Helen Garner5.0 Helen has little idea what lies ahead when she offers her spare room to an old friend of fifteen years.
Nicola has arrived in the city for treatment for cancer. Sceptical of the medical establishment, placing all her faith in an alternative health centre, Nicola is determined to find her own way to deal with her illness, regardless of the advice that Helen can offer.
In the weeks that follow, Nicola's battle against her cancer will turn not only her own life upside down but also those of everyone around her.
'Swift, beautiful, and relentless, The Spare Room is a brutal novel in the best sense' Alice Sebold
'The Spare Room is a perfect novel, imbued with all Garner's usual clear-eyed grace but with some other magnificent dimension that hides between the lines of her simple conversational voice. How is it that she can enter this heart-breaking territory - the dying friend who comes to stay - and make it not only bearable, but glorious, and funny? There is no answer except: Helen Garner is a great writer; The Spare Room is a great book.' Peter Carey
Джералдин Брукс4.2 Наши дни, Сидней. Известный реставратор Ханна Хит приступает к работе над легендарной "Сараевской Аггадой" - одной из самых древних иллюстрированных рукописей на иврите.
Шаг за шагом Ханна раскрывает тайны рукописи - и заглядывает в прошлое людей, хранивших эту книгу...
Назад - сквозь века. Все дальше и дальше. Из оккупированной нацистами Южной Европы - в пышную и роскошную Вену расцвета Австро-Венгерской империи. Из Венеции эпохи упадка Светлейшей республики - в средневековую Африку и Испанию времен Изабеллы и Фердинанда.
Книга открывает секрет за секретом - и постепенно Ханна узнает историю ее создательницы - прекрасной сарацинки, сумевшей занять видное положение при дворе андалузского эмира. Завораживающую историю запретной любви, смертельной опасности и великого самопожертвования...
Элис Нельсон0.0 Adrift in a failing marriage, Maya Wise is alone in a strange world far from home in this work of fiction. Intrigued by an elderly Chinese man carrying a caged nightingale, she begins to follow him through the streets and alleys of Hong Kong. Drawn to Ken Tiger and his painful tale of lost love in wartime Shanghai, Maya begins to piece together other stories, other histories from the world around her, and so comes to imagine a different future for herself, resulting in a moving meditation on exile, memory and the ways in which we reconcile ourselves with loss.
Джоан Лондон0.0 Maya de Jong, an eighteen-year-old country girl from the West, comes to live in Melbourne and starts an affair with her boss, the enigmatic Maynard Flynn, whose wife is dying of cancer. When Maya's parents, Toni and Jacob, arrive to stay with her, they are told by her housemate that Maya has gone away and no one knows where she is. As Toni and Jacob wait and search for Maya in Melbourne, everything in their lives is brought into question. They recall the yearning and dreams, the betrayals and choices of their pasts - choices with unexpected and irrevocable consequences. With Maya's disappearance, the lives of all those close to her come into focus, to reveal the complexity of the ties that bind us to one another, to parents, children, siblings, friends and lovers. Pacy and enthralling, The Good Parents is at once a vision of contemporary Australia and a story as old as fairytales: that of a runaway girl.
Toni Jordan3.8 An absolutely delightful tale of obsessive-compulsive love, Toni Jordan’s Addition is just the ticket for fans of TV’s Monk and readers who were captivated by The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. A wonderfully funny, supremely intelligent debut novel, Addition is “witty fun” (People), while OCD-afflicted heroine Grace and her new-found paramour Seamus are “thoroughly endearing characters, and their romance is sweet and fun” (Washington Post Book World).
