Search results for ""little, brown book group""
Little, Brown Book Group Bertie Plays The Blues: 7
Even down to its well-set Georgian townhouses, Edinburgh is a hymn to measure and harmony. But on Scotland Street, domestic accord is in short supply. Matthew and Elspeth welcome three new arrivals, though the joys of multiple parenthood are somewhat lost due to sleep deprivation and the difficulties of telling their brood apart. Angus and Domenica are to marry, and Domenica has ambitious and disturbing plans for their living arrangements, especially when it appears that Antonia, in Italy recuperating from Stendhal Syndrome, may not return. And little Bertie, feeling blue, puts himself up for adoption on eBay. Can Edinburgh's most deliciously dysfunctional residents forsake discord and learn to dance to the same happy tune?
£9.99
Little, Brown Book Group The Black Rose Of Florence
A strikingly beautiful young woman is found dead in her Florence apartment. She lies on her bed, naked, a black rose between her legs. And the murders do not stop there: shortly afterwards, a woman is burned to death in a church, and a man is shot on the Ponte Vecchio. Chief Superindendent Michele Ferrara is all too familiar with the dark side of Florence. But he has never seen anything of this magnitude before - he is up against a mysterious, powerful enemy who would do anything to hide his identity, and manages to controls events at every turn. As more violent deaths occur, Ferrara has to face the most dangerous investigation in his entire career and must confront deadly secrets from his own past ...Originally published in Italian as Le rose nere di Firenze.
£9.99
Little, Brown Book Group Attrition: Fighting the First World War
The First World War was too big to be grasped by its participants. In the retelling of their war in the competing memories of leaders and commanders, and the anguished fiction of its combatants, any sense of order and purpose, effort and achievement, was missing. Drawing on the experience of front line soldiers, munitions workers, politicians and those managing the vast economy of industrialised warfare, Attrition explains for the first time why and how this new type of conflict born out of industrial society was fought as it was. It was the first mass war in which the resources of the fully-mobilised societies strained every sinew in a conflict over ideals - and the humblest and highest were all caught up in the national enterprise. In a stunning narrative, this brilliant and necessary reassessment of the whole war cuts behind the myth-making to reveal the determination, organization and ambition on all sides.
£12.99
Little, Brown Book Group Celtic Art: The Methods of Construction
Celtic Art is the only indigenous British art form of world significance and this book is a graphically eloquent plea for the establishment of this great national art to its rightful place in schools and colleges where the history of ornament is being taught.Until recently, the classical orientated art-world has regarded the abstract, iconographic and symbolic style of the Celtic artist as something of an enigma, a mysterious archaic survival largely ignored in histories of art. The modern trends away from realism and the interest of the younger generation in psychedelic and art nouveau styles provides favourable ground for the Celtic art revival which the widespread interest in this new edition seems to indicate is possible.When this book first appeared, it was hailed as a 'veritable grammar of ornament'. It is certainly an indispensable reference book and practical textbook for the art student and craftsman seeking simple constructional methods for laying out complex ornamental schemes.The entire chronology of symbols is embrace from spirals through chevrons, step patterns and keys to knotwork interlacings, which are unique to this particular Celtic school. There are also sections dealing with zoomorphics, authentic Celtic knitwear, ceramics and other areas in which the author pioneered in his day.This book deals with the Pictish School of artist-craftsman, who cut pagan symbols like the Burghead Bull, and in the early Christian era designed such superb examples of monumental sculpture as the Aberlemno Cross, the Ardagh Chalice and the counter-parts in the Books of Kells and Lindisfarne.Knotwork Interlacings, owing much of their perfection and beauty to the use of mathematical formulae, are unique to Pictish Art and are found nowhere else than the areas occupied by the Picts. The outstanding achievement of their art was the subtle manner in which they combined artistic, geometric and mathematical methods with magic, imagination and logic, the function being both to teach and adorn.Although incidental to the main educational purpose of this book, there is also an implicit challenge to the art historian and archaeologist. The author frankly admits that the evidence such researches into the art have revealed of a hitherto unsuspected culture of much sophistication in pre-Roman Britain, pose as many questions as are answered.Who were the Picts? Whence the Asiatic origins of the Celtic Art?The instinct to ornament is one of the most basic human impulses that seems to have atavistic roots in the primeval creative and imaginative characteristic that separates man from beast.
£12.99
Little, Brown Book Group Burner
You've seen the worldwide #1 Netflix film - now read the latest breathtaking Gray Man thrillerCourt Gentry is caught between the Russian mafia and the CIA in the new novel from the new king of the electrifying non-stop action thriller.When you kick over a rock, you never know what's going to crawl out. Alex Velesky is about to discover that the hard way. He's stolen records from the Swiss bank that employs him, thinking that he'll uncover a criminal conspiracy. But he soon finds that he's tapped into the mother lode of corruption. Before he knows it, he's being hunted by everyone from the Russian mafia to the CIA. Court Gentry and his erstwhile lover, Zoya Zakharova, find themselves on opposites poles when it comes to Velesky. They both want him but for different reasons. That's a problem for tomorrow. Today they need to keep him and themselves alive. Right now, it's not looking good.
£9.99
Little, Brown Book Group Viva la Revolucion: Hobsbawm on Latin America
Eric Hobsbawm (1917-2012) wrote that Latin America was the only region of the world outside Europe which he felt he knew well and where he felt entirely at home. He claimed this was because it was the only part of the Third World whose two principal languages, Spanish and Portuguese, were within his reach. But he was also, of course, attracted by the potential for social revolution in Latin America. After the triumph of Fidel Castro in Cuba in January 1959, and even more after the defeat of the American attempt to overthrow him at the Bay of Pigs in April 1961, 'there was not an intellectual in Europe or the USA', he wrote, 'who was not under the spell of Latin America, a continent apparently bubbling with the lava of social revolutions'.'The Third World brought the hope of revolution back to the First in the 1960s'. The two great international inspirations were Cuba and Vietnam, 'triumphs not only of revolution, but of Davids against Goliaths, of the weak against the all-powerful'.
£11.69
Little, Brown Book Group Ballerina Body: Dancing and Eating Your Way to a Lighter, Stronger, and More Graceful You
In her first health and fitness book, celebrated ballerina Misty Copeland shows you how to find the motivation to get healthier and stronger, and how to refine the body you were born with to be lean, strong and flexible, with step-by-step advice, meal plans, workout routines and words of inspiration.Misty offers her own time-tested, ballet-inspired movements that are perfect for women who want to lengthen and strengthen, but don't want to run a marathon or lift weights. She also demonstrates the floor exercises that helped maintain her own ballerina body while recovering from an injury.Misty's eating plan focuses on vegetables, fruits, plant fats, animal proteins and beneficial oils - all of which keep her energetic and in top shape. With simple and delicious recipes for Granola, Spinach and Goat Cheese Salad, Quick Salsa Chili, and even a Ballerina Smoothie, you'll be satisfied and happy while getting leaner.To keep you motivated, Misty gives tips and words of encouragement on persevering even when you may want to give up, including a peek into her personal journal, to inspire you and help you stay on the road to your own ballerina body.
£16.99
Little, Brown Book Group The Carers Handbook 2nd Edition
'An invaluable resource for all carers.' Johnnie Walker MBE, joint patron Carers UK
£9.89
Little, Brown Book Group Julius
A chilling story of ambition, Daphne du Maurier's third novel has lost none of its ability to unsettle and disturb.
£9.04
Little, Brown Book Group Castle Dor
A masterful recreation of the legend of Tristan and Iseult, set in 19th century Cornwall.
£9.04
Little, Brown Book Group Never Leave a Man Behind
The stories of two veterans - one traumatised, one blind - who rediscover themselves with the help of a friend in the course of two epic ocean adventures, kayaking around the Falklands and rowing across the Pacific.
£13.49
Little, Brown Book Group Penance
*NOW A MAJOR TV DRAMA ON CHANNEL 5*''Utterly gripping and disturbing'' Irish Independent''It will get under your skin'' Sunday Independent__________A BROKEN FAMILYThe lives of Rosalie Douglas and her teenage daughter, Maddie, are changed forever when they meet Jed, a beautiful, charismatic young man at Bereavement Counselling. Inexplicably and self-destructively, Maddie holds herself accountable for her brother''s drowning accident in Thailand. A BEAUTIFUL STRANGERJed moves into their lives and their home, calming the tensions between mother and daughter. Lover and confidante to a besotted Maddie, gentle surrogate son to a grateful Rosalie - on the surface their lives are transformed. But underneath a deadly and morally corrupt triangle is taking shape . . .A DANGEROUS OBSESSIONRosalie commits an unspeakable act which forces h
£9.04
Little, Brown Book Group No Such Thing As Failure
'I admire David hugely. He is a true adventurer and this book shows the breadth and depth of his achievements. No Such Thing As Failure is an astonishing book, depicting an awe-inspiring life.' Sir Ranulph Fiennes
£18.00
Little, Brown Book Group Rabbit Hole
'Fast-paced and twisting' PAULA HAWKINS, author of THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN'At the very least it should reach the shortlist of this year's Booker prize' THE TIMESMy name is Alice. I'm a police officer. I'm trying to solve a murder on a psychiatric ward. But I'm also a patient... They were meant to be safe on Fleet Ward: psychiatric patients monitored, treated, cared for. But now one of their number is found murdered, and the accusations begin to fly. Was it one of his fellow patients? A member of staff? Or did someone come in from the outside? DC Alice Armitage is methodical, tireless, and she's quickly on the trail of the killer. The only problem is, Alice is a patient too. ________________________'A deeply compelling read'Harriet Tyce'The most cunning, complex, claustrophobic mystery'Louise Candlish'Immense skill and heart'Eve Chase'Brilliant, suspenseful, poignant, heartbreaking, surprisingly funny'Linwood Barclay'One of the most consistently entertaining, insightful cr
£18.00
Little, Brown Book Group Here Comes the Sun
A fascinating and illuminating look at the sun and our relationships to it, from one of our greatest science writers.
£18.00
Little, Brown Book Group Travelling Light
A charming and beautifully written account of the pleasures of slow travel - for readers of Patrick Leigh Fermor, Colin Thubron and Eric Newby.
£18.00
Little, Brown Book Group The Testimony of Alys Twist
The new novel from bestselling historical novelist Suzannah Dunn
£17.09
Little, Brown Book Group Cold Justice
The gasp-a-minute debut thriller from Ant Middleton, the remarkable TV star of SAS: Who Dares Wins and author of massive non-fiction hits including First Man In and Zero Negativity
£18.00
Little, Brown Book Group Vanity Fair
The classic novel of ''villainy, crime, merriment, lovemaking, jilting, laughing, cheating, fighting and dancing'', soon to be a major new ITV series from the producers of Poldark, Victoria and And Then There Were None.William Makepeace Thackeray''s witty literary classic Vanity Fair is set against the backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars, and follows anti-heroine and ruthless social climber Becky Sharp as she attempts to claw her way out of poverty and scale the heights of English Society. Her story takes her all the way to the court of King George IV, via the Battle of Waterloo, breaking heart and fortunes as she goes.ITV''s new adaptation of will be one of the biggest drama series of 2018: its script comes from BAFTA-nominated writer Gwyneth Hughes, the series is co-produced by leading production companies Mammoth Screen and Amazon Studios, and Olivia Cooke - star of Steven Spielberg''s hit blockbuster Ready Player One - plays
£7.19
Little, Brown Book Group Born Survivors
An incredible, inspirational story of resilience, resourcefulness, and maternal courage, set against the background of the holocaust.
£8.99
Little, Brown Book Group The Bus on Thursday
''Intoxicating'' Jeff VanderMeer, author of Annihilation''Barrett''s brilliant second novel plummets headlong into a darkly funny tale'' Mail on SundayBridget Jones meets Twin Peaks in this black comedy about a woman''s retreat to a remote Australian town and the horrors awaiting her.It wasn''t just the bad breakup that turned Eleanor Mellett''s life upside down. It was the cancer. And all the demons that came with it.One day she felt a bit of a bump when she was scratching her armpit at work. The next thing she knew, her breast was being removed by an inappropriately attractive doctor, and she was subsequently inundated with cupcakes, besieged by judgy support groups, and the ungrateful recipient of hand-knitted sweaters from her mum.Luckily, Eleanor finds that Talbingo, a remote little town, needs a primary-school teacher. Their Miss Barker upped and vanished in the night, despite being the most cari
£13.49
Little, Brown Book Group Fifth Ward Friendly Fire
£8.99
Little, Brown Book Group Blueprint
Fast-paced and highly topical, Theresia Enzensberger's story depicts a young woman in the throes of life: from brutal conflicts between right and left, to a pair of young lovers leaping into a river at night, almost one hundred years ago.
£13.49
Little, Brown Book Group Rose Daughter
The new gripping female-led fantasy from author Maria Lewis with her trademark brand of feisty female heroines, world-building and a bit of romance, perfect for fans of Leigh Bardugo, Sarah J Maas and Charlaine Harris.
£14.99
Little, Brown Book Group The Bench
The most romantic novel of 2020, this is a tragic love story spanning three decades where the love affair starts and ends on a bench.
£13.49
Little, Brown Book Group StandOutOnline
How to build an authoritative and authentic personal brand that will change your life.
£12.59
Little, Brown Book Group Ten Bells Street
The East End of London, 1930. Work is scarce, food is in short supply and there is political unrest on the streets. But in the face of all this hardship, there''s always friendship.Becky, Bernie and Rose - three best friends from very different backgrounds - are working hard to establish themselves in pre-war Spitalfields. Becky, the daughter of a Jewish tailor, wants to become a nurse, but her father has more traditional plans for her. Aching to leave the East End and travel the world, Bernie feels trapped by her vast family of poor Irish dock workers. And then there is Rose. Tiny and thin, she lives with her drunken mother and a revolving selection of surrogate fathers who exploit and brutalise them both.But at least the girls have each other and, as Europe begins to drift towards another war, their friendships become ever more crucial as each one of them fights for their place in an ever-changing, frightening, new world. One way or another, love will pull t
£17.99
Little, Brown Book Group Inside Out
Love is uncharted territory . . .Sometimes in order to find yourself, you need to venture off the map . . .
£8.09
Little, Brown Book Group 12Minute WeightLoss Plan
Dr Michael Spira is one of the UK's top obesity doctors and an expert in High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT or 'fast exercise'). Spira's book takes HIIT and combines it with a straightforward, easy-to-stick-to eating plan that shows readers how to lose weight with minimum of effort, all with just 12 minutes exercise a week.
£8.99
Little, Brown Book Group Secret History Of AlQaida
* A unique and indispensable insight into the story of al-Qa'ida from a UK-based Arab Muslim journalist and expert on the organisation
£8.99
Little, Brown Book Group Singin Swingin and Gettin Merry Like Christmas
A memoir about motherhood and music from the bestselling author of I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS''A brilliant writer, a fierce friend and a truly phenomenal woman'' BARACK OBAMAMaya Angelou''s seven volumes of autobiography are a testament to the talents and resilience of this extraordinary writer. Loving the world, she also knows its cruelty. As a black woman she has known discrimination and extreme poverty, but also hope, joy, achievement and celebration. In her third marvellous volume, music and her son are the focus of Maya Angelou''s life. She is on the edge of a new world: marriage, show business and a triumphant tour of Porgy and Bess.''She moved through the world with unshakeable calm, confidence and a fierce grace . . . She will always be the rainbow in my clouds'' OPRAH WINFREY''She was important in so many ways. She launched African American women writing in the United States. She was generous to a f
£10.99
Little, Brown Book Group Unpassing
'This brilliant novel is composed of equal parts mystery, menace and ravishment' Garth Greenwell
£13.49
Little, Brown Book Group My Cousin Rachel
Film tie-in edition of the major motion picture, starring Rachel Weisz and Sam Claflin. This special edition contains a foreword by the film's director and screenwriter, Roger Michell
£9.04
Little, Brown Book Group The Scapegoat
FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF REBECCA'What a magnificent thriller this is' NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW'She wrote exciting plots . . . a writer of fearless originality' GUARDIAN 'A good original novel, well tinged with nightmare' TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT 'He turned and stared at me and I at him, and I realised, with a strange sense of shock and fear and nausea all combined, that his face and voice were known to me too well. I was looking at myself.'By chance, two men - one English, the other French - meet in a provincial railway station. Their resemblance is uncanny, and they spend the evening talking and drinking. It is not until John wakes the next morning that he realises his French companion has stolen his identity and disappeared. So John steps into the Frenchman's shoes, and faces a variety of perplexing roles - as owner of a chateau, director of a failing business, head of a fractious family, and master of nothing.
£9.99
Little, Brown Book Group How to Stay Healthy: The nutritionist's guide to optimising your immunity
An essential guide to optimising your immunity and feeling your best - all year roundThousands of us are struck down by colds, flu and other viruses every year. We know we should be taking steps to look after our immune system every day, but beyond taking vitamin C and getting a good night's sleep it's often difficult to know where to start.In How to Stay Healthy, registered nutritionist Jenna Hope provides an easy-to-follow guide that will show you the steps you need to take to optimise your immunity and feel at your best.Through well-explained science this book will help you to understand what the immune system is, why it is so important and how to keep it functioning well in a way that suits you. It will cover the impact of nutrition, gut health and the role of supplements on your immune system, as well as lifestyle factors including smoking, physical activity, sleep, stress and pollution. Hope's smart, simple and sustainable approach will show you easy ways to incorporate immunity friendly foods into your diet, quick tips for when you're feeling run down and guidance to set you on the road to recovery from illness.Looking after your immune system has never been more important. This book provides the expert advice you need to do just that.
£14.99
Little, Brown Book Group Where the Crawdads Sing - Collector's Edition
'Painfully beautiful' The New York Times Book Review'Heart-wrenching... a compelling love story' Entertainment Weekly'Astonishing' PeopleFor years, rumours of the 'Marsh Girl' have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl. But Kya is not what they say. Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and lessons in the sand. Then the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. When two young men from town become intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new life - until the unthinkable happens.
£20.00
Little, Brown Book Group Enter the Water: An Observer Best Poetry Book of the Year
AN OBSERVER BEST POETRY BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023'A dark-light beauty' Ali Smith'Totally compelling, Enter The Water pulls you along like a current. Gentle, deft, spacious yet searingly vivid, it wanders like our narrator and shows us both nature and the city through new eyes . . . This book will sneak up on you and leave its music long ringing in your ears' Cecilia Knapp'Enter the Water is both visceral and perceptive, a discomfort formulated in great tenderness and pain' Bhanu Kapil 'Enter the Water has horizons and wit and allusion and rhyme and disenchanted politics and birds, and lines that hit the reader right in the heart . . . The writing is original and perfectly pitched . . . A significant debut' Ian Pattersoni sat in a chapel the other night in my big gay coat talking to a god whose answer is only sometimes no no that was a lie the house of god was closed the night i needed him i sat outside on the granite steps of a fountain happily pouring itself an eternal supplyENTER THE WATER follows a young man who becomes homeless when he is evicted from his flat in Cambridge during the turbulent early months of 2022. As the wind stirs, our narrator embarks on a journey from his park bench out towards the coast, wrapped in his 'big gay coat', accompanied by his pigeons, a blackbird and Storm Eunice - 'Nature' in colourfully alive and playful forms. Along the way he searches for a beauty inherent to all of us, and then calls us to reclaim it. ENTER THE WATER is a story invested in care - care towards the environment; towards the political realities of recession and the war in Ukraine; towards the dynamic self, the human whose love for swimming becomes synonymous with self-acceptance and survival; and to everyone, managing to manage. Walking along the edges of our troubled current affairs, animated by a spirit of cheerful protest, this book is an offering and an urgent invitation to exit and re-enter our world - and to celebrate our capacity for courage in times of suffering.
£14.99
Little, Brown Book Group Commitment
'Quietly devastating writing' The Observer'Commitment is a majestic novel' Yiyun Li, author of The Book of GooseA masterful and engrossing novel about a single mother's collapse and the fate of her family after she enters a California state hospital in the 1970s.When Diane Aziz drives her oldest son, Walter, from LA to college, it will be her last parental act before falling into a deep depression. A single mother who believes that her children can attain all the things she hasn't, she's worked hard to secure their future. But when she enters hospital, her closest friend must keep the children safe and their mother's dreams for them alive.At Berkeley College, Walter discovers a passion for architecture just as he realises his life as a student may end for lack of funds. Back home in LA, his sister Lina works in an ice-cream parlour while her wealthy classmates prepare for Ivy league schools, as she wages a high-stakes gamble to go there with them. And Donny, the little brother everybody loves, begins to drift towards a life on the beach, where he falls into an escalating relationship with drugs.A resonant story about family, duty, and the attendant struggles that come when a parent falls ill, it honours the spirit of imperfect mothers, and the under-chronicled significance of friends. With Commitment, Mona Simpson has written her most important and unforgettable novel.'Moving . . . [Simpson] is up there with Anne Tyler and Barbara Kingsolver when it comes to great chroniclers of American families'The Spectator'Simpson is a national treasure . . . I was immersed in their world and in Simpson's masterful vision for them. Simpson is so attuned to the family heart and oh dear Walter, Lina, and Donnie, have you forever moved mine'Weike Wang, author of Joan Is Okay
£17.09
Little, Brown Book Group Liarmouth: A feel-bad romance
'It's just as deliciously witty and delightfully deviant as you'd expect from the man William Burroughs called the "Pope of Trash"' Independent 'Waters is undoubtedly among the greatest American comedians of all time' Far OutA hilariously filthy tale of sex, crime, and family dysfunction from the brilliantly twisted mind of John Waters, the legendary filmmaker and bestselling author of Mr. Know-It-All.Marsha Sprinkle: Suitcase thief. Scammer. Master of disguise. Dogs and children hate her. Her own family wants her dead. She's smart, she's desperate, she's disturbed, and she's on the run with a big chip on her shoulder. They call her "Liarmouth" - until one insane man makes her tell the truth.John Waters's first novel, Liarmouth, is a perfectly perverted "feel-bad romance," and the reader will thrill to hop aboard this delirious road trip of riotous revenge.
£9.99
Little, Brown Book Group My Life As A Chameleon
'A vivid and tender portrait' Suzi Feay, Financial Times'Beautiful and immersive. I was completely absorbed' Andreina Cordani'Exceptional . . . A story of empowerment, bravery and courage' J P Rose'Tender, melancholic, and effortless, Diana Anyakwo writes with a deceptively simple yet steady voice which immediately draws readers into Lily's rose-colored world . . . A gorgeous tale that leaves you wanting to hug the protagonist and assure her of a lifetime of tender moments' Lola Akinmade Akerstrom, international bestselling author of IN EVERY MIRROR SHE'S BLACKLily is a sixteen-year-old living in Manchester. It is nearly five years since her father's death, and she is soon to return to her birthplace in Nigeria to reunite with her mother and siblings for the anniversary. As cold rain thunders on the streets of Moss Side she looks back over her young life and wonders . . . how did she get here? As a young girl in Lagos, Lily is the baby of her large family. The daughter of a Nigerian father and Irish mother, she lives in a dual reality: one where moments of bright colour and tenderness exist alongside a sense of danger just beneath the surface of her apparently idyllic life. This is a tension that nobody dares speak out loud and it teaches Lily an early lesson: always blend in, always play the right part. But the truth cannot stay hidden forever. Things in Lagos itself, and within her family, soon reach breaking point. As her city and her family implode into chaos around her, and at school her skin colour marks her out from the crowd, Lily struggles to know how to blend in. And when her mother sends her away to school in England, Lily's sense of identity is challenged in even more painful ways. My Life as a Chameleon is a powerful story of resilience and belonging, about family secrets and how they can destroy even the deepest bonds. It is a story about finding your place in the world and realising you deserve to be there.
£9.04
Little, Brown Book Group The Quiddity of Will Self
The ghost of a beautiful young woman, Sylvie, hovers outside the window of Will Self's study. She is seeking to influence his latest novel, before she can rest in peace. Sylvie was a member of the WSC - a mysterious cult of charismatic writers who appear to worship Will Self. When Richard, a twenty-something idler and literary wannabe, discovers Sylvie's dead body he gets sucked into their dark world of absinthe, cloaks and bizarre initiation rites, slowly losing his sense of perspective on the strange events that encircle him. What is the true nature of the WSC? What did they do to Sylvie? And does Richard now face a similar fate?
£8.99
Little, Brown Book Group Mary Toft; or, The Rabbit Queen
'Palmer spins a cracking tale that, despite its disconcerting subject, is piquantly cheerful and compassionate . . . With empathy and imagination, Palmer explores the master/apprentice relationship, first love and first rivalry, spite and kindness: conjuring a world to raise a wry smile' New York Times---------------------------------------------------------------------------------A stunning, powerfully evocative new novel based on a true story - in 1726 in the small town of Godalming, England, a young woman confounds the medical community by giving birth to dead rabbits.Surgeon John Howard is a rational man. His apprentice Zachary knows John is reluctant to believe anything that purports to exist outside the realm of logic. But even John cannot explain how or why Mary Toft, the wife of a local farmer, manages to give birth to a dead rabbit. When this singular event becomes a regular occurrence, John realizes that nothing in his experience as a village physician has prepared him to deal with a situation as disturbing as this. He writes to several preeminent surgeons in London, three of whom quickly arrive in the small town of Godalming ready to observe and opine. When Mary's plight reaches the attention of King George, Mary and her doctors are summoned to London, where Zachary experiences for the first time a world apart from his small-town existence, and is exposed to some of the darkest corners of the human soul. All the while, Mary lies in bed, waiting for another birth, as doubts begin to blossom among the surgeons and a growing group of onlookers grow impatient for another miracle . . .
£8.09
Little, Brown Book Group The Red Daughter
'John Burnham Schwartz has drawn such a fine and generous portrait of Stalin's daughter - a difficult, complicated, and deeply sympathetic woman - that I read his novel in a single great draught, and ever since have been worried about Svetlana as though she were a close and troubled friend of mine. The Red Daughter is a lustrous book' - Lauren Groff, author of Fates and FuriesIn one of the most momentous events of the Cold War, Svetlana Alliluyeva, the only daughter of the Soviet despot Joseph Stalin, abruptly abandoned her life in Moscow in 1967, arriving in New York to throngs of reporters and a nation hungry to hear her story. By her side is Peter Horvath, a young lawyer sent by the CIA to smuggle Svetlana into America.She is a contradictory celebrity: charismatic and headstrong, lonely and haunted, excited and alienated by her adopted country's radically different society. Persuading herself that all she yearns for is a simple American life, she attempts to settle into a suburban existence in New Jersey. But when this dream ends in disillusionment, Svetlana reaches out to Peter, the one person who understands how the chains of her past still hold her prisoner. As their relationship changes and deepens, unfolding under the eyes of her CIA minders, Svetlana's and Peter's private lives cease to be their own.John Burnham Schwartz's father was in fact the young lawyer who escorted Svetlana to the US. Drawing upon private papers and years of extensive research, Schwartz imaginatively re-creates the story of an extraordinary, troubled woman's search for a new life and a place to belong.'The Red Daughter is an intimate, intricate look at the collision of geopolitics with a private life: surprising and engaging from beginning to end' - Jennifer Egan, author of A Visit From the Goon Squad
£8.09
Little, Brown Book Group Trinity: Shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize
'Brilliant . . . Hall has shaped a richly imagined, tremendously moving fictional work. Its genius is not to explain but to embody the science and politics that shaped Oppenheimer's life . . .The resulting quantum portrait feels both true and dazzlingly unfamiliar' New York Times J. Robert Oppenheimer - the father of the atomic bomb - was a brilliant scientist, a champion of liberal causes, and a complex and often contradictory character. In Louisa Hall's kaleidoscopic novel, seven fictional characters bear witness to his life. From a secret service agent who tailed him in San Francisco, to the young lover of a colleague in Los Alamos, to a woman fleeing McCarthyism who knew him on St. John, as these men and women fall into the orbit of a brilliant but mercurial mind at work, all consider his complicated legacy while also uncovering deep and often unsettling truths about their own lives.In Trinity, Louisa Hall has crafted an explosive story about what it means to truly know someone, and about the secrets we keep from the world and from ourselves.
£8.09
Little, Brown Book Group The Verdun Affair
A sweeping, romantic, and profoundly moving novel, set in Europe in the aftermath of World War I and Los Angeles in the 1950s, about a lonely young man, a beautiful widow, and the amnesiac soldier whose puzzling case binds them together even as it tears them apart.In 1920, two young Americans meet in Verdun, the city in France where one of the most devastating battles of the war was waged. Tom is an orphan from Chicago, a former ambulance driver now gathering bones from the battlefield; Sarah is an expatriate from Boston searching for the husband who wandered off from his division and hasn't been seen since. Quickly, the two fall into a complicated affair against the ghostly backdrop of the ruined city. Months later, Sarah and Tom meet again at the psychiatric ward of an Italian hospital, drawn there by the appearance of a mysterious patient the doctors call Douglas Fairbanks (after the silent film actor) - a shell-shocked soldier with no memory of who he is. At the hospital, Tom and Sarah are joined by Paul, an Austrian journalist with his own interest in the amnesiac.Each is keeping a secret; each has been shaken by the horrors of war. Decades later, Tom, now a successful screenwriter, encounters Paul by chance in LA, still grappling with the questions raised by this gorgeous and incisive novel: How to begin again after unfathomable trauma? How to love after so much loss? And who, in the end, was Douglas Fairbanks?From the bone-strewn fields of Verdun to the bombed-out cafés of Paris, from the riot-torn streets of Bologna to the riotous parties of 1950s Hollywood, The Verdun Affair is a riveting tale of romance, grief and the far-reaching consequences of a single lie.
£12.59
Little, Brown Book Group The Shadow in the Garden: A Biographer's Tale
The biographer - so often in the shadows, kibbitzing, casting doubt, proving facts - here comes to the stage.James Atlas takes us back to his childhood in suburban Chicago, where he fell in love with literature and, early on, found in himself the impulse to study writers' lives. We meet Richard Ellmann, the great biographer of James Joyce and Atlas's professor during a transformative year at Oxford. We get to know the author's first subject, the "self-doomed" poet Delmore Schwartz; a bygone cast of intellectuals such as Edmund Wilson and Dwight Macdonald (the "tall trees," as Mary McCarthy described them, cut down now, Atlas writes, by the "merciless pruning of mortality"); and, of course, the elusive Bellow, "a metaphysician of the ordinary." Atlas revisits the lives and work of the classical biographers: the Renaissance writers of what were then called "lives," Samuel Johnson and the "meshugenah" Boswell, among them. In what amounts to a pocket history of his own literary generation, Atlas celebrates the luminaries of contemporary literature and the labor of those who hope to catch a glimpse of one of them - "as fleeting as a familiar face swallowed up in a crowd."
£27.00
Little, Brown Book Group Johannesburg
6 December 2013. It is a searing hot day in Johannesburg. Gin has returned to the city of her birth to throw a party for her mother's eightieth birthday. She is determined, with lists and meals and flower arrangements, to show that she has become a fully capable woman. She knows, deep down, her mother will only ever see a lost cause.Meanwhile outside, crowds of citizens and the world's media have gathered to hear the expected announcement: Nelson Mandela has died. Set across the course of a single momentous day and narrated by a chorus of voices, Fiona Melrose's second novel is a hymn to an extraordinary city and its people, an ambitious homage to Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway, and a devastating personal and political manifesto on mothers and daughters, justice and love.'Beautifully observed' Mail on Sunday'Woolf produced blooms that are impossible to emulate. Johannesburg provides evidence of a novelist who can grow inimitable flowers herself' Spectator
£8.09
Little, Brown Book Group Vessels: A Memoir of What Wasn't
An unforgettable portrait of a marriage tested to its limits.When Dan, a writer with a passion for underground comics, and his wife Bekah, a potter dedicated to traditional Japanese ceramics, met through a mutual friend, they swiftly fell in love. "Of all the women I've ever met," Dan told a friend, "she's the first one who felt like family." But at Christmas, as they prepared for the birth of their first child, tragedy struck.Based on Daniel Raeburn's acclaimed New Yorker essay, Vessels: A Memoir of What Wasn't is the story of how the couple clashed and clung to each other through a series of unsuccessful pregnancies before finally, joyfully, becoming parents. In prose as handsomely unadorned as his wife's pottery, Raeburn recounts a marriage cemented by the same events that nearly broke it.Vessels is an unflinching, enormously moving account of intimacy, endurance and love.
£8.99