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Baumgartner’s life has been defined by his deep, abiding love for his wife, Anna. But now Anna is gone, and Baumgartner is embarking on his seventies whilst trying to live with her absence. Rich with compassion, wit and Auster’s keen eye for beauty in the smallest, most transient episodes of ordinary life, ‘Baumgartner’ is a tender late masterpiece of the ache of memory. It asks: why do we find such meaning in certain moments, and forget others?
Midway through his life, an artist begins to paint upside down. In Paris, a woman is attacked by a stranger in the street. A mother dies. A man falls to his death. Couples seek escape in distant lands. The novel ‘Parade’ sets loose a carousel of lives. It surges past the limits of identity, character, and plot, to tell a true story – about art, family, morality, gender, and how we compose ourselves.
Why is misspelling stuff a sign of grate intelly-genz? What have the hours in the day got to do with FINGER BONES? Why does rain on a pavement smell so delish? Zany and laugh out loud bonkers, this book of large and small facts, is The Best, and that’s official! You’ll want to quote from it, repeat the gags, and reread it again and again. Plus Waldo Pancake shows you how to draw stuff, as well as learning you to be the biggest genius ever.
In this love letter to the London pub, our genial guide takes the reader through all aspects of the local hostelry as it was in the 1940s – a time of dark wood, dark corners and dark beer. ‘Back to the Local’ is a fascinating nostalgic ramble around the post-war pubs of London: we are introduced to The Regulars and Barmaids Old and New; we venture into the familiar surroundings of the Saloon Lounge, Saloon Bar and Public Bar and squeeze into possibly the lesser known Jug-And-Bottle Bar, where customers queue to buy ale to drink elsewhere; we learn about ‘lost’ drinks such as ‘The Mother-in-Law’ or ‘The Snort’.
Summer, 1867: The newlywed Dostoevsky and his young wife Anna – his one-time secretary – are travelling to the German spa resort of Baden-Baden on honeymoon. Their love is ecstatic, yet the author is plagued by demons: haunted by his crimes and punishments, consumed by fevers of jealousy, gambling to avoid mounting debts and shaken by epileptic fits. Winter, 1970s: Our Jewish narrator embarks on a pilgrimage from Moscow to Leningrad to trace the footsteps of his literary hero. As the train travels across the Soviet Union’s bleak expanses, he immerses himself in Anna’s travel journal: and their journeys – past and present, real and imagined – soon become entwined.
Cheeky sun won’t go to bed! He’ll find any excuse to stay up – painting rainbows, drinking the sea, hiding behind mountains. – but even the sun must go to bed.
As she stands at the window, the spring sunshine streaming in, Mathilde reflects on the opportunities before her – it’s April 1968 and Morocco is changing. Looking out at her garden, the roses – brought in from Marrakech – have bloomed and their sweet, fresh scent pervades the garden. The world is opening up and anything feels possible. Work on the pool has just begun and she imagines diving in to cool off from the summer’s baking heat. Indecency. That’s her husband’s word for it, the flagrant display of their glittering success, on show for their labourers to wonder at. But Mathilde has prevailed. Times have changed, and she is determined to celebrate it. Only Mathilde is blissfully unaware of the consequences for her family, her country and its future. Her babies are now grown up, and they are all about to learn how life can take wild and unexpected turns.
Since the publication of ‘Multitudes’, her debut collection, Lucy Caldwell has been celebrated as one of today’s pre-eminent short story writers. In this much-anticipated third collection, she continues her exploration of the contemporary female experience, as she delves deeper into motherhood and marriage, love and longing. From a passionate affair in Blitz-era London, to a highly charged Christmas party in Belfast, to a trip to Marrakech which could form a new family, the thirteen striking stories of ‘Openings’ pulse with possibility and illuminate those fleeting but recognisable moments of heartbreak and hope that can change the course of a life.
Jude Ripon has been gifted a fresh new start. For the last four months, she and her older sister Morley have been living with the Weston family. Jude is going to school every day, eating her vegetables and doing her homework. For the first time, Jude’s life seems normal. But adventure is calling her name. While unravelling their family’s illegal dealings with raw magic, Jude and Morley discovered a seedy side to the Consortium. They are eager to bring about justice, in their own way, through a series of heists. But in their escapades, they find something far darker bubbling in Farrowfell. Reports of a strange, menacing beast are inciting terror. Could it be connected to the resurfacing of raw magic and the devious dealings of the Ripons? Can Jude, Morley and the Westons band together to save Farrowfell?
We spend more time than we know trying to go back. We call it fantasising, we call it dreaming – but we’re all crawling back, each in his or her own way. A group of college friends find themselves marooned at a luxurious hotel on the Amalfi Coast in Italy. While their boat is being repaired, they can’t help but observe the daily routine of a fellow hotel guest – a mysterious, white-bearded stranger who sits on the veranda each night and smokes one cigarette, sometimes two. When the group decides to invite the elegant traveller to lunch with them, they cannot begin to imagine the miraculous abilities, strange wisdom, and a life-changing story he is about to impart to one of the friends in particular. Deeply atmospheric and sensual, ‘The Gentleman From Peru’ weaves achingly poignant insight into a story of regret, fate and epic love.
In a city that never was, in an America that never was, on a snowy night at the end of winter, two detectives find a body on the roof of a skyscraper. It’s 1922, and Americans are drinking in speakeasies, dancing to jazz, stepping quickly to the tempo of modern times. Beside the Mississippi, the ancient city of Cahokia lives on – a teeming industrial metropolis, containing every race and creed. Among them, peace holds. Just about. But that body on the roof is about to spark off a week that will spill the city’s secrets, and bring it, against a soundtrack of wailing clarinets and gunfire, either to destruction or rebirth.
Between 1199 and 1399, English politics was high drama. These two centuries witnessed savage political blood-letting – including civil war, deposition, the murder of kings and the ruthless execution of rebel lords – as well as international warfare, devastating national pandemic, economic crisis and the first major peasant uprising in English history. Arise, England uses the six Plantagenet kings who ruled during these two centuries to explore England’s emergent statehood. Drawing on original accounts and arresting new research, it draws resonances between government, international relations, and the abilities, egos and ambitions of political actors, then and now. Colourful and complicated, and by turns impressive and hateful, the six kings stride through the story; but arguably the greatest character is the emerging English state itself.
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