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Une route longue et sinueuse
By Tj Klune, Christine Gauzy-Svahn. 2018
Suite de L'art de la respirationLa famille n’est pas toujours déterminée par le sang. Elle est déterminée par ceux qui…
nous construisent – ce qui font de nous ce que nous sommes. Et là, en cette fin, Bear et Otter sont mis à l’épreuve comme jamais. Une petite fille qui n’a nulle part où aller frappe à leur porte. Un téléphone sonne, apportant des nouvelles qu’ils n’attendaient pas. Un frère revient chez lui après avoir appris comment voler de ses propres ailes. Alors que tous ces instants convergent, leur vie à tous va changer à tout jamais. Démarrant dans L’Ours, la Loutre et le Moustique, et continuant dans Ce que nous sommes et L’art de la respiration, TJ Klune a raconté une saga familiale et fraternelle, une histoire d’amour et de sacrifice. Dans cet épisode final, les événements du passé pavent la route longue et sinueuse vers un avenir que personne n’aurait pu imaginer.Snow Hunters: A Novel
By Paul Yoon. 2013
"Behind every subtle gesture, this novel shimmers with a deep and complex history. Snow Hunters is a beautiful and moving…
meditation on a solitary life" (Ann Patchett, author of State of Wonder and Bel Canto).In this elegant, haunting, and highly anticipated debut novel from 5 Under 35 National Book Foundation honoree Paul Yoon, a North Korean war refugee confronts the wreckage of his past. With spare, evocative prose, Snow Hunters traces the extraordinary journey of Yohan, who defects from his country at the end of the war, leaving his friends and family behind to seek a new life in a port town on the coast of Brazil. Though he is a stranger in a strange land, throughout the years in this town, four people slip in and out of Yohan's life: Kiyoshi, the Japanese tailor for whom he works, and who has his own secrets and a past he does not speak of; Peixe, the groundskeeper at the town church; and two vagrant children named Santi and Bia, a boy and a girl, who spend their days in the alleyways and the streets of the town. Yohan longs to connect with these people, but to do so he must sift through his traumatic past so he might let go and move on. In Snow Hunters, Yoon proves that love can dissolve loneliness; that hope can wipe away despair; and that a man who has lost a country can find a new home. This is a heartrending story of second chances, told with unerring elegance and absolute tenderness.Fuoco di Scozia
By Tanya Anne Crosby, Valeria D'Ellena. 2016
Scozia, 1125, la Leggenda ha inizio... Per due secoli, il popolo di Aidan dun Scoti ha fatto la guardia al…
segreto più grande di Scozia, in attesa di un degno successore che posse unire i clan delle Highland. La sua gente è l'ultima dei "Dipinti", i guardiani della vera Pietra del Destino. Una Lotta per il Potere Le tribù delle Highland sono divise. Re David di Scozia cerca un'alleanza con la gente di montagna. Ma solo una donna riuscirà a tentare Aidan dun Scoti - la bellezza maledetta il cui padre una volta ha tradito il suo clan... Tentazione di Vendetta Maledetta dalla gente di Aidan per i peccati commessi da suo padre, Lìleas MacLaren è l'unica donna a cui Aidan si crede immune. Offerta a lui come moglie da David di Scozia in segno di pace, lei è anche la donna che metterà in ginocchio il fiero capoclan.Big Ed Pulaski: Wildland Firefighting Legend
By Deanna Couch. 2017
Some Danger Involved
By Will Thomas. 2004
An atmospheric debut novel set on the gritty streets of Victorian London,Some Danger Involvedintroduces detective Cyrus Barker and his apprentice,…
Thomas Llewelyn, as they work to solve the gruesome murder of a young scholar. When a student bearing a striking resemblance to artists' renderings of Jesus Christ is found murdered -- by crucifixion -- in London's Jewish ghetto, 19th-century private detective Barker must hire an assistant to help him solve the sinister case. Out of all who answer an ad for a position with "some danger involved," the eccentric and enigmatic Barker chooses downtrodden Llewelyn, a gutsy young man whose murky past includes recent stints at both an Oxford college and an Oxford prison. As Llewelyn learns the ropes of his position, he is drawn deeper and deeper into Barker's peculiar world of vigilante detective work, as well as the dark heart of London's teeming underworld. Together they pass through chophouses, stables, and clandestine tea rooms, tangling with the early Italian mafia, a mad professor of eugenics, and other shadowy figures, inching ever closer to the shocking truth behind the murder. Brimming with wit and unforgettable characters, and steeped in authentic period detail,Some Danger Involvedis a captivating page-turner that introduces an equally captivating duo while signaling the start of an exciting career for Will Thomas.Un Marito Per Finta
By Tanya Anne Crosby, Alice Arcoleo - Valeria D'Ellena. 2015
L'indipendente e fiera Elizabeth Bowcock - "Doc Liz" come tutti la chiamano - si propone di crescere la nipote rimasta…
orfana. Sfortunatamente, il nonno della bambina non ritiene la nubile dottoressa idonea per il ruolo di tutrice e si rifiuta di lasciarle la custodia della bambina finché non avrà trovato un marito... Ecco che entra in scena il tenebroso Cutter McKenzie. Tuttavia, la sua carica erotica rischia di indebolire l'indipendenza di Liz. La strada per St. Louis promette molti altri pericoli...The Foreign Correspondent
By Alan Furst. 2006
From Alan Furst, whom The New York Times calls "America's preeminent spy novelist," comes an epic story of romantic love,…
love of country, and love of freedom-the story of a secret war fought in elegant hotel bars and first-class railway cars, in the mountains of Spain and the backstreets of Berlin. It is an inspiring, thrilling saga of everyday people forced by their hearts' passion to fight in the war against tyranny. By 1938, hundreds of Italian intellectuals, lawyers and journalists, university professors and scientists had escaped Mussolini's fascist government and taken refuge in Paris. There, amid the struggles of emigre life, they founded an Italian resistance, with an underground press that smuggled news and encouragement back to Italy. Fighting fascism with typewriters, they produced 512 clandestine newspapers. The Foreign Correspondent is their story. Paris, a winter night in 1938: a murder/suicide at a discreet lovers' hotel. But this is no romantic traged-it is the work of the OVRA, Mussolini's fascist secret police, and is meant to eliminate the editor of Liberazione," "a clandestine emigre newspaper. Carlo Weisz, who has fled from Trieste and secured a job as a foreign correspondent with the Reuters bureau, becomes the new editor. Weisz is, at that moment, in Spain, reporting on the last campaign of the Spanish civil war. But as soon as he returns to Paris, he is pursued by the French Surete," "by agents of the OVRA, and by officers of the British Secret Intelligence Service. In the desperate politics of Europe on the edge of war, a foreign correspondent is a pawn, worth surveillance, or blackmail, or murder. The Foreign Correspondent is the story of CarloWeisz and a handful of antifascists: the army officer known as "Colonel Ferrara," who fights for a lost cause in Spain; Arturo Salamone, the shrewd leader of a resistance group in Paris; and Christa von Schirren, the woman who becomes the love of Weisz's life, herself involved in a doomed resistance underground in Berlin. The Foreign Correspondent is Alan Furst at his absolute best-taut and powerful, enigmatic and romantic, with sharp, seductive writing that takes the reader through darkness and intrigue to a spectacular denouement.The Gilded Years: A Novel
By Karin Tanabe. 2016
In 1897, one young woman risks everything to earn a college degree--but the secret she hides could be her undoing.…
Passing meets The House of Mirth in this captivating reimagining of a remarkable true story.Since childhood, Anita Hemmings has longed to attend the country's most exclusive school for women, Vassar College. Now, a bright, beautiful senior in the class of 1897, she is hiding a secret that would have banned her from admission: Anita is the only African-American student ever to attend Vassar. With her olive complexion and dark hair, this daughter of a janitor and descendant of slaves has successfully passed as white, but now finds herself rooming with Louise "Lottie" Taylor, the scion of one of New York's most prominent families. Though Anita has kept herself at a distance from her classmates, Lottie's sphere of influence is inescapable, her energy irresistible, and the two become fast friends. Pulled into her elite world, Anita learns what it's like to be treated as a wealthy, educated white woman--the person everyone believes her to be--and even finds herself in a heady romance with a moneyed Harvard student. It's only when Lottie becomes infatuated with Anita's brother, Frederick, whose skin is almost as light as his sister's, that the situation becomes particularly perilous. And as Anita's college graduation looms, those closest to her will be the ones to dangerously threaten her secret. Set against the vibrant backdrop of the Gilded Age, an era when old money traditions collided with modern ideas, Tanabe has written an unputdownable and emotionally compelling story of hope, sacrifice, and betrayal--and a gripping account of how one woman dared to risk everything for the chance at a better life.A Red Herring Without Mustard (A Flavia de Luce Novel #3)
By Alan Bradley. 2011
In the third installment of this bestselling, award-winning, sister-poisoning, bicycle-riding, murder-investigating, and utterly captivating series, Flavia de Luce must draw…
upon Gypsy lore and her encyclopaedic knowledge of poisons to prevent a grave miscarriage of justice. "You frighten me," the old Gypsy woman says. "Never have I seen my crystal ball so filled with darkness." So begins eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce's third adventure through the charming but deceptively dark byways of the village of Bishop's Lacey. The fortune teller also claims to see a woman who is lost and needs help to get home--and Flavia knows it must be her mother Harriet, who died when Flavia was less than a year old. The Gypsy's vision opens up old wounds for our precocious yet haunted heroine, and sets her mind racing in search of what it could mean. When Flavia later goes to visit the Gypsy at her encampment, she certainly doesn't expect to find the poor old woman lying near death in her caravan, bludgeoned in the wee hours. Was it an act of retribution by those who thought that the woman had abducted a local child years before? Certainly Flavia understands the bliss of settling scores; revenge is a delightful pastime when one has two odious older sisters. But how can she prove this crime is connected to the missing baby? Did it have something to do with the weird sect who met at the river to practice their secret rites? While still pondering the possibilities, Flavia stumbles upon a corpse--that of a notorious layabout and bully she had only recently caught prowling about Buckshaw. The body hangs from a statue of Poseidon in Flavia's very own backyard, and our unflappable sleuth knows it's up to her to figure out the significance. Pedalling her faithful bicycle, Gladys, across the countryside in search of clues to both crimes, Flavia uncovers secrets both long-buried and freshly stowed--the dodgy dealings of a local ironworks, the truth behind the Hobblers' secret meetings, her own ancestor's ambitious plans--all the while exhausting the patience of Inspector Hewitt. But it's not long before the evidence starts falling into place, and Flavia must take drastic action to prevent another violent attack.A Charmed Life: A Novel (The library Of America Ser. #290)
By Mary Mccarthy. 1955
The life of a writer is flipped upside down when she reconnects with her roots--and her remarried ex-husband--in this witty…
autobiographical novel by bestselling author Mary McCarthyFormer actress and budding playwright Martha Sinnott longs to return to the New Leeds artists' colony and the "charmed life" she abandoned when she divorced her first husband. Now remarried, she has come back to the New England artistic "utopia" with her current spouse to find that little has changed. The same people still make up this tightly knit society, and her former husband has taken up new residence, with his new wife, dangerously close by. But her eagerly anticipated homecoming includes many rude awakenings in the company of the unhappy and often resentful artistic also-rans and never-weres she once counted among her closest friends. And in this pervasive atmosphere of falsehoods and self-delusions, the biggest lie of all is Martha's belief that she can reconnect with Miles, her ex, without it wreaking terrible havoc on her life and her future.This ebook features an illustrated biography of Mary McCarthy including rare images from the author's estate.The Rings of Saturn: The Emigrants, The Rings Of Saturn, And Vertigo
By Michael Hulse, W. G. Sebald. 1999
Shortlisted for the 1998 Los Angeles Times Book Award in Fiction: "Stunning and strange . . . Sebald has done…
what every writer dreams of doing. . . . The book is like a dream you want to last forever. . . . It glows with the radiance and resilience of the human spirit."--Roberta Silman, The New York Times Book Review "Ostensibly a record of a journey on foot through coastal East Anglia," as Robert McCrum in the London Observer noted, The Rings of Saturn "is also a brilliantly allusive study of England's imperial past and the nature of decline and fall, of loss and decay. . . . The Rings of Saturn is exhilaratingly, you might say hypnotically, readable. . . . It is hard to imagine a stranger or more compelling work." The Rings of Saturn - with its curious archive of photographs - chronicles a tour across epochs as well as countryside. On his way, the narrator meets lonely eccentrics inhabiting tumble-down mansions and links them to Rembrandt's "Anatomy Lesson," the natural history of the herring, a matchstick model of the Temple of Jerusalem, the travels of Sir Thomas Browne's skull, and the massive bombings of WWII. Cataloging change, oblivion, and memories, he connects sugar fortunes, Joseph Conrad, and the horrors of colonizing the Belgian Congo. The narrator finds threads which run from an abandoned bridge over the River Blyth to the terrible dowager Empress Tzu Hsi and the silk industry in Norwich. "Sebald," as The New Yorker stated, "weaves his tale together with a complexity and historical sweep that easily encompasses both truth and fiction." The Emigrants (hailed by Susan Sontag as an "astonishing masterpiece-perfect while being unlike any book one has ever read") was "one of the great books of the last few years," as Michael Ondaatje noted: "and now The Rings of Saturn is a similar and as strange a triumph."Episodes 9 to 12 of this explosive family drama! Who doesn’t love a good society wedding? The decadence, the drama,…
the father of the bride’s mistress—or is it mistresses? Harrison sure was a busy boy before he fell into a coma. Rachel’s been busy, too, doing anything and everything to keep Luc’s wandering eyes on her. Elana has a new earth-shattering secret; too bad the Fixer can't help—he's juggling a demanding new client. And when the family head to Sin City for wild nights—and fights—things look ready to boil over. But between vicious jealousies and staggering betrayals, it's a change in Harrison's condition in hospital that brings the family to his bedside… Better grab ahold of something, Marshalls. This house of cards is about to collapse! Super Rich. Super Sexy. Super Addictive. Secrets of the A-ListRebellion: A Novel
By Molly Patterson. 2017
"Molly Patterson is a writer of the first order, and her debut novel is a revelatory, immersive miracle. Ambitious in…
scope and exacting in its language, Rebellion becomes a grand exploration of fate and circumstance."—Claire Vaye Watkins, author of Gold Fame CitrusReminiscent of Elizabeth Strout and Jane Smiley, Rebellion is a powerful debut novel by Molly Patterson, weaving together the stories of four women unafraid to challenge the boundaries of their lives, spanning generations and taking readers across the globe.In 1890, a young missionary, Addie, has traveled to the town of Lu-cho Fu with her husband, dreaming of making her mark on the world. But Addie’s desires change after meeting a brash and thoroughly modern woman, Poppy, who offers to transform Addie’s destiny. All the while, letters from Addie reach her sister Louisa back home, recently married and struggling with the quiet isolation of being a farmer’s wife. When violence erupts overseas between the Chinese and their unwelcome Christian intruders, Addie’s life takes a mysterious and haunting turn strongly felt by her sister, Louisa, back home.By 1958, Louisa’s daughter Hazel is fighting to maintain control of her land and family in the aftermath of her husband’s untimely death. Reeling from the tragedy, she finds herself drawing closer to the neighboring Hughes family and in the process learns that grief takes on many forms. One hundred years after Addie’s disappearance, Juanlan returns to her hometown with no job and no options. She finds her father ailing and her pregnant sister-in-law restless and angry. While her family and town are rapidly changing, Juanlan feels frozen in place. In search of an outlet for the live wire she feels buried inside, she starts up a love affair with a married man. Interconnected by action and consequence, each woman’s tale brilliantly displays the fleeting intensity of youth, the obligation of family, and the dramatic consequence of charting your own destiny. A vibrant story of compassion and discovery set against a century of complicated relations between China and America, Rebellion celebrates those who fight against expectation in pursuit of their own thrilling fate, and introduces a rising literary star.The Interior: A Red Princess Mystery (The Red Princess Mysteries #2)
By Lisa See. 1999
"See paints a fascinating portrait of a complex and enigmatic society, in which nothing is ever quite as it appears,…
and of the people, peasant and aristocrat alike, who are bound by its subtle strictures. " -San Diego Union-Tribune While David Stark is asked to open a law office in Beijing, his lover, detective Liu Hulan, receives an urgent message from an old friend imploring her to investigate the suspicious death of her daughter, who worked for a toy company about to be sold to David's new client.The Wicked City: A Novel (The Wicked City series #1)
By Beatriz Williams. 2017
New York Times bestselling author Beatriz Williams recreates the New York City of A Certain Age in this deliciously spicy…
adventure that mixes past and present and centers on a Jazz Age love triangle involving a rugged Prohibition agent, a saucy redheaded flapper, and a debonair Princetonian from a wealthy family.When she discovers her husband cheating, Ella Hawthorne impulsively moves out of their SoHo loft and into a small apartment in an old Greenwich Village building. Her surprisingly attractive new neighbor, Hector, warns her to stay out of the basement at night. Tenants have reported strange noises after midnight—laughter, clinking glasses, jazz piano—even though the space has been empty for decades. Back in the Roaring Twenties, the place hid a speakeasy. In 1924, Geneva "Gin" Kelly, a smart-mouthed flapper from the hills of western Maryland, is a regular at this Village hideaway known as the Christopher Club. Caught up in a raid, Gin becomes entangled with Prohibition enforcement agent Oliver Anson, who persuades her to help him catch her stepfather Duke Kelly, one of Appalachia’s most notorious bootleggers.Headstrong and independent, Gin is no weak-kneed fool. So how can she be falling in love with the taciturn, straight-arrow Revenue agent when she’s got Princeton boy Billy Marshall, the dashing son of society doyenne Theresa Marshall, begging to make an honest woman of her? While anything goes in the Roaring Twenties, Gin’s adventures will shake proper Manhattan society to its foundations, exposing secrets that shock even this free-spirited redhead—secrets that will echo from Park Avenue to the hollers of her Southern hometown.As Ella discovers more about the basement speakeasy, she becomes inspired by the spirit of her exuberant predecessor, and decides to live with abandon in the wicked city too. . . .The Dog in the Wood
By Monika Schroder. 2017
When the Russians come, where do you go? Fritz loves his vegetable garden. His tomatoes are delicious, he's attentive to…
the asparagus, and he remembers how to keep slugs off the strawberries. But his tranquil life on the family farm is about to end—the Russians are near, Hitler has died, and known Nazi sympathizers like the Friedrich family brace for the Bolsheviks to take over their town. Local German supporters of the Bolshevik regime seize the Friedrich farm in the name of Communism, forcing Fritz's family to flee to the distant house of his grandmother, Oma Clara. Life there for Fritz is horrible, made even worse when Communists arrest his mother and Lech, the Polish farmhand who has tended the Friedrich land, for hiding weapons. Though there is no evidence to support the accusation, Gertrude and Lech are taken away, and Fritz commits to finding where they are imprisoned. Despite the boy's heroic efforts, the story ends with one of the war's ambiguities: that Lech and Gertrude may not return home.Heavy footsteps sounded on the tiles in the hallway. Then three soldiers entered the living room. They all wore torn green jackets with small red flags sewn onto their sleeves. They shouted in Russian. Fritz held Mama's hand and tried to stay as close to her as possible on the sofa. One of the soldiers broke the glass of the sideboard with the butt of his rifle, took out the bottle of brandy, drank from it, and passed it to the others. They rummaged through the china cabinet, throwing the plates on the floor. . . . Mama held his hand with a firm grip. Suddenly, one soldier pointed his rifle at them. "No!" Mama screamed. Fritz held his breath. "Stojat!" Lech stepped toward the middle of the room, holding his arms up. —FROM THE BOOKOrdesa
By Manuel Vilas. 2018
El libro más personal de Manuel Vilas. «Son dos verdades distintas, pero las dos son verdades: la del libro y…
la de la vida. Y juntas fundan una mentira.» En Ordesa, Manuel Vilas narra una historia personal con una intensidad similar a la que recorre su poesía: el pasado, el desvanecimiento de dos familias, la muerte de los seres queridos, las ausencias y la lejanía de los que ama, la España en la que vive y aquella en la que creció, los recuerdos, la sensación de desarraigo... Con una voz valiente y transgresora, mezclando realidad y ficción, prosa y poesía, el autor construye un relato en el que todos podemos reconocernos y recorre en él el camino inverso desde el presente inequívoco hasta el origen imaginado. Escrito a ratos desde el desgarro, y siempre desde la emoción, este libro es la crónica íntima de la España de las últimas décadas, pero también una narración sobre todo aquello que nos recuerdaque somos seres vulnerables, sobre la necesidad de levantarnos y seguir adelante cuando nada parece hacerlo posible, cuando casi todos los lazos que nos unían a los demás han desaparecido o los hemos roto. Y sobrevivimos. Críticas:«Este es el libro que necesitábamos todos nosotros. Desde la primera hasta la última sílaba es nuestro libro.»Juan Cruz Ruiz «Un escritor único, brillante y desprejuiciado, que va por libre y al que no le importa arriesgar.»Sara Mesa «Manuel Vilas sabe mirar más allá de los tristes lugares comunes. Su escritura está hecha de sabiduría, es decir, de amor.»Elvira Navarro «El gran signo que diferencia al autor de sus coetáneos de nuestra actual narrativa innovadora es el alejamiento de impostados cosmopolitismos y un enraizamiento español sin complejos, lúcido, crítico y de alcance universal.»Santos Sanz Villanueva, El Cultural «Manuel Vilas sorprende con una renovadora visión crítica de la sociedad española.»J.A. Masoliver Ródenas, La Vanguardia «Si escribir es una "enmienda a la totalidad", Vilas sigue haciéndolo estupendamente.»Nadal Suau, El Cultural (sobre Setecientos millones de rinocerontes) «La voz de Vilas tiene una cualidad a la vez torrencial y cristalina, de idioma sinestésico, libérrimo y asociativo, que produce esa absurda y sombría alegría de vivir.»Alejandro Gándara, El Boomeran(g) (sobre Setecientos millones de rinocerontes) «Vilas tiene talento doble de narrador y de poeta: cuenta el tránsito y aísla el momento, se deja llevar por el fluir de la escritura igual que por el del viaje, y se detiene en estampas de situaciones y espacios que son poemas en prosa y polaroids verbales.»Antonio Muñoz Molina (sobre América) «España es un libro de inusitada frescura. Es literatura en estado puro y procesa sin miedo los desafíos de la identidad y el verosímil que enfrentan los verdaderos creadores como Vilas.»Fogwill, PerfilChampion of the World
By Chad Dundas. 2016
In this stunning historical fiction debut set in the world of wrestling in the 1920s, a husband and wife are…
set adrift in a place where everyone has something to hide and not even the fights can be taken at face value. Late summer, 1921: Disgraced former lightweight champion Pepper Van Dean has spent the past two years on the carnival circuit performing the dangerous "hangman's drop" and taking on all comers in nightly challenge bouts. But when he and his cardsharp wife, Moira, are marooned in the wilds of Oregon, Pepper accepts an offer to return to the world of wrestling as a trainer for Garfield Taft, a down-and-out African American heavyweight contender in search of a comeback and a shot at the world title.At the training camp in rural Montana, Pepper and Moira soon realize that nothing is what it seems: not Taft, the upcoming match, or the training facility itself. With nowhere to go and no options left, Pepper and Moira must carefully navigate the world of gangsters, bootlegging, and fixed competitions, in the hope that they can carve out a viable future.A story of second chances and a sport at the cusp of major change, Champion of the World is a wonderful historical debut from a new talent in fiction.From the Hardcover edition.The Touch: A Novel
By Colleen McCullough. 2003
Not since The Thorn Birds has Colleen McCullough written a novel of such broad appeal about a family and the…
Australian experience as The Touch. At its center is Alexander Kinross, remembered as a young man in his native Scotland only as a shiftless boilermaker's apprentice and a godless rebel. But when, years later, he writes from Australia to summon his bride, his Scottish relatives quickly realize that he has made a fortune in the gold fields and is now a man to be reckoned with. Arriving in Sydney after a difficult voyage, the sixteen-year-old Elizabeth Drummond meets her husband-to-be and discovers to her dismay that he frightens and repels her. Offered no choice, she marries him and is whisked at once across a wild, uninhabited countryside to Alexander's own town, named Kinross after himself. In the crags above it lies the world's richest gold mine. Isolated in Alexander's great house, with no company save Chinese servants, Elizabeth finds that the intimacies of marriage do not prompt her husband to enlighten her about his past life -- or even his present one. She has no idea that he still has a mistress, the sensual, tough, outspoken Ruby Costevan, whom Alexander has established in his town, nor that he has also made Ruby a partner in his company, rapidly expanding its interests far beyond gold. Ruby has a son, Lee, whose father is the head of the beleaguered Chinese community; the boy becomes dear to Alexander, who fosters his education as a gentleman. Captured by the very different natures of Elizabeth and Ruby, Alexander resolves to have both of them. Why should he not? He has the fabled "Midas Touch" -- a combination of curiosity, boldness and intelligence that he applies to every situation, and which fails him only when it comes to these two women. Although Ruby loves Alexander desperately, Elizabeth does not. Elizabeth bears him two daughters: the brilliant Nell, so much like her father; and the beautiful, haunting Anna, who is to present her father with a torment out of which for once he cannot buy his way. Thwarted in his desire for a son, Alexander turns to Ruby's boy as a possible heir to his empire, unaware that by keeping Lee with him, he is courting disaster. The stories of the lives of Alexander, Elizabeth and Ruby are intermingled with those of a rich cast of characters, and, after many twists and turns, come to a stunning and shocking climax. Like The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCullough's new novel is at once a love story and a family saga, replete with tragedy, pathos, history and passion. As few other novelists can, she conveys a sense of place: the desperate need of her characters, men and women, rootless in a strange land, to create new beginnings.The Spies of Warsaw: A Novel
By Alan Furst. 2008
An Autumn evening in 1937. A German engineer arrives at the Warsaw railway station. Tonight, he will be with his…
Polish mistress; tomorrow, at a workers' bar in the city's factory district, he will meet with the military attache from the French embassy. Information will be exchanged for money. So begins The Spies of Warsaw, with war coming to Europe, and French and German operatives locked in a life-and-death struggle on the espionage battlefield. At the French embassy, the new military attache, Colonel Jean-Francois Mercier, a decorated hero of the 1914 war, is drawn in to a world of abduction, betrayal and intrigue in the diplomatic salons and back alleys of Warsaw. At the same time, the handsome aristocrat finds himself in a passionate love affair with a Parisian woman of Polish heritage, a lawyer for the League of Nations. Colonel Mercier must work in the shadows, amidst an extraordinary cast of venal and dangerous characters -- Colonel Anton Vyborg of Polish military intelligence, last seen in Furst's The Polish Officer; the mysterious and sophisticated Doctor Lapp, senior German Abwehr officer in Warsaw; Malka and Viktor Rozen, at work for the Russian secret service; and Mercier's brutal and vindictive opponent, Major August Voss of SS counterintelligence. And there are many more, some known to Mercier as spies, some never to be revealed. The Spies of Warsaw is Alan Furst's finest novel to date -- the history is precise, the writing evocative and powerful, more a novel about spies than a spy novel -- exciting, atmospheric, erotic and impossible to put down.