Search results for ""Author Lloyd Jones""

Sometimes a person passes through your world and you don't forget them.She is like that.She is crossing continents, searching for her missing child.Everyone she comes into contact with has a tale to tell: the truck driver who mistook her for a prostitute, the hunters who almost shot her, the Frenchman who loved her, the blind man and the lodger. This is her story.

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The next morning Alma showed up with his tin case of pencils and his sketchbooks. She showed him through to the sitting room. She had an idea that a sitting was a formal occasion and in preparation had gone around the room straightening cushions and pulling off furnishing covers. She had dressed herself up in her Sunday best, a black skirt and red blouse. She had been toying with putting a flower in her hair.Long ago, when the men were away at the war, Alma began painting the women of the town. Alice, his favourite, returned his attentions, and when her husband George came home from the war, he set out to prove his love and reclaim his wife by moving a hill to improve the view for her - with a spade and wheelbarrow.Now, decades later, the townspeople, looking to escape various corners of despair, turn to Alma's drawing classes and, in doing so, learn to rediscover each other. For when you draw, the only thing that matters is what lies before you. Paint Your Wife is a colourful, sensual novel, brimming with rich stories and even richer characters.

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In August 1905 a party of young men set sail for England. Amongst them were ordinary farmers and bootmakers, a miner and a bank clerk. Together they made up the All Blacks, an unknown rugby team from Auckland, New Zealand. And they had come to show the world what they could do. What they didn't know was that they were bound for fame. The first game was in Devon, 'played in golden farm light, a surprising victory'. By December they had become the 'wonderful All Blacks' who had beaten Yorkshire 40-0, England 15-0 and Ireland 15-0. People stopped them in the streets. In this melding of true history and imagination, Lloyd Jones has recreated an unforgettable journey from innocence to celebrity.

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Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize'Lloyd Jones brings to life the transformative power of fiction . . . This is a beautiful book' Sunday Times'You cannot pretend to read a book. Your eyes will give you away. So will your breathing. A person entranced by a book simply forgets to breathe. The house can catch alight and a reader deep in a book will not look up until the wallpaper is in flames.' Bougainville, 1991. A small village on a lush tropical island in the South Pacific. Eighty-six days have passed since Matilda's last day of school as, quietly, war is encroaching from the other end of the island. When the villagers' safe, predictable lives come to a halt, Bougainville's children are surprised to find the island's only white man, a recluse, re-opening the school. Pop Eye, aka Mr Watts, explains he will introduce the children to Mr Dickens. Matilda and the others think a foreigner is coming to the island and prepare a list of much needed items. They are shocked to discover their acquaintance with Mr Dickens will be through Mr Watts' inspiring reading of Great Expectations. But on an island at war, the power of fiction has dangerous consequences. Imagination and beliefs are challenged by guns. Mister Pip is an unforgettable tale of survival by story; a dazzling piece of writing that lives long in the mind after the last page is finished.

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"The most fascinating and wonderful book" JAN MORRIS"A restrained, lyrical tour de force" OWEN SHEERSIn the early years of the last century, Rebecca is born into a rural community in the Maesglasau valley in Wales; her family have been working the land for a thousand years, but the changes brought about by modernity threaten the survival of her language, and her family's way of life. Rebecca's reflections on the century are delivered with haunting dignity and a simple intimacy, while her evocation of the changing seasons and a life that is so in tune with its surroundings is rich and poignant. The Life of Rebecca Jones has all the makings of a classic, fixing on a vanishing period of rural history, and the novel's final, unexpected revelation remains unforgettable and utterly moving.

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