Кристи Уотсон5.0
Winner of the 2011 Costa First Novel Award
When their mother catches their father with another woman, twelve year-old Blessing and her fourteen-year-old brother, Ezikiel, are forced to leave their comfortable home in Lagos for a village in the Niger Delta, to live with their mother’s family. Without running water or electricity, Warri is at first a nightmare for Blessing. Her mother is gone all day and works suspiciously late into the night to pay the children’s school fees. Her brother, once a promising student, seems to be falling increasingly under the influence of the local group of violent teenage boys calling themselves Freedom Fighters. Her grandfather, a kind if misguided man, is trying on Islam as his new religion of choice, and is even considering the possibility of bringing in a second wife.
But Blessing’s grandmother, wise and practical, soon becomes a beloved mentor, teaching Blessing the ways of the midwife in rural Nigeria. Blessing is exposed to the horrors of genital mutilation and the devastation wrought on the environment by British and American oil companies. As Warri comes to feel like home, Blessing becomes increasingly aware of the threats to its safety, both from its unshakable but dangerous traditions and the relentless carelessness of the modern world. Tiny Sunbirds, Far Away is the witty and beautifully written story of one family’s attempt to survive a new life they could never have imagined, struggling to find a deeper sense of identity along the way.
Розамунд Лаптон3.7 «Разгадай мою смерть» – роман британской писательницы Розамунд Лаптон, сразу покоривший рейтинги продаж в Великобритании и США.
Беатрис Хемминг, тяжело переживающая смерть младшей сестры Тесс, не верит, что та совершила самоубийство. Беатрис убеждена – Тесс убили.
Но кто убийца?
Женатый любовник, от которого забеременела ее сестра? Однокурсник, докучавший ей чрезмерным вниманием? Или таинственный человек в маске, которого все вокруг считали лишь порождением неуемного воображения Тесс? Полиция отказывается проверять подозрения Беатрис. И тогда она решает разгадать тайну гибели сестры самостоятельно – чего бы это ни стоило…
Роман написан от первого лица, в виде письма от старшей сестры, Беатрис, к младшей, Тесс, которая стала жертвой жестокого убийства.
Роман будет экранизирован в 2014-2015 году. Главную роль исполнит Эмили Блант.
Иветт Эдвардс0.0 Redolent of Monica Ali and Zadie Smith, Yvvette Edwards' bold debut is a searing story of family, jealousy, and tragic betrayal."He just knocked, that was all, knoced at the front door and waited, like the fourteen years since the night I'd killed my mother hadn't happened at all..."Fourteen years ago, Jinx' mother was brutally murdered in their East London home. Overwhelmed by the part she played, Jinx's whole life has been poisoned by guilt. Then, out of nowhere, Lemon arrives on her doorstep. An old friend of her mother's, he wants to revisit the events leading to that terrible night, forcing Jinx to finally confront her past, and offering her the possibility of redemption alongside the pain of remembrance. Estranged from her husband and detached from her son, Jinx knows that this is her only chance to make her confession, and end the emotional paralysis that has blighted her life. But Lemon has his own secrets to share, and over the course of one weekend they unravel an unforgettable family drama, stoked with violence and passion.Rich with voices from East London and the West Indies, Edward's narrative is delivered with a unique and uncompromsing bight that announces a new talent in British fiction.
Elizabeth Haynes4.2 Catherine Bailey has been enjoying the single life long enough to know a catch when she sees one. Gorgeous, charismatic and spontaneous, Lee seems almost too perfect to be true. And her friends clearly agree, as each in turn falls under his spell.
But what begins as flattering attentiveness and passionate sex turns into raging jealousy, and Catherine soon learns there is a darker side to Lee. His increasingly erratic, controlling behaviour becomes frightening, but no one believes her when she shares her fears. Increasingly isolated and driven into the darkest corner of her world, a desperate Catherine plans a meticulous escape.
Four years later, Lee is behind bars and Catherine—now Cathy—compulsively checks the locks and doors in her apartment, trusting no one. But when an attractive upstairs neighbour, Stuart, comes into her life, Cathy dares to hope that happiness and love may still be possible . . . until she receives a phone call informing her of Lee’s impending release. Soon after, Cathy thinks she catches a glimpse of the former best friend who testified against her in the trial; she begins to return home to find objects subtly rearranged in her apartment, one of Lee’s old tricks. Convinced she is back in her former lover’s sights, Cathy prepares to wrestle with the demons of her past for the last time.
Аманда Ходжкинсон4.0
22 Britannia Road by Amanda Hodgkinson is a heartbreaking and powerful novel about wartime secrets and the difficulties of adjusting to postwar life
It is 1946 and Silvana and eight-year-old Aurek board a ship that will take them from Poland to England. Silvana has not seen her husband Janusz in six years, but, they are assured, he has made them a home in Ipswich.
However, after living wild in the forests for years, carrying a terrible secret, all Silvana knows is that she and Aurek are survivors. Everything else is lost. While Janusz, a Polish soldier who has criss-crossed Europe during the war, hopes his family will help put his own dark past behind him.
But the war and the years apart will always haunt each of them unless they together confront what they were compelled to do to survive.
'The characters are so convincing and the writing's so unshowily accomplished that it soon becomes something gripping. An admirable debut' Daily Mail
'A most accomplished first novel. Powerful story-telling and entirely convincing in its evocation of post-war England. Very good' Penelope Lively
'Keep your Kleenex handy reading 22 Britannia Road' Grazia
'An affecting story, extremely well told' The Times
Amanda Hodgkinson was born in Burnham-on-Sea in Somerset and grew up in Essex and Suffolk.
She currently lives in south-west France with her husband and two daughters. 22 Britannia Road is her first novel.
A.D. Miller3.6 A.D. Miller's Snowdrops is a riveting psychological drama that unfolds over the course of one Moscow winter, as a thirty-something Englishman's moral compass is spun by the seductive opportunities revealed to him by a new Russia: a land of hedonism and desperation, corruption and kindness, magical dachas and debauched nightclubs; a place where secrets - and corpses- come to light only when the deep snows start to thaw...
A chilling story of love and moral freefall: of the corruption, by a corrupt society, of a corruptible man. It is taut, intense and has a momentum as irresistible to the reader as the moral danger that first enchants, then threatens to overwhelm, its narrator.
Кэролайн Грин0.0 Bel has never mey anyone like Luka. And the day she follows him into the abandoned fairground, she is totally unprepared for the turn her life is about to take.
