A luminous and bewitching debut novel that is perfect for fans of Angela Carter. Set in Victorian London, it follows the fortunes of Eve, the Lion-Faced Girl and Abel, the Flayed Man. A magical realism delight.Before Eve is born, her mother goes to the circus. She buys a penny twist of coloured sugar and settles down to watch the heart-stopping main attraction: a lion, billed as a monster from the savage heart of Africa, forged in the heat of a merciless sun. Mama swears she hears the lion sigh, just before it leaps…and when Eve is born, the story goes, she didn’t cry – she meowed and licked her paws.When Abel is pulled from the stinking Thames, the mudlarks are sure he is long dead. As they search his pockets to divvy up the treasure, his eyes crack open and he coughs up a stream of black water. But how has he survived a week in that thick stew of human waste?Cast out by Victorian society, Eve and Abel find succour from an unlikely source. They will become The Lion Faced Girl and The Flayed Man, star performers in Professor Josiah Arroner’s Palace of Curiosities. And there begins a journey that will entwine their fates forever.Review'Garland's lush prose is always a pleasure... If she allows herself to be wilder, freer, in her next novel, it promises to be something very special indeed.' GUARDIAN 'Rosie Garland has conjured a dream-like magical realist debut about Victorian circus freaks ... an alternately brutal and beautiful story about love and belonging in a vividly conveyed underworld, rich in carny phantasmagoria and lyrical romance' METRO 'The Palace of Curiosities is a jewel-box of a novel, with page after page, scene after scene, layer after layer of treats and surprises. Garland is a real literary talent: definitely an author to watch.' Sarah Waters 'Reminds me of Angela Carter' Jenni Murray About the AuthorBorn in London to a runaway teenager, Rosie has always been a cuckoo in the nest. She is an eclectic writer and performer, ranging from singing in Goth band The March Violets through touring with the Subversive Stitch exhibition in the 90s, to her current incarnation as Rosie Lugosi the Vampire Queen, cabaret chanteuse, incomparable compere and electrifying poet. She has published five solo collections of poetry and her award-winning short stories, poems and essays have been widely anthologized. The Palace of Curiosities is her debut novel. Views: 34
One of our most incisive and committed journalists--author of the classic All the Livelong Day--shows us the real human cost of our economic follies. The Great Recession has thrown huge economic challenges at almost all Americans save the super-affluent few, and we are only now beginning to reckon up the human toll it is taking. Down the Up Escalator is an urgent dispatch from the front lines of our vast collective struggle to keep our heads above water and maybe even--someday--get ahead. Garson has interviewed an economically and geographically wide variety of Americans to show the painful waste in all this loss and insecurity, and describe how individuals are coping. Her broader historical focus, though, is on the causes and consequences of the long stagnation of wages and how it has resulted in an increasingly desperate reliance on credit and a series of ever-larger bubbles--stocks, technology, real estate. This is no way to run an... Views: 34
Aisleen Fitzgerald flees a troubled past in Ireland when she sets sail for Australia. Her life has always been clouded by the legend of a rose-shaped birthmark on her hip, which marked her for a destiny as brilliant as those of her distant ancestors. Yet her "gift" failed when her heartless father commanded her to use it to save their beloved home, Liscarrol Castle.Now she is daring to dream of adventure, of excitement, and glory. What she dare not believe is that love awaits her in the blaze of a stranger's deep blue eyes.Joined in marriage with an Irish sheep rancher as untamed as the Outback, Aisleen must find a way back to being the wild-haired lass of her youth. Only then will she learn in his tempestuous embraces the secret of the legacy of the Rose. Views: 34
They're perfect for each other...Desperate to save her family home from foreclosure, Hannah Olaniyi takes on a seemingly unwinnable case...for a substantial fee. But her new client is testing the North Carolina attorney in ways she never imagined. As tempers ignite over conflicting strategies, Hannah fights a desire that's taking her from the boardroom and into the bedroom of the town's most notorious playboy.They just don't know it yet.Amal Harper needs a lawyer fast...someone willing to go up against a powerful family. But there's a shocking secret in this hard-driving businessman's past. Amal doesn't want to lose Hannah, especially after she starts working her seductive magic. Is it too late to mend his bad-boy ways and claim his future with the woman who's his total opposite--except when it comes to love? Views: 34
Jumping lessons and a horse of her own for the summer - what more could any girl ask? This is the experience that awaits Terry Allen as she begins lessons at Briar Hill Stables. Instructed by the demanding Captain Riskin, the twelve Summer Club students study all aspects of hunt seat riding as well as assuming the care of a horse. Assigned Tic-Tac as her personal horse for the summer, Terry struggles to master lessons both equine and personal in pursuit of her dream to become a horsewoman and hopefully earn a coveted spot on the Westfield show team with her beloved partner. The dramatic climax is one no horse lover will want to miss. The 40th anniversary re-release of this classic horse story is a step back in time to the rich traditions of mid-century American riding academies. Tic-Tac is a memorable story that offers a timeless lesson in horsemanship, perseverance and love of the horse. Views: 34
Thomas Pynchon brings us to New York in the early days of the internet It is 2001 in New York City, in the lull between the collapse of the dot-com boom and the terrible events of September 11th. Silicon Alley is a ghost town, Web 1.0 is having adolescent angst, Google has yet to IPO, Microsoft is still considered the Evil Empire. There may not be quite as much money around as there was at the height of the tech bubble, but there’s no shortage of swindlers looking to grab a piece of what’s left. Maxine Tarnow is running a nice little fraud investigation business on the Upper West Side, chasing down different kinds of small-scale con artists. She used to be legally certified but her license got pulled a while back, which has actually turned out to be a blessing because now she can follow her own code of ethics—carry a Beretta, do business with sleazebags, hack into people’s bank accounts—without having too much guilt about any of it. Otherwise, just your average working mom—two boys in elementary school, an off-and-on situation with her sort of semi-ex-husband Horst, life as normal as it ever gets in the neighborhood—till Maxine starts looking into the finances of a computer-security firm and its billionaire geek CEO, whereupon things begin rapidly to jam onto the subway and head downtown. She soon finds herself mixed up with a drug runner in an art deco motorboat, a professional nose obsessed with Hitler’s aftershave, a neoliberal enforcer with footwear issues, plus elements of the Russian mob and various bloggers, hackers, code monkeys, and entrepreneurs, some of whom begin to show up mysteriously dead. Foul play, of course. With occasional excursions into the DeepWeb and out to Long Island, Thomas Pynchon, channeling his inner Jewish mother, brings us a historical romance of New York in the early days of the internet, not that distant in calendar time but galactically remote from where we’ve journeyed to since. Will perpetrators be revealed, forget about brought to justice? Will Maxine have to take the handgun out of her purse? Will she and Horst get back together? Will Jerry Seinfeld make an unscheduled guest appearance? Will accounts secular and karmic be brought into balance? Hey. Who wants to know? Views: 34
