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Showing 41 - 60 of 16996 items
By Jonathan Reggio. 2012
Feeling ill at ease with contemporary life James leaves the teeming cities behind and sets out on a pilgrimage…
across rural Japan in search of wisdom During his travels he gets lost in a wild wood and meets a young Japanese farmer who is trying to live a new kind of life James is inspired by him and lets this man teach him to trust nature and the truths within Seven years later James decides he must return to Japan to learn the truth has the farmer succeeded or are we doomed to live out our lives at war with each other and the environment Based on a true story this is a life-changing tale of friendship love and spiritualityBy Luigi Pirandello, C. K. Scott Moncrieff.
Serafino is a typical Pirandellian anti-hero, a spectator rather than a participant in the tragi-comedy of human existence. Indeed he…
has the perfect job for it, that of a film cameraman. Serafino is an observer, an impersonal tool of a new industry based on make believe. All he has to do is to turn the handle of his camera and watch. He has no part in what is going on and is so removed from life that the mauling of an actor by a tiger can not deflect him from filming the action. It is set in Rome circa 1915, partly on a film lot, partly in the city.By Albert Camus, Stuart Gilbert. 1946
By Herman Wouk. 2012
For more than fifty years, legendary author Herman Wouk has dreamed of writing a novel about the life of Moses.…
Finally, at age ninety-seven, he has found an ingeniously witty way to tell the tale in The Lawgiver, a romantic and suspenseful epistolary novel about a group of people trying to make a movie about Moses in the present day. The story emerges from letters, memos, e-mails, journals, news articles, recorded talk, Skype transcripts, and text messages. At the center of The Lawgiver is Margo Solovei, a brilliant young writer-director who has rejected her rabbinical father's strict Jewish upbringing to pursue a career in the arts. When an Australian multibillionaire promises to finance a movie about Moses if the script meets certain standards, Margo does everything she can to land the job, including a reunion with her estranged first love, an influential lawyer with whom she still has unfinished business. Two other key characters in the novel are Herman Wouk himself and his wife of more than sixty years, Betty Sarah, who, almost against their will, find themselves entangled in the Moses movie when the Australian billionaire insists on Wouk's stamp of approval. As Wouk and his characters contend with Moses and marriage, and the force of tradition, rebellion, and reunion, The Lawgiver reflects the wisdom of a lifetime. Inspired by the great nineteenth-century novelists, one of America's most beloved twentieth-century authors has now written a remarkable twenty-first-century work of fiction.By Pierre Lemaitre. 2013
NO APTO PARA LECTORES SENSIBLES Segunda y formidable entrega de la serie del comandante Verhoeven.La gran novela que supuso el…
inicio de la fulgurante carrera internacional de Lemaitre. Han pasado varios años desde el caso del asesino en serie que trastocó para siempre su vida, y el comandante Camille Verhoeven aún no se ha repuesta del todo cuando un nuevo desafío vuelve a implicarlo personal y profesionalmente: Alex, una mujer de treinta años, ha desaparecido. No es una mujer cualquiera, y Verhoeven, sin sospechosos ni pistas, debe adentrarse en la investigación de su personalidad para poder encontrarla, mientras ella agoniza en un almacén abandonado. Cada minuto que pasa puede ser el último. Y él no se lo perdonaría nunca. El autor de Vestido de novia e Irène vuelve a sacudirnos con este thriller escalofriante, una trama diabólica e imprevisible que lo confirma como el rey de la novela negra. Alex catapultó a Lemaitre a la fama internacional, al ser aclamado como el sucesor de Stieg Larsson; hoy su estilo es reconocido como único e inconfundible y cuenta con una legión de seguidores. Uno de los mejores libros del año según el Financial Times, en proceso de adaptación al cine, ganador del Dagger Award y del Premio de Lectores de Novela Negra de Livre de Poche. Por el ganador del Premio Goncourt,del Premio de Novela Negra Europeay del Premio Best Novel Valencia Negra,con más de medio millón de lectores. La crítica ha dicho...«Evito leer novelas traducidas, pero leí a Pierre Lemaitre: un autor de novelas de suspense realmente excelente.»Stephen King «Intriga, tensión medida, precisión psicológica y desasosiego de la mano de otro gran autor entre la novela negra francesa.»Culturamas «Dura y espeluznante (¡ay del que no soporte las ratas!) y con buenos (y odiosos) personajes.»Lilian Neuman, Cultura/s, La Vanguardia «Lemaitre impide dormir con esta historia aclamada como una obra maestra.»Tiempo «Cincuenta por ciento suspense, cincuenta por ciento investigación, cien por cien magnífica.»Le Figaro «Una capacidad original y absorbente para generar incredulidad en el lector.»Jurado del Crime Writers Association International Dagger Award «Lemaitre es, hoy por hoy, el mejor y más en forma novelista noir galo, un tipo capaz de pisarle los talones al maestro (Banville) Black.»Laura Fernández, El Cultural «La trilogía Verhoeven se lee de un tirón y desprende una melancolía notable por un minipoli adorable y la raza humana en general. No se la pierdan.»Ramón de España, El Periódico de CatalunyaBy Allan Massie. 2007
Third in Allan Massie's celebrated Dark Ages series A truly European monarch, Charlemagne was king of the Franks from 768…
to 814 and for some of that time king of the Lombards, too. From 800, when at Mass on Christmas day in Rome, Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne Imperator Romanorum (Emperor of the Romans) he became the renewer of the Western Empire, which had expired in the 5th century. His dual role as Emperor and King of the Franks provided the historical link between the Imperial dignity and the Frankish kingdoms and later Germany. Today both France and Germany look to him as a founding figure of their respective countries. His nephew, Roland, was also renowned for his prowess in battle and was the inspiration for the Chanson de Roland which recounts the story of the battle of Roncesvalles, in which he died.By Julia Ain-Krupa. 2016
The Upright Heart chronicles the return from Brooklyn of a Jewish man, Wolf, to his native Poland soon after World…
War II. He is haunted by the memory of his Catholic lover, Olga, whom he abandoned to marry a woman of his own faith and start a new life in America, and who perished sheltering the parents and younger sister he left behind. Harassed on the streets of postwar Poland, Wolf is watched over by the spirits of those who died during and after the war but have yet to let go. His story is woven together with those of others, living and dead, Catholic and Jew, including the deceased students of a school for girls, a battalion of fallen German soldiers, and an orphan boy who wanders the streets of Krakow, believing in a magic pill he has conjured up as a way to survive.Set amid the ruins of the Holocaust and the Nazis' total war, this haunting novel is at once a page-turning drama and a meditation on what it means to be human, part of a community, alive. The Upright Heart's dreamlike qualities and fluent lyricism draw the reader toward a consecrated realm, while its narrative force guides the story into the present, where survivors and their children, beset by the devastations of the past, struggle alongside the dead to perceive and appreciate the beauty of that which remains and that which might yet be.From the Trade Paperback edition.By Lara Harte. 2004
Following the death of her mother at an early age, Isabella Carroll was brought up by her wealthy Dublin aunt…
and uncle. The latter are keen to climb the ranks of Dublin society by making a suitably 'good' marriage for their niece. Isabella, however, is drawn to stories of her father who made his money on the plantations of Saint-Domingue, and to the idea of the 'Wild Geese', the Irish brigades who left their homes in search of a better life in France. When her aunt tries to set Isabella up with the wealthy but louche Gregory Murtogh, then the coldly calculating Mr M'Guire, Isabella decides to take her fate into her own hands. To the glee of the Dublin gossipmongers, Isabella sets off for Paris under the protection of the handsome but poor Dr Connor. But when she finally meets her father, she is in for a rude awakening about the source of his wealth. Added to that is the cool reception she receives from her father's cousin and her daughter, two women who want to exploit Isabella's innocence and idealism and gain access to her inheritance.By Cristina Alger. 2016
From the acclaimed author of The Darlings comes an incisive, hilarious, and tender exploration of fatherhood, love, and family life…
through the story of a widower who attempts to become the father he didn't know he could be.Charlie Goldwyn's life hasn't exactly gone according to plan. Widowerhood at thirty-three and twelve-hour workdays have left a gap in his relationship with his quirky five-year-old son, Caleb, whose obsession with natural disasters and penchant for girls' clothing have made him something of a loner at his preschool. The only thing Charlie has going for him is his job at a prestigious law firm, where he is finally close to becoming a partner. But when a slight lapse in judgment at an office party leaves him humiliatingly unemployed, stuck at home with Caleb for the summer, and forced to face his own estranged father, Charlie starts to realize that there's more to fatherhood than financially providing for his son, and more to being a son than overtaking his father's successes. At turns heartbreaking and hilarious, This Was Not the Plan is a story about loss and love, parenthood, and friendship, and what true work-life balance means.By Inga Simpson. 2014
A gripping and thought-provoking novel about finding the lost child in all of us.Once an artist and teacher, Jen now…
spends her time watching the birds around her house and tending her lush sub-tropical garden near the small hinterland town where she grew up. The only person she sees regularly is Henry, who comes after school for drawing lessons.When a girl in Henry's class goes missing, Jen is pulled back into the depths of her own past. She lost her father and her best friend Michael when she was Henry's age. They also went missing - in the same week. The whole town talked about it then, and now, nearly forty years later, they're talking about it again.Everyone is waiting - for the girl to be found and the summer rain to arrive. At last, when the answers do come, like the wet, it is in a drenching, revitalising downpour.Praise for Inga Simpson's MR WIGG'beautiful and absorbing? - Sydney Morning Herald'resonantly powerful at every bite...Just beautiful.' - Australian Women's Weekly'Beautifully crafted and brimming with warmth.' - Who Weekly'Mr Wigg captivates to the end' - Good Reading'a tender story' - Country StyleBy Jenny Bond. 2014
In Roosevelt's White House, one woman finds love and friendship in unexpected places. A short story from the author of…
The President's Lunch. Iris McIntosh is many things to many people - advisor to President Roosevelt, friend and confidant to First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, lover to one man, and girlfriend to another. But when the flamboyant Alexander Woollcott comes to stay, Iris begins to question everything that she had previously taken for granted. As she struggles to maintain the façade that splits her heart between two men, an unexpected evening with Aleck shows that they have more in common than Iris knew, and a simple game unravels both the mystery surrounding his past and the truth that she has failed to admit, even to herself. Jenny Bond has worked as a teacher, journalist, copywriter and researcher. Her non-fiction titles have been published in Australia and the USA. Writing about the stories behind great novels led Jenny to write her own first novel, Perfect North (Hachette 2013). Her second novel, The President's Lunch, again incorporates real-life figures with fictional ones, a technique that allows Jenny to imaginatively interpret historical events. While researching the novel, Jenny spent two months in Washington D.C. visiting the places where the Roosevelts lived and worked. She lives with her husband and children in Canberra, Australia's capital. Visit her at Jennybondbooks.comBy Scott Campbell. 1996
Robbie Young is an ordinary twelve-year-old boy about to drop a bombshell that will devastate his small town family. One…
day he rides his bike home after school, finds his mother in the kitchen making dinner, and speaks aloud the secret he's been keeping for a year, "Jerry Houseman's been touching me. " Robbie has been molested and the Young family will never be the same. From that moment on, the novel unfolds with inexorable power. The story is narrated in four parts: first by Robbie's mother, then by Jerry Houseman himself, then by Houseman's wife Linda, and concluded by Robbie himself fifteen years later, when he has returned to town for a high school reunion. Each voice is remarkably persuasive and utterly convincing, and the result is a novel that is impossible to put down as it is impossible to forget.By Paolo Sorrentino. 2015
In a luxury spa hotel in the Swiss Alps, octogenarian friends Fred Ballinger and Mick Boyle look back on their…
eventful and successful lives as composer and film director, surrounded by a host of colorful and eccentric fellow guests, ranging from a South American soccer star to a famous Californian actor and a reigning Miss Universe. Ballinger is there simply to enjoy his retirement, while Boyle is working with five scriptwriters on his last film, which he hopes will be his masterpiece. When Ballinger is invited by Buckingham Palace to conduct his most famous piece at Prince Philip's birthday celebration and accept a knighthood in return, he refuses, citing personal reasons. As for Mick Boyle, he eventually receives a visit from Brenda Morel, his signature actress, who comes all the way from California to give her opinion of this latest film in which she is to star. At the same time as these two men face these turning points, the marriage of Fred's daughter to Mick's son brings further complications.Only by reconciling with their muses, and by coming to terms with old age and the weight of memory that comes with it, can the two friends move forward with what remains of their lives.By Naguib Mahfouz. 1975
By Arthur Phillips. 2004
From the bestselling author of Prague comes a witty, inventive, brilliantly constructed novel about an Egyptologist obsessed with finding the…
tomb of an apocryphal king. This darkly comic labyrinth of a story opens on the desert plains of Egypt in 1922, then winds its way from the slums of Australia to the ballrooms of Boston by way of Oxford, the battlefields of the First World War, and a royal court in turmoil. Just as Howard Carter unveils the tomb of Tutankhamun, making the most dazzling find in the history of archaeology, Oxford-educated Egyptologist Ralph Trilipush is digging himself into trouble, having staked his professional reputation and his fiancée's fortune on a scrap of hieroglyphic pornography. Meanwhile, a relentless Australian detective sets off on the case of his career, spanning the globe in search of a murderer. And another murderer. And possibly another murderer. The confluence of these seemingly separate stories results in an explosive ending, at once inevitable and utterly unpredictable. Arthur Phillips leads this expedition to its unforgettable climax with all the wit and narrative bravado that made Prague one of the most critically acclaimed novels of 2002. Exploring issues of class, greed, ambition, and the very human hunger for eternal life, this staggering second novel gives us a glimpse of Phillips's range and maturity-and is sure to earn him further acclaim as one of the most exciting authors of his generation.By Arthur Phillips. 2002
A first novel of startling scope and ambition, Prague depicts an intentionally lost Lost Generation as it follows five American…
expats who come to Budapest in the early 1990s to seek their fortune--financial, romantic, and spiritual--in an exotic city newly opened to the West. They harbor the vague suspicion that their counterparts in Prague, where the atmospheric decay of post-Cold War Europe is even more cinematically perfect, have it better. Still, they hope to find adventure, inspiration, a gold rush, or history in the making. What they actually find is a deceptively beautiful place that they often fail to understand. What does it mean to fret about your fledgling career when the man across the table was tortured by two different regimes? How does your short, uneventful life compare to the lives of those who actually resisted, fought, and died? What does your angst mean in a city still pocked with bullet holes from war and crushed rebellion? Journalist John Price finds these questions impossible to answer yet impossible to avoid, though he tries to forget them in the din of Budapest's nightclubs, in a romance with a secretive young diplomat, at the table of an elderly cocktail pianist, and in the moody company of a young man obsessed with nostalgia. Arriving in Budapest one spring day to pursue his elusive brother, John finds himself pursuing something else entirely, something he can't quite put a name to, something that will draw him into stories much larger than himself. With humor, intelligence, masterly prose, and profound affection for both Budapest and his own characters, Arthur Phillips not only captures his contemporaries but also brilliantly renders the Hungary of past and present: the generations of failed revolutionaries and lyric poets, opportunists and profiteers, heroes and storytellers.By Anna Quinn. 2018
This breathtaking debut novel examines the impact of traumatic childhood experiences and the fragile line between past and present. Exquisitely…
nuanced and profoundly intimate, The Night Child is a story of resilience, hope, and the capacity of the mind, body, and spirit to save itself despite all odds.Nora Brown teaches high school English and lives a quiet life in Seattle with her husband and six-year-old daughter. But one November day, moments after dismissing her class, a girl’s face appears above the students’ desks—“a wild numinous face with startling blue eyes, a face floating on top of shapeless drapes of purples and blues where arms and legs should have been. Terror rushes through Nora’s body—the kind of raw terror you feel when there’s no way out, when every cell in your body, your entire body, is on fire—when you think you might die.”Twenty-four hours later, while on Thanksgiving vacation, the face appears again. Shaken and unsteady, Nora meets with neurologists and eventually, a psychiatrist. As the story progresses, a terrible secret is discovered—a secret that pushes Nora toward an even deeper psychological breakdown.“The Night Child is a powerful, beautifully written, transformative novel that struck a rare chord with me. When I recall Nora’s journey, I am affected viscerally, as if I were reliving her painful memories alongside her. ‘Must-read’ is not a phrase I use often; I am using it now: you must read this book!”—Garth Stein, New York Times bestselling author of The Art of Racing in the Rain“Anna Quinn writes with bright and assured authority, making this a remarkable debut novel you won’t soon forget. Her haunting story, expertly and lovingly crafted, leaves you breathless with both terror and hope.”—Susan Wiggs, #1 New York Times bestselling author“I loved this book so much…I entered Quinn’s book and lost myself and exited her book changed. She is hanging with the big dogs with this work…like Jodi Picoult and Ann Patchett.”—Lidia Yuknavitch, bestselling author of The Book of Joan“The Night Child is an exhilarating debut: Quinn immediately pulls the reader in and doesn’t let go until the final scene. She commands each page and expertly dives into the inner working of a broken mind. This fast-paced, riveting novel of coping with the past while trying to salvage life in the present is hard to put down.” —BooklistBy Daniel Glattauer. 2011
It begins by chance: Leo receives emails in error from an unknown woman called Emmi. Being polite he replies, and…
Emmi writes back. A few brief exchanges are all it takes to spark a mutual interest in each other, and soon Emmi and Leo are sharing their innermost secrets and longings. The erotic tension simmers, and, despite Emmi being happily married it seems only a matter of time before they will meet in person. Will their feelings for each other survive the test of a real-life encounter? And if so, what then? Love Virtually is a funny, fast-paced and absorbing experience, with plenty of twists and turns, about a love affair conducted by email.By Derek Robinson. 2012
1943. British Intelligence has finally got to grips with the Eldorado Network, Germany's most successful spy ring. It turns out…
to be one man in a small room in Lisbon, inventing phony (but convincing) reports. For two years he pulled the wool over German Intelligence's eyes, and made a killing.The British soon find that Eldorado's a real handful. They bring him to England, so they can manage his dispatches, and discover that living with a genius can be a headache. Eldorado rapidly creates a team of top sub-agents around him. None of them exists. But power--even imaginary power--is intoxicating, and he begins to treat his fake sub-agents as if real. Big trouble ahead.Artillery of Lies is the hair-raising sequel to The Eldorado Network, all the more funny for being soundly based on the true story of a real Second World War spy.By Jon Kalman Stefansson. 2016
After coming through the blizzard that almost cost them everything, Jens and the boy are far from home, in a…
fishing community at the edge of the world.Taken in by the village doctor, the boy once again has the sense of being brought back from the grave. But this is a strange place, with otherworldly inhabitants, including flame-haired Álfhei?ur, who makes him wonder whether it is possible to love two women at once; he had believed his heart was lost to Ragnhei?ur, the daughter of the wealthy merchant in the village to which he must now inexorably return.Set in the awe-inspiring wilderness of the extreme north, The Human Heart is a profound exploration of life, love, and desire, written with a sublime simplicity. In this conclusion to an audacious trilogy, Stefánsson brings a poet's eye and a philosopher's insight to a tale worthy of the sagasmiths of old.