Book picks similar to
The Shape of Illusion by William Edmund Barrett
christian-fiction
novels-fiction
setting-contemporary
historical-fiction
84 Charing Cross Road / The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street
Helene Hanff - 1973
For 20 years, an outspoken New York writer and a rather more restrained London bookseller carried on an increasingly touching correspondence. In her first letter to Marks & Co., Helene Hanff encloses a wish list, but warns, "The phrase 'antiquarian booksellers' scares me somewhat, as I equate 'antique' with expensive." Twenty days later, on October 25, 1949, a correspondent identified only as FPD let Hanff know that works by Hazlitt and Robert Louis Stevenson would be coming under separate cover. When they arrive, Hanff is ecstatic--but unsure she'll ever conquer "bilingual arithmetic." By early December 1949, Hanff is suddenly worried that the six-pound ham she's sent off to augment British rations will arrive in a kosher office. But only when FPD turns out to have an actual name, Frank Doel, does the real fun begin. Two years later, Hanff is outraged that Marks & Co. has dared to send an abridged Pepys diary. "i enclose two limp singles, i will make do with this thing till you find me a real Pepys. THEN i will rip up this ersatz book, page by page, AND WRAP THINGS IN IT." Nonetheless, her postscript asks whether they want fresh or powdered eggs for Christmas. Soon they're sharing news of Frank's family and Hanff's career.
The Sands of Time
Sidney Sheldon - 1985
Unwittingly they become pawns in a battle between the charismatic Jaime Miró, leader of the outlawed Basque nationalists, and the ruthless Colonel Ramón Acoca of the Spanish Army.Four women - and the men they are forbidden to love.Megan - the orphan, who feels an overpowering attraction to Jaime.Lucia - the fiery Sicilian beauty on the run for murder - and Rubio Arzano, the freedom fighter who risks his life to save her.Teresa - whose guilty conscience finally drives her to betray her friends.Graciela - who bears a terrible secret that almost destroys her - and the courageous Ricardo who loves her.From the same author of the books "The Other Side of Midnight", "Rage of Angels", "Bloodline" and "Windmills of the Gods". The book is set in Spain and centres around four nuns and their unwitting involvement with outlawed Basque nationalists and the Spanish Army.
Stones from the River
Ursula Hegi - 1994
Eventually she learns that being different is a secret that all humans share—from her mother who flees into madness, to her friend Georg whose parents pretend he's a girl, to the Jews Trudy harbors in her cellar.Ursula Hegi brings us a timeless and unforgettable story in Trudi and a small town, weaving together a profound tapestry of emotional power, humanity, and truth.
The Girl In Times Square
Paullina Simons - 2004
Lily's life is turned upside down with the disappearance of her flat mate, incredible revelations about her family and a personal discovery, all of which will affect her forever. What if everything you believed about your life was a lie? Meet Lily Quinn. She is broke, struggling to finish college, pay her rent, find love. Adrift in bustling New York City, the most interesting things in Lily's life happen to the people around her. But Lily loves her aimless life until her best friend and roommate Amy disappears. That's when Spencer Patrick O'Malley, a cynical, past his prime NYPD detective with demons of his own, enters Lily's world. And a sudden financial windfall which should bring Lily joy instead becomes an ominous portent of the dark forces gathering around her. But fate isn't finished with Lily. She finds herself fighting for her life as Spencer's search for the missing Amy intensifies, leading Lily to question everything she knew about her friend and family. Startling revelations about the people she loves force her to confront truths that will leave her changed forever. From a master storyteller comes a new heart-wrenching, magnificent and un-putdownable novel. This is the odyssey of two young women, Lily and Amy, roommates and friends on the verge of the rest of their lives.
I Know My Love
Catherine Gaskin - 1962
The story of two women - and a man; of Emmy and Rose, bound to each other irrevocably by ties of friendship and love, and still locked in a ceaseless struggle for the same man, Adam.
The Red Tent
Anita Diamant - 1997
In the Bible, her life is only hinted at in a brief and violent detour within the more familiar chapters of the Book of Genesis that are about her father, Jacob, and his dozen sons. Told in Dinah's voice, this novel reveals the traditions and turmoils of ancient womanhood—the world of the red tent. It begins with the story of her mothers—Leah, Rachel, Zilpah, and Bilhah—the four wives of Jacob. They love Dinah and give her gifts that sustain her through a hard-working youth, a calling to midwifery, and a new home in a foreign land. Dinah's story reaches out from a remarkable period of early history and creates an intimate connection with the past. Deeply affecting, The Red Tent combines rich storytelling with a valuable achievement in modern fiction: a new view of biblical women's society.
Missing Wings (Aranysargas, #1)
Andrea Luhman - 2018
The poison meant to kill her father leaves him in a degenerative state. When her eldest brother discovers she has survived, he orders her to stay in hiding. She must wait, concealed in the human world, until the danger of their father’s uncontrolled rages is contained.Grown and adapted to the human world, Katrina encounters one of her kind. The promise of home and first love leads her into a situation capable of starting war among the Veilede. Will a human upbringing, mistakes, and the loss of her abilities bar her from reclaiming her heritage? Will unraveling the mystery of her mother’s betrayal lead her family into even greater danger?
Remember When
Judith McNaught - 1996
ripe plot twists... a fine supporting cast" – Ocala Star-Banner.Now, with more than fourteen million books in print and seven New York Times bestsellers, Judith McNaught brings us her latest, most enthralling novel...
Remember When
When multinational tycoon Cole Harrison approached her on a moonlit balcony at the White Orchid Charity Ball, Diana Foster had no idea how extraordinary the night ahead would be. The most lavish social event of the Houston season had brought out American aristocracy, Texas-style, in glittering array. So, after losing her fiancé to a blond Italian heiress and reading about it in a sleazy gossip paper, the lovely Diana felt obliged to make an appearance — if only to save face and to bolster her company's image.Foster's Beautiful Living magazine was her family's success story, and Diana knew that, single, childless, and suddenly "unengaged", she was not living up to its lucrative image of upscale domestic tranquility.A woman of gentle grace and kindness, Diana deeply valued her privacy and her dignity, both of which were at risk that night among certain rumor-driven socialites. And now the pride of Dallas billionaires, Cole Harrison, was closing in on her with two crystal flutes and a bottle of champagne...The tall, lithe former stableboy couldn't negotiate his way out of a contract with his crusty uncle, Cal — he had to bring home a wife, and soon, or see Cal's share of the business Cole had created go to an undeserving relative. A man as coolly analytical as he was arrestingly attractive, Cole decided that his bride-to-be should be rich in her own right, meltingly beautiful, and a woman of impeccable character... Diana Foster!It was the perfect to their respective dilemmas, and, after a lot of champagne for Diana and some skilled persuasion from Cole, their lips met in a long, slow, bargain-sealing kiss. Neither one dared imagine that a match made in logic's heaven might be headed straight for an unexpected, once-in-a-lifetime love...
The Seduction of Eva Volk
C.D. Baker - 2009
Christians serving Hitler? Never before undertaken in a novel, 'The Seduction of Eva Volk' explores the reality of this no-so-simple paradox from the German point of view.Through the eyes of young Eva Volk, the alluring charm of the Hitler movement is personified in a lover. Desperately seeking wholeness in her broken world, she is quickly swept away by the passions of love and war...until she finds herself facing the consequences of blindness. Her's is a story that serves as a warning to us all.
Mercy Me
Margaret A. Graham - 2003
Her unabashed faith shines through as she shares details of her life as an adviser to her best friend, Beatrice, and as a voice of reason to her women's Sunday school class, the Willing Workers. The pettiness of the women at the Apostolic Bible Church gets under Esmeralda's skin, but when she rallies them to the side of an impoverished mother with AIDS, the very best of human love and compassion is portrayed.Told in delightfully eccentric first-person narration, this story will inspire, uplift, amuse, and move readers to tears. Despite Esmeralda's lack of education and sophistication-or perhaps because of it-she is used mightily by God and meets everyday challenges with gumption, humor, and grace. Her struggle to maintain her faith in the midst of pain and suffering is a timeless and universal theme with which many will identify, and the love and mercy the story unfolds will delight both young and old.
The Greatest Miracle in the World
Og Mandino - 1975
A great inspirational writer tells his story - a narrative that will hold you spellbound as it reveals exciting new secrets for your personal happiness and success.
People of the Ark
Vaughn Heppner - 2010
With astounding narrative power—Vaughn Heppner, Winner of the Writers of the Future Award—sweeps the reader into the whirlpool of pageantry, passion, splendor, chaos and earth-shattering upheaval that was the world before the Flood. Here is the story of Methuselah, the wealthy patriarch of a rebellious clan, and Noah, a farmer driven mad with a vision of catastrophic disaster. So begins a towering saga of great events and mortal frailties. It is peopled with a vast, and vivid cast of unforgettable men and women—queens and soldiers, temptresses and wives, carpenters and orphans—combined in a richly embroidered human tapestry to bring a remarkable era to bold and breathtaking life.
Night
Elie Wiesel - 1956
Night is the terrifying record of Elie Wiesel's memories of the death of his family, the death of his own innocence, and his despair as a deeply observant Jew confronting the absolute evil of man. This new translation by his wife and most frequent translator, Marion Wiesel, corrects important details and presents the most accurate rendering in English of Elie Wiesel's testimony to what happened in the camps and of his unforgettable message that this horror must simply never be allowed to happen again.
The Big War
Anton Myrer - 1957
They were Americans and Marines. And this is their story: The Big War, Anton Myrer's panoramic novel of Marines in the Pacific in World War II. This is the story of Alan Newcombe, the Boston society Harvard man; Danny Kantaylis, the natural-born leader; Jay O'Neill, the barroom scrapper. Myrer does not glorify war; he does not flinch from describing what the actual experience of warfare was like for a desperate group of Marines trapped in some of the worst fighting conditions of the war. We learn about their lives at home and their fates on the battlefield.
The Complete Father Brown
G.K. Chesterton - 1929
Chesterton's endearing amateur sleuth has entertained countless generations of readers. For, as his admirers know, Father Brown's cherubic face and unworldly simplicity, his glasses and his huge umbrella, disguise a quite uncanny understanding of the criminal mind at work.This Penguin omnibus edition contains* The Innocence of Father Brown* The Wisdom of Father Brown* The Incredulity of Father Brown* The Secret of Father Brown* The Scandal of Father Brown