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Skinny Island: More Tales of Manhattan
By Louis Auchincloss. 1987
Twelve stories contemplating destiny and detailing the life of Manhattan’s upper class over the course of one hundred years, from…
the author of Honorable Men.It’s only twelve miles long and two miles wide, but it has more money for its area, more history packed into its relatively brief settlement, and more emotional and intellectual energy coursing through its streets than any other place on earth. Manhattan is the setting for all of Louis Auchincloss’s fiction, and it is the stage on which those New Yorkers whose roots go down to its bedrock play out the drama of their lives.From the turn of the century to our present urban follies, these stories follow the fortunes of the socially secure and powerful as they try to cope with the changes shaped by the momentous events and growing anxieties of recent decades. Taken together, the tales weave a larger pattern of human strengths and foibles that bemuses the mind and touches the heart.The elegant prose, crystalline dialogue, immense insight into the mores, preoccupations, and afflictions of the rich, and the connoisseur’s sense of both art and life that are characteristic of Auchincloss—all are here, but with a depth of passion and irony exceeding anything he has accomplished in the past.Praise for Skinny Island“Many of Auchincloss’ wealthy and Waspy protagonists, caught in such fine conflict, find it difficult to defend their dwindling kind or, conversely, to rebel against their confining values . . . . With this, his 40th book, Auchincloss has yet to exhaust his art, or his loyal readers.” —Kirkuks ReviewsBaudolino: A Novel (Booket/columna Ser. #Vol. 28)
By Umberto Eco. 2002
A self-confessed liar spins a fascinating tale of his life in this &“comic and brilliantly baffling&” historical novel by the…
author of The Name of the Rose (The Guardian, UK). Constantinople, 1204. The Byzantine capital is under siege by the knights of the Fourth Crusade. Amid the carnage and confusion, one Baudolino saves a historian and high court official from certain death at the hands of the crusading warriors—and proceeds to regale him with the fantastical story of his life. Born a simple peasant in northern Italy, Baudolino has two major gifts: a talent for learning languages and a skill in telling lies. As a boy he meets a foreign commander who adopts Baudolino and sends him to the university in Paris, where he makes a number of adventurous friends. Spurred on by myths and their own reveries, they decide to go in search of the legendary priest-king Prester John who is said to rule over a vast kingdom in the East. The kingdom they seek is a phantasmagorical land of strange creatures with eyes on their shoulders and mouths on their stomachs; of eunuchs, unicorns, and lovely maidens. With dazzling digressions, outrageous tricks, extraordinary feeling, and vicarious reflections on our postmodern age, Baudolino is Eco the storyteller at his brilliant best.The Love Letters: A Novel
By Madeleine L'Engle. 1966
Past and present collide in this heartfelt novel of love and loss from the National Book Award–winning author of A…
Wrinkle in Time. After the tragic death of her son and the seeming collapse of her marriage, Charlotte Napier flees to Portugal in the hopes of finding guidance from her mentor: her mother-in-law, Violet. Instead, she finds solace in the letters of Mariana Alcoforado, a seventeenth-century nun. Charlotte and Mariana&’s stories may be different in origin, but they share the same inner turmoil. As she reads the letters, Mariana&’s spiritual journey sheds light on Charlotte&’s own crisis. Finding inspiration in the nun&’s struggles with sin, temptation, and faith, Charlotte gains perspective on her own mind—and sets out to accept the demanding, challenging nature of love. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Madeleine L&’Engle including rare images from the author&’s estate.The Girl with the Louding Voice: A Read with Jenna Pick (A Novel)
By Abi Daré. 2020
AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A READ WITH JENNA TODAY SHOW BOOK CLUB PICK! &“Brave, fresh . . . unforgettable.&”—The New York…
Times Book Review &“A celebration of girls who dare to dream.&”—Imbolo Mbue, author of Behold the Dreamers (Oprah&’s Book Club pick) Shortlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize and recommended by The New York Times, Marie Claire, Vogue, Essence, PopSugar, Daily Mail, Electric Literature, Red, Stylist, Daily Kos, Library Journal, The Everygirl, and Read It Forward! The unforgettable, inspiring story of a teenage girl growing up in a rural Nigerian village who longs to get an education so that she can find her &“louding voice&” and speak up for herself, The Girl with the Louding Voice is a simultaneously heartbreaking and triumphant tale about the power of fighting for your dreams. Despite the seemingly insurmountable obstacles in her path, Adunni never loses sight of her goal of escaping the life of poverty she was born into so that she can build the future she chooses for herself – and help other girls like her do the same. Her spirited determination to find joy and hope in even the most difficult circumstances imaginable will &“break your heart and then put it back together again&” (Jenna Bush Hager on The Today Show) even as Adunni shows us how one courageous young girl can inspire us all to reach for our dreams…and maybe even change the world.Pale Morning Light With Violet Swan: A Novel of a Life in Art
By Deborah Reed. 2020
This novel of a family secret revealed as a famous painter nears the end of her life is a “heart-lifting…
testament to the power of memory and love and art” (Margaret Renkl, author of Late Migrations).Ninety-three-year-old Violet Swan has spent a lifetime translating tragedy and hardship into art, becoming famous for her abstract paintings, which evoke tranquility, innocence, and joy. For nearly a century she has lived a peaceful, private life on the coast of Oregon. The “business of Violet” is run by her only child, Francisco, and his wife, Penny. But while death waits on the horizon for Violet, an earthquake sets a series of events in motion and her deeply hidden past begins to resurface. When her beloved grandson returns home with a family secret in tow, Violet is forced to come to terms with the life she left behind so long ago—a life her family knows nothing about . . . A generational saga set against the backdrop of twentieth-century America and moving into the present day, Pale Morning Light with Violet Swan is the story of a girl who escaped rural Georgia at fourteen during World War II, crossing the country alone and broke. It is the story of how that girl met the man who would become her devoted husband, how she became a celebrated artist, and above all, how her life, inspired by nothing more than the way she imagined it to be, would turn out to be her greatest masterpiece.“Reed finely balances the cavalcade of revelations with a poised, multilayered portrait of a complex life.” —Booklist “Prepare to be spellbound.” —Rene Denfeld, author of TheChild FinderThe Memoirs of Laetitia Horsepole
By John Fuller. 2001
Discovered in the secret compartment of a North Italian cabinet, this enchanting manuscript may or may not be complete, and…
it may or may not be intended for posterity. Undeterred by these uncertainties, John Fuller gives us the early nineteenth-century 'memoirs' of Laetitia Horsepole, painter, philosopher and femme fatale. Shelley, apparently, came across this formidable woman, aged ninety, on his travels through Italy, and became her confidant and neighbour. Why, the reader may wonder, is she not better known? Why indeed? That long spell in Madagascar certainly interrupted her career. She was prickly and disinclined to ingratiate herself with the arbiters of fashionable taste. And then her virtual disappearance to Italy didn't help matters. But her obscurity gives added piquancy to the memoirs which - her idiosyncratic art theory and philosophy apart - are above all a dramatic eighteenth-century adventure in five acts which reflect her tempestuous involvement with the five 'husbands' of her life, from the brutish Crowther and the dull and the rich but louche Count Chiavari. Laetitia reflects on the vagaries of love and erotic involvement, on art and men, on flora and fauna, and reveals for the first time what actually happened in Madagascar. Shamelessly enjoyable, teasingly allusive, irresistibly funny and sometimes sad, Laetitia's is quite simply a brilliant and bewitching romance full of truths that lie deeper than fact.Memoirs of a Dipper
By Nell Leyshon. 2015
'A reading experience that hums with an electric energy that never gets boring and feels shockingly, painfully real.' - The…
Times 'There's different ways to do it: I can slowly move closer step by step, or I can do it in one movement and bump into them. Easiest is in a pub then I can put my drink too close to theirs. Move my stool near theirs. Anything to cross the line.'Gary is a dipper, a burglar, a thief. He is still at junior school when his father first takes him out on the rob, and proves a fast learner: not much more than a child the first time he gets caught, he is a career criminal as soon as he is out again. But Gary is also fiercely intelligent - he often knows more about the antique furniture he is stealing than the people who own it, and is confident in his ability to trick his way out of any situation, always one step ahead. But all that changes when he falls for Mandy...The Memoir of an Anti-Hero (Penguin Modern Classics)
By Kornel Filipowicz. 1961
The Second World War. Poland. Our narrator has no intention of being a hero. He plans to survive this war,…
whatever it takes.Meticulously he recounts his experiences: the slow unravelling of national events as well as uncomfortable personal encounters on the street, in the café, at the office, in his love affairs. He is intimate but reserved; conversational but careful; reflective but determined. As he becomes increasingly and chillingly alienated from other people, the reader is drawn into complicit acquiescence. We are forced to consider what it means to be heroic and how we ourselves would behave in the same circumstances.Written in 1961, this is the masterpiece of one of the great Polish writers of the twentieth century.Martini Henry
By Sara Crowe. 2016
Life isn’t an exact science. Things can be troublesome. Like pregnant step-mothers, the ins-and-outs of French existentialism . . .…
having an unexceptional name. In 1988, seventeen-year-old Sue Bowl has a diary, big dreams and £4.73. What she wants most of all is to make it as a writer, as well as stop her decadent aunt Coral spending money she doesn't have. Living in their crumbling ancestral home should provide plenty of inspiration, but between falling in love, hunting for missing heirlooms and internship applications, things keep getting in the way.So when a young literary professor moves in and catches Sue's eye, life begins to take an unexpected turn . . .From the author of Campari for Breakfast, a witty and enchanting novel about what happens after you think you’ve grown up and fallen in love, perfect for fans of I Capture the Castle, Love, Nina and Where’d You Go Bernadette.Marriage: Vintage Minis (Vintage Minis)
By Jane Austen. 2018
Why do we set so much store by marriage? Jane Austen was fascinated by this question, subjecting it to her…
forensic eye and wonderfully ironic wit again and again. Here are stolen glances and nervous advances, meddling parents and self-important cousins, society whisperings and the fluttering hearts of young lovers. All of them have their own views and expectations of marriage, and Austen’s are the wisest of all. Selected from the novels Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion by Jane Austen. VINTAGE MINIS: GREAT MINDS. BIG IDEAS. LITTLE BOOKS. A series of short books by the world’s greatest writers on the experiences that make us humanLittle Dorrit
By Charles Dickens. 2012
Amy Dorrit (known as Little Dorrit) was born in the Marshalsea debtors' prison in London. She has lived there with…
her father and two elder siblings for all of her twenty-two years, only leaving to work each day as a seamstress for the forbidding Mrs Clennam. But Amy's fortunes are about to change: the arrival of Mrs Clennam's son Arthur, back from working in China, heralds the beginning of stunning revelations not just about Amy but also about Arthur himself.Mansfield Park
By Jane Austen. 2008
Fanny Price's rich relatives offer her a home at Mansfield Park so that she can be properly brought up. However,…
Fanny's childhood is a lonely one as she is never allowed to forget her place. Her only ally is her cousin Edmund. But when the glamorous and exciting Henry and Mary Crawford arrive in the area, Edmund starts to grow close to Mary and Fanny finds herself dealing with feelings she has never experienced before.'Full of the energies of discord - sibling rivalry, greed, ambition, illicit sexual passion and vanity' Margaret DrabbleThe Mayor of Casterbridge
By Thomas Hardy. 2010
'A tale of true tragedy - a man of potential brought down by his own fatal flaw - wonderfully vivid…
and strong' Joanna TrollopeThe Mayor of Casterbridge is a man haunted by his past. In his youth he betrayed his wife and baby daughter in a shocking incident that led him to swear never to touch alcohol again for twenty-one years. He has since risen from his humble origins to become a respected pillar of the community in Casterbridge, but his secrets cannot stay hidden forever and he has many hard lessons left to learn. WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY LUCY HUGHES-HALLETTMatisse's War
By Peter Everett. 1996
At seventy, Henri Matisse is a trim, clean old gentleman with a passion for naked women. He is UN MONSTRE…
SACRE who depicts with passion and conviction only what he takes pleasure in, only what he chooses to see. He is art personified. If there were no Matisse there would be no art as such. . . . He has purged everything from his painting except anxieties concerning structure and colour; his struggle is with these alone! MATISSE'S WAR is a minutely researched yet fictional account of Matisse's life during the years 1939-1945. It is also a superb portrait of the lives of the major French artists and writers under the German occupation. Louis Aragon, Malraux, Picasso and Bonnard all appear prominently in the narrative.Little Aunt Crane
By Geling Yan. 2008
In the last days of World War II, the Japanese occupation of Manchuria has collapsed. As the Chinese move in,…
the elders of the Japanese settler village of Sakito decide to preserve their honour by killing all the villagers in an act of mass suicide. Only 16-year-old Tatsuru escapes. But Tatsuru's trials have just begun. As she flees, she falls into the hands of human traffickers. She is sold to a wealthy Chinese family, where she becomes Duohe - the clandestine second wife to the only son, and the secret bearer of his children. Against all odds, Duohe forms an unlikely friendship with the first wife Xiaohuan, united by the unshakeable bonds of motherhood and family. Spanning several tumultuous decades of Mao’s rule, Little Aunt Crane is a novel about love, bravery and survival, and how humanity endures in the most unlikely of circumstances.The Man Who Planted Trees
By Jean Giono. 2019
‘A book for children from 8 to 80. I love the humanity of this story and how one man’s efforts…
can change the future for so many. It’s a real message of hope.’ Michael MorpurgoDiscover this beloved masterpiece of nature writing that is a hymn to creation and to the power of the individual to do their bit to change the world for the better.In 1910, while hiking through the wild lavender in a wind-swept, desolate valley in Provence, a man comes across a shepherd called Elzéard Bouffier. Staying with him, he watches Elzéard sorting and then planting hundreds of acorns as he walks through the wilderness. Ten years later, after surviving the First World War, he visits the shepherd again and sees the young forest he has created spreading slowly over the valley. Elzéard’s solitary, silent work continues and the narrator returns year after year to see the miracle he is gradually creating: a verdant, green landscape that is a testament to one man’s creative instinct.A beautiful story of hope, survival and selflessness, The Man Who Planted Trees resonates as strongly with readers today as when it was first published.'A charming and brilliantly entertaining novel... shot through with the light-hearted Nesbit touch' Penelope Lively, from the introduction"When did two…
girls of our age have such a chance as we've got - to have a lark entirely on our own? No chaperone, no rules, no...""No present income or future prospects," said Lucilla.It's 1919 and Jane and her cousin Lucilla leave school to find that their guardian has gambled away their money, leaving them with only a small cottage in the English countryside. In an attempt to earn their living, the orphaned cousins embark on a series of misadventures - cutting flowers from their front garden and selling them to passers-by, inviting paying guests who disappear without paying - all the while endeavouring to stave off the attentions of male admirers, in a bid to secure their independence.'To come upon any Nesbit today, hitherto unread... is like receiving a letter from a friend whom you have believed dead' New York Times'A wry, charming delight of a book' The PoolLady Susan (Penguin Little Black Classics)
By Jane Austen. 2016
'Of what a mistake were you guilty in marrying a Man of his age! - just old enough to be…
formal, ungovernable and to have the Gout - too old to be agreable, and too young to die.'The scheming and unscrupulous Lady Susan is unlike any Austen heroine you've met in this fascinating early novella.One of 46 new books in the bestselling Little Black Classics series, to celebrate the first ever Penguin Classic in 1946. Each book gives readers a taste of the Classics' huge range and diversity, with works from around the world and across the centuries - including fables, decadence, heartbreak, tall tales, satire, ghosts, battles and elephants.The Luck of the Vails
By E F Benson. 2013
A VINTAGE MURDER MYSTERYWH Auden, Nancy Mitford and Noel Coward were among his fans... But have you discovered E. F.…
Benson yet?In a Holbein portrait above the grand old fireplace, Francis Vail, second baronet, brandishes a beautiful golden goblet, encrusted with pearls, rubies and emeralds. But this treasure, the Luck of the Vails, has since brought the family nothing but ruin and death.On the eve of his twenty-first birthday, Harry Vail discovers the Luck hidden in the attic of his ancestral home, the family curse is reawoken, and a tale of madness, avarice and murder unfolds.Murder mystery... Ghost story... Whodunnit. This is a classic detective story from the author of Mapp and Lucia. Crime fiction at its best.Malaria
By Susan Hillmore. 2000
To the island of Mannar - once an enchanted paradise, now polluted, its wildlife dead or dying - comes Sir…
Alexander Haye, zoologist and TV personality, determined to acquire one of the last of the island's elephants for London Zoo. A mother elephant and her calf are procured and the task of escorting them to the capital falls to Alexander's twin brother Max. Sick at heart, his attachment to the beasts growing with each step of their journey, Max delivers them to their fate and retreats to his sanctuary, a fantastic island castle. There the malaria he has picked up in the jungle overcomes him and he plunges into fever and hallucination. When Alexander returns to the island, all the elephants are dead and the waves of violent anarchy that are sweeping through Mannar have reached even Max's haven.