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The Gin Closet: A Novel
By Leslie Jamison. 2011
From the author of the New York Times bestselling essay collection The Empathy Exams and the memoir The Recovering, Leslie…
Jamison&’s &“exquisitely beautiful&” (San Francisco Chronicle) novel about three generations of women and the inescapable brutality of love.As a young woman, Tilly flees home for the hollow underworld of Nevada, looking for pure souls and finding nothing but bad habits. One day, after Tilly has spent nearly thirty years without a family, drinking herself to the brink of death, her niece Stella—who has been leading her own life of empty promise in New York City—arrives on the doorstep of Tilly&’s desert trailer. The Gin Closet unravels the strange and powerful intimacy that forms between them. With an uncanny ear for dialogue and a witty, unflinching candor about sex, love, and power, Leslie Jamison reminds us that no matter how unexpected its turns, the life we&’re given is all we have: the cruelties that unhinge us, the beauties that clarify us, the addictions that deform us, those fleeting possibilities of grace that fade as quickly as they come. The Gin Closet marks the debut of a stunning new talent in fiction.Small Pleasures: Longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction
By Clare Chambers. 2020
LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2021'A WORD-OF-MOUTH HIT' Evening Standard 'A very fine book... It's witty and sharp…
and reads like something by Barbara Pym or Anita Brookner, without ever feeling like a pastiche'David Nicholls'Perfect'India Knight 'Beautiful' Jessie Burton'Wonderful'Richard Osman 'Miraculous'Tracy Chevalier 'A wonderful novel. I loved it'Nina Stibbe 'Effortless to read, but every sentence lingers in the mind' Lissa Evans 'This is one of the most beautiful books I have ever read. I honestly don't want you to be without it'Lucy Mangan'Gorgeous... If you're looking for something escapist and bittersweet, I could not recommend more' Pandora Sykes'Remarkable... Small Pleasures is no small pleasure'The Times'An irresistible novel - wry, perceptive and quietly devastating'Mail on Sunday'Chambers' eye for undemonstrative details achieves a Larkin-esque lucidity' Guardian'An almost flawlessly written tale of genuine, grown-up romantic anguish' The Sunday Times 1957, the suburbs of South East London. Jean Swinney is a journalist on a local paper, trapped in a life of duty and disappointment from which there is no likelihood of escape. When a young woman, Gretchen Tilbury, contacts the paper to claim that her daughter is the result of a virgin birth, it is down to Jean to discover whether she is a miracle or a fraud. As the investigation turns her quiet life inside out, Jean is suddenly given an unexpected chance at friendship, love and - possibly - happiness. But there will, inevitably, be a price to pay.Book of the Year for: The Times, Daily Telegraph, Evening Standard, Daily Express, Metro, Spectator, Red Magazine and Good HousekeepingRed Sky in Morning: author of the 2023 Booker Prize-Winning novel Prophet Song
By Paul Lynch. 2014
BY THE AUTHOR OF THE BOOKER PRIZE LONGLISTED PROPHET SONG.'Paul Lynch is peerless' Donal Ryan, author of Strange FlowersSpring 1832:…
Donegal, north west Ireland. Coll Coyle wakes to a blood dawn and a day he does not want to face. The young father stands to lose everything on account of the cruel intentions of his landowner's heedless son. Although reluctant, Coll sets out to confront his trouble. And so begins his fall from the rainsoaked, cloud-swirling Eden, and a pursuit across the wild bog lands of Donegal. Behind him is John Faller - a man who has vowed to hunt Coll to the ends of the earth - in a pursuit that will stretch to an epic voyage across the Atlantic, and to greater tragedy in the new American frontier. Red Sky in Morning is a dark tale of oppression bathed in sparkling, unconstrained imagery. A compassionate and sensitive exploration of the merciless side of man and the indifference of nature, it is both a mesmerizing feat of imagination and a landmark piece of fiction.Le chant de la mer (D'ailleurs)
By Norman Lewis. 1995
Chant épique et nostalgique. Un chef-d'oeuvre de ce qu'on désigne aujourd'hui par "littérature voyageuse". La découverte étonnante d'un village espagnol…
(vers 1954) qui vit comme si rien ne s'était passé sur terre depuis l'Antiquité. [SDMThe Figurine: The brand NEW novel from the much-loved author of The Island
By Victoria Hislop. 2023
In her irresistible new novel, Sunday Times No 1 bestselling author* Victoria Hislop shines a light on the questionable acquisition…
of cultural treasures and the price people - and countries - will pay to cling on to them.Of all the ancient art that captures the imagination, none is more appealing than the Cycladic figurine. An air of mystery swirls around these statuettes from the Bronze Age and they are highly sought after by collectors - and looters - alike. When Helena inherits her grandparents' apartment in Athens, she is overwhelmed with memories of the summers she spent there as a child, when Greece was under a brutal military dictatorship. Her remote, cruel grandfather was one of the regime's generals and as she sifts through the dusty rooms, Helena discovers an array of valuable objects and antiquities. How did her grandfather amass such a trove? What human price was paid for them?Helena's desire to find answers about her heritage dovetails with a growing curiosity for archaeology, ignited by a summer spent with volunteers on a dig on an Aegean island. Their finds fuel her determination to protect the precious fragments recovered from the baked earth - and to understand the origins of her grandfather's collection.Helena's attempt to make amends for some of her grandfather's actions sees her wrestle with the meaning of 'home', both in relation to looted objects of antiquity ... and herself.*Victoria Hislop's One August Night was a Sunday Times Number One bestseller in paperback in the first week of August 2021; Those Who Are Loved was a Sunday Times Number One bestseller in paperback for four weeks in August and September 2020.The Figurine: The brand NEW novel from the No 1 Sunday Times bestselling author of The Island
By Victoria Hislop. 2023
Multi-million copy bestselling author Victoria Hislop returns with the captivating tale of one woman's quest to come to terms with…
her family's brutal past.In her irresistible new novel, Sunday Times No 1 bestselling author Victoria Hislop shines a light on the questionable acquisition of cultural treasures and the price people - and countries - will pay to cling on to them.Of all the ancient art that captures the imagination, none is more appealing than the Cycladic figurine. An air of mystery swirls around these statuettes from the Bronze Age and they are highly sought after by collectors - and looters - alike. When Helena inherits her grandparents' apartment in Athens, she is overwhelmed with memories of the summers she spent there as a child, when Greece was under a brutal military dictatorship. Her remote, cruel grandfather was one of the regime's generals and as she sifts through the dusty rooms, Helena discovers an array of valuable objects and antiquities. How did her grandfather amass such a trove? What human price was paid for them?Helena's desire to find answers about her heritage dovetails with a growing curiosity for archaeology, ignited by a summer spent with volunteers on a dig on an Aegean island. Their finds fuel her determination to protect the precious fragments recovered from the baked earth - and to understand the origins of her grandfather's collection.Helena's attempt to make amends for some of her grandfather's actions sees her wrestle with the meaning of 'home', both in relation to looted objects of antiquity ... and herself.(P)2023 Headline Publishing Group LtdThe Figurine: The brand NEW novel from the No 1 Sunday Times bestselling author of The Island
By Victoria Hislop. 2023
In her irresistible new novel, Sunday Times No 1 bestselling author Victoria Hislop shines a light on the questionable acquisition…
of cultural treasures and the price people - and countries - will pay to cling on to them.Of all the ancient art that captures the imagination, none is more appealing than the Cycladic figurine. An air of mystery swirls around these statuettes from the Bronze Age and they are highly sought after by collectors - and looters - alike. When Helena inherits her grandparents' apartment in Athens, she is overwhelmed with memories of the summers she spent there as a child, when Greece was under a brutal military dictatorship. Her remote, cruel grandfather was one of the regime's generals and as she sifts through the dusty rooms, Helena discovers an array of valuable objects and antiquities. How did her grandfather amass such a trove? What human price was paid for them?Helena's desire to find answers about her heritage dovetails with a growing curiosity for archaeology, ignited by a summer spent with volunteers on a dig on an Aegean island. Their finds fuel her determination to protect the precious fragments recovered from the baked earth - and to understand the origins of her grandfather's collection.Helena's attempt to make amends for some of her grandfather's actions sees her wrestle with the meaning of 'home', both in relation to looted objects of antiquity ... and herself.The Brothers' Lot
By Kevin Holohan. 2011
"Holohan's ability to write the kind of free-flowing naturalistic dialogue that so potently conveys the anarchic spirit of schoolboy warfare…
. . . is grounded by a shadow play of macabre references to horrors that ghost around the edges of the narrative, many eerily similar to some of the more infamous real life reports that have emerged in recent years."--The Irish TimesCombining the spirit of Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim with a bawdy evisceration of hypocrisy in old-school Catholic education, The Brothers' Lot is a comic satire that tells the story of the Brothers of Godly Coercion School for Young Boys of Meager Means, a dilapidated Dickensian institution run by an assemblage of eccentric, insane, and often nasty celibate Brothers. The school is in decline and the Brothers hunger for a miracle to move their founder, the Venerable Saorseach O'Rahilly, along the path to Sainthood.When a possible miracle presents itself, the Brothers fervently seize on it with the help of the ethically pliant Diocesan Investigator, himself hungry for a miracle to boost his career. The school simultaneously comes under threat from strange outside forces. The harder the Brothers try to defend the school, the worse things seem to get. It takes an outsider, Finbar Sullivan, a young student newly arrived at the school, to see that the source of the threat may in fact lie inside the school itself. As the miracle unravels, the Brothers' efforts to preserve it unleash a disastrous chain of events.Tackling a serious subject from the oblique viewpoint of satire, The Brothers' Lot explores the culture that allowed abuses within church-run institutions in Ireland to go unchecked for decades.Fast Eddie, King of the Bees
By Robert Arellano. 2001
An abandoned child hustles on the streets of a dystopic, near-future Boston in the aftermath of the Great Devaluation--squatters have…
turned the tunnel system into an underground hive known as Dig City. In an elaborate search for his unknown parents, Eddie narrates through several levels of deception: street performer, pickpocket, adoptee, casino employee, and finally commander of the subterranean revolution. Fast Eddie is a convoluted Oedipal adventure blending low-brow scenarios with high-art diction, reminiscent of Robert Coover, John Hawkes, and Edmund White.Cuban-American author Robert Arellano instructs fiction workshops at Brown University. He spends his breaks playing guitar for indie rock outfit Palace Brothers. Arellano's interactive novel, Sunshine '69, was published by SonicNet in 1996. He lives in Providence, Rhode Island.Melusine; or, The Noble History of Lusignan
By Jean D'Arras. 2012
Jean d’Arras’s splendid prose romance of Melusine, written for Jean de Berry, the brother of King Charles V of France,…
is one of the most significant and complex literary works of the later Middle Ages. The author, promising to tell us “how the noble and powerful fortress of Lusignan in Poitou was founded by a fairy,” writes a ceaselessly astonishing account of the origins of the powerful feudal dynasty of the Lusignans in southwestern France, which flourished in western Europe and the Near East during the age of the Crusades. The spellbinding story of the destinies of the fairy Melusine, her mortal husband, and her extraordinary sons blends history, myth, genealogy, folklore, and popular traditions with epic, romance, and Crusade narrative.Preceded by a substantial introduction, this translation, the first in English to be amply annotated, captures the remarkable range of stylistic registers that characterizes this extravagant and captivating work.Jimi Hendrix Live in Lviv: Longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2023
By Andrey Kurkov. 2023
"Both a pleasure and a testament to life in Ukraine, before" Sunday Times"Ukraine's greatest living novelist" New European"A Ukrainian Murakami"…
GuardianA love letter to the beautiful city of Lviv, by the author of Death and the Penguin and Grey Bees.Strange things are afoot in the cosmopolitan city of Lviv, western Ukraine. Seagulls are circling and the air smells salty, though Lviv is a long way from the sea . . . A ragtag group gathers round a mysterious grave in Lychakiv Cemetery - among them an ex-KGB officer and an ageing hippy he used to spy on. Before long, Captain Ryabtsev and Alik Olisevych are teaming up to discover the source of the "anomalies".Meanwhile, Taras - who makes a living driving kidney-stone patients over cobblestones in his ancient Opel Vectra - is courting Darka, who works nights at a bureau de change despite being allergic to money.The young lovers don't know it, but their fate depends on two lonely old men, relics of another era, who will stop at nothing to save their city. Shot through with Kurkov's unique brand of black humour and vodka-fuelled magic realism, Jimi Hendrix Live in Lviv is an affectionate portrait one the world's most intriguing cities.Translated from the Russian by Reuben WoolleyJimi Hendrix Live in Lviv: Longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2023
By Andrey Kurkov. 2023
"Both a pleasure and a testament to life in Ukraine, before" The Times"Ukraine's greatest living novelist" New European"A Ukrainian Murakami"…
GuardianA hugely entertaining romp through the beautiful city of Lviv, by the author of Death and the Penguin and Grey Bees, now reporting widely on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, his home country.Strange things are afoot in the cosmopolitan city of Lviv, western Ukraine. Seagulls are circling and the air smells salty, though Lviv is a long way from the sea . . . A ragtag group gathers round a mysterious grave in Lychakiv Cemetery - among them an ex-KGB officer and an ageing hippy he used to spy on. Before long, Captain Ryabtsev and Alik Olisevych are teaming up to discover the source of the "anomalies".Meanwhile, Taras - who makes a living driving kidney-stone patients over cobblestones in his ancient Opel Vectra - is courting Darka, who works nights at a bureau de change despite being allergic to money.The young lovers don't know it, but their fate depends on two lonely old men, relics of another era, who will stop at nothing to save their city. Shot through with Kurkov's unique brand of black humour and vodka-fuelled magic realism, Jimi Hendrix Live in Lviv is an affectionate portrait one the world's most intriguing cities.Translated from the Russian by Reuben WoolleyThe Shadow of the Wind: The Cemetery of Forgotten Books 1
By Carlos Ruiz Zafon. 2001
THE MODERN CLASSIC: OVER 20 MILLION COPIES SOLDA Sunday Times bestseller and a Richard & Judy book club pick'The real…
deal: one gorgeous read' Stephen King'This book will change your life. An instant classic' Daily Telegraph'A book lover's dream' The Times Hidden in the heart of the old city of Barcelona is the 'Cemetery of Lost Books', a labyrinthine library of obscure and forgotten titles that have long gone out of print. To this library, a man brings his 10-year-old son Daniel one cold morning in 1945. Daniel is allowed to choose one book from the shelves and pulls out 'The Shadow of the Wind' by Julian Carax.But as he grows up, several people seem inordinately interested in his find. Then, one night, as he is wandering the old streets once more, Daniel is approached by a figure who reminds him of a character from the book, a character who turns out to be the devil. This man is tracking down every last copy of Carax's work in order to burn them. What begins as a case of literary curiosity turns into a race to find out the truth behind the life and death of Julian Carax and to save those he left behind...'Marvellous' Sunday Times'A hymn of praise to all the joys of reading' Independent'Gripping and instantly atmospheric' Mail on Sunday'Irresistibly readable' Guardian'Diabolically good' ElleThe Fawn
By Magda Szabó. 1959
"One of Hungary's most important twentieth-century writers" New York Times"Magda Szabó's fiction shows the travails of modern Hungarian history from…
oblique but sharply illuminating angles" EconomistEszter Encsy is an acclaimed actress, funny and outrageous, quick-witted but callous. Yet even flushed with the success of adulthood, Eszter craves acceptance of herself as she really is and of the person she has been. The only child of an impoverished aristocrat and a harried music teacher failing to make ends meet, Eszter grew up poor and painfully aware of it in a provincial Hungarian town.The feelings of resentment and envy acquired during her fraught childhood have hardened into an obsessional hatred for one person, the beautiful, saintly and pampered Angéla, Eszter's former classmate and the wife of the man who becomes her lover. Set against newly communist 1950s Hungary, The Fawn embraces the lies and falsehoods people were obliged to live with in those nightmarish times, and displays Szabó's uncanny ability to convey how the past can haunt and consume us.Translated from the Hungarian by Len Rix.A beautifully written, sweeping historical women's fiction novel that spans both time and the globe as we follow one woman's…
journey from simple country girl to global fashion icon.I need to tell you a story, ma chère. My story.Rosa Kusstatscher has built a global fashion empire upon her ability to find the perfect outfit for any occasion. But tonight, as she prepares for the most important meeting of her life, her usual certainty eludes her.What brought her to this moment? As she struggles to select her dress and choose the right shade of lipstick, Rosa begins to tell her incredible story. The story of a poor country girl from a village high in the mountains of Italy. Of Nazi occupation and fleeing in the night. Of hope and heartbreak in Switzerland; ambition, glamour and love in Paris. Of ambition and devastation in Rio de Janeiro; success and self-discovery in New York.A life spent running, she sees now. But she will run no longer.Breathtaking and utterly enthralling, The Dressmaker of Paris is a stunning debut novel that is perfect for fans of Lucinda Riley, Kate Morton and Dinah Jefferies.(P) 2021 Hodder & Stoughton LtdThe Outside Boy
By Jeanine Cummins. 2010
'A full-throated song of praise. I loved it' Sherman AlexieIreland, 1959. Young Christopher Hurley is a tinker, a Pavee gypsy,…
who roams with his father and extended family from town to town, carrying all their worldly possessions in their wagons. Christy carries with him a burden of guilt as well: his mother's death in childbirth.The wandering life is the only one Christy has ever known, but when his grandfather dies, everything changes. His father decides to settle briefly, in a town, where Christy and his cousin can receive proper schooling. But still, always, they are treated as outsiders.As Christy struggles with his new classmates, he starts to question who he is and where he belongs. But then the discovery of an old newspaper photograph, and a long-buried secret, changes his life for ever.(P)2020 Macmillan AudioThe Crooked Branch
By Jeanine Cummins. 2013
'Rich and intricately drawn... luminous prose' Carolyn ParkhurstAfter the birth of her daughter Emma, the usually resilient Majella finds herself…
feeling isolated and exhausted. Then, at her childhood home, Majella discovers the diary of her maternal ancestor Ginny, and is shocked to read a story of murder in her family history.With the famine upon her, Ginny Doyle fled from Ireland to America, but not all of her family made it. What happened during those harrowing years, and why does Ginny call herself a killer? Is Majella genetically fated to be a bad mother, despite the fierce tenderness she feels for her baby?Determined to uncover the truth of her heritage and her own identity, Majella sets out to explore Ginny's past - and discovers surprising truths about her family and ultimately, herself.(P)2020 Macmillan AudioThe Standardization of Demoralization Procedures: a world of spycraft, betrayals and surprising fates
By Jennifer Hofmann. 2020
Darkly comic and hauntingly surreal, The Standardization of Demoralization Procedures examines obsession, paranoia and the dwindling career of a Stasi…
operative.9th November 1989, East Berlin, the day the Berlin Wall will fall - Bernd Zeiger, a Stasi agent whose manual on the demoralisation of political opponents, once made him renowned, is now in the fading twilight of his career. Twenty five years earlier, a physicist Johnnes Held, had been sent by the East Germans to infiltrate a US military operation in the American desert, where teleportation and other paranormal activities were being investigated. Held had unknowingly fathered a child there, a fact Zeiger was aware of and when he returned and refused to divulge what he had learned, despite being tortured, Zeiger strangely became a sort of friend. But he would still betray him, a treachery that haunts him to this day.Like many other officials and government functionaries, Zeiger has been feeling strange, beginning to lose his grip on reality, a development he has tied to the disappearance of a café waitress for whom he has developed an attraction. This woman, Lara, who has been missing for a month, has a surprising connection to Johannes Held. In his attempts to find her Zeiger will discover that he himself has been betrayed, as chaos breaks out, the Wall comes down and his carefully curated life unravels.The Standardization of Demoralization Procedures brilliantly captures a moment when ideological winds shift and dogma and inhumanity reign.(P) 2020 Quercus Editions LimitedFor the Dead (Detective Charlie Lager #2)
By Lina Bengtsdotter. 2019
DI Charlie Lager returns to investigate a long-buried disappearance in this 'atmospheric', 'evocative' and 'arresting' page-turner of a procedural from…
the new Swedish queen of crime fiction ************She must find the truth about Francesca. Before the past catches up with her...AN UNSOLVED MYSTERYThirty years ago, teenager Paul Bergman was found drowned in Gullspång's lake, and his best friend Francesca vanished from her home. Paul's death was ruled a suicide, and Francesca was never found.A DETECTIVE'S OBSESSIONDI Charlie Lager is still haunted by childhood memories of a strange house and the missing girl who once lived there.A DEADLY SECRETConvinced that the original investigation was flawed, Charlie is determined to uncover what really happened all those decades ago. But someone out there is willing to do whatever it takes to keep the truth from coming out...************Praise for Lina Bengtsdotter:'A thriller that lingers in the memory' - SUNDAY TIMES'Atmospheric, evocative...a first-class procedural...an excellent thriller' - CRIME TIME'Dark Nordic noir' - THE i'Takes crime fiction to a disturbingly personal, high level' - SHOTS'Intelligent and arresting' - MORNING STAR'A brilliant, dense crime novel' - DAGENS NYHETERThe 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...