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The Lodger
by Marie Belloc LowndesBased on the nineteenth century’s most infamous crime, a novel that asks, How do you recognize a serial killer?One damp November evening on the Marylebone Road, a couple sits in silence. Though their thoughts are the same—money and the lack thereof—the time has long since passed when Mr. and Mrs. Bunting could find comfort in sharing their anxieties with each other. Now every word is a reproach—a reminder of luxuries forsaken and keepsakes pawned. Retired servants, the Buntings sunk every last shilling into their London lodging house. Now they are trapped. The rooms are empty, the rent is due, and ruin awaits. When the paper boys’ cry of “Horrible Murder! Murder at St. Pancras!” rings out in the street, Mr. Bunting risks his wife’s ire to buy the Evening Standard. The latest exploits of the killer known as the Avenger will give him something to think about besides his own misery.Just when he is settling in with the paper, there is a knock at the door. Mr. Sleuth enters, seeking “quiet rooms” to rent. He bears no luggage, save one nearly empty leather bag, and his demeanor is odd, to say least. The beautiful sitting room on the second floor interests him not at all, but the obsolete gas stove on the underfurnished third floor is exactly what he has been looking for. Best of all, he wants to pay a month’s rent in advance. Mr. and Mrs. Bunting believe that the new lodger is a godsend until a dark fear grips their hearts. Could the strange Mr. Sleuth be the Avenger in disguise? And if he is, can they afford to know? Inspired by the Jack the Ripper murders and the basis for Alfred Hitchock’s first thriller, The Lodger is a masterpiece of psychological suspense. This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.
The Lone Wolf
by Otto Penzler Louis Joseph VanceThe origin story of the Lone Wolf, master criminal with a conscienceOne rainy winter night, an orphan is abandoned to the care of a shabby Parisian inn called Troyon’s. For the next eleven years, the boy is up before dawn to clean and fetch and serve, his only respite the closet to which he retires at night and the books he pilfers from the hotel’s guests. A few francs here and there also find their way into his pockets, but not so much that anyone would notice—anyone, that is, except Bourke, the cultivated Irish thief who regularly hides out at Troyon’s. Caught red-handed, the amateur outwits the professional. Turn me over to the innkeepers, he says, and I’ll go to the police with everything I know about you. Astonished, Bourke takes the boy under his wing and teaches him how to be a master criminal. The most important lesson? Be friendless.Years later, Michael Lanyard—known to the authorities only as the Lone Wolf—is the world’s greatest jewel thief. When a ruthless gang of outlaws threatens to expose him unless he joins their “pack,” Lanyard vows to give up crime rather than violate Bourke’s code. Only a beautiful American girl and a sinister German spy stand in his way.Louis Joseph Vance’s groundbreaking series introduced a new turn of phrase to the language and gave American literature one of its most iconic characters.This ebook features a new introduction by Otto Penzler and has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.
Madame X
by Alexandre Bisson J. W. McConaughyA tragic story of infidelity, murder, and a mother’s love in turn-of-the-century France. When Jacqueline Floriot’s husband, Louis, finds her in the arms of another man, she and her lover flee the house. Two years later, Jacqueline returns, hoping to reunite with her young son, Raymond. But Louis, overcome with jealous rage, sends her out into the cold of winter without so much as a glimpse of her child. His merciless act sets off a tragic chain of events as Jacqueline sinks into a life of depravity, drugs, and prostitution. Twenty years later, Raymond is a lawyer, working alongside his father. When he finds himself representing a woman accused of murder, a woman known only as Madame X, he has no way of knowing that he defends his own mother—or that she may have committed her alleged crime out of love for her son. Based on Alexandre Bisson’s 1908 play of the same name, J. W. McConaughy’s novel brilliantly depicts a harrowing tale. This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.
Asylum
by Sean BorodaleLike his two previous books, Asylum was written live on-site; in this case deep within the caves, mines, quarries, geological and archaeological horizons of the Mendip Hills in Somerset. The poems stage modes of exile in the darkness of earth, enacting solidarity with those others who have made their journey into the underworld – Dante, Orpheus, blinded Oedipus, Euripides. These are semi-dramatic voicings, staged across the thirty-mile theatre of the Mendip subterranean: each an act of recovery, of rescue. Traversing the broken, collapsed, eroded stones, looking for voices that express the damaged and the damned, Asylum pays homage to the darkness of the human cave: its memories and ancient histories, and to its more contemporary signals – internationally owned quarries, abandoned coal mines, decommissioned Cold War bunkers.As with Bee Journal and Human Work, these poems take on the nature of the experience recorded. Written blind, as it were, the diction here becomes mineral, deeply tactile – hard and granular, alert to sound in its own blackness. Descending underground with the poet is to enter a theatre of heightened senses, and these extraordinary poems feel both unearthed and unearthly.
Overland
by Graham RawleWelcome to Overland! Where the California sun shines down on synthetic grass and plastic oranges bedeck the trees all year round. Steam billows gently from the chimney tops and the blue tarpaulin lake is open for fishing… Hollywood set-designer George Godfrey has been called on to do his patriotic duty and he doesn’t believe in half-measures. If he is going to hide an American aircraft plant from the threat of Japanese aerial spies he has an almighty job on his hands. He will need an army of props and actors to make the Lockheed factory vanish behind the semblance of a suburban town. Every day, his “Residents” climb through a trapdoor in the factory roof to shift model cars, shop for imaginary groceries and rotate fake sheep in felt-green meadows. Overland is a beacon for the young women labouring below it: Queenie, dreaming of movie stardom while welding sheet metal; Kay, who must seek refuge from the order to intern “All Persons of Japanese Ancestry”. Meanwhile, George’s right-hand Resident, Jimmy, knows that High Command aren’t at all happy with the camouflage project...With George so bewitched by his own illusion, might it risk confusing everybody – not just the enemy?Overland is a book like no other -- to be read in landscape format. Based on true events, it is a novel where characters' dreams and desires come down to earth with more than a bump, confronting the hardships of life during wartime. As surreal and playful as it is affecting and unsettling, no-one other than Graham Rawle could have created it.
My Life as a Russian Novel
by Emmanuel Carrère‘As a writer, Carrère is straight berserk’ Junot DíazIn this non-fiction novel – road trip, confession, and erotic tour de force – Emmanuel Carrère pursues two consuming obsessions: the disappearance of his grandfather amid suspicions that he was a Nazi collaborator in the Second World War; and a violently passionate affair with a woman that he loves but which ends in destruction. Moving between Paris and Kotelnich, a grisly post-Soviet town, Carrère weaves his story into a travelogue of a journey inward, travelling fearlessly into the depths of his tortured psyche.
The Story of a Marriage
by Geir Gulliksen Deborah Dawkin'Brilliant and breathtaking...sexy and sad' A.M. HomesIn his struggle to understand what has happened to his family, how his wife could fall in love with another man after twenty happy years, Jon attempts to tell the story of the painful collapse of his marriage, but from her point of view. He tries to get inside her head, to see it all as she did, all the while knowing that he can never really achieve this, and that his efforts reveal more projection than insight. How can one truly know another person? How much of what we think is love, is just a construct? Is it possible to find – and maintain – the great love we long for? Gulliksen explores these questions, turning them over again and again till they crack, revealing hollowness – or possible new meanings.Intense, erotic, dramatic, raw – Story of a Marriage examines two people's inner lives with devastating and fearless honesty. It is a gripping but slippery narrative of obsession and deceit, of a couple striving for happiness and freedom and intimacy, but ultimately falling apart.
Woman at Sea
by Catherine Poulain Adriana Hunter'A tale of travel and adventure, the story of a body utterly surrendered to pain and joy. It is mind-blowing, a delight.' Le MondeLili is a runaway. She’s left behind her native France to go in search of freedom, of adventure, of life. Her search takes her to Kodiak, Alaska, home to a ragtag community of fishermen, army vets and drifters who man the island’s fishing fleet. Despite her tiny frame, faltering English and lack of experience, Lili lands a job on board the Rebel, the only woman on the boat.Out on the open sea, everything is heightened: colours are more vivid, sounds are louder and the work is harder than anything she's ever known. The terrifying intensity of the ocean is addictive to the point of danger. But Lili is not alone: in her fellow crewmembers she finds kindred spirits – men living on the edge, drawn to extremes. Based on Catherine Poulain’s own experiences, and written in taut, muscular prose, Woman at Sea cuts through the noise of life and straight to the heart of our innermost longings.
Kalevala
by Elias LonnrotKalevala is the poetic name for Finland: ‘the land of heroes’. Here you’ll find the cultural essence of a young country but an old land, the stories, songs and poems that recount the mythical adventures of humankind. Ambition, lust, romance, birth and death can all be found within its pages, as well as the sampo, a mysterious talisman that brings great happiness to its possessor and over which great battles will be fought.WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY HORATIO CLARE
Don't Call Us Dead: Poems
by Danez Smith*A FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR POETRY 2017*‘[Smith’s] poems are enriched to the point of volatility, but they pay out, often, in sudden joy’ The New Yorker Award-winning poet Danez Smith is a ground-breaking force, celebrated for deft lyrics, urgent subjects, and performative power. Don’t Call Us Dead opens with a heartrending sequence that imagines an afterlife for black men shot by police, a place where suspicion, violence, and grief are forgotten and replaced with the safety, love and longevity they deserved here on earth. Smith turns then to desire, mortality – the dangers experienced in skin and body and blood – and an HIV-positive diagnosis. ‘Some of us are killed / in pieces,’ Smith writes, ‘some of us all at once.’ Don’t Call Us Dead is an astonishing and ambitious collection, one that confronts, praises, and rebukes an America where every day is too often a funeral and not often enough a miracle.
Feminism, Women's Agency, and Communication in Early Twentieth-Century China: The Case of the Huang-Lu Elopement (Chinese Literature and Culture in the World)
by Qiliang HeFeminism, Women’s Agency, and Communication in Early Twentieth-Century China focuses on a sensational elopement in the Yangzi Delta in the late 1920s to explore how middle- and lower-class members of society gained access to and appropriated otherwise alien and abstract enlightenment theories and idioms about love, marriage, and family. Via a network of communications that connected people of differing socioeconomic and educational backgrounds, non-elite women were empowered to display their new womanhood and thereby exercise their self-activating agency to mount resistance to China’s patriarchal system. Qiliang He’s text also investigates the proliferation of anti-feminist conservatisms in legal practice, scholarly discourses, media, and popular culture in the early Nanjing Decade (1927-1937). Utilizing a framework of interdisciplinary scholarship, this book traverses various fields such as legal history, women’s history, popular culture/media studies, and literary studies to explore urban discourse and communication in 1920s China.
Feminism, Women's Agency, and Communication in Early Twentieth-Century China: The Case of the Huang-Lu Elopement (Chinese Literature and Culture in the World)
by Qiliang HeFeminism, Women’s Agency, and Communication in Early Twentieth-Century China focuses on a sensational elopement in the Yangzi Delta in the late 1920s to explore how middle- and lower-class members of society gained access to and appropriated otherwise alien and abstract enlightenment theories and idioms about love, marriage, and family. Via a network of communications that connected people of differing socioeconomic and educational backgrounds, non-elite women were empowered to display their new womanhood and thereby exercise their self-activating agency to mount resistance to China’s patriarchal system. Qiliang He’s text also investigates the proliferation of anti-feminist conservatisms in legal practice, scholarly discourses, media, and popular culture in the early Nanjing Decade (1927-1937). Utilizing a framework of interdisciplinary scholarship, this book traverses various fields such as legal history, women’s history, popular culture/media studies, and literary studies to explore urban discourse and communication in 1920s China.
Ecocritical Perspectives on Children's Texts and Cultures: Nordic Dialogues (Critical Approaches to Children's Literature)
by Nina Goga Lykke Guanio-Uluru Bjørg Oddrun Hallås Aslaug NyrnesThis volume presents key contributions to the study of ecocriticism in Nordic children’s and YA literary and cultural texts, in dialogue with international classics. It investigates the extent to which texts for children and young adults reflect current environmental concerns. The chapters are grouped into five thematic areas: Ethics and Aesthetics, Landscape, Vegetal, Animal, and Human, and together they explore Nordic representations and a Nordic conception, or feeling, of nature. The textual analyses are complemented with the lived experiences of outdoor learning practices in preschools and schools captured through children’s own statements. The volume highlights the growing influence of posthumanist theory and the continuing traces of anthropocentric concerns within contemporary children’s literature and culture, and a non-dualistic understanding of nature-culture interaction is reflected in the conceptual tool of the volume: The Nature in Culture Matrix.
Ecocritical Perspectives on Children's Texts and Cultures: Nordic Dialogues (Critical Approaches to Children's Literature)
by Nina Goga Lykke Guanio-Uluru Bjørg Oddrun Hallås Aslaug NyrnesThis volume presents key contributions to the study of ecocriticism in Nordic children’s and YA literary and cultural texts, in dialogue with international classics. It investigates the extent to which texts for children and young adults reflect current environmental concerns. The chapters are grouped into five thematic areas: Ethics and Aesthetics, Landscape, Vegetal, Animal, and Human, and together they explore Nordic representations and a Nordic conception, or feeling, of nature. The textual analyses are complemented with the lived experiences of outdoor learning practices in preschools and schools captured through children’s own statements. The volume highlights the growing influence of posthumanist theory and the continuing traces of anthropocentric concerns within contemporary children’s literature and culture, and a non-dualistic understanding of nature-culture interaction is reflected in the conceptual tool of the volume: The Nature in Culture Matrix.
A Field Guide to the North American Family: An Illustrated Novella
by Garth Risk HallbergFrom the author of the New York Times bestseller City on FireA Granta Best of Young American Novelist 2017 ‘A young author of boundless and unflagging talents’ New York TimesWe can all agree on this much, Marnie thought: nobody saw the Hungate divorce coming. In the privacy of her own mind, she saw them as the last of a dying breed, the Great American Family.Two families – the Hungates and the Harrisons – live side by side in Long Island, New York. They lead charmed lives: good jobs in the city, weekends by the pool, cheerleading practice after school and backyard barbecues in the summer. But within these lives lie hundreds of little deceptions.Told through a mix of photographs and words, this is a dazzlingly inventive depiction of two families falling apart and coming together and the thousand different truths of the American Dream.
The Pets at Primrose Cottage: New Beginnings
by Sheila NortonA charming and romantic story about living the simple life and the joy of animals, from the author of THE VETS AT HOPE GREEN.Emma Nightingale needs a place to hide away. Fresh from the heartbreak of a failed relationship, she takes refuge in quiet Crickleford. And not before long – and quite accidentally too – Emma finds herself the town’s favourite pet-sitter, a role she isn’t certain of at first, but soon her heart is warmed by the animals; they expect nothing more of her than she is able to give.The last thing Emma wants is for people to discover the real reason she is lying low, but then the handsome reporter from the local paper takes an interest in her story. Can Emma keep her secret and follow her heart’s desire…?
Ambulance Girls Under Fire
by Deborah BurrowsIn times of war, how do you know who to trust?Celia Ashton has driven ambulances throughout the Blitz for the Bloomsbury Auxiliary Ambulance Depot. Cool under fire, she revels in her exciting and extremely dangerous job. When her husband, a known Nazi supporter, is released from prison, Celia refuses to return to her unhappy marriage. Instead she joins forces with Simon Levy, a man who appears to despise her, to help a young Jewish orphan. In so doing she discovers that one ruthless traitor can be more dangerous than any German bomber, and that love can cross any boundary.A heartwarming saga about a woman doing her bit for the war effort. Full of wartime adventure, romance and heartbreak, this is perfect for fans of Daisy Styles, Donna Douglas and Nancy Revell
Mill Town Girl
by Audrey ReimannCan she give her baby a better life?After the tragic death of her parents, Caroline Shrigley is left with the responsibility of bringing up her younger sister, Jane, as well as running the family business at the Temperance Hotel. Carrie is beginning to think her care-free days are gone forever when Patrick Kennedy, a wild, handsome and passionate Irishman, turns her world upside down. The life she’s dreamed of is finally within reach – until a devastating betrayal changes everything. Left with a newborn baby to care for, Carrie has some difficult choices to make. What must she sacrifice to protect her baby?
Eleanor's Secret
by Caroline BeechamCan Eleanor follow her heart in troubled times?Eleanor Roy is determined to do her bit for the war effort after being recruited by the War Artist Advisory Committee. When she meets handsome artist Jack Valante, her dreams seem to be finally coming true when Jack promises to help her pursue her ambition of becoming an artist. But after a whirlwind romance, Eleanor is devastated when Jack is posted overseas.When Eleanor receives some unexpected news she desperately tries to find Jack. But with the young couple torn apart by war, will they be reunited and find happiness at last?A heartwarming wartime saga perfect for fans of Ellie Dean and Nancy Revell.
Workhouse Angel
by Holly GreenWill she ever be reunited with her real father?A gritty, heartwarming saga perfect for fans of Dilly Court and Rosie GoodwinAngelina was abandoned on the doorsteps of Brownlow Workhouse when she was just a baby – her only possession the rag doll she held in her arms.Nicknamed 'Angel' for her golden curls, she is adopted by Mr and Mrs McBride. At first Angel is so happy to have found a caring family to save her from the drudgery of the workhouse. But her new parents are not the benevolent guardians they first appear.Angel has lost all hope when she discovers that a man has visited the workhouse, looking for the baby girl he was forced to give up. A girl who isn't an orphan after all...
The Pets at Primrose Cottage: Part One A Place to Hide
by Sheila NortonPART ONE of a serialised novel - a charming and romantic story about living the simple life and the joy of animals.Emma Nightingale needs a place to hide away. Pursued by the demons left by her ex-boyfriend, she takes refuge in quiet Crickleford, a sleepy town in Dartmoor, where she can lay low.Life in Crickleford is quiet and peaceful, but it won’t be for long if people discover the truth about Emma’s past. Not wanting to make too much of a fuss, she ends up lying about why she's there - she's looking after some cats, she says - then suddenly the town’s new ‘pet-sitter’ is in high demand!While looking after an Alsatian, Emma finds all attention is on her, and the handsome young reporter from the local paper takes an interest in her story...Note: this is part one of a four-part serialised novel.
The Pets at Primrose Cottage: New Beginnings
by Sheila NortonPART TWO of a serialised novel - a charming and romantic story about living the simple life and the joy of animals.All Emma wants is a quiet life in sleepy Crickleford, away from the prying eyes of the press who are obsessed with the life she used to lead. She is enjoying her new vocation: the town's most in-demand pet-sitter. But her journalist friend and fellow animal lover Matt is desperate for a big story to make his career – such as Emma’s true identity…Emma doesn’t want the spotlight, but it keeps finding her anyway. Can she keep her past a secret and live the life she’s dreamed of?Note: this is part two of a four-part serialised novel.
The Pets at Primrose Cottage: Part Three Trust Your Heart
by Sheila NortonPART THREE of a serialised novel - a charming and romantic story about living the simple life and the joy of animals.Emma Nightingale finds she’s accidentally becoming something of a local celebrity in the small town of Crickleford, and it seems that everyone wants her to look after their pets.While looking after a hamster, she accidentally uncovers a mystery that threatens to draw even more attention to her. With nowhere to turn, soon Emma will have to make a decision that could cost her everything…Note: this is part three of a four-part serialised novel.
The Pets at Primrose Cottage: Part Four No Place Like Home
by Sheila NortonPART FOUR of a serialised novel - a charming and romantic story about living the simple life and the joy of animals.With Emma’s past threatening to ruin her life in quiet Crickleford, she’s running out of options. If people – especially Matt, her reporter friend – find out her secret, it might force her to leave the place she’s come to think of as home.When flooding strikes the town while Emma is looking after an elderly couple’s dog, she has to take her biggest risk yet – but could this be the one that blows her cover for good? And if it does, can Crickleford – and Matt – ever accept Emma for who she truly is?Note: this is part four of a four-part serialised novel.
Gone Viking: The laugh out loud debut novel from the bestselling author of The Year of Living Danishly
by Helen RussellBe bold. Be brave. Be Viking...The uplifting, laugh out loud debut novel from the bestselling author of THE YEAR OF LIVING DANISHLYFrazzled mum Alice Ray likes to think she’s on top everything – she has FOUR bags-for-life in the boot of her car for heaven's sake. But after spectacularly embarrassing herself at work, she finally gives in to her sister’s pleas to take a much needed break.But this is not the luxury spa holiday Alice hoped for – instead, she finds herself in Denmark, in the middle of nowhere, on a ‘How to be a Viking’ getaway. Can the two sisters finally learn to get along or will learning to embrace their inner warrior just make them better at fighting?Two sisters. One Scandi holiday they'll never forget...GONE VIKING is a laugh out loud debut novel perfect for fans of Sophie Kinsella's Surprise Me