Alys, Always


Book Description

Comforting a dying car crash victim before being invited to meet the woman's privileged family, Frances is transformed through her friendships with two family members from an unknown editor to a sought-after figure in literary society.




Aly's Fight


Book Description

In this "life-changing" book (Korie Robertson), TLC reality TV stars Aly and Josh Taylor share the inspiring story of how their faith sustained them through breast cancer, infertility, and dashed dreams. October 17, 2011 changed Aly and Josh Taylor's lives forever. At just 24 years old, Aly was diagnosed with breast cancer. Everything they had known, hoped for, and dreamed of came to a screeching halt with the news of her diagnoses. But Aly's cancer journey is only the beginning of their incredible story. With grit, fierce love, and unyielding faith, Aly and Josh fight for her life and dream of building a family. They battle infertility, face heart-wrenching struggles while trying to adopt, and experience God in miraculous ways. Aly and Josh will inspire you to cling to life, faith, and love, even when all hope seems lost.




Alys, Always


Book Description

A psychological thriller excavating the fault lines that separate the entitled from the rest, Alys, Always is adapted for the stage by Lucinda Coxon from Harriet Lane's gripping novel. Frances works on the books pages of a Sunday newspaper. She's quiet and capable, but nobody takes much notice: her face is pressed to the window, on the outside, looking in. One evening, driving back to London after visiting her infuriating parents, she comes across an overturned car crumpled on the side of the road. She waits with the injured driver, Alys Kyte, until the ambulance arrives. Later, when Alys's famous family gets in touch, Frances finds herself ushered for the first time into the world on the other side of the window. And she begins to wonder: what will it take to belong? This stage version of Alys, Always was premiered at the Bridge Theatre, London, in February 2019, directed by Nicholas Hytner and starring Joanne Froggatt and Robert Glenister. 'Wonderfully observed... a gripping, psychologically complex achievement, whose greatest success is the lingering sense of unease' Sunday Telegraph on Harriet Lane's novel




Ashes of the Elements


Book Description

A grove of huge oak trees in the Wealden forest is felled. And, as if some ancient curse is being brought alive, the man who wielded the axes meets with a violent end. The Sheriff claims the Forest People did it, but Abbess Helewise believes a supernatural solution is too easy an answer. She consults Josse d'Acquin, whose manor house in the Weald is now being renovated, and he, concerned about the safety of two girls from the abbey, enters the forest himself - to find something in this ancient part of Britain that terrifies even him.




Dark Tides


Book Description

#1 New York Times bestselling author of Tidelands—the “searing portrait of a woman that resonates across the ages” (People)—returns with an evocative historical novel tracking the rise of the Tidelands family in London, Venice, and New England. Midsummer Eve 1670. Two unexpected visitors arrive at a shabby warehouse on the south side of the River Thames. The first is a wealthy nobleman seeking the lover he deserted twenty-one years earlier. Now James Avery has everything to offer: a fortune, a title, and the favor of the newly restored King Charles II. He believes that the warehouse’s poor owner Alinor has the one thing he cannot buy—his son and heir. The second visitor is a beautiful widow from Venice in deepest mourning. She claims Alinor as her mother-in-law and tells her of the death of Rob—Alinor’s son—drowned in the dark tides of the Venice lagoon. Meanwhile, Alinor’s brother Ned, in faraway New England, is making a life for himself between in the narrowing space between the jarring worlds of the English newcomers and the American Indians as they move towards inevitable war. Alinor writes to him that she knows—without doubt—that her son is alive and the widow is an imposter. But how can she prove it? Set in the poverty and glamour of Restoration London, in the golden streets of Venice, and on the tensely contested frontier of early America, this is a novel of greed and desire: for love, for wealth, for a child, and for home.




The Modern Girl Around the World


Book Description

During the 1920s and 1930s, in cities from Beijing to Bombay, Tokyo to Berlin, Johannesburg to New York, the Modern Girl made her sometimes flashy, always fashionable appearance in city streets and cafes, in films, advertisements, and illustrated magazines. Modern Girls wore sexy clothes and high heels; they applied lipstick and other cosmetics. Dressed in provocative attire and in hot pursuit of romantic love, Modern Girls appeared on the surface to disregard the prescribed roles of dutiful daughter, wife, and mother. Contemporaries debated whether the Modern Girl was looking for sexual, economic, or political emancipation, or whether she was little more than an image, a hollow product of the emerging global commodity culture. The contributors to this collection track the Modern Girl as she emerged as a global phenomenon in the interwar period. Scholars of history, women’s studies, literature, and cultural studies follow the Modern Girl around the world, analyzing her manifestations in Germany, Australia, China, Japan, France, India, the United States, Russia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. Along the way, they demonstrate how the economic structures and cultural flows that shaped a particular form of modern femininity crossed national and imperial boundaries. In so doing, they highlight the gendered dynamics of interwar processes of racial formation, showing how images and ideas of the Modern Girl were used to shore up or critique nationalist and imperial agendas. A mix of collaborative and individually authored chapters, the volume concludes with commentaries by Kathy Peiss, Miriam Silverberg, and Timothy Burke. Contributors: Davarian L. Baldwin, Tani E. Barlow, Timothy Burke, Liz Conor, Madeleine Yue Dong, Anne E. Gorsuch, Ruri Ito, Kathy Peiss, Uta G. Poiger, Priti Ramamurthy, Mary Louise Roberts, Barbara Sato, Miriam Silverberg, Lynn M. Thomas, Alys Eve Weinbaum




Her


Book Description

You don't remember her -- but she remembers you. Two different women; two different worlds. On the face of it, Emma and Nina have very little in common. Isolated and exhausted by early motherhood, Emma finds her confidence is fading fast. Nina is sophisticated and assured, a successful artist who seems to have it all under control. And yet, when the two women meet, they are irresistibly drawn to each other. As the friendship develops, as Emma gratefully invites Nina into her life, it emerges that someone is playing games-and the stakes could not be higher. What, exactly, does Nina see in Emma? What does she want? And how far will she go in pursuit of it? A gripping novel about friendship and identity, about the wild hopes and worst fears of parenthood, about the small and easily forgotten moments that come to define a life, Her is unputdownable-compelling and hauntingly discomfiting.




The Casquette Girls


Book Description

Originally published: New York: Kensington.




Hidden Nature


Book Description

'Fowler's moving memoir charts her experience of coming out as a gay woman, alongside her journey through Birmingham's canal networks, mapping both the waterways and the travails of her heart.' Observer 'An emotional and compelling memoir, that left me inspired, both by her bravery in transforming her life, and by the unexpected beauty she finds along the way' Countryfile Magazine 'Fowler beautifully exposes her emotional fragility while also celebrating the unloved nature of buddleia, herons and even the water rats who take refuge among the locks.' i paper 'Fowler captures the beauty of the canal's dishevelled, neglected condition...' Times Literary Supplement 'Thoughtful and heartbreakingly honest ...Beautiful' Press Association 'An astounding memoir' Gay Star News 'Hidden Nature is one of the most thrilling things I've read in a long time' Waterways World 'She writes wonderfully about the species that have carved out a place for themselves amid the discarded shopping trolleys, condom packets and industrial waste' Guardian 'This candid book is as much about mapping the heart as it is about mapping the paths of waterways. Lovely.' Simple Things 'A beautiful memoir' Good Housekeeping 'Gentle, brave and acutely observant' Woman's Weekly Leaving her garden to the mercy of the slugs, the Guardian's award-winning writer Alys Fowler set out in an inflatable kayak to explore Birmingham's canal network, full of little-used waterways where huge pike skulk and kingfishers dart. Her book is about noticing the wild everywhere and what it means to see beauty where you least expect it. What happens when someone who has learned to observe her external world in such detail decides to examine her internal world with the same care? Beautifully written, honest and very moving, Hidden Nature is also the story of Alys Fowler's emotional journey and her coming out as a gay woman: above all, this book is about losing and finding, exploring familiar places and discovering unknown horizons.




Girl In A Red Tunic


Book Description

With Richard the Lionheart still being held hostage after his crusade, his people have been made paupers paying his ransom. The Abbess Helewise is struggling to keep her abbey going through a cold, brutal winter as she fends off starvation of her nuns and the local people. Then her son returns to her in desperate need of help after a seperation of nearly twenty years. He claims his wife is suffering mental torments and his son is mute. But when a man is found strangled, dangling from a tree near the abbey, her son and his family flee the very next day. Helewise and a local Knight, Josse d' Acquin, must investigate deep into the past to the time before Helewise took the veil. Were her handsome husband and enigmatic father-in-law all that they seemed? And can she prevent another terrible murder or will the sins of the fathers be laid upon her innocent son?