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One man’s fortune holds the key to a nation’s fate in this sensational debut novel set in 18th-century Sweden. The Stockholm Octavo by Karen Engelmann transports readers to a colorful Scandinavian world of intrigue and magic in a dazzling golden age of high art, music, and opulent fashion. A masterwork of historical fiction in the vein of Patrick Suskind’s classic novel, Perfume, Karen Engelmann’s The Stockholm Octavo is mysterious and romantic—as magical and enthralling as The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern—and features a brilliant and unforgettable cast of extraordinary characters.
'A delicious page-turner that brings 18th century Stockholm to vivid life, complete with scandal, conspiracy, mystery, and a hint of magic.' - Eleanor Brown, New York Times bestselling author of The Weird Sisters In 18th century Stockholm, as the winds of revolution rage through the great capitals of Europe, the key to a nation's fate rests in the hands of an unlikely hero. Emil Larsson is a drinker, card player and contented bachelor until he is told that his position at the Office of Excise and Customs depends on his settling down and finding a wife. Mrs Sparrow, proprietor of an exclusive gaming house, fortune teller (and confidante of King Gustav III) offers to lay an Octavo for him - a form of cartomancy which can divine his future if he can find the eight individuals who can help him realise his vision. When Mrs Sparrow wins a mysterious fan in her card game, the Octavo's deeper powers are revealed. No longer just a game of the heart, collecting his Eight is now crucial to pulling his country back from the brink of rebellion and chaos. A debut novel full of opulent period detail, brilliantly interweaving history, romance and intrigue, in which one man's fortune holds the key to a nation's precarious fate.
Stockholm 1791. Revolutionens vindar drar genom Europa och även i Sverige börjar Gustav III:s makt att ifrågasättas. Emil Larsson är nöjd med att tillbringa sina dagar med att dricka och spela kort till den dag han inser att hans fortsatta yrkeskarriär som tulltjänsteman är beroende av att han hittar en kvinna att gifta sig med. Hans vän fru Sparf, ägare till ett exklusivt spelhus och spådam, med både Gustav III och hans bror Karl som klienter, hjälper Emil genom att lägga en octavo åt honom – en kortspådom som visar honom vilka åtta personer i hans närhet som kommer att förvandla hans drömmar till verklighet. Full av förhoppning börjar Emil leta bland arbetare och adel efter sina nya vänner. Men föga kan han ana att det som till en början var en oskyldig lek så småningom kommer att leda honom till en annan mycket mäktigare profetia – Stockholm octavo! Och innan Emil hinner förstå hur allt gått till finner han sig högst involverad i de mordiska intrigerna kring Gustav III.
Visions of Angels by Nelson Bloncourt,Karen Engelmann Pdf
In 40 black-and-white photographs that range from the ephemeral to the Earthly, 35 of today's foremost photographers present the idea of angels in a stunning compendium.
Zweden, 1798. Emil Larsson, een drinkende en gokkende vrijgezel, raakt bevriend met de eigenaresse van een goklokaal, mevrouw Sofia Mus, die hem de toekomst voorspelt aan de hand van een nieuwe vorm van kaartlegging: het octavo. Wanneer Sofia na een lange nacht aan de goktafels een kostbare waaier van barones De Uzanne wint, leidt dat tot bittere rivaliteit en een moorddadig complot waar niemand ongeschonden uit tevoorschijn komt. Ondertussen krijgt Emil te horen dat hij `de Zoeker' is, en dat niet alleen zijn toekomst maar ook die van de monarchie, de stad en heel Zweden afhangt van zijn vermogen de acht leden van het Stockholm Octavo te achterhalen... Het Stockholm Octavo is een adembenemende, spannende en onvergetelijke historische roman die op ingenieuze wijze geschiedenis, politiek, romantiek, mystiek en de geheime taal van waaiers combineert. ‘Wat een geweldig verhaal! – Library Journal (sterrecensie) ‘Een meesterlijke vertelling: mysterieus, spannend en boordevol actie.’ – Booklist (sterrecensie) ‘Adembenemend.’ – Kirkus Reviews ‘Buitengewoon spannend en meeslepend.’ – Publishers Weekly (sterrecensie)
Summer, 1643 England is at war with itself. King Charles I has fled London, his negotiations with Parliament in tatters. The country is consumed by bloodshed. For Thomas Hill, a man of letters quietly running a bookshop in the rural town of Romsey, knowledge of the war is limited to the rumours that reach the local inn. When a stranger knocks on his door one night and informs him that the king's cryptographer has died, everything changes. Aware of Thomas's background as a mathematician and his expertise in codes and ciphers, the king has summoned him to his court in Oxford. On arrival, Thomas soon discovers that nothing at court is straightforward. There is evidence of a traitor in their midst. Brutal murder follows brutal murder. And when a vital message encrypted with a notoriously unbreakable code is intercepted, he must decipher it to reveal the king's betrayer and prevent the violent death that failure will surely bring.
The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic by Emily Croy Barker Pdf
An imaginative story of a woman caught in an alternate world—where she will need to learn the skills of magic to survive Nora Fischer’s dissertation is stalled and her boyfriend is about to marry another woman. During a miserable weekend at a friend’s wedding, Nora wanders off and walks through a portal into a different world where she’s transformed from a drab grad student into a stunning beauty. Before long, she has a set of glamorous new friends and her romance with gorgeous, masterful Raclin is heating up. It’s almost too good to be true. Then the elegant veneer shatters. Nora’s new fantasy world turns darker, a fairy tale gone incredibly wrong. Making it here will take skills Nora never learned in graduate school. Her only real ally—and a reluctant one at that—is the magician Aruendiel, a grim, reclusive figure with a biting tongue and a shrouded past. And it will take her becoming Aruendiel’s student—and learning magic herself—to survive. When a passage home finally opens, Nora must weigh her “real life” against the dangerous power of love and magic. For lovers of Lev Grossman's The Magicians series (The Magicians and The Magician King) and Deborah Harkness's All Souls Trilogy (A Discovery of Witches and Shadow of Night).
Book Trade Catalogues in Early Modern Europe by Arthur der Weduwen,Andrew Pettegree,Graeme Kemp Pdf
This edited collection offers in seventeen chapters the latest scholarship on book catalogues in early modern Europe. Contributors discuss the role that these catalogues played in bookselling and book auctions, as well as in guiding the tastes of book collectors and inspiring some of the greatest libraries of the era. Catalogues in the Low Countries, Britain, Germany, France and the Baltic region are studied as important products of the early modern book trade, and as reconstructive tools for the history of the book. These catalogues offer a goldmine of information on the business of books, and they allow scholars to examine questions on the distribution and ownership of books that would otherwise be extremely difficult to pursue. Contributors: Helwi Blom, Pierre Delsaerdt, Arthur der Weduwen, Anna E. de Wilde, Shanti Graheli, Ann-Marie Hansen, Rindert Jagersma, Graeme Kemp, Ian Maclean, Alicia C. Montoya, Andrew Pettegree, Philippe Schmid, Forrest C. Strickland, Jasna Tingle, Marieke van Egeraat, and Elise Watson.
A “shrewd, funny, and sometimes devastating” novel about the things we desire and the things we throw away (Entertainment Weekly). A New York Times Notable Book A highly inventive, corrosively funny story of our times, Want Not exposes three different worlds in various states of disrepair—a young freegan couple living off the grid in New York City; a once-prominent linguist, sacked at midlife by the dissolution of his marriage and his father’s losing battle with Alzheimer’s; and a self-made debt-collecting magnate, whose brute talent for squeezing money out of unlikely places has yielded him a royal existence, trophy wife included. Want and desire propel these characters forward toward something, anything, more, until their worlds collide, briefly, randomly, yet irrevocably, in a shattering ending that will haunt readers long after the last page is turned. “Its pleasures are endless."—Joshua Ferris, author of Then We Came to the End “Terrific…The novel may begin with prickly satire, it may dig deep into America’s disposable lifestyle, but it ultimately pivots to scenes of surprising tenderness…a novel to hoard.”—The Washington Post “Leaps nimbly from topic to topic…from freeganism to conspicuous consumption; from Manhattan's Alphabet City to residential New Jersey to the backwoods of Tennessee; and from neighbors with nothing but geographical location in common to sisters who share nothing but blood….Sitting down with Want Not is like finding yourself opposite the most interesting person at a dinner party. It pulls you in immediately; makes you shake your head in wonder and delight at your new companion's wit, originality, and compelling turns of phrase; and, best of all, surprises you into laughter.”—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette “For readers who relish extravagant language, scathing wit and philosophical heft, Want Not wastes nothing.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
From one of Sweden’s most astute cultural critics, a razor-sharp comedy of the progress and ruin of the industrial welfare state, told through the story of a single family. Ragnar Johansson is born in 1932, a transformative moment in Swedish history. He has Swedish social democracy flowing through his veins—convinced it lifted humankind out of the dark ages and into modernity, he cherishes it. At times Ragnar despises his mother, Svea, whose perpetual baking, scrubbing, and canning represent the poverty of the peasantry. Ragnar, for his part, hails the efficiency of washing machines and prefab food. Once he has children himself, he raises them in accordance with his values, standing in the ski track supporting his daughter Elsa as she works hard to become one of the best skiers in the country. While Svea is a relic of the past, Elsa represents hope for the future. In time, however, Ragnar realizes that the world is changing. Is his golden age coming to an end? In Son of Svea, Lena Andersson offers a characteristically funny, wise, and moving family chronicle about the social transformations that unite and divide us, and about finding the courage to be true to oneself.
"This thrilling, emotional, and tautly paced novel will appeal to fans of The Book Thief (2006)."—Booklist, STARRED Review Her family is priceless. So is the art she's stealing to support them. Sophie Porter is the last person in the world you'd expect to be stealing Renaissance masterpieces—and that's exactly why she's so good at it. Slipping objects out of her husband's office at the Philadelphia Museum of Art satisfies something deep inside, during a time in her life when satisfactions are few and far between. Selling the treasures also happens to keep their house out of foreclosure — a house that means everything to Sophie. But the FBI is sniffing around, and Sophie is close to destroying the very life she's working so hard to build. She knows she should give up her thieving ways. But she may no longer be in control. The Objects of Her Affection is a riveting story about the realities of motherhood, the perils of secrecy, and the art of appraising the real treasures in our lives. "Sonya Cobb combines the rarified atmosphere of museum scholarship, illegal art trafficking, and the sticky desperation of young motherhood to craft a superbly written thriller."—Karen Engelmann, author of The Stockholm Octavo
Medieval manuscripts resisted obsolescence. Made by highly specialised craftspeople (scribes, illuminators, book binders) with labour-intensive processes using exclusive and sometimes exotic materials (parchment made from dozens or hundreds of skins, inks and paints made from prized minerals, animals and plants), books were expensive and built to last. They usually outlived their owners. Rather than discard them when they were superseded, book owners found ways to update, amend and upcycle books or book parts. These activities accelerated in the fifteenth century. Most manuscripts made before 1390 were bespoke and made for a particular client, but those made after 1390 (especially books of hours) were increasingly made for an open market, in which the producer was not in direct contact with the buyer. Increased efficiency led to more generic products, which owners were motivated to personalise. It also led to more blank parchment in the book, for example, the backs of inserted miniatures and the blanks ends of textual components. Book buyers of the late fourteenth and throughout the fifteenth century still held onto the old connotations of manuscripts—that they were custom-made luxury items—even when the production had become impersonal. Owners consequently purchased books made for an open market and then personalised them, filling in the blank spaces, and even adding more components later. This would give them an affordable product, but one that still smacked of luxury and met their individual needs. They kept older books in circulation by amending them, attached items to generic books to make them more relevant and valuable, and added new prayers with escalating indulgences as the culture of salvation shifted. Rudy considers ways in which book owners adjusted the contents of their books from the simplest (add a marginal note, sew in a curtain) to the most complex (take the book apart, embellish the components with painted decoration, add more quires of parchment). By making sometimes extreme adjustments, book owners kept their books fashionable and emotionally relevant. This study explores the intersection of codicology and human desire. Rudy shows how increased modularisation of book making led to more standardisation but also to more opportunities for personalisation. She asks: What properties did parchment manuscripts have that printed books lacked? What are the interrelationships among technology, efficiency, skill loss and standardisation?
"A stupendous feat of reportage." -Ron Powers, cowriter of Flags of Our Fathers Praise for Desperate Hours "Goldstein's book is packed with detail. . . . This description of the Doria's sinking is especially moving." -The New York Times "A stupendous feat of reportage. Goldstein has virtually put us into lifeboats and sent us hurtling into the North Atlantic on the night of July 25, 1956." -Ron Powers, cowriter, Flags of Our Fathers, and author of Dangerous Water and Tom and Huck Don't Live Here Anymore On an extraordinary summer's night in 1956, in a fog off Nantucket, the world-renowned ocean liner Andrea Doria collided with the Swedish liner Stockholm and, eleven hours later, tragically sank. But in that brief time the Doria became, after the Titanic, the most storied vessel of the century, as nearly 1,700 people were saved in an unforgettable rescue punctuated by countless acts of heroism amid confusion, terror, and even cowardice. In the tradition of Walter Lord's A Night To Remember, Desperate Hours re-creates the ill-fated voyage, from the passengers' parting waves at Genoa, to their last evening highball in the Doria's lavish lounge, to the unbelievable realization that catastrophe was imminent. Richard Goldstein draws from dozens of interviews, court documents, memoirs, and reports that relate never-before-told stories. He also presents technical findings that shed light on the blame for the disaster. The result is a definitive history of a fateful day, a legendary liner, and a deadly shipwreck now considered by scuba divers to be the Mount Everest of the deep.
