Showing results by narrator "Alix" in All Categories

A new novel from the Booker Prize finalist Deborah Levy, the celebrated author of The Man Who Saw Everything and The Cost of Living. At the height of her career, the piano virtuoso Elsa M. Anderson—former child prodigy, now in her thirties—walks off the stage in Vienna, mid-performance. Now...

1936. Anglo-Breton translator Annie Wrenne is working in Madrid when the Spanish Civil War breaks out. Annie becomes a nurse on the front line, but after falling in love with a patient, she ends up pregnant - and abandoned - by a man she thought she knew. Annie passes the rest of the war in a haze, her only consolation her relationship with mysterious Republican fighter Carlos Ortega. Annie finds herself caught up in Ortega’s world, a web of intrigue, which leads to her recruitment into MI5.

Worn out by poverty, Lettie Radley and her miner husband Tommy grasp at the offer of their very own smallholding - part of a Government scheme to put the unemployed back to work on the land. When she comes down to Essex to join him, it's not Tommy who greets her, but their new neighbours. Overbearing and unkempt, Jean and Adam Dell are everything that Lettie can't abide. But as Lettie settles in, she finds an unexpected joy in the rhythms of life. She's hopeful that her past, and the terrible secret Tommy has come to Foxash to escape, are far behind them. But the Dells have their own secrets.

A new work by the author of “In Defense of Witches” that seeks to redefine heterosexual relationships and give women back their voice. As feminist principles have taken wider hold in society, and basic ideas about equality for women can seem a given, many women still struggle in one of the...

Anthony Cade undertakes a small, seemingly innocuous favour for a friend which begins to draw him into the center of a deadly conspiracy. Unable to escape the web he becomes entangled within, he begins to realize that the simple favor has placed him in serious danger. As events unfold, the combined forces of the Metropolitan Police and the French Sûreté corner in on Chimneys, the great country estate that hides an unbelievable secret.

Cassie and her friends get to do exactly that—until they find their lives spiraling into a web of secrets, deception, and danger. Past suspicions are renewed, blurring the truth, and they are left struggling to protect one another from the outside world that threatens to take away their new-found freedom.

'Intriguing' – The Sunday Times 'A rousing read' – The Irish Times Renowned journalist Mona Chollet recasts the witch as a powerful role model: an emblem of strength, free to exist beyond the narrow limits society imposes on women. Taking three archetypes from historic witch hunts –...

“An absolutely gripping read... both satisfying and chilling.” –Ellery Lloyd, author of the New York Times bestseller The Club Meet Eva, who can’t feel pain, and Anna, who can’t escape it. Everyone has heard about the case of Eva Reid. Ever since she was born, she’s felt no pain: she...

After years of people insisting she must be cursed due to her discolored left eye, Salome starts to believe they might be right. But when Harbona the Seer unexpectedly visits her, he reveals that not only has the Year of the Hunter begun, but Salome’s distorted eye is in actuality the Mark of the Hunter, and she is charged to avenge the blood of the innocent. With the Immortal Seer, their axe-wielding guardian, and a dangerous bounty hunter known as the Wanderer in their company, Salome and her brother, Crispin, embark on a journey to defeat their sister and reclaim the White Throne.

Sophie has become the figure within the family who is the comforter to its members and a reassuring and inspiring presence for the country. She is a modern woman and yet a throwback to happier Royal times. She is now the 'glue that binds'. During some of the darkest days of the Royal Family...

Who thought writing "LOSERS" on a menu could lead to an affair of love notes? It didn't start out as love. How could it when I vowed never to fall in love.... Reef Burton, the sexy blue-eyed football player, and his mates are definitely not "Losers", yet writing it on a menu gave me reason to smile. Only it didn't make it to the trash. He returns to the restaurant where I work wearing his killer smile.

Anne arrives in London in search of adventure when trgedy finds her. A thin man, dishevelled and giving off a stench of mothballs, topples onto the tracks and is electrocuted on the rails. Scotland Yard believe it is an accidental death. But Anne is not convinced. Who was the man in the brown suit who she saw poking around the body? And why did he leave so sharply, leaving a message behind: "17-122 Kilmorden Castle"?

'A fascinating alternative history covering 2,500 years and a geographical span from Japan to California' NEW STATESMAN 'A revelation . . . The tale of each carpet as Armstrong tells it is untidy and tragic and comical all at once' TESSA HADLEY On the saddles of warlords, draping the walls of...

Brought to you by Penguin. This is the story of three women - one an orphan and refugee who finds a place in the studio of a famous French artist, the other a wife and mother who has stood by her husband for nearly forty years. The third is his daughter, caught in the crossfire between her...

Jessie wakes to darkness, cold, and the rain beating down on her. She reaches out, and her hands meet hard stone. Suddenly she knows where she is. Deep in the woods, far underground, at the bottom of the well where her best friend's lifeless body was found fifteen years ago. After returning to her hometown to investigate a new murder, she now finds herself poised to become the killer's next victim. Jessie gazes up to the circle of night sky above her, the relentless raindrops landing on her face.

From the whistling languages of La Gomera in the Canary Islands and the Hmong people in East and Southeast Asia, to the wars and clashes in Sri Lanka and the conservation efforts in Hawaii and New Zealand, Rare Tongues draws attention to how language and culture are becoming increasingly homogenous, and what we risk losing as a result.

"The Star" is an 1897 apocalyptic short story by H.G. Wells. In January (about 1900, presumably), the people of Earth awaken to the notion that a strange luminous object has erupted, into the Solar System, after disturbing the normal orbit of the planet Neptune. Indeed, such object is a luminous celestial body, whose luminosity is distinguishable on the sky about the constellation of Leo.

A schoolyard stabbing sends wingbeats echoing from the past. One shocking event. Two teachers risk their careers to help a boy who has nothing. Three worlds intersect and collide. The best way to avoid trouble, thinks Ayisha Emmanuelle, is to avoid confrontation. As an inner-city schoolteacher, she does a whole lot of avoidance. 14-year-old Shamayal Thomas trusts no one. Not the family, not the gang. And at school, trusting people is forbidden. Jim Stevens teaches history. Haunted by his own, he still believes everyone can learn from the past. History doesn’t always have to repeat itself.

Now 80 years old, retirement and advanced age have dissipated the spirit of six college radicals of the 1960s, who jointly had participated in civil rights campaigns and anti-war protests. Having engaged in only periodic communication over the decades, they suddenly receive an invitation to reunite for an extended weekend. Struggling with whether to go, each of them has divergent qualms and expectations for the proposed gathering.

Among the unconventional attitudes of the Beat writers as they rebelled against the conformism of the late 1940s and 1950s was their relaxed stance on sexuality. At a time when gay people were considered mentally ill or criminal, the Beats celebrated spontaneity and freedom in thought, word, and action. They were queer in the fullest sense of the word: their fluid sexuality challenged all sexual and romantic conventions.