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The House of Lyall
by Doris DavidsonMarion Cheyne is young, poor and ambitious. Her humble village roots and poorly paid job offer few opportunities and Marion feels trapped in a dead-end existence. So when an unexpected chance to escape presents itself, Marion grabs it, ignoring the moral implications of her actions, and sets out on a new life far away in Aberdeen. Years later and the struggling servant girl Marion has been transformed into Marianne, wife of the heir to Castle Lyall, and every inch the lady of the glen. More a business arrangement than a love match, Marianne's commitment to her role and to the name of Lyall is total, and as family, friends and world wars come and go, she will stop at nothing to protect her hard-won position. But the many secrets of her past refuse to stay safely buried. Nothing in the small community of the glen can remain hidden forever...
Porridge the Tartan Cat Books 1 to 3: Brawsome Bagpipes, Bash-crash-ding And Kittycat Kidnap (Porridge the Tartan Cat #0)
by Alan DapréAn ebook-exclusive omnibus of books 1, 2 and 3 in the hilarious Porridge the Tartan Cat series. When Porridge was a wee kitten he toppled into a tin of tartan paint -- which is easy to do and not so easy to say. Now he lives with the quirky McFun family
Crater Lake
by Jennifer KillickThe Times Children's Book of the WeekIt could be the mysterious bloodstained man who tries to stop their coach, or the fact no one seems to be around at the brand-new activity centre when Lance and the rest of his class arrive for the Year 6 school trip, but something is definitely not right at Crater Lake! What follows is a fight for survival that sees five pupils band together to save their classmates from an alien fate far worse than death. But whatever happens, they must Never, Ever fall asleep!
Record of a Night Too Brief
by Hiromi KawakamiThe Akutagawa Prize-winning stories from one of the most highly regarded and provocative contemporary Japanese writers'The nightingale sang again. The plates on the table gleamed, and the food, in all its ceaseless variety, breathed, glossy and bright. The night had only just begun.'In these three haunting and lyrical stories, three young women experience unsettling loss and romance.In a dreamlike adventure, one woman travels through an apparently unending night with a porcelain girlfriend, mist-monsters and villainous monkeys; a sister mourns her invisible brother whom only she can still see, while the rest of her family welcome his would-be wife into their home; and an accident with a snake leads a shop girl to discover the snake-families everyone else seems to be concealing.Sensual, yearning, and filled with the tricks of memory and grief, Record of a Night Too Brief is an atmospheric trio of unforgettable tales.Hiromi Kawakami was born in Tokyo in 1958. Since the publication of God in 1994, she has written numerous novels and collections of short stories, including Strange Weather in Tokyo and The Nakano Thrift Shop. Her most recent novel, Running Water, was published in Japan in 2014 and won the Yomiuri Prize for Literature. Hiromi Kawakami has previously been awarded the Akutagawa Prize and the Tanizaki Prize, and was shortlisted for the 2013 Man Asian Literary Prize and the 2014 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. Her work has been published in more than twenty languages.
The Abbey Court Murder: An Inspector Furnival Mystery (Inspector Furnival Mysteries Ser. #Vol. 1)
by Annie Haynes“A crime of a peculiarly mysterious nature was perpetrated some time last night in a block of flats called Abbey Court.”Lady Judith Carew acted furtively on the night of the Denboroughs’ party. Her secret assignation at 9:30pm was a meeting to which she took a loaded revolver. The Abbey Court apartment building would play host to violent death that very night, under cover of darkness. The killer’s identity remained a mystery, though Lady Carew had a most compelling motive - and her revolver was left in the dead man’s flat…Enter the tenacious Inspector Furnival in the first of his golden age mysteries, first published in 1923. Though there are many clues, there are just as many red herrings and the case takes numerous Christie-esque twists before the murderer can be revealed. This new edition, the first printed in over 80 years, features an introduction from crime fiction historian Curtis Evans.“Annie Haynes does, in The Abbey Court Murder, what all writers of mystery stories aspire to do, and so few carry off successfully… It is a first-rate story… the plot thickens with every page, leading us on to the final climax in a state of unfluctuating interest.” Bookman
Beyond the Black Atlantic: Relocating Modernization and Technology
by Walter Goebel Saskia SchabioDebates about the ‘Black Atlantic’ have alerted us to an experience of modernization that diverges from the dominant Western narratives of globalization and technological progress. This outstanding volume expands the concept of the Black Atlantic by reaching beyond the usual African-American focus of the field, presenting fresh perspectives on postcolonial experiences of technology and modernization. A team of renowned contributors come together in this volume in order to: redefine and expand ideas of Black Atlantic challenge unified concepts of modernization from a postcolonial perspective question fashionable concepts of the transnational by returning to the local and the national offer new approaches to cross-cultural mechanisms of exchange explore utopian uses of technology in the postcolonial sphere. Exploring a variety of national, diasporan and transnational counternarratives to Western modernization, Beyond the Black Atlantic makes a valuable contribution to the fields of postcolonial, literary and cultural studies.
Who Killed The Mince Spy?: A Food Crime Investigation
by Matthew RedfordTenacious carrot, detective inspector Willie Wortell is back to reveal the deviously delicious mind behind the crime of the festive season in this hugely entertaining, and utterly unconventional, short story. When Mitchell the Mince Spy is horrifically murdered by being over baked in a fan oven, it falls to the Food Related Crime team to investigate this heinous act. Why was Mitchell killed? Who is the mysterious man with a long white beard and why does he carry a syringe? Why is it that the death of a mince spy smells so good? Detective Inspector Willie Wortel, the best food sapiens police officer, once again leads his team into a series of crazy escapades. Supported by his able homo sapiens sergeant Dorothy Knox and his less able fruit officers Oranges and Lemons, they encounter Snow White and the seven dwarf cabbages as well as having a run in with the food sapiens secret service, MI GasMark5. With a thigh slap here, and a thigh slap there, the team know Christmas is coming as the upper classes are acting strangely - why else would there be lords a leaping, ladies dancing and maids a milking? And if that wasn't enough, the Government Minister for the Department of Fisheries, Agriculture and Rural Trade (DAFaRT) has only gone and given the turkeys a vote on whether they are for or against Christmas. Let the madness begin! This short story by Matthew Redford follows his deliciously irreverent debut Addicted To Death (Clink Street Publishing, 2015).
The Road to Oz: Wizard Of Oz Book 5 Special Annotated Edition (Oz #5)
by Frank L. BaumThe Road to Oz takes Dorothy and her friends on an adventure in Oz to a grand party in honour of Ozma's birthday in this spellbinding and classic tale. Dorothy and her faithful Toto are back home in Kansas when they encounter the homeless and hapless Shaggy Man and decide to accompany him on his journey. Soon they encounter a bevy of new friends, including Button-Bright and Polychrome the Rainbow's Daughter, and are back on their way to the magical land of Oz. Hoping to arrive in time to attend the Ozma's birthday party, the company is soon pitched headlong into a series of unlikely adventures, tackling talking foxes with magical powers and crossing the Deadly Desert. Arriving at the palace, they make the acquaintance of a host of guests from all over Fairyland. Will Dorothy and Toto remain in Oz with their old friend the Wizard, or will she once again return to her native land?
The Anthology of Irish Folk Tales
by VariousCarefully selected stories from the celebrated Folk Tales series have been gathered here for this special volume. Herein lies a treasure trove of tales from a wealth of talented storytellers performing in the country today. From banshees, pookas and changelings to rainbows, fairies and leprechauns, this book celebrates the distinct character of Ireland's different customs, beliefs and dialects, and is a treat for all who enjoy a well-told story.
Colonial Encounters in New World Writing, 1500-1786: Performing America
by Susan CastilloSusan Castillo’s pioneering study examines the extraordinary proliferation of polyphonic or ‘multi-voiced’ texts in the three centuries following the first contact between Europeans and the indigenous peoples of the Americas. Taking a selection of plays, printed dialogues, travel narratives and lexicographic studies in English, Spanish and French, the book explores both European and indigenous writers of the early Americas. Paying particular attention to performance and performativity in the texts of the early colonial world, Susan Castillo asks: why vast numbers of polyphonic and performative texts emerged in the Early Americas how these texts enabled explorers, settlers and indigenous groups to come to terms with radical differences in language, behaviour and cultural practices how dialogues, plays and paratheatrical texts were used to impose or resist ideologies and cultural norms how performance and polyphony allowed Europeans and Americans to debate exactly what it meant to be European or American, or in some cases, both. Tracing the dynamic enactment of (often conflictive) encounters between differing local narratives, Castillo presents polyphonic texts as not only singularly useful tools for exploring what initially seemed inexpressible or for conveying controversial ideas, but also as the site where cultural difference is negotiated. Offering unparalleled linguistic and historical range, through the analysis of texts from Spain, France, New Spain, Peru, Brazil, New England and New France, this volume is an important advance in the study of early American literature and the writings of colonial encounter.
Catlantis
by Anna StarobinetsA thrilling, funny story about a heroic cat on a missionBaguette is just a regular house cat. He likes to sit in the window, watch the birds, and eat three square meals a day. But what's a regular house cat to do if he falls in love with a beautiful street cat who has some very strange - and really rather dangerous - demands?Baguette must travel back through the Ocean of Time to the lost island of Catlantis. He must find a way to save the nine lives of all cats before it is too late. And he must outwit the wicked black cat Noir, who is hot on his tail. Only then can he hope to win the paw of Purriana...Anna Starobinets is an acclaimed, award-winning Russian novelist, scriptwriter and journalist. She is best known as a writer of dystopian and metaphysical novels and short stories, and is also a very successful children's author. Catlantis is her first children's book to be translated into English.
An Elegy for Easterly: Faber Stories
by Petina GappahFaber Stories, a landmark series of individual volumes, presents masters of the short story form at work in a range of genres and styles. The government has cleaned up Harare for the Queen of England's visit. 'The townships are too full of people, they said, gather them up and put them in the places the Queen will not see.' Four waves of people have settled on Easterly Farm since then, living on the margins in homes that will soon be destroyed.Among them is Martha Mupengo. She has lost her wits, and gained a pregnancy. Who could be the baby's father, and what fate awaits mothers and children in this temporary, poverty-stricken town?
The Incredibly Nosey Cat Flap Pony
by Libby LakeThe tiddliest of ponies with wondersome wings was buzzing around examining things. What would you do if a teensy tiny, flying pony busily bustled into your house? This hilarious, heart-warming story shows how being inquisitive can be a good thing!
Dock Leaves
by Hugo WilliamsIn these poems, Hugo Williams's subjects include the stings inflicted by school, family and love-life, and the exquisite (if qualified) solace afforded by their contemplation.
Under the Night
by Alan GlynnIn 1950s Manhattan, the CIA carry out a covert study of psychoactive drugs. When they dose ad man Ned Sweeney with MDT-48, he finds his horizons dramatically expand as he is hurtled through the corridors of the rich and powerful, all the way to the government's nuclear tests at Bikini Atoll.But what of Ned's colleague who was also dosed that night - last seen running half-naked and screaming into the Broadway traffic - and for how long can Ned maintain the extraordinary pace and trajectory of his new life?Over sixty years later, the only fact Ray Sweeney knows about his grandfather's life is that it ended when he jumped out of a hotel window in Manhattan, an event which scarred his family thereafter. But then Ray meets a retired government official, ninety-two-year-old Clay Proctor, who claims he can illuminate not only Ned's life and death, but also the truth behind the mysterious drug. Both a sequel and prequel to Alan Glynn's classic debut, The Dark Fields - which became the hit movie Limitless - Under the Night is an irresistible thriller about the seductive power and dangers of unlocking the potential of the human mind.
Seeing Stars: Poems
by Simon ArmitageSimon Armitage's new collection is by turns a voice and a chorus: a hyper-vivid array of dramatic monologues, allegories, parables and tall tales. Here comes everybody: Snoobie and Carla, Lippincott, Wittmann, Yoshioka, Bambuck, Dr Amsterdam, Preminger. The man whose wife drapes a border-curtain across the middle of the marital home; the English astronaut with a terrestrial outlook on life; an orgiastic cast of unreconstructed pie-worshipers at a Northern sculpture farm; the soap-opera supremacists at their zoo-wedding; the driver who picks up hitchhikers as he hurtles towards a head-on collision with Thatcherism; a Christian cheese-shop proprietor in the wrong part of town; the black bear with a dark secret, the woman who curates giant snowballs in the chest freezer. Celebrities and nobodies, all come to the ball.I am a sperm whale. I carry up to 2.5 tonnes of an oil-likebalm in my huge, coffin shaped head. I have a brain thesize of a basketball, and on that basis alone am entitled tomy opinions. I am a sperm whale. When I breathe in, the fluid in my head cools to a dense wax and I nosedive into the depths. My song, available on audiocassette and compact disc is a comfort to divorcees, astrologists and those who have 'pitched the quavering canvas tent of their thoughts on the rim of the dark crater'.- from 'The Christening'The storyteller who steps in and out of this human tapestry changes, trickster-style, from poem to poem, but retains some identifying traits: the melancholy of the less deceived, crossed with an undercover idealism. And he shares with many of his characters a star-gazing capacity for belief, or for being 'genuine in his disbelief'.Language is on the loose in these poems, which cut and run across the parterre of poetic decorum with their cartoon-strip energies and air of misrule. Armitage creates world after world, peculiar yet always particular, where the only certainty is the unexpected.
Venices
by Paul MorandA poetic evocation of the French diplomat's encounters and experiences, filtered through the one constant in his life—Venice.Diplomat, writer and poet, traveller and socialite, friend of Proust, Giraudoux and Malraux, Paul Morand was out of the most original writers of the twentieth century. He was French literature's globe-trotter, and his delightful autobiography is far from being yet another account of a writer's life. Instead it is a poetic evocation of certain scenes among Morand's rich and varied encounters and experience, filtered through the one constant in his life—the one place to which he would always return—Venice.Admired both by Ezra Pound and by Marcel Proust as a pioneer craftsman of Modernist French prose (...) The sheer shapeliness of his prose recalls Hemingway; the urbanity of his self-destructiveness compares with Fitzgerald's; and his camera eye is as lucidly stroboscopic as that of Dos Passos. He is, like Victor Segalen, Blaise Cendrars, Valery Larbaud, and Saint-John Perse, one of the great nomads of 20th-century French literature, racing through the apocalypse with the haste and glamor of an Orient Express. It is a pity we should have had to wait this long to catch up with him. --The New York TimesVenices is balanced by the sharpness of the imagery. He writes in a melancholy vein of the loves, jealousies and regrets he has experienced in Venice ... Exquisitely translated, Venices is a travel memoir of the highest order. -- IAN THOMSON, Sunday Times
Coventry: Essays
by Rachel CuskA GUARDIAN BOOK OF THE YEARAfter the publication of Outline, Transit and Kudos - in which Rachel Cusk redrew the boundaries of fiction - this writer of uncommon brilliance returns with a series of essays that offers new insights on the themes at the heart of her life's work. Encompassing memoir and cultural and literary criticism, with pieces on gender, politics and writers such as D. H. Lawrence, Olivia Manning and Natalia Ginzburg, this collection is essential reading for our age: fearless, unrepentantly erudite, both startling and rewarding to behold. The result is a cumulative sense of how the frank, deeply intelligent sensibility - so evident in her stories and novels - reverberates in the wider context of Cusk's literary process. Coventry grants its readers a rare opportunity to see a mind at work that will influence literature for time to come.
Whited Sepulchres: A Mediaeval Mystery (Book 3) (Mediaeval Mystery Ser. #3)
by C.B. Hanley1217: Commoner-turned-earl’s-man Edwin Weaver has returned to Conisbrough Castle after his blood-soaked adventure in Lincoln. Now carrying a dagger for protection, he has no chance to rest, for preparations are already underway for a noble wedding. But his weapon will be little help against the armed band of outlaws terrorising the area. When the household marshal is murdered under the earl’s own roof, and Edwin is asked to resolve the situation before the wedding plans can be jeopardised. Edwin is convinced that there is more to his death than meets the eye and, as he digs deeper, he realises that the killer’s true target might be someone much closer to home. The third book in C.B. Hanley’s popular Mediaeval Mystery series, following The Bloody City.
House of Angels
by Freda LightfootThe Lake District, 1908.It seems as though Livia, Ella and Maggie Angel lead a charmed life on a large country estate. But since the death of their mother, their family home has been far from a quiet haven as their bullying father is determined to marry off the girls to his greatest advantage.When the sisters discover their father had an affair many years ago, which resulted in the birth of a baby girl, they determine to find their half-sister, and their search begins in the local workhouse. Mercy had been unaware of her connection to the rich Angel family until her mother’s death-bed confession, and once she knows, she’s not at all sure that she wants to be part of the family after all…
A Dark Redemption (Carrigan & Miller #1)
by Stav SherezA Dark Redemption introduces DI Jack Carrigan and DS Geneva Miller as they investigate the brutal rape and murder of a young Ugandan student. Plunged into an underworld of illegal immigrant communities, they discover that the murdered girl's studies at a London College may have threatened to reveal things that some people will go to any lengths to keep secret...Unflinching, inventive and intelligent, A Dark Redemption explores a sinister case that will force DI Carrigan to face up to his past and DS Miller to confront what path she wants her future to follow.
Colonial Encounters in New World Writing, 1500-1786: Performing America
by Susan CastilloSusan Castillo’s pioneering study examines the extraordinary proliferation of polyphonic or ‘multi-voiced’ texts in the three centuries following the first contact between Europeans and the indigenous peoples of the Americas. Taking a selection of plays, printed dialogues, travel narratives and lexicographic studies in English, Spanish and French, the book explores both European and indigenous writers of the early Americas. Paying particular attention to performance and performativity in the texts of the early colonial world, Susan Castillo asks: why vast numbers of polyphonic and performative texts emerged in the Early Americas how these texts enabled explorers, settlers and indigenous groups to come to terms with radical differences in language, behaviour and cultural practices how dialogues, plays and paratheatrical texts were used to impose or resist ideologies and cultural norms how performance and polyphony allowed Europeans and Americans to debate exactly what it meant to be European or American, or in some cases, both. Tracing the dynamic enactment of (often conflictive) encounters between differing local narratives, Castillo presents polyphonic texts as not only singularly useful tools for exploring what initially seemed inexpressible or for conveying controversial ideas, but also as the site where cultural difference is negotiated. Offering unparalleled linguistic and historical range, through the analysis of texts from Spain, France, New Spain, Peru, Brazil, New England and New France, this volume is an important advance in the study of early American literature and the writings of colonial encounter.
Twentieth-Century Caribbean Literature: Critical Moments in Anglophone Literary History
by Alison DonnellThis bold study traces the processes by which a ‘history’ and canon of Caribbean literature and criticism have been constructed. It offers a supplement to that history by presenting new writers, texts and critical moments that help to reconfigure the Caribbean tradition. Focusing on Anglophone or Anglocreole writings from across the twentieth century, Alison Donnell asks what it is that we read when we approach ‘Caribbean Literature’, how it is that we read it and what critical, ideological and historical pressures may have influenced our choices and approaches. In particular, the book: * addresses the exclusions that have resulted from the construction of a Caribbean canon * rethinks the dominant paradigms of Caribbean literary criticism, which have brought issues of anti-colonialism and nationalism, migration and diaspora, ‘double-colonised’ women, and the marginalization of sexuality and homosexuality to the foreground * seeks to put new issues and writings into critical circulation by exploring lesser-known authors and texts, including Indian Caribbean women’s writings and Caribbean queer writings. Identifying alternative critical approaches and critical moments, Twentieth-Century Caribbean Literature allows us to re-examine the way in which we read not only Caribbean writings, but also the literary history and criticism that surround them.
The Care and Management of Lies: A Novel Of The Great War
by Jacqueline WinspearBy July 1914, the ties between Kezia Marchant and Thea Brissenden, friends since girlhood, have become strained – by Thea’s passionate embrace of women’s suffrage and by the imminent marriage of Kezia to Thea’s brother, Tom, who runs the family farm.When Kezia and Tom wed just a month before war is declared between Britain and Germany, Thea’s gift to Kezia is a book on household management – a veiled criticism of the bride’s ordinary life to come. Yet when Tom enlists to fight and Thea is drawn reluctantly onto the battlefield herself, the farm becomes Kezia’s responsibility. Each must find a way to endure the ensuing cataclysm and turmoil.As Tom marches to the front lines and Kezia battles to keep her ordered life from unravelling, they hide their despair in letters filled with stories woven to bring comfort. But will well-intended lies and self-deception be of use when they come face-to-face with the enemy?
Ascension: The Times History Book of the Month (Alvise Marangon Mysteries Ser. #1)
by Gregory DowlingWonderful . . . I loved being transported to my favourite time in my favourite city' - ANDREA DI ROBILANT' A special thriller set in the Venetian past - its colours and intrigues so vividly described'- FRANCESCO DA MOSTOWhen a young tour guide, Alvise Marangon, offers to help an English Grand Tourist, little does he know that it will lead to his being embroiled in blackmail and conspiracy. To add to his woes, he is then forcibly recruited into the city’s powerful secret service to investigate a murder case. A reluctant spy he may be, but he is a gifted one. Amidst the world of gambling dens and courtesans, something momentous is being planned for the Feast of the Ascension, Venice's most important and spectacular holiday, and it seems that only Alvise can prevent the day turning into bloody mayhem.