Showing results by publisher "----RM Alexander" in Contemporary Fiction

From his remote moorland home, David Hartley assembles a gang of weavers and land workers to embark upon a criminal enterprise that will capsize the economy and become the biggest fraud in British history. They are the Cragg Vale Coiners, and their business is clipping - the forging of coins, a treasonous offence punishable by death.

Paige Winterbourne is a witch. Not that you'd notice - no warts, no green skin, no cute little wiggle of the nose whenever she casts a spell. No, most of the time she's just a normal 23-year-old girl; works too hard, worries about her weight, wonders if she'll ever find a boyfriend. Okay, so she does have an adopted teenage daughter, Savannah, who wants to raise her black witch of a mother from the dead. And who is being stalked by a telekinetic half-demon and an all-powerful cabal of sorcerers.

Gavin Sasaki was a promising young journalist in New York City until the day he was fired for plagiarism. The last thing he wants is to sell foreclosed real estate for his sister Eilo's company in their Florida hometown, but he's in no position to refuse her job offer. Plus, there's another reason to go home: Eilo recently met a 10-year-old girl who looks very much like Gavin and has the same last name as his high-school girlfriend, Anna, who left town abruptly after graduation.

Pietro è un ragazzino di città, solitario e un po' scontroso. La madre lavora in un consultorio di periferia, e farsi carico degli altri è il suo talento. Il padre è un chimico, un uomo ombroso e affascinante, che torna a casa ogni sera dal lavoro carico di rabbia. I genitori di Pietro sono uniti da una passione comune, fondativa: in montagna si sono conosciuti, innamorati, si sono addirittura sposati ai piedi delle Tre Cime di Lavaredo.

As a boy, William Bellman commits one small cruel act that appears to have unforeseen and terrible consequences. The killing of a rook with his catapult is soon forgotten amidst the riot of boyhood games. And by the time he is grown, with a wife and children of his own, he seems indeed, to be a man blessed by fortune. Until tragedy strikes, and the stranger in black comes, and William Bellman starts to wonder if all his happiness is about to be eclipsed. Desperate to save the one precious thing he has left, he enters into a bargain.

Garrison Keillor is the consummate storyteller, gifted with the rare ability, both in print and in performance, to hold an audience spellbound with his tales of ordinary people whose lives contain extraordinary moments of humor, tenderness, and grace. This exclusive recording of Garrison Keillor reading a carefully edited abridgement of the book also includes a few segments taken from live performances recorded during a fundraising tour for public radio stations in 1985.

When Myriam, a French-Moroccan lawyer, decides to return to work after having children, she and her husband look for the perfect caretaker for their two young children. They never dreamed they would find Louise: a quiet, polite and devoted woman who sings to their children, cleans the family's chic apartment in Paris' upscale tenth arrondissement, stays late without complaint and is able to host enviable birthday parties.

In 1796, a young cabin boy, Will Martin, goes on a voyage of discovery in the Tom Thumb with Matthew Flinders and Mr. Bass: two men and a boy in a tiny boat on an exploratory journey south from Sydney Cove to the Illawarra, full of hope and dreams, daring and fearfulness. Set on the banks of Lake Illawarra and spanning four centuries, Storyland is a unique and compelling novel of people and place which tells the story of Australia. All these characters are all connected—not only through the same land and water, but also by tendrils of blood, history, memory and property.

Growing up in an Australian country town before World War I, Jackie Hanna and Cushie Moy are carefree and innocent in their love for each other, but Jackie is a dwarf, and his devotion to the beautiful Cushie is condemned by her parents. This is the story of their life-long odyssey, and of the triumph of a special kind of courage. In Swords and Crowns and Rings Ruth Park brilliantly captures the mood and tempo of Australian life from 1907 until 1931.

Exploring themes of ownership and abandonment, Eleanor Anstruther’s debut is a fictionalised account of the true story of Enid Campbell (1892-1964), granddaughter of the 8th Duke of Argyll, who sold her son to her sister for £500. Interweaving one significant day in 1964 with a decade during the interwar period, A Perfect Explanation gets to the heart of what it is to be bound by gender, heritage and tradition, to fight, to lose, to fight again. In a world of privilege, truth remains the same; there are no heroes and villains, only people misunderstood.

She watches from her terrazza as the three American women carry their luggage into the stone villa down the hill. Who are they, and what brings them to this Tuscan village so far from home? An expat herself, and with her own unfinished story, she can't help but question: will they find what they came for?

"I'M A FAN" tells the story of an unnamed narrator's involvement in a seemingly unequal romantic relationship. With a clear and unforgiving eye, Sheena Patel makes startling connections between power struggles at the heart of human relationships to those in the wider world, offering a devastating critique of social media, access and patriarchal systems.

Richard is a modern day everyman; a middle-aged divorcee trading stocks out of his home. He has done such a good job getting his life under control that he needs no one. His life has slowed almost to a standstill until two incidents conspire to hurl him back into the world. One day he wakes up with a knotty cramp in his back, which rapidly develops into an all-consuming pain. At the same time a wide hole appears outside his living room window, threatening the foundations of his house.

Sixteen-year-old Mikaela has grown up isolated and home-schooled on an orchard in Tasmania, until an unexpected event shatters her family. Eighteen months later, she and her older brother Kurt are running a small business in a timber town. Miki longs to make connections and spend more time in her beloved forest, but she is kept a virtual prisoner by Kurt, who leads a secret life of his own. When Miki meets Leon, another outsider, things slowly begin to change. But the power to stand up for yourself must come from within....

Tessa has just a few months to live. Fighting back against hospital visits, endless tests, drugs with excruciating side-effects, Tessa compiles a list. It's her To Do Before I Die list. And number one is sex. Released from the constraints of 'normal' life, Tessa tastes new experiences to make her feel alive while her failing body struggles to keep up.

The Fishcastle stands proud and high over the seaside village of Proudie Bay, where the sea meets the land. It is home to the Hardwicks - Marlin, teller of tales and charmer of snakes and women; his daughter, Jennifer, who keeps house; and his son, Gulliver, perfect in form but flawed in spirit. Creaking with secrets and a menagerie of creatures, the Fishcastle gathers many others into its rambling rooms and garden. One eventful summer under the Fishcastle's roof their lives are changed forever.

The superb follow-up to Eoin Colfer's highly acclaimed Plugged, written with the warmth and wit of his Artemis Fowl series. Dan McEvoy doesn't set out to get into violent confrontations with New Jersey's gangster overlords but he's long since found that once you're on their radar, there's only one way to slip off it. So he's learned his own way to fight back, aiming to outwit rather than kill unless he really has no choice. But when Dan's glam step-gran Edit shows up on the hunt for his dishevelled aunt Evelyn, it quickly becomes clear that family can provide the deadliest threat of all.

Luke Livingstone is a respected solicitor, a father and grandfather, a pillar of the community. Yet Luke is struggling with an unbearable secret, and it's threatening to destroy him. All his life, Luke has hidden the truth about himself and his identity. It's a truth so fundamental that it will shatter his family and leave him outcast. But to continue living, he must become the person - the woman - he knows himself to be, whatever the cost.

An enchanting and nostalgic tale of Ireland in the 1950s by Ireland’s favourite writer, Alice Taylor. The Phelans have owned Mossgrove for generations. The small, rural Irish farm has been the pride of them all until Ned's wife, Martha, arrives and begins to undermine generations of hard work and happiness. She resents the deep history of the place and sets about making it her own, shutting out what is left of Ned's family. She is particularly jealous of Ned's sister, Kate, a local nurse and doting aunt to Martha's children.

In a South Africa torn by civil war, Michael K sets out to take his mother back to her rural home. On the way there she dies, leaving him alone in an anarchic world of brutal roving armies. Imprisoned, Michael is unable to bear confinement and escapes, determined to live with dignity. Life and Times of Michael K goes to the centre of human experience - the need for an interior, spiritual life, for some connections to the world in which we live, and for purity of vision.