Рос Барбер0.0 On May 30th, 1593, a celebrated young playwright was killed in a tavern brawl in London. That, at least, was the official version. Now let Christopher Marlowe tell you the truth: that his 'death' was an elaborate ruse to avoid his being hanged for heresy; that he was spirited across the channel to live on in lonely exile, longing for his true love and pining for the damp streets of London; that he continued to write plays and poetry, hiding behind the name of a colourless man from Stratford — one William Shakespeare.
With the grip of a thriller and the emotional force of a sonnet, this extraordinary novel in verse gives voice to a man who was brilliant, passionate, mercurial and not altogether trustworthy. The son of a cobbler who rose so far in Elizabethan society that he counted nobles among his friends and patrons, a spy in the Queen's service, a fickle lover and a declared religious sceptic, he was always courting trouble. When it caught up with him, he was lucky to have connections powerful enough to help him escape.
Memoir, love letter, settling of accounts and a cry for recognition as the creator of some of the most sublime works in the English language, this is Christopher Marlowe's testament — and a tour de force by an award-winning poet: provocative, persuasive and enthralling.
Jenni Fagan0.0 Anais Hendricks, fifteen, is in the back of a police car. She is headed for the Panopticon, a home for chronic young offenders. She can't remember what’s happened, but across town a policewoman lies in a coma and Anais is covered in blood. Raised in foster care from birth and moved through twenty-three placements before she even turned seven, Anais has been let down by just about every adult she has ever met. Now a counterculture outlaw, she knows that she can only rely on herself. And yet despite the parade of horrors visited upon her early life, she greets the world with the witty, fierce insight of a survivor.
Anais finds a sense of belonging among the residents of the Panopticon—they form intense bonds, and she soon becomes part of an ad-hoc family. Together, they struggle against the adults that keep them confined. But when she looks up at the watchtower that looms over the residents, Anais realizes her fate: She is an anonymous part of an experiment, and she always was. Now it seems that the experiment is closing in.
Гевин Экстенс4.4 Роман «Вселенная против Алекса Вудса» воспевает курьезные случайности, астрономию и астрологию, произведения Курта Воннегута и неожиданные нити, соединяющие все и вся, которые и формируют этот мир. Метеорит угодил в Алекса Вудса, когда тому было 10 лет, оставив шрамы и уготовив мальчику необычное будущее. Сын гадалки, педантичный и страннный, удобная мишень для хулиганов, Алекс не мог похвастаться счастливым детством. Вся его жизнь изменилась, когда он знакомится с мистером Петерсоном, человеком, который научил его простой истине: у тебя в жизни есть только один шанс. И ты должен не упустить его. Рассказ Алекса балансирует на тонкой грани между светом и тьмой, смехом и слезами, и вполне может поразить вас как самый смешной и в то же время самый грустный роман, который вам приходилось читать.
Беатрис Хитчман0.0 Mesdames et Messieurs, presenting La Petite Mort, or, A Little Death... A silent film, destroyed in a fire in 1913 at the Pathé studio, before it was seen even by its director. A lowly seamstress, who makes the costumes she should be wearing, but believes her talent - and the secret she keeps too - will soon get her a dressing room of her own. A beautiful house in Paris, with a curving staircase, a lake, and locked rooms. A famous - and dashing - creator of spectacular cinematic illusions, husband to a beautiful, volatile actress, the most adored icon of the Parisian studios. All fit together, like scenes in a movie. And as you will see, this plot has a twist we beg you not to disclose ...
Кевин Махер0.0 A warm and funny debut about a young man in trouble and a family in love and in pieces. It's the first summer of lust for 14-year-old Jim Finnegan, a boy trying to become a man in 1980s Dublin. Jim's vivid and winning voice leaps off the page and into the reader's heart as he watches his parents argue, his five older sisters fight, and the local network of mothers gossip. Jim hilariously recounts his life dealing with the politics of his boisterous family, taking breakneck bike rides with his best friend, dancing to Foreigner on his boombox, and quietly coveting the local girls from afar.
Over the summer, Jim wins the attention of a beautiful older girl-but he also becomes the unwilling target of a devious religious figure in the community. His life starts to unravel as he faces consequences from both his love for his girlfriend and his attempts to avoid the Parish Priest. When he and his girlfriend take a ferry for a clandestine trip to London, the dark and difficult repercussions from the trip force Jim to look for the solution to all his problems in some very unusual places.
THE FIELDS is an unforgettable story of an extraordinary character. It's a portrait of a boy who sinks into troubles as he grows into a man, and the loving but fractured family that might be his downfall-or his salvation. Lyrical, funny, and endlessly inventive, it is a brilliant debut from a remarkable new voice.
Сара Ридгард0.0 Desiree White was walking through the fields of winter wheat and oilseed rape when she saw it.She picked the newspaper bundle out of the ditch and took it to the phone box.Across the baby's tiny body she could see a faint tattoo of Lady Di's face where some of the newsprint had rubbed off. It was like finding a featherless bird fallen out of its nest.
No-one had ever bothered much about Desiree but now everyone is interested in her, in what she saw, in who the parents might be and why they'd dump a baby. Even Bernie Capon, her older brother's best friend, wants to know what she thinks.
As years go by and everyone else moves on with their lives, Desiree feels stuck, unable to forget what she saw that day. Somehow she owes it to the baby to solve the mystery. But when she starts to make connections which bring the truth dangerously close to home, it seems that some secrets are best left alone.
Кевин Смит0.0 Life is sweet for would-be bohemian Artie Conville. Safe at the helm of his subsidised magazine-with a cosy office paid for by the tax-payer-he's content to drift along quoting poetry, lingering over long lunches and flirting with the lovely Rosie McCann. The main thing is to keep the real world-of nine-to-five jobs, mortgages and political violence-at bay. So when his cushy number is threatened, Artie hatches a cunning plan to keep the funds coming in. But events quickly spiral out of control and before long he is up to his ears in a bizarre fraud. Can he avert disaster? Will he get the girl? With a cast of characters that includes a gun-toting playwright, a jealous police chief, a drunken actor and a giant white rabbit, this is a rich and riotous tale about coming-of-age in 1980s Belfast; a novel that is by turns darkly ironic and laugh-out-loud funny.
Венди Уоллес0.0 JUST OUTSIDE LONDON, behind a high stone wall, lies Lake House, a private asylum for genteel women of a delicate nature. In the winter of 1859, Anna Palmer becomes its newest patient. To Anna’s dismay, her new husband has declared her in need of treatment and brought her to this shabby asylum.
Confused and angry, Anna is determined to prove her sanity, but with her husband and doctors unwilling to listen, her freedom will notbe easily won. As the weeks pass, she finds other allies: a visiting physician who believes the new medium of photography may reveal the state of a patient’s mind; a longtime patient named Talitha Batt, who seems, to Anna’s surprise, to be as sane as she is; and the proprietor’s bookish daughter, who also yearns to escape.
Yet the longer Anna remains at Lake House, the more she realizes that—like the ethereal bridge over the asylum’s lake—nothing and no one is quite as it appears. Not her fellow patients, her husband, her family—not even herself. Locked alone in her room, driven by the treatments of the time into the recesses of her own mind, she may discover the answers and the freedom she seeks . . . or how thin the line between madness and sanity truly is.
Wendy Wallace’s taut, elegantly crafted first novel, The Painted Bridge, i s a s tory o f f amily betrayals and illicit power; it is also a compelling portrait of the startling history of the psychiatric field and the treatment of women— in society and in these institutions. Wallace sets these ideas and her characters on the page beautifully, telling a riveting story that is surprising and deeply moving.
Рози Гарленд3.5 A luminous and bewitching debut novel that is perfect for fans of Angela Carter. Set in Victorian London, it follows the fortunes of Eve, the Lion-Faced Girl and Abel, the Flayed Man. A magical realism delight.
Before Eve is born, her mother goes to the circus. She buys a penny twist of coloured sugar and settles down to watch the heart-stopping main attraction: a lion, billed as a monster from the savage heart of Africa. Mama swears she hears the lion sigh, just before it leaps…and nine months later when Eve is born, the story goes, she doesn’t cry – she meows and licks her paws.
When Abel is pulled from the stinking Thames, the mudlarks are sure he is long dead. As they search his pockets to divvy up the treasure, his eyes crack open and he coughs up a stream of black water. But how has he survived a week in that thick stew of human waste?
Cast out by Victorian society, Eve and Abel find succour from an unlikely source. They soar to fame as The Lion Faced Girl and The Flayed Man, star performers in Professor Josiah Arroner’s Palace of Curiosities. And there begins a journey that will entwine their fates forever.
