The Maze At Windermere

Author : Gregory Blake Smith
Publisher : Penguin
Page : 368 pages
File Size : 49,6 Mb
Release : 2018-01-09
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9780735221949

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The Maze at Windermere by Gregory Blake Smith Pdf

Named one of the best books of 2018 by The Washington Post, The Seattle Times, and The Advocate “Staggeringly brilliant . . . You’ll start The Maze of Windermere with bewilderment, but you’ll close it in awe.” —The Washington Post “Pitch perfect.” —New York Times Book Review When a drunken party guest challenges him to a late-night tennis match, Sandy Allison finds himself unexpectedly entangled in the monied world of Newport, Rhode Island. A former touring pro a little down on his luck, Sandy has nothing to stake against the vintage motorcycle his opponent wagers. But then Alice DuPont—the young heiress to a Newport mansion called Windermere—offers up her diamond necklace. With this reckless wager begins a dazzling narrative odyssey that braids together four centuries of aspiration and adversity in this renowned seaside society capital. A witty and urbane bachelor of the Gilded Age embarks on a high-risk scheme to marry into a fortune; a young Henry James, soon to make his mark on the world, turns himself to his craft with harrowing social consequences; an aristocratic British officer during the American Revolution carries on a courtship that leads to murder; and, in Newport’s earliest days, a tragically orphaned Quaker girl imagines a way forward for herself and the slave girl she has inherited. Gregory Blake Smith weaves these intersecting worlds into a rich, brilliant tapestry. A deftly layered novel of love, ambition, and duplicity, The Maze at Windermere charts a voyage across the ages into the maze of the human heart.

Author : Lucy Hughes-Hallett
Publisher : HarperCollins
Page : 480 pages
File Size : 53,9 Mb
Release : 2018-01-09
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9780062684219

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Peculiar Ground by Lucy Hughes-Hallett Pdf

A Kirkus Best Book of 2018 "Unlike anything I’ve read. With its broad scope and its intimacy and exactness, it cuts through the apparatus of life to the vivid moment. Haunting and huge, and funny and sensuous. It’s wonderful."—Tessa Hadley The Costa Award-winning author of The Pike makes her literary fiction debut with an extraordinary historical novel in the spirit of Wolf Hall and Atonement—a great English country house novel, spanning three centuries, that explores surprisingly timely themes of immigration and exclusion. It is the seventeenth century and a wall is being raised around Wychwood, transforming the great house and its park into a private realm of ornamental lakes, grandiose gardens, and majestic avenues designed by Mr. Norris, a visionary landscaper. In this enclosed world everyone has something to hide after decades of civil war. Dissenters shelter in the woods, lovers rendezvous in secret enclaves, and outsiders—migrants fleeing the plague—find no mercy. Three centuries later, far away in Berlin, another wall is raised, while at Wychwood, an erotic entanglement over one sticky, languorous weekend in 1961 is overshadowed by news of historic change. Young Nell, whose father manages the estate, grows up amid dramatic upheavals as the great house is invaded: a pop festival by the lake, a television crew in the dining room, a Great Storm brewing. In 1989, as the Cold War peters out, a threat from a different kind of conflict reaches Wychwood’s walls. Lucy Hughes-Hallett conjures an intricately structured, captivating story that explores the lives of game keepers and witches, agitators and aristocrats; the exuberance of young love and the pathos of aging; and the way those who try to wall others out risk finding themselves walled in. With poignancy and grace, she illuminates a place where past and present are inextricably linked by stories, legends, and history—and by one patch of peculiar ground.

Author : John Pipkin
Publisher : Anchor
Page : 386 pages
File Size : 44,9 Mb
Release : 2009-04-28
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9780385530477

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Woodsburner by John Pipkin Pdf

Set against the backdrop of a devastating forest fire that Henry David Thoreau accidentally set in 1844, John Pipkin's novel brilliantly illuminates the mind of the young philosopher at a formative moment in his life and in the life of the young nation. The Thoreau of Woodsburner is a lost soul, resigned to a career designing pencils for his father's factory while dreaming of better things. On the day of the fire, his path crosses those of three very different people, each of whom also harbors a secret dream. Oddmund Hus, a shy Norwegian farmhand, pines for the wife of his brutal employer. Eliot Calvert, a prosperous bookseller, is also a hilariously inept aspiring playwright. Caleb Dowdy preaches fire and brimstone to his followers through an opium haze. Each of their lives, like Thoreau's, will be changed forever by the fire.

Author : Daisy Goodwin
Publisher : St. Martin's Press
Page : 475 pages
File Size : 55,5 Mb
Release : 2011-06-21
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9781429987080

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The American Heiress by Daisy Goodwin Pdf

Now including an excerpt from VICTORIA: A Novel, by Daisy Goodwin, the Creator/Writer of the Masterpiece Presentation on PBS. "Anyone suffering Downton Abbey withdrawal symptoms (who isn't?) will find an instant tonic in Daisy Goodwin's The American Heiress. The story of Cora Cash, an American heiress in the 1890s who bags an English duke, this is a deliciously evocative first novel that lingers in the mind." --Allison Pearson, New York Times bestselling author of I Don't Know How She Does It and I Think I Love You Be careful what you wish for. Traveling abroad with her mother at the turn of the twentieth century to seek a titled husband, beautiful, vivacious Cora Cash, whose family mansion in Newport dwarfs the Vanderbilts', suddenly finds herself Duchess of Wareham, married to Ivo, the most eligible bachelor in England. Nothing is quite as it seems, however: Ivo is withdrawn and secretive, and the English social scene is full of traps and betrayals. Money, Cora soon learns, cannot buy everything, as she must decide what is truly worth the price in her life and her marriage. Witty, moving, and brilliantly entertaining, Cora's story marks the debut of a glorious storyteller who brings a fresh new spirit to the world of Edith Wharton and Henry James. "For daughters of the new American billionaires of the 19th century, it was the ultimate deal: marriage to a cash-strapped British Aristocrat in return for a title and social status. But money didn't always buy them happiness." --Daisy Goodwin in The Daily Mail One of Library Journal's Best Historical Fiction Books of 2011

Author : Meg Waite Clayton
Publisher : Ballantine Books
Page : 304 pages
File Size : 45,9 Mb
Release : 2013-07-16
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9780345538840

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The Wednesday Daughters by Meg Waite Clayton Pdf

In the tradition of Kristin Hannah and Karen Joy Fowler, Meg Waite Clayton, bestselling author of The Wednesday Sisters, returns with an enthralling new novel of mothers, daughters, and the secrets and dreams passed down through generations. It is early evening when Hope Tantry arrives at the small cottage in England’s pastoral Lake District where her mother, Ally, spent the last years of her life. Ally—one of a close-knit group of women who called themselves the Wednesday Sisters—had used the cottage as a writer’s retreat while she worked on her unpublished biography of Beatrix Potter, yet Hope knows little about her mother’s time there. Traveling with Hope are friends Anna Page and Julie, first introduced as little girls in The Wednesday Sisters, now grown women grappling with issues of a different era. They’ve come to help Hope sort through her mother’s personal effects, yet what they find is a tangled family history—one steeped in Lake District lore. Hope finds a stack of Ally’s old notebooks tucked away in a hidden drawer, all written in a mysterious code. As she, Julie, and Anna Page try to decipher Ally’s writings—the reason for their encryption, their possible connection to the Potter manuscript—they are forced to confront their own personal struggles: Hope’s doubts about her marriage, Julie’s grief over losing her twin sister, Anna Page’s fear of commitment in relationships. And as the real reason for Ally’s stay in England comes to light, Hope, Julie, and Anna Page reach a new understanding about the enduring bonds of family, the unwavering strength of love, and the inescapable pull of the past. Look for special features inside. Join the Random House Reader’s Circle for author chats and more. “The present and the past intertwine beautifully and inevitably in Meg Waite Clayton’s winning follow-up to The Wednesday Sisters. From the beguiling Lake District setting, to a completely charming (and spot-on) portrayal of Beatrix Potter, to the way the Wednesday daughters strive to unpuzzle both their own choices and their mothers’ legacies, every layer of the novel delivers. The Wednesday Daughters is utterly rich and satisfying.”—Paula McLain, New York Times bestselling author of The Paris Wife “A captivating novel about mothers and daughters, lifelong friendships, love affairs, betrayals, and redemption. Clayton transports us to the English Lake District, an area rich in literary history and romance, where her characters’ secrets unfold in ways both satisfying and surprising.”—J. Courtney Sullivan, New York Times bestselling author of Commencement, Maine, and The Engagements “Beautiful storytelling . . . [Meg Waite Clayton] delves deep into the human heart . . . and [will] keep you hanging on until the very last page is turned.”—RT Book Reviews “The Wednesday Daughters is a bewitching escape of a novel. The characters became my beloved companions. I wanted it never to end.”—Elin Hilderbrand, author of Beautiful Day “Heartwarming . . . filled with memorable characters.”—Bookreporter Selected as Recommended Summer Reading by Chicago Tribune • Fort Worth Star-Telegram • San Jose Mercury News

Author : Kristen Lippert-Martin
Publisher : Carolrhoda Lab ®
Page : 266 pages
File Size : 52,7 Mb
Release : 2014-08-01
Category : Young Adult Fiction
ISBN : 9781606845196

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Tabula Rasa by Kristen Lippert-Martin Pdf

The Bourne Identity meets Divergent in this action-packed debut thriller with a Katniss-esque heroine fighting to regain her memories and stay alive, set against a dystopian hospital background. Sarah finds herself in a battle for her life within the walls of her hospital-turned-prison. A procedure to eliminate her memory goes awry, and she starts to remember snatches of her past. Was she an urban terrorist or vigilante? Has the procedure been her salvation or her destruction? The answers lie trapped within her mind. To access them, she'll need the help of the teen computer hacker who's trying to bring the hospital down for his own reasons, and she'll need to evade an army of mercenary soldiers poised to eliminate her for good. If only she knew why . . .

Author : Gary D. Schmidt
Publisher : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Page : 313 pages
File Size : 55,6 Mb
Release : 2007
Category : Juvenile Fiction
ISBN : 9780618724833

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The Wednesday Wars by Gary D. Schmidt Pdf

During the 1967 school year, on Wednesday afternoons when all his classmates go to either Catechism or Hebrew school, seventh-grader Holling Hoodhood stays in Mrs. Baker's classroom where they read the plays of William Shakespeare and Holling learns muchof value about the world he lives in.

Author : Max Porter
Publisher : Faber & Faber
Page : 57 pages
File Size : 40,8 Mb
Release : 2021-01-05
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9780571366521

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The Death of Francis Bacon by Max Porter Pdf

A bold and brilliant short work by the author of Grief is the Thing with Feathers and Lanny.Madrid. Unfinished.Man Dying.A great painter lies on his deathbed.Max Porter translates into seven extraordinary written pictures the explosive final workings of the artist's mind.

Author : Henry James
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 191 pages
File Size : 41,6 Mb
Release : 1961
Category : Electronic
ISBN : OCLC:716545214

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The Turn of the Screw by Henry James Pdf

Author : Geoffrey Trease
Publisher : Penguin UK
Page : 251 pages
File Size : 53,5 Mb
Release : 2009-04-02
Category : Juvenile Fiction
ISBN : 9780141327266

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Cue for Treason by Geoffrey Trease Pdf

Fleeing from the evil Sir Philip Morton, Peter Brownrigg finds himself on the wrong side of the law. On the run to London he meets Kit and the two decide to stick together. But a chance discovery endangers their lives and soon Peter is deep in murderous plots, secrets and even treason. Set in the turbulent days of Elizabeth I, this classic story of danger and intrigue conjures up a world of mystery, twists and turns and thrilling action.

Author : Jennifer Niven
Publisher : Penguin
Page : 434 pages
File Size : 41,8 Mb
Release : 2009-07-28
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9781101057797

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Velva Jean Learns to Drive by Jennifer Niven Pdf

The New York Times bestselling author of All the Bright Places—soon to be a Netflix film starring Elle Fanning—presents a coming-of-age debut about ill-fated love during the Great Depression—and what it means to be a woman with ambition. Velva Jean’s mother urged her to “live out there in the great wide world,” and growing up in Appalachia in the years before World War II, Velva Jean dreams of becoming a big-time singer in Nashville. Then she falls in love with Harley Bright, a handsome juvenile delinquent turned revival preacher. As their tumultuous love story unfolds, Velva Jean must choose between keeping her hard-won home and pursuing her dream of singing in the Grand Ole Opry. Like All the Bright Places, hailed as a “charming love story about [an] unlikely and endearing pair” (New York Times Book Review), Jennifer Niven’s debut novel is a big-hearted story about the struggle to find happiness.

Author : Alex Landragin
Publisher : St. Martin's Press
Page : 384 pages
File Size : 52,6 Mb
Release : 2020-07-28
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9781250259059

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Crossings by Alex Landragin Pdf

"A sparkling debut. Landragin’s seductive literary romp shines as a celebration of the act of storytelling." —Publishers Weekly "Romance, mystery, history, and magical invention dance across centuries in an impressive debut novel." —Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review) "Deft writing seduces the reader in a complex tale of pursuit, denial, and retribution moving from past to future. Highly recommended." —Library Journal (Starred Review) Alex Landragin's Crossings is an unforgettable and explosive genre-bending debut—a novel in three parts, designed to be read in two different directions, spanning a hundred and fifty years and seven lifetimes. On the brink of the Nazi occupation of Paris, a German-Jewish bookbinder stumbles across a manuscript called Crossings. It has three narratives, each as unlikely as the next. And the narratives can be read one of two ways: either straight through or according to an alternate chapter sequence. The first story in Crossings is a never-before-seen ghost story by the poet Charles Baudelaire, penned for an illiterate girl. Next is a noir romance about an exiled man, modeled on Walter Benjamin, whose recurring nightmares are cured when he falls in love with a storyteller who draws him into a dangerous intrigue of rare manuscripts, police corruption, and literary societies. Finally, there are the fantastical memoirs of a woman-turned-monarch whose singular life has spanned seven generations. With each new chapter, the stunning connections between these seemingly disparate people grow clearer and more extraordinary. Crossings is an unforgettable adventure full of love, longing and empathy.

Author : Martin Seay
Publisher : Melville House
Page : 592 pages
File Size : 44,9 Mb
Release : 2016-05-10
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9781612195155

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The Mirror Thief by Martin Seay Pdf

A globetrotting, time-bending, wildly entertaining masterpiece hailed by the New York Times Book Review as "Audaciously well written...the book I was raving about to my friends before I'd even finished it." Publishers Weekly raved that "with near-universal appeal . . . Seay’s debut novel is a true delight, a big, beautiful cabinet of wonders that is by turns an ominous modern thriller, a supernatural mystery, and an enchanting historical adventure story." Set in three cities in three eras, The Mirror Thief calls to mind David Mitchell and Umberto Eco in its mix of entertainment and literary bravado. The core story is set in Venice in the sixteenth century, when the famed makers of Venetian glass were perfecting one of the old world's most wondrous inventions: the mirror. An object of glittering yet fearful fascination—was it reflecting simple reality, or something more spiritually revealing?—the Venetian mirrors were state of the art technology, and subject to industrial espionage by desirous sultans and royals world-wide. But for any of the development team to leave the island was a crime punishable by death. One man, however—a world-weary war hero with nothing to lose—has a scheme he thinks will allow him to outwit the city's terrifying enforcers of the edict, the ominous Council of Ten . . . Meanwhile, in two other Venices—Venice Beach, California, circa 1958, and the Venice casino in Las Vegas, circa today—two other schemers launch similarly dangerous plans to get away with a secret . . . All three stories will weave together into a spell-binding tour-de-force that is impossible to put down—an old-fashioned, stay-up-all-night novel that, in the end, returns the reader to a stunning conclusion in the original Venice . . . and the bedazzled sense of having read a truly original and thrilling work of art.

Author : Susan Fraser King
Publisher : Crown
Page : 370 pages
File Size : 55,5 Mb
Release : 2009-04-07
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9780307341754

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Lady Macbeth by Susan Fraser King Pdf

From towering crags to misted moors and formidable fortresses, Lady Macbeth transports readers to the heart of eleventh-century Scotland, painting a bold, vivid portrait of a woman much maligned by history. Lady Gruadh—Rue—is the last female descendant of Scotland’s most royal line. Married to a powerful northern lord, she is widowed while still carrying his child and forced to marry her husband’s murderer: a rising warlord named Macbeth. As she encounters danger from Vikings, Saxons, and treacherous Scottish lords, Rue begins to respect the man she once despised. When she learns that Macbeth’s complex ambitions extend beyond the borders of the vast northern region, she realizes that only Macbeth can unite Scotland. But his wife’s royal blood is the key to his ultimate success. Determined to protect her son and a proud legacy of warrior kings and strong women, Rue invokes the ancient wisdom and secret practices of her female ancestors as she strives to hold her own in a warrior society. Finally, side by side as the last Celtic king and queen of Scotland, she and Macbeth must face the gathering storm brought on by their combined destiny. This is Lady Macbeth as you’ve never seen her.

Author : Ellery Queen
Publisher : Overamstel Uitgevers
Page : 228 pages
File Size : 40,9 Mb
Release : 2011-10-25
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9789049986506

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Calamity Town by Ellery Queen Pdf

Looking for trouble, Ellery Queen descends on a small town At the tail end of the long summer of 1940, there is nowhere in the country more charming than Wrightsville. The Depression has abated, and for the first time in years the city is booming. There is hope in Wrightsville, but Ellery Queen has come looking for death. The mystery author is hoping for fodder for a novel, and he senses the corruption that lurks beneath the apple pie façade. He rents a house owned by the town’s first family, whose three daughters star in most of the local gossip. One is fragile, left at the altar three years ago and never recovered. Another is engaged to the city’s rising political star, an upright man who’s already boring her. And then there’s Lola, the divorced, bohemian black sheep. Together, they make a volatile combination. Once he sees the ugliness in Wrightsville, Queen sits back—waiting for the crime to come to him.