A dark, glittering debut novel, The Body Double is the suspenseful story of a young woman who is recruited by a stranger to give up her old life and identity to impersonate a reclusive Hollywood star.A strange man discovers our nameless narrator selling popcorn at a decrepit small town movie theater and offers her an odd and lucrative position: She will forget her job, her acquaintances, even her name, and move to Los Angeles, where she will become the body double of the famous and troubled celebrity Rosanna Feld. A nervous breakdown has forced Rosanna out of the public eye, and she needs a look-alike to take her place in the tabloid media circus of Hollywood. Overseen by Max, who hired her for the job, our narrator spends her days locked up in a small apartment in the hills watching hidden camera footage of Rosanna, wearing Rosanna's clothes, eating the food Rosanna likes, practicing her mannerisms, learning to become Rosanna in every way. But as she makes her... Views: 610
"Everyone hears voices. I'm treated like I'm broken for admitting it."Can a weekend trip to visit family ever be smooth? Nick was hoping for a quick dinner at his brother Reid's house when he stopped by with his seventeen-year-old adopted son, Gerome, on their way to meet Gerome's birth mother. Gerome was recently diagnosed with schizophrenia, and he wants to know more about his family history. Though Reid and his family wreak havoc with their well-meaning but misguided ideas about Gerome's diagnosis, they manage to convince Nick and his son to stay the night, even after they find Gerome on the roof ready to demonstrate backflips. The dinner pit stop becomes a tense weekend-long event full of claims and questions as the family attempts to "un-crazy" Gerome, leading them all to a dangerous breaking point.With truth, humour, and pathos, Quick Bright Things explores a family's struggle with understanding mental health, their ways of expressing... Views: 610
"With candor, wry wit and memorable details, these stories shimmer" as characters across the world embark on strange journeys of the spirit (Publishers Weekly). In these ten short stories, author Laura Newman brings readers along to Varanasi, Tijuana, Rome, Lhasa, New Orleans, Valdez, Barcelona, and the Isle of Skye. And her characters are just as diverse as her destinations: There's Maggie, who's taking her brother's ghost on a trek to the Annapurna Sanctuary in Nepal; Gomez, who has a date with destiny at the Tijuana hypermarket; a Norwegian preacher who relocates to Varanasi, India, in a valiant effort to convert Hindus and Muslims to Christianity; and, in the title story, the women who run an undercover orphanage in New Orleans, wearing habits by day while playing poker at night. Although these fictions occur thousands of miles apart from one another, within wildly different cultures, they are unified in their portrayal of... Views: 610
He Finally Escaped His Past... Then She Appeared On His Doorstep.Sheriff Jamison Wyatt has spent his life helping his loved ones elude his father's ruthless gang of thugs, the Sons of the Badlands. But he's never forgotten Liza Dean, the one who got away. Now Liza's sister, a child, is caught in the gang's most horrifying crime yet -- and only Jamison can help her retrieve the little girl from her captors. With only each other in the isolation of the unforgiving South Dakota landscape, can they infiltrate the crime syndicate before it's too late? Views: 610
A sensuous, textured novel of life in a refugee camp, long-listed for the Orwell Prize for Political FictionOn a hill overlooking a refugee camp in Sudan, a young man strings up bedsheets that, in an act of imaginative resilience, will serve as a screen in his silent cinema. From the cinema he can see all the comings and goings in the camp, especially those of two new arrivals: a girl named Saba, and her mute brother, Hagos.For these siblings, adapting to life in the camp is not easy. Saba mourns the future she lost when she was forced to abandon school, while Hagos, scorned for his inability to speak, must live vicariously through his sister. Both resist societal expectations by seeking to redefine love, sex, and gender roles in their lives, and when a businessman opens a shop and befriends Hagos, they cast off those pressures and make an unconventional choice.With this cast of complex, beautifully drawn characters, Sulaiman Addonia details the textures and... Views: 610
Mysteries, family secrets, and the love of a true Father are found at the heart of this gripping novel from the best-selling author of Bringing Maggie HomeNewlyweds Sean Eagle and Meghan DeFord are no strangers to pain and loss. As cold-case detectives, they know intimately the anguish family members endure after the murder or disappearance of a loved one. But when a new case hits too close to home, it threatens to pull loose the fragile cords of their young marriage. Sheila Menke was just a girl when her father left for work and never returned. An investigation revealed he had embezzled enough to start a new life elsewhere, but Sheila could never accept the court's criminalization of her father. Meghan reluctantly takes the case, secretly fearing it will stir up buried feelings about her own biological father. And while Sean investigates the mysterious death of two young brothers, he longs to start a family. But Meghan worries that with a... Views: 610
Ritchie's life is shadowed by the death of his wife, Cat, in a car accident twenty-two years previously. He was the driver. He loves his children – Nic, who is bi-polar and often impulsive, and Jack. Both are active in the campaign to welcome asylum-seekers and refugees to Britain. His life comes to a crisis as he realises how much his children despise his trade in advertising and how much the loss of Cat still means to them all. Ritchie abandons his career but achieves new success in driving Britain's treatment of refugees up the political agenda. This earns him the respect of his children but brings him to the attention of Makepeace, the populist Home Secretary. Nic, his daughter, strives to show she can overcome her disorder. She infiltrates a people-trafficking gang but is arrested as a criminal. Makepeace uses this to blackmail Ritchie to help him in his political schemes. Ritchie is horrified to discover that his task is to sell the reintroduction of forced labour,... Views: 610
