Other books that might interest you

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  Never Seduce a Scot

  Maya Banks

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  Eveline Armstrong is fiercely loved and protected by her powerful clan, but outsiders consider her "touched." Beautiful, fey, with a level, intent gaze, she doesn't speak. No one, not even her family, knows that she cannot hear. Content with her life of seclusion, Eveline has taught herself to read lips and allows the outside world to view her as daft. But when an arranged marriage into a rival clan makes Graeme Montgomery her husband, Eveline accepts her duty—unprepared for the delights to come. Graeme is a rugged warrior with a voice so deep and powerful that his new bride can hear it, and hands and kisses so tender and skilled that he stirs her deepest passions. Graeme is intrigued by the mysterious Eveline, whose silent lips are ripe with temptation and whose bright, intelligent eyes can see into his soul. As intimacy deepens, he learns her secret. But when clan rivalries and dark deeds threaten the wife he has only begun to cherish, the Scottish warrior will move heaven and earth to save the woman who has awakened his heart to the beautiful song of a rare and magical love.

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  A Grain of Wheat

  Ngugi wa Thiong'o

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  Set in the wake of the Mau Mau rebellion and on the cusp of Kenya's independence from Britain, A Grain of Wheat follows a group of villagers whose lives have been transformed by the 1952–1960 Emergency. At the center of it all is the reticent Mugo, the village's chosen hero and a man haunted by a terrible secret. As we learn of the villagers' tangled histories in a narrative interwoven with myth and peppered with allusions to real-life leaders, including Jomo Kenyatta, a masterly story unfolds in which compromises are forced, friendships are betrayed, and loves are tested.

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  Love And Friendship

  Jane Austen

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  Impossibly beautiful, disarmingly witty, and completely self-absorbed: Meet Lady Susan Vernon, both the heart and the thorn of Love & Friendship. Recently widowed with a daughter who's coming of age as quickly as their funds are dwindling, Lady Susan makes it her mission to find them wealthy husbands--and fast. But when her attempts to secure their futures result only in the wrath of a prominent conquest's wife and the title of 'most accomplished coquette in England', Lady Susan must rethink her strategy. Unannounced, she arrives at her brother-in-law's country estate. Here she intends to take refuge - in no less than luxury, of course - from the colorful rumors trailing her, while finding another avenue to 'I do'. Before the scandalizing gossip can run its course, though, romantic triangles ensue. Written in epistolary form, it resembles a fairy tale as much as anything else, featuring wild coincidences and turns of fortune, but Austen is determined to lampoon the conventions of romantic stories, right down to the utter failure of romantic fainting spells, which always turn out dreadfully for the female characters.In this story one can see the development of Austen's sharp wit and disdain for romantic sensibility, so characteristic of her later novels.

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  Sixty Blades of Grass

  Elizabeth Millane

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  The bond between a Dutch teenager and her father is tested as the Resistance wages its secret war on the Nazis. 
   
   
   
  During the Second World War, Rika, a seventeen-year-old Dutch Resistance fighter, paints in fields overlooking the busy rail yards. Hidden in her artwork is information crucial to the Dutch Underground about the concentration camps and Jewish prisoner transports. 
   
   
   
  But Rika's covert activities aren't the only thing on her mind. In these uncertain times, even trusting family is risky. She suspects her father of collaborating with the Germans and is determined to uncover the truth. 
   
   
   
  Across town, her German-born father is also living a double life. But his desire to keep his daughter safe proves inadequate when he invites a German colonel into his home with terrible consequences . . .  
   
   
   
  With no one to rely on or turn to, Rika knows her greatest challenge has only just begun as she must fight for her own survival . . .  
   
   
   
  Inspired by the author's own family history, this is a riveting, heartrending novel of danger and betrayal that explores what it takes to lay down one's life for another in the most harrowing of circumstances.

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  The Notebooks of Malte Laurids...

  Rainer Maria Rilke

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  This remarkable book is the only novel by Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), the greatest German-language poet of his time. It is, in a sense, a true curiosity - dark and intense - and possesses, not surprisingly, strong elements of autobiography.  
   
  The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge (Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge) has even been described as an anti-novel. It is set in Paris in the period just before the First World War, but it presents a bleaker milieu than that described by Proust. The language is terse, the atmosphere painful, the images uncompromising. Rilke drew on the short period he spent in Paris in 1903 where, in contrast to the rural circumstances in which he had lived before, he found the underbelly of urban life distressing. He saw the sick, the vagrants, the beggars and those descending into mental and emotional confusion and despair. And he worried that he, too, might become like them.  
   
  This is the theme he explores in The Notebooks in a first-person torrent of observation and reflection. Malte, a young Dane with little money but with the aspiration to be a poet, expresses a continuing uncertainty and unease, in the form of a diary, without obvious timeline or direction, except for its increasing intensity. Published in 1910, The Notebooks is a striking contrast to the crafted, polished poetry for which Rilke was better known. It has affected and been admired by many writers since, including Jean-Paul Sartre. Jamie Parker’s reading underpins the fear and the tension of the work.   
   
  Translation William Needham.

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  The black arrow A tale of two roses

  Robert Louis Stevenson

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  "The Black Arrow" is a swashbuckling adventure that follows the protagonist, Richard Shelton, as he becomes embroiled in the conflict between the House of Lancaster and the House of York during the tumultuous Wars of the Roses. The novel is filled with action, intrigue, and romance, as Richard navigates through political and personal challenges.

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