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From international bestselling author of The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, Holly Ringland, comes a haunting and magical novel about joy, grief, courage, and transformation. 'On the afternoon that Esther Wilding drove homeward along the coast, a year after her sister had walked into the sea and disappeared, the light was painfully golden.'The last time Esther Wilding's beloved older sister Aura was seen, she was walking along the shore towards the sea. In the wake of Aura's disappearance, Esther's family struggles to live with their loss. To seek the truth about her sister's death, Esther reluctantly travels from Tasmania to Copenhagen, and then to the Faroe Islands. On her journey, Esther is guided by the stories Aura left behind: seven fairy tales about selkies, swans and women, alongside cryptic verses Aura wrote and had secretly tattooed on her body. THE SEVEN SKINS OF ESTHER WILDING is about the far-reaches of sisterly love, the power of wearing your heart on your skin, and the ways life can transform when we find the courage to feel the fullness of both grief and joy.
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Feyre's survival rests upon her ability to hunt and kill - the forest where she lives is a cold, bleak place in the long winter months. So when she spots a deer in the forest being pursued by a wolf, she cannot resist fighting it for the flesh. But to do so, she must kill the predator and killing something so precious comes at a price ..., Dragged to a magical kingdom for the murder of a faerie, Feyre discovers that her captor, his face obscured by a jewelled mask, is hiding far more than his piercing green eyes would suggest. Feyre's presence at the court is closely guarded, and as she begins to learn why, her feelings for him turn from hostility to passion and the faerie lands become an even more dangerous place. Feyre must fight to break an ancient curse, or she will lose him forever., The start of a sensational romantic fantasy trilogy by the bestselling author of the Throne of Glass series. Contains mature content. Not suitable for younger readers.
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Five months after Mel told her husband to leave, a ghost moved in upstairs. A young man who reminds her, with eerie intensity, of a past lover, someone who changed Mel's life and then vanished. When the man's travelling girlfriend joins him, Mel's obsession with the couple upstairs builds and the boundaries between the two homes begin to blur, with devastating consequences. The Couple Upstairs is about one strange Summer of dazzling, curdling infatuation. Writing with both a light touch and vivid intensity, Holly Wainwright explores love, regret, whether you can stop history repeating, and whether or not you should.
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What connects a botanical illustration of a butterfly with a missing baby and an enigma fifty years in the making? A twisty historical mystery from a bestselling Australian author. 1868 Morpeth Theodora Breckenridge, still in mourning after the loss of her parents and brother at sea, is more interested in working quietly on her art at the family's country estate than she is finding a husband in Sydney society, even if her elder sister Florence has other ideas. Theodora seeks to emulate prestigious nature illustrators, the Scott sisters, who lived nearby, so she cannot believe her luck when she discovers a butterfly never before sighted in Australia. With the help of Clarrie, her maid, and her beautiful illustrations, she is poised to make a natural science discovery that will put her name on the map. Then Clarrie's new-born son goes missing and everything changes.1922 Sydney When would-be correspondent Verity Binks is sent an anonymous parcel containing a spectacular butterfly costume and an invitation to the Sydney Artists Masquerade Ball on the same day she loses her job at The Arrow, she is both baffled and determined to go. Her late grandfather Sid, an esteemed newspaperman, would expect no less of her. At the ball, she lands a juicy commission to write the history of the Treadwell Foundation - an institution that supports disgraced young women and their babies. But as she begins to dig, her investigation quickly leads her to an increasingly dark and complex mystery, a mystery fifty years in the making. Can she solve it? And will anyone believe her if she does?
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Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and for the National Book Award 2015 A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara is an immensely powerful and heartbreaking novel of brotherly love and the limits of human endurance. When four graduates from a small Massachusetts college move to New York to make their way, they're broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition. There is kind, handsome Willem, an aspiring actor; JB, a quick-witted, sometimes cruel Brooklyn-born painter seeking entry to the art world; Malcolm, a frustrated architect at a prominent firm; and withdrawn, brilliant, enigmatic Jude, who serves as their centre of gravity. Over the decades, their relationships deepen and darken, tinged by addiction, success, and pride. Yet their greatest challenge, each comes to realize, is Jude himself, by midlife a terrifyingly talented litigator yet an increasingly broken man, his mind and body scarred by an unspeakable childhood, and haunted by what he fears is a degree of trauma that he'll not only be unable to overcome - but that will define his life forever.
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The million-copy bestselling phenomenon, Fredrik Backman's heartwarming debut is a funny, moving, uplifting tale of love and community that will leave you with a spring in your step. Perfect for fans of Rachel Joyce's The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Graeme Simsion's The Rosie Project and David Nicholl's US.New York Times bestseller'Warm, funny, and almost unbearably moving' Daily Mail'Rescued all those men who constantly mean to read novels but never get round to it' Spectator Books of the YearAt first sight, Ove is almost certainly the grumpiest man you will ever meet. He thinks himself surrounded by idiots - neighbours who can't reverse a trailer properly, joggers, shop assistants who talk in code, and the perpetrators of the vicious coup d'etat that ousted him as Chairman of the Residents' Association. He will persist in making his daily inspection rounds of the local streets.But isn't it rare, these days, to find such old-fashioned clarity of belief and deed? Such unswerving conviction about what the world should be, and a lifelong dedication to making it just so?In the end, you will see, there is something about Ove that is quite irresistible...
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Bravery, courage, fear and love in a time of war. Despite their differences, sisters Viann and Isabelle have always been close. Younger, bolder Isabelle lives in Paris while Viann is content with life in the French countryside with her husband Antoine and their daughter. But when the Second World War strikes, Antoine is sent off to fight and Viann finds herself isolated so Isabelle is sent by their father to help her. As the war progresses, the sisters' relationship and strength is tested. With life changing in unbelievably horrific ways, Viann and Isabelle will find themselves facing frightening situations and responding in ways they never thought possible as bravery and resistance take different forms in each of their actions. Vivid and exquisite in its illumination of a time and place that was filled with atrocities, but also humanity and strength, Kristin Hannah's novel will provoke thought and discussion that will have readers talking long after they finish reading.
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From the bestselling author of The Ex and Those Other Women comes a thrilling family drama about the secrets we keep, the lies we tell and the truths that won't stay hidden. The holidays are here. The extended family has gathered. The cars are packed and the convoy sets off. The cottage is a few hours' drive - but not everyone will live to see it ...For Jill, her three sons, their wives and children, a terrifying road crash will tear apart their family.The crash will be an accident but the shattering that follows has been long coming.Because at the heart of this family lies a secret - concealed, wrestled with, festering and harmful - and nothing now can stop it coming out.But will any of them survive it?Praise for Nicola Moriarty:'Will have you turning pages in a blur to find out what happens' The Age on The Ex'Moriarty is a masterful plotter' Better Reading'I devoured it, loved it and totally escaped into it ... Fun and topical' Marian Keyes on Those Other Women
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The Hobbit
J.R.R. Tolkien
#0 The Lord of the Rings #0 The History of Middle Earth #0 Middle Earth Universe<p>J.R.R. Tolkien, in this extraordinary, historically important recording, leads listeners with prose, poems, and songs into the fantastic world of <em>The Hobbit</em> and <em>The Fellowship of the Ring</em>.</p><p>This audio is based on a tape that Tolkien made for his friends in August 1952. He had been working on <em>The Lord of the Rings</em> for more than fourteen years by then and had almost given up hope of ever seeing it in print. But making this recording reassured him of his talent and prompted him to send his manuscripts to a former pupil who had become a publisher. The result was one of the most popular and influential series of novels of the 20th century!</p><p>This recording includes the poem "The Mirror of Galadriel," originally meant for inclusion in Book Two of <em>The Fellowship of the Ring</em>.</p> -
'Scotland's answer to Game of Thrones'HeraldTHE FIRST NOVEL IN THE BESTSELLING OUTLANDER SERIES. As seen on Amazon Prime TV. What if your future was the past?1946, and Claire Randall goes to the Scottish Highlands with her husband Frank. It’s a second honeymoon, a chance to learn how war has changed them and to re-establish their loving marriage. But one afternoon, Claire walks through a circle of standing stones and vanishes into 1743, where the first person she meets is a British army officer - her husband’s six-times great-grandfather. Unfortunately, Black Jack Randall is not the man his descendant is, and while trying to escape him, Claire falls into the hands of a gang of Scottish outlaws, and finds herself a Sassenach - an outlander - in danger from both Jacobites and Redcoats.Marooned amid danger, passion and violence, her only chance of safety lies in Jamie Fraser, a gallant young Scots warrior. What begins in compulsion becomes urgent need, and Claire finds herself torn between two very different men, in two irreconcilable lives.(Previously published as Cross Stitch)
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In the middle ages, a poet told a story that mocked a strong woman. It became a literary classic. But what if the woman in question had a chance to tell her own version? Who would you believe? England, The Year of Our Lord, 1364 When married off aged 12 to an elderly farmer, Eleanor Cornfed, who's constantly told to seek redemption for her many sins, quickly realises it won't matter what she says or does, God is not on her side - or any poor woman's for that matter.But Eleanor was born under the joint signs of Venus and Mars. Both a lover and a fighter, she will not bow meekly to fate. Even if five marriages, several pilgrimages, many lovers, violence, mayhem and wildly divergent fortunes (that swoop up and down as if spinning on Fortuna's Wheel itself) do not for a peaceful life make.Aided and abetted by her trusty god-sibling Alyson, the counsel of one Geoffrey Chaucer, and a good head for business, Eleanor fights to protect those she loves from the vagaries of life, the character deficits of her many husbands, the brutalities of medieval England and her own fatal flaw... a lusty appreciation of mankind. All while continuing to pursue the one thing all women want - control of their own lives.This funny, picaresque, clever retelling of Chaucer's 'Wife of Bath' from The Canterbury Tales is a cutting assessment of what happens when male power is left to run unchecked, as well as a recasting of a literary classic that gives a maligned character her own voice, and allows her to tell her own (mostly) true story.
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“Brooks’ chronological and cross-disciplinary leaps are thrilling.” —The New York Times Book Review “Horse isn’t just an animal story—it’s a moving narrative about race and art.” —TIMEA discarded painting in a junk pile, a skeleton in an attic, and the greatest racehorse in American history: from these strands, a Pulitzer Prize winner braids a sweeping story of spirit, obsession, and injustice across American historyKentucky, 1850. An enslaved groom named Jarret and a bay foal forge a bond of understanding that will carry the horse to record-setting victories across the South. When the nation erupts in civil war, an itinerant young artist who has made his name on paintings of the racehorse takes up arms for the Union. On a perilous night, he reunites with the stallion and his groom, very far from the glamor of any racetrack. New York City, 1954. Martha Jackson, a gallery owner celebrated for taking risks on edgy contemporary painters, becomes obsessed with a nineteenth-century equestrian oil painting of mysterious provenance. Washington, DC, 2019. Jess, a Smithsonian scientist from Australia, and Theo, a Nigerian-American art historian, find themselves unexpectedly connected through their shared interest in the horse—one studying the stallion’s bones for clues to his power and endurance, the other uncovering the lost history of the unsung Black horsemen who were critical to his racing success. Based on the remarkable true story of the record-breaking thoroughbred Lexington, Horse is a novel of art and science, love and obsession, and our unfinished reckoning with racism.
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"The body you are wearing used to be mine." So begins the letter Myfanwy Thomas is holding when she awakes in a London park surrounded by bodies all wearing latex gloves. With no recollection of who she is, Myfanwy must follow the instructions her former self left behind to discover her identity and track down the agents who want to destroy her. <br>She soon learns that she is a Rook, a high-ranking member of a secret organization called the Chequy that battles the many supernatural forces at work in Britain. She also discovers that she possesses a rare, potentially deadly supernatural ability of her own. <br>In her quest to uncover which member of the Chequy betrayed her and why, Myfanwy encounters a person with four bodies, an aristocratic woman who can enter her dreams, a secret training facility where children are transformed into deadly fighters, and a conspiracy more vast than she ever could have imagined. <br>Filled with characters both fascinating and fantastical, THE ROOK is a richly inventive, suspenseful, and often wry thriller that marks an ambitious debut from a promising young writer.
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From Australia's favourite storyteller, with new novel The Night Tide out now.Face her demons? Or run?After being double-crossed by a devious colleague, career woman Ellie Conlan quits her job on principle. With no idea what to do next, she retreats to Storm Harbour, an idyllic Victorian beach town. Ellie's grandfather runs The Storm Harbour Chronicle, the trusted local newspaper. As Ellie is drawn into a story about a development which could split the coastal community - and involves her with the influential O'Neill family - an event she has long suppressed threatens to overwhelm her. Dark clouds gather as rumours fly and tensions mount. And when a violent storm breaks and rages, Ellie will finally have to confront her past. PRAISE FOR BEFORE THE STORM: 'There's no denying the beauty and opulence of Morrissey's rendering of place . . . She is a master of the genre.' Weekend Australian'a gripping, twisting yarn' Australian Women's Weekly
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Lowen Ashleigh is a struggling writer on the brink of financial ruin. When Jeremy Crawford, husband of bestselling author Verity Crawford, asks Lowen to complete the remaining books in a contract his permanently injured wife is unable to fulfill, Lowen has no choice but to accept. Lowen arrives at the Crawford home with the intention of only staying one or two nights--long enough to sort through Verity's chaotic home office to collect all the notes and outlines she'll need to start writing the first novel. But the more time Lowen spends with Jeremy Crawford, the less of a hurry she is in to leave. While there, Lowen uncovers a hidden manuscript. An autobiography containing chilling admissions Verity planned to take to her grave, including the truth behind the events that turned their lives upside down. A truth that, if revealed to Jeremy, would further devastate the already grieving father. Lowen decides to keep the manuscript a secret, allowing Jeremy to continue to believe Verity is merely an innocent, unfortunate victim of circumstance. But as Lowen's feelings for the devoted father and husband deepen, she wonders if keeping Jeremy in the dark is in her own best interest. After all, if Jeremy were to read his wife's autobiography, the disturbing truth would make it impossible for him to continue to love her. A chilling romantic thriller from #1 New York Times bestselling author Colleen Hoover.
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An enchanting and captivating novel, about how our untold stories haunt us - and the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive. After her family suffers a tragedy, nine-year-old Alice Hart is forced to leave her idyllic seaside home. She is taken in by her grandmother, June, a flower farmer who raises Alice on the language of Australian native flowers, a way to say the things that are too hard to speak. Under the watchful eye of June and the women who run the farm, Alice settles, but grows up increasingly frustrated by how little she knows of her family's story. In her early twenties, Alice's life is thrown into upheaval again when she suffers devastating betrayal and loss. Desperate to outrun grief, Alice flees to the dramatically beautiful central Australian desert. In this otherworldly landscape Alice thinks she has found solace, until she meets a charismatic and ultimately dangerous man. Spanning two decades, set between sugar cane fields by the sea, a native Australian flower farm, and a celestial crater in the central desert, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart follows Alice's unforgettable journey, as she learns that the most powerful story she will ever possess is her own.
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A woman on a quest to find out the truth about her family, a mysterious Victorian authoress, a book of dark fairytales and a long-hidden secret - <i>The Forgotten Garden</i> is another addictive and compulsively readable romance/mystery from Kate Morton, author of the international bestseller <i>The Shifting Fog</i>.
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Prussia, 1836 Hanne Nussbaum is a child of nature - she would rather run wild in the forest than conform to the limitations of womanhood. In her village of Kay, Hanne is friendless and considered an oddity...until she meets Thea. Ocean, 1838 The Nussbaums are Old Lutherans, bound by God's law and at odds with their King's order for reform. Forced to flee religious persecution the families of Kay board a crowded, disease-riddled ship bound for the new colony of South Australia. In the face of brutal hardship, the beauty of whale song enters Hanne's heart, along with the miracle of her love for Thea. Theirs is a bond that nothing can break. The whale passed. The music faded. South Australia, 1838 A new start in an old land. God, society and nature itself decree Hanne and Thea cannot be together. But within the impossible...is devotion. This long-awaited novel demonstrates Hannah Kent's sublime ability with language that creates an immersive, transformative experience for the reader. Devotion is a book to savour. Praise for Devotion: 'Devotion is utterly original. A glorious, heartbreaking love story of infinite beauty.' - Heather Rose 'Hannah Kent's latest novel is stunning - full of magic and adventure. I fell in love with language again reading it. So beautiful and so raw. Devotion is impossibly good.' - Evie Wyld 'Such a glorious love story. And the poetry of the landscape had, for me, a Whitmanesque sensibility. A mighty impassioned cry to love and the land.' - Sarah Winman 'Devotion is rare and exquisite, both beautiful and muscular in its portrayal of love found and denied. It's a story of love as a radical act, and a celebration of place and persistence. As we've come to expect from Kent, this is masterful storytelling with pull-no-punches stakes. It's taken root in my heart.' - Kiran Millwood Hargrave
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Lou Clark knows lots of things. She knows how many footsteps there are between the bus stop and home. She knows she likes working in The Buttered Bun tea shop and she knows she might not love her boyfriend Patrick. What Lou doesn't know is she's about to lose her job or that knowing what's coming is what keeps her sane. Will Traynor knows his motorcycle accident took away his desire to live. He knows everything feels very small and rather joyless now and he knows exactly how he's going to put a stop to that.What Will doesn't know is that Lou is about to burst into his world in a riot of colour. And neither of them knows they're going to change the other for all time.Praise for Jojo Moyes:'What a wonderful, thoughtful and moving book. I was riveted all the way through. Absolutely loved it.' Sophie Kinsella'Destined to be the novel that friends press upon each other. More than any other, Lou and Will are a couple who readers will take to their hearts as they did One Day's Emma and Dex. A novel that demands an afternoon on the sofa with a fistful of tissues.' Independent on Sunday'A triumph. Packs such an emotional punch, you'll need a box of tissues.' Elle'Magical and heartbreaking. Waterproof mascara essential.' Marie Claire
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