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The rings of Saturn
By Michael Hulse, W. G. Sebald, Winfried Georg Sebald. 1999
A walking tour of England's southeast coast frames a wide-ranging series of meditations on literature and stories from Britain's imperial…
past. A stay in a Norwich hospital prompts the protagonist to search for naturalist Thomas Browne's skull; a railroad bridge over the river Blyth recalls England's silk trade with China. 1998The Pillars of Hercules: a grand tour of the Mediterranean
By Paul Theroux. 1995
Although the Pillars of Hercules are only fifteen miles apart, it took Theroux approximately eighteen months to travel between them--he…
took the long way, the old Grand Tour route. Theroux visits places such as Barcelona, Nice, Istanbul, Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily, Albania, Greece, and Morocco by car, boat, train, and footThe land and people of Italy (Portraits of the Nations Ser.)
By David Travis. 1992
Italy, a European peninsula bordered on three sides by five seas and criss-crossed by mountains, is a collection of distinct…
regions. Although built on ancient foundations, Italy was not formed as a single nation until 1861, and it became a democracy in 1946. The author examines the history, geography, economy, culture, and people of Italy. For grades 5-8 and older readersSpain or shine (S.A.S.S. : Students Across the Seven Seas)
By Michelle Jellen. 2005
At home in California, sixteen-year-old Elena Holloway feels overshadowed by her siblings. But then she spends a semester in Spain…
living with a Spanish family, studying playwriting, and flirting with Miguel, an attractive local boy. For grades 6-9. 2005A child's Christmas in Wales (New Directions paperbook #972)
By Dylan Thomas. 2003
The Villa: Escape to Sicily with the Number One Bestseller
By Rosanna Ley. 2014
THE #1 KINDLE BESTSELLER. An unforgettable story set off the sun-soaked coast of Sicily for fans of Dinah Jefferies, Victoria…
Hislop and Santa Montefiore.'The perfect holiday companion' - Heat'The ultimate feel-good read' - Candis'Sun-soaked escapism' - Best**********When Tess Angel receives a solicitor's letter inviting her to claim her inheritance - the Villa Sirena, perched on a clifftop in Sicily - she is stunned. Her only link to the island is through her mother, Flavia, who left Sicily during World War II and cut all contact with her family. When Tess goes to Sicily, Flavia realises the secrets from her past are about to be revealed and decides to try to explain her actions. Meanwhile, Tess' teenage daughter Ginny is stressed by college, by her blooming sexuality and filled with questions that she longs to ask her father, if only she knew where he was...********SEE WHAT EVERYONE IS SAYING ABOUT ROSANNA LEY:'An impeccably researched and deftly written narrative that kept me hooked until the end' - Kathryn Hughes, bestselling author of The Letter 'Loved it from start to finish. A brilliant holiday read' - Amazon reviewer'Perfect for fans of Santa Montefiore, Victoria Hislop and Leah Fleming' - Candis 'On so many levels a fantastic read' - Amazon reviewer'A fascinating story with engaging themes' - Dinah Jefferies, bestselling author of The Tea Planter's Wife 'Warm, enthralling, one of my favourite authors' - Amazon reviewerSpain or Shine
By Michelle Jellen. 2005
Elena is lost in the shuffle between her three overachieving siblings. But now that she’s on her own for a…
whole semester, she intends to keep the spotlight on herself—and Spain is just the place to do it. Once she starts living it up in tapas bars, lying out on the beach (even though it’s November), and having a nice, long siesta smack-dab in the middle of every day, Elena finds that Spain is everything she hoped it would be. She’s even met a to-fawn-over Spaniard, Miguel. But Elena has always been more comfortable writing plays than starring in them, and she’s beginning to realize that keeping out of the spotlight has its perks too. . . . .Involuntary Witness
By Patrick Creagh, Gianrico Carofiglio. 2002
A boy is found murdered in a well near a beach resort A Senegalese peddler is accused in a…
hopeless case soaked in small town racism The Italian judicial process revealed and an affectionate portrait of a deeply humane heroLondon Triptych
By Jonathan Kemp. 2013
"London itself is as powerful a presence here as the three gay men whose lives it absorbs."?The Times Literary Supplement"Vivid…
and visceral, London Triptych cuts deep to reveal the hidden layers of a secret history."?Jake Arnott, author of The Long FirmRent boys, aristocrats, artists, and criminals populate this sweeping novel in which author Jonathan Kemp skillfully interweaves the lives and loves of three very different men in gay London across the decades.In the 1890s, a young man named Jack apprentices as a rent boy and discovers a life of pleasure and excess that leads to new friendships, most notably with the soon-to-be-infamous Oscar Wilde. A century later in 1998, David tells his own tale of unashamed decadence from prison, recalling life as a young man arriving in the city in the mid-'80s just as the scourge of AIDS hit. Where their paths cross, in the politically sensitive 1950s, when gay men were the target of police and politicians alike, the artist Colin tentatively explores his sexuality while working on his painting "London Triptych."Moodily atmospheric and rich with history, London Triptych is a sexy, resplendent portrait of the politics and pleasures of queer life in one of the world's most fascinating cities.Jonathan Kemp lives in London, where he currently teaches creative writing at Birkbeck College. London Triptych, his first novel, was published in the United Kingdom in 2010 and won the Authors' Club Best First Novel Award.Killing Auntie
By Wiesiek Powaga, Andrzej Bursa. 2015
"The Polish postwar firebrand Andrzej Bursa acquired a reputation as a quick-burning, existentially tormented rebel. . . . Yet Bursa's…
dark humor and deadpan satire . . . keep utter bleakness at bay."-The Independent"A revolution against the banality of everyday life."-Gazeta KrakowskaA young university student named Jurek, with no particular ambitions or talents, is adrift. After his doting aunt asks him to perform a small chore, he decides to kill her for no good reason other than, perhaps, boredom. Killing Auntie follows Jurek as he seeks to dispose of the corpse-a task more difficult than one might imagine-and then falls in love with a girl he meets on a train. Can he tell her what he's done? Will that ruin everything?"I'm convinced-simply-that we are all guilty," says Jurek, and his adventures with nosy neighbors, false-toothed grandmothers, and love-making lynxes shed light on how an entire society becomes involved in the murder and disposal of dear old Auntie. This is a short comedic masterpiece combining elements of Fyodor Dostoevsky, Jean-Paul Sartre, Franz Kafka, and Joseph Heller, coming together in the end to produce an unforgettable tale of murder and-just maybe-redemption.Andrzej Bursa was born in 1934 in Krakow, Poland, and died twenty-five years later. In his brief lifetime he composed some of the most original Polish writing of the twentieth century. Killing Auntie is his only novel. His brilliant career and tragic early death established him as a cult figure among restless and disenchanted youth.Guys Like Me
By Howard Curtis, Dominique Fabre. 2015
"Fabre is a genius of these nuanced, interior moments ... The story Fabre tells is that of every one of…
us: looking for meaning in the mundane, moving through our lives, our interactions, as if through the fabric of a dream ... How do we live? it asks to consider. And: What does our existence mean?"--Los Angeles Times"Guys Like Me is a short, arresting tale that ...not only offers keen insights into the mind of its middle-aged protagonist, but also provides the reader with a unique tour of what everyday life in the low-key suburbs of Paris must truly be like."--Typographical Era"Readers will take pleasure in this well-told tale with a satisfying ending."--Publishers Weekly"The setting may be Paris, but it's not the Paris of grand avenues and pricey cafés. In fact, Fabre's hero is a recognizable everyman, from any country."-Library JournalA smile like a soft flash of light . . . travels through this moving novel and tells, in words that are muted and profoundly humane, of life as it is."-Le Monde"Fabre speaks to us of luck and misfortune, of the accidents that make a man or defeat him. He talks about our ordinary disappointments and our small moments of calm. Fabre is the discreet megaphone of the man in the crowd."-Elle"In this novel one finds the intimate geography of an author who lays bare the essence of Paris and its outskirts."-La Quinzaine littéraireDominique Fabre, born in Paris and a lifelong resident of the city, exposes the shadowy, anonymous lives of many who inhabit the French capital. In this quiet, subdued tale, a middle-aged office worker, divorced and alienated from his only son, meets up with two childhood friends who are similarly adrift, without passions or prospects. He's looking for a second act to his mournful life, seeking the harbor of love and a true connection with his son. Set in palpably real Paris streets that feel miles away from the City of Light, Guys Like Me is a stirring novel of regret and absence, yet not without a glimmer of hope.Dominique Fabre, born in 1960, writes about people living on society's margins. He is a lifelong resident of Paris, France. His previous novel, The Waitress Was New, was also translated into English.Fever
By Mike Mitchell, Friedrich Glauser. 1896
Praise for Friedrich Glauser's other Sergeant Studer novels:"Thumbprint is a fine example of the craft of detective writing in a…
period which fans will regard as the golden age of crime fiction."-The Sunday Telegraph"In Matto's Realm is both a compelling mystery and an illuminating, finely wrought mainstream novel."-Publishers Weekly"A despairing plot about the reality of madness and life, leavened with strong doses of bittersweet irony. The idiosyncratic investigation of In Matto's Realm and its laconic detective have not aged one iota."-Guardian"With good reason, the German-language prize for detective fiction is named after Glauser. . . . He has Simenon's ability to turn a stereotype into a person, and the moral complexity to appeal to justice over the head of police procedure."-The Times Literary SupplementWhen two women are "accidentally" killed by gas leaks, Sergeant Studer investigates the thinly disguised double murder in Bern and Basel. The trail leads to a geologist dead from a tropical fever in a Moroccan Foreign Legion post and a murky oil deal involving rapacious politicians and their henchmen. With the help of a hashish-induced dream and the common sense of his stay-at-home wife, Studer solves the multiple riddles on offer. But assigning guilt remains an elusive affair.The third in the Sergeant Studer series.A Jew Must Die
By Jacques Chessex, Donald Wilson. 1973
Praise for A Jew Must Die:"Chessex, our new Flaubert, has no equal when describing horror without flinching, screaming sotto voce…
and exploring guilt in taut prose."--Le Nouvel Observateur"A masterpiece. Beauty of the world, ubiquity of evil, God's silence, it's all there, delivered like a slap to the face."--Le Point"A great author explores a nightmare not as anachronistic as it might appear."--L'HebdoA novel based on a true story.On April 16, 1942, a handful of Swiss Nazis in Payerne lure Arthur Bloch, a Jewish cattle merchant, into an empty stable and kill him with a crowbar. Europe is in flames, but this is Switzerland, and Payerne, a rural market town of butchers and bankers, is more worried about unemployment and local bankruptcies than the fate of nations across the border. Fernand Ischi, leader of the local Nazi cell, blames it all on the town's Jewish population and wants to set an example, thinking the German embassy would be grateful. Ischi's dream of becoming the local gauleiter is shattered, however, when the milk containers used to dissimulate Bloch's body parts is discovered floating in a lake nearby, leading to his arrest.Jacques Chessex, winner of the prestigious Prix Goncourt, is one of Switzerland's greatest authors. He knew the murderers, went to school with their children, and has written a terse, implacable story that has awakened memories in a country that seems to endlessly rediscover dark areas of its past.The Last Wolf & Herman
By George Szirtes, John Batki, László Krasznahorkai. 2016
Two short masterworks by the most recent winner of the Man Booker International Prize: here, in miniature, is every reason…
why he won The Last Wolf, translated by George Szirtes, features a classic, obsessed Krasznahorkai narrator, a man hired to write (by mistake, by a glitch of fate) the true tale of the last wolf of Extremadura, a barren stretch of Spain. This miserable experience (being mistaken for another, dragged about a cold foreign place, appalled by a species' end) is narrated--all in a single sentence--as a sad looping tale, a howl more or less, in a dreary wintry Berlin bar to a patently bored bartender. The Last Wolf is Krasznahorkai in a maddening nutshell--with the narrator trapped in his own experience (having internalized the extermination of the last creature of its kind and "locked Extremadura in the depths of his own cold, empty, hollow heart")--enfolding the reader in the exact same sort of entrapment to and beyond the end, with its first full-stop period of the book. Herman, "a peerless virtuoso of trapping who guards the splendid mysteries of an ancient craft gradually sinking into permanent oblivion," is asked to clear a forest's last "noxious beasts." In Herman I: the Game Warden, he begins with great zeal, although in time he "suspects that maybe he was 'on the wrong scent.'" Herman switches sides, deciding to track entirely new game... In Herman II: The Death of a Craft, the same situation is viewed by strange visitors to the region. Hyper-sexualized aristocratic officers on a very extended leave are enjoying a saturnalia with a bevy of beauties in the town nearest the forest. With a sense of effete irony, they interrupt their orgies to pitch in with the manhunt of poor Herman, and in the end, "only we are left to relish the magic bouquet of this escapade..." Translated by John Batki.The House with the Stained-Glass Window (MacLehose Press Editions #7)
By Zanna Sloniowska, Antonia Lloyd Jones. 2015
"The House with the Stained-Glass Window is remarkable, a gripping, Lvivian evocation of a city and a family across a…
long and painful century, at once personal and political, a novel of life and survival across the ages" PHILIPPE SANDS, author of East West StreetIn 1989, Marianna, the beautiful star soprano at the Lviv opera, is shot dead in the street as she leads the Ukrainian citizens in their protest against Soviet power. Only eleven years old at the time, her daughter tells the story of their family before and after that critical moment - including, ten years later, her own passionate affair with an older, married man. Just like their home city of Lviv, which stands at the crossroads of nations and cultures, the women in this family have had turbulent lives, scarred by war and political turmoil, but also by their own inability to show each other their feelings. Lyrically told, this is the story of a young girl's emotional, sexual, artistic and political awakening as she matures under the influence of her relatives, her mother's former lover, her city and its fortunes.Translated from the Polish by Antonia Lloyd-JonesThe Russian Passenger
By John Brownjohn, Gunter Ohnemus. 2004
"At fifty the good Buddhist takes to the road, leaving all his belongings behind. His sole possession is a begging…
bowl. That's how it should be. The problem was, there were four million dollars in my begging bowl and the mafia were after me. It was their money. They wanted it back, and they also wanted the girl, the woman who was with me: Sonia Kovalevskaya".Not only a thriller about murder and big money but also a powerful evocation of the cruel history that binds Russia and Germany.Günter Ohnemus, born in 1946, lives in Munich and writes novels, essays and translations. This is his first novel to be translated into English.Blackout
By Howard Curtis, Gianluca Morozzi. 2004
"A spine-tingling novel that keeps you mesmerized from beginning to end."--InfiniteStorie"Morozzi has a light touch. He has an uncanny ability…
to convey mood swings, excitement and plot twists with ever increasing velocity."--Gazzetta di Parma"A chilling and claustrophobic thriller with an unpredictable ending. Morozzi joins the best in the genre."--LINUSBologna in August: unbearable heat, an empty city. Claudia is a young student in a hurry to return home from her work as a waitress and get out of the skimpy uniform she hates. Tomas is a young man on his way to elope to Amsterdam with his girlfriend, Francesca. Aldo is a husband and father with an uncanny resemblance to Elvis Presley, anxious to get to an apartment filled with guilty secrets. All three have an urgent need to be somewhere else. Instead, they are trapped in an elevator in a deserted building on a holiday weekend. They are like three wasps in an upturned glass . . . and one of the trio is a serial killer.This dark, twist-packed psychological thriller in the style of Phonebooth has been adapted as a US film to be released in the fall of 2008, starring Amber Tamblyn and directed by cult Mexican auteur Rigoberto Castañeda.Gianluca Morozzi was born in Bologna in 1971, where he lives today. He is well-known as a cutting-edge satirist and music critic, often compared to Nick Hornby and Ben Elton. Blackout is his first thriller.The Snowman
By Anthea Bell, J rg Fauser. 2004
"Prose that penetrates the reader's mind like speed, fast paced, without an ounce of fat."--WeltwocheHe's found five pounds of top--quality…
Peruvian cocaine in a suit-case. Pur-sued by the police and drug traffickers the luckless Blum falls prey to the frenzied paranoia of the cocaine addict and dealer. This is a fast-paced thriller written with acerbic humour, a hardboiled evocation of drug-fuelled existence and a penetrating observation of those at the edge of German society.Having broken his addiction to on heroin at the age of thirty, Jörg Fauser spent much of the rest of his life dependent on alcohol. He died aged forty-three in 1987, run over by a truck at four am on a German highway.Reasonable Doubts
By Howard Curtis, Gianrico Carofiglio. 2006
A man gets sixteen years for smuggling drugs into Italy. Guerrieri takes on the appeal, discovers the accused was a…
neo-Fascist thug, and ends up in bed with his beautiful half-Japanese wife...the gnawing boredom of routine.The Chinaman
By Mike Mitchell, Friedrich Glauser. 1896
"After reading Friedrich Glauser's dark tour de force In Matto's Realm, it's easy to see why the German equivalent of…
the Edgar Allan Poe Award is dubbed 'The Glauser.'"--The Washington PostPraise for the Sergeant Studer series:"Thumbprint is a fine example of the craft of detective writing in a period which fans will regard as the golden age of crime fiction."--The Sunday Telegraph"In Matto's Realm is a gem that contains echoes of Dürrenmatt, Fritz Lang's film M and Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain. Both a compelling mystery and an illuminating, finely wrought mainstream novel."--Publishers WeeklyWhen, in later years, Sergeant Studer told the story of the Chinaman, he called it the story of three places, as the case unfolded in a Swiss country inn, in a poorhouse, and in a horticultural college. Three places and two murders. Anna Hungerlott, supposedly dead from gastric influenza, left behind handkerchiefs with traces of arsenic. One foggy November morning the enigmatic James Farny, nicknamed the Chinaman by Studer, was found lying on Anna's grave. Murdered, a single pistol shot to the heart that did not pierce his clothing. This is the fourth in the Sergeant Studer series. Friedrich Glauser is a legendary figure in European crime writing. He was a morphine and opium addict much of his life and began writing crime novels while an inmate of the Swiss asylum for the insane at Waldau.