The Vanishing Princess


Book Description

The only story collection from the beloved Jenny Diski—darkly funny, subversive, sexy, and eccentric tales from one of the most original and intelligent voices of our time “Mordant and talon-sharp.” —Dwight Garner, New York Times, on Jenny Diski Description Jenny Diski’s prose is as sharp and steely as her imagination is wild and wondrous. When she died of cancer in April 2016, after chronicling her illness in strikingly honest essays in the London Review of Books, readers, admirers, and critics around the world mourned the loss. In a cool and unflinching tone that came to define her singular voice, she explored the subjects of sex, power, domesticity, femininity, hysteria, and loneliness with humor and honesty, The stories in The Vanishing Princess showcase a rarely seen side of this beloved writer, channeling both the piercing social examination of her nonfiction and the vivid, dreamlike landscapes of her novels. In a Rumpelstiltskin fairy tale turned on its head, a miller’s daughter rises to power and wealth to rule over her kingdom and outwit the title villain. “Bathtime” tells the story of a woman’s life through her attempts to build the perfect bathtub, chasing an elusive moment of peace. In “Short Curcuit,” the author mines her own bouts in and out of mental institutions outside London to question whether those we think are mad are really the sanest among us. Longtime fans of Diski and those who have discovered her since her death will find much to treasure here, in her only short story collection, released in the US for the very first time. The Vanishing Princess is another vital stop on Jenny Diski’s journey for meaning and beauty in her prolific writing, one that feels as fresh and necessary as if it were brand-new.




The Vanishing Princess


Book Description

These stories are dark & diverting.They move effortlessly between wildly differ-ing locations.They explore subjects contemporary & complex.Best of all they gleam with intelligence and sardonic wit.




Rapunzel and the Vanishing Village


Book Description

Rapunzel craves adventure and longs for experiences outside the walls of her kingdom. So when she embarks on an epic journey to save Corona with the people closest to her, she's surprised to discover it's not quite as enjoyable as she thought it would be. Bumps in the road cause tempers to flare, and Raps can't even seem to get a self-portrait right. Plus, her best friend, Cassandra, grows more and more frustrated whenever they veer away from her itinerary, and Rapunzel's boyfriend, Eugene, feels he's not being taken seriously. But when the group discovers an idyllic village said to be the birth place of the Flynnigan Rider books, they agree to make an unplanned stop. And soon it becomes clear that there is more to Harmony Glen than meets the eye: something or someone is determined to wipe it off the map for good. Will the heroes be able to work together to solve the mystery of the vanishing village before it's too late? Leila Howland's second original tied to the hit Disney Channel show, Tangled the Series, features an all-new adventure starring Rapunzel, Cassandra, and fan-favorite Eugene!




Princess Hyacinth


Book Description

Princess Hyacinth is bored and unhappy sitting in her palace every day because, unless she is weighed down by specially-made clothes, she will float away, but her days are made brighter when kite-flying Boy stops to say hello.




The Door in the Hedge


Book Description

From ensorcelled princesses to a frog that speaks, an enchanting collection of fairy tales from the Newbery Medal–winning author. The last mortal kingdom before the unmeasured sweep of Faerieland begins has at best held an uneasy truce with its unpredictable neighbor. There is nothing to show a boundary, at least on the mortal side of it; and if any ordinary human creature ever saw a faerie—or at any rate recognized one—it was never mentioned; but the existence of the boundary and of faeries beyond it is never in doubt either. So begins “The Stolen Princess,” the first story of this collection, about the meeting between the human princess Linadel and the faerie prince Donathor. “The Princess and the Frog” concerns Rana and her unexpected alliance with a small, green, flipper-footed denizen of a pond in the palace gardens. “The Hunting of the Hind” tells of a princess who has bewitched her beloved brother, hoping to beg some magic of cure, for her brother is dying, and the last tale is a retelling of the Twelve Dancing Princesses in which an old soldier discovers, with a little help from a lavender-eyed witch, the surprising truth about where the princesses dance their shoes to tatters every night.




The Vanishing Place


Book Description

When Brooke, Eva, Nate, and Jay take a nighttime sail off the Florida coast, they never imagine that their lives are about to change forever. Shipwrecked by a storm at sea, the teenagers become castaways on an island that seems designed to test their very natures. Faced with loss, trauma, and the harsh reality of day-to-day survival, will they find the strength to confront their inner demons and escape the Vanishing Place? Or are mysterious forces at work to keep them stranded for all time?




In Gratitude


Book Description

National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist A New York Times Notable Book of the Year "Transcendently disobedient, the most existence-affirming and iconoclastic defense a writer could mount against her own extinction." --Heidi Julavits, New York Times Book Review From "one of the great anomalies of contemporary literature" (The New York Times Magazine) comes a breathtaking memoir about terminal cancer and the author's relationship with Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing. In July 2014, Jenny Diski was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer and given "two or three years" to live. She didn't know how to react. All responses felt scripted, as if she were acting out her part. To find the response that felt wholly her own, she had to face the clichés and try to write about it. And there was another story to write, one she had not yet told: that of being taken in at age fifteen by the author Doris Lessing, and the subsequent fifty years of their complex relationship. In the pages of the London Review of Books, to which Diski contributed for the last quarter century, she unraveled her history with Lessing: the fairy-tale rescue as a teenager, the difficulties of being absorbed into an unfamiliar family, the modeling of a literary life. Swooping from one memory to the next--alighting on the hysterical battlefield of her parental home, her expulsion from school, the drug-taking twenty-something in and out of psychiatric hospitals--and telling all through the lens of living with terminal cancer, through what she knows will be her final months, Diski paints a portrait of two extraordinary writers--Lessing and herself. From a wholly original thinker comes a book like no other: a cerebral, witty, dazzlingly candid masterpiece about an uneasy relationship; about memory and writing, ingratitude and anger; about living with illness and facing death.




The Vanishing Princess


Book Description




The Vanishing


Book Description

'Think Wuthering Heights or Jane Eyre, but ten times darker, and you have The Vanishing … as dark and eerie and gothic as the Yorkshire Moors it is set on. One to curl up by the fire with on a windy night’ Stylist On top of the Yorkshire Moors, in an isolated spot carved out of a barren landscape, lies White Windows, a house of shadows and secrets. Here lives Marcus Twentyman, a hard-drinking but sensitive man, and his sister, the brisk widow, Hester. When runaway Annaleigh first meets the Twentymans, their offer of employment and lodgings seems a blessing. Only later does she discover the truth. But by then she is already in the middle of a web of darkness and intrigue, where murder seems the only possible means of escape. Already a Sunday Times bestselling author with her first novel, The Vanishing confirms Sophia Tobin as a major talent. Stunning, twisting historical fiction for all fans of Jessie Burton and Tracy Chevalier. ‘Undeniably page-turning’ Mail on Sunday ‘Entertaining’ Times ‘Vivid, absorbing and wonderfully gothic, with shades of Sarah Waters and Emily and Charlotte Brontë’ Kate Riordan ‘Brilliantly Brontë-esque. Perfect reading for a stormy night’ Anna Mazzola ‘A vivid sense of the period … which stays with the reader long after the final page’ the i ‘The plotting is skilful, with a network of lies being woven so that no one, characters or readers, can be sure of the truth’ Daily Express ‘Atmosphere aplenty and some real surprises’ Daily Mail ‘Echoes Wuthering Heights with its setting and sense of intrigue’ Red ‘An atmospheric tale of betrayal and revenge’ woman&home ‘A thrilling, atmospheric page-turner’ Metro 'Playful and menacing, The Vanishing is a pitch perfect evocation of a classic nineteenth century Gothic novel which confirms Sophia Tobin as a writer of the highest calibre' William Ryan, author of The Constant Soldier




Some Enchanted Evening


Book Description

Once upon a time . . . in a kingdom high in the Pyrenees, three young princesses were forced to flee the chaos in their land—vanishing without a trace and lost to their people . . . until the day a courageous prince can bring the princesses home. One of Scotland's most dangerous men, Robert MacKenzie is dazzled by the enchanting beauty who rides into the town he is sworn to defend. Though he is wary of the exquisite stranger, Clarice stirs emotions within him that Robert buried deeply years before. And now he must have her at any cost, vowing to gain her trust through the powers of his sensuous seduction. Torn between her need to protect her secrets and her aching desire for the dark, tormented earl of Hepburn, Clarice is pulled into Robert's glamorous world . . . and into his perilous plan for justice and revenge. And with the winds of treachery swirling around them, a runaway princess must draw Robert's heart from the shadows and make him believe in happily-ever-after.