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Claire, five-year-old daughter of Irish doctors, Connie and Liam, dies suddenly in 1963. The novel follows the devastation in the family - consequences that reverberate over the next fifty years. There's the shock as Connie deserts Liam and their children and the mystery of the pact she makes with Anne, a Catholic nun. All who witnessed the child's death, even the youngest, feel responsible and have their own stories as they leave home, reject religion, start careers. Connie's ambivalence about mothering seems to follow the next generation of women. One cousin, most deeply affected, tries to escape the past as she takes up work in Nigeria. Do her choices repeat Connie's actions? And to whom does it fall to fulfil the pact Connie made fifty years before? A heartbreaking story of motherhood and the limitations of love.
Béla has grown up in a cramped East London flat with his great uncle, once a Hungarian count; as far as he's concerned his elderly relative is eccentric and annoying. But when his great-uncle dies, Béla is bequeathed a mysterious manuscript - a manuscript that reveals a completely different side to the count. For the first time Béla learns about the horrors his great uncle had to endure during the Second World War. Snow on the Danube evokes the lost world of Budapest during and between two great wars -- and is recounted in the inimitable voice of Count Zoltán Pongrácz: a fussy hypochondriac who becomes an unlikely and compromised hero when the Fascists take over his beloved country and he is forced to rescue his adored, wayward sister Anna. An unlikely comedy, a document of filial love and a compelling portrait of the horrors of war, Snow on the Danube is the story of one man's quest to save everything he loves most: his family, his friends --- and, perhaps, soul.
The final handcrafted installment by award-winning author Ann Rinaldi. "Whether they've covered the previous books or not, readers will enjoy this rip-roaring tale of adventure and suspense."-Kirkus Amanda Videau had no idea what adventures she'd find on the journey North. But she never expected this… After witnessing a crime, she goes into hiding, disguising herself as a worker in her great-grandfather's textile mill. For the first time in her life, Amanda must work to survive. And that means experiencing the horrible working conditions of the mill firsthand. Now, as Amanda fights for her newfound rights, she must also try to heal generations of deep Chelmsford family wounds. And that means facing the man behind the blue door--the man who tore apart the family quilt so many years ago.
This volume was first published by Inter-Disciplinary Press in 2014. Building Barriers and Bridges: Interculturalism in the 21st Century is a compilation of perspectives on the theme of Interculturalism and Identity by nineteen authors from thirteen countries on four continents. It represents a broad panorama of views on pivotal issues of identity, trans-and intercultural concepts, and cross-cultural community building. Presented in three parts: Culture and Identity; Constructing and Deconstructing Barriers; and Experienced-based Transformations, Building Barriers and Bridges moves from formal definitions to strategies to success stories in daily life around our globe. The book encompasses a...
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This book explores the extraordinary proliferation of novels based on Henry James’s life and works published between 2001 and 2016, the centenary of his death. Part One concentrates on biofictions about James by David Lodge and Colm Tóibín, and those written from the perspective of the key female figures in his life. Part Two explores appropriations of The Portrait of a Lady, The Turn of the Screw, and The Ambassadors. The book articulates the developments in biographical and adaptive writing that enabled millennial writers to engage so explicitly with James, locates the sources of his appeal, and explores the different forms of engagement taken. Layne analyses how these manifestations of James’s legacy might function differently for knowing versus unknowing readers, and how they might perform the role of literary criticism. Overarching themes include ideas of queering, the concern with seeking redress, and the frustrated quest for origin, authenticity, or ‘the real thing’.
The Guardian's 2008 'How to Write' supplements were a huge success with wordsmiths of all stripes. Covering fiction, poetry, comedy, screenwriting, biography and journalism, they offered invaluable advice and bags of encouragement from a range of leading professionals, including Catherine Tate on writing memorable comedy characters, Robert Harris on penning bestelling fiction and Michael Rosen on constructing stories that will appeal to young people. This book draws together the material from those supplements and includes a full directory of useful addresses, from publishers and agents to professional societies and providers of bursaries. Whether you're looking to polish up your writing skills or you want to ensure that your manuscript finds its way into the right hands, How to Write will prove essential reading.
This book examines ‘Southern Gothic’ - a term that describes some of the finest works of the American Imagination. But what do ‘Southern’ and ‘Gothic’ mean, and how are they related? Traditionally seen as drawing on the tragedy of slavery and loss, ‘Southern Gothic’ is now a richer, more complex subject. Thirty-five distinguished scholars explore the Southern Gothic, under the categories of Poe and his Legacy; Space and Place; Race; Gender and Sexuality; and Monsters and Voodoo. The essays examine slavery and the laws that supported it, and stories of slaves who rebelled and those who escaped. Also present are the often-neglected issues of the Native American presence in the South, socioeconomic class, the distinctions among the several regions of the South, same-sex relationships, and norms of gendered behaviour. This handbook covers not only iconic figures of Southern literature but also other less well-known writers, and examines gothic imagery in film and in contemporary television programmes such as True Blood and True Detective.
The fourth book in the Blue Door series, which starts with The Swish of the Curtain, the classic story which inspired actors from Maggie Smith to Eileen Atkins. The seven young members of the Blue Door Theatre Company are, at long last, professional actors. And they are now proudly in charge of the first commercial theatre in their hometown of Fenchester. But the day-to-day pressures of financing the theatre and choosing box-office attractions are soon eclipsed by an event that threatens to close the theatre almost as soon as it has opened. Following the characters from the classic of children's literature The Swish of the Curtain on an adventure which takes them far from the stage of the Blue Door Theatre, Blue Door Venture is the fourth book in the Blue Door series.