Silver Devil Teresa Denys Ebook Reader (2024)

The Flesh and the Devil - Ebook download as PDF File (.pdf) or view presentation slides online.

61 Hours Lee Child $19.99 Winter in South Dakota. Blowing snow, icy roads, a tired driver. A bus skids and crashes and is stranded in a gathering storm. There's a small town twenty miles away, where a vulnerable witness is guarded around the clock.

There's a strange stone building five miles further on, all alone on the prairie. There's a ruthless man who controls everything from the warmth of Mexico. Jack Reacher hitched a ride in the back of the bus.

A life without baggage has many advantages. And crucial disadvantages too, when it means facing the arctic cold without a coat. But he's equipped for the rest of his task. He doesn't want to put the world to rights. He just doesn’t like people who put it to wrongs. A Brief History of Seven Killings James Marlon $22.99 Jamaica, 1976: Seven men storm Bob Marley's house with machine guns blazing.

The reggae superstar survives, but leaves Jamaica the following day, not to return for two years. Inspired by this near-mythic event, A Brief History of Seven Killings is an imagined oral biography, told by ghosts, witnesses, killers, members of parliament, drug dealers, conmen, beauty queens, FBI and CIA agents, reporters, journalists, and even Keith Richards' drug dealer. Marlon James' dazzling novel is a tour de force. It traverses strange landscapes and shady characters, as motivations are examined - and questions asked - in a masterpiece of imagination. A Change in Altitude Anita Shreve $32.99 Margaret and her new husband James travel toKenya with the intention of staying a year. Invitedon a climbing expedition to Mt. Kenya, thenewlyweds are caught up in a horrific accident.

Inthe aftermath, Margaret must try to understandwhat happened on that mountain and what it hasdone to her marriage. Author Anita Shrevesearches out the secrets at the core of our closestrelationships and the ways in which lives can turnon the axis of a single catastrophic event. A Dance With Dragons part 1: Dreams and Dust George R.R.

Martin $22.99 The future of the Seven Kingdoms hangs in the balance. In the east, Daenerys, last scion of House Targaryen, her dragons grown to terrifying maturity, rules as queen of a city built on dust and death, beset by enemies. Now that her whereabouts are known many are seeking Daenerys and her dragons. Among them the dwarf, Tyrion Lannister, who has escaped King's Landing with a price on his head, wrongfully condemned to death for the murder of his nephew, King Joffrey. But not before killing his hated father, Lord Tywin. To the north lies the great Wall of ice and stone - a structure only as strong as those guarding it. Eddard Stark's bastard son Jon Snow has been elected the 998th Lord Commander of the Night's Watch, but he has enemies both in the Watch and beyond the Wall, where the wildling armies are massing for an assault.

On all sides bitter conflicts are reigniting, played out by a grand cast of outlaws and priests, soldiers and skinchangers, nobles and slaves. The tides of destiny will inevitably lead to the greatest dance of all. A Game Of Thrones George R R Martin $22.99 HBO's hit series A GAME OF THRONES is based on George R R Martin's internationally bestselling series A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE, the greatest fantasy epic of the modern age. A GAME OF THRONES is the first volume in the series. ‘So vivid that you'll be hooked within a few pages' The Times Summers span decades. Winter can last a lifetime.

And the struggle for the Iron Throne has begun. As Warden of the north, Lord Eddard Stark counts it a curse when King Robert bestows on him the office of the Hand. His honour weighs him down at court where a true man does what he will, not what he must and a dead enemy is a thing of beauty. The old gods have no power in the south, Stark's family is split and there is treachery at court. Worse, the vengeance-mad heir of the deposed Dragon King has grown to maturity in exile in the Free Cities. He claims the Iron Throne. A God in Ruins Kate Atkinson $32.99 Kate Atkinson's dazzling Life After Life, the bestselling adult book this year to date in the UK, explored the possibility of infinite chances, as Ursula Todd lived through the turbulent events of the last century again and again.

In A God in Ruins, Atkinson turns her focus on Ursula's beloved younger brother Teddy - would-be poet, RAF bomber pilot, husband and father - as he navigates the perils and progress of the 20th century. For all Teddy endures in battle, his greatest challenge will be to face living in a future he never expected to have.

A God in Ruins is a masterful companion to Life After Life, and will prove once again that Kate Atkinson is one of the finest novelists of our age. A Kiss from Mr. Fitzgerald Natasha Lester $29.99 In the Manhattan of gin, jazz and speakeasies, Evelyn Lockhart is determined to follow her dream to study obstetrics, even if it means turning her back on her family and the only life she's ever known.

In a desperate attempt to support herself as one of the first female students at Columbia University's medical school, Evie auditions for the infamous Ziegfeld Follies on Broadway. But if she gets the part, what will it mean for her fledgling relationship with Upper East Side banker Thomas Whitman - a man Evie thinks she could fall in love with, if only she lived a life less scandalous. A captivating, tragic love story set amid the fragile hearts and glamour of 1920s New York.

If you loved The Paris Wife and Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald you will devour this deliciously evocative story of a young woman ahead of her time. A Memory Of Light, Wheel of Time Book 14 Robert Jordan; Brandon Sanderson $35.00 The long awaited conclusion to the Wheel of Time series is finally here, and it’s well worth the wait! In the Field of Merrilor the rulers of the nations gather to join behind Rand al'Thor, or to stop him from his plan to break the seals on the Dark One's prison — which may be a sign of his madness, or the last hope of humankind. Egwene, the Amyrlin Seat, leans toward the former. In Andor, the Trollocs seize Caemlyn.

In the wolf dream, Perrin Aybara battles Slayer. Approaching Ebou Dar, Mat Cauthon plans to visit his wife Tuon, now Fortuona, Empress of the Seanchan. All humanity is in peril, and the outcome will be decided in Shayol Ghul itself. The Wheel is turning, and the Age is coming to its end.

The Last Battle will determine the fate of the world. A Pure Clear Light Madeleine St John $32.95 A Pure Clear Light examines a marriage at the moment it goes haplessly off-track. Simon and Flora Beaufort have a comfortable, happy life in London. When Flora takes their three children for a month-long vacation in France, Simon stays home to work on his latest film project. He meets Gillian, a cool, blonde accountant, and as their passionate affair begins Flora discovers a new love of her own.

Simon and Flora stray from each other, but neither of them can escape the revelation that lies at the heart of the phenomenon called love. A Room of One’s Own & The Voyage Out Virginia Woolf $6.95 A Room of Ones Own(1929) has become a classic feminist essay and perhaps Virginia Woolf’s best known work. The Voyage Out (1915) is highly significant as her first novel.

Both focus on the place of women within the power structures of modern society. In the essay, Woolf’s prescription is clear: if a woman is to find creative expression equal to a man’s, she must have an independent income, and a room of her own. This is both an acute analysis and a spirited rallying cry, and remains surprisingly resonant and relevant in the 21st century. The novel explores these issues more personally, through the character of Rachel Vinrace, a young woman whose voyage out to South America opens up powerful encounters with her fellow-travellers, men and women. As she begins to understand her place in the world, she finds the happiness of love, but also sees its brute power.

A Storm Of Swords: Part 1 Steel And Snow George R R Martin $19.99 The Seven Kingdoms are divided by revolt and blood feud, and winter approaches like an angry beast. Beyond the Northern borders, wildlings leave their villages to gather in the ice and stone wasteland of the Frostfangs. From there, the renegade Brother Mance Rayder will lead them South towards the Wall.

Robb Stark wears his new-forged crown in the Kingdom of the North, but his defences are ranged against attack from the South, the land of House Starks enemies the Lannisters. His sisters are trapped there, dead or likely yet to die, at the whim of the Lannister boy-king Joffrey or his depraved mother Cersei, regent of the Iron Throne. And Daenerys Stormborn will return to the land of her birth to avenge the murder of her father, the last Dragon King on the Iron Throne. A Tiny Bit Marvellous Dawn French $32.95 The first novel by Dawn French is told through the eyes of a mother and her two teenage children.

Dora, a stroppy teenager who has just come out of her first relationship (lasting a whole six weeks) and Peter, who would rather be referred to as Oscar due to an Oscar Wilde obsession. Written in diary format, with each chapter narrated by a different voice, A Tiny Bit Marvellousis a hilarious, sharp and utterly compelling novel about the ups and down of family, sibling rivalry and growing up. Abattoir Blues: The 22nd DCI Banks Mystery Peter Robinson $32.99 BANKS IS BACK—AND THE HUNT IS ON. When two boys vanish under mysterious circ*mstances, the local community is filled with unease.

Then a bloodstain is discovered in a disused WWII hangar nearby, and a caravan belonging to one of the youths is burned to the ground. Things quickly become much more sinister. Assigned to the case, DCI Banks and his team are baffled by the mystery laid out before them. But when a motor accident throws up a gruesome discovery, the investigation spins into a higher gear—in another direction. As Banks and his team struggle desperately to find the missing boy who holds the key to the puzzle, they find themselves in a race against time where it's their turn to become the prey... About Grace Anthony Doerr $19.99 Beautifully written and compelling, About Grace is the brilliant debut novel from Anthony Doerr.

Growing up in Alaska, young David Winkler is crippled by his dreams. At nine, he dreams a man is decapitated by a passing truck on the path outside his family's home. The next day, unable to prevent it, he witnesses an exact replay of his dream in real life.

The premonitions keep coming, unstoppably. He sleepwalks during them, bringing catastrophe into his reach. Then, as unstoppable as a vision, he falls in love, at the supermarket (exactly as he already dreamed) with Sandy.

They flee south, landing in Ohio, where their daughter Grace is born. And then the visions of Grace's death begin for Winkler, as their waterside home is inundated. Plagued by the same horrific images of Grace drowning, when the floods come, he cannot face his destiny and flees. He beaches on a remote Caribbean island, where he works as a handyman, chipping away at his doubts and hopes, never knowing whether Grace survived the flood or met the doom he foretold.

After two decades, he musters the strength to find out. Adultery Paulo Coelho $29.99 Have you ever looked at your life and wondered, 'Is this it?' Linda knows she's lucky.

Yet every morning when she opens her eyes to a so-called new day, she feels like closing them again. Her friends recommend medication. But Linda wants to feel more, not less. And so she embarks on an adventure as unexpected as it is daring, and which reawakens a side of her that she - respectable wife, loving mother, ambitious journalist - thought had disappeared.

Even she can't predict what will happen next... A novel about discovering who you are, where you're going, and what matters to you most. 'Paulo Coelho's books have had a life-enhancing impact on millions of people.' After You Jojo Moyes $22.99 'Lou Clark has lots of questions.

Like how it is she's ended up working in an airport bar, watching other people jet off to new places. Or why the flat she's owned for a year still doesn't feel like home.

Whether her family can ever forgive her for what she did eighteen months ago. And will she ever get over the love of her life. What Lou does know for certain is that something has to change. Then, one night, it does. But does the stranger on her doorstep hold answers Lou is searching for - or just more questions? Close the door and life continues- simple, ordered, safe.

Open it and she risks everything. But Lou once made a promise to live. And if she's going to keep it, she has to invite them in...' Albert of Adelaide Howard L. Anderson $26.99 What does it take to become a hero? Albert has escaped from the Adelaide Zoo to go in search of the 'old Australia,' somewhere in the desert, north of Adelaide, a 'Promised Land' that he's heard so much about from other animals. Unusually, Albert is a duck-billed platypus.

Four days north of Alice Springs and carrying nothing other than an old, almost empty soft-drink bottle, Albert has no idea where he's going. One thing he does know, though, if he doesn't find water fast, he's going to be in all sorts of trouble.

But when all seems lost, he comes across a wombat by a campfire who offers him a cup of tea. And so begins Albert's adventures, during which he meets two drunk, wise-cracking bandicoots (Roger and Alvin), a wrestling Tasmanian Devil (called Muldoon), escapes from a burning hotel (set alight by his good friend the pyromaniac wombat Jack) after a very lucky streak at two-up, and runs for his life from the dingoes. Albert of Adelaide is charming, funny, and entrancing. Aleph Paulo Coelho $29.99 Aleph is an encounter with our fears and our sins. A search for love and forgiveness, and the courage to confront the inevitable challenges of life. Each end gives us the opportunity for a rebirth Aleph marks a return to Paulo Coelhoa??s beginnings. Facing a grave crisis of faith, and seeking a path of spiritual renewal and growth, Paulo decides to start over: to travel, to experiment, to reconnect with people and the world.

On this journey through Europe, Africa and Asia, he will again meet Hilal -- the woman he loved 500 years before -- an encounter that will initiate a mystical voyage through time and space, through past and present, in search of himself. What you do in the present will change the future. All That I Am Anna Funder $29.95 *** Winner of the 2012 Miles Franklin Literary Award *** When Hitler comes to power in 1933, a tight-knit group of friends and lovers become hunted outlaws overnight.

United in their resistance to the madness and tyranny of Nazism, they flee the country. Dora, passionate and fearless; her lover, the greate playwright Ernst Toller; her younger cousin Ruth and Ruth's husband Hans, find refuge in London. Here they take inspiring risks in order to continue their work in secret. But England is not the safe-haven they think it is, and a single, chilling act of betrayal will tear them apart. Some seventy years later, Ruth is living out her days is Sydney, making an uneasy peace with the ghosts of her past, and a part of history that has all but been forgotten. 'A gripping story of love and betrayal.

Dora is the most attractive fictional heroine in a long time.' New Statesman. All The Light We Cannot See Anthony Doerr $29.99 An epic novel, set during WW2, from the prize-winner Anthony Doerr. Marie Laure lives with her father in Paris within walking distance of the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of the locks (there are thousands of locks in the museum). When she is six, she goes blind, and her father builds her a model of their neighborhood, every house, every manhole, so she can memorise it with her fingers and navigate the real streets with her feet and cane.

When the Germans occupy Paris, father and daughter flee to Saint-Malo on the Brittany coast, where Marie-Laure's agoraphobic great uncle lives in a tall, narrow house by the sea wall. In another world in Germany, an orphan boy, Werner, grows up with his younger sister, Jutta, both enchanted by a crude radio Werner finds. He becomes a master at building and fixing radios, a talent that wins him a place at an elite and brutal military academy and, ultimately, makes him a highly specialised tracker of the Resistance. Werner travels through the heart of Hitler Youth to the far-flung outskirts of Russia, and finally into Saint-Malo, where his path converges with Marie-Laure. Doerr's gorgeous combination of soaring imagination with observation is electric. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another. Ten years in the writing, All the Light We Cannot Seeis his most ambitious and dazzling work.

All Things Cease to Appear Elizabeth Brundage $29.99 Upstate New York, 1980s. The farm stood at the foot of the hill. Around it, an aching emptiness of fields and wind. Within, a weight, a sense of being occupied, with more than its inhabitants.

The Clares got it cheap. George knew why, though he didn't let on -- he didn't want to give Catherine any excuses. He'd given her an easy excuse to get married. He wasn't prepared to give away much more. Catherine, at home with their young daughter, has the feeling they're not alone. But she is helped by the Hale boys, young Cole and his brothers. Though they never tell her what happened to their mother in this house.

As the seasons burn and then bite, the Clares will find their place in this small upstate community. George, the inscrutable professor; his beautiful, brittle wife. He will try to tame the hollow need inside him. She will pull strength from the friends she makes. And as their marriage splinters, so too does the border between sanity and rage; between this world, and the inexplicable beyond.

With masterful tension and understanding of human nature, Elizabeth Brundage has crafted a novel that is at once a community's landscape spanning twenty years and an intimate portrait of a disturbed mind. This is new American fiction at its most piercing, ambitious and chilling. An Unexpected Guest Anne Korkeakivi $29.99 Tonight a dinner could change the future -- if a terrible secret doesn't destroy it first. Clare Moorhouse is an American in Paris who has been leading a graceful life abroad. There are pleasures to being married to a high-ranking diplomat, but there are also appearances to be upheld and responsibilities to be executed -- like tonight's unexpected dinner party, one crucial to her husband's career. As Clare navigates the spring-green streets of Paris, shopping for fresh stalks of asparagus, the right cheeses, and flowers for the table, she is haunted by a brief period of violence in her past that threatens to resurface and crack the immaculate veneer shea's worked so hard to achieve. At tonight's dinner, her husband hopes to receive a new posting.

But to Clare, the potential move means wrestling with a secret that has been deeply and carefully buried for twenty-five years -- or so she thought. The myriad preparations for dinner are only the beginning of her day's complications.

Analogue Men Nick Earls $32.99 Do you ever feel like you might have just one more chance to get on top of your life and make things happen? They're starting to feel like analogue men trying to make sense of a digital age. Andrew Van Fleet is 49 and feeling 50 closing in.

He's bailed out of his private equity job for something that'll let him spend more time at home, but the house is overrun by iPads and teenage hormones and conversations that have moved on without him. Plus his ailing father is now lodged in the granny flat, convalescing from surgery and with his scrappy bulldog in tow. And then there's Brian Brightman, the expensive fading star at the radio station Andrew's signed up to manage, whose every broadcast offers fresh trouble. He's 49 too and, like Andrew, starting to wonder if the twenty-first century might prove to be his second best. Ancient Light John Banville $45.00 Alexander Cleave, an actor who thinks his best days are behind him, remembers his first unlikely affair as a teenage boy in a small town in 1950s Ireland: the illicit meetings in a rundown cottage outside town; assignations in the back of his lover's car on sunny mornings and rain-soaked afternoons. And with these early memories comes something sharper and much darker — the more recent recollection of his own daughter's suicide just ten years before. Ancient Light is the story of a life rendered brilliantly vivid: the obsession and selfishness of young love and the terrifying shock of grief.

A dazzling funny novel; utterly pleasurable and devastatingly moving in the same moment. “Could any book be better? Did it even need to be as tremendous as this?” Sebastian Barry, author of The Secret Scripture. Afghanistan, 1952.

Abdullah and his sister Pari live with their father and step-mother in the small village of Shadbagh. Their father, Saboor, is constantly in search of work and they struggle together through poverty and brutal winters. To Adbullah, Pari, as beautiful and sweet-natured as the fairy for which she was named, is everything.

More like a parent than a brother, Abdullah will do anything for her, even trading his only pair of shoes for a feather for her treasured collection. Each night they sleep together in their cot, their skulls touching, their limbs tangled. At Home with the Templetons McInerney Monica $32.95 When the Templeton family from England takes up residence in a stately home in country Australia, they set the locals talking – and with good reason. From the outside, the seven Templetons seem so bohemian, unusual.

Peculiar even. No one is more intrigued by the family than their neighbours, single mother Nina Donovan and her young son Tom. Before long, the two families' lives become entwined in unexpected ways, to the delight of Gracie, the sweetest of the Templeton children.

In the years that follow, the relationships between the Templetons and the two Donovans twist and turn in unpredictable and life-changing directions, until a tragedy tears them all apart. What will it take to bring them together again? From Australia's top-selling female novelist comes her best book yet – a wonderfully entertaining and touching story about the perils and pleasures of love, friendship and family.

Bad Behaviour Rebecca Starford $0.00 It is night. They move with such stealth they could be almost floating along the road. I can't see faces, just the outline of their movement. But when the moon drifts out from behind a cloud, bathing the road in an urgent sort of light, I see how they're all gazing up towards me.' They're coming back,' I murmur.

I turn to Kendall, and she puts her sewing aside, eyes on me. They never waiver.It was supposed to be a place where teenagers would learn resilience, confidence and independence, where long hikes and runs in the bush would make their bodies strong and foster a connection with the natural world. Living in bare wooden huts, cut off from the outside world, the students would experience a very different kind of schooling, one intended to have a strong influence over the kind of adults they would eventually become.Fourteen-year-old Rebecca Starford spent a year at this school in the bush. In her boarding house sixteen girls were left largely unsupervised, a combination of the worst behaved students and some of the most socially vulnerable. As everyone tried to fit in and cope with their feelings of isolation and homesickness, Rebecca found herself joining ranks with the powerful girls, becoming both a participant--and later a victim-- of various forms of bullying and aggression.Bad Behaviour tells the story of that year, a time of friendship and joy, but also of shame and fear.

It explores how those crucial experiences affected Rebecca as an adult and shaped her future relationships, and asks courageous questions about the nature of female friendship.Moving, wise and painfully honest, this extraordinary memoir shows how bad behaviour from childhood, in all its forms, can be so often and so easily repeated throughout our adult lives. Beatlebone Kevin Barry $27.99 He will spend three days alone on his island.

That is all that he asks.John is so many miles from love now and home. This is the story of his strangest trip. John owns a tiny island off the west coast of Ireland. Maybe it is there that he can at last outrun the shadows of his past. The tale of a wild journey into the world and a wild journey within, Beatlebone is a mystery box of a novel.

It's a portrait of an artist at a time of creative strife. It is most of all a sad and beautiful comedy from one of the most gifted stylists now at work.

WINNER OF THE GOLDSMITHS PRIZE SHORTLISTED FOR THE IRISH BOOK AWARDS 2015. Before I Fall Lauren Oliver $29.95 Sam Kingston and her friends are the queen bees of their school, and they go through life leaving the tattered remains of their classmates’ popularity, dignity, and happiness in their wake. So when Sam and her friends are in a car accident on their way home from a party, an accident that Sam remembers dying in, it doesn’t seem fair that she is given a second chance. She wakes up and it is February 12 th all over again. And again, and again, until she can figure out how to end the loop. She realises that she needs to fix the things that are broken in her life, from her relationship with her parents and sister, to her long-ago friendship with the boy next-door. And to do that she has to look at the way her actions ripple through the lives of the people around her, and how something as small as stealing someone’s parking spot, going to the right party, or kissing the right boy can change everything.

I couldn’t put this book down, I needed to know how all the events of Sam’s final day would come together, and what would happen to her when it was finally February 13 th. I recommend this book to anyone who likes their novels a little bittersweet, as well as to parents of teenage girls who are despairing, wondering if their daughter will grow out of her angry teen years. Sam’s journey will give you hope, but also probably make you want to lock your daughter in the house until she’s 21. Review by Katiefrom our Bulimba store. Bellagrand Paullina Simons $29.99 They gave up everything to be together, but love was just the beginning of their journey. Italian immigrant Gina — independent, compassionate, and strong —desperately wants a family.

Boston blue-blood Harry — idealistic and fiercely political — wants to create a better world. Bound together by tormented passion, they rail, rage, and break each other's hearts, only to come face-to-face with a stark final choice that will forever determine their destiny. Their journey takes them through four decades and two continents, through triumph and turmoil, from the wooden planks of the troubled immigrant town of Lawrence, Massachusetts, to the marble halls and secret doors of a mystical place known asBellagrand. From internationally bestselling author Paullina Simons comes another compelling saga of heartbreak and redemption, and the devastating love story that led to The Bronze Horseman.

Beneath the Darkening Sky Majok Tulba $29.95 When the rebels come to Obinna's village, they do more than wreak terror for one night. Lining the children up in the middle of the village, they measure them against the height of an AK-47.

Those who are shorter than the gun are left behind. Those who are taller are taken. Obinna and his older brother Akot find themselves the rebel army's newest recruits. Beneath the Darkening Sky describes a life unimaginably different from our own, but one that is the experience of tens of thousands of child soldiers. Uncompromising, vivid,and raw, it is an astonishing portrait of a mind trying to make sense of a senseless world. Majok Tulba himself was shorter than the AK-47, and came to Australia from South Sudan as a refugee in 2001.

This is the story of what might have happened to him had he been an inch taller. Big Little Lies Liane Moriarty $14.99 'I guess it started with the mothers.' 'It was all just a terrible misunderstanding.' 'I'll tell you exactly why it happened.' Pirriwee Public's annual school Trivia Night has ended in a shocking riot.

A parent is dead. Was it murder, a tragic accident. Or something else entirely? Big Little Liesis a funny, heartbreaking, challenging story of ex-husbands and second wives, new friendships, old betrayals, and schoolyard politics. Liane Moriarty turns her unique gaze on the dangerous little lies we tell ourselves every day and what really goes on behind closed suburban doors.

Bittersweet Colleen McCullough $39.99 In this enthralling tale of women and love two sets of twins, Edda and Grace, Tufts and Kitty, struggle against the restraints, prohibitions, laws, and prejudices of 1920s Australia. The submissive, yet steely Grace yearns for marriage; the sleekly sophisticated Edda burns to be a doctor; down-to-earth but courageous Tufts burns never to marry; and the beautiful, scarred Kitty yearns for a love free from male ownership. Through turbulent times the four magnificent Latimer sisters, each so different, love as only women do: with tenderness as well as passion, and with hearts roomy enough to hold their men, their children, their careers, and, most of all, their sisters. Black Mountain Venero Armanno $29.95 Beginning in the sulphur mines of Sicily over a century ago, Black Mountain takes you on a journey through time and back again. When a boy sold into slavery finds the courage to escape his brutal life, he is saved by a mysterious stranger, who raises the boy as his own. Renamed Cesare Montenero after Sicily’s own ‘black mountain’, Mount Etna, the boy grows up to discover that his rescue was no accident, that his physical strength is unnatural, and that he has more in common with his saviour than he could have imagined.

And when he meets the enigmatic Celeste, he suspects for the first time that he many not be alone. Based on factual events and ranging through Italy, Paris, and the rural fringes of coastal Australia, Black Mountain is a haunting exploration of what it means to be human. Black Rock White City A.S. Patric $0.00 Black Rock White City is a novel about the damages of war, the limits of choice, and the hope of love. During a hot Melbourne summer Jovan's cleaning work at a bayside hospital is disrupted by acts of graffiti and violence becoming increasingly malevolent. For Jovan the mysterious words that must be cleaned away dislodge the poetry of the past.

He and his wife Suzana were forced to flee Sarajevo and the death of their children. Intensely human, yet majestic in its moral vision, Black Rock White City is an essential story of Australia's suburbs now, of displacement and immediate threat, and the unexpected responses of two refugees as they try to reclaim their dreams.

It is a breathtaking roar of energy that explores the immigrant experience with ferocity, beauty and humour.' What impresses first about A.S.

Patric's novel is the assuredness of the writing, his accomplished and confident language. But what is most moving is the humanity of his story, the vividness and truth of his characters' emotional worlds. Black Rock White City is a bold, mature and compassionate novel, and I couldn't put it down.' - Christos Tsiolkas. Blossoms & Shadows Lian Hearn $35.00 Blossoms and Shadows is the story of the birth of modern Japan in the mid 1860s when it is in the grip of a tumultuous revolution. It is told by Tsuru, a young woman who breaks every stereotype of the Japanese lady. Refusing to take on the domestic role that is expected of her, Tsuru embraces the new world.

A tale of forbidden love and battling against the conventions of the day, Blossoms and Shadows is an engaging new novel from Lian Hearn, author of the bestselling Tales of the Otori series. Blossoms and Shadows Lian Hearn $34.99 This is the story of the birth of modern Japan, told by Tsuru, a young woman who breaks every stereotype of the Japanese lady. We meet her on the day of her sister s wedding, and soon realise that she will not accept the same domestic role that her sister is about to take on.

Instead, Tsuru is ready to embrace the new world, defend her beliefs, look for love, and follow her career as a doctor working alongside her husband on the battlefields.In the mid 1860s Japan was in the grip of a revolution almost as tumultuous as the French Revolution 100 years earlier, yet we in the West know very little about it. This book lets readers feel they are there among the revolutionaries, guided by the engaging character of Tsuru.

By the end of the first chapter readers will feel they know her, and want to fight with her as she battles against the conventions of the day and falls into a forbidden love. Blue Bloods: Masquerade Melissa de la Cruz $16.99 Preparations are under way for the ball of the century. But as any true Blue Blood knows, it’s the after-party that counts and Mimi Force is getting ready to make sure her masquerade ball is the place to be. But Schuyler Van Alen has more on her mind. She is getting closer to finding out what has been preying on the young vampires, and is discovering the deadly secrets hidden by their masks. Masquerade is rich with glamour, attitude and vampire lore, leaving readers thirsting for more.

Blue Bloods: Revelations Melissa de la Cruz $16.99 For the Young, Fabulous and Fanged.All is never what it seems. Schuyler Van Alen's blood legacy has just been called into question: is the young vampire in fact a Blue Blood, or is it the sinister Silver Blood that runs through her veins? As controversy swirls, Schuyler is left stranded in the Force household, trapped under the same roof as her cunning nemesis, Mimi Force, and her forbidden crush, Jack Force. But when an ancient place of power is threatened in Rio de Janeiro, the Blue Bloods need Schuyler on their side. The stakes are high, the battle is bloody; and through it all Schuyler is torn between duty and passion, love and freedom. Romance, glamour and vampire lore collide in the highly anticipated third book in best-selling author Melissa de la Cruz's Blue Bloods series.

Blue Bloods: The Van Alen Legacy Melissa de la Cruz $16.99 With the stunning revelation surrounding Bliss's true identity comes the growing threat of the sinister Silver Bloods. Once left to live the glamorous life in New York City, the Blue Bloods now find themselves in an epic battle for survival.Not to worry, love is still in the air for the young vampires of the Upper East Side. Jack and Schuyler are over. Oliver's brokenhearted. And only the cunning Mimi seems to be happily engaged.Young, fabulous and fanged, Melissa de la Cruz's vampires unite in this highly anticipated fourth instalment of the Blue Bloods series.

Blueeyedboy Joanne Harris $32.95 From the author of Chocolat and The Lollipop Shoes comes Blueeyedboy – Joanne Harris’s second psychological thriller. Told through posts on a webjournal called ‘badguysrock’, Blueeyedboy is a dark and intricately plotted tale of a poisonously dysfunctional family, a blind child prodigy, and a serial murderer who is not who he seems.Harris makes creative use of all the multiple personalities, disguise and mind games that come with playing out a life on the internet and the result is a provocative and brilliantly atmospheric novel. Book of Lost Threads Tess Evans $27.99 Moss has run away from Melbourne on the trail of a man she knows only by name. She arrives in the small town of Opportunity but manages to disturb the long-held secrets of three of the town’s inhabitants: Finn, a brilliant mathematician; Lily, an eighty-three-year-old knitter of tea cosies; and Sandy, the town buffoon. As the four develop unlikely friendships with each other, they find a way to lay their sorrows to rest and knit together the threads that will restore them to life. Breaking Away Anna Gavalda $0.00 On the car journey to a family wedding, Garance reflects on how adult life, with its responsibilities, has not always gone to plan for herself or her three siblings.

But just around the corner lies the chance for them to revisit their younger, carefree selves in a delightfully unplanned escapade. In this exquisitely told story, Anna Gavalda explores the themes of time passing and the highs and lows of family life, with characteristic wit, warmth, and brilliant characterisation. Bridget Jones: Mad About Boys Helen Fielding $32.95 With her hotly anticipated third instalment, Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, Fielding introduces us to a whole new enticing phase of Bridget's life set in contemporary London, including the challenges of maintaining sex appeal as the years roll by and the nightmare of drunken texting, the skinny jean, the disastrous email cc, total lack of twitter followers, and TVs that need 90 buttons and three remotes to simply turn on. An uproariously funny novel of modern life, Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy is a triumphant return of our favourite Everywoman. Bring Up the Bodies Hilary Mantel $0.00 By 1535 Thomas Cromwell, the blacksmith's son, is far from his humble origins. Chief Minister to Henry VIII, his fortunes have risen with those of Anne Boleyn, Henry's second wife, for whose sake Henry has broken with Rome and created his own church.

But Henry's actions have forced England into dangerous isolation, and Anne has failed to do what she promised: bear a son to secure the Tudor line. When Henry visits Wolf Hall, Cromwell watches as Henry falls in love with the silent, plain Jane Seymour. The minister sees what is at stake: not just the king's pleasure, but the safety of the nation. As he eases a way through the sexual politics of the court, its miasma of gossip, he must negotiate atruth that will satisfy Henry and secure his own career. But neither minister nor king will emerge undamaged from the bloody theatre of Anne's final days.

In a Bring up the Bodies, the sequel to the Man Booker Prize-winning Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel explores one of the most mystifying and frightening episodes in English history: the destruction of Anne Boleyn. This new novel is a speaking picture, an audacious vision of Tudor England that sheds its light on the modern world. It is the work of one of our great writers at the height of her powers. Brooklyn Colm Toibin $22.99 Young Eilis Lacey dreams of life beyond the confines of her tiny Irish village, but unlike her beautiful sister, Rose, Eilis' gifts are of a more practical nature: she has a head for numbers, and is a loving and dutiful daughter. Yet her ambition cannot be hidden and soon is noted by the Parish Priest, Father Flood.

Via a church contact, he arranges for Eilis to travel to America where a job opportunity has arisen in New York with a reputable 'merchant of Italian origin'. Eilis finds lodgings in an eccentric boarding house and ekes out an existence in the cosmopolitan melting pot that is 1950s Brooklyn, impressing her employer, outwitting her landlady, and even falling in love. It seems her dream is truly becoming a reality.

But then fate intervenes: a family crisis back home forces Eilis to make a choice between the past and the future, the old world and the new. Told with a masterful and elegant simplicity, Brooklyn is a sublime Trans-Atlantic coming-of-age story by one of the UK's greatest living writers. Agnes is sent to wait out the time leading to her execution on the farm of District Officer Jon Jonsson, his wife, and their two daughters. Horrified to have a convicted murderess in their midst, the family avoids speaking with Agnes. Only Toti, the young assistant reverend appointed as Agnes's spiritual guardian, is compelled to try to understand her, as he attempts to salvage her soul.

As the summer months fall away to winter and the hardships of rural life force the household to work side by side, Agnes's ill-fated tale of longing and betrayal begins to emerge. And as the days to her execution draw closer, the question burns: did she or didn't she? Caleb's Crossing Geraldine Brooks $0.00 In 1665, a young man from Marthaa's Vineyard became the first Native American to graduate from Harvard College.

When Bethia Mayfield, a spirited twelve-year-old living in the rigid confines of an English Puritan settlement - and the daughter of a Calvinist minister - meets Caleb, the young son of a Wampanoag chieftain, the two forge a secret friendship that draws each into the alien world of the other. Once again, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Geraldine Brooks brings to vivid life a shard of little-known history, and through Bethia and Caleb explores the intimate spaces of the human heart. Carol Patricia Highsmith $19.99 Therese first sees Carol in the New York department store where she is working as a sales assistant. Carol is choosing a present for her daughter; she looks preoccupied, exuding an aura of elegance as perfect as a secret. Standing there at the counter, Therese suddenly feels wholly innocent - wholly unprepared for the first shock of love.Therese was nineteen, and loved by a young man she cared about, but could not desire. Carol was a sophisticated married woman. Now Therese seemed to have no other purpose to her life other than their meeting?

First published under a pseudonym in 1952, Carol is a love story told with compelling wit and eroticism, and consummate tenderness. Chasing Light: A Novel of Antarctica Jesse Blackadder $29.99 It's the early 1930s. Antarctic open-sea whaling is booming and a territorial race for the mysterious continent between Norwegian and British-Australian interests is in full swing.

Aboard a ship setting sail from Cape Town carrying the Norwegian whaling magnate Lars Christensen are three women: Lillemor Rachlew, who tricked her way on to the ship and will stop at nothing to be the first woman to land on Antarctica; Mathilde Wegger, a grieving widow who's been forced to join the trip by her calculating parents-in-law; and Lars's wife, Ingrid Christensen, who has longed to travel to Antarctica since she was a girl and has made a daunting bargain with Lars to convince him to take her. Loyalties shift and melt and conflicts increase as they pass through the Southern Ocean and reach the whaling grounds. None of the women is prepared for the reality of meeting the whaling fleet and experiencing firsthand the brutality of the icy world. As they head for the continent itself, the race is on for the first woman to land on Antarctica. None of them expect the outcome and none of them know how they will be changed by their arrival. Based on the little-known true story of the first woman to ever set foot on Antarctica, Jesse Blackadder has captured the drama, danger, and magnetic pull of exploring uncharted places in our world and our minds.

CHERUB 12: Shadow Wave Robert Muchamore $34.99 After a tsunami causes massive devastation to a tropical island, its governor sends in the bulldozers to knock down villages, replacing them with luxury hotels.Guarding the corrupt governor's family isn't James Adams' idea of the perfect mission, especially as it's going to be his last as a CHERUB agent. And then retired colleague Kyle Blueman comes up with an unofficial and highly dangerous plan of his own.James must choose between loyalty to CHERUB, and loyalty to his oldest friend.

Children of Liberty Paullina Simons $29.99 The long-awaited prequel to Paullina Simon’s beloved classic, The Bronze Horseman is finally here. Before Tatiana and Alexander, there was a forbidden love. At the turn of the century and the dawning of the modern world, Gina sails from Sicily to Boston’s Freedom Docks to find a new and better life, and meets Harry Barrington, a man searching for his own place in the old world of New England.

She is a penniless unrefined immigrant, he a first family Boston blue-blood, yet they are hopelessly drawn to one another. Yet their union would leave a path of destruction in its wake that will swallow two families. The fates of the Barringtons and Attavianos become entwined, on a collision course between the old and new, between what is expected and what is desired.what is chosen and what is bestowed.what is given and what is taken away. Torn and torn apart, Gina and Harry face the cruelest choice of all — between what they cannot have and what they cannot live without. Circling the Sun Paula McLain $29.99 As a young girl, Beryl Markham was brought to Kenya from Britain by parents dreaming of a new life.

For her mother, the dream quickly turned sour, and she returned home; Beryl was brought up by her father, who switched between indulgence and heavy-handed authority, allowing her first to run wild on their farm, then incarcerating her in the classroom. The scourge of governesses and serial absconder from boarding school, by the age of sixteen Beryl had been catapulted into a disastrous marriage - but it was in facing up to this reality that she took charge of her own destiny.

Scandalizing high society with her errant behaviour, she left her husband and became the first woman ever to hold a professional racehorse trainer's licence. After falling in with the notoriously hedonistic and gin-soaked Happy Valley set, Beryl soon became embroiled in a complex love triangle with the writer Karen Blixen and big game-hunter Denys Finch Hatton (immortalized in Blixen's memoir Out of Africa). It was this unhappy affair which set tragedy in motion, while awakening Beryl to her truest self, and to her fate: to fly. Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage Murakami $35.00 Tsukuru Tazaki had four best friends at school. By chance all of their names contained a colour. The two boys were called Akamatsu, meaning 'red pine', and Oumi, 'blue sea', while the girls' names were Shirane, 'white root', and Kurono, 'black field'.

Tazaki was the only last name with no colour in it. One day Tsukuru Tazaki's friends announced that they didn't want to see him, or talk to him, ever again. Since that day Tsukuru has been floating through life, unable to form intimate connections with anyone. But then he meets Sara, who tells him that the time has come to find out what happened all those years ago. Come, Thou Tortoise Jessica Grant $24.95 Audrey Flowers, affectionately known as Oddly, lives with her pet tortoise in Oregon.

Although she has a low IQ, Audrey is not stupid. She is, however, decidedly unconventional. When her father is struck down by a Christmas tree, she returns to her hometown in Newfoundland. Her Uncle Thoby leaves abruptly after the funeral, leaving distraught Audrey wondering why he left. Before long, she realises there is a mystery to her father’s life and death, and embarks on an extraordinary journey to solve it. Commonwealth Ann Patchett $0.00 A powerful story of two families brought together by beauty and torn apart by tragedy, the new novel by the Orange Prize-winning author of Bel Canto and State of Wonder is her most astonishing yet.It is 1964: Bert Cousins, the deputy district attorney, shows up at Franny Keating's christening party uninvited, bottle of gin in hand. As the cops of Los Angeles drink, talk and dance into the June afternoon, he notices a heart-stoppingly beautiful woman.

When Bert kisses Beverly Keating, his host's wife, the new baby pressed between them, he sets in motion the joining of two families whose shared fate will be defined on a day seven years later.In 1988, Franny Keating, now twenty-four, has dropped out of law school and is working as a co*cktail waitress in Chicago. When she meets one of her idols, the famous author Leon Posen, and tells him about her family, she unwittingly relinquishes control over their story. Franny never dreams that the consequences of this encounter will extend beyond her own life into those of her scattered siblings and parents.Told with equal measures of humour and heartbreak, Commonwealth is a powerful and tender tale of family, betrayal and the far-reaching bonds of love and responsibility.

A meditation on inspiration, interpretation and the ownership of stories, it is Ann Patchett's most astonishing work to date. It is more than a century since the ascetic, gaunt, and enigmatic detective, Sherlock Holmes, made his first appearance in A Study in Scarlet.

From 1891, beginning with The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, the now legendary and pioneering Strand Magazine began serialising Arthur Conan Doyle's matchless tales of detection, featuring the incomparable sleuth patiently assisted by his doggedly loyal and lovably pedantic friend and companion, Dr Watson. The stories are illustrated by the remarkable Sydney Paget from whom our images of Sherlock Holmes and his world derive and who first equipped Holmes with his famous deerstalker hat. The literary cult of Sherlock Holmes shows no sign of fading with time as each new generation comes to love and revere the penetrating mind and ruthless logic which were the undoing of so many Victorian master criminals.

Concussion Jeanne Marie Laskas $24.99 This is the story of one man's fight against a multibillion dollar colossus. A man who stood up for what was right, whatever the cost. The brilliant young forensic pathologist had no idea that the body on the slab in front of him would change his life, and ultimately change the world. The body belonged to legendary American Footballer Mike Webster, whose mental health had rapidly declined after he had stopped playing - he had ended up tasering himself to relieve his chronic back pain and fixing his rotting teeth with Superglue. Dr Bennet Omalu found that the psychosis suffered by 'Iron Mike' was no accident. His autopsy unearthed evidence of a trauma-related disease - the direct result of years of blows to the head in games.

He knew it would keep killing scores of other sportsmen unless something was done. He believed that the NFL (National Football League), one of the most powerful corporations in America, would welcome the discovery. But it was the one truth they wanted to ignore. Omalu himself became a target. Cutting for Stone Abraham Verghese $19.95 Marion and Shiva Stone, born in a mission hospital in Ethiopia in the 1950s, are twin sons of an illicit union between an Indian nun and British doctor.

Bound by birth, but with widely different temperaments, they grow up together in a country on the brink of revolution, until a betrayal splits them apart. But fate has not finished with them, they will be brought together once more, in the sterile surroundings of a hospital theatre. From the 1940s to the present, from a convent in India to a cargo ship bound for the Yemen, from a tiny operating theatre in Ethiopia to a hospital in the Bronx, this is both a richly visceral epic and a riveting family story. Dark Paradise Robert Macklin $35.00 “I have to tell you, Satan lives here.” Norfolk Island resident to the author, 2011.

Perhaps, from a distance, Norfolk Island looks a peaceful place lush with tall pines. But look closer and that idyllic facade is shattered. For all of the 220 years we have known it, Norfolk’s story has been one of darkness, pain, rage, and horror. Long-buried bones and axes hint at the violence before Captain Cook arrived and claimed the place for England — when the horror truly began. Robert Macklin, author of the bestselling SAS Sniper, tells the vivid, bewitching story of how a unique lifestyle and culture evolved amongst the almost two thousand inhabitants of Norfolk Island. From a brutal penal colony, a refuge for descendants of the Bounty mutineers when they outgrew Pitcairn Island in 1856, to the murder of Janelle Patton in 2002, Norfolk Island is exposed like never before. A place full of shadows and wrongful deaths, its history is a mesmerising tale all the more powerful because it is true.

Daughter of Australia Harmony Verna $29.99 It's a miracle that the little girl dressed in rags is still breathing when an old miner discovers her in the vast Australian desert. Even more so that he is able to keep her alive long enough to bring her to the town from which she'll take her name: Leonora.

Sent to an orphanage, mute with grief and fear, Leonora bonds with James, who fights to protect her until both are sent away. Many years later Leonora is given the chance to return to her beloved Australia where she comes face to face with the boy who encountered many hardships and has grown into a strong, resourceful man. James knows her roots and her heart are here, among the gum trees and red earth, but with Leonora married to another and war testing their courage, will they be able to fight their way back to each other? Dead Reckoning Charlaine Harris $0.00 With her knack for being in trouble's way, Sookie witnesses the firebombing of Merlotte's, the bar where she works.

Since Sam Merlotte is now known to be two-natured, suspicion falls immediately on the anti-shifters in the area. But Sookie suspects otherwise and she and Sam work together to uncover the culprit - and the twisted motive for the attack.But her attention is divided. Though she can't 'read' vampires, Sookie knows her lover Eric Northman and his 'child' Pam well - and she realises that they are plotting to kill the vampire who is now their master.

Gradually, she is drawn into the plot - which is much more complicated than she knows.Caught up in the politics of the vampire world, Sookie will learn that she is as much of a pawn as any ordinary human - and that there is a new Queen on the board. Death in Calabria Michele Giuttari $29.99 Calabriais one of the wildest and most beautiful regions in Italy and home to the deadly ‘Ndrangheta – a much-feared organised Mafia crime operation that is shrouded in mystery. When several Calabria citizens turn up dead in New York and in some of the isolated villages that dot the Calabrian countryside, Chief Superintendent Michele Ferrara is tasked with investigating the murders. He must infiltrate a village deep in the Calabrian mountains and put his life on the line to learn more about a family at the centre of an ancient, bloody feud. Death Mask Kathryn Fox $22.99 In the US, a number of sexual assaults are reported against players in the Jersey Bombers football team. This is the last straw for the management, who decide to bring in an expert to investigate the claims and help reverse the violent culture. They are pointed in the direction of a leading Australian forensic physician, the one person with the expertise for the job: Dr Anya Crichton.

Assigned to help Anya with this mission is enigmatic private investigator Ethan 'Catcher' Rye. Together with Ethan, Anya must deftly balance her responsibilities to the Bombers' management with her increasing desire to see the perpetrators of these violent crimes brought to justice. But it is only when the violence hits too close to home, and Anya's mettle is truly tested, that she makes the breakthrough in this investigation with shocking results. Now lives, including her own, are in danger.

Difficult Women Roxane Gay $29.99 The women in these stories live lives of privilege and of poverty, are in marriages both loving and haunted by past crimes or emotional blackmail. A pair of sisters, grown now, have been inseparable ever since they were abducted together as children, and must negotiate the elder sister's marriage. A woman married to a twin pretends not to realize when her husband and his brother impersonate each other. A stripper putting herself through college fends off the advances of an overzealous customer. A black engineer moves to Upper Michigan for a job and faces the malign curiosity of her colleagues and the difficulty of leaving her past behind. From a girls' fight club to a wealthy subdivision in Florida where neighbors conform, compete, and spy on each other, Gay delivers a wry, beautiful, haunting vision of modern America. Dog Gone, Back Soon Nick Trout $29.99 From the author of the much-loved The Patron Saint of Lost Dogs comes this wild and delightful ride through another jam-packed week in Eden Falls.

When Dr Cyrus Mills inherits his estranged father's veterinary practice, The Bedside Manor for Sick Animals, the last thing he wanted was to stay in Eden Falls a moment longer than absolutely necessary. However, the appealingly awkward vet quickly found that he actually enjoyed getting to know the eccentric residents of the provincial town and their equally eccentric animals. Now Cyrus is determined to make Bedside Manor thrive. Not an easy goal, given that Healthy Paws, the national veterinary chain across town, will stop at nothing to crush its humble competitor.

Dupuytren's Contracture: A tale of distortion and deception Colin Ball $39.99 It is the late 1990s. Christian,a charismatic and idealistic friend of the poor and oppressed around the world, lies in a coma, following an operation to cure the condition which is causing his fingers to curl up into a claw. His wife, Claire, begins to have strange dreams, which she believes are subliminal messages from her husband’s still-active brain, and which lead her to embark on a voyage of discovery about him. Dupuytren’s Contracture is an unfolding mystery with a central theme of giving versus grasping and generosity versus greed, symbolised by the fingers of the hand, straight and healthy or bent and diseased. Elegance Of The Hedgehog Muriel Barberry $24.95 Rene is the concierge of a grand Parisian apartment building, home to members of the great and the good.

Over the years she has maintained her carefully constructed persona as someone reliable but totally uncultivated, in keeping, she feels, with societys expectations of what a concierge should be. But beneath this faade lies the real Rene: passionate about culture and the arts, and more knowledgeable in many ways than her employers with their outwardly successful but emotionally void lives. Down in her lodge, apart from weekly visits by her one friend Manuela, Rene lives resigned to her lonely lot with only her cat for company. Meanwhile, several floors up, twelve-year-old Paloma Josse is determined to avoid the pampered and vacuous future laid out for her, and decides to end her life on her thirteenth birthday.

But unknown to them both, the sudden death of one of their privileged neighbours will dramatically alter their lives forever. By turn moving and hilarious, this unusual novel became the top-selling book in France in 2007 with sales of over 900,000 copies to-date.

The French publishing phenomenon of 2007 from an initial print run of 4,000, sales of over 900,000 in hardback. Translation rights sold to 34 countries Cited in Paris Match magazine in highlights of 2007 along with the i-phone and facebook Winner of the prestigious 2007 French booksellers award To be published in English simultaneously in UK and US Published in Italy in October 2007 with sales to date of 400,000 AUTHOR: Muriel Bar. Eligible Curtis Sittenfeld $29.99 From the bestselling author of PREP, AMERICAN WIFE and SISTERLAND comes this brilliant retelling of PRIDE & PREJUDICE, set in modern day Cincinnati. The Bennet sisters have been summoned from New York City. Liz and Jane are good daughters. They've come home to suburban Cincinnati to get their mother to stop feeding their father steak as he recovers from heart surgery, to tidy up the crumbling Tudor-style family home, and to wrench their three sisters from their various states of arrested development.

Once they are under the same roof, old patterns return fast. Soon enough they are being berated for their single status, their only respite the early morning runs they escape on together. For two successful women in their late thirties, it really is too much to bear. That is, until the Lucas family's BBQ throws them in the way of some eligible single men...

Chip Bingley is not only a charming doctor, he's a reality TV star too. But Chip's friend, haughty neurosurgeon Fitzwilliam Darcy, can barely stomach Cincinnati or its inhabitants. Jane is entranced by Chip; Liz, sceptical of Darcy. As Liz is consumed by her father's mounting medical bills, her wayward sisters and Cousin Willie trying to stick his tongue down her throat, it isn't only the local chilli that will leave a bad aftertaste. But where there are hearts that beat and mothers that push, the mysterious course of love will resolve itself in the most entertaining and unlikely of ways. And from the hand of Curtis Sittenfeld, Pride & Prejudice is catapulted into our modern world singing out with hilarity and truth. Everyone Brave is Forgiven Chris Cleave $29.99 When war is declared, Mary North leaves finishing school unfinished, goes straight to the War Office, and signs up.

Tom Shaw decides to give it a miss - until his flatmate Alistair unexpectedly enlists, and the conflict can no longer be avoided.Young, bright and brave, Mary is certain she'd be a marvelous spy. When she is - bewilderingly - made a teacher, she instead finds herself defying prejudice to protect the children her country would rather forget. Tom, meanwhile, finds that he will do anything for Mary. And when Mary and Alistair meet, it is love, as well as war, that will test them in ways they could not have imagined, entangling three lives in violence and passion, friendship and deception, inexorably shaping their hopes and dreams.In a powerful combination of both humour and heartbreak, this dazzling novel weaves little-known history, and a perfect love story, through the vast sweep of the Second World War - daring us to understand that, against the great theatre of world events, it is the intimate losses, the small battles, the daily human triumphs, that change us most.

Eyrie Tim Winton $22.99 Eyrie is beautifully written and wonderfully funny and marks the return of master storyteller Tim Winton.PEyrie tells the story of Tom Keely, a man whos lost his bearings in middle age and is now holed up in a flat at the top of a grim highrise, looking down on the world hes fallen out of love with. Hes cut himself off, until one day he runs into some neighbours: a woman he used to know when they were kids, and her introverted young boy. PThe encounter shakes him up in a way that he doesnt understand. Despite himself, Keely lets them in. What follows is a heart-stopping, groundbreaking novel for our times funny, confronting, exhilarating and haunting populated by unforgettable characters.

It asks how, in an impossibly compromised world, we can ever hope to do the right thing. Faithful Alice Hoffman $29.99 She was disappearing inch by inch, vanishing into thin air, and then one day a postcard arrived.There was no return address, no signature, only a scrawled message: Say something. Shelby Richmond is an ordinary girl growing up on Long Island until one night a terrible road accident brings her life to a halt.

While her best friend Helene suffers life-changing injuries, Shelby becomes crippled with guilt and is suddenly unable to see the possibility of a future she'd once taken for granted. But as time passes, and Helene becomes an almost otherworldly figure within the town, seen by its inhabitants as a source of healing, Shelby finds herself attended to by her own guardian angel.

A mysterious figure she half-glimpsed the night of the car crash, he now sends Shelby brief but beautiful messages imploring her to take charge of her life once more. What happens when a life is turned inside out?

When you lose all hope and sense of worth? Shelby, a fan of Chinese food, dogs, bookshops, and men she should stay away from, captures both the ache of loneliness and the joy of finding oneself at last. From the bestselling author of The Dovekeepers comes this spellbinding, poignant and life-affirming story of one woman's journey towards happiness - and the power of love, family and fate. Fifty Shades Darker E.

James $17.95 Romantic, liberating, and totally addictive, the Fifty Shades trilogy will obsess you, possess you, and stay with you for ever.Daunted by the dark secrets of the tormented young entrepreneur Christian Grey, Ana Steele has broken off their relationship to start a new career with a US publishing house. But desire for Grey still dominates her every waking thought, and when he proposes a new arrangement, she cannot resist. Soon she is learning more about the harrowing past of her damaged, driven, and demanding Fifty Shades than she ever thought possible. But while Grey wrestles with his inner demons, Ana must make the most important decision of her life. And it's a decision she can only make on her own. Fifty Shades Freed E. James $17.95 Romantic, liberating, and totally addictive, the Fifty Shades trilogy will obsess you, possess you, and stay with you for ever.

When Ana Steele first encountered the driven, damaged entrepreneur Christian Grey, it sparked a sensual affair that changed both their lives irrevocably. Ana always knew that loving her Fifty Shades would not be easy, and being together poses challenges neither of them had anticipated. Ana must learn to share Grey's opulent lifestyle without sacrificing her own integrity or independence; and Grey must overcome his compulsion to control and lay to rest the horrors that still haunt him. Now, finally together, they have love, passion, intimacy, wealth, and a world of infinite possibilities.

But just when it seems that they really do have it all, tragedy and fate combine to make Ana's worst nightmares come true. Fifty Shades of Grey E L James $0.00 Romantic, liberating and totally addictive, Fifty Shades of Grey is a novel that will obsess you, possess you, and stay with you for ever. When literature student Anastasia Steele interviews successful entrepreneur Christian Grey, she finds him very attractive and deeply intimidating. Convinced that their meeting went badly, she tries to put him out of her mind - until he turns up at the store where she works part-time, and invites her out.

Unworldly and innocent, Ana is shocked to find she wants this man. And, when he warns her to keep her distance, it only makes her want him more. But Grey is tormented by inner demons, and consumed by the need to control.

As they embark on a passionate love affair, Ana discovers more about her own desires, as well as the dark secrets Grey keeps hidden away from public view. Flood of Fire Amitav Ghosh $29.99 The thrilling climax to the Ibis trilogy that began with the phenomenal Booker-shortlisted Sea of Poppies.It is 1839 and tension has been rapidly mounting between China and British India following the crackdown on opium smuggling by Beijing. With no resolution in sight, the colonial government declares war. One of the vessels requisitioned for the attack, the Hind, travels eastwards from Bengal to China, sailing into the midst of the First Opium War. The turbulent voyage brings together a diverse group of travellers, each with their own agenda to pursue. Among them is Kesri Singh, a sepoy in the East India Company who leads a company of Indian sepoys; Zachary Reid, an impoverished young sailor searching for his lost love, and Shireen Modi, a determined widow en route to China to reclaim her opium-trader husband's wealth and reputation. Flood of Fire follows a varied cast of characters from India to China, through the outbreak of the First Opium War and China's devastating defeat, to Britain's seizure of Hong Kong.Flood of Fire is a thrillingly realised and richly populated novel, imbued with a wealth of historical detail, suffused with the magic of place and plotted with verve.

It is a beautiful novel in its own right, and a compelling conclusion to an epic and sweeping story —it is nothing short of a masterpiece. Forty Days Without Shadow: An Arctic Thriller Olivier Truc $29.99 Winter is savage and cold in Lapland. When a priceless local relic is stolen from Kautokeino, a village in the middle of the isolated snowy tundra, detectives Klemet Nango — a familiar face in the rural community — and Nina Nansen, fresh out of the local police academy, are called to investigate.

There are just a few days until the locals will host a UN World Heritage conference, and Klemet and Nina are under pressure to retrieve the artefact, due to be presented to a world-renowned French scientist as part of the celebrations. When a local reindeer herder is found brutally murdered, Klemet and Nina immediately suspect that the two events are linked. But the villagers don't take too kindly to having their secret histories stirred up and the duo is forced to cross the icy landscapes alone in search of the answers that will lead them to a killer.

Set in an alternately savage and dreamlike Lapland, this multiple award-winning, compelling thriller takes the reader to the limits of hypermodernity against the stunning history of a native people struggling to keep their culture alive. Fractured Dawn Barker $29.99 A compelling, emotional knockout debut from a brilliant new Australian author. An unforgettable novel that brings to life a new mother's worst fears. Tony is worried.

His wife, Anna, isn't coping with their newborn. Anna had wanted a child so badly and, when Jack was born, they were both so happy. They'd come home from the hospital a family. Was it really only six weeks ago? But Anna hasn't been herself since. One moment she's crying, the next she seems almost too positive. It must be normal with a baby, Tony thought; she's just adjusting.

He had been busy at work. It would sort itself out. But now Anna and Jack are missing. And Tony realises that something is really wrong. What happens to this family will break your heart and leave you breathless.

Freedom Jonathan Franzen $32.99 Patty and Walter Berglund were the new pioneers of old St. Paul -- the gentrifiers, the hands-on parents, the avant-garde of the Whole Foods generation. Patty was the ideal sort of neighbour who could tell you where to recycle your batteries and how to get the local cops to actually do their job. She was an enviably perfect mother and the wife of Waltera??s dreams. Together with Walter --environmental lawyer, commuter cyclist, total family man -- she was doing her small part to build a better world.

But now, in the new millennium, the Berglunds have become a mystery. Why has their teenage son moved in with the aggressively Republican family next door? Why has Walter taken a job working with Big Coal? What exactly is Richard Katz-outr?? Rocker and Waltera??s college best friend and rival-still doing in the picture? Most of all, what has happened to Patty?

Why has the bright star of Barrier Street become a??a very different kind of neighboura?? -- an implacable Fury coming unhinged before the streeta??s attentive eyes?

In his first novel since The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen has given us an epic of contemporary love and marriage. Freedom comically and tragically captures the temptations and burdens of liberty: the thrills of teenage lust, the shaken compromises of middle age, the wages of suburban sprawl, the heavy weight of empire. In charting the mistakes and joys of Freedoma??s intensely realised characters as they struggle to learn how to live in an ever more confusing world, Franzen has produced an indelible and de. Freedom - $19.99 Edition Jonathan Franzen $0.00 Patty and Walter Berglund were the new pioneers of old St.

Paul-the gentrifiers, the hands-on parents, the avant-garde of the Whole Foods generation. Patty was the ideal sort of neighbor, who could tell you where to recycle your batteries and how to get the local cops to actually do their job. She was an enviably perfect mother and the wife of Waltera's dreams. Together with Walter-environmental lawyer, commuter cyclist, total family man-she was doing her small part to build a better world. But now, in the new millennium, the Berglunds have become a mystery.

Why has their teenage son moved in with the aggressively Republican family next door? Why has Walter taken a job working with Big Coal? What exactly is Richard Katz-outr? French Seaside Style Sebastien Siraudeau $0.00 The fourth title in a successful series, this new book celebrates the enduring popularity of nautically inspired interiors, with a French twist. Azure blue skies and sparkling waves on the horizon are the perfect counterpoints to these cozy interiors inspired by life at the seaside.

Natural wood finishes set the tone and are the perfect complement to canvas-inspired upholstery and crisp linens in the fresh hues of summertime. A perfect seashell placed on a coffee table brings back memories of carefree holidays spent by the sea, while frosty gem-colored goblets cool us down even before the first sip of mint julep. The overall impression of these interiors creates a relaxed sense of well-being that feeds the soul, and they are replete with ideas that will infuse the home with serenity and joy. Grace's Table Sally Piper $22.95 Grace has not had twelve people at her table for a long time. Hers isn’t the kind of family who share regular Sunday meals. But it isn’t every day you turn seventy. As Grace prepares the feast, she reflects on her life, her marriage and her friendships.

When the three generations come together, simmering tensions from the past threaten to boil over. The one thing that no one can talk about is the one thing that no one can forget. Grace’s Table is a moving and often funny novel about the power of memory and the family rituals that define us.

‘A wise and tender novel about food, friendship and marriage.’ Kristina Olsson, author of Boy, Lost. Griffith Review 26: Stories for Today $24.95 Stories for Today features new fiction by established and emerging writers who make sense of the country as it is now, in a borderless, globalised world balanced between crisis and opportunity. Voices from home and the Australian diaspora explore the effects of migration, easy movement, pandemics, recession, connection with Asia, the service economy and more. Including a series of short essays, with questions about why writing fiction matters, how it differs from other forms of communication, and what it contributes to our culture and understanding of ourselves.

Gypset Travel Julia Chaplin $65.00 Julia Chaplin has found the gypsy in her soul — and that of quite a number of simpatico others. Following her best-selling 2009 Assouline title, travel writer Julia Chaplin explores the little-known enclaves of gypsy jet-setters around the world. From the Aeolian Islands in Italy to Lamu, Kenya, North Goa in India, and Jos Ignacio, Uruguay, Gypset Travel delves into the glamorous yet casual lifestyle of bohemian wanderers through intimate photography and first-person anecdotes, and is characterised by a fashionable exoticism and down-to-earth ease that is surely the literary reflection of its gypsy-infused writer. Happy Eva After Chris Harrison $29.99 As a teacher at the Fawlty Towers of London language colleges, Sebastian Pink is accustomed to confusion caused by the complexities of the English language. Married to Sarah, a career woman who has long been a workaholic but is now desperate for a baby, Sebastian feels ambivalent about becoming a parent.

Sarah has effectively been absent from his life for so long that they've grown apart and these days his social life has come to revolve around his work; walking his dog, Claude; and his obsessive daily completion of the cryptic crossword. When an alluring Czech student called Eva becomes one of Sebastian's students — and inadvertently provides him with the last solution in his morning crossword— he finds himself drawn into a sordid suburban tangle based mainly on his own misinterpretations and feverish imagination. Happy Eva After is a seriously funny comedy about a bloke, his wife, his dog, an alluring young woman with a mysterious past, and the nuances of the English language. Twenty-something Londoner Natalie Bowen is envied by many, but her personal life is a disaster.

Men don’t seem to be able to cope with her career success and Natalie is beginning to think she'll never find real happiness. Then she hears about an exclusive retreat called The Haven, a place that specialises in introducing you to pleasures you could never have imagined. Shocked at the idea, but unable to resist finding out more, Natalie decides it's time to put her fears behind her. Once at The Haven, she meets the enigmatic and disciplined Simon, a man who is used to getting what he wants.

Finally, Natalie may very well have met her match. Heart of Darkness (Wordsworth Collection) Joseph Conrad $6.95 Continuing with the political theme of this month’s recommendations, Heart of Darkness is a chilling tale of horror capable of many interpretations. Set in the Congo during the period of rapid colonial expansion in the 19th century, Heart of Darkness deals with the highly disturbing effects of economic, social, and political exploitation of European and African societies, and the cataclysmic behaviour this induced in many individuals. This classic may only be 80 pages, but it packs a serious punch and remains a bestseller after over 100 years on the market. Hearts and Minds Amanda Craig $24.99 Raging with moralistic passion, Hearts and Minds centres human rights lawyer Polly and her quest to investigate what happened to her missing au pair, Iryna.

Woven intricately into Polly’s fate is Job, an illegal Zimbabwean mini-cab driver; political magazine assistant Katie, an American trying to find herself; and fifteen year old Anna, unaware of the horrors that wait in her new life. As the characters lives collide, the layers of London life get stripped bare, and nothing is as it seems. Hector & the Search for Happiness: The First of Hector’s Journeys Francois Lelord $19.95 Hector is a successful young psychiatrist who’s very good at treating patients that are in real need of his help. But many people he sees are simply dissatisfied with their lives, and Hector can’t do much for them. It’s beginning to depress him. So when a patient tells him he looks in need of a holiday, Hector decides to set off on a worldwide search to find out what makes people everywhere happy (and sad), and whether the secret of true happiness really exists. His Story - A Novel Memoir - The Life and Times of Dick O’Toole Nigel Gray $44.95 This original literary tour-de-force is a unique blend of memoir, faction, fiction, and radical social and political history that is funny, tragic, playful, iconoclastic, and satirical.

The revelations are profound, the humour is black, and the style is a breeze. Dick O’Toole is a rogue floundering on the assault course of life. His attempts at making the world a better place and his ‘doggedness’ in defending the underdog invariably lead to anguish and failure, but our protagonist comes up smelling of roses. Readers are advised to fasten their seat belts: they’re in for a wild ride. Hitman Anders and the Meaning of it All Jonas Jonasson $29.99 A madcap new novel from the one-of-a-kind author of THE HUNDRED-YEAR-OLD MAN WHO CLIMBED OUT OF THE WINDOW and THE GIRL WHO SAVED THE KING OF SWEDEN.

IT'S NEVER TOO LATE TO START AGAIN. It's always awkward when five thousand kronor goes missing. When it happens at a certain grotty hotel in south Stockholm, it's particularly awkward because the money belongs to the hitman currently staying in room seven. Per Persson, the hotel receptionist, just wants to mind his own business, and preferably not get murdered.

Johanna Kjellander, temporarily resident in room eight, is a priest without a vocation, and, as of last week, without a parish. But right now she has two things at her disposal: an envelope containing five thousand kronor, and an excellent idea... Featuring one violent killer, two shrewd business brains and many crates of Moldovan red wine, Hitman Anders and the Meaning of It All is an outrageously zany story with as many laughs as Jonasson's multimillion-copy bestseller The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared. House Rules Jodi Picoult $32.99 Jacob Hunt is a teenage boy with Asperger’s Syndrome who has an obsessive focus on forensic analysis.

He keeps a police scanner in his room, always showing up at crime scenes telling the cops what they need to do. And he’s usually right. But when his tutor is found dead, Jacob finds himself accused of murder. The police take his reluctance to make eye contact, stimulatory tics and twitches and inappropriate gestures as signs of guilt. And so begins his family’s daunting task to prove his innocence. I Am Pilgrim Terry Hayes $19.99 Can you commit the perfect crime?

Pilgrim is the codename for a man who doesn't exist. The adopted son of a wealthy American family, he once headed up a secret espionage unit for US intelligence. Before he disappeared into anonymous retirement, he wrote the definitive book on forensic criminal investigation. But that book will come back to haunt him.

It will help NYPD detective Ben Bradley track him down. And it will take him to a rundown New York hotel room where the body of a woman is found facedown in a bath of acid, her features erased, her teeth missing, her fingerprints gone. It is a textbook murder— and Pilgrim wrote the book. What begins as an unusual and challenging investigation will become a terrifying race-against-time to save America from oblivion. Pilgrim will have to make a journey from a public beheading in Mecca to a deserted ruins on the Turkish coast via a Nazi death camp in Alsace and the barren wilderness of the Hindu Kush in search of the faceless man who would commit an appalling act of mass murder in the name of his God.

In Falling Snow Mary-Rose MacColl $29.90 Iris is getting old. A widow, her days are spent living quietly and worrying about her granddaughter, Grace, a headstrong young doctor. It's a small sort of life. But one day an invitation comes for Iris through the post to a reunion in France, where she served in a hospital during WWI. Determined to go, Iris is overcome by the memories of the past, when as a shy, naive young woman she followed her fifteen-year-old brother, Tom, to France in 1914 intending to bring him home. On her way to find Tom, Iris comes across the charismatic Miss Ivens, who is setting up a field hospital in the old abbey of Royaumont, north of Paris. Putting her fears aside, Iris decides to stay at Royaumont, and it is there that she truly comes of age, finding her capability and her strength, discovering her passion for medicine, making friends with the vivacious Violet and falling in love.

But war is a brutal thing, and when the ultimate tragedy happens there is a terrible price that Iris has to pay, a price that will echo down the generations. A moving and uplifting novel about the small, unsung acts of heroism of which love makes us capable of. In Search of the Blue Tiger Robert Power $29.95 Eleven year old Oscar Flowers is on a quest to make sense of the strange world of adults that surround him in the seaside town of Tidetown.

The bizarre behaviour of his parents and great aunt impels him to search for the blue tiger, a powerful and beautiful animal that will save his family from themselves. Mrs April, the town’s librarian, helps Oscar in his pursuit of knowledge and generously shares her great love of books with him. A deep and wondrous friendship develops. Yet as Oscar falls under the influence of his peers, the fishmonger’s peculiar twin daughters, Perch and Carp, he becomes embroiled in a dark crime of vengeance with seemingly disastrous consequences. In the Quiet Eliza Henry-Jones $29.99 'The absence of aching is a sort of ache in itself.

I'm terrified of the day when they stop saying my name. Calling to me. Because maybe I'm only here, anchored, in order to hear them.'

Cate Carlton has recently died, yet she is able to linger on, watching her three young children and her husband as they come to terms with their life without her on their rural horse property. As the months pass and her children grow, they cope in different ways, drawn closer and pulled apart by their shared loss. And all Cate can do is watch on helplessly, seeing their grief, how much they miss her and how — heartbreakingly — they begin to heal. Gradually unfolding to reveal Cate's life, her marriage, and the unhappy secret she shared with one of her children, In the Quiet is compelling, simple, tender, true — heartbreaking and uplifting in equal measure. Indelible Ink: A Novel Fiona McGregor $32.95 Marie King has grown accustomed to life on Sydney’s affluent north shore.

But now she’s divorced, her kids have moved out, and the family house needs to be sold. On a drunken whim, Marie gets a tattoo – and strikes up an unlikely friendship with her tattoo artist, Rhys. Marie’s transformation mortifies her children, but they have their own challenges to tackle. Incredible Ink is a multi-layered examination of how we live now, in which one family becomes a microcosm for the changes operating in society at large. Inferno Dan Brown $19.99 'Seek and ye shall find.'

With these words echoing in his head, eminent Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon awakes in a hospital bed with no recollection of where he is or how he got there. Nor can he explain the origin of the macabre object that is found hidden in his belongings. A threat to his life will propel him and a young doctor, Sienna Brooks, into a breakneck chase across the city of Florence. Only Langdon's knowledge of hidden passageways and ancient secrets that lie behind its historic facade can save them from the clutches of their unknown pursuers. With only a few lines from Dante's dark and epic masterpiece, The Inferno, to guide them, they must decipher a sequence of codes buried deep within some of the most celebrated artefacts of the Renaissance to find the answers to a puzzle which may, or may not, help them save the world from a terrifying threat.

Set against an extraordinary landscape inspired by one of history's most ominous literary classics, Inferno is Dan Brown's most compelling and thought-provoking novel yet, a breathless race-against-time thriller that will grab you from page one and not let you go until you close the book. Island Beneath The Sea Isabel Allende $ Born a slave on the island of Saint-Domingue, ZaritC) -- known as TC)tC) -- is the daughter of an African mother she never knew and one of the white sailors who brought her into bondage. Though her childhood is one of brutality and fear, TC)tC) finds solace in the traditional rhythms of African drums and the voodoo loas she discovers through her fellow slaves.

When twenty-year-old Toulouse Valmorain arrives on the island in 1770, itb2s with powdered wigs in his trunks and dreams of financial success in his mind. But running his fatherb2s plantation, Saint Lazare, is neither glamorous nor easy. Against the merciless backdrop of sugar cane fields, the lives of TC)tC) and Valmorain grow ever more intertwined. When the bloody revolution of Toussaint Louverture arrives at the gates of Saint Lazare, they flee the island that will become Haiti for the decadence and opportunity of New Orleans.

There, TC)tC) finally forges a new life - but her connection to Valmorain is deeper than anyone knows and not so easily severed. Spanning four decades, ISLAND BENEATH THE SEA is the moving story of one womanb2s determination to find love amid loss, to offer humanity though her own has been so battered, and to forge her own identity in the cruellest of circ*mstances. Jack of Diamonds Bryce Courtenay $45.00 If poker was an addiction then music was an overwhelming obsession; one could never replace the other in my life. During the Great Depression there was little hope for a boy born into the slums of Cabbagetown, Toronto. But Jack Spayd is offered a ticket out in the form of a Hohner harmonica, won by his brutal drunken father in a late-night card game.

Jack makes music as a way of escaping his surroundings, and his talent leads him to a jazz club and, eventually, to the jazz piano. Jack is a virtuoso and hits the road, enchanting audiences in Canada, wartime Europe, and Las Vegas, where he is caught up in the world of elite poker and falls under the spell of his boss, the enigmaticBridgett Fuller.

Vegas is a hard town ruled by the Mafia, but Jack prospers, until his luck turns bad and he falls foul of the Mob. Forced to run for his life from Vegas, he must also leave the woman he adores. His adventuring takes him to the far reaches of Africa, to a rare and valuable bird that may seal his fate – and to the love of a very different woman. Set across three continents, Jack of Diamondsis a spellbinding story of chance, music, corruption and love.

Jasper Jones Craig Silvey $23.99 Late on a hot summer night in the tail end of 1965, Charlie Bucktin, a precocious and bookish boy of thirteen, is startled by an urgent knock on the window of his sleep-out. His visitor is Jasper Jones, an outcast in the regional mining town of Corrigan. Rebellious, mixed-race and solitary, Jasper is a distant figure of danger and intrigue for Charlie. So when Jasper begs for his help, Charlie eagerly steals into the night by his side, terribly afraid but desperate to impress.

Jasper takes him through town and to his secret glade in the bush, and it's here that Charlie bears witness to Jasper's horrible discovery. With his secret like a brick in his belly, Charlie is pushed and pulled by a town closing in on itself in fear and suspicion as he locks horns with his tempestuous mother; falls nervously in love and battles to keep a lid on his zealous best friend, Jeffrey Lu. And in vainly attempting to restore the parts that have been shaken loose, Charlie learns to discern the truth from the myth, and why white lies creep like a curse. In the simmering summer where everything changes, Charlie learns why the truth of things is so hard to know, and even harder to hold in his hear. Juliet Anne Fortier $32.99 When a young woman inherits the key to a safety deposit box in Siena, she is told it will lead to an old family treasure. But her mysterious inheritance leads her on a perilous journey into the past - and to the true history of her ancestor, Giulietta, whose legendary love for a young man named Romeo turned medieval Siena upside down. As she crosses paths with descendants of the families involved in the unforgettable blood feud that inspired Shakespearea??s famous tale, it becomes clear that the notorious curse a??A plague on both your housesa??

Is still at work, and that she is the next target. Both an inspired reimagining of the greatest love story ever told and a romantic, heart-pumping thriller, Juliet intertwines the fates of two fascinating women who lived centuries apart into one unforgettable tale no true romantic will be able to resist. Already a bestseller in Italy and Germany, Juliet is set to win the hearts of readers in 30 other countries - and film rights have been snapped up by Universal. A love story that reads like a Da Vinci Code for the smart modern woman.a?? PUBLISHERS WEEKLY (starred review) a??Delightfully original - and the kind of thing you wish you had thought up yourself. We will never see Romeo and Juliet in quite the same way again.a??

NYT bestelling author ALISON WEIR. Killing Adonis J.M. Donellan $29.99 LIGHT DUTIES LARGE PAY NO QUESTIONS ASKED.

OR ANSWERED After seeing a curious flyer, Freya takes a job caring for Elijah, the comatose son of the eccentric Vincetti family. She soon discovers that the Vincetti’s labyrinthine mansion hides a wealth of secrets, their corporate rivals have a nasty habit of being extravagantly executed, and Elijah is not the saint they portray him to be. As well, Marilyn Monroe keeps showing up, unaware she’s very much deceased. And there’s something very strange about the story that Elijah’s brother Jack is writing. Larkswood Valerie Mendes $29.99 Larkswood House.

The very name suggests birdsong, peace, and elegance. Home to the Hamilton children — Edward, Cynthia, and Harriet — who enjoy the freedom and excitement of privilege.

But in the glorious summer of 1896, with absent parents and a departed governess, disaster strikes the family, leaving it cruelly divided. More than forty years later, on the eve of the Second World War, Louisa Hamilton, newly presented at court but struck down with glandular fever, is sent to Larkswood to recuperate. There, for the first time, she meets her grandfather, Edward, home after decades in India.

But as Louisa begins to fall under the spell of Larkswood, she realises it holds the key to the mystery that shattered her family two generations before. Will she find the courage to unravel the dark secrets of the past? And can Larkswood ever become home to happiness again? Last Night at Chateau Marmont Lauren Weisberger $29.99 Heartbreak, headlines and Hermes - welcome to Brooke′s new world. Brooke and Julian live a happy life in New York - she′s the breadwinner working two jobs and he′s the struggling musician husband. Then Julian is discovered by a Sony exec and becomes an overnight success - and their life changes for ever. Soon they are moving in exclusive circles, dining at the glitziest restaurants, attending the most outrageous parties in town and jetting off to the trendiest hotspots in LA.

But Julian′s new-found fame means that Brooke must face the savage attentions of the ruthless paparazzi. And when a scandalous picture hits the front pages, Brooke′s world is turned upside down. Can her marriage survive the events of that fateful night at Chateau Marmont? It′s time for Brooke to decide if she′s going to sink or swim. Life After Life Kate Atkinson $19.99 What if you had the chance to live your life again and again, until you finally got it right? During a snowstorm in England in 1910, a baby is born and dies before she can take her first breath.

During a snowstorm in England in 1910, the same baby is born and lives to tell the tale. What if there were second chances? And third chances? In fact an infinite number of chances to live your life? Would you eventually be able to save the world from its own inevitable destiny? And would you even want to? Life After Life follows Ursula Todd as she lives through the turbulent events of the last century again and again.

With wit and compassion, she finds warmth even in life's bleakest moments, and shows an extraordinary ability to evoke the past. Here is Kate Atkinson at her most profound and inventive, in a novel that celebrates the best and worst of ourselves. Life of Pi Yann Martel $19.99 After the tragic sinking of a cargo ship, a solitary lifeboat remains bobbing on the wide, wild Pacific. The crew of the surviving vessel consists of a hyena, one zebra (with broken leg), an orang-utan, a 450-pound Royal Bengal Tiger named Richard Parker, and Pi - a 16-year-old Indian boy. As the 'crew' begin to assert their natural places in the food chain, Pi's fear mounts, and he must use all his wit and daring to develop an understanding with his fellow survivors.

Yann Martel's Life of Pi is a transformative novel, an astonishing work of imagination that will delight and stun readers in equal measures. It is a triumph of storytelling and a tale that will, as one character puts it, make you believe. Lila Marilynne Robinson $29.99 Lila, homeless and alone after years of roaming the countryside, steps inside a small-town Iowa church -- the only available shelter from the rain -- and ignites a romance and a debate that will reshape her life. She becomes the wife of a minister and widower, John Ames, and begins a new existence while trying to make sense of the days of suffering that preceded her newfound security. Neglected as a toddler, Lila was rescued by Doll, a canny young drifter, and brought up by her in a hardscrabble childhood of itinerant work.

Together they crafted a life on the run, living hand-to-mouth with nothing but their sisterly bond and a lucky knife to protect them. But despite bouts of petty violence and moments of desperation, their shared life is laced with moments of joy and love.

When Lila arrives in Gilead, she struggles to harmonise the life of her makeshift family and their days of hardship with the gentle worldview of her husband which paradoxically judges those she loves. Revisiting the beloved characters and setting of Marilynne Robinson's Pulitzer Prize-winning Gilead and Orange Prize-winning Home, Lila is a moving expression of the mysteries of existence. Little Fish are Sweet Matthew Condon $32.95 Little Fish Are Sweet is Matthew Condon's extraordinary personal account of writing the Three Crooked Kings trilogy. When Condon first interviewed disgraced former police commissioner Terry Lewis, he had no idea that it would be the start of a turbulent six-year journey.

As hundreds of people came forward to share their powerful and sometimes shocking stories, decades of crime and corruption were revealed in a new light. Risking threats and intimidation, Condon tirelessly pursued his investigations into a web of cold murder cases and past conspiracies. What he discovered is much more sinister than anyone could have imagined. Lone Wolf Jodi Picoult $0.00 Edward Warren, twenty-four, has been living in Thailand for five years, a prodigal son who left his family after an irreparable fight with his father, Luke. But he gets a frantic phone call: His dad lies comatose, gravely injured in the same accident that has also injured his younger sister Cara.With her father's chances for recovery dwindling, Cara wants to wait for a miracle. But Edward wants to terminate life support and donate his father's organs. Is he motivated by altruism, or revenge?

And to what lengths will his sister go to stop him from making an irrevocable decision? Lost & Found Brooke Davis $26.99 At seven years old, Millie Bird realises that everything is dying around her. She wasn't to know that after she had recorded twenty-seven assorted creatures in her Book of Dead Things her dad would be a Dead Thing, too. Agatha Pantha is eighty-two and has not left her house since her husband died. She sits behind her front window, hidden by the curtains and ivy, and shouts at passers-by, roaring her anger at complete strangers.

Until the day Agatha spies a young girl across the street. Karl the Touch Typist is eighty-seven when his son kisses him on the cheek before leaving him at the nursing home. As he watches his son leave, Karl has a moment of clarity. He escapes the home and takes off in search of something different. Three lost people needing to be found. But they don't know it yet.

Millie, Agatha, and Karl are about to break the rules and discover what living is all about. Love is the Answer Tracy Madden $24.99 Peach Avenel is a broken woman. She thought she had a loving marriage. She thought she would be starting a family. She thought she had a successful career.

She was wrong. She has a life that no longer fits, filled with broken dreams. When a tumbled down house with a neglected garden comes into her life by serendipitous circ*mstances, Peach feels something stir within her and although she prefers Jimmy Choo shoes to gum boots, she is drawn to the house and the garden. What unfolds is a story of humour and love. Of cupcakes and cactus. And of a young woman learning about herself and finding that, sometimes, you need to break open to find who you really are. Lover Husband Father Monster Elise & Graeme Johnstone $0.00 A chilling story of the disintegration of a marriage, Lover, Husband, Father, Monster traces the fragmentation of the relationship between Jennifer - law graduate, wife and mother - and Stuart, successful Dublin businessman, husband and father.

Reacting to his domineering approach, she finds solace in a former lover. His trust betrayed, Stuart vows to hurt her in a way she'll never forget. In a finale that shocks everyone to the core, he does. Told in two voices, 'Lover, Husband, Father, Monster' outlines how a marriage with even the best of intentions can become engulfed in tragedy. This is a story that stays with the reader long after the book is finished.

Lucinda's Whirlwind Louise Limerick $0.00 Lucinda Ellis has never really mastered the knack for dealing with people. So she usually avoids them. Until her sister, Jayne, takes a sudden trip to America and Lucinda's perfectly ordered life is thrown into chaos. With Jayne's husband stranded in a remote Aboriginal community, Lucinda is forced to take charge of Jayne's children and their ridiculous little dachshund, Wilma. Then there is the malingering presence of teenage Emo Wesley Heslop, who's taken up residence on the living room couch, the mysterious disappearance of a stuffed eclectus parrot from the museum where she works, and the disarming affections of Madison's challenging 'second-best' friend, Kieran Waterford. Mad Men, Bad Girls and the Guerilla Knitters Institute Maggie Groff $27.95 When an American cult moves to the Gold Coast, freelance journalist Scout Davis's investigative antennae start quivering. She sets out to expose the cult's bizarre practices, but when she learns the identity of a recent recruit, her quest becomes personal.

And dangerous. Meanwhile, someone is cutting up girls' underwear at an exclusive school and Scout agrees to look into it. The sinister secret behind the vandalism is not nice.

But Scout has her secrets too. In the dead of night she sneaks out with an underground group of yarn bombers to decorate the locality with artworks. Scout has a sneaking suspicion that the local police sergeant, Rafe Kelly, is hot on her tail. The Kelleher clan's beachfront holiday house creaks under a weight of secrets. It's a place where co*cktails follow morning mass, children eavesdrop, and ancient grudges fester. One summer, three generations of Kelleher women descend on the shore.

Kathleen, finally sober, hoped never to set foot there again. Maggie, pregnant, has left her useless boyfriend. Ann-Marie, bound to the family by marriage, fantasises about an extra-marital affair.

In the middle of all this is matriarch Alice, who drinks to forget her failings as a parent and the events of a single night, decades before. Major Pettigrew's Last Stand Helen Simonson $32.99 The retired Major Ernest Pettigrew leads a quiet life in a small English village. He values the proper things that Englishmen have treasured for generations – honour, duty and a properly brewed cup of tea.

His brother’s death sparks an unexpected friendship with the Pakistani shopkeeper from the village, Mrs Jasmina Ali. Drawn together by their shared love of literature and the loss of their respective spouses, the Major and Mrs Ali soon find their friendship blossoming into something more – a development that isn’t well received by the outraged village. Adelaide, 1977: the year Elvis died. And the year twelve-year-old Jake Taylor meets Rory Macbeath. Until then, Jake's world was small, revolving around his street, his school, and the courthouse where his mum, Harry, was a barrister. His best friend lives only a few houses away. For them, daylight is for spinning a cricket ball, riding bikes around the neighbourhood, and swimming at the pool until their skin is wrinkled and the zinc on their noses has washed away.

But then Rory Macbeath moves into the red-brick house at the end of Rose Avenue and everything changes. Me Before You Jojo Moyes $19.99 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. Meltdown $32.95 For Jimmy Corby, money was the new Rock 'n'Roll.

His whole life was a party, adrenalinecharged and cocaine fuelled. If he hadn't metMonica he would probably have ended up eitherdead or in rehab. But Jimmy was as lucky in loveas he was at betting on dodgy derivatives, soinstead of burning out, his star just burnedbrighter than ever. Rich, pampered and successfulJimmy, Monica and their friends lived the dream,but when the global financial crisis hits, Jimmydiscovers what it's really like to handle failure. Merciless Gods Christos Tsiolkas $32.99 Love, sex, death, family, friendship, betrayal, tenderness, brutality, sacrifice, and revelation. This incendiary collection of stories from acclaimed writer Christos Tsiolkas, bestselling author of The Slap and Barracuda, takes you deep into worlds both strange and familiar, and introduces you to characters who will never let you go and situations that will haunt you forever. One of the most significant contemporary storytellers at work today.'

Colm Toibin, author of Brooklyn '. There is not a more important writer working in Australia today.' Australian Bookseller & Publisher 'One of the most astute chroniclers and critics of our age and culture, Tsiolkas is a passionate, poetic, political polemicist, but his critiques take the form of enthralling stories that are peopled with characters that bounce off the page.' Adelaide Advertiser 'Tsiolkas is a hard-edged, powerful writer. Leaves us exhausted but gasping with admiration.' Washington Post 'The sheer energy of Tsiolkas' writing -- its urgency and passion and sudden jags of tenderness -- is often an end in itself: a thrilling, galvanising reminder of the capacity of fiction to speak to the world it inhabits.'

James Bradley, Monthly. Milk Fever Lisa Reece-Lane $32.95 Julia Heath is experiencing a tree-change nightmare. She suspects her yoga-teacher husband of having an affair, her mother-in-law is coming to stay, and her son is obsessed with flies. But Julia soon falls under the spell of Tom – a handsome yet troubled dairy farmer. When Julia’s husband sets out to cure Tom’s migraines and memory lapses, all three lives become entwined. Milk Fever explores the healing nature of relationships and how, ultimately, we are all necessary to each other. Missing You Harlan Coben $32.99 It's a profile, like all the others on the online dating site.

But as NYPD Detective Kat Donovan focuses on the accompanying picture, she feels her whole world explode, as emotions she's ignored for decades come crashing down on her. Staring back at her is her ex-fiance Jeff, the man who shattered her heart eighteen years ago. Kat feels a spark, wondering if this might be the moment when past tragedies recede and a new world opens up to her. But when she reaches out to the man in the profile, her reawakened hope quickly darkens into suspicion and then terror as an unspeakable conspiracy comes to light, in which monsters prey upon the most vulnerable. As Kat's hope for a second chance with Jeff grows more and more elusive, she is consumed by an investigation that challenges her feelings about everyone she ever loved — her former fiance, her mother, and even her father, whose cruel murder so long ago has never been fully explained. With lives on the line, including her own, Kat must venture deeper into the darkness than she ever has before, and discover if she has the strength to survive what she finds there. Mortal Remains Kathy Reichs $32.95 When Tempe is called to the scene of an autoerotic death, she has little idea of the tangled chain of events that will follow.

Because the man whose body she is examines apparently died in a helicopter crash in Vietnam 40 years before. So who is buried in the soldier's grave? Tempe's investigations take her to Honolulu where she is caught up not only in the mystery of the unidentified body in the soldier's grave, but also dragged into investigating who, or what, killed the young men whose body parts have floated up onto a popular Hawaiian beach. And as Tempe gradually unravels the tangled threads of the mystery, it becomes clear that there are some who would rather the past stays dead and buried.

And when Tempe proves difficult to frighten, they turn their attention to the person who means more to her than anyone else in the world. Mr Rosenblum's List Natasha Solomons $29.99 Through study and application the tenacious Jack Rosenblum intends to become a Very English Gentleman. Jack is compiling a list – a comprehensive guide to the manners and customs of his new home. Apart from the occasional curse he never speaks German, believing assimilation to be the secret of success. However, his bid to blend in remains fraught with unexpected hurdles even though the war ended eight years ago. His wife, Sadie, doesn’t want to forget their past, but Jack is convinced they can find a place to call home. Mr Wigg Inga Simpson $26.99 It's the summer of 1971, not far from the stone-fruit capital of New South Wales, where Mr Wigg lives on what is left of his family farm.

Mrs Wigg has been gone a few years now and he thinks about her every day. He misses his daughter, too, and wonders when he'll see her again. He spends his time working in the orchard, cooking and preserving his produce and, when it's on, watching the cricket. It's a full life. Things are changing though, with Australia and England playing a one-day match, and his new neighbours planting grapes for wine. His son is on at him to move into town, but Mr Wigg has his fruit trees and his chooks to look after. His grandchildren visit often: to cook, eat, and hear his stories.

And there's a special project he has to finish. It's a lot of work for an old man with shaking hands, but he'll give it a go, as he always has. 'A novel that celebrates the small things in life by a fresh Australian voice.' Mudwoman Joyce Carol Oates $29.99 Mudgirl is a child abandoned by her mother in the silty flats of the Black Snake River. Cast aside, Mudgirl survives by an accident of fate — or destiny. After her rescue, she slowly forgets her own origin; her past is erased, her future uncertain.

The well-meaning couple who adopt Mudgirl quarantine her poisonous history behind the barrier of their Quaker values: compassion, modesty, and hard work, seemingly sealing it off forever. But the bulwark of the present proves surprisingly vulnerable to the agents of the past.

Meredith ‘M.R.’ Neukirchen is the first woman president of a prestigious Ivy League university; her commitment to her career and moral fervour for her role are all-consuming. Involved with a secret lover whose feelings for her are teasingly undefined, and concerned with the intensifying crisis of the American political climate as the United States edges toward a declaration of war with Iraq, M.R. Is confronted with challenges to her professional leadership which test her in ways she could not have anticipated.

The fierce idealism and intelligence that delivered her from a more conventional life in her upstate New York hometown now threaten to undo her. A reckless trip upstate thrusts M.R. Into an unexpected psychic collision with Mudgirl and the life she believes she has left behind. A powerful exploration of the enduring claims of the past, Mudwoman is at once a psychic ghost-story and an intimate portrait of an individual who breaks, but finds a way to heal herself. My Brilliant Friend Elena Ferrante $22.99 My friendship with Lila began the day we decided to go up the dark stairs that led, step after step, flight after flight, to the door of Don Achille's apartment. I waited to see if Lila would have second thoughts and turn back.

I knew what she wanted to do; I had hoped that she would forget about it, but in vain. My Brilliant Friend is a ravishing, wonderfully written novel about a friendship that lasts a lifetime. The story of Elena and Lila begins in a poor but vibrant neighbourhood on the outskirts of Naples.

The two girls learn to rely on each other ahead of anyone or anything else, sometimes to their own detriment, as each discovers more about who she is and suffers or delights in the throes of their intense friendship. There is a piercing honesty about Ferrante's prose that makes My Brilliant Friend a compulsively readable portrait of two young women, and also the story of a neighbourhood, a city and a country. My Brother Jack George Johnston $14.99 If you haven’t read this great Australian classic do yourself a favour and pick up a copy today! Available in this beautifully designed Australian Classics series or as an ebook from the Mary Ryan’s website, My Brother Jack is a vivid and enthralling look at life in post-war suburban Melbourne, and is a must-read for fans of Australian literature. “The thing I am trying to get at is what made Jack different from me.

Different all through our lives, I mean, and in a special sense, not just older or nobler or braver or less clever.” David and Jack Meredith grow up in a patriotic suburban Melbourne household during the First World War, and go on to lead lives that could not be more different. Through the story of the two brothers, George Johnston created an enduring exploration of two Australian myths: that of the man who loses his soul as he gains worldly success, and that of the tough, honest Aussie battler, whose greatest ambition is to serve his country during the war. Acknowledged as one of the true Australian classics, My Brother Jackis a deeply satisfying, complex and moving literary masterpiece. The story continues in the sequels Clean Straw for Nothingand A Cartload of Clay. My Grandmother Sends Her Regards and Apologises Fredrik Backman $29.99 A must-read for fans of Rachel Joyce's The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and Maria Semple's Where'd You Go, Bernadette.

Heartbreaking and hilarious in equal measure, the new novel by the author of the internationally bestselling phenomenon A Man Called Ove will charm and delight anyone who has ever had a grandmother. Everyone remembers the smell of their grandmother's house. Everyone remembers the stories their grandmother told them. But does everyone remember their grandmother flirting with policemen? Driving illegally? Breaking into a zoo in the middle of the night? Firing a paintball gun from a balcony in her dressing gown?

Seven-year-old Elsa does. Some might call Elsa's granny 'eccentric', or even 'crazy'. Elsa calls her a superhero. And granny's stories, of knights and princesses and dragons and castles, are her superpower. Because, as Elsa is starting to learn, heroes and villains don't always exist in imaginary kingdoms; they could live just down the hallway. As Christmas draws near, even the best superhero grandmothers may have one or two things they'd like to apologise for. And, in the process, Elsa can have some breath-taking adventures of her own...

My Salinger Year Joanna Rakoff $. Joanna Rakoff takes a job— her first— at one of New York's oldest literary agencies. On her first day, her boss— a commanding woman in her sixties who has been there for three decades— gives her a stern talk about someone named 'Jerry'. She is never to give out Jerry's address or phone number, or talk to reporters about Jerry, or to call him with questions. It is only then she notices an entire wall of books containing myriad editions of the works of J. Oh, she thinks.

Filled with titanic personalities and legendary authors, including the mysterious and iconic J. Salinger, My Salinger Year is a vivid, funny, and charming coming-of-age story about a young woman trying to find her feet, and her voice. It is also a love letter to the vanishing world of old-fashioned publishing. Narrow Road to the Deep North Richard Flanagan $19.99 A novel of the cruelty of war, and tenuousness of life, and the impossibility of love. August, 1943. In the despair of a Japanese POW camp on the Thai-Burma death railway, Australian surgeon Dorrigo Evans is haunted by his love affair with his uncle's young wife two years earlier. Struggling to save the men under his command from starvation, cholera, and beatings, he receives a letter that will change his life forever.

This savagely beautiful novel is a story about the many forms of love and death, of war and truth, as one man comes of age and prospers, only to discover all that he has lost. 'Beyond comparison...

An immense achievement... Wilfred Owen wrote of his Great War verse: 'My subject is war, and the pity of war.

The poetry is in the pity.' Flanagan's triumph is to find poetry without any pity at all.' Geordie Williamson, The Australian. 'A story of war and star-crossed lovers, the novel is also a profound meditation on life and time, memory and forgetting... A magnificent achievement.'

Katharine England, Adelaide Advertiser. 'A masterpiece...

The Narrow Road is an extraordinary piece of writing and a high point in an already distinguished career.' Michael Williams, The Guardian. Nest Inga Simpson $27.99 Once an artist and teacher, Jen now spends her time watching the birds around her house and tending her lush sub-tropical garden near the small town where she grew up. The only person she sees regularly is Henry, who comes after school for drawing lessons. When a girl in Henry's class goes missing, Jen is pulled back into the depths of her own past.

When she was Henry's age she lost her father and her best friend Michael— both within a week. The whole town talked about it then, and now, nearly forty years later, they're talking about it again. Everyone is waiting— for the girl to be found and the summer rain to arrive. At last, when the answers do come, like the wet, it is in a drenching, revitalising downpour. Night School: Jack Reacher 21 Lee Child $32.99 'In the morning, they gave Reacher a medal. And in the afternoon, they sent him back to school.

It's just a voice plucked from the air- 'The American wants a hundred million dollars'. It's 1996, and the Soviets are long gone. But now there's a new enemy. In an apartment in Hamburg, a group of smartly-dressed young Saudis are planning something big. Jack Reacher is fresh off a secret mission and a big win.

The Army pats him on the back and gives him a medal. And then they send him back to school. It's a school with only three students- Reacher, an FBI agent, and a CIA analyst. Their assignment? To find that American.

And what he's selling. There is serious sh*t going on, signs of a world gone mad. Night School takes Reacher back to his army days, but this time he's not in uniform. With trusted sergeant Frances Neagley at his side, he must carry the fate of the world on his shoulders, in a wired, fiendishly clever new adventure that will make the cold sweat trickle down your spine.

Nutshell Ian McEwan $32.99 Nutshell is a classic story of murder and deceit, told by a narrator with a perspective and voice unlike any in recent literature. A bravura performance, it is the finest recent work from a true master. Trudy has betrayed her husband, John.

She's still in the marital home – a dilapidated, priceless London townhouse – but not with John. Instead, she's with his brother, the profoundly banal Claude, and the two of them have a plan.

But there is a witness to their plot: the inquisitive, nine-month-old resident of Trudy's womb. Told from a perspective unlike any other, Nutshellis a classic tale of murder and deceit from one of the world's master storytellers. Oddfellows Nicholas Shakespeare $14.99 On 1 January 1915, ramifications from the First World War, raging half a world away, were felt in Broken Hill, Australia, when in a guerrilla-style military operation, four citizens were killed and seven wounded. It was the annual picnic day in Broken Hill and a thousand citizens were dressed for fun when the only enemy attack to occur on Australian soil during World War I, took them by surprise. Nicholas Shakespeare has turned this little known piece of Australian history into a story for our time.

One Hundred Days of Happiness Fausto Brizzi $29.99 What would you do if you knew you only had 100 days left to live? For Lucio Battistini, it's a chance to spend the rest of his life the way he always should have - by making every moment count. Womanizing, imperfect, but loveable, Lucio Battistini has been thrown out of the house by his wife and is sleeping in the stock room of his father-in-law's bombolini bakery when he learns he has inoperable cancer. So begins the last hundred days of Lucio's life, as he attempts to care for his family, win back his wife (the love of his life and afterlife), and spend the next three months enjoying every moment with a zest he hasn't felt in years. From helping his hopelessly romantic, widowed father-in-law find love, discovering comfort in enduring friendships, and finding new ones, Lucio becomes, at last, the man he's always meant to be. In 100 epigrammatic chapters, one for each of Lucio's remaining days on earth, One Hundred Days of Happiness is as delicious as a hot doughnut and a morning cappuccino. Wistful, often hilarious, and always delectable, One Hundred Days of Happiness reminds us all to remember the preciousness of life and what matters most.

Orphan X Gregg Hurwitz $19.99 Do you need my help? It was the first question he asked. They called him when they had nowhere else to turn. As a boy, Evan Smoak was taken from an orphanage. Raised and trained in a top-secret programme, he was sent to bad places to do things the government denied ever happened.

Then he broke with the programme, using what he'd learned to vanish. Now he helps the desperate and deserving. But someone's on his trail.

Someone who knows his past and believes that the boy once known as Orphan X must die... Praise for Orphan X.

Our Kind of Traitor John Le Carre $0.00 Two young lovers find themselves in the darkening basem*nt of an anonymous house in Bloomsbury. In the same room sit two members of Britain's intelligence service. And they want information. The couple, Perry and Gail, have just returned from holiday in the Caribbean where they met the mysterious Dima, a Russian millionaire in fear for his life. The Russian thinks that only the unlikely figure of Perry can save him. And Dima has cash - and he is prepared to pay. Their meeting will propel Perry and Gail on a terrifying journey from London to Paris and on to a safe house deep in the Swiss Alps.

When there is that much money at stake, and a British government that needs it that badly, certain sacrifices, even if it means a life or two, will have to be made. Our Souls At Night Kent Haruf $19.99 In the familiar setting of Holt, Colorado, home to all of Kent Haruf’s fiction, Addie Moore pays an unexpected visit to a neighbor, Louis Waters.

Her husband died years ago, as did his wife, and in such a small town they naturally have known of each other for decades; in fact, Addie was quite fond of Louis’s wife. His daughter lives hours away in Colorado Springs, her son even farther away in Grand Junction, and Addie and Louis have long been living alone in houses now empty of family, the nights so terribly lonely, especially with no one to talk with.

Paris Edward Rutherfurd $32.99 City of love. City of splendour. City of terror. City of dreams. Inspired by the haunting, passionate story of the city of lights, this epic novel weaves a gripping tale of four families across the centuries: from the lies that spawn the noble line of de Cygne to the revolutionary Le Sourds who seek their destruction; from the Blanchards whose bourgeois respectability offers scant protection against scandal to the hard-working Gascons and their soaring ambitions.

Over hundreds of years, these four families are bound by forbidden loves and marriages of convenience; dogged by vengeance and murderous secrets; torn apart by the irreconcilable differences of birth and faith, and brought together by the tumultuous history of their city. The story of Paris bursts to life in the intrigue, corruption, and glory of its people. Beloved author Edward Rutherfurd illuminates Paris as only he can, capturing the romance and everyday drama of the men and women who, in two thousand years, transformed a humble trading post on the muddy banks of the Seine into the most celebrated city in the world.

Past The Shallows Favel Parrett $0.00 Harry and Miles live with their father, an abalone fisherman, on the south-east coast of Tasmania. With their mum dead, they are left to look after themselves.

When Miles isn't helping out on the boat they explore the coast and Miles and his older brother, Joe, love to surf. Harry is afraid of the water.Everyday their dad battles the unpredictable ocean to make a living. He is a hard man, a bitter drinker who harbours a devastating secret that is destroying him. Unlike Joe, Harry and Miles are too young to leave home and so are forced to live under the dark cloud of their father's mood, trying to stay as invisible as possible whenever he is home. Harry, the youngest, is the most vulnerable and it seems he bears the brunt of his father's anger.

Peaches for Monsieur le Cure Joanne Harris $0.00 It isn't often you receive a letter from the dead. When Vianne Rocher receives a letter from beyond the grave, she has no choice but to follow the wind that blows her back to Lansquenet, the village in south-west France where, eight years ago, she opened up a chocolate shop. But Vianne is completely unprepared for what she finds there.

Women veiled in black, the scent of spices and peppermint tea, and there, on the bank of the river Tannes, facing the square little tower of the church of Saint-Jerme like a piece on a chessboard - slender, bone-white and crowned with a silver crescent moon - a minaret. Nor is it only the incomers from North Africa that have brought big changes to the community. Father Reynaud, Vianne's erstwhile adversary, is now disgraced and under threat. Could it be that Vianne is the only one who can save him?

Personal Lee Child $32.99 Jack Reacher walks alone. Once a go-to hard man in the US military police, now he's a drifter of no fixed abode. But the army tracks him down. Because someone has taken a long-range shot at the French president.

Only one man could have done it. And Reacher is the one man who can find him. This new heartstopping, nailbiting book in Lee Child's number-one bestselling series takes Reacher across the Atlantic to Paris and then to London. The stakes have never been higher— because this time, it's personal. Phantom Jo Nesbo $32.95 Summer. A boy is lying on the floor of an Oslo apartment.

He is bleeding and will soon die. In order to place his life and death in some kind of context he begins to tell his story. Outside, the church bells toll. Former police inspector Harry Hole returns to Oslo after three years abroad. He seeks out his old boss at Police Headquarters to request permission to investigate a homicide. But the case is already closed: the young junkie was in all likelihood shot dead by a fellow addict.

Yet, Harry is granted permission to visit the boy's alleged killer in jail. There, he meets himself and his own history.

What follows is the solitary investigation of what appears to be the first impossible case in Harry Hole's career. And while Harry is searching, the murdered boy continues his story. A man walks the dark streets of Oslo. The streets are his and he has always been there.

He is a Phantom. Picnic in Provence Elizabeth Bard $29.99 Lunch in Paris takes us on another delicious journey, this time to the heart of Provence. In Lunch in Paris, Elizabeth Bard fell in love with a handsome Frenchman and moved to the City of Light. In this mouthwatering follow-up, the couple and their newborn son bid farewell to Paris for rural life in a tiny village in Provence— land of blue skies, lavender fields, and peaches that taste like sunshine.

This is the story of how they embarked on a new adventure and became culinary entrepreneurs, starting an artisanal ice cream shop and experimenting with local ingredients like saffron, sheep's milk yogurt and olive oil. Along the way, challenges abound, from renovating a historic cottage to navigating new motherhood (French style), but Elizabeth meets them with her trademark honesty and humour. Full of discoveries, mishaps, feasts, and recipes, Picnic in Provence is about everything that happens after the happily ever after, and reminds us that life, in and out of the kitchen, is a rendezvous with the unexpected. Political Awakenings: Conversations with History Harry Kreisler (Editor) $29.95 As a kid, Noam Chomsky handed out the Daily Mirror at his uncle’s newsstand on 72nd Street, inadvertently finding himself in a buzzing intellectual and political hub for European immigrants in New York. Iranian human rights Nobelist Shirin Ebadi and her husband signed their own legal contract, attempting to restore equality to their marriage after the Iranian Revolution effectively erased the legal rights of women. Elizabeth Warren set out to expose those frauds declaring bankruptcy and taking advantage of the system—only to discover, in her research, a very different story of hard-working middle-class families facing economic collapse in the absence of a social safety net.

While studying at Oxford, a young Tariq Ali made a bet with a friend that he could work the Vietnam War into every single answer on his final exams. Portrait of a Spy Daniel Silva $0.00 For Gabriel Allon and his wife Chiara, it was supposed to be the start of a romantic weekend in London. But nothing is ever that simple when you're an off-duty spy and assassin. A pair of bombings in Paris and Copenhagen has put him on edge and when Gabriel notices a man exhibiting several traits common to suicide bombers, he follows him into the Covent Garden throng. He's determined to prevent the carnage he fears is about to take place, but before Gabriel can draw his sidearm, he is knocked to the pavement by two plain-clothes police officers.

A moment later he looks up to find a scene from his nightmares. From the streets of New York and London, to the unforgiving landscape of the Saudi desert, Gabriel Allon is in a race to the death against a calculating mass-murderer that he dare not lose. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dreadfully Ever After Steve Hockensmith $17.95 The story opens with our newly married protagonists, Elizabeth and Fitzwilliam Darcy, defending their village from an army of flesh-eating “unmentionables.” But the honeymoon has barely begun when poor Mr.

Darcy is nipped by a rampaging zombie. Elizabeth knows the proper course of action is to promptly behead her husband (and then burn the corpse, just to be safe). But when she learns of a miracle antidote under development in London, she realises there may be one last chance to save her true love—and for everyone to live happily ever after. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and its prequel, Dawn of the Dreadfuls, were both New York Times best sellers, with a combined 1.3 million copies in print. Provence Cure For Brokenhearted Bridget Asher $0.00 Brokenhearted, still mourning the loss of her husband, Heidi travels with Abbott, her troubled eight-year-old son, and Charlotte, her intolerably jaded sixteen-year-old niece, to spend the summer repairing their family home in a small village in the south of France.The rundown stone house in Provence has been in the family for generations and is the centre of a lovely myth. The family tells and retells stories of the magical properties entwined around the old stones - in many different ways, this house has healed broken hearts and made miracles happen.

Purity Jonathan Franzen $32.99 Young Pip Tyler doesn't know who she is. She knows that her real name is Purity, that she's saddled with $130,000 in student debt, that she's squatting with anarchists in Oakland, and that her relationship with her mother – her only family – is hazardous. But she doesn't have a clue who her father is, why her mother chose to live as a recluse with an invented name, or how she'll ever have a normal life. Enter the Germans. A glancing encounter with a German peace activist leads Pip to an internship in South America with the Sunlight Project, an organization that traffics in all the secrets of the world – including, Pip hopes, the secret of her origins. TSP is the brainchild of Andreas Wolf, a charismatic provocateur who rose to fame in the chaos following the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Now on the lam in Bolivia, Andreas is drawn to Pip for reasons she doesn't understand, and the intensity of her response to him upends her conventional ideas of right and wrong. Questions of Travel Michelle de Kretser $22.99 *Winner of the 2013 Miles Franklin Award* A mesmerising literary novel, Questions of Travel charts two very different lives. Laura travels the world before returning to Sydney, where she works for a publisher of travel guides. Ravi dreams of being a tourist until he is driven from Sri Lanka by devastating events.

Around these two superbly drawn characters, a double narrative assembles an enthralling array of people, places, and stories. Award-winning author Michelle de Kretser illuminates travel, work, and modern dreams in this brilliant evocation of the way we live now. Wonderfully written, Questions of Travel is an extraordinary work of imagination — a transformative, very funny, and intensely moving novel. Quicksand Steve Toltz $32.99 A daring, brilliant work by one of our most original and fearless novelists. 'Why should I let you write about me?' 'Because you'll inspire people. To count their blessings.'

Aldo Benjamin, relentlessly unlucky in every aspect of life, has always faced the future with despair and optimism in equal measure. His latest misfortune, though, may finally have brought him undone.

There's still hope, but not for Aldo. His mate Liam hasn't been doing much better— a failed writer with a rocky marriage and a dangerous job he never wanted— until he finds inspiration in Aldo's exponential disaster.

What begins as an attempt to document these improbable but inevitable experiences becomes a profound exploration of fate, fear, and friendship. Wildly entertaining and acutely insightful, Quicksand is a subversive portrait of 21st-century existence in all its hypocrisy and absurdity, an exquisite interpretation of suffering and resilience, and a compelling story about the taking of risks and the making of art. Reading Madame Bovary Amanda Lohrey $32.95 A woman finds her everyday world engulfed by vivid fantasies. A businessman finds a new way to deal with his rage.

A couple contemplate the best way to educate their children. A young woman finds herself on a boat with a bunch of delinquent schoolkids. A diary is discovered. A commune goes wrong. This collection of stories, from one of Australia’s leading short-fiction writers, deals with transition and transformations. The characters find themselves caught between order and chaos, and they must change or become trapped. These tales enlighten and entertain in equal measure.

Return to the Little Coffee Shop of Kabul Deborah Rodriguez $32.99 The spellbinding sequel to the international bestseller The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul. Six women, on opposite sides of the earth, yet forever joined by a cafe in Kabul. Sunny is the former proprietor and the new owner of the Screaming Peaco*ck Vineyard in the Pacific Northwest — can she handle the challenges of life on her own? Yazmina is the young mother who now runs the cafe, until a terrifying event strikes at the heart of her family, and business.

Layla and Kat are two Afghan teenagers in America, both at war with the cultures that shaped them. Zara is a young woman about to be forced into a marriage with a man she despises, with devastating consequences for all. These five women are about to learn what Halajan, Yazmina's rebellious mother-in-law, has known all along: that when the world as you know it disappears, you find a new way to survive.

Amid the gilded opulence and dark intrigue of Renaissance Italy grew a love that knew no bounds. No woman's heart is safe from the Silver Devil. From the moment he sees the beautiful Felicia, he must have her. Overnight he changes Felicia's nightmare world of tavern drudgery into an erotic adventure as his royal mistress. He is the Duke of Cabria who holds his subjects Amid the gilded opulence and dark intrigue of Renaissance Italy grew a love that knew no bounds.

No woman's heart is safe from the Silver Devil. From the moment he sees the beautiful Felicia, he must have her. Overnight he changes Felicia's nightmare world of tavern drudgery into an erotic adventure as his royal mistress. He is the Duke of Cabria who holds his subjects in constant fear.

He is troubled. He is ruthless. And Felicia is hopelessly in love with him - though at times he seems like the devil incarnate.

I don't read too many historical romances, but every once in a while it is nice to change it up. When I read a friend's review for this one, it sounded like just my type of story.

I have a thing for despicable, often abusive, heroes. I love reading stories about the type of guys that you'd run screaming from in real life. It's a hang-up of mine, I guess. Set in the 1600's, 'The Silver Devil' tells the story of the Duke of Cambria, aka Domenico.

Used to getting his way at any cost, he is cold, sel I don't read too many historical romances, but every once in a while it is nice to change it up. When I read a friend's review for this one, it sounded like just my type of story. I have a thing for despicable, often abusive, heroes. I love reading stories about the type of guys that you'd run screaming from in real life. It's a hang-up of mine, I guess.

Set in the 1600's, 'The Silver Devil' tells the story of the Duke of Cambria, aka Domenico. Used to getting his way at any cost, he is cold, selfish and often cruel. When he sets eyes on Felicia one afternoon, he decides that he will have her by any means necessary. When Felicia wakes up in an unknown place, she is soon made aware of her circ*mstances. A young virgin, Felicia is terrified when she is told that she is to be the newest plaything for the Duke. She resigns herself to a fate worse than death. Over the course of many weeks, Felicia eventually grows fond of the Duke, despite his less than pleasant disposition.

The kind man and tender lover that he is privately, contrasts sharply with the cruel and calculating man he is in public. Watching how easily he dismisses his closest acquaintances with little regard, she fears the day that he will grow tired of her. Domenico was definitely a tough character to like. He takes Felicia by force and shows little regard for her feelings for much of the book. At the same time, he treats her with just enough tenderness to keep masoch*stic readers like me hanging in there. I can't resist a bad guy that is almost irredeemable. Domenico fits the bill perfectly.

Just when I thought he'd crossed the point of no return, he'd go and show another side of himself. He was every bit as endearing as he was infuriating.

If, like me, you love stories about really bad guys that turn over a new leaf for the woman they love, then this is a good choice. It doesn't come quickly or easily though. You will have to hang in there to the very end to get the transformation you crave. Domenico was a tough one to break. Overall, I really enjoyed this historical romance. I found the characters and storyline to be very interesting.

I did have to slow down a little to make sense of the language, but for a novel set in the 1600's, it was easier to follow than I had anticipated. I'm certainly no authority on this romance sub genre, but I thought this was a fantastic read. The Silver Devil by Teresa Denys: 4 “Uncomfortably Good” Stars. He bought her for thirty pieces of silver, drugged her, dragged her from her home, held her captive in his cellar, subjected her to the scorn of his cohorts, surrounded her with jealous former lovers, and took her virginity in the most violent and humiliating way. When she smiled at a boy, he tortured and killed him. When she tried to escape, he hung those who assisted her. When a woman tried to drive them apart, he banished her to a The Silver Devil by Teresa Denys: 4 “Uncomfortably Good” Stars.

He bought her for thirty pieces of silver, drugged her, dragged her from her home, held her captive in his cellar, subjected her to the scorn of his cohorts, surrounded her with jealous former lovers, and took her virginity in the most violent and humiliating way. When she smiled at a boy, he tortured and killed him. When she tried to escape, he hung those who assisted her. When a woman tried to drive them apart, he banished her to a leper colony. When a childhood friend conspired against them, he had starving dogs tear him limb from limb.

He seduced and impregnated servant girls, passed mistresses off to his friends, tried to curse his father into an early grave, and drove his stepmother to suicide after having relations with her on the chapel floor. HE IS SPOILED, NARCISSISTIC, JADED, AND VOLATILE. He is Domenico Giordano della Raffaelle, Duke of Cabria and Lord of the Marches, and he should NOT be lovable, but he IS. HE IS BEAUTIFUL, BRAVE, CHARMING, AND PASSIONATE.

And when it comes to Felicia, the girl he bought for thirty pieces of silver, the one to whom he asserts, 'It is your vocation to love me above all others”: So, like all the others – the men and women, boyhood friends, and stepmothers alike – Felicia falls in love with His Grace, The Duke of Cabria. The Silver Devil, by Teresa Denys, is not a comfortable read. Like it’s hero, the feelings it evokes are not kind or merciful. Felicia’s first person narrative so vividly describes her every feeling, her every thought, and her every conclusion, that it’s as if you’re experiencing all of The Duke’s actions – his transgressions, his commands, his whispered seductions and possessive caresses - from within her skin. Her confusion becomes your confusion; her fear, your fear; her pain, your pain; her rapture, your rapture; and, her love, your love. By the time the story reaches its dramatic climax, you’re thoroughly convinced that His Grace is everything Felicia believes him to be: an over-indulged, inconstant, opportunist, incapable of returning her love.

That’s when we finally hear Domenico’s side of the story; and with it, all of the unkind and unmerciful emotions finally come to an end. Suddenly, a whole new set of feelings roll through you, ones that are refreshingly sweet and tender. And when they continue to linger long after the story comes to an end, you know, with undue certainty, that despite the discomfort; The Silver Devil was an uncomfortably good read.

For information about my rating system, see my profile page. A SHOUT OUT TO Fre06: I can’t tell you how grateful I am for the recommendation.

It's nice to read a really well written book. One where you get lost in the world of the main character. Thanks for recommending it to me. I hope someday I can return the favor. UPDATED REVIEW Romance Is Horror! Just as the little voice in the back of my head has often whispered to me during various awkward moments. The Silver Devil is an historical romance with a twist.

The twist: i loved it. The feverishly sweaty and grotesque atmosphere, the constant viciousness and savagery, the insanely operatic characters. And, surprise, the writing is highly accomplished. Overall it was fascinating. The whole thing was so luridly gothic an experience that at times it UPDATED REVIEW Romance Is Horror!

Just as the little voice in the back of my head has often whispered to me during various awkward moments. The Silver Devil is an historical romance with a twist.

The twist: i loved it. The feverishly sweaty and grotesque atmosphere, the constant viciousness and savagery, the insanely operatic characters. And, surprise, the writing is highly accomplished. Overall it was fascinating. The whole thing was so luridly gothic an experience that at times it became hard for me to wrap my mind around. In a good way! Okay i've read more about bodice rippers than actually experienced them.

I understand that brutish man-boys are the standard. That women often fall into two categories: inexplicably independent (for the historical time period depicted) or - in the case of the The Silver Devil - virginal proto-nuns. This novel pitches these two archetypes of Man & Woman so beyond that template that the effect is genuinely surreal.

The brutality and rapiness was extreme. Normally this is something that would upset me. Everything came together in such an intense fashion that i began to see it as an un-romance. A kind of extreme-relationship novel with a hair-raisingly demanding dom and a heroine who is so deranged in her passivity that she comes across as the ultimate subjugate-me-please sub. But in the end it was as i mentioned at the start: A Tale of Horror. That was really the only way i could take this seriously - and because of the strength of the writing, i did take it seriously. I did not read this with a droll sense of irony because this sh*t is good, man.

The intensity sort of made me feel high at times. The heroine is a young, sheltered, abused naif. And yet a glass-half-full sorta gal. So devoid of all maliciousness or need for revenge that she basically comes across as a severely developmentally disabled girl-woman. She moved from being a sad character to a pathetic character to a character who attained a bizarre transcendence in the extremity of her submissiveness. She is Pure Victim.

And the genuine horror of her story is her unexplainable love for the worst, most evil hero i've come across since i don't know when. It is like she was hypnotized by a devil. The Silver Devil! Once i began to see this as a story of extreme psychological terror and so rejected it as a romance, it really came together for me in a way i did not expect. I was on the edge of my seat constantly, just waiting for the next hellish trial that she would be put through. Her terrorized first-person perspective on the world around her only strengthened the horror of it all.

This is a deeply realized historical novel with a consistently grim tone. One that describes terrible smells of rot and death as a constant, castles as places of nightmare, appealing rascally types who turn around and laughingly engage in gang rape, sybaritic aristocrats who cover their faces in dead-white make-up as if they are miming the undead, irrational rulers who view their people as slaves to be used and killed, unending misogyny, devious deviants who love incest and pederasty, the works. This is a world of abominations and it is all brilliantly described as a genuine living hell. The hero is something else.

And to me, entirely unattractive - and so the horror remained constant. This was not a remotely arousing novel and yet i was enthralled by the excessive perversity on display. It was easy to never sympathize with the twisted, sickening hero (just as it was easy to long for his punishment and demise) because the author portrays him as evil incarnate. He bullies and terrorizes and rapes and beats the heroine FROM BEGINNING TO END. All that plus he mocks and laughs at her on a regular basis too, exulting in her pain and the bruises he inflicts upon her.

Again, not romance: horror. Imagine a Rupert Everett type (except with silver hair, 'natch): bisexual, mordantly witty, high-handed, suave, always fashionable, always cutting.

Now combine him with an emo thug from the hbo series Oz who goes violently berserk and throws insane tantrums on a daily basis, tortures people who look at his girl the wrong way, lives to inspire fear, and gets a boner over every one of his disgustingly callous, meaninglessly mean-spirited acts. Imagine a petulant man-child who sets dogs on his oldest friend and former lover, and who in turn is depicted as either a kind of unreasoning, ravening dog himself or even more frequently, as a smug and self-satisfied cat who sharpens his claws on human mice. Hey, that's our hero. Or our villain. He stays this way FROM BEGINNING TO END. If you read this one, you are entitled to that warning. And this one too: this novel has a happy ending.

A happy ending where he is not redeemed in any way except he has finally been able to declare his love. Teresa Denys stays completely true to her hellish vision of the time period, her beyond-repulsive characters, her version of 'love'. There is an admirable and rather fiendish purity to that. So yeah, i loved this one. But it wasn't just the Ken Russell level of grotesque abandon that won me over. The writing was lush and beautiful, yet remarkably free of sentiment and consistently invested in showing life as one diabolic tableau after another. Teresa Denys has an uncompromisingly bleak world view.

This is a dark, dark book. Love as a trap for fools and villains. Life as death.

'The darkness seemed to breathe, pressing down on me like a hot, thick blanket. Here and there were gleams of light from the last embers of the torches, and the blackness was peopled by innumerable small sounds. Sighs of lassitude, stertorous breathing, the rustle of garments and the kiss of flesh, quietening into a silence of exhaustion; the court's lust had spent itself in one hectic surge, and soon would come the bitter aftermath. I sat staring into space, seeing in the darkness pictures of the gluttony and debauchery to which fear of tomorrow had spurred the Cabrian nobles.

The masque of the Seven Deadly Sins played before our faces, sung and chanted, with servants of each Sin's train engulfing the whole hall in a miasma of vivid colour: the spilling dishes, the flowing wine, the sighs and screams of the court as the torches were doused one by one.' ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ YE OLDE PLACEHOLDER REVIEW 'tis the season. 13: BOOK 11 oh my God, what the f*ck! I'm not sure i've read anything like this before. Sweet Jesus this was crazy. So i think i have finally gotten the appeal of bodice rippers, thanks Teresa Denys.

This was an intensely sad*stic and violent gothic, and hey, i love that. 'romance' as straight up horror. And the writing was excellent. I need to think about this one a little bit more before i write a review because right now i feel like i'm having ptsd from some kind of violent assault. But for now here are some things to illustrate my broken mind after having read this nightmare: [ ]. He was toweringly tall and slender, every poise and motion a conscious beauty; doublet and breeches fitted him like a skin, turning him to a living, moving silver statue. But all I saw in that first moment was the fiercely beautiful face, its proud profile, white skin, and the shapely, sensual mouth under the cropped and silken fair beard.radiantly, blindingly fair, with a devil's dark eyes set in the face of an archangel.

When I think of Renaissance Italy, I automatically think of bright a He was toweringly tall and slender, every poise and motion a conscious beauty; doublet and breeches fitted him like a skin, turning him to a living, moving silver statue. But all I saw in that first moment was the fiercely beautiful face, its proud profile, white skin, and the shapely, sensual mouth under the cropped and silken fair beard.radiantly, blindingly fair, with a devil's dark eyes set in the face of an archangel. When I think of Renaissance Italy, I automatically think of bright and shiny cultural rebirth after the darkness of the Middle Ages, of prosperous, idyllic Italian-states ruled by the glamorous Medici, of frothy, charming paintings like Botticelli's Venus. This is not the Italian Renaissance world of Teresa Denys' The Silver Devil. Think more along the lines of Dante's circles of hell, Machiavelli's ruthless commentary on prince-tyrants, and Caravaggio's dark, broody chiaroscuro paintings.

In other words, this book was out of this world fabulous. Readers, if you are lucky enough to get your greedy hands on a copy, leave your twenty-first century sensitivities behind. This is the way rulers of the world behaved centuries past. And to be honest, that kind of savagery, immorality, arrogance and entitlement still lies dormant beneath the thin veneer of civilization to this day. He sat on his horse unmoving, a somber black figure in startling contrast to the vivid colors about him, the sun dazzling on his white gold hair. Unlike the duke and his bastard, there was no laughter in his face, and his eyes were not searching the housefronts for diversion-instead, he was staring intently straight up at my window.

Poor Felicia Guardi. Not bad enough that she is a reviled bastard toiling away, Cinderella-like, at the inn of her portly brother and his shrewish wife, but now she has unbeknownst to her caught the eye of Domenico della Raffaelle, heir to the Dukedom of Cabria, in the fictitious southern city of Fidena, Italy.

And if she thinks this is going to mean hearts and flowers, she is in for a rude awakening. For Domenico does not court, certainly not an unprotected tavern wench. He takes what he wants. A voice, soft and almost teasing, stopped me in my tracks.

“Little crow!” () When I felt his fingertips against my cheek, I flinched as I would have done from a brand. But he turned my face up to him as casually as he might have turned a rose to smell it, and unwarily I looked straight up into his eyes. They were black; so dark that they were unfathomable, and impossibly, horrifyingly dark in that fair face. I thought of Lucifer as I looked at him, of a demon’s eyes in the face of a fallen angel. Then, as I watched, a strange light began to grow in them-the darkness was swallowed up in a brilliance that made them blaze silver.

I caught my breath, and the room, the house, the whole city, was suddenly breathless with waiting. Next thing you know, her brother sells her for thirty pieces of silver and she is swept to the Duke's castle, which is more like a corrupt, rotten, debauched hellmouth than one of those Disney fairytale palaces. Felicia's first person narrative is so emotionally poignant, realistic and strong that you cannot help, as the reader, to feel as she feels, sees as she sees, tremble as she trembles. The character of Domenico, seen through her eyes, is a magnificent and charismatic but always aloof and distant, cold and cruel figure. Nevertheless, Felicia, for all her vulnerability and the inevitability of her body, then her mind and heart ultimately succumbing to Domenico's will, has pride, loyalty and bravery.

This, more than her pretty looks, is what ensnares Domenico in turn, and has his entire court gaping at the unprecedented obsession that his newest mistress has engendered in him. The struggle of their personalities is mighty even though the scales are so imbalanced, with Felicia fighting him at every turn. But in my opinion, despite the odds, she is the one to come out on top at the end, though many readers will surely disagree with my assessment. The silver devil is also a swashbuckler of a novel, with some nice Gothic touches, very vivid descriptions of battles, some awful torture and assassination scenes, and a couple of heart-stopping duel. Its fast, but not too fast, pace, and the change of settings, plot twists and turns, ensure that it never becomes boring or repetitive. I loved The Silver Devil from the first to the last word. Heartbreaking that this book is one of only two known to have been penned by this talented author, whose life was tragically cut short, and about whom we know so little.

This review was edited and reposted with additional quotes and pictures, on November 30, 2016. This review has mild spoilers in it.:) A few weeks ago, I saw a post where they were discussing the difference between old bodice rippers and modern romance novels. At the time, I couldn’t quite put my thoughts into words. I’ve been thinking about it though, and I’m convinced the main difference is a plot strategy where the hero and the villain are pretty much the same character.

This provides lots of sexual tension and conflict for the heroine, plus it adds many hilarious WTF moments, like, huh This review has mild spoilers in it.:) A few weeks ago, I saw a post where they were discussing the difference between old bodice rippers and modern romance novels. At the time, I couldn’t quite put my thoughts into words. I’ve been thinking about it though, and I’m convinced the main difference is a plot strategy where the hero and the villain are pretty much the same character. This provides lots of sexual tension and conflict for the heroine, plus it adds many hilarious WTF moments, like, huhare you seriousso now they’re in love? LOL I’ve always loved old bodice rippers and it bums me out they’ve become so politically incorrect that authors don’t write them anymore. I can read the old ones though.  So does Silver Devil fit the typical BR mold?

Well, yes and no. Clearly Domenico is a villain. He’s a psychopath, tyrant who terrifies his people. Domenico has a man’s legs broken because the man is taller than him.

He tells a scribe to write up his own death warrant because the scribe doesn’t write fast enough. And he has a handsome boy tortured and killed because Felicia smiles at the him. Domenico never really regrets his cruelty either. You don’t see him brooding about his past murders. He’s not evolved enough to have an epiphany at the end of the book about who he really is.

So the only thing that changes is that the heroine becomes so besotted by Domenico that she doesn’t care that he’s a total nutcase. In fact, I don’t see a happy ending for Felicia. Domenico is so self-absorbed that I’m convinced he will dump her in a few years for a younger woman, and she will be forced to grin and bear it. So is this romance? Wellthe love scenes are intense and passionate. Does that count? I actually read Silver Devil before when I was teenager and I had forgotten most of it.

But I do remember at the time, I was appalled at what a horrible person Domenico was. He certainly wasn’t my idea of a dreamboat hero. Felicia struck me as weak and wimpy for falling for him, throwing away her moral integrity simply because she loves him.

'But I love him,' is the whiniest reason in the world to stay with someone and this did not endear me to her. I look at Silver Devil totally different now.

While it fails as a romance, I think it’s excellent historical fiction. Teresa Denys is masterful at pulling you into the seventeenth century.

She lived in Italy and paints Cabria with visceral color and depth. I feel like she truly captures the personalities and thoughts of time period too. Domenico fits perfectly the self-absorbed and jaded Duke who disposes of human life without a single thought. History is dotted with people like him. Felicia comes from the bottom level of society, so of course she is meek and weak. Her position is precarious and she’s well aware of that. For her, it must be intoxicating to go from being completely powerless to someone people bow to.

Who wouldn’t throw away some of their moral integrity to be apart of it? So while Felicia may not admit it to herself, I think she’s attracted to the power as much as she is to Domenico. So it’s not just love that keeps her attached to him, although she’d like to believe it. These characters make sense to me. They are complicated and full blooded. In conclusion, I think Silver Devil is a tale about a villain; an evil tyrant that everyone is trying to overthrow. The good guys are trying to kill him, but they fail miserably.

The people of Cabria would be much better off with a different ruler, but the Silver Devil has uncanny luck. And this story is told through the eyes of his mistress who grows to love him. In the end, the bad guys win. It’s not a happy ending.

Funny though, Teresa Denys writes so well, you end up rooting for the bad guys. Pre-read impression- Ok. After reading that this book has been put on shelves varying from recommends to: Girly girls to 'tall, dark and psycho'.

I'm crazy curious as to what my beloved ringleader Searock is getting me into. No matter, with her leading the charge, it'll be fun.:) Review- 3.5 Stars So, we're takin' it back. That's right ladies and gents, cats and kittens! All the way back to a book written in 1978 about a story in 1605.

Bringing you today's hits and yesterday's favorites! Espe Pre-read impression- Ok. After reading that this book has been put on shelves varying from recommends to: Girly girls to 'tall, dark and psycho'. I'm crazy curious as to what my beloved ringleader Searock is getting me into. No matter, with her leading the charge, it'll be fun.:) Review- 3.5 Stars So, we're takin' it back. That's right ladies and gents, cats and kittens!

All the way back to a book written in 1978 about a story in 1605. Bringing you today's hits and yesterday's favorites! Especially if those favorites are 'forced consent' and 'hemorrhagic virginity loss' and one of my favorites 'gang rape'.

(I don't know technically if it's considered gang rape if four guys hold you down while another does the raping, but they're all complicit, so I'm calling it gang rape). So, stay right where you are, don't touch that dial! So you might be saying, 'Michele, why are you reading a historical bodice ripper with FADE TO BLACK LOVE SCENES when you could be reading Breathe by one of your favorite authors, KA?' I'll tell you why, in one word, Searock. And I'd do it again. If Searock asked me to group read the Bible cover to cover, I'd probably do it, but I'd beg for the children's version.

(Searock- please don't call my bluff on this one). So historical is not my thing and this book made me realize why. Christ on a crutch. Like I give a flying ape sh*t if they came from the west or the north. That he hit him with his spear and he parried with his knife, that the horse was running, galloping or cantering, that blah, blah,blah, blah, blah-boring.

The intrigue is another. Siblings betraying one another. Your Uncle the archbishop is not to be trusted, he has his own agenda. Who doesn't in this book?

Your father's third wife poisoned her own husband because she thought it would make you happy and land you in her bed. But instead, you send her away without tupping her. Tsk tsk, a woman scorned. That will come back to bite you in the balls, Duke. Felicia, is our heroine??

A bar wench who one night, very unusually, was given a 'cordial' or two by Antonio, the half brother that detests her. You know, the one that makes her work as a bar wench at his inn, scrub the floors, clean his house top to bottom, for room and board. How's this for intrigue? At one point, I thought Felicia was The Duke's half sister! Felicia thought it too. And this was after the schtupping had begun!

But alas, no. It was a lie perpetrated by current handmaiden to Felicia/last whor* who warmed the Duke's bed and now warms Sandro the bastard Brother's bed, as she was casted off. She wanted back in the Duke's bed. I mean, who wouldn't?

(The man must have a prized co*ck, that's all I can figure.) She got sent to care for lepers for that tall tale. And that was getting off easy.

Felicia smiled at a footboy and it got him tortured and killed. I was rooting for Felicia to run away with the footboy. Make your way to the New World together. Ask for the Indians. They'll be nice to you, just be nice to them back. No more intrigue! No more backstabbing!

Eat Maize and live in peace. One of you will die on the journey, but what the hell! Felicia drinks those cordials from her brother and wakes up in a strange place and soon finds out that she is to be the Duke's whor*. A girl can't ask for more than that! I mean the first question out of my mouth would be, 'I beg of you sir, have you any pudding?' No, just kidding, it would be, 'I beg of you sir, how the f*ck did I get here? Is there a Wizard and an Emerald City nearby?

Where's Toto? I could sure use a field of poppies right now. I'm not even scared of flying monkeys.

Bring 'em on!' Then sir would be like, 'She's batsh*t crazy! She'll fit right in amongst royalty.

So shortly after Felicia has a 'forced consent' loss of her virginity.[I'm going to parlay this into a mini-discussion about that term. 'Forced consent' to me, means rape. But in this instance, in a different time, when a woman's only other choice is to become a beggar or a whor*, I'd call it 'forced consent'. Because better to be the whor* to one, than whor* to many. Unless that many is a pack of sexy shape shifting werewolves that want to share you and keep you in sexual bliss 24/7.

Then, I say bring it on! I'll be your whor*! But I digress.] Shortly after she is stripped of her virginity, she comes to love the Duke. A moment after she realizes this, he shows her pictures of women and asks her to help his pick his new bride. *Stage whispers to Felicia* 'Pick the ugly bitch! Sometimes the ugly ones are good in bed!

Pick the manliest one. Oh no, wait, the Duke had an affair with a man for a dozen years. Pick the the one that looks like a shrew. Well, you were kind of a mousy shrew at first. Now look at you! Close your eyes and point or do eeny-meeny-miney-moe. Wait, do you have that yet in 1605?

Eeny-meeny-miney-moe-catch-a tiger. *rears back incredulously* What's a tiger?

Oh forget it! Close your eyes and point.' But the Duke is just so darned lovable. For instance:When they are in the tavern and the inn-keeper's wife is being raped, Felicia begs the Duke to make it stop, but he refuses. And holds her tight so that she can't interfere.

Ah, but she still can't help but love him. You see, he has nightmares that only she can soothe away. Oh, his tortured soul.

If only he'd let her care for him. From the beginning, other men at court say that when the Duke tires of her, which should say, be in a day or two, they will ask that she be given to them. Because that's what he does with his castoffs, he gives them to other men. What's not to love about this guy? I mean, I could see why any girl would fall for a guy that slept with her in a pool of her own blood, the night he took her virginity, then made her ride with him the next day on the hunt, side saddle. [Another discussion- sidesaddle is bullsh*t! Who comes up with this stuff?

You're just a woman. So what if you break your neck?

Just don't hurt the horse, wench.]. That Duke, he's a keeper. One thing that bothered me, haha, was that when Felicia was barwench at her Brother's Inn, she had no self confidence. Took all manner of abuse that her half brother and his wife could dig out.

But once she came to court, she instantaneously knew how to behave, how to dance, when to kneel and curtesy. And she was never a wallflower in dealing with these other men pursuing her. Maybe it was borne out of necessity, but it was quite a transformation. Maybe it 'cause she was getting a little sumpin' sumpin', works wonders on the self esteem to be the whor* of a Duke.

To entertain myself, I took on the language of the book while reading it. As in, 'Dearest husband of mine, would you be so kind as to gather the soiled livery so that I may tend to it?' My hubby just rolled his eyes. But livery is such a weird name for clothing.

I always think that livery must smell like onions. Does anyone else think that? But hey, it had a happy ending.

I can't wait sink my teeth into some KA. All I know is Breathe better contain the words: co*ck, suck, thrust, mouth, puss*, come, cl*t, knees, and maybe pounding. Or I am going lose my mind! It may be lost already to the Silver Devil. One can't help but to love him. Hell.I'd never managed to read through the pdf version of a 300+ novel within three or so days! Thoughts after reading: Just.What The Hell Had I Just Read!?

(Link: ) That.that's just mind-blowing in a crazy manner! It's a damn difficult book to rate, on one hand I'm intrigued by the outstanding, sensual writing, the vivid sense of dread expressed through said writing, the fine details and the roller coaster ride which is the main story. On the other hand, Hell.I'd never managed to read through the pdf version of a 300+ novel within three or so days!

Thoughts after reading: Just.What The Hell Had I Just Read!? (Link: ) That.that's just mind-blowing in a crazy manner! It's a damn difficult book to rate, on one hand I'm intrigued by the outstanding, sensual writing, the vivid sense of dread expressed through said writing, the fine details and the roller coaster ride which is the main story. On the other hand, I rolled my eyes (with a few 'No it can't be!' Exclaims) at how the plots go over-the-top at times and the ending is *ways* too unrealistic *and* the hero, a.k.a the main love interest in this book, is an irredeemable asshole.

To spice things up, this guy is also a torturer, a cold-blooded killer and a rapist. Although I can almost appreciate how unapologetic this guy had been for an entire book. I mean, when comparing with Domenico Giordano della Raffaelle, Lothaire the Enemy Of Old from suddenly looks like he is Mr. To be very honest, if you didn't happen to have a morbid curiosity over this book, if you didn't happen to have some sort of sad*stic threads within you (yes I have some within me, shocking), I don't think you should be reading this book. One of my Goodreads friend commented that 'reading this book is like watching Caligula'.and she is right. However, I have to tell you that is exactly part of the fun of reading The Silver Devil, Teresa Denys push everything to the extreme and she didn't hold things back, she went into places where other romance novelists rarely visit, and OMG I just love it! As to the late Miss Denys, we know so little about this lady, but by reading this book I at least can tell she had a lot of guts, a fine taste for Gothic-style writing and a lavish imagination.

I must wonder how the ending of this book would have turned out if Miss Denys didn't have to limit herself to the typical romance cliches of a [happy ending. If you asked me, I would say the heroine should remain as the male lead's mistress and continues to live in misery because the male lead is too spoiled and selfish to make things up with her.for long. ] And here's a damn good review from Bgurl, with splendid jpgs. Originally, it was my plan to use this review space to create another installment of my series. Then I got to thinking. Is this even going to be possible? How could I spin a taboo book?

Would it go something like this? Are you a fan of kidnappings and rape?

[If your answer is yes, you're in luck! Keep reading! ] Do you laugh with glee when men are tortured to the point of death because they might have shown an interest in you? [W Originally, it was my plan to use this review space to create another installment of my series. Then I got to thinking. Is this even going to be possible?

How could I spin a taboo book? Would it go something like this?

Are you a fan of kidnappings and rape? [If your answer is yes, you're in luck! Keep reading!

] Do you laugh with glee when men are tortured to the point of death because they might have shown an interest in you? [Wow, you're going to love this book!

] Would the addition of ridiculous mental games make a story even better for you? [Ding, ding, ding.we have a winner! Don't quit now! ] I think most people would have had their adventure ended on the first step.

Therefore, my plan was not going to work, unless I wanted to do this as a potential parody. If you could see the cold sweat on my face right now from how sick I am, you'd know that 'haha, fun parody' is not quite the mood I'm in at the moment.

So I'll just give you a rundown on my thoughts about this book instead. I wish I had more experience with bodice rippers because I had no way of being able to compare Silver Devil to any other book written in this style. It seemed strange for me to read a historical romance book in first person. I love first person in contemporaries and paranormals, but have always been used to third person when it comes to historicals.

Something about the third person style lends itself to going back in time. It makes the setting feel more lush and not as personal (which can be a good thing when you're trying not to hear everyday phrases and slang in your head).

It was also strange to read dub-con scenes in which there were no big details. Not that I'm saying people want to witness rap (*edit* oops, I meant rape, that was a typo but kind of funny.no slam on rap/hip-hop intended) in all of its disturbing glory, but if we the audience are to find a reason as to why Felicia would fall for her Domenico, you'd think that we'd be given more detail about the growing intimacy (especially given the freedoms that come with telling a story in first person narrative).

If there was any time I felt awkward about a non-detailed sex scene, it was with this couple's story. This book was a prime example of how 'show, not tell' might have helped me connect more with what was going on. The first half of the book was great. Talk about promise! I love stories in which the heroine is rescued from a horrendous life by a man who is willing to make it all better. Our hero was eyeing up his girl with dark looks, then he had his woman kidnapped so he could have her.I was getting excited about what was going to happen!

The second half took me days to get through. With some books, I am taken in by the politics and intrigue. For whatever reason, I could have cared less when it came to this story. Felicia essentially became background fodder in many instances, even though she was the main character.

Domenico was an overgrown man-child, and not even in the sexy tortured 'let me make it feel better' kind of way. If some man woke up every night crying into my breast, I'd push him out of bed - especially when he acted like a spoiled brat for the majority of the time out of bed. Since I can't compare this book to other bodice-rippers, I almost feel like I'm doing it a disservice by feeling such a disconnect. Maybe Silver Devil is a prime example of what works for this category of historicals.

I just don't know. All I can go by is what I do like to read in historicals. I prefer my historical romance to be fun, quirky and sexy, and my historical fiction that has a romantic bent to be rich, lush and epic. I didn't get either vibe from this book, so if this is the gold standard, I'm guessing it's just not the category for me. However, maybe I'll have to give it one more shot. I'm not opposed to trying out a book in which a pirate plunders for booty. Surprisingly, there were a couple of randomly awesome quote-worthy moments in this book: 'Because he soon tires of those who are too willing.'

There was an oddly brittle note in Piero's voice. 'He is surfeited with brood mares and must mount the unicorn.' ~ Then he bent his head as though to kiss her, and spat deliberately, full into her open mouth. Well that was one heck of a ride. Silver Devil himself.

Not exactly choir boy material. This story felt very real to me. It was a true depiction of renaissance life with dukes and lords and kings and their total power over common people.

The heroine was complex in her own right. At first she appeared incredibly simple and naive. Yet as the story evolves you understand she is the victim of circ*mstances being illiterate, imprisoned within her own home, beaten and abused and eventu Well that was one heck of a ride. Silver Devil himself. Not exactly choir boy material.

This story felt very real to me. It was a true depiction of renaissance life with dukes and lords and kings and their total power over common people. The heroine was complex in her own right. At first she appeared incredibly simple and naive. Yet as the story evolves you understand she is the victim of circ*mstances being illiterate, imprisoned within her own home, beaten and abused and eventually sold for silver pieces.

She is powerless to change anything and is reduced to praying for death once the Silver Devil tires of her because the future of a discarded mistress is too brutal for anyone to endure. At first, I wanted her to be much more cunning and I was disappointed when she wasn't. But then I came to realize that she never had the skills or ability to pull herself out of the mire.

Consequently she confuses lust for love and finds herself enslaved physically and mentally to the hero. The hero is a merciless, ruthless, cruel, sad*stic, monster, but he knows his way around the sheets (with men and women) and he holds everyone around him in his power. While most are blinded by his charms and anxious to warm his bed, there are few who would just as soon see him dead.

The story is hauntingly filled with lies, treachery and treason which adds another dimension, excitement and complexity to the story. This book isn't for the faint of heart (which I usually am), but it is surprisingly good and has the power to suck you right in. I absolutely loved it! This wasn't a romance. The hero villain was completely and utterly (insert hysterical mad laughter) insane. I know many other reviews have spoiled this more than adequately, so I won't go into examples. I can deal with an anti-hero as long as he finds some sort of redemption or learns to look at the world a bit differently.

I don't expect them to become paragons, actually that would be absurd. But I do expect some sort of emotional awakening. This guy wasn't capable of that.

He was a sociopath. This wasn't a romance. The hero villain was completely and utterly (insert hysterical mad laughter) insane.

I know many other reviews have spoiled this more than adequately, so I won't go into examples. Torrent Windows Home Server 2011 Isole. I can deal with an anti-hero as long as he finds some sort of redemption or learns to look at the world a bit differently. I don't expect them to become paragons, actually that would be absurd. But I do expect some sort of emotional awakening.

This guy wasn't capable of that. He was a sociopath. I think some people like this for the crazy factor and it has plenty of that.

I have some glorious train wreck books I enjoy for the same reason. However, this one was just too ick with all the tortures and cruelty. Plus - and this may offend some people - I just can't get into a man who has sex with other men. I don't believe I'm being anti-gay/bi-sexual.

As far as I'm concerned people can sleep with whoever they want. However, for me to find a man sexually attractive/romantic hero material he needs to be straight with a capital S. That's just my taste. Minus stars.if that was an option. DNF @ 59% RANT FULL OF SPOILERS! I tried, my friends, I tried.

I can't believe I put myself through that. So I found this book based on my recs on Goodreads since I read. So say this book is even similar to The Golden Dynasty is an INSULT.

Okay, so we start off with a girl who is dealt a horrible hand and is basically a slave to her brother. His wife and him treat her the absolute worst and I felt like she deserved better in li Minus stars.if that was an option. DNF @ 59% RANT FULL OF SPOILERS! I tried, my friends, I tried.

I can't believe I put myself through that. So I found this book based on my recs on Goodreads since I read. So say this book is even similar to The Golden Dynasty is an INSULT. Okay, so we start off with a girl who is dealt a horrible hand and is basically a slave to her brother.

His wife and him treat her the absolute worst and I felt like she deserved better in life. I was excited when I read her interaction with whatever the Duke's name was, he's not even worth racking my brain for his name. Well to say the Duke was a complete and UTTER ASSHOLEEEEE is such an understatement. So get this, he rapes the female and then she's feeling things for him and willingly sleeps with him over and over again.whyy???

He never showed you even the slightest bit of affection.I doubt he's THAT good in bed girl. So apparently after a couple nights in bed with that insufferable ass-butt, 'she knew she was in love with him' WHAAATTTT???????? This book has rape, a rape that the Heroine doesn't think it's rape.

And INSTA-LOVE. Two very big No-nos in my books. OHHHHH GUESS WHAT THIS STAND UP GUY DOES WHEN HE THINKS THE HEROINE IS SLEEPING WITH SOMEONE ELSE. HE NOT ONLY KILLS THE POOR INNOCENT, SWEET MAN BUT TORTURES HIM, TEARS HIM APART via TORTURE TABLE.

Yup, soooooo true love quality there. For some reason, I decided to stick it through and keep reading, thinking it would get better.

That would be a HELL NO. So she decides to leave but OF COURSE the asshole Duke catches her and kills all the people involved to punish her and they resume their weird sex-ship.like that's all they do. SEX and little miss innocent is all in love with him. Keep in mind, he has shown no growth as a character. I ended my torture there.I couldn't keep going if I wanted to remain sane. The writing wasn't even mind-blowingly awesome, to be quite honest, Denys lacks emotion in her work. Her characters undergo these life altering events that don't change them as a person, or they just don't feel anything.

The pacing is WAY off. I don't get how someone can fall in love with their rapist in just a few days.when again, there was no growth of character.

But, also maybe because she hasn't known kindness so she takes this sorry excuse of a man as a kind-ish man.?? This book was just awful and I honestly wish I could get back my time that I spent reading this horrendous 'story.' I put 'story' in parenthesis because.it didn't feel at all like a full blown story with character growth, rising action, plot, or just conflict (besides him going all psycho!!!) but like their relationship was at a standstill at 59%!!!!!!!!

Yup, I'm done. I don't give 5 stars easily but this book is truly one of the best books I have ever read!! Domenico is truly one of the nastiest male leads you will ever read he is an anti hero who kills at whim and is so cold he is also bi sexual something I would normally find off putting but as I read the book I became so engrossed that I almost forgot about it. Even though he does not become good in the end you can feel his obsession with the female lead from the first time he saw her you can also see his I don't give 5 stars easily but this book is truly one of the best books I have ever read!! Domenico is truly one of the nastiest male leads you will ever read he is an anti hero who kills at whim and is so cold he is also bi sexual something I would normally find off putting but as I read the book I became so engrossed that I almost forgot about it. Even though he does not become good in the end you can feel his obsession with the female lead from the first time he saw her you can also see his resolve in making sure that he would always keep her. The language at first is a bit difficult to get into but once you do it flows nicely.

The female lead is accepting of her role as his mistress but for some reason I did not find that off putting as I normally would I think in the end she knew she had no power over her situation and she was being sensible. If you like a book where a completely unredeemable male lead falls in love with a common woman to the point of obsession you will love this book as much as I did if I could I would rate this a 10 stars!! This is a dark read with death betrayal and love but no cheating which I loved if you have not tried it I urge you to read it!!!! Some Spoilerish Stuff about Content If You Haven't Read This Yet 1978. What inappropriate books was I reading the year I was eleven?

Let's see:, (ugh, gave me nightmares),, and old Harlequin Romances. Throw in the odd Nancy Drew and book (including a smuggled copy of ) and you can see how I ended up as such a twisted adult. Anyhow, I gotta say I never saw this book lying around anywhere back then. I did read Some Spoilerish Stuff about Content If You Haven't Read This Yet 1978.

What inappropriate books was I reading the year I was eleven? Let's see:, (ugh, gave me nightmares),, and old Harlequin Romances. Throw in the odd Nancy Drew and book (including a smuggled copy of ) and you can see how I ended up as such a twisted adult. Anyhow, I gotta say I never saw this book lying around anywhere back then. I did read that summer, which probably gave rise to all the other inappropriate reading I did. My mom bought me and (mostly to shut me up after I read Shanna), but I'm sure she would have put an immediate kibosh on a cover that looked like this one. So anyway, here I am, 33 years later and finally getting a chance to read it.

I'm glad I didn't read this as an 11 or 12 year old -- frankly, it would have bored the sh*t out of me back then. It's in the first person and there's barely any sex in it! At least, sex that is described, and that's what titillated little me was looking for back then. Read this as an adult, however, and it takes on an entirely new dimension. This is quite a story. I'm not going to describe it here; this review is mostly my thoughts on having read it.

I normally don't care for first person POV, mostly because of the obvious limitations on the story-telling. When first person is done badly, it stinks to high heaven. That's not the case with this book at all. The narration was beautifully done. You're right there with Felicia, without feeling like she is specifically describing things to you.

Teresa Denys was very talented. When I started reading the book, and got to the first 'love scene' (oh, who am I kidding, he capital R -raped her) I thought I was going to be in trouble.

'I do not know how long it was before I realized he had left me. A white hand touched my cheek, and I opened my eyes and saw the blood thick under this fingernails.'

What did he DO to her that there is that much blood? Then a few paragraphs later: 'My answer was smothered against his mouth. Every movement was pain, pain that he had inflicted; the coverlet underneath me was slimy with blood, and between my thighs was burning agony.' But, before long there was no more mention of cuts and bruises from her evenings with Domenico and I breathed a little easier. Or maybe there were and I just ignored them.:) As a matter of fact, once that chapter was done the book settled down into a very entertaining read.

I know it was marketed as a romance ( 'amid the gilded opulence and dark intrigue of Renaissance Italy grew a love that knew no bounds.' ) but I thought it ran closer to straight historical fiction. Scratch that. This is the way historical romances used to be written. In 1978 this WAS a historical romance. Ooops, off track again. Anyhow, it was a pretty compelling story once I got into it, full of intrigue and betrayal, love and stunning cruelty, jealousy and revenge, (Karla, no wonder you LOVED this one!) and by the end there was even a grovelling Hero and a pretty standard HEA.

I thought that Felicia was a bit dim from time to time and did a couple of really stupid things, but hey. She hasn't had the benefit of reading a couple of hundred historical romances like I have, so how would she know that everything he did was because he actually loved her? And Domenico -- oh, what a bastard. The first Hero I've ever read about who goes into throes of anger so great he practically passes out.

He's absolutely ruthless, domineering, spoiled and cruel. Stunning in his physical beauty, he takes his pleasure where he sees it - be it with men, soldiers or women. On the other hand, he has nightmares (DUH!) and is tormented by his role in the death of his stepmother. Just the kind of guy who, as Dr. Phil says, needs a soft place to fall. All kidding aside though, he didn't seem unrealistic for his time to me.

Those Italians were a pretty mean bunch. So here 's the bottom line: Am I glad I read it?

Yup Would I recommend it? Only to people whose tastes I'm familiar with. Did I like it?

As a dark, Renaissance gothicky-type story, yes. As a romance, I'm not sure. If this was 1978, you bet - they were all like that then. Nowadays I like a little more navel-gazing in my romances. Would I read Denys' other book?

She sure can tell a story. And thanks to my friend Karla (Mossy Love Grotto), without whom I would never have picked this up. What a delightfully odd book.:) There's much here that's traditional bodice-ripper material.

The heroine (Felicia) is raped by the hero (Domenico), yet she reluctantly comes to love & adore her captor. Her circ*mstances are more akin to slavery than courtship; she's a bought woman from common background, which gives her no standing except as Domenico's bedwarmer. But whether by choice or necessity, Felicia follows her abusive hero through thick & thin -- much of which includes violent h What a delightfully odd book.:) There's much here that's traditional bodice-ripper material. The heroine (Felicia) is raped by the hero (Domenico), yet she reluctantly comes to love & adore her captor. Her circ*mstances are more akin to slavery than courtship; she's a bought woman from common background, which gives her no standing except as Domenico's bedwarmer. But whether by choice or necessity, Felicia follows her abusive hero through thick & thin -- much of which includes violent happenings & 'no, no, yes!'

Sexual encounters. While dealing with the downsides of her troubled relationship with Domenico, she comes to know the many sides of her lover's personality.which ultimately leads to the confrontation in which our emotionally challenged hero must admit he's equally in love with her.

Yeah, I know.some people get their knickers in a twist over these tropes. Like Christine Monson's excellent but brutal Stormfire, this is a touchstone work in the bodice-ripper genre -- and there's a reason The Silver Devil is branded as such. It incorporates all that makes some readers shriek & rant about women's rights & toss the book aside in favor of bland Regency romances with their cuddlebug woobie-rakes. But as I said in my review of Stormfire, this oh-so-notorious book has much to be appreciated by a more open-minded (or less squeamish) reader. Denys' style is lyrical & lush -- more dense than the average BR, but not wordy per se. It's a very dark, gothic style; violence & beauty coexist in close confines, often in the same scene.or even the same paragraph.

There are some gruesome images in this book, & they're described in picturesque, loving detail -- the same as the instances of beauty & love. (Example: Felicia's virginity-taking is brutal & bloody, yet so elegantly written.) But despite a sweeping backdrop of grandeur & battle, each scene is claustrophic & intensely personal. Describes the story in terms of an opera, & I'd agree with that. Each scene has the feel of a gloomy, isolated stage piece that highlights the cast & their melodramatic antics. (And yes, I can imagine the dialogue in song, complete with uber-dramatic Italian solos & grandiose hand gestures.:D) Furthermore, The Silver Devil is narrated first-person by Felicia alone.

There are no infodumps on history or culture. Unless the reader has already studied up on Renaissance Italy culture, they'll flounder until the names, places, & relationships become more familiar -- which is no accident, I'm sure. Like Felicia, the reader is forced to rely on context & dialogue to gain their footing. Bottom line: it's not a book for stupid people. *looks askew at the current crop of Lowest Common Denominator romances* Would I recommend it for general audiences?

Probably not. Beautiful writing & style points aside, Domenico is a jerk of the highest order; his commanding neediness drove me nuts, & lowered the rating to four stars.

[I have a hard time with leading men that base their uber-psycho possessiveness on childhood trauma -- it makes me want to slap them silly, not fall into spasms of lust. I've always preferred the more stoic, standoffish loner-types. ].But would I recommend The Silver Devil for more daring readers of romantic historical fiction? Absolutely -- especially those who are tired of the modernized-and-sanitized army of cuddlebug woobie-rakes. (Blech.) N.B. Much thanks to Karla for lending me her copy.:).

Enthralling, Terrible and Wonderful, a Classic set in 17th century Italy This was my first by Denys. Her only other novel is The Flesh And The Devil, which is also wonderful. Both are set in 17th century Europe. The Silver Devil begins in 1605 north of Naples, Italy, at the time of the plague. It tells the story of Felicia Guardi, a commoner beauty who comes to the attention of Domenico della Raffaelle, the new Duke of Cabria, the one they call the “Silver Devil.” When her mother died, Felicia lea Enthralling, Terrible and Wonderful, a Classic set in 17th century Italy This was my first by Denys.

Her only other novel is The Flesh And The Devil, which is also wonderful. Both are set in 17th century Europe. The Silver Devil begins in 1605 north of Naples, Italy, at the time of the plague. It tells the story of Felicia Guardi, a commoner beauty who comes to the attention of Domenico della Raffaelle, the new Duke of Cabria, the one they call the “Silver Devil.” When her mother died, Felicia learned from her brother that she was bastard born. Forced by him and his wife to live in their house as a servant, Felicia becomes a sort of Cinderella. Though Felicia has had a hard life, she has virtue, integrity and wisdom that outshine all those around her.

Surely that is what Domenico saw when he chanced to glimpse her. Without her knowing it, Domenico buys Felicia from her half brother who drugs her so she can be taken to the duke’s palace.

Already ruined by having been taken to the duke, Felicia nevertheless fights the man who would have her (“a demon’s eyes in the face of a fallen angel” “as graceful as a leopard and as treacherous as murder”). After he takes her maidenhead, she realizes she has no choice but to stay with him until he tires of her, which according to what she is told, may be very soon as he runs through mistresses quickly. But Felicia is unlike any woman Domenico has ever known and he does not cast her off. Having just come to power, Domenico is aware of the seething treachery swirling around him. There are those who would prefer to see his half brother Alessandro rule the duchy. And Domenico knows he must take a wife and sire an heir so there are choices to be made.

But Felicia has fallen in love with him (“it was then, as I went to him like a falcon flying to his fist, that I realized I loved him”); and even knowing she will be set aside, she stays. I can’t say enough good about this classic. Brilliantly written with attention to detail reflecting much research into the era and the politics of the time, it is a fascinating story of warring families and the vicious actions some take to stay in power. The prose is nearly lyrical at times and Denys’ writing is truly beautiful in its descriptions. Few authors could do it so well. The plot is intricate and captured me from the start.

Though told from the first person (we are only ever in Felicia’s head), it works for an intriguing story as we can only wonder what the Silver Devil is thinking behind his black eyes. Felicia is a wonderful heroine, and though he was often wicked, Domenico was a very worthy alpha male hero. I did not want to put it down. I highly recommend this one and it’s going on my Best Bodice Ripper list, My Favorite Heroes & Heroines list and my Top 20 list!

You’ll have to get it used, but get it! It's a keeper. Re-read 8/2013 Oh, I know this old bodice-ripper sets off a plethora of hot-buttons for many readers. Fortunately - not for me. All of those hot-button issues aside, this is a very well-written, cult-classic, book. The tone is very dark; Felicia's first person narrative detailed, enlightening, but not omniscient. Truly, though she is presented with all of the facts (albeit, ambiguous facts), she doesn't put things together very well in her naivety of the deviousness of Domenico's world.

This actua Re-read 8/2013 Oh, I know this old bodice-ripper sets off a plethora of hot-buttons for many readers. Fortunately - not for me. All of those hot-button issues aside, this is a very well-written, cult-classic, book.

The tone is very dark; Felicia's first person narrative detailed, enlightening, but not omniscient. Truly, though she is presented with all of the facts (albeit, ambiguous facts), she doesn't put things together very well in her naivety of the deviousness of Domenico's world.

This actually makes things more challenging for the reader - to pick up on the nuances that are Domenico, to look past his 'devilishness,' and see his true motives and feelings for her. In real life, Domenico would be a dangerous sociopath, but in Romancelandia, he is a romantic, over-the-top, jealous, possessive hero of the first degree. Truly one of my favorite books, despite it's increasingly non-politically correct nature. Wow, I don't know quite what to say about this book. As my rating shows, it's a damn good book and everything, even the characters with all their flaws, worked.

I was hesitant about the first person narration, but I don't know how this book could have worked any other way. Felicia, the illiterate and illegitimate tavern maid, became entirely dependent on Domenico and was in nearly all respects a fairly pitiful woman.

She waited patiently for any crumbs of his love like a starving dog. This kind Wow, I don't know quite what to say about this book. As my rating shows, it's a damn good book and everything, even the characters with all their flaws, worked. I was hesitant about the first person narration, but I don't know how this book could have worked any other way. Felicia, the illiterate and illegitimate tavern maid, became entirely dependent on Domenico and was in nearly all respects a fairly pitiful woman. She waited patiently for any crumbs of his love like a starving dog.

This kind of doormat usually scores no points with me, but the way her character was set up, it made total sense, and her point of view made me more charitable. Boy, is Domenico unlikeable!

I hated his guts through the entire thing and even the final grovel didn't make him any better. Felicia by this time is realistic enough to realize that he hasn't changed all that much, either. The man is a spoiled, petulant, dangerous man who has never been denied anything his entire life. When he wants something, he takes it. If anybody stands in his way, or gives the slightest offense, the option of murder is totally on the table. A has already been done, but of course I also imagined the fabulous Dmitri Hvorostovsky as Domenico, because how could you not if you know of this guy? If Dmitri hadn't been in the mind's eye the entire time, I don't think I could have gotten past the absolute reprehensible creature of the Duke of Cabria.

But since he was. (pardon some picGIFspam of the brooding beast) [ ] He's really a psycho, caressing Felicia one second, crushing her fingers or wrist the next. Felicia is totally in the grip of Stockholm Syndome and there ain't no comin' out of it. Just one of Domenico's more tender PDA moments Teresa Denys is an amazing writer.

It took me about 50 pages to get into her particular style. It is very dense, ornately written, and yet feels very authentic.

It suited the OTT characters and goings-on and even without the hunky Russian baritone filling my thoughts, the entire book felt like one of Verdi's early melodramatic operas like. Final verdict is 4 1/2 stars, due to a downswing in the action near the end, but other than that - what a fantastic bodice ripper that wears the veneer of a little something more. I can't wait to read Denys'. This is a fabulous historical study based on real life accounts of various members of the Borgia's and de Medici's melded into one very interesting character. The H, and I use that lightly, is so overwhelmingly a man of his times that I can practically breathe the wax scented air. Every other character, including the h, comes in a very second to the character that is Domenico.

You can really see where Machiavelli got his inspiration for or where Teresa Denys got hers. Just a note here This is a fabulous historical study based on real life accounts of various members of the Borgia's and de Medici's melded into one very interesting character.

The H, and I use that lightly, is so overwhelmingly a man of his times that I can practically breathe the wax scented air. Every other character, including the h, comes in a very second to the character that is Domenico. You can really see where Machiavelli got his inspiration for or where Teresa Denys got hers.

Just a note here for historical purposes. TD did her research really well, including the various acts of bi-sexuality that the H displays. That bi-sexuality is a hold over from medieval times, it wasn't who you were doing, it was more who was doing what to whom. A powerful man could, would and did use the act of penetration to enforce his will or his dominance. While not widely talked about, it happened and contrary to modern belief, that did not diminish a man in the eyes of peers.

Also the torture and the elimination of various characters in various ways are all documented acts of one ruler or another. TD did not have to use her imagination to have Domenico do these things, they are all actual things real Italian rulers did. TD's talent was to give background and depth to the men who committed these acts, and while it may be a very unusual romance, TSD is a brilliant look at a way of life modern readers will never know. Call me crazy, and I probably am, but I absolutely loved this medivial romance between a king and his courtesan.

At 15 years old I found it in the back of my mother's closet, read it through to the last page only to reopen it and read it through again. The entire story is told from the courteson's point of view and she is really kept in the dark in regards to her lover's real feelings and yet she's willing to risk her life just to remain close to him. Sappy, I know, but in my teen years I couldn Call me crazy, and I probably am, but I absolutely loved this medivial romance between a king and his courtesan.

At 15 years old I found it in the back of my mother's closet, read it through to the last page only to reopen it and read it through again. The entire story is told from the courteson's point of view and she is really kept in the dark in regards to her lover's real feelings and yet she's willing to risk her life just to remain close to him. Sappy, I know, but in my teen years I couldn't get enough of this story. Over-the-top craptastic crap lacking any romance and fun.

A homicidal, rapist hero whom I'm betting Joffrey Baratheon* was modeled after? Gimme, gimme! Reading other reviews, it doesn't look as if character growth was in the cards for this turd either.

Domenico's characterization may be a historically accurate portrayal of the nobility (oh, such an ironic term) living in early seventeenth-century Italy, but I don't find such tyrannical behavior appealing in a romantic hero. Don't get me star Over-the-top craptastic crap lacking any romance and fun.

A homicidal, rapist hero whom I'm betting Joffrey Baratheon* was modeled after? Gimme, gimme! Reading other reviews, it doesn't look as if character growth was in the cards for this turd either. Domenico's characterization may be a historically accurate portrayal of the nobility (oh, such an ironic term) living in early seventeenth-century Italy, but I don't find such tyrannical behavior appealing in a romantic hero. Don't get me started on the insta-love on the heroine's part. He's not even a good lova. Just because the author—via Felicia and Domenico's past lovers—said so doesn't make it true.

This reader wasn't shown any proof of his supposed sexual prowess. Minus the brutal deflowering and rape of virginal Felicia, the sex scenes were all tell, not show.

Not that sexual skill excuses bad behavior, but that's all that Felicia had to go by at this point in time. Domenico hadn't really shown her any tenderness or true nobility of character yet, if at all; only his cruel, petulant, and petty side. So the author skimped on portraying a convincing romance but, don't worry, she didn't hold back on detailing the minutiae of everything else though. I couldn't take the torture anymore and stopped at the 47% mark. *For those unfamiliar with Joffrey. 3 stars--I liked the book.

Some mild spoilers. I read this expecting something more gothic, from the cover and description.

But despite some gothic elements, it's definitely a historical romance. This book has a reputation for being vile, and it is. Make no mistake: this hero is not an alpha male.

He is a serial rapist and abuser. He enjoys murder and torture (both physical and mental), and has the emotional range of Prince Joffrey. The heroine (whom the hero literally buys) has no spine at all; 3 stars--I liked the book. Some mild spoilers.

I read this expecting something more gothic, from the cover and description. But despite some gothic elements, it's definitely a historical romance. This book has a reputation for being vile, and it is. Make no mistake: this hero is not an alpha male. He is a serial rapist and abuser.

He enjoys murder and torture (both physical and mental), and has the emotional range of Prince Joffrey. The heroine (whom the hero literally buys) has no spine at all; I'm surprised she can even stand upright. She trembles and faints her way through this book. The one time she takes action (dressing like a boy to follow the hero and his men to war), you get the feeling it's more for plot convenience (the book is written in first person) rather than any agency on her part. But for some reason, she desperately loves the hero (Stockholm syndrome? Masochism?), despite the repeated rapes and violence. This book isn't graphic, but I winced through the descriptions of the heroine's rapes; they're emotionally devastating.

(I'm not going to address the topic of rape in these vintage--and modern--bodice rippers, but it's a fascinating and complicated subject that I don't entirely understand.) Despite this, I couldn't stop reading. This book is so melodramatic that it demands your attention. The plot is over the top, the characters are completely ridiculous and fascinating, and the writing? Denys' settings are vivid and her characters jump off the page. The political scheming elements and historical details were really stellar. It's a pity Denys only wrote two novels; I think with time and growth, she could have moved past this rapey subgenre of romance and written some masterpieces.

My first impression of the book after having read it was -- this book is not shallow like so many others that fall in the genre of romance. It is love story between a duke and an innocent young girl 'forced into sin' by him.Even though the duke,our hero comes across as a ruthless tyrant and a despot, the care and compassion he shows to the girl (sometimes even against his true nature) are endearing. There are times when due to his sheer cruelty and indifference to the human suffering he inflicts,o My first impression of the book after having read it was -- this book is not shallow like so many others that fall in the genre of romance. It is love story between a duke and an innocent young girl 'forced into sin' by him.Even though the duke,our hero comes across as a ruthless tyrant and a despot, the care and compassion he shows to the girl (sometimes even against his true nature) are endearing. There are times when due to his sheer cruelty and indifference to the human suffering he inflicts,one wonders if he really is our true hero. But given his circ*mstances, his upbringing and above all his past, his actions are understandable if not totally justifiable.

I would also like to say that romance is only a part of this book because it has so much more; a well detailed war plot, well described lifestyles and well developed characters. There are both direct and indirect references to incest as well as hom*osexuality.

Lastly I would add that it may bother some that the book is written in the third person from the heroine's perspective. I personally don't like books written in the third person but this one seemed and (luckily) turned out to be too good a read to be missed just because of that one, if i may say, shortcoming. AND it has a HEA:)) for all the romantics out there i would like to sa=y that this book has one of the most touching 'confession of love' scenes, esp for a medevial romance. Of all books I have read, this is in strong contention for having the most vile plot and characters. I got recommended this because of some similarities to a series I loved (Lymond).

And the setting sounded interesting, a sort of historical romance set on renaissance (fantasy version) Italy. Now the cover and blurb warn you this is a old-school boddice ripper (of the old old kind, not the wider derogatory term applied to generic romance novels, clothing really got ripped in anger). Of all books I have read, this is in strong contention for having the most vile plot and characters. I got recommended this because of some similarities to a series I loved (Lymond). And the setting sounded interesting, a sort of historical romance set on renaissance (fantasy version) Italy. Now the cover and blurb warn you this is a old-school boddice ripper (of the old old kind, not the wider derogatory term applied to generic romance novels, clothing really got ripped in anger). And it is totally unlikeable, over-the-top without being fun, hateful gender roles, without any humour or self-consciousness from the author to make it camp.

Horrible horrible book. “I forbid you to go.' 'I am not yours to forbid. Comfort your pride with your conquest!'

The raw anguish of it stopped me. Tears were threatening to spill from my eyes so that I had to bend my head, fighting for self-control, and I did not hear him come up beside me. His hand touched my shoulder, then dropped again as I shivered. 'Does this look like pride?' His voice was shaking.

'Or must I grovel?' He was on his knees at my feet, and as I watched he lifted the hem of my gown to his lips and kissed it. I made some sort of sound in my throat, but I could not speak. 'You cannot go.' He spoke in a whisper, without lifting his head. I have always loved you--I bought you from your vile brother because I could not live without you.'

As I stared down at his bowed, bright head, the earth shook under my feet. This could not be happening, I thought.” —.