Summer 1867: four-year-old Daisy Belle is about to make her debut at the Lambeth Baths in London. Her father, swimming professor Jeffery Belle, is introducing his Family of Frogs - and Daisy is the star attraction. By the end of that day, she has only one ambition in life: she will be the greatest female swimmer in the world. She will race down the Thames, float in a whale tank, and challenge a man to a 70-foot high dive. And then she will set sail for America to swim across New York Harbour. But Victorian women weren't supposed to swim, and Daisy Belle will have to fight every stroke of the way if she wants her dreams to come true. Inspired by the careers of Victorian champions Agnes Beckwith and Annie Luker, Daisy Belle is a story of courage and survival and a tribute to the swimmers of yesteryear. Views: 21
After the bestselling, Costa First Novel award-winning Elizabeth is Missing comes Whistle in the Dark...
How do you rescue someone who has already been found?
Jen's fifteen-year-old daughter goes missing for four agonizing days. When Lana is found, unharmed, in the middle of the desolate countryside, everyone thinks the worst is over. But Lana refuses to tell anyone what happened, and the police think the case is closed. The once-happy, loving family returns to London, where things start to fall apart. Lana begins acting strangely: refusing to go to school, and sleeping with the light on.
With her daughter increasingly becoming a stranger, Jen is sure the answer lies in those four missing days. But will Lana ever reveal what happened?
'This novel is a beautiful and rare thing' Kate Hamer
'Healey is a natural storyteller' Claire Fuller
'I don't know anyone else who writes like this' Jane Corry
**Review
“The true mystery of this captivating novel begins not so much when Lana is lost but when she’s found, cold, pale, her head bloody, her clothes soaked. Faced with her daughter’s silence, Jen embarks on her own perilous journey to understanding. With masterful skill and mounting suspense, Healey reveals the complexities and ambiguities of family life. A brilliant and unsettling novel.” (Margot Livesey)
“Emma Healey is a natural story-teller, and I knew from the opening page that I would be in safe hands. She expertly shows what it’s like to have a depressed teenage daughter—all the love, the worries, and frustrations were perfectly observed, while still managing to bring out the comic side of modern family life, and wrap it in a story that urged me to keep reading to find out what happened.” (Claire Fuller, author of *Swimming Lessons*)
“[A] knockout debut...Ms. Healey’s audacious conception and formidable talent combine in a bravura performance that sustains its momentum and pathos to the last.” (Wall Street Journal)
“Spellbinding.” (New York Times Book Review)
“Ingeniously structured and remarkably poignant, Elizabeth is Missing is a riveting story of friendship and loss that will have you compulsively puzzling fact from fiction as you race to the last page. Immersed in the narrator’s increasingly fragmented world, the story questions the true meaning of memory and proves the enduring power of love.” (Kimberly McCreight, New York Times bestselling author of *Reconstructing Amelia*)
“Elizabeth is Missing will stir and shake you: an investigation into a seventy-year-old crime, through the eyes of the most likeably unreliable of narrators. But the real mystery at its compassionate core is the fragmentation of the human mind.” (Emma Donoghue, author of *Room*)
“Altogether brilliant.” (Booklist (starred review))
“A poignant novel of loss.” (Kirkus Reviews)
“British author Healey draws on her own grandmothers’ experiences to create the distinctive narrator of her first novel… an absorbing tale.” (Publishers Weekly)
“What’s truly astonishing about the book is that its author—a web administrator at the University of East Anglia—isn’t even 30 years old. How can she know what it’s like for a person to lose herself, bit by bit? How can her descriptions of World War II, with all the shabbiness and rationing and black-market intrigue, be so vivid? Of course, Healey is able to imagine and empathize on such a level because she’s simply a brilliant writer. Let’s hope we hear much more from her over the years.” (BookPage)
About the Author
Emma Healey grew up in London where she studied for her first degree in bookbinding. She then worked for two libraries, two bookshops, two art galleries and two universities, before completing an MA in Creative Writing at the University East Anglia. Her first novel, Elizabeth is Missing, was published to critical acclaim in 2014, became a Sunday Times (London) bestseller and won the Costa First Novel Award. She lives in Norwich, England with her husband and daughter. Views: 21
"A dry, sharp x-ray of the horror of life in the Gulf, the network of complicity, the scope of tragedy. A gritty, direct, exciting novel that is a must-read for anyone who wants to look at the hell that the Gulf (and Mexico at the same time) has become."—Antonio Ortuño From a writer whose work has been praised by Junot Díaz as "Latin American fiction at its pulpy phantasmagorical finest," Don't Send Flowers is a riveting novel centered on Carlos Treviño, a retired police detective in northern Mexico who has to go up against the corruption and widespread violence that caused him to leave the force, when he's hired by a wealthy businessman to find his missing daughter. A seventeen-year-old girl has disappeared after a fight with her boyfriend that was interrupted by armed men, leaving the boyfriend on life support and the girl an apparent kidnap victim. It's a common occurrence in the region—prime narco territory—but the girl's... Views: 21
An action-packed dramatic military thriller based on true events featuring a daring World War II submarine commander.In 1942, off the coast of France there is a United States Navy submarine lurking just outside the borders of a German U-boat minefield. Luckily, Karl Alexander Steiner likes a good challenge. As the sub's lieutenant commander, Steiner calls the shots, though his enigmatic and cold persona alienates him from the crew members who worry that the chances he takes might be too risky. After sinking three German U-boats, a feat that no other American or British sub had achieved, Steiner is decorated and promoted. With a new fleet boat on Mare Island, Steiner and his crew set out yet again for the mid-Atlantic Ocean. Although this voyage proves even more successful than the last, Steiner's crew fears his dicey tactics - and begins to undermine his command.With intense action and featuring authentic submarine tactics in the early years of the Pacific war, The Iceman continues P. T. Deutermann's masterful, award-winning cycle of thrillers set during World War II. Views: 21
Gracie McBride isn't looking for love; she's looking for respect. But in this man's world of Civil War medicine, Gracie is expected to maintain her place changing beds and writing letters. Her biggest nemesis is the ward surgeon, Doctor Charles Ellard, who seems determined to woo her with arrogant kisses and terrible jokes. Charles is an excellent surgeon. He assumed he would be well received by an army at war. He was not. Friendless and alone, he struggles to hide the panic attacks that plague him while the only person who understands him is a feisty Irish nurse clearly resolved to keep him at a distance. But Charles is sent to the battlefield, and Gracie is left with a wounded soldier, a box of toys, and a mystery which can only be solved by the one man she wishes could love her, both as a woman and a nurse. Views: 21
