If only she'd been born a boy, Tamsyn would never have been sent away to Uncle Gideon's - the armourer's - house when her grandmother died. She could have stayed by the wild sea that she loved with her Uncle Martin, the ship merchant.
But instead, she is bound for busy, bustling Tudor London, and the armourer's house, far from the coast and far from her beloved ships. Homesick and lonely in the loud family of cousins, it isn't until she meets the strange old Wise Woman that Tamsyn is finally promised her "heart's desire"... Views: 908
In a story of breathtaking scope, Colleen McCullough returns to the magnificent setting of her international bestseller The Thorn Birds.
Following the disappearance of his only son and the death of his beloved wife, Richard Morgan is falsely imprisoned and exiled to the penal colonies of eighteenth-century Australia. His life is shattered but Morgan refuses to surrender, overcoming all obstacles to find unexpected contentment and happiness in the harsh early days of Australia's settlement.
From England's shores to Botany Bay and the rugged frontier of a hostile new world, Morgan's Run is the epic tale of love lost and found, and the man whose strength and character helped settle a country and define its future. Views: 905
Twelve-year-old Damaris and 13-year-old Peter literally stumble over a young man who had been shot during the night. How they rescue him and help him get safe passage out of the country is the plot of this historical adventure set in Sussex, England in the 1750s. As readers have come to expect, Sutcliff writes in a demanding, evocative style and conveys a strong sense of place. Views: 905
With the unpredictable wit and engaging warmth that has won her a loyal following, and the undeniable star quality that has made her television series an instant hit, Ellen DeGeneres brings her unique comic perspective to the page in a book of simple yet brilliant observations, outrageous dreams, and hilarious life stories. Views: 904
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR
"Elaborate and playful...Honest and deeply felt....Here is the Quindlen wit, the sharp eye for the details of class and manners, [and] the ardent reading of domestic lives."
-THE NEW YORK TIMES
It is the 1960s, in suburban New York City. Maggie and her family, are in the thrall of her powerful grandfather Jack Scanlan. In the summer of her twelfth year, Maggie is despertately trying to master the object lessons her grandfather fills her head with. But there is too much going on to concentrate. Everything at home is in upheaval, her grandfather is changing, and Maggie is unsure if what she wants is worth having....
From the Trade Paperback edition. Views: 903
In his usual winning, humorous style, R. K. Narayan shares his life story, beginning in his grandmother's garden in Madras with his ferocious pet peacock. As a young boy with no interest in school, he trains grasshoppers, scouts, and generally takes part in life's excitements. Against the advice of all, especially his commanding headmaster father, the dreaming Narayan takes to writing fiction, and one of his pieces is accepted by Punch magazine (his "first prestige publication"). Soon his life includes bumbling British diplomats, curious movie moguls, evasive Indian officials, eccentric journalists, and "the blind urge" to fall in love. R. K. Narayan's larger-than-life perception of the human comedy is at once acute and forgiving, and always true to it. Views: 902
A short incident from the time of Jane Austen, told in a series of letters from Bath, England. A prequel story to Friendship and Folly: The Merriweather Chronicles, Book I. Approx. 23,000 words.If a dream is a wish your heart makes, can it hear those things we want even if we don’t what they are? When sorrow brings young Lucy home to a land full of mystery, steeped in tradition and colored with unspoken magic, she finds herself re-evaluating her life and her own place in it. Things are never what they seem and people are seldom what you THINK them to be if all you base it on is what your eyes see and not what your soul knows. There’s a fine line between destiny and duty, but when both are blended with love, who knows what miracles can occur at Christmas. Views: 901
Now available for the first time in English, this important addition to the Roth canon is rich in irony and exemplary of Roth's keen powers of social and political observation
A novel fragment that was discovered among Joseph Roth's papers decades after his death, this book chronicles the life and times of Alexander Perlefter, the well-to-do Austrian urbanite with whom his relative, a small-town narrator, Naphthali Kroj, has come to live after becoming orphaned. The colorful cast of characters includes Perlefter's four children: foolish Alfred, with his predilection for sleeping with servant girls and widows and boasting of the venereal diseases he contracts; the hapless Karoline, whose interest in math and physics and employment at a scientific institute seem to repel serious suitors; the flamboyant Julie, a sweet, pale, and anemic girl who likes any man who is inclined toward marriage; and the beautiful and flighty Margarete, besotted with a professor of history. Written circa 1928-30, Perlefter represents Joseph Roth at the very peak of his literary powers—it was penned just after the publication of The Silent Prophet and just before his masterpieces Job and The Radetzky March. Views: 900
John Irving wishes. That he could be as mordantly funny as Elizabeth Gilbert, that is. With the publication of her first novel, Stern Men, Gilbert has been widely compared to New England's unofficial novelist laureate. And the comparison is a natural; this writer gives us a tough, lovable heroine against an iconoclastic, rural backdrop.
Ruth Thomas grows up on Fort Niles Island, off the coast of Maine, among lobstermen, lobster boats, and, well, lobsters. There's just not much out there besides ocean. Abandoned by her mother, she lives sometimes with her dad and sometimes with her beautiful neighbor, Mrs. Pommeroy, and the seven idiot Pommeroy boys. Eventually she is plucked from obscurity by the wealthy Ellises—vacationers on Fort Niles for some hundred years—and sent, against her will, to a fancy boarding school in Delaware. (Sorting out her relationship with this highly manipulative family is one of the novel's crooked joys.) Now she has returned, and is casting about for something to do.
What Ruth does (hang around with her eccentric island friends, fall in love, organize the lobstermen) makes for an engaging book that's all the more charming for its rather lumpy, slow-paced plotting. Gilbert delivers a kind of delicious ethnography of lobster-fishing culture, if such a thing is possible, as well as a love story and a bildungsroman. But best of all, she possesses an ear for the ridiculous ways people communicate. One of Mrs. Pommeroy's young sons, "in addition to having the local habit of not pronouncing r at the end of a word—could not say any word that started with r.... What's more, for a long time everyone on Fort Niles Island imitated him. Over the whole spread of the island, you could hear the great strong fishermen complaining that they had to mend their wopes or fix their wigging or buy a new short-wave wadio." Views: 900
Here is the only collection of writings compiled by Abbey himself, who writes in his own words, "to present what I think is both the best and most representative of my writing--so far." Included in this collection are generous selections of his best novels, such as The Brave Cowboy, Black Sun, and his classic The Monkey Wrench Gang, as well as many of his other, more expressive and acerbic essays.
To add further interest, Abbey’s own sketches are scattered throughout the text. This rich offering of fiction and prose is a testament to a singular American author, and offers an opportunity to become better acquainted with his abundant body of work. Views: 895
From the Nobel laureate and author of the masterly Night, a deeply felt, beautifully written novel of morality, guilt, and innocence.
Despite personal success, Yedidyah—a theater critic in New York City, husband to a stage actress, father to two sons—finds himself increasingly drawn to the past. As he reflects on his life and the decisions he’s made, he longingly reminisces about the relationships he once had with the men in his family (his father, his uncle, his grandfather) and the questions that remain unanswered. It’s a feeling that is further complicated when Yedidyah is assigned to cover the murder trial of a German expatriate named Werner Sonderberg. Sonderberg returned alone from a walk in the Adirondacks with an elderly uncle, whose lifeless body was soon retrieved from the woods. His plea is enigmatic: “Guilty . . . and not guilty.”
These words strike a chord in Yedidyah, plunging him into feelings that bring him harrowingly close to madness. As Sonderberg’s trial moves along a path of dizzying yet revelatory twists and turns, Yedidyah begins to understand his own family’s hidden past and finally liberates himself from the shadow it has cast over his life.
With his signature elegance and thoughtfulness, Elie Wiesel has given us an enthralling psychological mystery, both vividly dramatic and profoundly emotional.
From the Hardcover edition. Views: 889
Spanning three generations, and illuminated by marvelous flights of lyricism and wit, "Moon Palace" follows an orphan child of the sixties as he seeks the key to his past and the answers to the riddle of his fate. Views: 884
Great Aunt Oleander is dead. To each of her nearest and dearest she has left a seed pod. The seed pods might be deadly, but then again they might also contain the secret of enlightenment. Not that anyone has much time for enlightenment. Fleur, left behind at the crumbling Namaste House, must step into Oleander’s role as guru to lost and lonely celebrities. Bryony wants to lose the weight she put on after her botanist parents disappeared, but can’t stop drinking. And Charlie struggles to make sense of his life after losing the one woman he could truly love.
A complex and fiercely contemporary tale of inheritance, enlightenment, life, death, desire, and family trees, The Seed Collectors is the most important novel yet from one of the world’s most daring and brilliant writers. Views: 884
Published in 1932 as an 'entertainment', Graham Greene's gripping spy thriller unfolds aboard the majestic Orient Express as it crosses Europe from Ostend to Istanbul.
Weaving a web of subterfuge, murder and politics along the way, the novel focuses upon the disturbing relationship between Myatt, the pragmatic Jew, and naive chorus girl Coral Musker as they engage in a desperate, angst-ridden pas-de-deux before a chilling turn of events spells an end to the unlikely interlude. Exploring the many shades of despair and hope, innocence and duplicity, Stamboul Train offers a poignant testimony to Greene's extraordinary powers of insight into the human condition. Views: 882
If Kelsey Newman's theory about the end of the time is true, we are all going to live forever. But for Meg - locked in a dead-end relationship and with a deadline looming for a book that she can't write - this thought fills her with dread. Stuck in a labyrinth of her own devising, Meg knows that there must be a way out. Views: 878
