You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
The New York Times bestselling author of All the Stars and Teeth brings to life a highly romantic, Gothic-infused world of wealth, desire, and betrayal. Orphaned as a baby, nineteen-year-old Signa has been raised by a string of guardians, each one more interested in her wealth than her well-being—and each has met an untimely end. Her remaining relatives are the elusive Hawthornes, an eccentric family living at Thorn Grove, an estate both glittering and gloomy. Its patriarch mourns his late wife through wild parties, while his son grapples for control of the family’s waning reputation, and his daughter suffers from a mysterious illness. But when their mother’s restless spirit appears claiming she was poisoned, Signa realizes that the family she depends on could be in grave danger and enlists the help of a surly stable boy to hunt down the killer. However, Signa’s best chance of uncovering the murderer is an alliance with Death himself, a fascinating, dangerous shadow who has never been far from her side. Though he’s made her life a living hell, Death shows Signa that their growing connection may be more powerful—and more irresistible—than she ever dared imagine.
Winner of 2018 Warwick Prize for Women in Translation From the author of the highly acclaimed Trieste, a fierce novel about history, memory, and illness Andreas Ban, a psychologist who no longer psychologizes, a writer who no longer writes, lives alone in a coastal town in Croatia. His body is failing him. He sifts through the remnants of his life—his research, books, medical records, photographs—remembering old lovers and friends, the tragedies of WWII, the breakup of Yugoslavia. Ban’s memories of Belgrade (which he thought he had left behind) and of Amsterdam (a different world and life) alternate with meditations on hole-ridden time (ebbing away through its perforations), on his measly pension, on growing old and fragile, on the intelligence of rats and the agelessness of lobsters, on deadly nightshade. He tries to push the past away, "to land on a little island of time in which tomorrow does not exist, in which yesterday is buried.” Drndic´ leafs through the horrors of history with a cold unflinching wit. “The past is riddled with holes,” she writes. “Souvenirs can’t help here.” And they don't.
'A beguiling whirlwind of love and obsession' Elle _______________________________________________ It is summer, 1956, when fifteen-year-old Bridget first meets Isabella. In their conservative Connecticut town, Isabella is a breath of fresh air. She is worldly, alluring and brazen: an enigma. When they receive an offer to study at the Academy in Italy, Bridget is thrilled. This is her ticket to Europe and - better still - a chance to spend nine whole months with her glamorous and unpredictable best friend. There, lodged in a convent of nuns who have taken a vow of silence, the two girls move towards a passionate but fragile intimacy. As the year rolls on, Bridget grows increasingly fearful t...
Most little girls want to be princesses or ballerinas, but not Bella Donna. She's wanted to be a witch her whole life, and the only thing she wants more is to find a family to adopt her. No one seems quite right for her until the day Lilith arrives and Bella knows immediately that Lilith might be the one to make both her secret wishes come true. First person recount. Suggested level: primary.
The deliciously seductive sequel to VENOM. Beauty, romance, murder -- this historical romance series has it all! Cassandra Caravello is trying to forget Falco, the wild artist who ran off with her heart, as she grows closer to her strong, steady fiance, Luca. But Luca seems to have his own secrets. When he's arrested by soldiers in the middle of the night, Cass's life is once again thrown into chaos. She must save Luca, and that means finding the Book of the Eternal Rose - the only evidence that will prove he is innocent. So begins her journey to Florence, a city haunted by whispers of corruption, secret soirees and clandestine meetings of the Order of the Eternal Rose. And home to Falco, who's working for the Order's eerily stunning leader, the Belladonna herself. Can Cass trust her heart to lead her to the truth this time? Nothing is as it seems in this seductive thriller, where the truth may be the deadliest poison of all... Ages: 12+
Belladonna of Sadness, the final film in the adult-oriented Animeramatrilogy, is one of the great forgotten masterpieces of Japanese anime. Loosely inspired by La Sorci�re, Jules Michelet’s 1862 history of witchcraft and the occult, Belladonna of Sadnesstells the story of a young woman who makes a pact with the devil to exact revenge after being raped and driven from her home. This brief synopsis, however, does no justice to the visual spectacle of the film, which proceeds as a series of still images flashing onscreen. Spectacular watercolor paintings by Kuni Fukai marry the art nouveau artifice of artists like Aubrey Beardsley to ’60s psychedelia; the film’s North American distribut...
Alastair Reynolds has continued to publish short fiction throughout the thirty-odd years of his professional career. This fourth collection gathers material mostly written by the former space scientist in the last decade, even as a number of stories--such as the title piece, set in the universe of House of Suns--revisit earlier environments. The scope of settings is wide, ranging from the contemporaneous Earth to the near future and out to the furthest realms of the galaxy, and taking in such diverse topics as the perils of immortality, cybernetic encounters in the Wild West, uncanny skateboard parks and the flocking behaviour of birds. There is horror here, but also hope--and not a little black humour. The collection includes "Open and Shut," "Night Passage," and "Plague Music," a long, previously unpublished story, all three set in the Revelation Space universe.
From bestselling crime novelist and renowned Irish TV journalist Sinéad Crowley, gripping dual timelines entwine in this heart-stopping story of old secrets and forbidden passion. An old house can hold many secrets. Hollowpark in the west of Ireland certainly does. At the heart of the gardens is an intricate maze, named after a deadly poison, Belladonna. If you know the way through, it's magical, a hiding place and playground like no other. If you don't, it's a place of fear and sinister riddles, where a young girl once went missing and was never seen again. Grace comes to Hollowpark as a nanny for young Skye FitzMahon. Soon the mysterious past of Hollowpark has seduced her. Who is the woma...
None
Which Witch? is a brilliantly witty tale of magic and marriage by Eva Ibbotson, shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal. 'Find me a witch!' cried Arriman the Awful, feared Wizard of the North. Arriman has decided to marry. His wife must be a witch of the darkest powers – but which witch will she be? To find the most fiendish, he holds a spell-casting competition. Glamorous Madame Olympia performs the terrifying Symphony of Death and conjures up a thousand plague-bearing rats. The magic of gentle Belladonna, the white witch, goes hopelessly wrong. She produces perfumed flowers instead of snakes. And bats roost in her golden hair instead of becoming blood-sucking vampires. Poor Belladonna longs to be an evil enchantress – but how? 'This kind of fun will never fail to delight' - Philip Pullman.