Showing results for "the miller" in Literary Fiction

In the darkness of an old asylum, a young man unscrews the lid from a bottle of sleeping pills. In the nearby village, two couples begin their day. Local doctor, Eric Parry, mulling secrets, sets out on his rounds, while his pregnant wife sleeps on in the warmth of their cottage. Across the field, in a farmhouse impossible to heat, funny, troubled Rita Simmons is also asleep, her head full of images of a past life her husband prefers to ignore. He's been up for hours, tending to the needs of the small dairy farm he bought, a place where he hoped to create a new version of himself.

Robert and Mkiwa Livingston are happily ensconced in their tranquil life in Geneva, Switzerland, when Robert's best friend drops dead from a brain aneurysm, sparking a mid-life crisis. Nostalgic for the New England of his youth, Robert begs his wife for a chance to go back to his native America. As the Livingstons settle into their new home in Marblehead, Massachusetts, they - along with the rest of the country - become engrossed in a popular TV show called Quiet Time, about a family who decide to give up all electronic devices and smartphones for one year.

Deep in the heart of Paris, its oldest cemetery is, by 1785, overflowing, tainting the very breath of those who live nearby. Into their midst comes Jean-Baptiste Baratte, a young, provincial engineer charged by the king with demolishing it. At first Baratte sees this as a chance to clear the burden of history, a fitting task for a modern man of reason. But before long, he begins to suspect that the destruction of the cemetery might be a prelude to his own.

In the summer of 1997, four people reach a turning point: Alice Valentine, who lies gravely ill in her West Country home; her two sons, one still searching for a sense of direction, the other fighting to keep his acting career and marriage afloat; and László Lázár, who leads a comfortable life in Paris yet is plagued by his memories of the 1956 Hungarian uprising. For each, the time has come to assess what matters in life, and all will be forced to take part in an act of liberation - though not necessarily the one foreseen.

Daisy Miller is a beautiful American girl abroad. Assured, flirtatious, and at odds with reserved European etiquette, she meets two men: Mr. Winterbourne, a world-weary compatriot in full pursuit, and Mr. Giovanelli, a passionate Italian with questionable motives. Unmindful of the scandals she incites and of the risks to her reputation, Daisy believes that she is also impervious to fate.

Arthur Miller’s deeply moving drama reunites two long estranged middle-aged brothers. Nostalgia and recrimination erupt as they sell off an attic full of furniture, their last link to a family and a world that no longer exists. This 1968 classic is a wrenching saga of plaintive gestures and missed opportunities. A co-production with the BBC.

World War II is over, and a family mourning a son missing in action plants a memorial tree and tries to go on with their lives. When a storm blows down the tree, a devastating family secret is uprooted, setting the characters on a terrifying journey towards truth.

Ma Taffy may be blind, but she sees everything. So when her great-nephew, Kaia, comes home from school in tears, what she senses sends a deep fear through her. While they wait for Kaia's mama to come home from work, Ma Taffy recalls the story of the flying preacherman and a great thing that did not happen. A poor suburban sprawl in the Jamaican heartland, Augustown is a place where many things that should happen don't, and plenty of things that shouldn't happen do.

It's 1910, and Theodulf Sauer has finally achieved a position befitting his ego: master lighthouse keeper at a newly commissioned station towering above Lake Superior. When his new wife, Willa, arrives on the first spring ferry, it's clear her life has taken the opposite turn: after being summoned home from college to Duluth when her father dies, she and her scheming mother find themselves destitute, and Willa is rushed into this ill-suited arranged marriage. As the lighthouse station establishes, the new relationship teeters between tense and hostile.

As a young girl in Miller's Valley, an ordinary farming town that may be facing its final days, Mimi is observing adults, selling corn, growing up and changing, and watching the world around her change, too. As the years go by, the unthinkable starts to seem inevitable. Anna Quindlen's novel takes us through the changing eras of Mimi and her family, as secrets are revealed, and the heartbreaks of growing up and falling in love with the wrong man are overcome.

Daisy Miller is a young American girl travelling Europe with her mother and younger brother. While in Vevey, Switzerland, she becomes acquainted with Frederick Winterbourne, an idle expatriate, of well-to-do Americans. Winterbourne, who observes and critiques young Daisy through their brief acquaintanceship, is infatuated with her irreverent behavior. Daisy flaunts society's rules and uncompromising standards; she is charming, spontaneous, and unpretentious, and her audacity shocks the Europeans, who consider her an uncultivated flirt. The sophisticated Winterbourne remains smitten with Daisy, but his classical values stand in his way.

The innocent and insolent Daisy confronts the traditions of old Europe and confounds all of the people (especially the men) who surround her. All throughout the story, there are classic Jamesian views on the differences between English and American societies.

Published in 1878, portrays the courtship of the beautiful American girl Daisy Miller by Frederick Winterbourne. Winterbourne's pursuit of her is hampered by her own flirtatiousness, which is frowned upon by the other expatriates they meet in Switzerland and Italy. The the novel coments on the contrast between American and European society that is common to James's work.

Between unending housework and thankless efforts to appease a loutish husband and acid-tongued teens, Ginny Cooper's to-do list never seems to get done. Her guilty pleasure - fantasizing about her husband's demise - her weakness - the drive-thru at Arby's. On the job as head librarian at the county's obsolete library, tedium reigns. One afternoon Ginny innocently stumbles upon a dating website, where the rabbit hole awaits.

After spending her adult years in England Imelda Richardson returns to the small village of Watersgate, Jamaica. The village is still dominated by the Evangelical church and a Pentecostal fervour threatens to sweep both sinners and the righteous away.

Henry James' signature theme - the American abroad - centers here on a chatterbox, provincial (not to say ignorant) daughter of a wealthy Schenectady industrialist, as she travels through Europe with her doting, vapid mother and rambunctious young brother. She meets up with one Mr. Winterbourne, another ex-patriate, with whom she flirts before coming to a sad end.

Mary Carson is thrown into the fire as the new chief executive of the United States, the first female to hold that position. Enemies put her to the test soon after based on dovish campaign promises as well as dislike for females in that coveted role. The news media does her no favors since she holds mostly traditional positions. Whether she survives is a defining moment in her life and for the country. Pushed to the brink by the Mexican Cartels and the Iranian Government, Mary must make decisions that fulfill her duty as Commander in Chief.

American expatriate Frederick Winterbourne has long resided in Switzerland, where society follows strict rules for proper behavior. When Daisy Miller of Schenectady, New York arrives in Vevey, however, Winterbourne soon finds that he must reckon with his own assumptions about what makes someone "proper" and "good."

Against a backdrop of unrest and unforeseen political change, a trio of bygone friends converge in San Francisco. Jonathan is haunted by his past and can’t move forward. Kit, his former student, is disillusioned and in a slump. Milo inhabits the center—the axis of the triangle. Beneath his clownlike behavior and dazzling grin, Milo’s tender heart and wisdom transforms those he loves.

Miller is unlucky. That's why he's in a foxhole with the rest of Bravo Company. That's why his dad is gone and his mother remarried. That's why his teeth are falling out. Then, when the first sergeant tells Miller his mother has passed away, Miller thinks he's finally gotten lucky. Surely it's another Miller's mother, and now he can get away from the battalion for a couple days thanks to the Army's error. But Miller knows the future rarely has happiness in store.