Set in a 1970s Irish fishing village, the story revolves around a baby boy found on the beach, who captivates the local community. As he grows into a charismatic yet enigmatic young man named Brendan, the narrative explores the intertwined lives of his adoptive family and the village, revealing the impact of a changing global economy on their traditional way of life. The dynamic between Brendan and his brother Declan, alongside their father's struggles, highlights themes of family, community, and the complexities of identity in a shifting world.
Rick Martin loved music and the music loved him. He could pick up a tune so quickly that it didn’t matter to the Cotton Club boss that he was underage, or to the guys in the band that he was just a white kid. He started out in the slums of LA with nothing, and he ended up on top of the game in the speakeasies and nightclubs of New York. But while talent and drive are all you need to make it in music, they aren’t enough to make it through a life. Dorothy Baker’s Young Man with a Horn is widely regarded as the first jazz novel, and it pulses with the music that defined an era. Baker took her inspiration from the artistry—though not the life—of legendary horn player Bix Beiderbecke, and the novel went on to be adapted into a successful movie starring Kirk Douglas, Lauren Bacall, and Doris Day.
THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 'Insanely gripping' - India Knight 'A mystery, a love story and a ghost story, all at once' - SJ Watson Cornwall, 1972. Three keepers vanish from a remote lighthouse, miles from the shore. The entrance door is locked from the inside. The clocks have stopped. The Principal Keeper's weather log describes a mighty storm, but the skies have been clear all week. What happened to those three men, out on the tower? The heavy sea whispers their names. The tide shifts beneath the swell, drowning ghosts. Can their secrets ever be recovered from the waves? Twenty years later, the women they left behind are still struggling to move on. Helen, Jenny and Michelle should have been united by the tragedy, but instead it drove them apart. And then a writer approaches them. He wants to give them a chance to tell their side of the story. But only in confronting their darkest fears can the truth begin to surface . . . The Lamplighters by Emma Stonex is an intoxicating and suspenseful mystery, an unforgettable story of love and grief that explores the way our fears blur the line between the real and the imagined. 'Gripping' - Guardian 'Riveting' - Independent 'Excellent' - Observer 'A triumph' - Daily Mail
«No soy negro, soy hombre.» Elwood Curtis, inspirado por Martin Luther King, sueña con un mundo más justo. Criado por su estricta abuela tras ser abandonado por sus padres, Elwood se destaca como un estudiante prometedor, viendo en la educación su única salida. Sin embargo, su vida da un giro inesperado cuando, debido a un malentendido, es enviado a la Academia Nickel, un reformatorio que promete formar «hombres hechos y derechos» a través de una instrucción física, intelectual y moral. Pronto descubre que este lugar encierra un brutal secreto y una realidad corrupta, ignorada por muchos. Con la ayuda de su amigo Turner, quien cree que la única forma de sobrevivir es imitar la crueldad de sus opresores, Elwood se enfrenta a un dilema. Mientras Turner adopta una postura cínica, Elwood opta por seguir las enseñanzas de King: «Enviadnos a la cárcel, y os querremos igual». La tensión entre el escepticismo y el idealismo de ambos amigos los llevará a tomar decisiones con consecuencias profundas. Inspirada en un caso real de un reformatorio de Florida que devastó vidas durante más de un siglo, esta novela devastadora explora la lucha por la justicia en un contexto marcado por la segregación racial en los años sesenta.
When Frances Shore moves to Saudi Arabia, she settles in a nondescript sublet, sure that common sense and an open mind will serve her well with her Muslim neighbors. But in the dim, airless flat, Frances spends lonely days writing in her diary, hearing the sounds of sobs through the pipes from the floor above, and seeing the flitting shadows of men on the stairwell. It's all in her imagination, she's told by her neighbors; the upstairs flat is empty, no one uses the roof. But Frances knows otherwise, and day by day, her sense of foreboding grows even as her sense of herself begins to disintegrate.
La 4e de couv. indique : "Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia, an existence made even more hellish by her status as an outcast among her fellow Africans. And she is approaching womanhood, where greater pain and danger awaits. So when Caesar, a slave recently arrived from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, Cora takes the momentous decision to acompany him on his escape to the North."
Una treintena de muchachos son los únicos supervivientes de un naufragio en el que perecen todos los adultos. Enseguida se plantea cómo sobrevivir en tales condiciones, y no tardan en crearse dos grupos con sus respectivos líderes. Ralph se convierte en el cabecilla de quienes están dispuestos a construir refugios y a recolectar, mientras que Jack se convierte en el jefe de los cazadores, animados por un espíritu más aventurero. Las tensiones entre ambos bandos desembocan en un enfrentamiento que se resuelve en un baño de sangre. Partiendo de este esquema, el Premio Nobel William Golding crea una fábula moral sobre el lado más oscuro de la naturaleza humana. Una novela deslumbrante en la que se ha visto desde una requisitoria moral contra la educación represiva hasta una parábola acerca de los instintos básicos del ser humano. El señor de las moscas es un nombre para el mal en la cultura judía, y este es uno de los temas principales de la novela, junto con la contraposición entre civilización y barbarie y la validez de la disciplina, entre otros muchos.
Love is not consolation, it is light.'From the author of Maps for Lost Lovers comes a searing, exquisitely written novel set in Pakistan and Afghanistan in the months following 9/11 - a story of war, of one family's losses, and of the simplest, most enduring human impulses.Jeo and Mikal, foster-brothers from a small Pakistani city, secretly enter Afghanistan: not to fight with the Taliban, but to help and care for wounded civilians. But it soon becomes apparent that good intentions can't keep them out of harm's way...From the wilds of Afghanistan to the heart of the family left behind - their blind father haunted for years by the death of his wife, by the mistakes he may have made in the name of Islam and nationhood, Jeo's steadfast wife and her superstitious mother - Aslam's prose takes us on an extraordinary journey, through war, tragedy, love and brotherhood.
Dublin 1907, a city of whispered rumours. A young actress begins an affair with a damaged older man, the leading playwright at the theatre where she works. Rebellious and flirtatious, Molly Allgood is a girl of the inner city tenements, dreaming of stardom in America. She has dozens of admirers but in the backstage of her life there is a secret. Her lover, John Synge, is a troubled genius, the son of a once prosperous landowning family, a poet of fiery language and tempestuous passions. Yet his life is hampered by convention and by the austere and God-fearing mother with whom he lives. Scarred by a childhood of loneliness and severity he has long been ill, but he loves to walk the wild places of Ireland. The affair, sternly opposed by friends and family, is turbulent, sometimes cruel, often tender. Many years later, an old woman makes her way across London on the morning after a hurricane. Christmas is coming. As she wanders past bombsites and through the city's forlorn beauty, a snowdrift of memories and lost desires seems to swirl. She has twice been married: once widowed, once divorced, but an unquenchable passion for life has kept her afloat as her dazzling career has faded. A story of love's commitment, of partings and reconciliations, of the courage involved in living on nobody else's terms, Ghost Light is a profoundly moving and ultimately uplifting novel.
The year is 1799, the place Dejima in Nagasaki Harbor, the “high-walled, fan-shaped artificial island” that is the Japanese Empire’s single port and sole window onto the world, designed to keep the West at bay; the farthest outpost of the war-ravaged Dutch East Indies Company; and a de facto prison for the dozen foreigners permitted to live and work there. To this place of devious merchants, deceitful interpreters, costly courtesans, earthquakes, and typhoons comes Jacob de Zoet, a devout and resourceful young clerk who has five years in the East to earn a fortune of sufficient size to win the hand of his wealthy fiancée back in Holland.But Jacob’s original intentions are eclipsed after a chance encounter with Orito Aibagawa, the disfigured daughter of a samurai doctor and midwife to the city’s powerful magistrate. The borders between propriety, profit, and pleasure blur until Jacob finds his vision clouded, one rash promise made and then fatefully broken. The consequences will extend beyond Jacob’s worst imaginings. As one cynical colleague asks, “Who ain’t a gambler in the glorious Orient, with his very life?”A magnificent mix of luminous writing, prodigious research, and heedless imagination, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is the most impressive achievement of its eminent author.
From one of England's most celebrated writers, a funny and superbly observed novella about the Queen of England and the subversive power of reading When her corgis stray into a mobile library parked near Buckingham Palace, the Queen feels duty-bound to borrow a book. Discovering the joy of reading widely (from J. R. Ackerley, Jean Genet, and Ivy Compton-Burnett to the classics) and intelligently, she finds that her view of the world changes dramatically. Abetted in her newfound obsession by Norman, a young man from the royal kitchens, the Queen comes to question the prescribed order of the world and loses patience with the routines of her role as monarch. Her new passion for reading initially alarms the palace staff and soon leads to surprising and very funny consequences for the country at large. With the poignant and mischievous wit of The History Boys, England's best loved author Alan Bennett revels in the power of literature to change even the most uncommon reader's life.
Yearning to escape her life of prostitution in 1870s London, Sugar finds her fate entangled in the complicated family life of patron William, an egotistical perfume magnate.
De verhouding van de Latijnse dichter Catullus met Clodia lijkt zich te herleven in die van een archeoloog die Clodia's villa opgraaft en zijn assistente.
