Family life fiction / Stories about family
Forever My One and Only Duke
Book Synopsis
£26.25
Little Brown and Company Here Is the Beehive
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£30.00
Grand Central Publishing Every Breath
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£12.75
Harbour Publishing Cambium Blue
Book SynopsisSet in the British Columbia Interior, the novel Cambium Blue is an homage to resource towns, independent women and local newspapers. In 1994, at the outset of the bark beetle epidemic that will decimate millions of acres of pine forest in western North America, a fiercely independent lumber town faces a bleak future when its only sawmill is shuttered. Encouraged by a provincial government intent on transitioning the region from timber to tourism, the town council embraces a resort developer as their last, best hope. A failure to anticipate the human cost of that choice ignites a struggle for the very soul of the community.Cambium Blue's narrative alternates between three viewpoints. Stevie Jeffers is a timid, 24-year-old single mom who stakes her future on the town after a traumatic break-up. Nash Malone is a reclusive Spanish Civil War veteran who supplements his pension with salvage from the local dumpan occupation that puts him on a collision course with the town's plan to beautify itself. At 54 years old, cash-strapped and short-staffed Maggie Evans is treading water while waiting to sell her dead husband's newspaper, the barely solvent Chronicle. As the characters' lives intertwine and the conflict heats up, they will each be challenged to traverse the ambiguous divide between substance and hype, past and future, hope and despair.Rich with unforgettable characters and set in the Interior hinterland of British Columbia, Cambium Blue is a masterful and compassionate illumination of the human politics of a small town, and the intersection of individual lives with political agendas and environmental catastrophes.
£12.34
Breakwater Books Eyes in Front When Running
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£42.92
Coach House Books The Imago Stage
Book SynopsisLonglisted for the 2022 DUBLIN Literary AwardA woman must emerge from the virtual world she’s created to confront her flesh-and-blood past and family. Growing up with a menacing drunk for a father and a grief-stricken mother, a girl spends her 1980s childhood staring at the television to escape the tension, depression, and looming violence that fill her suburban home. After winning a modelling competition, she dedicates herself to becoming a placid image onto which anything can be projected, a blank slate with a blank stare. Earning enough in Paris to retire in her twenties, she buys a studio in Montreal and retreats from the world and its perceived threats, cultivating her existence as an image through her virtual reality avatar. But when her mother develops cancer and nears the end of her life, she is forced to leave her cocoon – surrounded by her posse of augmented reality superheroes – and interact with the world and her parents without the mask of her perfect, virtual self. Georges offers up an alienated childhood with shifting pop culture obsessions, a woman’s awakening to the role of the image in culture, and her eventual isolation in her apartment and the world online. It is a catalogue of the anxieties of an age, from nuclear war to terrorism, climate change to biological warfare. Set in the past and not-too-distant future of Montreal, The Imago Stage is an ominous tale of oppression, suppression, and disembodiment.Trade Review"A thought-provoking meditation on our relationships with images and digital life." –Kirkus Reviews"The Imago Stage is flat, intensely orchestrated, and nearly lifeless: essentially and purposefully so." –World Literature Today"Here is an intoxicating novel, enigmatic and deeply troubling... a brilliant book, on our relationships to art, to bodies, and to contemporary technology, which assures us that images do indeed hold the power of seduction." –Dominique Janelle, Le Vif / L'express"Karoline Georges doesn’t align herself with the vast community of techno-pessimists. Without slipping into utopianism, she sees technology’s exponential growth with clarity and curiosity... Virtual reality and artificial intelligence are words that do not scare her... With Karoline Georges, we go beyond obsession, beyond a will to please, or to seduce. We aim instead for pure disembodiment, we’re virtually in the realm of mysticism." –Chantal Guy, La Presse"A lucid and provocative novel. Karoline Georges brilliantly breaks open our fascination for screens, for emoticon conversations, for beauty without imperfections, for eternal life." –Josée Boileau, Journal de Montréal“In this singular story dedicated to the mother, the narrator creates an avatar to counter her distress. Karoline Georges succeeds in combining the real and the virtual around the complexity of family ties. The author approaches solitude and the representation of the body with astonishing lucidity. The Imago Stage transcends genres in intelligent and effective prose.” –Governor General's Literary Award Peer Review Committee"Karoline Georges suggests that reality can be lived, forming a lasting image instead of the preserved, yet temporary image of the virtual." –Full Stop Magazine"The only thing you have to sacrifice to achieve this blissful utopia is your humanity." –Quill & Quire"This is truly an amazing book that can be enjoyed by anyone." –The Girly Book Club"One of the greatest strengths of Georges’ novel is that she does not shy away from the narrator’s persistent discomfort and uneasiness in the resolution, and this is a profound insight to the process of resolving trauma." –Winnipeg Free Press"Canadian writer Georges (Under the Stone) crafts a cerebral novel exploring the thin line between the real world and virtual reality. . . The result makes for an exhilarating and prescient ride through a woman’s lifelong drive toward disembodiment." –Publishers Weekly"The Imago Stage is an unusual tale of healing and rebirth, in which the protagonist, Anouk, escapes from her traumatic childhood memory by immersing herself in images." –Asymtote
£12.34
Coach House Books Neighbourhood Watch
Book SynopsisThe lives of three families intersect in the hallways of an apartment block in a Montreal neighborhood. Mélissa, Roxane, and Kevin have never had it easy. As their parents face their own struggles – with addiction, unemployment, and abuse – they must learn to fend for themselves. Though their lives converge at school, on the street, at the corner store, or when they can hear each other through their apartments’ thin walls, they each feel deeply alone. Neighbourhood Watch tells their coming-of-age stories with a cinematic ease, moving between despair and the unalterable hope of childhood. With her characteristic poetic flair and generosity, Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette, author of the acclaimed Suzanne, has painted, in brief strokes, an unforgettable and moving portrait of a fictional apartment block in Montreal. This translation of her 2010 debut novel is presented with an afterword interview with a woman who, as a child, was the inspiration behind the character of Roxane. ‘This is prose to lose yourself in. Never complicated, it’s gentle like a love song, comforting and enveloping like a black-and-white film, full of tones and textures. These sentences can destroy us. Not for their simplicity, but for the powerful beauty within the simplicity.’ —Peter McCambridge, ‘Best Translated Book Award: Why This Book Should Win,’ on SuzanneTrade Review“You’ll recognize in this novel scenes from The Ring. The idea for this book was born long before.… After the film, she wanted to pursue their stories, without the heaviness of film.… The narration borrows the point of view and the crude and sometimes awkward language of the characters.” —La Presse"Barbeau-Lavalette brings a filmmaker’s eye to each scene, framing every vignette with both a startling beauty and a heartbreaking realism. That the book features a new interview with the young woman who was the model for Roxanne only adds to its intimate verisimilitude. The result is a powerful, unforgettable read." - Toronto Star“Barbeau-Lavalette takes on a naive and charming tone without a trace of miserabilism.” —Voir Montréal
£11.39
Coach House Books To the Forest
Book SynopsisCBC BOOKS WORKS OF CANADIAN FICTION TO READ IN THE FIRST HALF OF 202349th SHELF EDITORS' PICK FOR JUNE 2023When a family is forced to return to the mother’s childhood home, she seeks meaning in her ancestral roots and the violent beauty of the natural world.Fleeing the city at the beginning of the pandemic, two families are cramped together in a small century-old country house. Winter seeps through the walls, the wallpaper is peeling, and mice make their nest in the piano. Without phones or internet, they turn to the outdoors, where a new language unfolds, a language of fireflies and clover. The five children explore nature and its treasures, while our narrator, Anaïs, turns to the eccentric neighbours and her own family history to find peace and meaning in the middle of her life.To the Forest is a field guide to a quieter life, a call to return to the places where we can reweave the threads of memory, where existence waltzes with death, where we can recapture what it means to be alive.Trade Review"Covering a period of grief, growth, and rebirth, To the Forest is an exquisite novel that revels in wild places." – Michelle Anne Schingler, Foreword Reviews“Anaïs, with extraordinary delicacy and a flawless sense of observation, offers up words on love, death, great adventures, passing along knowledge and values, finding roots, beauty, and the resilience of nature.” – Journal de Québec “With rare literary talent, the author tells a story that is tonic and poetic, that grabs readers from the opening lines and doesn’t let them go. An absolute jewel of emotion. Stunning!” – Salut, Bonjour! “An autobiographical novel, spellbinding for its poetry, where imagination reigns, Femme forêt is like a reverse mirror of La femme qui fuit/Suzanne (Marchand de feuilles, 2015; Coach House Books, 2017), a magnificent portrait of her maternal grandmother, artist Suzanne Meloche. The aftermath of a ‘family history woven from abandonment,’ she wanted to weave ties with her loved ones, her community, and nature.” – Le Devoir “Through pages and fragments that echo one another, the author tells the story of her clan, moments filled with the ordinary moments and the magic they experienced in their hideaway in the forest. She also brings to life a cast of colourful characters who have lived unusual lives.” – La Tribune
£12.34
Coach House Books Not Anywhere, Just Not
Book SynopsisBoy meets Girl, Boy marries Girl, and years later Boy mysteriously disappears in this Gordon Lish–style novel.The boy and the girl have been married for decades, mostly getting along as they go about their lives. But one day, like thousands of people around the world, the boy vanishes, and the girl is left to wait, wonder, and worry. Will he return? Who might she be if she moves on without him?This is a world where every morning the cat gets fed and the coffee gets made, but also one in which God sometimes lives in the garage – she likes to sleep on the freezer – and gigantic words can fall from the sky. Not Anywhere, Just Not cracks open the small dramas of our lives to show the dread and wonder inside all of us."Ken Sparling is a brilliant writer and this book, like all his books, is a beauty. Sparling chronicles the times I fear most—the moments of loneliness, of loss, of ennui—and somehow makes them seem worthwhile, even wondrous, and often flat-out funny. His work makes life look livable, which makes him a wizard to me." – Derek McCormack, author of Castle Faggot"A gorgeous rendition of the domestic uncanny, Not Anywhere, Just Not is an ostensibly quiet book that slowly and carefully unnerves and unsettles you--both because of its precise swapping out of reality and because of just how familiar it so often seems. All of us, Sparling seems to say, are on the verge of vanishing at any moment." – Brian Evenson, author of Song for the Unraveling of the WorldTrade Review"In Ken Sparling’s sixth novel, people sometimes just disappear. And when they reappear, they can’t quite say where they’ve been. When this happens to one half of a middle-aged couple, the partner who remains frets about his eventual return. Bordering magic realism and absurdity, Not Anywhere, Just Not is sure to be a metaphysical delight." – Andrew Woodrow-Butcher, Quill & Quire '2023 Spring Fiction Preview'"Not Anywhere, Just Not is a rhythmic, brooding novel in which a woman whose life was intertwined with her husband’s searches for an identity after his loss." – Kristen Rabe, Foreword Reviews' Book of the Day"It is a pleasure to read something that has ideas, that poses questions and that desires participation from the reader." – Kris Rothstein, Subterrain
£12.34
Fernwood Publishing Co Ltd Chocolate Cherry Chai
Book SynopsisYoung, free-spirited Maya Mubeen leaves behind the pressures of family, marriage and tradition for a life of experience and adventure - proving to herself, and her mother, that she is anything but a typical Indian girl. After diving with sharks in the Philippines and a sordid breakup amidst the bustling nightlife of Tokyo, Maya's sense of who she is - and where home is - starts to falter.An ancient chai-making ritual holds the key to Maya's past and present, unlocking the secret lives of her mother, Nina, who lived through Idi Amin's rule in Uganda, her grandmother, Nargis, forced into marriage at thirteen, her great-grandmother, Sukaina, an underground radical socialist who fled an abusive husband, and lastly, her great-great grandmother, Zainab, who left behind a luxurious life in India.Traversing the globe and historical eras, Taslim Burkowicz's debut Chocolate Cherry Chai binds together themes of familial pressures, the immigrant experience, motherhood, love and loss into a poetic narrative.
£16.16
Rowman & Littlefield Myra Sims
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£17.05
Coffee House Press Empty Set
Book Synopsis"Verónica Gerber writes with a luminous intimacy; her novel is clever, vibrant, moving, profoundly original. Reading it made me feel as if the world had been rebuilt." Francisco Goldman"From the very beginning, Verónica Gerber set out to write a novel that would end up at a loss for words. She alone could achieve this feat: because she's a visual artist who takes everything she reads in as concentric circles threaded with color, and because she writes essays on painters who write across canvasses and writers who paint plots from the realities of life. . . . She alone could bring the necessary silence to a novel so perfect it ended up leaving me speechless as well." Jorge F. HernándezHow do you draw an affair? A family? Can a Venn diagram show the ways overlaps turn into absences, tree rings tell us what happens when mothers leave? Can we fall in love according to the hop skip of an acrostic? Empty Set is a novel of patterns, its young narrator's attempt at making sense of inevitable loss, tracing her way forward in loops, triangles, and broken lines.Verónica Gerber Bicecci is a visual artist who writes. In 2013 she was awarded the third Aura Estrada prize for literature. She is an editor with Tumbona Ediciones, a publishing cooperative with a catalogue that explores the intersections between literature and art.
£12.34
Coffee House Press Ramifications
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£13.29
Milkweed Editions Extra Indians
Book SynopsisEvery winter, Tommy Jack McMorsey watches the meteor showers in northern Minnesota. On the long haul from Texas to Minnesota, Tommy encounters a deluded Japanese tourist determined to find the buried ransom money from the movie Fargo. When the Japanese tourist dies of exposure in Tommy Jack's care, a media storm erupts and sets off a series of journeys into Tommy Jack's past as he remembers the horrors of Vietnam, a love affair, and the suicide of his closest friend, Fred Howkowski. Exploring with great insight and wit the ways images, stereotypes, and depictions intersect with, Extra Indians offers a powerful glimpse into contemporary Native American life.Trade Review"Exemplary. Gansworth delivers a messy and satisfying resolution. Longtime readers of Gansworth will recognize some characters from his previous work (Mending Skins; etc.), but the discoveries in this novel will delight new readers even more." --Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW "Gansworth will surely garner comparisons to Sherman Alexie for his wry wit and compassionate voice, but his ability to dissect multiple hearts in a single pierce, his precise reconstruction of each lost soul into something new and pure, sets him apart. This is familial redemption at its finest, which is to say agonizingly complex and wholly engaging." --Booklist "Gansworth has given us a beautiful story of the intersection of truth and fiction, family and forgiveness, and the inability to forgive. A powerful story; highly recommended for readers of popular fiction." --Library Journal "In exploring who his characters believe they are versus who they may really be, Eric Gansworth says as much about the constitution of family and America as he does about the construction of identity and the world. Spanning the war in Vietnam, life on the rez, and the Coen Brothers' Fargo, Extra Indians is both rollicking and tenderhearted. --Stewart O'Nan, author of Last Night at the Lobster and Songs for the Missing "Gansworth's look at youthful folly and the damage that violence begets is fully drawn and beautifully written, almost ballad-like with its rueful tone." --Minneapolis Star Tribune "What seemingly begins as a road trip novel detours into a mysterious death and then comes around into a big-hearted novel about reservation life, the resonance of war even thirty years later, and the inescapability of one's past." --Time Out Chicago "A literary novel carrying themes that possess more true-to-life tangible strength than verifiable facts. By layering truth and fiction, Gansworth complicates the two, dislocating us along with his characters." --Philadelphia City Paper "With an exacting eye for images and ear for language, novelist Eric Gansworth has constructed a rich tapestry of interwoven narratives that speak to the contemporary Native American experience, both on and off the reservation." --Buffalo News
£11.99
Milkweed Editions Vestments
Book SynopsisLet me begin today, illumined by Thy light, to destroy this part of the natural man which lives in me in its entirety, the obstacle that constantly keeps me from Thy Love. Taught this prayer as a boy by his grandfather, James Dressler recites it each time he's tempted by earthly desires. Originally drawn to the priesthood by the mystery, purity, and sensual fabric of the Church, as well as by its promise of a safe harbor from his tempestuous home, James finds himself -- just a few years after his ordination -- attracted again to his first love, Betty Garcia. Torn between these opposing desires, and haunted by his familial heritage, James finds himself at a crossroads. Exploring issues in the Catholic Church and in life, and infused throughout by a rich sense of the history and vibrant texture of St. Paul, this is an utterly honest and subtly lyrical novel.Trade ReviewPUBLISHERS WEEKLY BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR MINNESOTA BOOK AWARD WINNER "Reimringer knows well the landscape of the Catholic Church--seminary mentoring, rectory loneliness, the bonding of men of the cloth--and he writes about these things with a combination of affection and ruthless honesty. He also knows the fragility of the human heart, broken as is the body of Christ at Eucharist, with an embedded promise of healing." --America: The Catholic Weekly "Vestments is a pitch-perfect account of priestly life." --Commonweal "Luminous... [a] beautiful debut." --Pioneer Press "A stunning debut." --ForeWord Reviews "In this potent debut about a wayward yet devout young priest who struggles to reconcile his faith with longings of the flesh, Reimringer has crafted a suspenseful, illuminating, and highly readable saga... Reimringer excels, most notably, at revealing how the sensual delectations of Catholic ritual and the forbidden delights of the flesh are part of the same continuum, as sin and repentance feed off each other." --Publishers Weekly (starred review) "Through his thoughtful themes and lyrical prose, Reimringer effortlessly restores a measure of dignity to the priesthood even as he pays tender homage to the working-class roots of St. Paul." --Booklist "A plainspoken but finely turned debut novel... [James Dressler] is full-blooded in a way fictional proests so often aren't, and he stars in an admirably complex study of family ties." --Minneapolis Star Tribune "Ribald and wry, concerned at heart with faith and forgiveness, Vestments is a rich, involving debut." --Stewart O'Nan, bestselling author of Emily, Alone "This book knows the soul of the great old city: the yellowing taverns and fraying neighborhoods, the sense of grace in decline, the doubtful saints wrangling their disbelief. John Reimringer writes with the confidence and observation of one who was there at the time and is there still, and his novel has the knuckles and shouting and beer breath of glory." --Leif Enger, author of Peace Like a River "In this memorable, skillful novel, Reimringer writes compassionately about the tie between violence and yearning, the calls of the body and the calls of the spirit. Many writers can write well about one or the other. The gift of this writer is his rich understanding and love of both. Vestments is a wise, wide, and eloquent book." --Erin McGraw, author of Lies of the Saints "Deeply rooted in history, burning with family furies, and told by a narrator-priest you find yourself rooting for (and wondering about), this is a captivating novel, scene by scene." --Patricia Hampl, author of The Florist's Daughter "A compelling tale that provides a little-seen, interior, first-person point of view of the priesthood." --Library Journal
£14.40
Milkweed Editions Let Him Go
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£11.99
Milkweed Editions Jewelweed: A Novel
Book SynopsisFrom a masterful storyteller, comes a Midwestern epic that illuminates the majestic in the commonplace. When David Rhodes burst onto the American literary scene in the 1970s, he was hailed as "a brilliant visionary" (John Gardner), and compared to Sherwood Anderson and Marilynne Robinson. In Driftless, his "most accomplished work yet" (Joseph Kanon), Rhodes brought Words, WI, to life in a way that resonated with readers across the country. Now with Jewelweed, this beloved author returns to the same out-of-the-way hamlet and introduces a cast of characters who all find themselves charged with overcoming the burdens left by the past, sometimes with the help of peach preserves or pie. After serving time for a dubious conviction, Blake Bookchester is paroled and returns home. The story of Blake's hometown is one of challenge, change, and redemption, of outsiders and of limitations, and simultaneously one of supernatural happenings and of great love. Each of Rhodes's characters--flawed, deeply human, and ultimately universal--approach the future with a combination of hope and trepidation, increasingly mindful of the importance of community to their individual lives. Rich with a sense of empathy and wonder, Jewelweed offers a vision in which the ordinary becomes mythical.Trade Review"[A] rhapsodic, many-faceted novel of profound dilemmas, survival, and gratitude... Rhodes portrays his smart, searching, kind characters with extraordinary dimension as each wrestles with what it means to be good and do good." --Booklist (STARRED REVIEW) "Jewelweed is a novel of forgiveness, a generous ode to the spirit's indefatigable longing for love." --Minneapolis Star Tribune "Brave and inspiring... Rhodes also has important things to say about humble, hardworking Americans at odds with contemporary American culture, which he finds predatory, corporate, and soulless. An impressive and emotionally gratifying novel; highly recommended for fans of literary fiction." --Library Journal "Masterful storytelling... The characters in Driftless and Jewelweed are rendered with such care and precision that this little known region of the Midwest becomes dazzlingly alive. At the same time, Rhodes' decision to publish again marks a welcome return of a master storyteller of real people who live in our small towns." --Chicago Tribune Printers Row Journal "A benevolent sort of rural American magical realism... profound." --Publishers Weekly "I liked Driftless, but his emotionally rich new novel, Jewelweed, a sequel of sorts, is even better. The novel emits frequent solar flares of surprise and wonder." --Cleveland Plain Dealer "A master of nuance, Rhodes picks up on those 'inaudible rhythms' that drive human actions: fear, regret, friendship, yearning, and a desire for forgiveness." --Milwaukee Journal Sentinel "[A] deeply moving meditation on the resonance of each individual life on a small Wisconsin town." --Wisconsin State Journal "Jewelweed is another book that all Iowa should read." --Iowa Press-Citizen "A damn fine novel--one of the best kinds--where ordinary people living ordinary lives are drawn by the deft and lyrical touch of the author in such an achingly rich way, one quietly marvels." --Sheryl Cotleur, Copperfield's Books "Rhodes describes the natural world and his characters' inner lives with equal passion, creating an ensemble as natural to its landscape as the trees. Jewelweed is a remarkable piece of storytelling, soul-felt and deeply moving." --Mark LaFramboise, Politics & Prose Bookstore "David Rhodes takes seemingly mundane events, and makes them magic. The everyday is made spectacular through his telling." --Jack Hannert, Brilliant Books "From philosophical prison inmates to childhood-haunted truckers, Rhodes's melange of characters feels so real, you'd swear you lived among them." --Emily Crowe, The Odyssey Bookshop "With Jewelweed, David Rhodes has once more produced a moving, deeply thoughtful novel, of poor people doing difficult things, often against their best interests. He is the same writer, maybe better, as the author of Driftless." --Paul Ingram, Prairie Lights Books
£14.56
Milkweed Editions What a Woman Must Do
Book SynopsisWhen Celia Canby -- Kate's niece, Bess's mother, and Harriet's cousin -- is killed in a car accident, it's up to Kate and Harriet to raise Bess. Ten years later, on the day of the accident, the local newspaper in Harvester, MN, dredges up the story of the accident for a careless "Way Back When" piece, subjecting the women to another round of grief. Kate, arthritic and stuck far away from the farm she loves, is concerned about Bess. Headstrong and closed off, Bess yearns to escape Harvester before she "goes bad." But when she begins to trace the same path of mistakes her mother made -- a risky relationship with a local married man -- everything seems on the verge of falling apart. In a novel that celebrates the power of what a woman can do, What A Woman Must Do asks timeless questions about love and loss: How does our history define us? How can we let go of it? Should we?Trade ReviewPraise for What a Woman Must Do "[T]he pages can't turn fast enough. Sullivan is a good storyteller and the peaceful, rural backdrop she sketches stands in poignant contrast to her sympathetic characters' struggles with temptation and conflicting loyalties." --Publishers Weekly "Sullivan realizes the epoch in subtle and genuine detail. Teens who like family sagas, romance, and complex characters will treasure this novel. Its craftsmanship will cultivate their reading palates toward literary sophistication." --School Library Journal "Sullivan provides a very perceptive look at actions and interactions and how they can reroute lives. Recommended for all libraries." --Library Journal "Sullivan's writing is most effective at evoking the steady pace of small-town life. This novel has a kind of gentle gravity and sweetness." --LA Times "Sullivan writes with insight about the difficulties her women characters face in this insular town. What a Woman Must Do draws the reader in." --Washington Post
£11.99
Milkweed Editions Let Him Go (Movie Tie-In Edition)
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£11.39
Paul Dry Books, Inc Still Life with Monkey
Book SynopsisDuncan Wheeler is a successful architect who savors the quotidian pleasures in life until a car accident leaves him severely paralyzed and haunted by the death of his young assistant. Now, Duncan isnt sure what there is left to live for, when every day has become a broken series of unsuccessful gestures. Duncan and his wife, Laura, find themselves in conflict as Duncans will to live falters. Laura grows desperate to help him. An art conservator who has her own relationship to the repair of broken things, Laura brings home a highly trained helper monkeya tufted capuchin named Ottolineto assist Duncan with basic tasks. Duncan and Laura fall for this sweet, comical, Nutella-gobbling little creature, and Duncans life appears to become more tolerable, fuller, and funnier. Yet the question persists: Is it enough? Katharine Weber is a masterful observer of humanity, and Still Life with Monkey, full of tenderness and melancholy, explores the conflict between the will to live and the desire to die.
£15.29
Paul Dry Books The King of Nothing Much
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£12.95
Paul Dry Books She Never Told Me about the Ocean
Book SynopsisTold by four women whose stories nest together, She Never Told Me about the Ocean is an epic about a rite of passage that all humans undergo and none remember: birth. Eighteen-year-old Sage has been mothering her mother for as long as she can remember, and as she arrives on the shores of adulthood, she learns a secret: before she was born, she had an older brother who drowned. In her search to discover who he was and why nobody told her, Sage moves to tiny Dragon Island where her mother grew up. There, she embarks on a quest to learn the superstitions of the island, especially its myths involving her mother. Gathering stories from Ilya, a legendary midwife who hires Sage as her apprentice; Marella, Sage's grieving mother who was named for the ocean yet has always been afraid of it; and Charon, the Underworld ferrywoman who delivers souls to the land of the dead, Sage learns to stop rescuing her mother and simply let go. But when her skill as Ilya's apprentice enables her to rescue her mother one final time, in a way that means life or death, Sage must shed her inherited fears and become her own woman.
£14.41
Paul Dry Books Rug Man
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£15.26
Other Press LLC The Cold Song: A Novel
Book SynopsisOne of the New York Times Book Review's 100 Notable Books of 2014!Ullmann’s characters are complex and paradoxical: neither fully guilty nor fully innocent Siri Brodal, a chef and restaurant owner, is married to Jon Dreyer, a famous novelist plagued by writer’s block. Siri and Jon have two daughters, and together they spend their summers on the coast of Norway, in a mansion belonging to Jenny Brodal, Siri’s stylish and unforgiving mother. Siri and Jon’s marriage is loving but difficult, and troubled by painful secrets. They have a strained relationship with their elder daughter, Alma, who struggles to find her place in the family constellation. When Milla is hired as a nanny to allow Siri to work her long hours at the restaurant and Jon to supposedly meet the deadline on his book, life in the idyllic summer community takes a dire turn. One rainy July night, Milla disappears without a trace. After her remains are discovered and a suspect is identified, everyone who had any connection with her feels implicated in her tragedy and haunted by what they could have done to prevent it. The Cold Song is a story about telling stories and about how life is continually invented and reinvented.
£14.36
Other Press LLC Acts of Infidelity: A Novel
Book SynopsisLike diving into the mind of a brilliant, infuriating friend, this novel dissects the experience of the other woman with tremendous wit and insight.When Ester Nilsson meets the actor Olof Sten, she falls madly in love. Olof makes no secret of being married, but he and Ester nevertheless start to meet regularly and begin a strange dance of courtship. Olof insists he doesn't plan to leave his wife, but he doesn't object to this new situation either...it's far too much fun.Ester, on the other hand, is convinced that things might change. But as their relationship continues over repeated summers apart, and winters full of heated meetings in bars, she is forced to realize the truth: Ester Nilsson has become a mistress.Ester's and Olof's entanglements and arguments are the stuff of relationship nightmares. Cutting, often cruel, and written with piercing humor, Acts of Infidelity is clever, painful, maddening, but most of all perfectly, precisely true.
£14.44
Soft Skull Press Circus: or, Moira Orfei in Aigues-Mortes: A Novel
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£14.39
Soft Skull Press Blue Hour
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£13.59
Large Print Press One Plus One
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£16.19
Penguin Putnam Inc The Uncoupling: A Novel
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£14.45
Penguin Putnam Inc Modern Lovers
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£14.45
Penguin Putnam Inc All Adults Here: A Read with Jenna Pick (A Novel)
Book SynopsisAN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERA TODAY SHOW #ReadWithJenna BOOK CLUB PICK!"In a time when all we want is hope, it’s a beautiful book to reach for." -Jenna Bush Hager“Literary sunshine.”—New York Times“The queen of the summer novel.”—Entertainment Weekly"Brimming with kindness, forgiveness, humor and love and yet (magically) also a page turner that held me captive until it was finished. This is Emma Straub''s absolute best and the world will love it. I love it." —Ann Patchett “An immensely charming and warmhearted book. It’s a vacation for the soul.”—Vox A warm, funny, and keenly perceptive novel about the life cycle of one family--as the kids become parents, grandchildren become teenagers, and a matriarch confronts the legacy of her mistakes. From the New York Times bestselling author of Modern Lovers and The Vacationers.When Astrid Strick witnesses a school bus accident in the center of town, it jostles loose a repressed memory from her young parenting days decades earlier. Suddenly, Astrid realizes she was not quite the parent she thought she''d been to her three, now-grown children. But to what consequence?Astrid''s youngest son is drifting and unfocused, making parenting mistakes of his own. Her daughter is pregnant yet struggling to give up her own adolescence. And her eldest seems to measure his adult life according to standards no one else shares. But who gets to decide, so many years later, which long-ago lapses were the ones that mattered? Who decides which apologies really count? It might be that only Astrid''s thirteen-year-old granddaughter and her new friend really understand the courage it takes to tell the truth to the people you love the most. In All Adults Here, Emma Straub''s unique alchemy of wisdom, humor, and insight come together in a deeply satisfying story about adult siblings, aging parents, high school boyfriends, middle school mean girls, the lifelong effects of birth order, and all the other things that follow us into adulthood, whether we like them to or not.
£13.50
Penguin Putnam Inc City of Girls: A Novel
Book SynopsisAN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER!From the # 1 New York Times bestselling author of Eat Pray Love and The Signature of All Things, a delicious novel of glamour, sex, and adventure, about a young woman discovering that you don''t have to be a good girl to be a good person."A spellbinding novel about love, freedom, and finding your own happiness." - PopSugar"Intimate and richly sensual, razzle-dazzle with a hint of danger." -USA Today"Pairs well with a cocktail...or two." -TheSkimm"Life is both fleeting and dangerous, and there is no point in denying yourself pleasure, or being anything other than what you are."Beloved author Elizabeth Gilbert returns to fiction with a unique love story set in the New York City theater world during the 1940s. Told from the perspective of an older woman as she looks back on her youth with both pleasure and regret (but mostly pleasure), City of Girls explores themes of female sexuality and promiscuity, as well as the idiosyncrasies of true love. In 1940, nineteen-year-old Vivian Morris has just been kicked out of Vassar College, owing to her lackluster freshman-year performance. Her affluent parents send her to Manhattan to live with her Aunt Peg, who owns a flamboyant, crumbling midtown theater called the Lily Playhouse. There Vivian is introduced to an entire cosmos of unconventional and charismatic characters, from the fun-chasing showgirls to a sexy male actor, a grand-dame actress, a lady-killer writer, and no-nonsense stage manager. But when Vivian makes a personal mistake that results in professional scandal, it turns her new world upside down in ways that it will take her years to fully understand. Ultimately, though, it leads her to a new understanding of the kind of life she craves - and the kind of freedom it takes to pursue it. It will also lead to the love of her life, a love that stands out from all the rest. Now eighty-nine years old and telling her story at last, Vivian recalls how the events of those years altered the course of her life - and the gusto and autonomy with which she approached it. "At some point in a woman''s life, she just gets tired of being ashamed all the time," she muses. "After that, she is free to become whoever she truly is." Written with a powerful wisdom about human desire and connection, City of Girls is a love story like no other.
£22.40
Penguin Putnam Inc City of Girls: A Novel
Book Synopsis
£8.55
Penguin Putnam Inc Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty: A Novel
Book Synopsis
£13.60
Penguin Putnam Inc Awayland: Stories
Book Synopsis
£13.60
£17.94
£16.18
Turner Publishing Company Ivan!: A Pound Dog's View on Life, Love, and
Book SynopsisA story of hope, love and purpose for anyone who has ever loved a rescue dog. With wry wit, deep insight, and vivid anecdotes, Tim McHugh gives voice to the family pet and delves into the place where the canine and human hearts become one. Ivan, a mixed-breed dog-philosopher with an extreme underbite and various other deformities, chronicles his life story with keen observations about his adopted family and the people he loves, covering the life events that touch us all. Throughout his life Ivan keeps plugging forward with optimism and faith, always striving to learn from his mistakes, believing that even as he is ultimately facing old age, disease, and death, life is all the more wonderful. To Ivan, love and relationships with people are what matters most, and that if a deformed pound dog like him can find love and acceptance, anyone can. His is a lively, humorous story of hope and perseverance.Trade Review“Move over, Marley, there’s a new dog in town! Be prepared to take a breathtaking, emotional joyride . . . two paws up!” —Charlie Cantrell and Dr. Rachel Wagner, authors of A Friend for Einstein, the Smallest Stallion “Ivan is not your average dog. He tells his life story—from pound dog to beloved family companion—in this unique twist on the dog memoir. An admirer of Tolstoy, Descartes, and Thoreau, Ivan finds himself contemplating life’s biggest questions: Who am I? What is my purpose? And, Why am I always hungry? I loved it!” —C. A. Wulff, author of Born Without a Tail and Circling the Waggins “Gandhi, MLK, Tolstoy . . . Ivan. All champions of the underdog. Hilarious!” —Dana Lyons, author of Cows with Guns and The Tree ""Literate, poignant, and hilarious. Ivan is a canine Huckleberry Finn, wise in his naiveté."" —Gary McKinney, author of Slipknot and Darkness Bids the Dead Goodbye “We can all use a fresh perspective . . . from a dog’s eye. If you’ve ever wondered about the life lived in a state of grace, here’s your answer.” —Mitch Friedman, coauthor of Forever Wild ""A great book."" —American Dog Magazine ""[Ivan!] celebrates the life of a truly unique dog."" —New Day Northwest ""I absolutely love this book. So inspiring!"" —Jennifer, Nashville Humane Society
£16.14
Turner Publishing Company Our Daily Bread
Book SynopsisFrom renowned playwright Jackie Alexander comes a captivating, masterfully told coming-of-age novel of a young man struggling through his haunting past to discover and save himself. Stigmatized at birth due to his interracial parentage and reared in a household poisoned by domestic abuse, Kevin Matthews is orphaned at age ten after losing his mother to a violent attack at the hands of his father, who is jailed for the crime. Raised by his paternal grandfather, a Baptist Minister who instills values of the church as a base for recovery, Kevin is content with life in rural Louisiana during the 1970s until disturbing news surfaces regarding his mother's attack—news that sheds doubt on his father's guilt, and leads Kevin to relive painful memories. As Kevin grows up, the emotional scars of his childhood cast dark clouds over his relationships with women, and his life begins to spiral out of control. Faced with losing all that he loves, Kevin is forced to confront the man who holds the key to his salvation, his father. Our Daily Bread is a rich and compelling coming-of-age story of a young boy whose journey takes us from the bayous of Louisiana to the big city lights of New York and Paris. Examining family, race, religion, and the lingering effects of domestic abuse, Our Daily Bread questions what defines one's legacy: the surroundings we are born into, or the choices we make thereafter.Trade Review“Engaging in its lyricism and piercingly honest . . . Alexander’s voice is distinctive, fluid, and captivating. His keen sense and talent for dialogue; his narrative style, simple but profound; and his humor make Our Daily Bread compelling and irresistible.” —Mohammed Naseehu Ali, author of The Prophet of Zongo Street “Alexander’s characters stay with you long after reading the last page of Our Daily Bread, so much so that you miss them and find yourself wondering how they’re doing in life. With dialogue so skillfully constructed that conversations feel as if they are being eavesdropped on rather than read, this story becomes a part of you.” —Jill Sorensen, founder of Knock-Out Abuse
£11.39
Red Hen Press Banjo Grease
Book SynopsisBut it’s the dead folks that do him the damage. It’s the dead ones that lay quiet in one place and don’t try to hold him, that he can’t escape from. —William Faulkner, Light in August There is an inexplicable gravity in a small town. It can be read and enjoyed like a favorite book for most of its inhabitants. Comforting are its streets and institutions, its wedding and obituary announcements. Banjo Grease is about life and death in a mill town where at each epiphany and rite of passage, the narrator yields a ration of innocence. Characters portray class as a marker as strong as race and gender, and distrust that they will ever escape in their lifetimes. Faulkner uses the term “eager fatalism.” These stories’ cumulative effect asks: When exchanging naivete for worldliness, what is lost in denying one’s past?Trade Review"These stories float through the reader like frozen images. Each one fits into the others unevenly as jagged glass. This is the essence of great fiction at the end of the century; Ray Carver and Thom Jones plowed into some stupendous force that whips along with a tilted wild energy." — Kate Gale, author of Goldilocks Zone "Dennis Must’s first collection of short stories is no ordinary debut but the mature work of a fully accomplished literary artist. Moreover, his originality, his deep irreverence, and his compassion for working-class men and women . . . Strivers and seekers of dreams, signal him as an inspired author in a new American grain—a visionary, poet, and realist . . ." — Tom Jenks, editor (with Raymond Carver) of American Short Story Masterpieces "Dennis Must’s stunning collection Banjo Grease is just what one hopes for: a series of intriguing, interlocking stories whose cumulative force goes beyond the sum of its parts." — Geoffrey Clark, author of Jackdog Summer, What the Moon Said, and Rabbit Fever
£12.34
Red Hen Press Like Wings, Your Hands
Book SynopsisKalina, born in Bulgaria and now living in Boston, has always been a spiritual seeker. Her fourteen-year-old son, Marko, who has spina bifida and is partially paralyzed, shares her curiosity about larger metaphysical questions, but also has his own unique perspective on life: Marko perceives numbers as having colors, shapes, and textures—and they’re linked to emotions: embarrassment, for example, is fourteen; satisfaction is sixty-seven. Kalina is determined to respect her son’s dignity and privacy as he embarks on the new terrain of adolescence, complicated as it is by his continued physical dependence on her care. She has other issues to wrestle with as well, including coming to understand her own life choices and her strained relationship with her father. Meanwhile, Marko, already expert at deep meditation, discovers a technique that allows him to experience a sense of boundlessness and also gain surprising insights into himself, his mother, and the grandfather he’s never met. Both a philosophical novel and a coming-of-age story, Like Wings, Your Hands explores a mother-son relationship in the context of disability and interdependence, while also raising questions about the nature of time and space and the limitless capacities of the human mind.Trade Review"In her frank, clear prose, Earley moves through multiple places and characters with startling ease, building a world at once honest and graceful." — Aimee Bender, author of The Color Master, a New York Times Notable book "Urgent, essential, and previously untold, Like Wings, Your Hands offers readers a voice and perspective glaringly absent in the history of literature. Although that fact alone should be sufficient to make Elizabeth Earley’s novel required reading, readers will ultimately keep turning the pages for the intimacy and innovation of this passionately necessary book." — Gina Frangello, author of A Life in Men and Every Kind of Wanting "Elizabeth Earley has written a stunningly original novel—one that breaks ground as it breaks silences, one that thrums with insight and compassion and devastating beauty. Entering Like Wings, Your Hands feels like entering the dream box constructed by one of its characters—it catapults us through space and time, zooming us in to the cellular level and blasting us out to the stars. I love this book with 100% of my heart." — Gayle Brandeis, author of The Book of Dead Birds, a Bellwether Prize recipient "A helixing of the various incapacities of our bodies, Like Wings, Your Hands embraces the courage of yearning and the hopeful escape of dreams. Elizabeth Earley is bold and real and unapologetically political and all the things every writer strives for—and profound, absolutely profound." — Lily Hoang, author of Changing, a PEN Open Books Award recipient "Like Wings, Your Hands takes us into a world that exists all around us, yet few of us even see. It’s a place of raw and heartbreaking human experience, and Elizabeth Earley has revealed its unique language: elemental, luminous, and beautiful." — Peter Nichols, author of The Rocks
£12.34
Red Hen Press Against the Wind
Book SynopsisAgainst the Wind is an elegantly written story of relationships involving six principal characters, strands of whose lives braid together after a chance reunion among three of them. A successful environmental lawyer is forced to take himself to task when he realizes that everything about his work has betrayed his core beliefs. A high school English teacher asks her former high school love to take up her environmental cause. A transgender adolescent male raised by his grandparents struggles to excel in a world hostile to his kind. A French-Canadian political science professor finds himself left with a choice between his cherished separatist cause and his marriage and family. An accomplished engineer is chronically unable to impress his more accomplished father sufficiently to be named head of the international wind technology company his father founded. The Quebec separatist party’s Minister of Natural Resources, a divorcée, finds herself caught between her French-Canadian lover and an unexpected English-Canadian suitor.Trade Review"The writing is brilliant and economical, especially about the environment, and there’s all sorts of information here for the taking, but essentially this is a novel of character. And a very good one." —Library Journal "Tilley handles decades long character arcs with empathy, resulting in a resonant and humanistic novel." — Kirkus Reviews "Against the Wind is an intricate and elegantly compelling novel, notable for both its political and personal acuity. Jim Tilley writes with deep feeling for his characters and great command of his fascinating materials." — Peter Ho Davies, author of The Fortunes "Against the Wind is a big old-fashioned novel with contemporary concerns: gender, adultery, wind energy, business acquisitions. But at its heart, Jim Tilley’s debut novel is about the ageless concerns of love and loss and hope that we all share." — Ann Hood, author of Kitchen Yarns: Notes on Life, Love, and Food "Poet Jim Tilley’s compulsively readable debut novel, Against the Wind, is a rumination on how the past stretches its long fingers into the present. Set in Canada and the U.S., the novel tells the story of Ralph, who is coming to terms with old rivalries and lost love. Told mostly from Ralph’s point of view, and touching on such topical issues as the environment (wind energy) and transgender parenting, this absorbing and tender new novel offers us a view into the male psyche and reminds us of the difficulty of being a man in a culture that judges us all too harshly." — Cai Emmons, author of Weather Woman "In this contemporary novel of manners, the personal, the professional, and the political are inextricably intertwined. Tilley writes with insight and clarity about people we recognize and situations that hit close to home. Whether he’s writing about changing relationships or chronicling a complex international business deal, Tilley writes with insight and clarity about people and situations we recognize. An important novel about characters facing the winding-down of their professional lives and the approach of life’s third act." — John Van Kirk, author of Song for Chance "Politics—personal and environmental—form the colorful canvas upon which Jim Tilley paints Against the Wind, a novel that squarely faces the issues of today: the breakdown of families, the struggles to accept a transgender child, and the international policies and rivalries of global energy industries." — Anne D. LeClaire, author of The Halo Effect and The Lavender Hour
£12.34
Red Hen Press Tea by the Sea
Book Synopsis*Featured in O, the Oprah Magazine* *Selected as one of the Best Books of the Week by the New York Post* A seventeen-year-old taken from her mother at birth; an Episcopal priest with a daughter whose face he cannot bear to see; a mother weary of searching for her lost child: Tea by the Sea is their story—that of a family uniting and unraveling. To find the daughter taken from her, Plum Valentine must find the child’s father who walked out of a hospital with the day-old baby girl without explanation. Seventeen years later, weary of her unfruitful search, Plum sees an article in a community newspaper with a photo of the man for whom she has spent half her life searching. He has become an Episcopal priest. Her plan: confront him and walk away with the daughter he took from her. From Brooklyn to the island of Jamaica, Tea by the Sea traces Plum’s circuitous route to find her daughter and how Plum’s and the priest’s love came apart.Trade Review“Tea By the Sea is a powder keg of a novel, where secrets and lies explode into truth and consequences, all told with spellbinding, shattering power. Hemans doesn't just fulfill the promise of her debut— she soars past it." —Marlon James, Man Booker Prize Winning author of Black Leopard, Red Wolf "The forbidden love story of Plum and Lenworth comes alive in this heart-rending novel, Tea by the Sea. Hemans has a stunning ability to give words to that elusive feeling of emptiness, and the longing for redemption is palpable. In Hemans’s deft hands, regrets are explored with precision and compassion so that the reader finds herself unable to turn against even characters who have committed the most wretched betrayals. Tea by the Sea is like the story told in a grandmother’s kitchen with the odors of fried dumplings and saltfish wafting into mouths that are set agape at the heady twists and turns delivered in an urgent and beautiful prose." —Lauren Francis-Sharma, author of ’Til the Well Runs Dry "Tea by the Sea is an insightful and illuminating prism of a novel, deftly examining familial identity and personal transformation. Hemans turns the kaleidoscope, catching light at different angles, to show us how one person’s act of honor and responsibility can also be an act of unspeakable betrayal." —Carolyn Parkhurst, author of The Dogs of Babel and Harmony "Tea by the Sea is a well-written novel exploring the themes of agency, love, and loss."—LynnDee Wathen, Booklist "A deftly crafted and entertaining work of impressive literary nuance, Tea by the Sea by Donna Hemans is an extraordinary, original, and inherently fascinating novel."—Midwest Book Review"Donna Hemans’ second novel, Tea by the Sea, is a moving portrait of identity, belonging, family, immigration, and the power of maternal love." —Alice Stephens, Washington Independent Review of Books"Her plots are as intense as thrillers yet as resonant as poetry, and the lyricism and emotional honesty of her work has earned her comparisons to Jamaica Kincaid and Edwidge Danticat." —Aimee Liu, The Rumpus"Tea by the Sea sounds deceptively sweet, but this novel connecting Jamaica to the United States packs a soursop punch." —Bethanne Patrick, Lit Hub's "5 Books You May Have Missed in June""In beautiful, wrenching prose, Hemans’ Tea by the Sea tells an unforgettably moving story of family love, identity, and betrayal." —G.P. Gottlieb, author of ’ Whipped and Sipped mystery series."Don’t expect a facile morality play: Hemans writes with precision about the most private bacchanals of the heart, the utter vexations of the spirit. Read with a rum-soaked handkerchief."—Shivanee Ramlochan, Caribbean Beat A Conversation in the Washington Independent Review of Books An interview with Aimee Liu in The Rumpus An interview in New York State Writers Institute Spring 2020 Blog Tour (Reviews, interviews, and more) Week 1 The Livre Café | 6/1 Jessica Belmont | 6/2 Fiction Matters | 6/3 Everyday I Write The Book | 6/4 Rebel Women Lit | 6/5 Never Without A Book | 6/6 The Book Decoder | 6/7 Week 2 Book of Cinz | 6/8 Nurse Bookie | 6/9 This Brown Girl Reads | 6/10 Jennifer Tarheel Reader | 6/11 Book Reviews and More by Kathy | 6/12 Girl Who Reads | 6/13 Week 3 Suzy Approved Book Reviews | 6/14 Blunt Scissors Book Review | 6/15 Syllables of Swathi | 6/16 Collector of Book Boyfriends | 6/17 Gimme The Scoop Reviews | 6/18 Audio Killed the Bookmark | 6/19 Miss Bibliofancy | 6/20 Week 4 Gail Renatta | 6/21 Chocolate Covered Pages | 6/22 Storybook Reviews | 6/23 Long and Short Reviews | 6/24 BNJ Reads | 6/25 What Is That Book About | 6/26 Eno Books | 6/27 Week 5 Beth’s Book Nook Blog | 6/28 Reading Between the Wines Book Club | 6/29 Amy’s Booket List | 6/30 Book and Pen In Hand | 7/1 Bree McIvor | 7/2 Teddy Rose Book Reviews Plus More | 7/3 Karukerament | 7/4 Suzanne Bhagan | 7/6
£12.34
Red Hen Press Glorious Boy
Book Synopsis"A riveting amalgam of history, family epic, anticolonial/antiwar treatise, cultural crossroads, and more, this latest from best-selling author Liu (Face) is a fascinating, irresistible marvel."—Terry Hong, STARRED Library Journal review "Liu's prose is masterful. A good choice for book groups and for readers who are unafraid to be swept away."—*Starred Booklist Review* "With a mesmerizing setting and transporting detail, Glorious Boy balances tropical beauty with raw, physical risk, and dives deep into grim truths about parental love and the power and limitation of language. This is a page-turner, sometimes violent but always revelatory. Readers won’t easily forget the trials this young couple faces, or the landscape that changes them all."—Five Star Review from The Seattle Review of Books What will it take to save Ty? This is the question that haunts Claire and Shep Durant in the wake of their four-year-old’s disappearance. Until this moment, Port Blair’s British surgeon and his young wife, a promising anthropologist, have led a charmed life in the colonial backwaters of India’s Andaman Islands—thanks in part to Naila, a local girl who shares their mysteriously mute son’s silent language. But with the war closing in and mandatory evacuation underway, the Durants don’t realize until too late that Naila and Ty have vanished. While Claire sails for Calcutta, Shep stays to search for the children. Days later, the Japanese invade the Andamans, cutting off all communication. Fueled by guilt and anguish, Claire uses her unique knowledge of the islands’ tribes to make herself indispensable to an all-male reconnaissance team headed back behind enemy lines. Her secret plan: rescue Shep and Ty. Through the brutal odyssey that follows, she’ll discover truths about sacrifice that both shatter and transcend her understanding of devotion.Trade Review"An absolutely gorgeous historical novel about ambition, culture clash, love, atonement, and one silent boy, set against the backdrop of a tribe in the Andamans struggling with British rule. So blisteringly alive, you feel the swampy heat and the bugs; so emotionally true, it grips at every page. Just magnificent and not to be missed." —Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author of Pictures of You and Cruel Beautiful World"In Glorious Boy, Aimee Liu tears a forgotten footnote from the history books and brings it to life in an epic tale of a family caught in a clash of cultures and loyalties during World War II. Set in a penal colony on the remote Andaman Islands, Glorious Boy is the whirlwind story of vanishing cultures, unbreakable codes, rebellion, occupation, and colonization, all swirling around the disappearance of a mute four-year-old boy on the eve of the Japanese occupation of Port Blair. A stirring indictment of the brutality that humanity is capable of, Liu’s heartbreaking new novel of love, betrayal, and sacrifice is also a testament to how far we will go for the ones we love." —Rahna Reiko Rizzuto, author of Shadow Child and Hiroshima in the Morning"No doubt Aimee Liu’s ambitious novel, Glorious Boy, will be praised, deservedly, as historical fiction, an adventure novel, even a ripping yarn, but the heart of this book is what it means to be a mother. Liu's sympathetic and complicated protagonist, Claire Durant, finds herself challenged when it comes to connecting with her atypical son, and the book asks us all to consider whose responsibility it is to be better with and to other human beings, especially those with whom we’re most intimate. How do we learn what isn’t instinct? How do we protect ourselves and others from our own best intentions? With a generous and exacting eye, Liu explores these questions and more, and we, lucky readers, get to go along for the ride." —Karen Shepard, author of Kiss Me Someone"The most memorable and original novel I've read in ages. Aimee Liu takes us into a set of islands—an entire world—most of us have barely heard of, and evokes every side in a multi-cultural conversation with sympathy and rare understanding. Here is the rare book, full of heart yet rich with research, that opens a door to a revealing piece of history that few of us knew existed."—Pico Iyer"A novel about family, communication, and colonialism in a rarely discussed sphere of World War II conflict." —Kirkus Reviews"A good choice for book groups and for readers who are unafraid to be swept away."—Starred Booklist review"Reminiscent of the tone and atmosphere of Somerset Maugham and George Orwell’s Asia-set novels, Glorious Boy is a Second World War story of adventure and loss, uniquely set in the Andaman Islands, one of India’s farthest flung territories....Glorious Boy stands out from the crowded shelves of World War II literature by immersing the reader in one of the remoter theatres of the Asian half of the War."—Susan Blumberg-Kason, Asian Review of Books"...the thrilling story of one unstoppable mother on a quest to be reunited with her family.”—Madeline Diamond, Travel+Leisure "20 New Books to Gift This Mother's Day""As WWII intensifies, anthropologist Claire Durant waits with her family for the all-clear to leave the lush and sacred Andaman Islands, in this fascinating novel about the many, often unexpected dimensions of war." —Booklist, "Top 10 Historical Fiction of 2020""Glorious Boy transcends history and geography and gets to the heart of things."—Elizabeth Sulis Kim, The Los Angeles Review of Books"This lyrical narrative takes the reader on a sweeping emotional and physical journey, exploring themes of endurance, love, sacrifice, motherhood, guilt, and hope." —Susan McDuffie, Historical Novel Society"Glorious Boy is an exciting read, a family story that morphs into a high-stakes adventure." —The Washington Independent Review of Books"Liu's well-crafted plotline shows how courageous action brings hope. In lushly described scenes, Glorious Boy engages the reader while not providing the characters any easy paths to resolution." — Consequence Magazine"This novel tugged at my heart in all the right ways. I got teary explaining to my husband why I’d cried the night before, when I’d stayed up until two in the morning finishing the book. As her characters’ journey becomes increasingly fraught, Liu walks the emotional tightrope perfectly, never swaying into sentimentality but also never shying away from heartbreak." —Norah Vawter, Washington Independent Review of Books
£13.29
The Library of America John Updike: Novels 1986–1990 (LOA #354): Roger's
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£38.00
C&T Publishing The Potting Shed Quilt: Colebridge Community
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£14.85
C&T Publishing The Funeral Parlor Quilt: Colebridge Community
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£13.46
University of New Orleans Press A Catalogue of Small Pains
Book Synopsis
£16.11
