Search results for ""Blackwater Press""

"A novel full of grace, humour and loss." --Elizabeth Reeder " A mastery of spare -- yet sweeping -- storytelling." --Anne Pettigrew "Fabulous writing, intriguing story." --Emma Fraser A sensational debut set in in the turbulent landscape of Argentina in the mid-twentieth century. For years, the best that young girls from the backwater village of Alta Gracia could hope for was a position in the Big House, home of the immensely powerful and politically influential Goyena family. So, when Senorita Delia Lugghi - enigmatic teacher and devout Peronist - arrives from Buenos Aires to found a state school in the village, the future of Milagros Riquelme suddenly seems to be full of possibilities. But change rarely does come easily. Inspired by true events, this story charts a life of tragedy, love, and missed opportunity, as Milagros goes from girlhood to old age, all the while being forced to navigate an oppressive regime during Argentina's Dirty War.

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Somota is society divided by change, and by memories. When A. arrives in the protectorate shortly after the first world war, he is unsure of what to expect. Employed by the government as a linguistic anthropologist, he is tasked with documenting the benefits of the new order and reporting them to the Reverend G. But what are these benefits? In his travels throughout the region, A. finds only the physical and emotional scars of conquest, and of routine colonial administration. Yet, even as the indigenous culture is being reduced to mere fragments, he also learns of a sublime literature responding to those historical traumas. One storyteller in particular, Kehinta, begins to reveal to A. just how much has been lost. A profoundly beautiful novel commenting on the horrors of colonial oppression, trauma, love, and the power of story.

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The riddles of desire, youth, old age, poverty, and wealth are laid bare in this radiant collection from a master of the form. From inner-city pawnshops to highpowered law firms, from the desert of California to the coast of France, The Flounder paints a vivid portrait of how complex and poignant everyday life can be. Told in vibrant, incantatory prose, these moving, lyrical, and surprising stories teeter between desperation and hope, with Fulton showing us what lasts in an impermanent world.

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Life in the town of LV runs placidly and smoothly, regulated by an unspoken, but very much omnipresent System. When Monica and her daughter move into the house known as the Hovel, everyone is ready to welcome them - until it becomes apparent that they do not, and will not, blend into the well-oiled scheme. A crescendo of unrest pervades the town dragging everyone into its tidal wave, with consequences reverberating in unexpected ways. Will things ever be the same again? This novella speaks about the fear of the unknown, of the foreign 'other', and of life in the quaint suburbs of a town very much culturally embedded in the Western world.

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A young maid at an upscale resort hides her banjo-playing freight hopper brother. An unlikely romance bridges a quarter-century age gap and a 150-year-old murder. A man tries to turn his sheltered mother's backyard shed into a pricey vacation rental. A gig worker must shake off her darker identity to become a professional baby namer. This mesmeric debut collection of stories set in the Appallachian mountains weaves together the curious and the sublime, with Bianchi's lyrical style cutting straight to the heart of the matter. A debut from one of America's most exciting new talents.

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Loosely based on true events, this multi-generational novel uses short, punchy chapters to provide a fragmented framework of one family, allowing the story to gradually come together as a whole.In 1920 Irini Gaspari, a young Greek woman, leaves behind all that she holds dear - her family, and particularly her friend Martha - and emigrates to America, bound for an arranged marriage to a man she has never met. After tragedy strikes and her closely-knit family gradually crumbles, little Marieta finds her own path into womanhood in the changing world of the 1950s and 1960s. Jumping forward to 2010, in Akron, Ohio two brothers, Herman and Richard, in spite of their very different personalities, share an awkward relationship with love. In their own de-romanticised ways, they are looking for 'the one.' They navigate romance, and take care of an ageing mother riddled with dementia and an obsession with her garden. The lives of these characters are interwoven through Frieda Kahlo: an enigmatic calico cat who drifts between reality and the spiritual world, connecting the generations of characters.

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Upper Canada, 1804, on the edge of Chippewa territory. Flora MacCallum wakes from a malarial coma and witnesses the staggering loss her siblings have endured during their first days on the mosquito-infested banks of the Chenail Ecarte. Lured from the Isle of Mull by Lord Selkirk's promise of fertile grazing land and freedom far from the Highland clearances, Flora's father staked his life to bring his family across the Atlantic. During the struggling frontier settlement's first bleak North American winter, Flora discovers hope through an unlikely friendship. The eldest son of a Chippewa chief offers Flora the gift of his mother tongue, shifting Flora's relationship with the land and the truth of her own spirit. But as their furtive fellowship attracts attention, conflicts soon arise... An arresting debut novel told in swift, lyrical prose. Anangokaa captures the bleak magnificence of the Canadian wilderness through the eyes of a complex, traumatised, and intelligent young protagonist in Flora.

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Gustav and Alma Mahler in New York City in 1907: He had been invited to lead the Metropolitan opera; his glamorous wife accompanied him to the New World. Nineteen years his junior, Alma was Gustav's constant companion, occasional soulmate, sometimes his muse, always his caretaker: a woman otherwise restless and unfulfilled. Her husband's life was intensely interior, sporadically alert to others' needs and desires. His energy and idealism were aroused by new surroundings, but fitfully. He remained a chronic outsider, with Alma bearing much of the brunt amid their turbulent New York surroundings. A stunning debut novel from renowned cultural historian Joseph Horowitz.

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A period piece memoir depicting the life of Richard Robison, who as a boy moved from town to town, swept along by his parents’ quest for the American Dream. Beautifully told, humorous, sometimes dark – this memoir deals with forgiveness, empathy, music, and pain. The story begins with Robison’s entry into fourth grade at a Rochester, New York city school where he finds himself, once again, the new kid in his class – his fourth school in four years. There he meets Matthias, a German American boy whose father was an American G.I. who helped liberate the Mauthausen concentration camp at the end of World War II. Another classmate and neighbor, a Jewish girl, Hannah, befriends him and introduces him to her family and culture. The unlikely alliance of Robison, Matthias, and Hannah grows through the school year until Robison is once again uprooted, this time to Buffalo, pulled in the slipstream of his father’s dream of a better life: money, status, a family well provided for. By tenth grade – several moves and new schools later – Robison is floundering from a life of discontinuity and disconnection from friends, classmates, teammates, and ultimately even his parents. His father’s ambition and drive lead down a path of alcoholism, violence, and resultant family secrecy. His mother’s inability to protect him and extricate herself from a dream gone bad adds another layer of damage to an already lost boy. But the memoir is not dark, not entirely, and includes passages where humor supplants pain, where activities – baseball, skiing, bicycling – provide positive experiences and healthy responses to the angst of teenage life. Robison reveals the importance of teachers both good and bad; of friends gained and lost; of girlfriends, real and longed for; of the need for empathy expressed and shared, and of the need for forgiveness.

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A heartwarming debut novel, commenting on the powers of music and friendship. Sarah's hope of becoming a concert pianist was shattered when she bombed an important performance of a Mozart concerto. Now in Munich, she feels like an imposter in her job as a food magazine editor. A chance encounter in a music shop leads to a surprising friendship with an elderly widower with a unique grand piano. When they start meeting to play Mozart's works for four hands, Sarah unravels the mysteries of his war-time past, uproots a musical secret in her own family -- and finds the strength to redirect her own future. Laced with melodies from Mozart and Schumann to Toto and Nena, THE GIRL WITH TWENTY FINGERS will delight readers, while asking the question: Can music change lives? Kate Mueser's debut novel cracks open notions of failure and second chances, living to the fullest and dying without regrets, and cultural identity and privilege, making it both timeless and urgently relevant to our age.

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