Search results for ""author bella pollen""

Best-selling author Bella Pollen’s imaginative new novel received stellar reviews in hardcover and was chosen as a Richard & Judy Book Club title.In 1980 Germany, Cold War tensions are once again escalating and a mole is suspected in the British Embassy. So when the clever diplomat Nicky Fleming dies suddenly and suspiciously, it’s convenient to brand him the traitor. But was his death an accident, murder, or suicide? As the government investigates Nicky's death, his wife relocates with their three children to a remote Scottish island hoping to save what remains of their family. But the isolated shores of her childhood retreat only intensify their distance between them, and it is the brilliant and peculiar youngest child, Jamie, who alone holds on to the one thing he’s sure of: his father has promised to return and he was a man who never broke a promise.When Jamie sets off to explore the island with his teenage sisters, they discover a tamed grizzly bear has been marooned on shore, hiding somewhere among the seaside caves. Jamie believes the bear may have a strange connection to his father, and as he seeks the truth, Nicky's story begins revealing itself in unexpected ways.

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Interwoven with exquisite passages of graphic memoir, Meet Me in the In-Between is bestselling author Bella Pollen's surprisingly tender, frequently funny and achingly poignant quest to keep on looking for the extraordinary in an ordinary life.Growing up the middle child of transatlantic parents, Bella Pollen never quite learnt how to belong. Restlessly criss-crossing the boundaries of family and freedom, safety and danger, home and away, she has sought but generally failed to contain an adventurous spirit within the narrow lines of convention - until, finding herself stymied in the in-between, she reluctantly concludes that to move forwards, she must take a good look at her past.Cue a bewitching journey, from her very English childhood in upper Manhattan, through an early marriage to the son of an alluring Italian Godfather, to the dusty border towns of Mexico where she falls in with a band of Pink Floyd-loving smugglers. Throughout all, Pollen grapples with relationships, motherhood, career ups and downs and a pathological fear of being boxed in.

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A Richard and Judy Book Club selection.The Summer of the Bear is a beautiful story of a family recovering from loss on a remote Scottish island, from Bella Pollen, author of Hunting Unicorns.In the summer of 1979, a tamed grizzly bear is tempted by the lure of freedom and the wild open sea . . . Meanwhile, the sudden death of British diplomat Nicky Fleming has left his wife closed down with shock. Relocated from Cold-War-riven Germany to a remote Hebridean island, Letty Fleming is haunted by the unthinkable – was it an accident, murder or suicide? And how can she ever begin to explain to her three children that their father may have betrayed his country? Struggling to find solace in a place she loves, Letty begins to unravel the mystery of Nicky's death, but her determination to protect the children from the truth blinds her to the demons they are already battling. As the family’s secrets threaten to tear them apart, it is only the strange but brilliant Jamie who manages to hold on to the one thing he knows for sure: his father has promised to return, and Nicky Fleming was a man who never broke a promise . . .

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American Maggie Monroe is a journalist for New York's hard-hitting current affairs show Newsline. Independent and fearless, the more cutting-edge the story, the happier she is. But when her next assignment turns out to be an in-depth documentary on the decline of England's ruling classes, she's furious at being sent to cover a bloody tea party. Meet the Earl and Countess of Bevan, eccentric, maddening and with family secrets to hide. Meet Daniel Bevan - their eldest son. Funny, attractive and hopelessly alcoholic. Meet Daniel's responsible brother Rory - angry, self-mocking and strictly teetotal. When Maggie discovers Rory to be an uninvited chaperone on the first stop of her journey the two look set to clash. Maggie finds herself torn between her journalist ideals and coming to terms with a greater understanding. This unlikely romantic comedy paints an endearing portrait of a family, which like so many others, holds itself together despite its evident frailties. ‘Hilariously accurate . . . A gifted writer with a pithy, poetic style’ Wendy Holden, Daily Mail

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Driven by curiosity and possibility, writer Bella Pollen has always maintained a double life, navigating between a fierce love of family and the yearning for escape until one day, a strange encounter changes everything . . .What does it take to work out who you really are and where you truly belong? From mafia-in-laws to fashion failures to neighbours from hell, Pollen’s search for answers is a dazzling and powerful odyssey through the conflicting desires and roles of women in today’s confusing world. Interwoven with passages of graphic art by award-winning illustrator Kate Boxer, Meet Me in the In-between is a renegade memoir that takes readers all over the world before bringing them back home again.

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