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The Essex Serpent


Sarah Perry - 2016
    At the same time, the novel explores the boundaries of love and friendship and the allegiances that we have to one another. The depth of feeling that the inhabitants of Aldwinter share are matched by their city counterparts as they strive to find the courage to express and understand their deepest desires, and strongest fears.

Plain Tales from the Hills


Rudyard Kipling - 1888
    Most of the stories it includes had already appeared in the Civil and Military Gazette they were written before he reached the age of 22; and they show a remarkably precocious literary talent. His vignettes of life in Brittish India a hundred years ago give vivid insight into Anglo-India at work and play, into a barrack-room life, and into the character of Indians themselves.

Windfall


Penny Vincenzi - 1997
    'Reading her is an addictive experience' Elizabeth BuchanCassia Fallon has always been the perfect country doctor's wife, performing each menial task with willingness and grace, even though her desire to become a doctor herself has been thwarted by lack of money. Then her godmother leaves her a fortune.With her new-found wealth, Cassia is finally free to do as she pleases, and resumes her own medical career as Dr Cassia Tallow with a passion. But it soon becomes clear that her legacy may not be such a blessing after all, for Cassia begins to question the strength of her marriage, her future and exactly where the money has come from.a rich, absorbing tale of temptation, ambition and desire.

Daphne


Justine Picardie - 2006
    The author Daphne du Maurier, beautiful, famous, despairing as her marriage falls apart, finds herself haunted by Rebecca, the character in her most famous novel, written 20 years earlier. Seeking distraction, she begins to research a biography of Branwell Bronte.

New Beginnings at the Star and Sixpence


Holly Hepburn - 2018
    Nessie has moved in with the lovely Owen and his son Luke, leaving her sister Sam next door in their renovated pub, the Star and Sixpence. But is all change for the good? Sam and Joss have gone their separate ways and he’s left Little Monkham for good. New chef Gabriel Santiago is causing a flutter among the women of the village but Sam is determined not to make the same mistake again and keeps things strictly business between them. But an inconvenient attraction to Gabe is the least of Sam’s worries when an unexpected visitor arrives at the Star and Sixpence. Who is Laurie Marsh and what does he want from the sisters?If you loved Part One of the LAST ORDERS AT THE STAR AND SIXPENCE series, pre-order Part Two: Christmas Kisses at the Star and Sixpence now!

Collected Poems


Philip Larkin - 1988
    Collected Poems brings together not only all his books--The North Ship, The Less Deceived, The Whitsun Weddings, and High Windows--but also his uncollected poems from 1940 to 1984.This new edition reflects Larkin's own ordering for his poems and is the first collection to present the body of his work with the organization he preferred. Preserving everything he published in his lifetime, the new Collected Poems is an indispensable contribution to the legacy of an icon of twentieth-century poetry.

Chronicles of Fairacre: Village School / Village Diary / Storm in the Village (Fairacre, #1-3)


Miss Read - 1964
    Classic.

The Well of Loneliness


Radclyffe Hall - 1928
    Stephen grows to be a war hero, a bestselling writer and a loyal, protective lover. But Stephen is a woman, and her lovers are women. As her ambitions drive her, and society confines her, Stephen is forced into desperate actions.The Well of Loneliness was banned for obscenity when published in 1928. It became an international bestseller, and for decades was the single most famous lesbian novel. It has influenced how love between women is understood, for the twentieth century and beyond.

The Towers of Trebizond


Rose Macaulay - 1956
    In this fine and funny adventure set in the backlands of modern Turkey, a group of highly unusual travel companions makes its way from Istanbul to legendary Trebizond, encountering potion-dealing sorcerers, recalcitrant policemen, and Billy Graham on tour with a busload of Southern evangelists. But though the dominant note of the novel is humorous, its pages are shadowed by heartbreak as the narrator confronts the specters of ancient empires, religious turmoil, and painful memories of lost love.

The Secret Agent


Joseph Conrad - 1907
    When Verloc is reluctantly involved in an anarchist plot to blow up the Greenwich Observatory things go disastrously wrong, and what appears to be "a simple tale" proves to involve politicians, policemen, foreign diplomats, and London's fashionable society in the darkest and most surprising interrelations.Based on the text which Conrad's first English readers enjoyed, this new edition includes a full and up-to-date bibliography, a comprehensive chronology and a critical introduction which describes Conrad's great London novel as the realization of a "monstrous town," a place of idiocy, madness, criminality, and savage butchery. It also discusses contemporary anarchist activity in the UK, imperialism, and Conrad's narrative techniques.

NW


Zadie Smith - 2012
    In private houses and public parks, at work and at play, these Londoners inhabit a complicated place, as beautiful as it is brutal, where the thoroughfares hide the back alleys and taking the high road can sometimes lead you to a dead end. Depicting the modern urban zone—familiar to city-dwellers everywhere—NW is a quietly devastating novel of encounters, mercurial and vital, like the city itself.

The Heat of the Day


Elizabeth Bowen - 1948
    Stella Rodney is one of those who chose to stay. But for her, the sense of impending catastrophe becomes acutely personal when she discovers that her lover, Robert, is suspected of selling secrets to the enemy, and that the man who is following him wants Stella herself as the price of his silence. Caught between these two men, not sure whom to believe, Stella finds her world crumbling as she learns how little we can truly know of those around us.

Barcelona Plates


Alexei Sayle - 2000
    Barcelona Plates is a collection of sleek, dark, and witty short stories from the renowned comedian, presenter and actor, Alexei Sayle.

Elmet


Fiona Mozley - 2017
    Daniel is heading north. He is looking for someone. The simplicity of his early life with Daddy and Cathy has turned sour and fearful. They lived apart in the house that Daddy built for them with his bare hands. They foraged and hunted. When they were younger, Daniel and Cathy had gone to school. But they were not like the other children then, and they were even less like them now. Sometimes Daddy disappeared, and would return with a rage in his eyes. But when he was at home he was at peace. He told them that the little copse in Elmet was theirs alone. But that wasn't true. Local men, greedy and watchful, began to circle like vultures. All the while, the terrible violence in Daddy grew.Atmospheric and unsettling, Elmet is a lyrical commentary on contemporary society and one family's precarious place in it, as well as an exploration of how deep the bond between father and child can go.

Aeson: Blue


Vera Nazarian - 2021
    Intelligent, well-educated, perfectly isolated in his lofty rank, responsibilities, and privilege of the divine Imperial Dynasty. He's the most powerful boy on Atlantis and he's going into the real world for the very first time. . . .Now just another student in Fleet Cadet School, Aeson must learn everything normal people take for granted—including the basics of how to look after himself, how to interact with others his age, how to laugh, and how to make friends.As if that wasn't enough to boggle the mind of a confident but shy boy who's never had a real conversation with anyone but his mother, Aeson has one more lesson ahead . . . what it's like to fall in love.Get inside Aeson's mind and learn his story from the inside out as he forms the bonds that will change him forever—with Elikara, Xelio, Oalla, Keruvat, Erita, and other favorite Atlantean characters, long before they took to the stars as astra daimon! AESON: BLUE is the first in The Atlantis Grail Novella Series.