The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield is a rich story about secrets, ghosts, winter, books and family. The Thirteenth Tale is a book lover's book, with much of the action taking place in libraries and book stores, and the line between fact and fiction constantly blurred. It is hard to believe this is Setterfield's debut novel, for she makes the words come to life with such skill that some passages even gave me chills. With a mug of cocoa and The Thirteenth Tale, contentment isn't far away.
The author of Cloud Atlas's most ambitious novel yet, for the readers of Ishiguro, Murakami, and, of course, David Mitchell.The year is 1799, the place Dejima, the "high-walled, fan-shaped artificial island" that is the Japanese Empire's single port and sole window to the world. It is also the farthest-flung outpost of the powerful Dutch East Indies Company. To this place of superstition and swamp fever, crocodiles and courtesans, earthquakes and typhoons, comes Jacob de Zoet. The young, devout and ambitious clerk must spend five years in the East to earn enough money to deserve the hand of his ...
A geriatric stepfather falls in love with a scheming woman half his age in Schine's –flecked and compulsively readable follow-up to . Betty Weissman is 75 when Joseph, her husband of nearly 50 years, announces he's divorcing her. Soon, Betty moves out of their grand Central Park West apartment and Joseph's conniving girlfriend, Felicity, moves in. Betty lands in a rundown Westport, Conn., beach cottage, but things quickly get more complicated when Betty's daughters run into their own problems. Literary agent Miranda is sued into bankruptcy after it's revealed that some of her authors made up their lurid memoirs, and Annie, drowning ...
Lockheart Flawse exposes the suburban foibles of his tennants in Sandicott Close. Terrified out of their wits, one by one they beat a hasty retreat and Lockheart's dream of escaping hated East Pursley, and his 12 rent-controlled houses comes a step closer.
In the small town of Larksville, the Pike family is hopelessly out of step with the daily rhythms of life after the tragic, accidental death of six-year-old Janie Rose. Mrs. Pike seldom speaks, blaming herself, while Mr. Pike is forced to come out of his long, comfortable silence. Then there is ten-year-old Simon, who is suddenly without a baby sister – and without understanding why she's gone.Those closest to this shattered family must learn to comfort them – and confront their own private shadows of hidden grief. If time cannot draw them out of the dark, then love may be their only hope…
"The Toss of a Lemon joins the company of the great novels on India." – Yann Martel***In a fiction debut to rival The God of Small Things, Padma Viswanathan gives us a richly detailed and intimate vision of an India we've never seen.Inspired by her family history, Padma Viswanathan brings us deep inside the private lives of a Brahmin family as the subcontinent moves through sixty years of intense social and political change. At the novel's heart is Sivakami, a captivating girl-child married at ten to an astrologer and village healer who is drawn to ...
Considered a masterpiece, this story was written in 1921, and is set in the China of 1911: the period of the old-democratic revolution. It concerns the tragedy of Ah Q, a farm laborer who suffers a lifetime of humiliation and persecution, dreams of revolution, and ends up on the execution ground. The story colorfully reflects the rural conditions in semi-feudal and semi-colonial China, and brings to life the time's sharp class contradictions and the peasant masses' demand for revolution. Its simplicity and directness of style, and the beauty of Lu Hsun's language, place The True Story of Ah Q high among literary works of the time for both content and style.
Considered a masterpiece, this story was written in 1921, and is set in the China of 1911: the period of the old-democratic revolution. It concerns the tragedy of Ah Q, a farm laborer who suffers a lifetime of humiliation and persecution, dreams of revolution, and ends up on the execution ground. The story colorfully reflects the rural conditions in semi-feudal and semi-colonial China, and brings to life the time's sharp class contradictions and the peasant masses' demand for revolution. Its simplicity and directness of style, and the beauty of Lu Hsun's language, place The True Story of Ah Q high among literary works of the time for both content and style.
The Swiss writer Friedrich D?rrenmatt (1921–90) was one of the most important literary figures of the second half of the twentieth century. During the years of the cold war, arguably only Beckett, Camus, Sartre, and Brecht rivaled him as a presence in European letters. Yet outside Europe, this prolific author is primarily known for only one work, . With these long-awaited translations of his plays, fictions, and essays, D?rrenmatt becomes available again in all his brilliance to the English-speaking world.This second volume of reveals a writer who may stand as Kafka’s greatest heir. D?rrenmatt’s ...
A novel of irreconcilable loves and infidelities, which embraces all aspects of human existence, and addresses the nature of twentieth-century 'Being'.
Only a Scandinavian dystopia would unravel in a setting “furnished in a modern style and tastefully decorated in muted colors” such as “eggshell white.” And only a Scandinavian dystopia, perhaps, would see mandatory paternal leave as a slippery slope to compulsory childcare and then to compulsory parenthood and the criminalization of traditional gender roles. This is a dystopia for a shrinking country. In The Unit, all childless women over fifty and childless men over sixty are classified as “dispensable” and removed to facilities where they take part in scientific experiments and eventually donate all of their organs to “needed” ...
Urban Book of the dead is my second book to be published, after 'The Unrequited Zombie'. It is a rather less experimental work, though still unusual, vivid, and descriptive. I would describe the book as both psychedelic and surreal, being rather pedantic about the use of those two words. That is, if it were surreal I would be dealing with a psychological work, something that looked towards expanding knowledge of the Id, that primitive part of our nature that is repressed by social conventions and the need to plan to get what we want. It is, in that it ...
Рассказ вошёл в сборники:The Illustrated Man (Человек в картинках)The Vintage Bradbury (Классический Брэдбери)The Stories of Ray Bradbury (И грянул гром: 100 рассказов)
A powerful new collection from one of our most beloved, admired, and honored writers.In stories that are more personal than any that she's written before, Alice Munro pieces her family's history into gloriously imagined fiction. A young boy is taken to Edinburgh's Castle Rock, where his father assures him that on a clear day he can see America, and he catches a glimpse of his father's dream. In stories that follow, as the dream becomes a reality, two sisters-in-law experience very different kinds of passion on the long voyage to the New World; a baby is lost ...
Set in Hollywood, Paris, Bordeaux, and Marseille, Peter Mayle’s newest and most delightful novel is filled with culinary delights, sumptuous wines, and colorful characters. It’s also a lot of fun.The story begins high above Los Angeles, at the extravagant home and equally impressive wine cellar of entertainment lawyer Danny Roth. Unfortunately, after inviting the Los Angeles Times to write an extensive profile extolling the liquid treasures of his collection, Roth finds himself the victim of a world-class wine heist.Enter Sam Levitt, former corporate lawyer, cultivated crime expert, and wine connoisseur. Called in by ...
A novel of passion and intrigue in the Holy Wars of the XVI century, by the author of The Egyptian, The Etruscan, and The Secret of the Kingdom. From the back cover: "Had I – Michael of Finlandia – but known this, I would never have saved her from the lust of the Moslem pirates. Nor would I ever have married her. But at first I did not know. After we became slaves of Suleiman the Magnificent, it took all my quick wits just to keep us alive. All my quick wits, and my brother's skill with guns, and Giulia's gift of prophecy. So we rose to wealth and power. And then, fascinated by her magnetic eyes and her loving ways, I set out to follow the Crescent, leaving her behind to intrigue in the sultan's harem. And to bring about my undoing."
