Search results for ""author tristan hughes""

`Superbly accomplished... Hughes' prose is startling and luminous' FINANCIAL TIMES`Beautifully nuanced and utterly touching'THE DAILY MAILBeside a lake in the northern Canadian wilderness, fifteen-year-old Zachary Tayler lives a lonely and isolated life with his father. His only neighbours are a leech trapper, an eccentric millionaire, and an expert in snow. But then one summer the enigmatic and shape-shifting Eva Spiller arrives in search of the remains of her parents and together they embark on a strange and disconcerting journey of discovery. Nothing at Sitting Down Lake is quite as it seems. The forest hides ruins and mysteries; the past can never be fully understood. And as Zach and Eva make their way through this haunted landscape, they move ever closer towards an acceptance of what in the end is lost and what can truly be found.In his fourth novel, award-winning author Tristan Hughes returns to the landscape of his youth in this vivid and poetic coming-of-age story about death, life, and the changes they bring. Set against the harsh, unforgiving beauty of the forests of northern Ontario, Hummingbird unravels a moving tale of loss, absence and redemption.

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"Hughes is a very good writer, if 'good writing' has to do with precision, eloquence, beauty, and passionately held belief."—Times Literary Supplement Welcome to Crooked River, population 2,851 and falling. Eli has lived in Crooked River his whole life, ever since he was born in the dead of winter with the cord wrapped around his neck nearly thirty years ago, and he knows better than anyone about that shrinking number. His father, uncle, and grandmother have all died, he didn't know his mother, and his grandfather, Clarence, founder of the town and eccentric builder of hotels and a now-underwater castle, walked to the river one day and never returned. Eli's childhood best friend, George, went missing, too, when they were kids, around the time his dad started going a little bonkers, and George was never seen again. Eli's always been obsessed with Clarence and George's disappearances. Now, while the town half-heartedly celebrates its centennial and the river, long ago diverted to make way for a mine, reclaims its original path, Eye Lake is vanishing day by day. As new tensions in town rise and the lake's water level drops, Clarence's castle—and his many secrets—begin to surface. But when another young boy goes missing, Eli's past and present collide. Tristan Hughes is the author of three previous books: The Tower, Send My Cold Bones Home, and Revenant. He was the winner of the 2002 Rhys Davies Short Story Award. He lives in Wales.

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On 11 June 323 BC in Babylon, Alexander the Great breathed his last. He left one of the largest empires the world had seen, stretching from Greece to the Punjab. Alexander the Great's death in Babylon that fateful day in June 323 BC triggered an unprecedented crisis. Within a couple of days, Macedonian blood had stained the walls of the chamber in which he died. Within a couple of weeks, Babylon had witnessed the first siege of the post Alexander age. Within a couple of months, a major revolt had erupted on mainland Greece. Within a couple of years, theatres of conflict had arisen across the length and breadth of what was once Alexander's empire. From a Spartan adventurer attempting to forge his own empire in North Africa, to a vast horde of veteran Greek mercenaries heading home from ancient Afghanistan. From a merciless, punitive campaign against some of the most infamous brigands of the time to a warrior princess raising an army and pressing ahead with her own power play during

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From the remote forests of northern Ontario to a Neolithic burial chamber on the coast of north Wales, from a frozen lake in the Canadian wilderness to a mysterious Welsh heath, Shattercone takes the reader on a strange, compelling and sometimes heart-breaking journey through the blurry junctures that bind together landscapes and lovers. Including buried elephant bones, explorers gone astray, hidden histories, secret islands, loves found and lost, these subtly linked stories explore the curious and delicate threads that weave together places and people.

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In a remote Welsh village by the sea, four friends grow up together. Plain but charismatic Del is the ringleader, unstoppable, supremely confident in her ability to get her own way. Neil, shy and stuttering, and Ricky, full of rage and loneliness, are misfits at school until Del takes them under her wing. Steph is the outsider, but she too is mesmerised by Del's devil-may-care approach to life. They hang around together - mucking about in the woods, searching for treasure on the seashore, doing dares, sharing cigarettes. Then, one terrible day, the gang is broken up for good. Meeting ten years later in the now stagnating village, Neil, Ricky and Steph revisit their childhood haunts and re-live the memories that have cast a shadow over each of their lives. Del is, by turns, the beating heart at the centre of all their stories and a gaping absence. Set against the backdrop of the northern Welsh coast, and told through the voices of Neil, Ricky and Steph - the children left behind - Revenant pieces together their memories of childhoods broken by desertion, absence and death, and uncovers the secrets and betrayals of childhood friendships, with thoughtful, shocking brilliance.

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"What you could change and alter could never be finished or complete or dead. This is what I had been told back then, and what I had tried very hard to believe in since."Beside a lake in the northern Canadian wilderness, fifteen year old Zachary Tayler lives a lonely and isolated life with his father. His only neighbours are a leech trapper, an eccentric millionaire, and an expert in snow. But then one summer the enigmatic and shape-shifting Eva Spiller arrives in search of the remains of her parents and together they embark on a strange and disconcerting journey of discovery. Nothing at Sitting Down Lake is quite as it seems. The forest hides ruins and mysteries; the past can never be fully understood. And as Zach and Eva make their way through this haunted landscape, they move ever closer towards an acceptance of what in the end is lost and what can truly be found.

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