Book picks similar to
King Goshawk and the Birds by Eimar O'Duffy
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Wittgenstein's Mistress
David Markson - 1988
It is the story of a woman who is convinced, and, astonishingly, will ultimately convince the reader as well, that she is the only person left on earth. Presumably she is mad. And yet so appealing is her character, and so witty and seductive her narrative voice, that we will follow her hypnotically as she unloads the intellectual baggage of a lifetime in a series of irreverent meditations on everything and everybody from Brahms to sex to Heidegger to Helen of Troy. And as she contemplates aspects of the troubled past which have brought her to her present state, so too will her drama become one of the few certifiably original fictions of our time.
The Year of Sharing
Harry Gilbert - 1995
Written for Learners of English by Harry GilbertRichard is bored with the quiet life of his village. He would like to have a motor-car and drive it . . . very fast. But Richard lives in a future world where there are no cars, only bicycles and small villages and green forests.And now he is twelve years old, and like the other children, he must do his Year of Sharing. He must live alone in the forest with the wild animals. He must learn to share his world; he must learn how animals live and eat and fight . . . and die.
The Crying Heart Tattoo
David Lozell Martin - 1982
Beginning their relationship when Sonny is just fourteen and Felicity thirty-four, the couple share a poignant history together that ends only upon Felicity's passing despite four marriages, numerous obstacles, and enough misadventures to challenge the most loyal of lovers.At once heartbreaking and euphoric, their story mirrors the tale that Felicity has passed down to Sonny, a story uncanny in its similarity to their own: when a prehistoric outcast locates her former tribe, she falls in love with a young boy.A masterful novel first published a quarter of a century ago, The Crying Heart Tattoo keeps the impossible within reach, proving once and for all that the struggle for true love is worth everything.
Harvesting
Lisa Harding - 2017
When they are thrown together in a Dublin brothel in a horrific twist of fate, a peculiar and important bond is formed . . .This is a novel about a flourishing but hidden world, thinly concealed beneath a veneer of normality. It’s about the failings of polite society, the cruelty that can exist in apparently homely surroundings, the bluster of youth and the often appalling weakness of adults.Harvesting is heartbreaking and funny, gritty, raw and breathtakingly beautiful, where redemption is found in friendship and unexpected acts of kindness.Harvesting was inspired by Harding’s involvement with a campaign against sex trafficking run by the Children’s Rights Alliance. Although it is a fictionalised account, the text has been read and approved of by representatives for NGOs in both Moldova and Dublin.
Little Green
Loretta Stinson - 2010
She hitchhikes as far as the freeway outside a small Northwestern town. The closest thing within walking distance is a strip club, and Janie finds herself working there, where she falls for Paul Jesse, a drug dealer, and moves in with him as he spirals into addiction and physical abuse. As the violence escalates, Janie finds a job in a bookstore and begins to establish her independence. Leaving Paul after a brutal beating, Janie must reconcile their relationship and make the most difficult, most dangerous choice she’ll ever make.Like Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina and Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, Little Green examines the psychology of a woman who has experienced violence at the hands of someone she loves and the complexity of leaving with sensitivity and insight. This is a life-affirming story about a woman who finds strength in books, in the promise of education, and in the community of friends who help her find a way out.
The Girl Who Came Home
Hazel Gaynor - 2012
. . .Ireland, 1912 . . .Fourteen members of a small village set sail on RMS Titanic, hoping to find a better life in America. For seventeen-year-old Maggie Murphy, the journey is bittersweet. Though her future lies in an unknown new place, her heart remains in Ireland with Séamus, the sweetheart she left behind. When disaster strikes, Maggie is one of the few passengers in steerage to survive. Waking up alone in a New York hospital, she vows never to speak of the terror and panic of that fateful night again.Chicago, 1982 . . .Adrift after the death of her father, Grace Butler struggles to decide what comes next. When her great-grandmother Maggie shares the painful secret about the Titanic that she's harbored for almost a lifetime, the revelation gives Grace new direction—and leads both her and Maggie to unexpected reunions with those they thought lost long ago.Inspired by true events, The Girl Who Came Home poignantly blends fact and fiction to explore the Titanic tragedy's impact and its lasting repercussions on survivors and their descendants.
The World I Made for Her
Thomas Moran - 1998
Nuala is the Irish immigrant nurse who coaxes him toward survival. The odd synergy of their relationship is both his link to reality and his inspiration to fantasy. This is the hypnotic story of the world that grows in the silence between them.In Thomas Moran's first novel, the New York Times Book Review saw evidence of his "incontestable conceptual gifts". In his "elegant writing", the Los Angeles Times found the promise of a serious new career. The New Yorker compared The Man in the Box to The Diary of Anne Frank, and the Los Angeles Times compared Thomas Moran to Eli Wiesel. And on the heels of this critical success comes The World I Made for Her.Nuala means "white shoulders" in Gaelic. Nuala's wild red hair falls in disarray over hers. James watches her moving deftly around him; changing his IV, attaching a fresh respirator tube. Nuala's movements are like dance to him through his morphine-clouded vision. His senses are numbed, his mind is dulled, but he hears her Irish spirit sing against the metronome of the life-support machines. He is drawn to the warmth of her. He carries Nuala in and out of consciousness with him, writing a secret love story in which she is, unknowingly, the heroine.In prose that moves seamlessly between fantasy and reality, The World I Made for Her is a novel of obsession and redemption that unfolds like a dream -- a story that will break your heart.
Reticence
Jean-Philippe Toussaint - 1991
Which could have just as easily happened to you. You re on vacation in a hotel with your son in a small village and you re about to go see some friends, but something holds you back, a mysterious reticence that prevents you from going to find them. Here is the novel of this reticence, small and specific, and of the fears that it instigates, little by little. Because not only are your friends not there when you do decide to go find them, but, several days later, you find a dead cat in the harbor, a black cat floating in front of you on the water . . ."In Jean-Philippe Toussaint 's take on the detective novel, we find a man on vacation in a tiny village, where a writer named Biaggi appears to be keeping him under surveillance. To what end? Ah, but it 's far more pleasant to enjoy the Mediterranean night air than to look for answers, make deductions, or get upset isn't it?
Ghost Fleet
D.A. Boulter - 2011
Experts say they are scanner echoes tossed out of the past by the Phenomenon. The rumors and a cryptic entry in an ancestor's diary propel Lieutenant-Commander Mart Britlot of the Confederation navy into the dangerous Sivon sector of space. There, Britlot hopes to find help for the Confederation, now facing a two-front war. As the last living Confederation descendant of the Adian nation, Britlot is obsessed with finding the ghost ships, believed destroyed during a mass emigration 300 years in the past. He dreams of riding to the rescue at the head of the never defeated Adian fleet; he dreams of finding family after the death of all his near relatives at the hands of the Combine. He'll drive his ship and crew beyond endurance to achieve this. The felid Tlartox Empire, eager to avenge their humiliating defeat at the hands of the Confederation, has voted to annul the long-standing peace treaty. The glory of The Hunt beckons. Admiral Tood Tlomega has focused on the human planet Lormar, with its great naval base, as a fitting target for retribution. She will return dignity to the people of Tlar. She will return them to the path that Tlar illuminated so many centuries ago.But a small band of Tlartox subversives intend to rake a claw across the plans of the war-mongers, and give both the Empire and the Confederation something they hadn't counted on.
The Summoning
Mark Lukens - 2014
a supernatural mystery.Edrington, Oregon - a town with a horrifying past. A town with dark secrets. A town where a woman has summoned something terrifying.Three hundred and fifty miles south, Ryan wakes up in a motel room with a bag of stolen money, bullet hole scars on his chest, and no memory of his past - his only clue is a scrap of paper in his wallet with an Edrington address scrawled on it.Plagued by nightmares of a tortured man who seems to be forcing his way from the dream world into our world, Ryan journeys north to the small Oregon town where the answers are waiting for him.
The History Of Us
Jonathan Harvey - 2016
They all have ambitions, they all have dreams.Adam wants to be a writer, Jocelyn wants to sing and Kathleen - well, she wants to be an embalmer.London 2015Kathleen is a borderline alcoholic, Adam is holding on to a shocking secret and Jocelyn is dead. Where did it all go wrong? How did having the world at their feet turn into having the weight of it on their shoulders?
Night in Tunisia
Neil Jordan - 1982
This book, which won raves at its first publication, shows all the hallmarks of the writer who became the award-winning film director so well known today.
Term Limits
Steve Powell - 2018
Having been a press officer for a US Senator for a number of years, I’ve had a front row seat to the inter workings of Capital Hill. To my mind, Powell has masterfully combined the timeliness of today’s political intrigue with a gripping detective story/who-done-it. By bringing the mind-boggling swirling mess that is Washington politics down to the level of one family’s pain he held me glued to the page."What I found particularly remarkable was how easily I found myself sympathizing with the ‘villain’, and how well-crafted and human was Powell’s plea that we need to finally bring common sense back to our government and its approaches to critical problems facing the country and the world."A deceptively easy read — given its thunderous message. Term Limits should be require reading for every new politician heading to Washington."Murder – week after week, month after month, across the country. Pushed beyond his limits, one man takes on the establishment, the gun lobby, and corruption at the highest levels. To break the power of entrenched elites, he leads the nation on a grisly hunt. He’s hunting them. And they’re hunting him. One side will have to blink. In the meantime, people are dying. Term Limits is a thriller from the front pages of our newspapers. It couldn’t be more topical.
Blood Ties
Jennifer Lash - 1997
It tells of Violet Farr and her loveless marriage, her wild, unfathomable son and his illegitimate son, all of them bound together in a repeating pattern of exile and homecoming, rejection and, finally, acknowledgement and love. As Elizabeth Buchan wrote in the London Times, "Jennifer Lash is a Lawrentian in so far as she mines her material for the blood and thunder roaring between spouses, and between parents and children."
A Train to Moscow
Elena Gorokhova - 2022
When she leaves for Moscow to audition for drama school, she defies her mother and grandparents and abandons her first love, Andrei.Before she leaves, Sasha discovers the hidden war journal of her uncle Kolya, an artist still missing in action years after the war has ended. His pages expose the official lies and the forbidden truth of Stalin’s brutality. Kolya’s revelations and his tragic love story guide Sasha through drama school and cement her determination to live a thousand lives onstage. After graduation, she begins acting in Leningrad, where Andrei, now a Communist Party apparatchik, becomes a censor of her work. As a past secret comes to light, Sasha’s ambitions converge with Andrei’s duties, and Sasha must decide if her dreams are truly worth the necessary sacrifice and if, as her grandmother likes to say, all will indeed be well.