Showing results for "Rise" in Literary Fiction

Nine-year-old Tooly is spirited away from Bangkok by a seductive group of outsiders who take her from city to city across the globe. At 20, she is wandering the streets of Manhattan with a scribbled-on map, scamming strangers for her shadowy protector, Venn. Now, aged 31, she runs a secondhand bookshop on the Welsh borders and has found peace with her strange upbringing - until she's called to return to New York to see her dying father. Warm, hilarious and fizzing with intelligence, The Rise and Fall of Great Powers is a masterpiece about the search for identity.

Justine is running for her life. Escaping a city and a man, she heads north to the valleys of the Highlands. Michael and Hannah are also running, with their two sons and their tattered marriage. They are looking for somewhere they can call home. In an ancient landscape, a shocking accident causes their lives to intertwine. Tangled together in threads of guilt and love, with Scotland rushing towards a referendum and the community fracturing, they must all face their ghosts.

In The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway, a generation adrift searches for meaning in a world forever changed by war. Set against the vibrant backdrops of 1920s Paris cafés and the sun-drenched bullfighting arenas of Spain, this iconic novel captures the restless spirit of the Lost Generation. Through spare, powerful prose, the story follows a circle of expatriates chasing love, pleasure, and purpose. At the center is Jake Barnes, a journalist navigating emotional wounds that run deeper than the visible ones. .

From the author of the Sunday Times best seller Cocaine Nights comes an unnerving tale of life in a modern tower block running out of control. Within the concealing walls of an elegant forty-storey tower block, the affluent tenants are hell-bent on an orgy of destruction. Cocktail parties degenerate into marauding attacks on "enemy" floors and the once-luxurious amenities become an arena for riots and technological mayhem.

Paul O'Rourke is a man out of touch with modern life. While his dental practice occupies his days, his nights are filled with darker thoughts, as he alternately marvels at and rails against the optimism of the rest of humanity. So it goes, until someone begins to impersonate Paul online. What began as an outrageous violation of privacy soon becomes something far more soul-frightening: the possibility that the virtual 'Paul' might be a better version…

This collection of nine short stories by Flannery O'Connor was published posthumously in 1965. The flawed characters of each story are fully revealed in apocalyptic moments of conflict and violence that are presented with comic detachment.

An Iranian student studying in one of the most prestigious universities of India narrates a terrible incident where a bunch of goons with their faces wrapped in saffron scarves enter the University premises to physically assault the students. Can she ever forget the incident?...

1975. In the town of Rexburg, Idaho, aspiring artist Aran Rigby, his younger sister, Tamsin, and their two brothers are locked in orbit around their emotionally abusive father. Gad is the kind of man who soothes the failures of his own life by controlling the lives of others. But Aran and Tamsin are united in rebellion against their father. They understand each other. They have dreams beyond their small town.

Lark Rise is Flora Thompson's childhood memories of a north Oxfordshire village, the people who lived and worked in it, and a way of life that has totally disappeared. The story is built around Laura and her brother Edmund, through whose eyes are seen 'old Sally', whose grandfather built the house she lived in before the enclosure of the heathland, children's games, the interaction of village and gentry, and the way in which the seasons governed life.

It is 1740 and when Louise Fletcher is offered work as a maid in the bustling port of Harwich she leaps at the chance. Fifteen-year old Luke is in a Harwich tavern when it is raided by His Majesty's Navy and he is press ganged and sent to sea on board the warship Essex. The worlds they find are more dangerous and more exciting than they could ever have imagined…

This is the story Harry Ransom. If you know his name it's most likely as the inventor of the Ransom Process, a stroke of genius that changed the world. Or you may have read about how he lost the battle of Jasper City, or won it, depending on where you stand in matters of politics. Friends called him Hal or Harry, or by one of a half-dozen aliases, of which he had more than any honest man should. He often went by Professor Harry Ransom, and though he never had anything you might call a formal education, he definitely earned it.

Hemingway’s greatest novel. American and British expatriates travel from Paris to the Festival of San Fermín in Pamplona to watch the running of the bulls and the bullfights. Hemingway investigates the themes of love and death, the revivifying power of nature, and the concept of masculinity. The novel is well known for its style, which is variously described as modern, hard-boiled, or understated.

William Dean Howells was born in Martin's Ferry, Ohio, of Welch, Irish, and German forebears. Along with Mark Twain, he was one of the great novelists of his time. This book, the realisic saga of the rise and redemptive fall of an American tycoon, is considered to be his best novel.

In the quiet village of Noon Sun, Benedict Stone has settled into a complacent and predictable routine. Business at his jewelry shop has dried up and his marriage is on the rocks. Then a surprise arrives at his door. Gemma is Benedict's teenage niece—the daughter of his estranged brother, Charlie. Reckless and stubborn, Gemma invites herself into Benedict's world and turns his orderly life upside down. But she might just be exactly what he needed.

In a North Carolina mountain town filled with moonshine and rotten husbands, Sadie Blue is only the latest girl to face a dead-end future at the mercy of a dangerous drunk. She's been married to Roy Tupkin for 15 days, and she knows now that she should have listened to the folks who said he was trouble. But when a stranger sweeps in and knocks the world off-kilter for everyone in town, Sadie begins to think there might be more to life than being Roy's wife.

Die Fortsetzung des SPIEGEL-Bestsellers. Das Finale der zweibändigen Vampire-Royals-Reihe. "Er ist mein König. Er ist mein Geliebter. Er ist mein Untergang...". Londons Straßen werden von Blut regiert. Nach dem gescheiterten Attentat auf Vampirkönig Benedict Tudor schlägt der Hass zwischen Menschen und Vampiren in offene Gewalt um. Florence ist als Blutbraut die menschliche Repräsentantin an Benedicts Seite und könnte eigentlich vermitteln. Doch sie wird im Tower gefangen gehalten. Ursprünglich als Rebellin ins Schloss gekommen, um den König zu töten, hat sie sich gegen ihren Willen in ihn verliebt.

The Dark Flood Rises asks momentous questions as it entertains and enthralls. In her beautifully imagined new book, Margaret Drabble is at her incisive best, exploring the end of life with her trademark humour, composure and wisdom. Francesca Stubbs holds our hand as we take a walk through old age and death. Fran brings us to drinks with her dear friends, dropping off mouth-watering suppers for Claude, her ex-husband, warm and cosy in his infirmity.

Brought to you by Penguin. Vienna, 1913. Lysander Rief, a young English actor, sits in the waiting room of the city's preeminent psychiatrist as he anxiously ponders the particularly intimate nature of his neurosis. When the enigmatic, intensely beautiful Hettie Bull walks in, Lysander is...

Vienna, 1913. Lysander Rief, a young English actor in town seeking psychotherapy for a troubling ailment of a sexual nature, becomes caught up in a feverish affair with a beautiful, enigmatic woman. When she goes to the police to press charges of rape, however, he is stunned, and his few months...