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The Englishman’s Boy brilliantly links together Hollywood in the 1920s with one of the bloodiest, most brutal events of the nineteenth-century Canadian West – the Cypress Hills Massacre. Vanderhaeghe’s rendering of the stark, dramatic beauty of the western landscape and of Hollywood in its most extravagant era – with its visionaries, celebrities, and dreamers – provides vivid background for scenes of action, adventure, and intrigue. Richly textured, evocative of time and place, this is an unforgettable novel about power, greed, and the pull of dreams that has at its centre the haunting story of a young drifter – “the Englishman’s boy” – whose fate, ultimately, is a tragic one.
From the national bestselling author of The Last Crossing, a story that’s “by turns a western, a critique of Hollywood, and a novel of ideas” (The New York Times Book Review). In 1920s Hollywood, elusive producer Damon Ira Chance is obsessed with making movies rooted in American history and experience. So after discovering that small-time actor Shorty McAdoo is a real-life cowboy—and is even rumored to have played a role in the Cypress Hills Massacre—Chance commissions ambitious young screenwriter Harry Vincent to find Shorty and retell his story. But as Harry digs deeper into Shorty’s life, he uncovers a surprising tale of survival, power, greed, and the seduction of dreams . . . all with an ending that no one is prepared for. “A wonderful writer . . . The Englishman’s Boy is a great accomplishment.” —Richard Ford “An epic tale that brings together the American West before the turn of the century with the Hollywood of the 1920s.” —Los Angeles Times “Fascinating . . . Vanderhaeghe seamlessly alternates two interconnected stories. . . . Masterful storytelling.” —Entertainment Weekly “A compelling yarn that delivers provocative intellectual content about the ways our tendency to mythologize history can prevent us from learning its lessons.” —San Francisco Chronicle
As a youth, Shorty McAdoo participated in a massacre of Indians. Fifty years later, still suffering from guilt, he is approached by a filmmaker to tell his story. A chance to make amends--or get exploited.
Set in the second half of the nineteenth century, in the American and Canadian West and in Victorian England, The Last Crossing is a sweeping tale of interwoven lives and stories Charles and Addington Gaunt must find their brother Simon, who has gone missing in the wilds of the American West. Charles, a disillusioned artist, and Addington, a disgraced military captain, enlist the services of a guide to lead them on their journey across a difficult and unknown landscape. This is the enigmatic Jerry Potts, half Blackfoot, half Scottish, who suffers his own painful past. The party grows to include Caleb Ayto, a sycophantic American journalist, and Lucy Stoveall, a wise and beautiful woman who travels in the hope of avenging her sister’s vicious murder. Later, the group is joined by Custis Straw, a Civil War veteran searching for salvation, and Custis’s friend and protector Aloysius Dooley, a saloon-keeper. This unlikely posse becomes entangled in an unfolding drama that forces each person to come to terms with his own demons. The Last Crossing contains many haunting scenes – among them, a bear hunt at dawn, the meeting of a Métis caravan, the discovery of an Indian village decimated by smallpox, a sharpshooter’s devastating annihilation of his prey, a young boy’s last memory of his mother. Vanderhaeghe links the hallowed colleges of Oxford and the pleasure houses of London to the treacherous Montana plains; and the rough trading posts of the Canadian wilderness to the heart of Indian folklore. At the novel’s centre is an unusual and moving love story. The Last Crossing is Guy Vanderhaeghe’s most powerful novel to date. It is a novel of harshness and redemption, an epic masterpiece, rich with unforgettable characters and vividly described events, that solidifies his place as one of Canada’s premier storytellers.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER WINNER of the 2022 Glengarry Book Award The first novel in nearly a decade from the three-time Governor General's Award‒winning author of The Last Crossing, August Into Winter is an epic story of crime and retribution, of war and its long shadow, and of the redemptive possibilities of love. You carried the past into the future on your back, its knees and arms hugging you tighter with every step. It is 1939, with the world on the brink of global war, when Constable Hotchkiss confronts the spoiled, narcissistic man-child Ernie Sickert about a rash of disturbing pranks in their small prairie town. Outraged and cornered, Ernie commits an act of unspeakable violence, setting in motion a course of events that will change forever the lives of all in his wake. With Loretta Pipe—the scrappy twelve-year-old he idealizes as the love of his life—in tow, Ernie flees town. In close pursuit is Corporal Cooper, who enlists the aid of two brothers, veterans of World War One: Jack, a sensitive, spiritual man with a potential for brutal violence; and angry, impetuous Dill, still recovering from the premature death of his wife who, while on her deathbed, developed an inexplicable obsession with the then-teenaged Ernie Sickert. When a powerful storm floods the prairie roads, wreaking havoc, Ernie and Loretta take shelter in a one-room schoolhouse where they are discovered by the newly arrived teacher, Vidalia Taggart. Vidalia has her own haunted past, one that has driven her to this stark and isolated place with only the journals of her lover Dov, recently killed in the Spanish Civil War, for company. Dill, arriving at the schoolhouse on Ernie's trail, falls hard and fast for Vidalia—but questions whether he can compete with the impossible ideal of a dead man. Guy Vanderhaeghe, writing at the height of his celebrated powers, has crafted a tale of unrelenting suspense against a backdrop of great moral searching and depth. His is a canvas of lavish, indelible detail: of character, of landscape, of history—in all their searing beauty but all their ugliness, too. Vanderhaeghe does not shrink from the corruption, cruelty, and treachery that pervade the world. Yet even in his clear-eyed depiction of evil—a depiction that frequently and delightfully turns darkly comic—he will not deny the possibility of love, of light. With August Into Winter, Guy Vanderhaeghe has given us a masterfully told, masterfully timed story for our own troubled hearts.
These superbly crafted stories reveal an astonishing range, with settings that vary from a farm on the Canadian prairies to Bloomsbury in London, from a high-rise apartment to a mine-shaft. Vanderhaeghe has the uncanny ability to show us the world through the eyes of an eleven-year-old boy as convincingly as he reveals it through the eyes of an old man approaching senility. Moving from the hilarious farce of teenage romance all the way to the numbing tragedy of life in a ward for incurables, these twelve stories inspire belief, admiration, and enjoyment, and come together to form a vibrant chronicle of human experience from a gifted observer of life’s joys and tribulations. This is Guy Vanderhaeghe’s brilliant first book of fiction.
BOOKER PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A novel that follows a middle-aged man as he contends with a past he never much thought about—until his closest childhood friends return with a vengeance: one of them from the grave, another maddeningly present. A novel so compelling that it begs to be read in a single setting, The Sense of an Ending has the psychological and emotional depth and sophistication of Henry James at his best, and is a stunning achievement in Julian Barnes's oeuvre. Tony Webster thought he left his past behind as he built a life for himself, and his career has provided him with a secure retirement and an amicable relationship with his ex-wife and daughter, who now has a family of her own. But when he is presented with a mysterious legacy, he is forced to revise his estimation of his own nature and place in the world.
An Andalusian shepherd boy named Santiago travels from his homeland in Spain to the Egyptian desert in search of a treasure buried in the Pyramids. Along the way he meets a Gypsy woman, a man who calls himself king, and an alchemist, all of whom point Santiago in the direction of his quest. No one knows what the treasure is, or if Santiago will be able to surmount the obstacles along the way. But what starts out as a journey to find worldly goods turns into a discovery of the treasures found within.
William—An Englishman explores the impact of the First World War on a married couple during the rise of Socialism and the Suffragette movement. This is the story of William and Griselda are arrogant social activists who repeat the opinions of others instead of creating their own. They listen only to those who agree with them and consider themselves heroic, even though they risk and sacrifice nothing. They met in the course of pursuing their various idealistic causes and got married. Then they left for a private cottage in the Ardennes for their honeymoon. While they're in the secluded cabin, cut off from contact with the rest of the world, the war starts. Things change for the newlyweds when they find themselves on the Belgian front during WWI, quite by accident. Cicely Hamilton, an English actress, writer, and journalist, was a suffragist, feminist, and a part of the fight for women's suffrage in the United Kingdom. She gently mocked the activism and idealism of the couple in the novel. But when William and Griselda are caught up in the real war, she stops ridiculing, and instead, one senses her sympathy for the victims of war and a great rage against the ones responsible for it.
A special 25th anniversary edition of the extraordinary international bestseller, including a new Foreword by Paulo Coelho. Combining magic, mysticism, wisdom and wonder into an inspiring tale of self-discovery, The Alchemist has become a modern classic, selling millions of copies around the world and transforming the lives of countless readers across generations. Paulo Coelho's masterpiece tells the mystical story of Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd boy who yearns to travel in search of a worldly treasure. His quest will lead him to riches far different—and far more satisfying—than he ever imagined. Santiago's journey teaches us about the essential wisdom of listening to our hearts, of recognizing opportunity and learning to read the omens strewn along life's path, and, most importantly, to follow our dreams.
Multi-award-winning author Guy Vanderhaeghe's eagerly awaited new novel is a dazzling follow up to his bestselling The Englishman's Boy and The Last Crossing (a Canada Reads winner!). A Good Man culminates what could be thought of as a trilogy of books set in the late nineteenth-century Canadian and American West, and it is a masterpiece. Vanderhaeghe skilfully weaves a rich tapestry of history with the turns of fortune of his most vividly and compellingly drawn cast of characters yet. Vanderhaeghe entwines breathtaking, intriguing, and richly described narratives that contain a compelling love story, a tale of revenge and violence, a spectacular battle scene, the story of an incident in Welsely's past that threatens his relationship with Ada, and much, much more. While raising moral questions, this novel weaves the historical with the personal and stands as Vanderhaeghe's most accomplished and brilliant novel to date.
One of the most famous literary works of the 20th century, the novella “Death in Venice” embodies themes that preoccupied Thomas Mann (1875–1955) in much of his work; the duality of art and life, the presence of death and disintegration in the midst of existence, the connection between love and suffering, and the conflict between the artist and his inner self. Mann’s handling of these concerns in this story of a middle-aged German writer, torn by his passion for a Polish youth met on holiday in Venice, resulted in a work of great psychological intensity and tragic power.
Set in the late nineteenth-century Canadian and American West, Guy Vanderhaeghe's bestselling and multi-award-winning epic Frontier Trilogy is now available together for the first time. The Englishman's Boy brilliantly links together Hollywood in the 1920s with one of the bloodiest, most brutal events of the nineteenth-century Canadian West--the Cypress Hills Massacre--to tell an unforgettable novel about power, greed, and the pull of dreams that has at its centre the haunting story of a young drifter--"the Englishman's boy"--whose fate, ultimately, is a tragic one. Winner of Canada Reads 2004, The Last Crossing tells the epic story of an unlikely group--including two Englishmen in search of their lost brother; their half-Blackfoot, half-Scottish guide; a Civil War veteran searching for salvation; a young woman determined to avenge her sister's brutal murder--who make the treacherous journey across the unknown landscape of the West, only to become entangled in an unfolding drama that forces each person to come to terms with his own demons. Set in the aftermath of Custer's defeat at the Battle of Little Big Horn, A Good Man weaves together the lives of a compellingly drawn cast of characters, including Wesley Case, a disgraced military officer who works as a liaison between the American and Canadian militaries in an effort to contain the Native Americans' unresolved anger in the wake of the Civil War; Ada Tarr, the beautiful, outspoken widow he has fallen in love with; and Michael Dunne, her disturbed admirer. When the American government unleashes its final assault on the Indians, Dunne commences his own vicious plan for vengeance in one last feverish attempt to claim Ada as his own.
Song is just a boy when he sets out from Lishui village in China. Brimming with courage and ambition, he leaves behind his impoverished broken family, hoping he’ll make his fortune and return home. Chasing tales of sugarcane, rubber and gold, Song embarks upon a perilous voyage across the oceans to the British colony of Guiana, but once there he discovers riches are not so easy to come by and he is forced into labouring as an indentured plantation worker. This is only the beginning of Song’s remarkable life, but as he finds himself between places and between peoples, and increasingly aware that the circumstances of birth carry more weight than accomplishments or good deeds, Song fears he may live as an outsider forever. This beautifully written and evocative story spans nearly half a century and half the globe, and though it is set in another century, Song’s story of emigration and the quest for an opportunity to improve his life is timeless.