Download or read book Our Endless Numbered Days A Novel written by Claire Fuller and published by Tin House Books. This book was released on 2015-03-17 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Part fairy-tale, part magic, yet always savagely realistic Claire Fuller's haunting and powerful debut Our Endless Numbered Days will appeal to fans of Eowyn Ivey's The Snow Child and Christian Baker Kline's Orphan Train . Peggy Hillcoat is eight years old when her survivalist father, James, takes her from their home in London to a remote hut in the woods and tells her that the rest of the world has been destroyed. Deep in the wilderness, Peggy and James make a life for themselves. They repair the hut, bathe in water from the river, hunt and gather food in the summers and almost starve in the harsh winters. They mark their days only by the sun and the seasons. When Peggy finds a pair of boots in the forest and begins a search for their owner, she unwittingly begins to unravel the series of events that brought her to the woods and, in doing so, discovers the strength she needs to go back to the home and mother she thought she’d lost. After Peggy's return to civilization, her mother learns the truth of her escape, of what happened to James on the last night out in the woods, and of the secret that Peggy has carried with her ever since.
Download or read book Swimming Lessons written by Claire Fuller and published by Tin House Books. This book was released on 2017-02-07 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Oprah Editor's Pick and NPR Best Book of the Year From the author of the award-winning and word-of-mouth sensation Our Endless Numbered Days comes an exhilarating literary mystery that will keep readers guessing until the final page. Ingrid Coleman writes letters to her husband, Gil, about the truth of their marriage, but instead of giving them to him, she hides them in the thousands of books he has collected over the years. When Ingrid has written her final letter she disappears from a Dorset beach, leaving behind her beautiful but dilapidated house by the sea, her husband, and her two daughters, Flora and Nan. Twelve years later, Gil thinks he sees Ingrid from a bookshop window, but he’s getting older and this unlikely sighting is chalked up to senility. Flora, who has never believed her mother drowned, returns home to care for her father and to try to finally discover what happened to Ingrid. But what Flora doesn’t realize is that the answers to her questions are hidden in the books that surround her. Scandalous and whip-smart, Swimming Lessons holds the Coleman family up to the light, exposing the mysterious truths of a passionate and troubled marriage.
Download or read book Bitter Orange written by Claire Fuller and published by Tin House Books. This book was released on 2018-10-09 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An NPR Best Book of the Year "Unsettling and eerie, Bitter Orange is an ideal chiller." —Time Magazine From the author of Our Endless Numbered Days and Swimming Lessons, Bitter Orange is a seductive psychological portrait, a keyhole into the dangers of longing and how far a woman might go to escape her past. From the attic of Lyntons, a dilapidated English country mansion, Frances Jellico sees them—Cara first: dark and beautiful, then Peter: striking and serious. The couple is spending the summer of 1969 in the rooms below hers while Frances is researching the architecture in the surrounding gardens. But she’s distracted. Beneath a floorboard in her bathroom, she finds a peephole that gives her access to her neighbors' private lives. To Frances’s surprise, Cara and Peter are keen to get to know her. It is the first occasion she has had anybody to call a friend, and before long they are spending every day together: eating lavish dinners, drinking bottle after bottle of wine, and smoking cigarettes until the ash piles up on the crumbling furniture. Frances is dazzled. But as the hot summer rolls lazily on, it becomes clear that not everything is right between Cara and Peter. The stories that Cara tells don’t quite add up, and as Frances becomes increasingly entangled in the lives of the glamorous, hedonistic couple, the boundaries between truth and lies, right and wrong, begin to blur. Amid the decadence, a small crime brings on a bigger one: a crime so terrible that it will brand their lives forever.
Download or read book Our Numbered Days written by Neil Hilborn and published by Button Poetry. This book was released on 2017-10-10 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "When you're dumb enough for long enough, you're gonna meet someone too smart to love you, and they're gonna love you anyway, and it's gonna go so poorly," Neil Hilborn writes in his debut full-length collection, OUR NUMBERED DAYS. In 2013, Hilborn's poem "OCD" went viral, and has amassed over 11 million views to date. While this collection ruminates on love, heartbreak, and mental illness, these poems are anything but saccharine. Hilborn uses the same humor and self-deprecation that propelled "OCD" to success in order to make his unmatched vulnerability all the more powerful. Ultimately, Hilborn is a poet of the people: his work is accessible, honest, and entertaining; a revitalizing entry in contemporary poetry.
Download or read book Unsettled Ground written by Claire Fuller and published by House of Anansi. This book was released on 2021-05-18 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From bestselling author Claire Fuller comes a portrait of life on the fringes of society, a heart-stopping novel of betrayal and resilience, love and survival. What if the life you have always known is taken from you in an instant? What would you do to get it back? Twins Jeanie and Julius have always been different from other people. At fifty-one years old, they still live with their mother, Dot, in rural isolation and poverty. But when Dot dies suddenly, threats start raining down. Jeanie and Julius would do anything to preserve their small sanctuary against the perils of the outside world, even as their mother’s secrets begin to unravel, putting everything they thought they knew about their lives at stake.
Download or read book Magpie Lane written by Lucy Atkins and published by Quercus. This book was released on 2020-02-01 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Riveting, twisty, page-turning stuff' Guardian A 'best books of 2020' pick for BBC Radio 4 Open Book, the Guardian, the Telegraph and Good Housekeeping 'The page turner you've been looking for. Sly, witty and gripping . . . I devoured it' Naomi Alderman 'An utter joy . . . wonderfully skilled' Sarah Perry 'Beguiling, brilliantly creepy, and an utterly compelling read' Claire Fuller 'Tender, creepy and gripping' Sunday Times 'Spellbinding and spooky . . . a dazzling high wire act, superbly absorbing' Sunday Mirror When the eight-year-old daughter of an Oxford College Master vanishes in the middle of the night, police turn to the Scottish nanny, Dee, for answers. As Dee looks back over her time in the Master's Lodging - an eerie and ancient house - a picture of a high achieving but dysfunctional family emerges: Nick, the fiercely intelligent and powerful father; his beautiful Danish wife Mariah, pregnant with their child; and the lost little girl, Felicity, almost mute, seeing ghosts, grieving her dead mother. But is Dee telling the whole story? Is her growing friendship with the eccentric house historian, Linklater, any cause for concern? And most of all, why is Felicity silent? Roaming Oxford's secret passages and hidden graveyards, Magpie Lane explores the true meaning of family - and what it is to be denied one. 'Enthralling . . . creepy and compelling' The Times 'Deliciously dark' Alexandra Shulman 'A gorgeously satisfying triumph' Lucy Mangan 'A rare thing . . . simply stunning' Daily Express 'I was gripped . . . highly original' Alex Clark 'Creepy, suspenseful' Independent 'One of the most intriguing narrators since Notes on a Scandal' Sara Collins 'Grown-up and cleverly written . . . a dizzying sense of uncertainty' Literary Review 'Keeps you guessing . . . a real sense of menace' Good Housekeeping 'Wholly beguiling' Mick Herron 'Dazzlingly good' Diane Setterfield 'Beautiful writing' Polly Samson 'Clever, tense and twisty' Amanda Craig 'Highly intelligent' Sarah Vaughan 'Simply brilliant!' JP Delaney 'Darkly atmospheric' Jane Fallon 'Clever and creepy' Erin Kelly 'Highly recommended' Louise Candlish
Download or read book The Wolf Road written by Beth Lewis and published by Crown Publishing Group (NY). This book was released on 2016 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Published simultaneously in Great Brtain by The Borough Press.
Download or read book Stay Up With Me written by Tom Barbash and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-10-10 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Stay Up With Me belongs to the tradition of the classic American story and, like John Cheever, Barbash dramatizes the messy lives of New Yorkers' Independent on Sunday A newly single mother wrestles with the evidence of her son's love life during his Christmas vacation; an anxious husband persists in playing the host at his annual drinks party even though his marriage is in trouble and his wife mysteriously absent; a young man watches his widowed father become the toast of Manhattan's midlife dating scene while he struggles to find his own footing in life . . . The characters in Tom Barbash's acclaimed, Folio Prize-nominated collection explore the myriad ways we seek to connect with each other and the sometimes cruel world around us. In the classic tradition of John Cheever or Tobias Wolff, Barbash laces his narratives with sharp wit, psychological acuity and pathos, so that they pierce the heart and linger in the imagination. 'One of the most satisfying cover-to-cover short story collections I can remember' Dave Eggers 'Tom Barbash's wise and bittersweet stories map the gulfs between us, and the unexpected connections. I tried to keep track of my favorite one, but it was always the story I'd just finished'David Mitchell 'Is there such a thing as the Great American Story Collection? Yes, and this is it' Justin Cronin
Download or read book Ready Player Two written by Ernest Cline and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2020-11-24 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The thrilling sequel to the beloved worldwide bestseller Ready Player One, the near-future adventure that inspired the blockbuster Steven Spielberg film. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST • “The game is on again. . . . A great mix of exciting fantasy and threatening fact.”—The Wall Street Journal AN UNEXPECTED QUEST. TWO WORLDS AT STAKE. ARE YOU READY? Days after winning OASIS founder James Halliday’s contest, Wade Watts makes a discovery that changes everything. Hidden within Halliday’s vaults, waiting for his heir to find, lies a technological advancement that will once again change the world and make the OASIS a thousand times more wondrous—and addictive—than even Wade dreamed possible. With it comes a new riddle, and a new quest—a last Easter egg from Halliday, hinting at a mysterious prize. And an unexpected, impossibly powerful, and dangerous new rival awaits, one who’ll kill millions to get what he wants. Wade’s life and the future of the OASIS are again at stake, but this time the fate of humanity also hangs in the balance. Lovingly nostalgic and wildly original as only Ernest Cline could conceive it, Ready Player Two takes us on another imaginative, fun, action-packed adventure through his beloved virtual universe, and jolts us thrillingly into the future once again.
Download or read book Our Tragic Universe written by Scarlett Thomas and published by HMH. This book was released on 2010-09-01 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This “delightfully whimsical novel riffs on the premise that ordinary lives stubbornly resist the tidy order that a fiction narrative might impose on them” (Publishers Weekly). Can a story save your life? Meg Carpenter is broke. Her novel is years overdue. Her cell phone is out of minutes. And her moody boyfriend’s only contribution to the household is his sour attitude. So she jumps at the chance to review a pseudoscientific book that promises life everlasting. But who wants to live forever? Consulting cosmology and physics, tarot cards, koans (and riddles and jokes), new-age theories of everything, narrative theory, Nietzsche, Baudrillard, and knitting patterns, Meg wends her way through Our Tragic Universe, asking this and many other questions. Does she believe in fairies? In magic? Is she a superbeing? Is she living a storyless story? And what’s the connection between her off-hand suggestion to push a car into a river, a ship in a bottle, a mysterious beast loose on the moor, and the controversial author of The Science of Living Forever? Smart, entrancing, and boiling over with Thomas’s trademark big ideas, Our Tragic Universe is a book about how relationships are created and destroyed, how we can rewrite our futures (if not our histories), and how stories just might save our lives.
Download or read book Shady Hollow written by Juneau Black and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2022-01-25 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first book in the Shady Hollow series, in which we are introduced to the village of Shady Hollow, a place where woodland creatures live together in harmony—until a curmudgeonly toad turns up dead and the local reporter has to solve the case. Reporter Vera Vixen is a relative newcomer to Shady Hollow. The fox has a nose for news, so when she catches wind that the death might be a murder, she resolves to get to the bottom of the case, no matter where it leads. As she stirs up still waters, the fox exposes more than one mystery, and discovers that additional lives are in jeopardy. Vera finds more to this town than she ever suspected. It seems someone in the Hollow will do anything to keep her from solving the murder, and soon it will take all of Vera’s cunning and quickness to crack the case. A VINTAGE CRIME/BLACK LIZARD ORIGINAL
Download or read book Mr Chartwell written by Rebecca Hunt and published by Dial Press. This book was released on 2011-02-08 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: July 1964. Chartwell House, Kent: Winston Churchill wakes at dawn. There’s a dark, mute “presence” in the room that focuses on him with rapt concentration. It’s Mr. Chartwell. Soon after, in London, Esther Hammerhans, a librarian at the House of Commons, goes to answer the door to her new lodger. Through the glass she sees a vast silhouette the size of a mattress. It’s Mr. Chartwell. Charismatic, dangerously seductive, Mr. Chartwell unites the eminent statesman at the end of his career and the vulnerable young woman. But can they withstand Mr. Chartwell’s strange, powerful charms and his stranglehold on their lives? Can they even explain who or what he is and why he has come to visit? In this utterly original, moving, funny, and exuberant novel, Rebecca Hunt explores how two unlikely lives collide as Mr. Chartwell’s motives are revealed to be far darker and deeper than they at first seem.
Download or read book The Silence written by Tim Lebbon and published by Titan Books (US, CA). This book was released on 2015-04-14 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now a gripping Netflix movie starring Stanley Tucci and Kiernan Shipka. A suspenseful masterpiece from New York Times bestselling author Tim Lebbon. In the darkness of a underground cave system, blind creatures hunt by sound. Then there is light, there are voices, and they feed... Swarming from their prison, the creatures thrive and destroy. To scream, even to whisper, is to summon death. As the hordes lay waste to Europe, a girl watches to see if they will cross the sea. Deaf for many years, she knows how to live in silence; now, it is her family’s only chance of survival. To leave their home, to shun others, to find a remote haven where they can sit out the plague. But will it ever end? And what kind of world will be left?
Download or read book The Lightkeepers written by Abby Geni and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2016-01-01 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2016 B&N Discover Great New Writers Award for Fiction In The Lightkeepers, we follow Miranda, a nature photographer who travels to the Farallon Islands, an exotic and dangerous archipelago off the coast of California, for a one–year residency capturing the landscape. Her only companions are the scientists studying there, odd and quirky refugees from the mainland living in rustic conditions; they document the fish populations around the island, the bold trio of sharks called the Sisters that hunt the surrounding waters, and the overwhelming bird population who, at times, create the need to wear hard hats as protection from their attacks. Shortly after her arrival, Miranda is assaulted by one of the inhabitants of the islands. A few days later, her assailant is found dead, perhaps the result of an accident. As the novel unfolds, Miranda gives witness to the natural wonders of this special place as she grapples with what has happened to her and deepens her connection (and her suspicions) to her companions, while falling under the thrall of the legends of the place nicknamed ""the Islands of the Dead."" And when more violence occurs, each member of this strange community falls under suspicion.
Download or read book The Most Dangerous Place on Earth written by Lindsey Lee Johnson and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In an idyllic community of wealthy California families, new teacher Molly Nicoll becomes intrigued by the hidden lives of her privileged students. Unknown to Molly, a middle school tragedy in which they were all complicit continues to reverberate for her students. Theirs is a world in which every action may become public: postable, shareable, viral.
Download or read book The Wife the Maid and the Mistress written by Ariel Lawhon and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2014-10-07 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the New York Times bestselling author of I Was Anastasia comes a “genuinely surprising whodunit” (USA Today) that tantalizingly reimagines a scandalous murder mystery that rocked the nation. One summer night in 1930, Judge Joseph Crater steps into a New York City cab and is never heard from again. Behind this great man are three women, each with her own tale to tell: Stella, his fashionable wife, the picture of propriety; Maria, their steadfast maid, indebted to the judge; and Ritzi, his showgirl mistress, willing to seize any chance to break out of the chorus line. As the twisted truth emerges, Ariel Lawhon’s wickedly entertaining debut mystery transports us into the smoky jazz clubs, the seedy backstage dressing rooms, and the shadowy streets beneath the Art Deco skyline. Don't miss Ariel Lawhon's new book, The Frozen River!
Download or read book My Absolute Darling written by Gabriel Tallent and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-06-26 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER LA TIMES BOOK PRIZE FINALIST NBCC JOHN LEONARD PRIZE FINALIST ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES'S MOST NOTABLE BOOKS OF 2017 ONE OF THE WASHINGTON POST’S MOST NOTABLE BOOKS OF 2017 ONE OF NPR’S ‘GREAT READS’ OF 2017 A USA TODAY BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR AN AMAZON.COM BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR A BUSINESS INSIDER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR "Impossible to put down." —NPR "A novel that readers will gulp down, gasping.” —The Washington Post "The word 'masterpiece' has been cheapened by too many blurbs, but My Absolute Darling absolutely is one." —Stephen King A brilliant and immersive, all-consuming read about one fourteen-year-old girl's heart-stopping fight for her own soul. Turtle Alveston is a survivor. At fourteen, she roams the woods along the northern California coast. The creeks, tide pools, and rocky islands are her haunts and her hiding grounds, and she is known to wander for miles. But while her physical world is expansive, her personal one is small and treacherous: Turtle has grown up isolated since the death of her mother, in the thrall of her tortured and charismatic father, Martin. Her social existence is confined to the middle school (where she fends off the interest of anyone, student or teacher, who might penetrate her shell) and to her life with her father. Then Turtle meets Jacob, a high-school boy who tells jokes, lives in a big clean house, and looks at Turtle as if she is the sunrise. And for the first time, the larger world begins to come into focus: her life with Martin is neither safe nor sustainable. Motivated by her first experience with real friendship and a teenage crush, Turtle starts to imagine escape, using the very survival skills her father devoted himself to teaching her. What follows is a harrowing story of bravery and redemption. With Turtle's escalating acts of physical and emotional courage, the reader watches, heart in throat, as this teenage girl struggles to become her own hero—and in the process, becomes ours as well. Shot through with striking language in a fierce natural setting, My Absolute Darling is an urgently told, profoundly moving read that marks the debut of an extraordinary new writer.
