When Charlotte Kinder treats herself to a two-week vacation at Austenland, she happily leaves behind her ex-husband and his delightful new wife, her ever-grateful children, and all the rest of her real life in America. She dons a bonnet and stays at a country manor house that provides an immersive Austen experience, complete with gentleman actors who cater to the guests' Austen fantasies.
Everyone at Pembrook Park is playing a role, but increasingly, Charlotte isn't sure where roles end and reality begins. And as the parlor games turn a little bit menacing, she finds she needs more than a good corset to keep herself safe. Is the brooding Mr. Mallery as sinister as he seems? What is Miss Gardenside's mysterious ailment? Was that an actual dead body in the secret attic room? And-perhaps of the most lasting importance-could the stirrings in Charlotte's heart be a sign of real-life love?
The follow-up to reader favorite Austenland provides the same perfectly plotted pleasures, with a feisty new heroine, plenty of fresh and frightening twists, and the possibility of a romance that might just go beyond the proper bounds of Austen's world. How could it not turn out right in the end? Views: 1 036
From the bestselling author of Girl in Translation, a novel about a young woman torn between her family duties in Chinatown and her escape into the world of ballroom dancing.
Twenty-two-year-old Charlie Wong grew up in New York’s Chinatown, the older daughter of a Beijing ballerina and a noodle maker. Though an ABC (America-born Chinese), Charlie’s entire world has been limited to this small area. Now grown, she lives in the same tiny apartment with her widower father and her eleven-year-old sister, and works—miserably—as a dishwasher.
But when she lands a job as a receptionist at a ballroom dance studio, Charlie gains access to a world she hardly knew existed, and everything she once took to be certain turns upside down. Gradually, at the dance studio, awkward Charlie’s natural talents begin to emerge. With them, her perspective, expectations, and sense of self are transformed—something she must take great pains to hide from her father and his suspicion of all things Western. As Charlie blossoms, though, her sister becomes chronically ill. As Pa insists on treating his ailing child exclusively with Eastern practices to no avail, Charlie is forced to try to reconcile her two selves and her two worlds—Eastern and Western, old world and new—to rescue her little sister without sacrificing her newfound confidence and identity. Views: 1 036
Aan het einde van de negentiende eeuw bestijgt een nieuwe sjah de Perzische troon. Hij volgt zijn vader op, maar hij mist de daadkracht en de ambitie om zijn stempel op het bestuur te drukken. De koning heeft meer oog voor zijn harem, de kersentuin, de jacht en zijn rijkdommen dan voor de situatie waarin het volk en het land verkeren. Het leiderschap in het economische machtsspel waarin Perzië met Engeland, Frankrijk en Rusland is verwikkeld, laat hij over aan zijn raadgever, de vizier.
De handige politicus ziet in de samenwerking met de westerse landen grote mogelijkheden om hervormingen door te voeren die voorspoed zullen brengen. Maar tegen welke prijs?
In een prachtig historisch en tegelijkertijd actueel verhaal vol betoverende personages verweeft Kader Abdolah de harde strijd om bodemschatten, land en macht met de magische sfeer van het aloude Perzië. Views: 1 036
It was a warm, golden-cloudy, lovable afternoon. In the big living-room at Ingleside Susan Baker sat down with a certain grim satisfaction hovering about her like an aura; it was four o\'clock and Susan, who had been working incessantly since six that morning, felt that she had fairly earned an hour of repose and gossip. Susan just then was perfectly happy; everything had gone almost uncannily well in the kitchen that day. Dr. Jekyll had not been Mr. Hyde and so had not grated on her nerves; from where she sat she could see the pride of her heart-the bed of peonies of her own planting and culture, blooming as no other peony plot in Glen St. Mary ever did or could bloom, with peonies crimson, peonies silvery pink, peonies white as drifts of winter snow. Views: 1 035
I imagined him in his beloved Brooklyn, strolling in Prospect Park and preaching to chance comers about his gospel of good books.
"When you sell a man a book," says Roger Mifflin, the sprite-like book peddler at the center of this classic novella, "you don't sell him just twelve ounces of paper and ink and glue—you sell him a whole new life." In this beguiling but little-known prequel to Christopher Morley's belovedHaunted Bookshop, the "whole new life" that the traveling bookman delivers to Helen McGill, the narrator of Parnassus on Wheels, provides the romantic comedy that drives this charming love letter to a life in books.
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The Art of The Novella Series
**Too short to be a novel, too long to be a short story, the novella is generally unrecognized by academics and publishers. Nonetheless, it is a form beloved and practiced by literature's greatest writers. In the Art Of The Novella series, Melville House celebrates this renegade art form and its practitioners with titles that are, in many instances, presented in book form for the first time. Views: 1 035
She harbors a secret yearning.
As a lover of animals and nature, Beatrix Hathaway has always been more comfortable outdoors than in the ballroom. Even though she participated in the London season in the past, the classic beauty and free-spirited Beatrix has never been swept away or seriously courted... and she has resigned herself to the fate of never finding love. Has the time come for the most unconventional of the Hathaway sisters to settle for an ordinary man—just to avoid spinsterhood?
He is a world-weary cynic.
Captain Christopher Phelan is a handsome, daring soldier who plans to marry Beatrix's friend, the vivacious flirt Prudence Mercer, when he returns from fighting abroad. But, as he explains in his letters to Pru, life on the battlefield has darkened his soul—and it's becoming clear that Christopher won't come back as the same man. When Beatrix learns of Pru's disappointment, she decides to help by concocting Pru's letters to Christopher for her. Soon the correspondence between Beatrix and Christopher develops into something fulfilling and deep... and when Christopher comes home, he's determined to claim the woman he loves. What began as Beatrix's innocent deception has resulted in the agony of unfulfilled love—and a passion that can't be denied. Views: 1 035
On her fourth Leap birthday, when she turns sixteen, Josie has a number of momentous experiences, including taking her driver's test, auditioning for a school play, and celebrating with her family and friends. Views: 1 035
In this unique and compelling anthology, Sebastian Faulks has collected the best fiction about war in the 20th century. Ranging from the First World War to the Gulf War, these stories depict a soldiers experience from call-ups battle and comradship to leave, hospital and trauma in later life. Truely international in scope, this anthology includes stories by Erich Maria Remarque and Pat Barker, Issac Babel and Ernest Hemingway , Heinrich Boll and Norman Mailer, JG Ballard and Tim OBrian Julian Barnes and Louis de Barnieres. Together they form a powerful and moving evocation of the horors of war. Views: 1 035
Juan Cabrillo and his CIA-backed Oregon crew must beat opposing factions to a meteorite that could end the conflict between America and the Middle East in this novel in the #1 New York Times-bestselling series.
Two embattled groups seek a 50,000-year-old meteorite first discovered and then hidden by Eric the Red and his Vikings. Known as the Sacred Stone, it has powerful radioative properties. Muslim extremists have stolen a nuclear device and need the stone to give them the power to vaporize any city in the west. A megalomaniacal industrialist leads a group seeking to carry out the utter annihilation of Islam itself. And caught between the two militant factions is Juan Cabrillo and his crew, who must do whatever they can to stop the impending doom... Views: 1 035
Kiran Desai's first novel, Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard, was published to unanimous acclaim in over twenty-two countries. Now Desai takes us to the northeastern Himalayas where a rising insurgency challenges the old way of life. In a crumbling, isolated house at the foot of Mount Kanchenjunga lives an embittered old judge who wants to retire in peace when his orphaned granddaughter Sai arrives on his doorstep. The judge's chatty cook watches over her, but his thoughts are mostly with his son, Biju, hopscotching from one New York restaurant job to another, trying to stay a step ahead of the INS, forced to consider his country's place in the world. When a Nepalese insurgency in the mountains threatens Sai's new-sprung romance with her handsome Nepali tutor and causes their lives to descend into chaos, they, too, are forced to confront their colliding interests. The nation fights itself. The cook witnesses the hierarchy being overturned and discarded. The judge must revisit his past, his own role in this grasping world of conflicting desires-every moment holding out the possibility for hope or betrayal. A novel of depth and emotion, Desai's second, long-awaited novel fulfills the grand promise established by her first. Views: 1 034
From the author of Haunted, The Ghosts of Sleath and Ash, comes an electrifying action-thriller that will take readers to new levels of terror and excitement.
In 1945, Hitler unleashes the Blood Death on Britain as his final act of vengeance.
Those who died at once were the lucky ones. The really unfortunate took years. The survivors; people like me who had the blood group that kept us safe from the disease were now targets for those who believed our blood could save them.
I survived for three years. I lived alone, spending my days avoiding the fascist Blackshirts who wanted my blood for their dying leader. Then I met the others – and life got complicated all over again… Views: 1 034
Nearly sixty of Egypt’s past leaders—from the time of the Pharoahs to the twentieth century—are summoned to judgment in the Court of Osiris in the Afterlife, in this extraordinary novel by Nobel Prize–winning author Naguib Mahfouz.
Before the Throne calls forth a parade of those who have shaped the modern nation of Egypt—from the ruler who first unified Egypt in 3000 BC to Anwar Sadat, the president assassinated by religious extremists in 1981, and including figures as various as the famous pharaoh Ramesses II and the medieval vizier Qaraqush. As they defend their decisions under questioning by Osiris, Isis, and Horus, those who acted for the nation’s good are honored with immortality in paradise while those who failed to protect it are condemned either to the inferno or to “the place of insignificance.” Full of Mahfouz’s unique insight into his country’s timeless qualities, this provocative work skillfully traces five thousand years of Egypt’s past as it flows into the turbulent present.
Translated from the Arabic by Raymond Stock Views: 1 034
The brilliant and outrageous debut novel from British actor, comedian, author, presenter, journalist and national treasure, Stephen Fry.
Stephen Fry's breathtakingly outrageous debut novel, by turns eccentric, shocking, brilliantly comic and achingly romantic.
Adrian Healey is magnificently unprepared for the long littleness of life; unprepared too for the afternoon in Salzburg when he will witness the savage murder of a Hungarian violinist; unprepared to learn about the Mendax device; unprepared for more murders and wholly unprepared for the truth.
The Liar is a thrilling, sophisticated and laugh out loud hilarious novel from a brilliantly talented writer. Views: 1 034
Sixteen-year-old Polly is on her way to the island of Cyprus, where she will work as a gofer. The trip was arranged by Maximiliana Horne, a rich, brilliant artist who, with her longtime companion, Dr. Ursula Heschel, recently became the O'Keefe family's neighbor on Benne Seed Island. Max and Polly formed an instant friendship and Max took over Polly's education, giving her the encouragement and confidence that her isolated upbringing had not. Polly adored Max, even idolized her, until Max betrayed her. In Greece, Polly finds romance, danger, and unique friendships. But can she ever forgive Max? Views: 1 034
The Barnes & Noble Review
Detective Chief Inspector Jack Spratt and his trusty sergeant, Mary Mary, are back in another sidesplitting Nursery Crime adventure from Jasper Fforde: the sequel to 2005's The Big Over Easy. In The Fourth Bear, Spratt must track down a legendarily violent criminal known as the Gingerbreadman, a "seven-foot biscuit with a bad attitude."
After successfully apprehending the infamous Great Long Red-Legg'd Scissor-man, who cuts the digits off children who suck their thumbs, Spratt is inexplicably forced to take a leave of absence while a medical review board assesses his competency. With Mary Mary working as the acting head of the Nursery Crime Division -- and Spratt as her "consultant" -- the misfit members of the NCD are faced with two very different cases: to help track down the deranged Gingerbreadman, who has just escaped from a hospital for the criminally insane, and to find Henrietta "Goldilocks" Hatchett, an investigative reporter who mysteriously disappeared while working on a story about prizewinning pickles. The last to see her alive: a family of three bears who have recently experienced strange porridge problems
Fans of authors who specialize in outlandish, absurdist fiction -- Terry Pratchett, Christopher Moore, et al. -- will absolutely devour Fforde's Nursery Crime novels. If the essences of Monty Python's Flying Circus and Mother Goose were blended together, Fforde's Nursery Crime saga would be the result. Readers should be warned, however, that after reading The Fourth Bear, they will never look at porridge the same way again Paul Goat Allen Views: 1 034
