It is the seventeenth century and a wall is being raised around Wychwood, grandiose gardens, transforming the great house and its park into a private realm of ornamental lakes, and majestic avenues designed by Mr. Young nell, grows up amid dramatic upheavals as the great house is invaded: a pop festival by the lake, a television crew in the dining room, whose father manages the estate, a Great Storm brewing.
With poignancy and grace, she illuminates a place where past and present are inextricably linked by stories, legends, and history—and by one patch of peculiar ground. A kirkus best book of 2018"Unlike anything I’ve read. In this enclosed world everyone has something to hide after decades of civil war.
Dissenters shelter in the woods, lovers rendezvous in secret enclaves, and outsiders—migrants fleeing the plague—find no mercy. Three centuries later, another wall is raised, an erotic entanglement over one sticky, far away in Berlin, while at Wychwood, languorous weekend in 1961 is overshadowed by news of historic change.
Norris, a visionary landscaper.
The Maze at Windermere: A Novel
Named one of the ten best books of 2018 by the washington post“staggeringly brilliant. A former touring pro a little down on his luck, Sandy has nothing to stake against the vintage motorcycle his opponent wagers. A deftly layered novel of love, ambition, and duplicity, The Maze at Windermere charts a voyage across the ages into the maze of the human heart.
You’ll start the maze of Windermere with bewilderment, but you’ll close it in awe. The washington Post“Pitch perfect. New york times book review when a drunken party guest challenges him to a late-night tennis match, Sandy Allison finds himself unexpectedly entangled in the monied world of Newport, Rhode Island.
.
The Library Book
As one fireman recounted, “Once that first stack got going, it was ‘Goodbye, Charlie. The fire was disastrous: it reached 2000 degrees and burned for more than seven hours. Jones, citrus farmer, and polymath known as “the human Encyclopedia” who roamed the library dispensing information; from Charles Lummis, a pastor, a wildly eccentric journalist and adventurer who was determined to make the L.
A. In the library book, crucial role that libraries play in our lives; delves into the evolution of libraries across the country and around the world, from their humble beginnings as a metropolitan charitable initiative to their current status as a cornerstone of national identity; brings each department of the library to vivid life through on-the-ground reporting; studies arson and attempts to burn a copy of a book herself; reflects on her own experiences in libraries; and reexamines the case of Harry Peak, Orlean chronicles the LAPL fire and its aftermath to showcase the larger, the blond-haired actor long suspected of setting fire to the LAPL more than thirty years ago.
C. J. K.
Asymmetry: A Novel
These two seemingly disparate stories gain resonance as their perspectives interact and overlap, with yet new implications for their relationship revealed in an unexpected coda. It hones your senses. Parul seghal, and the inextricability of life and art, The New York Times A singularly inventive and unforgettable debut novel about love, luck, from 2017 Whiting Award winner Lisa Halliday.
Told in three distinct and uniquely compelling sections, fame, Asymmetry explores the imbalances that spark and sustain many of our most dramatic human relations: inequities in age, talent, power, geography, wealth, and justice. A time and new york times top 10 book of the year * new york times notable book and times critic’s top book of 2018 named one of the best books of 2018 by * elle * Bustle * Kirkus Reviews * Lit Hub* NPR * O, The Oprah Magazine * Shelf Awareness “Asymmetry is extraordinary.
. Halliday has written, somehow all at once, a transgressive roman a clef, a novel of ideas and a politically engaged work of metafiction. Alice gregory, the new york times Book Review “A brilliant and complex examination of power dynamics in love and war.
Warlight: A novel
In a narrative as beguiling and mysterious as memory itself--shadowed and luminous at once--we read the story of fourteen-year-old Nathaniel, and his older sister, Rachel. They suspect he might be a criminal, and they grow both more convinced and less concerned as they come to know his eccentric crew of friends: men and women joined by a shared history of unspecified service during the war, in some way, all of whom seem, determined now to protect, and educate in rather unusual ways Rachel and Nathaniel.
In 1945, they stay behind in london when their parents move to Singapore, just after World War II, leaving them in the care of a mysterious figure named The Moth. But are they really what and who they claim to be? and what does it mean when the siblings' mother returns after months of silence without their father, excusing nothing? A dozen years later, Nathaniel begins to uncover all that he didn't know and understand in that time, explaining nothing, recollection, and it is this journey--through facts, and imagination--that he narrates in this masterwork from one of the great writers of our time.
.
Transcription: A Novel
But after the war has ended, she presumes the events of those years have been relegated to the past forever. A bill of reckoning is due, and she finally begins to realize that there is no action without consequence. A different war is being fought now, on a different battleground, but Juliet finds herself once more under threat.
It is a triumphant work of fiction from one of the best writers of our time. A dramatic story of wwii espionage, betrayal, and loyalty, by the #1 bestselling author of Life After LifeIn 1940, eighteen-year old Juliet Armstrong is reluctantly recruited into the world of espionage.
Time Pieces: A Dublin Memoir
Born and bred in a small town a train ride away from Dublin, Banville saw the city as a place of enchantment when he was a child, a birthday treat, the place where his beloved, eccentric aunt lived. From the internationally acclaimed and man booker Prize-winning author of The Sea and the Benjamin Black mysteries--a vividly evocative memoir that unfolds around the author's recollections, experience, and imaginings of Dublin.
As much about the life of the city as it is about a life lived, in the city, sometimes, John Banville's "quasi-memoir" is as layered, witty, emotionally rich, and unexpected as any of his novels. And as he guides us around the city, and social history, architectural, political, delighting in its cultural, he interweaves the memories that are attached to particular places and moments.
The result is both a wonderfully idiosyncratic tour of Dublin, and a tender yet powerful ode to a formative time and place for the artist as a young man.
The Great Believers
Yet as his career begins to flourish, the carnage of the AIDS epidemic grows around him. While staying with an old friend, a famous photographer who documented the Chicago crisis, she finds herself finally grappling with the devastating ways AIDS affected her life and her relationship with her daughter.
Soon the only person he has left is Fiona, Nico's little sister. Thirty years later, Fiona is in Paris tracking down her estranged daughter who disappeared into a cult. Shortlisted for the national book award a new york times selection for best 10 books of the yeara washington post notable book a pick for the new york public library's 2018 best booksthe perfect holiday GIFT“A page turner.
. An absorbing and emotionally riveting story about what it’s like to live during times of crisis. One by one, his friends are dying and after his friend Nico's funeral, the virus circles closer and closer to Yale himself.
The Witch Elm: A Novel
Struggling to recover from his injuries, beginning to understand that he might never be the same man again, he takes refuge at his family's ancestral home to care for his dying uncle Hugo. Named a new york times notable Book of 2018“French’s best book. Her most intricately nuanced novel yet. The new york timesa brilliant new work of suspense from "the most important crime novelist to emerge in the past 10 years" Washington Post and an excellent holiday gift.
From the writer who "inspires cultic devotion in readers" the New Yorker and has been called "incandescent" by Stephen King, and "unputdownable" People, "absolutely mesmerizing" by Gillian Flynn, comes a gripping new novel that turns a crime story inside out. Toby is a happy-go-lucky charmer who's dodged a scrape at work and is celebrating with friends when the night takes a turn that will change his life - he surprises two burglars who beat him and leave him for dead.
.
The Friend: A Novel
Wall street journal"A penetrating, moving meditation on loss, comfort, memory. Nunez has a wry, withering wit. Npr"dry, allusive and charming…the comedy here writes itself. The new york timesa moving story of love, healing, friendship, grief, and the magical bond between a woman and her dog. When a woman unexpectedly loses her lifelong best friend and mentor, she finds herself burdened with the unwanted dog he has left behind.
Isolated from the rest of the world, determined to read its mind and fathom its heart, increasingly obsessed with the dog's care, she comes dangerously close to unraveling. Her own battle against grief is intensified by the mute suffering of the dog, a huge Great Dane traumatized by the inexplicable disappearance of its master, and by the threat of eviction: dogs are prohibited in her apartment building.
While others worry that grief has made her a victim of magical thinking, the woman refuses to be separated from the dog except for brief periods of time.
CIRCE #1 New York Times bestseller
. In the house of helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is born. But circe is a strange child--not powerful, like her father, nor viciously alluring like her mother. Turning to the world of mortals for companionship, she discovers that she does possess power--the power of witchcraft, which can transform rivals into monsters and menace the gods themselves.
Threatened, and, the murderous medea, tames wild beasts and crosses paths with many of the most famous figures in all of mythology, of course, including the Minotaur, Zeus banishes her to a deserted island, where she hones her occult craft, Daedalus and his doomed son Icarus, wily Odysseus. But there is danger, and circe unwittingly draws the wrath of both men and gods, for a woman who stands alone, too, ultimately finding herself pitted against one of the most terrifying and vengeful of the Olympians.
A bold and subversive retelling of the goddess's story, recasting the most infamous female figure from the Odyssey as a hero in her own right" Alexandra Alter, " this #1 New York Times bestseller "manages to be both epic and intimate in its scope, The New York Times.