LONGLISTED FOR THE 2016 MAN BOOKER PRIZEA good man in a bad world, Jon Sigurdsson is 59 and divorced: a senior civil servant in Westminster who hates many of his colleagues and loathes his work for a government engaged in unmentionable acts. A man of conscience.Meg Williams is 'a bankrupt accountant – two words you don't want in the same sentence, or anywhere near your CV'. She's 45 and shakily sober, living on Telegraph Hill, where she can see London unfurl below her. Somewhere out there is safety.Somewhere out there is Jon, pinballing around the city with a mobile phone and a letter-writing habit he can't break. He's a man on the brink, leaking government secrets and affection as he runs for his life. Set in 2014, this is a novel of our times. Poignant, deeply funny, and beautifully written, Serious Sweet is about two decent, damaged people trying to make moral choices in an immoral world: ready to sacrifice what's left of... Views: 31
Use the product description that is on Amazon detail page Views: 31
In her latest novel, the author of Another You combines intensely realistic description and an effortless command of mood to examine the treacherous difference between love and fascination--between what we know about other people and what we think we know. Dara Falcon is someone other people think they know. Charismatic and theatrical, she has no sooner arrived in a New England town than she is wreaking havoc in the lives of her new friend Jean and her family. As Ann Beattie follows Dara's antics, she braids subplots and vibrant characters into a work that is compassionate, tartly funny, and teeming with life. Views: 31
In this latest installment of the beloved and best-selling No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, Precious Ramotswe and Grace Makutsi help a young woman on a quest to find someone from her past.Changes are afoot at the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, where Mma Makutsi, who has recently been promoted to co-director, has been encouraging Mma Ramotswe to update to more modern office practices. However, an unusual case will require both of them to turn their attention firmly to the past. A young Canadian woman who spent her early childhood in Botswana requests the agency's help in recovering important pieces of her life there. With only a faded photograph—and, of course, some good old-fashioned detective skills—to guide them, Precious and Grace set out to locate the house that the woman used to live in and the caretaker who looked after her many years ago. But when the journey takes an unexpected turn, they are forced to consider whether some lost things may be better... Views: 31
A sweeping, emotionally riveting first novel - an enthralling family saga of Africa and America, doctors and patients, exile and home. Marion and Shiva Stone are twin brothers born of a secret union between a beautiful Indian nun and a brash British surgeon at a mission hospital in Addis Ababa. Orphaned by their mother's death in childbirth and their father's disappearance, bound together by a preternatural connection and a shared fascination with medicine, the twins come of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution. Yet it will be love, not politics - their passion for the same woman - that will tear them apart and force Marion, fresh out of medical school, to flee his homeland. He makes his way to America, finding refuge in his work as an intern at an underfunded, overcrowded New York City hospital. When the past catches up to him - nearly destroying him - Marion must entrust his life to the two men he thought he trusted least in the world: the surgeon father who abandoned him and the brother who betrayed him. An unforgettable journey into one man's remarkable life, and an epic story about the power, intimacy, and curious beauty of the work of healing others. Views: 31
The only way therapist Victoria Lake can think to protect her estranged son, Jack, from a case turned deadly is to make a complete break from the past. As painful as it is, it's safer for him if he - and her enemies - think she's dead. Jack never wanted to believe in his mother's psychic abilities. Yet he can't deny his own conviction that she's alive, despite the meticulous police investigation and the somber funeral. To survive, Victoria knows she has to reinvent herself completely. She can't even listen to her beloved Puccini. But without the music in her ears, eerie dreams invade her sleep. Lush with the sounds and sights of 19th-century Tuscany, they're also loaded with a present-day warning she can't afford to ignore...ReviewRomantic Times: Marley's latest is a poetic blend of historical fiction and suspense. Readers are kept waiting anxiously in the dark for details behind Tory's escape . . . Marley also awards readers with a book-within-a-book, a glimpse into the life of the composer Puccini. Beautifully written and intimate . . .--Sarah Eisenbraun"SciFi Magazine: Louise Marley's latest is a slipstream offering . . . The tone is literary, the language rich, and the feelings wrapped up in Tory's intense love of music--and her unresolved relationship with the estranged son.--Adam-Troy CastroNocturne Romance Reads: Marley's novel could be classified as a mystery; however such a perspective would minimize the intensity of the emotional elements. . . Marley excels at setting rich and colorful scenes. The tension and suspense surrounds Tory, Jack and their friends, as well as the antagonist.The Seattle Times: Seattle-based opera singer/novelist Louise Marley knits together two related plot lines -- a contemporary story about a therapist in deadly peril from a patient, and a domestic drama in the life of opera composer Giacomo Puccini -- into a gripping novel about obsession and its consequences.--Melinda Bargreen From the AuthorShopping once in an antiques store--in Cannon Beach, Oregon, in fact, where this novel is set--it struck me that it would be possible to construct a whole new life out of the things in that store. Old photos, old linens and glassware, books and papers and keepsakes, all turn up for sale. What became of the people who once treasured them? It's impossible to know.The story within a story of this novel concerns a young girl who worked for the Puccini family in Italy. History tells us one side of her story. The Glass Butterfly explores a different interpretation, and proposes that a keepsake of hers connects her story to that of Tory Lake. It is both a comfort and a warning, an omen of the threat that hangs over her and her son. Views: 31
The acclaimed author of To the End of the Land now gives us a searing short novel about the life of a standup comic as revealed in the course of one evening's performance—comedy that will lean inexorably toward tragedy. In a little dive in a small Israeli city, Dov Greenstein, a comedian a bit past his prime, is doing a night of standup. In the audience is a district court justice, Avishai Lazar, whom Dov knew as a boy, along with a few others who remember Dov as the awkward, scrawny kid who walked on his hands to confound the neighborhood bullies. Gradually, teetering between hilarity and hysteria, Dov's patter becomes a kind of memoir, taking us back into the terrors of his childhood—his beautiful flower of a mother, a Holocaust survivor in need of constant monitoring; his punishing father, a striver who had little understanding of his creative son. Finally, recalling his week at a military camp for youth—where Lazar witnessed what became the... Views: 31
