Publisher: idb
A young man named Eric Marshall goes to teach a school on Prince Edward Island and meets Kilmeny, a mute girl who has perfect hearing. He sees her when he is walking through an old orchard and hears her playing the violin. He visits her ...
August 1939. Genie Watkins, a Birmingham kid, would love to have a proper happy family like her Italian friend, Teresa. But Genie hasn't reckoned with the outbreak of war, her already rocky family being split up and the strangely liberating effect it all has on her mother . . . Under Birmingham skies darkened by blackout, Genie shares her fears and hopes with Teresa, keeps her spirits up with her nan and glamorous auntie Lil, and tries to hold her family together. And amid it all, she discovers love . . . Read aloud by Julia Franklin, Birmingham Blitz is a heart-warming story of family, friendship and resilience during the Second World War by Annie Murray.Show book
Peace has come to England and the blackout is over, but the gloom has yet to lift from London. One night, leaving a gambling club where he has run up a considerable tab, the young painter Francis Bacon, accompanied by his lover, sees a man gunned down in the street. Soon afterward, Bacon receives a strange offer from the club owner: He will erase Bacon's debts if the painter delivers a package to the dead man's widow on the Riviera. What gambler could resist a trip to Monte Carlo? The Riviera may be lovely, but in 1945, its sun-drenched beaches can be just as dark as the back alleys of London.Show book
JOB by Joseph Roth (HIOB, 1930) is a modern retelling of the Biblical story in a mixed form, fable and realism. It follows the fortunes of the Singer family from Western Russia at the end of the 19th century to New York in the early 20th. Stefan Zweig wrote: "JOB, more than a novel and a legend, is a pure, perfect poem of our time, and if I am not mistaken, the only one certain to outlast all that we, its contemporaries, have created and written." Heinrich Böll comments: "Joseph Roth's novels transpire in a world that is no longer: the world of Eastern Jewry, as Roth describes it in JOB, existed up to 1940: in that year the murderers swept it away. Thus Joseph Roth's work is not only poetry and great prose, it is also documentation of everyday Jewish life, such as is seldom to be found."Show book
A cold sweat had spread over Mary as she listened. What she was hearing was sounding ever more like a premonition: adultery was nearly as bad as murder. Shetland, 1773: a land of hand-to-mouth living and tight community ties overshadowed by the ever-watchful eye of the kirk, an institution 'run by auld men, for auld men'. In this fictionalised retelling of historical events, young Waas lass Mary Johnsdaughter stands accused of having sinned in the eyes of the church after the Batchelor, a ship bursting with emigrants seeking new lives in North Carolina, is left stranded upon Shetland's shores. Will she survive the humiliation? Will she become an outcast? Will one moment cost her everything? A tale of Shetland folk knit out of Shetlandic voices and real parish records, The Trials of Mary Johnsdaughter pits the bonds of friends and family against the grip of the kirk. Only one thing is clear: then as now, 'Hit's no aesy livin in a peerie place.'Show book
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, by Vicente Blasco Ibañez and translated into English by Charlotte Brewster Jordan, depicts two branches of a family with its roots in the pampas of Argentina. The wealthy Argentinian, Julio Madariaga, comes from Spain and raises himself from poverty, becoming a self-made, wealthy cattleman. He is a man of extremes; an honest man with a rascally knack for taking advantage of others; a self-made man with overweening pride, prejudices, and a sharp, flinty temper that can spark into violence, he is at the same time given to great generosity toward those who are under him. This almost feudal lord has two daughters who marry expatriates, a Frenchman and a German. Julio Madariaga leaves his stamp on these two families who, after his death, return to the native countries of his two sons in law. At that time, the mood of Europe is in many ways similar to that of the old gaucho, a mixture of generosity, explosive anger, romanticism, strong prejudices, and wounded pride, a mood composed of extremes painted on an oversized canvas. World War I is waiting in the wings and will leave its own stamp on the old gaucho's lineage, pitting them against each other on opposite sides in the violent first year that many think will last only a few months but will, in fact, result in improbable destruction and loss of lives. An old Russian visionary given to drink, looks out on red skies one day and experiences its coming in a vision: hoofbeats; and riders. --Summary by Tony Oliva and released to public domain.Show book
The legendary MacCallister clan brought 500 years of Highlander tradition, honor, and fighting courage to the American frontier. In an astounding new novel from the nationally bestselling Johnstones, Duff MacCallister rides into the Colorado mountains with a young girl at his side—and a gang of stone-cold killers eagerly waiting for them . . . When Duff MacCallister sees smoke rising from his neighbor's ranch, he knows that something is very wrong. But he isn't prepared for what he finds: smoldering buildings, a rancher and his wife brutally slaughtered, and a fourteen-year-old survivor who could not save her parents. Now, Duff is going after the killers—and his only companion is the headstrong girl who refuses to be left behind. Duff and his new companion head into the towering Gore Range. Up ahead are two convicted murderers who were about to be hung in Cheyenne, and the killers who broke them loose. Duff doesn't have a plan—or a prayer. But the girl will be more help than he can know, and when the day of reckoning comes, bullets and blood will prove who is the bravest and fiercest fighter of all . . .Show book
