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Not even if you begged: A Novel (Invincible Women #4)
By Francis Ray. 2008
Charleston, South Carolina. Thirty-seven-year-old attorney Traci Evans is honored to join the Invincible Sisterhood, a group of older widows, although…
she does not mourn her cheating husband. While fellow member Maureen Gilmore falls in love with a younger man, Traci meets Maureen's unmarried son. Some explicit descriptions of sex. 2008Spain 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 Shortcut to Paradise
By Teresa Solana, Peter Bush. 2007
A writer is murdered at the Ritz on the night she wins an important literary prize, battered to death with…
the trophy she has just won. A satire of the Catalan literary scene dressed up as a hilarious murder mystery.Nights of Awe
By Harri Nykanen, Kristian London. 2004
'Nykänen's twist on Nordic crime fiction may be the most inventive of the year. Ariel Kafka, a middle-aged bachelor, is…
a detective in Helsinki (think early Harry Hole) and, as far as he knows, the only Jew on the entire Helsinki police force, which is why he's picked to head up the investigation of a series of murders that began with two Arabic-looking men who may have been shouting Jewish obscenities as they died. Set during the days leading up to Yom Kippur, this complex tale moves quickly, as Ari attempts to figure it all out. With pressure from his colleagues, police administration, his brother, and the local Jewish community, can he uncover everything before the holiest day in the Jewish calender? The clever combination of classic Jewish themes with the traditions of Nordic crime makes for a refreshing tale with wide appeal. And the subtle humor, combined with a hero who is not completely depressed and alcoholic, makes it even better. Not just for readers of Nordic fiction, this should also be suggested to those who relate to New York Jewish detectives, including Lenny Briscoe (from Law & Order) and John Munch (from Homicide and Law & Order: SVU), as well as readers who enjoy the black humor of Stuart MacBride.' BooklistHarri Nykänen, born in Helsinki in 1953, was a well-known crime journalist before turning to fiction. He won the Finnish crime writing award The Clue in 1990 and in 2001. His fiction exposes the local underworld through the eyes of the criminal, the terrorist, and, most recently, from the point of view of an eccentric Helsinki police inspector.The Sound of One Hand Killing
By Peter Bush, Teresa Solana. 2011
The director of an exclusive New Age meditation centre in a fancy Barcelona neighborhood is murdered, a case for twin…
detectives Borja and Eduard. The murder of a CIA agent simultaneously drags them into an international conspiracy that transports them to China and back. This hilarious mystery novel is a remorseless satire of those practicing pseudo-science and pseudo-spirituality.The Eyes of Lira Kazan
By Eva Joly, Judith Perrignon, Emily Read. 2012
"Plot twists galore, relentless suspense and expert insights to satisfy anyone fascinated by today's financial crisis."--Culture TF1 From Lagos to…
London, by way of the Faroe Islands and St. Petersburg, an investigation turns deadly. The head of the Nigerian fraud squad is evacuated from Lagos by secret service operatives. Meanwhile a junior prosecutor in Nice probes the mysterious death of the wife of a powerful banker and a crusading journalist in St. Petersburg pursues a corrupt oligarch and his criminal business empire. The paths of all three cross in London, where they find themselves embroiled in violent events obviously linked to financial and political interests and hunted by the oligarch's men, the Western secret services and goons sent by Nigerian oil magnates. A satirical, intelligent, and fast-paced thriller set in the world of high finance and low politics, The Eyes of Lira Kazan is co-written by Eva Joly, a prominent former prosecuting judge in Paris and a candidate in the 2012 French Presidential elections. Eva Joly is Norwegian born and this is her first novel. Judith Perrignon is a prize-winning essayist and the author of a number of historical and other literary works, including La nuit du Fouquet's avec Ariane Chemin. This is her second novel after the much lauded Les Chagrins, published in France in 2011.Crazy Tales of Blood and Guts
By Peter Bush, Teresa Solana. 2013
Fascinating short stories that include a rather bloody satire on installation art, including the Edgar Award-nominated story "Still Life No.41",…
a wonderful story of gruesome revenge involving a wayward son-in-law, a surprising and hilarious tale of a pre-historic serial killer who invents God and psychoanalysis, and, inevitably, a vampire story told with venom and humor.These stories remind one of the best short stories by Stephen King, such as those in the 'Just after Sunset' compilation. They can be horrific but are never without a devastating sense of humor. As in the adult short stories of Roald Dahl (the 'Kiss Kiss' collection in particular, with its tales of family and other violence) there is great ingenuity, surprising and satisfying endings, and, since it's Solana, deep cutting satire of contemporary fads and mores.Framed
By Adriana Hunter, Tonino Benacquista. 2006
Praise for Holy Smoke, the first in the Antoine series:"A terrific black comedy ...both a blasphemously funny satire of provincial…
Italian chicanery and a wry acknowledgment of the ambivalence that ambitious immigrants feel about their roots."--The New York Times"Unexpected deadly demands made in the name of friendship inspire the plot of this quirky mystery novel. Irreverently inveighs against romantic love, cancer and the Paris suburbs."--The Washington Post"An iconoclastic chronicle of small-time crooks and desperate capers, with added Gallic and Italian flair. Wonderful fun."--GuardianAntoine, a fanatic billiards player, is asked to watch over a Paris art gallery. When he scuffles with a thief a statue falls and severs his right hand. His maverick investigation leads to the discovery of a series of gruesome killings. Soon Antoine finds himself the prime suspect in the murder of a gallery owner. A game of billiards decides the outcome of this satirical tale which brilliantly captures the world of modern art and the parasites that infest it.After being, in turn, a museum night-watchman, and a train guard on the Paris-Rome line, Tonino Benacquista is now a highly successful author of fiction and film scripts.Someone Else
By Adriana Hunter, Tonino Benacquista. 2005
"Breathless pace. Touches effortlessly on identity, love, alcohol, and the cynicism of the business world."--Les EchosWho hasn't wanted to become…
"someone else"? Over a drink in Paris, two men give each other three years to see which one can more radically alter his life. Blin becomes a private detective. He takes on a new identity, even a surgically altered face. Gredzinski, a self-effacing corporate executive, discovers liquor that evening and rapidly yields to the sensuality and self-confidence induced by alcoholism. Things get complicated when Blin is hired by an ex-lover to find himself and when Gredzinski secretly follows his girlfriend to her home. A helter-skelter tale of humor and suspense.Winner of the literary prize RTL-Lire.The Cheffe: A Culinary Novel
By Marie NDiaye. 2016
The Cheffe is born into a very poor family in Sainte-Bazeille in south-western France, but when she takes a job…
working in the kitchen of a couple in the Landes region, it does not take long before it becomes clear that the Cheffe has an unusual, remarkable talent for cooking. She dreams in recipes, she's always imagining food combinations and cooking times, she hunts down elusive flavours and aromas, and she soon usurps the couple's cook.But for all her genius, the Cheffe remains very secretive about the rest of her life. She becomes pregnant, but will not reveal her daughter's father. She shares nothing of her feelings or emotions. And when the demands of her work and caring for her child become too much, she leaves her baby in the care of her family, and sets out to open her own restaurant, which will soon win rave reviews and be lauded by all.But her relationship with her daughter will never be easy, and before long, it will threaten to destroy everything the Cheffe has spent her life perfecting.A Foolish Virgin
By Ida Simons. 2014
It is the middle of the roaring twenties, and Gittel is living The Hague with her parents, whose blazing rows…
are the traditional preserve of Sundays and public holidays. What luck, then, that Gittel is Jewish, and must submit to "the double helping of public holidays that is the lot of Jewish families".After every matrimonial slanging match, Gittel's mother runs off to her parents' home in Antwerp - with her daugher in tow. Much to her delight, Gittel makes the acquaintance of the well-to-do Mardell family, who allow her to practise on their Steinway. Gittel feels that she is taken seriously by Mr Mardell, the head of the household, and by thirty-year-old Lucie, whom she adores. When these friendships turn out to be nothing but an illusion, Gittel learns her first lessons about trust and betrayal. Her second comes soon after, when her father, whose talents for business leave much to be desired, attempts to make a quick killing in Berlin on the eve of the Wall Street Crash.Though this intimate portrayal of familial strife is set in the shadow of the Holocaust, Simons says little about the horror that awaits her characters, yet she succeeds in giving the reader the sense that the novel is about more than a young girl's loss of innocence. In a fluid, almost casual style, she has written a masterly and timeless ode to a relatively carefree interlude in a dark and dramatic period.Translated from the Dutch by Liz WatersLadivine
By Marie NDiaye. 2013
Longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize 2016Clarisse Rivière's life is shaped by a refusal to admit to her husband…
Richard and to her daughter Ladivine that her mother is a poor black housekeeper. Instead, weighed down by guilt, she pretends to be an orphan, visiting her mother in secret and telling no-one of her real identity as Malinka, daughter of Ladivine Sylla. In time, her lies turn against her. Richard leaves Clarisse, frustrated by the unbridgeable, indecipherable gulf between them. Clarisse is devastated, but finds solace in a new man, Freddy Moliger, who is let into the secret about her mother, and is even introduced to her. But Ladivine, her daughter, who is now married herself, cannot shake a bad feeling about her mother's new lover, convinced that he can bring only chaos and pain into her life. When she is proved right, in the most tragic circumstances, the only comfort the family can turn to requires a leap of faith beyond any they could have imagined.Centred around three generations of women, whose seemingly cursed lineage is defined by the weight of origins, the pain of alienation and the legacy of shame, Ladivine is a beguiling story of secrets, lies, guilt and forgiveness by one of Europe's most unique literary voices.Translated from the French by Jordan StumpThe Human Part
By Kari Hotakainen. 2009
An elderly woman agrees to sell her life to a blocked writer she meets at a book fair. She needs…
to talk - her husband has not spoken since a family tragedy some months ago. She claims that her grown-up children are doing well, but the writer imagines less salubrious lives for them, as the downturn of Finland's economic boom begins to bite. Perhaps he's on to something. The Human Part is pure laugh-out-loud satire, laying bare the absurdities of modern society in the most vicious and precise manner imaginable.The Cheffe: A Culinary Novel
By Marie NDiaye. 2019
The Cheffe is born into a very poor family in Sainte-Bazeille in south-western France, but when she takes a job…
working in the kitchen of a couple in the Landes region, it does not take long before it becomes clear that the Cheffe has an unusual, remarkable talent for cooking. She dreams in recipes, she's always imagining food combinations and cooking times, she hunts down elusive flavours and aromas, and she soon usurps the couple's cook.But for all her genius, the Cheffe remains very secretive about the rest of her life. She becomes pregnant, but will not reveal her daughter's father. She shares nothing of her feelings or emotions. And when the demands of her work and caring for her child become too much, she leaves her baby in the care of her family, and sets out to open her own restaurant, which will soon win rave reviews and be lauded by all.But her relationship with her daughter will never be easy, and before long, it will threaten to destroy everything the Cheffe has spent her life perfecting.Rolling Fields
By David Trueba. 2020
WINNER OF AN ENGLISH PEN AWARD'Effortlessly readable and fizzing with energy, this novel is by turns quirky, funny and thoughtful'Mail…
on Sunday Dani Mosca is 40 and his father has just died. Fulfilling his father's last wishes, Dani embarks on a road trip back to his childhood village, a three-hour hearse journey from Madrid. Leaving behind the busy streets of the city for the deserted, archaic heart of Spain, Dani revisits the key junctions of his life: his conflicted relationship with a pragmatic and authoritarian father; the mystery of his birth; his school years in the repressed atmosphere of Catholic Spain; the origin of his band and its early successes; the emptiness left by a tragically lost friendship; his great loves. Laugh-out-loud funny, deeply moving and featuring an unforgettable cast of characters - from Ecuadorian drivers to Spanish Bowie lookalikes - Rolling Fields is a novel full of the grace and messiness of life: brave, exciting and completely irresistible.Translated from Spanish by Rahul BeryBlack Water Lilies: 'A dazzling, unexpected and haunting masterpiece' Daily Mail
By Michel Bussi. 2011
THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER 'Ends with one of the most reverberating shocks in modern crime fiction' The Sunday Times 'A dazzling,…
unexpected and haunting masterpiece' Daily Mail 'A work of genius... Stunning' Daily Express Jérôme Morval has been found dead in the stream that runs through the gardens at Giverny, where Monet did his famous paintings. In Jérôme's pocket is a postcard of Monet's 'Water Lilies' with the words: Eleven years old. Happy Birthday.Entangled in the mystery are three women: a young painting prodigy, the seductive village schoolteacher and an old widow who watches over the village from a mill by the stream. All three of them share a secret. But what do they know about Jérôme's death? And what is the connection to the mysterious 'Black Water Lilies', a rumoured masterpiece by Monet that has never been found?MICHEL BUSSI: THE MASTER OF THE KILLER TWIST ''A novel so extraordinary that it reminded me of reading Stieg Larsson for the very first time' The Sunday Times on After the Crash'Inventive, original and incredibly entertaining' Sunday Mirror on Don't Let Go 'Combines an extraordinarily inventive plot with characters haunted by long-ago events - and demonstrates why he has such a hold on readers' The Times on Time Is A KillerAbout the Size of the Universe
By Jón Kalman Stefánsson. 2015
A modern saga spanning the whole of the 20th century, by one of Iceland's most celebrated writers.At the beginning of…
this story there is death, and yet it is a celebration of life - the passion between a man and a woman, forbidden love, violence, sorrow, betrayal. Happiness and misfortune are passed down from one generation to the next. The sorrow over what was and what might have been weighs heavily on the characters and at the end of this chain, for now, stands Ari, on his way to his dying father, with a score still to be settled. The raw beauty of life is written into the dramatic Icelandic landscape, and into a society that has undergone great transformation within a century. In language both archaic and lyrical, and yet entirely contemporary and full of humour, Jón Kalman Stefánsson proves himself one of the finest European writers of his generation.A companion volume to Fish Have No Feet (longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize 2017).Translated from the Icelandic by Philip RoughtonThe Human Part
By Kari Hotakainen. 2009
An elderly woman agrees to sell her life to a blocked writer she meets at a book fair. She needs…
to talk - her husband has not spoken since a family tragedy some months ago. She claims that her grown-up children are doing well, but the writer imagines less salubrious lives for them, as the downturn of Finland's economic boom begins to bite. Perhaps he's on to something. The Human Part is pure laugh-out-loud satire, laying bare the absurdities of modern society in the most vicious and precise manner imaginable.Rolling Fields
By David Trueba. 2020
WINNER OF AN ENGLISH PEN AWARD'Effortlessly readable and fizzing with energy, this novel is by turns quirky, funny and thoughtful'Mail…
on Sunday Dani Mosca is 40 and his father has just died. Fulfilling his father's last wishes, Dani embarks on a road trip back to his childhood village, a three-hour hearse journey from Madrid. Leaving behind the busy streets of the city for the deserted, archaic heart of Spain, Dani revisits the key junctions of his life: his conflicted relationship with a pragmatic and authoritarian father; the mystery of his birth; his school years in the repressed atmosphere of Catholic Spain; the origin of his band and its early successes; the emptiness left by a tragically lost friendship; his great loves. Laugh-out-loud funny, deeply moving and featuring an unforgettable cast of characters - from Ecuadorian drivers to Spanish Bowie lookalikes - Rolling Fields is a novel full of the grace and messiness of life: brave, exciting and completely irresistible.Translated from Spanish by Rahul BeryThe Angel's Game: The Cemetery of Forgotten Books 2
By Carlos Ruiz Zafon. 2008
The stunning new novel from the internationally bestselling author of THE SHADOW OF THE WIND.In an abandoned mansion at the…
heart of Barcelona, a young man - David Martin - makes his living by writing sensationalist novels under a pseudonym. The survivor of a troubled childhood, he has taken refuge in the world of books, and spends his nights spinning baroque tales about the city's underworld. But perhaps his dark imaginings are not as strange as they seem, for in a locked room deep within the house letters hinting at the mysterious death of the previous owner. Like a slow poison, the history of the place seeps into his bones as he struggles with an impossible love. Then David receives the offer of a lifetime: he is to write a book with the power to change hearts and minds. In return, he will receive a fortune, perhaps more. But as David begins the work, he realises that there is a connection between this haunting book and the shadows that surround his home...