The Director
£10.99An artist's life, a pact with the devil, a novel about the dangerous illusions of the silver screen.
Showing 49–60 of 131 resultsSorted by latest
-
-
No. 2 Whitehall Court
£9.99THE STUNNING NEW FIRST WORLD WAR SPY THRILLER FROM THE MASTER OF THE GENRE
-
Devotions
£14.99A woman recalls the time her grandfather claimed to have met Jesus. A professional musician travels across the world and through her memories with a violin older than the USA. A young Belfast theatre troupe brings their experimental production of Hamlet to New York. Transporting and profound, these are stories of love, grief, and the ways that lives can be haunted.
-
The Original
£9.99Oxfordshire, 1899. Grace Inderwick grows up on the peripheries of a once-great household, an unwanted guest in her uncle’s home. She has unusual skills and unusual predilections: for painting, though faces elude her; for lurking in the shadows; for other girls. Then a letter arrives, postmarked Saint Helena. After years missing at sea, Grace’s cousin Charles is ready to come home. When Charles returns, unrecognisable and uncanny, a rift emerges between those who claim he is an imposter and Grace’s aunt, who insists he is her son. And Grace, whose intimate knowledge of forgeries is her own closely-guarded secret, must decide who and what to believe in, and what kind of life she wants to live.
-
Wifehouse
£16.99‘Je suis femme maison.’ ‘You are a wifehouse? Oh, a housewife. Je suis une femme au foyer.’ ‘Wow, that actually sounds worse in French. Let’s go with je suis mère.’ He is drenched in youth, this young man, she thinks. He is soaked in all its possibilities. Following years of a life lived as a wife and mother, Annie is gifted French lessons with twenty-six-year-old local French tutor, Thierry. As time passes and the lessons progress, she finds herself unexpectedly vulnerable to the charms of a man closer in age to her teenage daughter than to her own. A new life for Annie emerges, one she could never have foreseen.
-
The Benefactors
£10.99Meet Frankie, Miriam and Bronagh: three very different women from Belfast, but all mothers to 18-year-old boys. Gorgeous Frankie, now married to a wealthy, older man, grew up in care. Miriam has recently lost her beloved husband Kahlil in ambiguous circumstances. Bronagh, the CEO of a children’s services charity, loves celebrity and prestige. When their sons are accused of sexually assaulting a friend, Misty Johnston, they’ll come together to protect their children, leveraging all the powers they possess. But on her side, Misty has the formidable matriarch, Nan D, and her father, taxi-driver Boogie: an alliance not so easily dismissed.
-
Go Gentle
£20.00Adora Hazzard has it all figured out. A Stoic philosopher and contented divorcée, she relishes her teenage daughter, her job as a moral tutor for an old-money family, and the bliss of finally being solo. She’s also quietly assembling a ‘coven’ of like-minded single women on the sixth floor of the legendary Ansonia building on New York’s Upper West Side. Together, they share groceries, dog walkers – and one dirty little secret: despite their age, they’re only just getting started. Adora’s life philosophy is simple: want only what you already have. It’s her secret to happiness until a chance encounter with a charming stranger stirs long-buried passions. Soon, her carefully curated life unravels: black-market art, secret rendezvous, international intrigue and a past she’s worked hard to forget crash into her present. Suddenly, Adora finds herself wanting more and she’s willing to risk everything to get it.
-
On the Calculation of Volume IV
£12.99In a sprawling villa on the outskirts of Bremen, Tara Selter is starting to settle into a new kind of eighteenth of November. Her days with Henry, Ralf and Olga revolve around the daily routines of practical chores: gathering provisions, splitting firewood. But one morning, there are five new arrivals at their wrought-iron gate. Now the villa is full of people. As their community grows, their search for answers about the eighteenth of November becomes more urgent.
-
Helm
£9.99Helm is a ferocious, mischievous wind – a subject of folklore and awe, who has blasted the sublime landscape of the Eden Valley since the very dawn of time. Through the stories of those who’ve obsessed over this phenomenon, Helm’s extraordinary history is formed: the Neolithic tribe who tried to placate Helm, the Dark Age wizard priest who wanted to banish Helm, the Victorian steam engineer who attempted to capture Helm – and the farmer’s daughter who loved Helm. But now Dr Selima Sutar, surrounded by infinite clouds and measuring instruments in her observation hut, fears human pollution is killing Helm.
-
Boyhood
£23.00This work opens in 1979 with the abduction of a young boy outside a Glasgow football ground. Nine years later, the boy’s brother, Aaron Murray, is on the cusp of that moment when adolescence becomes adulthood. His own journey of grief and recovery has been guided by an angel, ‘The Precious Gift’ – perhaps imagined, perhaps real – who has blessed Aaron with redemptive, messianic powers. These have enabled him to see through the past and present, joining the dots between a vast array of characters; ballerinas, soldiers, poets, burlesque dancers, East End gangsters and the Vampire of Derry over five decades, all tied up in each other’s fate. As Aaron’s visions span cities and decades, from wartime Paris to the Troubles in the 1970s, Mexico City in the 1980s to – of course – Glasgow, Boyhood builds to an extraordinary, intense, climactic moment of redemption.
-
Seascraper
★ STAFF PICK!£9.99
Selected by MiaStaff Pick!
Mia says…
Thomas Flett works a difficult life on the shores, while secretly dreaming up folk music compositions. After striking an unlikely friendship with a man who claims to be a Hollywood film director, Thomas’s future seems at once closer and further away. A considerate novel about aspirations, hope, class, and pining, while the sea looms ominously in the background. I also very much recommend following the book’s ending prompt and listening to a “real-life” recording of Thomas’s song.
_______________________________________________________________________
Thomas lives a slow, deliberate life with his mother in Longferry, working his grandpa’s trade as a shanker. He rises early to take his horse and cart to the grey, gloomy beach and scrape for shrimp, spending the afternoon selling his wares, trying to wash away the salt and scum, pining for Joan Wyeth down the street, and rehearsing songs on his guitar. At heart, he is a folk musician, but it remains a private dream. When a striking visitor turns up, bringing the promise of Hollywood glamour, Thomas is shaken from the drudgery of his days and begins to see a different future. But how much of what the American claims is true, and how far can his inspiration carry Thomas?
-
Son of Nobody
£20.00Harlow Donne has devoted his life to the Classical world. When a chance comes up to study an obscure collection of papyrus fragments at Oxford University, he seizes it. Though it means leaving his daughter and fracturing marriage back home in Canada, this is the kind of career break he desperately needs. In the depths of the Bodleian Library, Harlow discovers a lost account of the Trojan War, a glimpse into the founding of Western civilization itself. He names the epic poem ‘The Psoad’, after its protagonist, a Greek commoner identified as Psoas of Midea but known to all as ‘son of nobody’. As sole translator and interpreter of ‘The Psoad’, Harlow dedicates the poem and its footnotes to his daughter, Helen. Under his gaze, the text unlocks echoes of Ancient Greece into the present day, and a personal message to his beloved child appears.