FROM THE GLOBALLY BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING 'Bittersweet ... dazzling' Guardian 'Deeply pleasurable ... the ending made me cry' The Times 'Told with a wealth of detail and narrative intensity' Penelope Lively Violet is 38. The First World War took everything from her. Her brother, her fiance - and her future. She is now considered a 'surplus woman'. But Violet is also fiercely independent and determined. Escaping her suffocating mother, she moves to Winchester to start a new life -a change that will require courage, resilience and acts of quiet rebellion. And when whispers of another world war surface, she must live with a secret that could change everything...
''A wonderful book; rich, evocative, original. I loved it'' Joanne Harris ''One in ten trees comes up sweet...'' In the inhospitable Black Swamp of Ohio, the Goodenough family are barely scratching out a living. Life there is harsh, tempered only by the apples they grow for eating and for the cider that dulls their pain. Hot-headed Sadie and buttoned-up James are a poor match, and Robert and his sister Martha can only watch helplessly as their parents tear each other apart. One particularly vicious fight sends Robert out alone across America, far from his sister, to seek his fortune among the mighty redwoods and sequoias of Gold Rush California. But even across a continent, he can feel the pull of family loyalties...
In the year of the 150th anniversary of Origin of Species, set in a town where Jane Austen was a frequent visitor, Tracy Chevalier once again shows her uncanny sense for the topical
Flames and funerals, circus feats and seduction, neighbours and nakedness: a sparkling historical drama from the bestselling author of Girl with a Pearl Earring.London 1792. The Kellaways move from familiar rural Dorset to the tumult of a cramped, unforgiving city. They are leaving behind a terrible loss, a blow that only a completely new life may soften.Against the backdrop of a city jittery over the increasingly bloody French Revolution, a surprising bond forms between Jem, the youngest Kellaway boy, and streetwise Londoner Maggie Butterfield. Their friendship takes a dramatic turn when they become entangled in the life of their neighbour, the printer, poet and radical, William Blake. He is a guiding spirit as Jem and Maggie navigate the unpredictable, exhilarating passage from innocence to experience. Their journey inspires one of Blake's most entrancing works.Georgian London is recreated as vividly in Burning Bright as 17th-century Delft was in Tracy Chevalier's bestselling masterpiece, Girl with a Pearl Earring. This novel is perfect for fans of Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus and Essie Fox's Somnambulist.
A stunning novel of female friendship, forbidden love and evolution from the bestselling author of Girl with a Pearl Earring.In the early nineteenth century, a windswept beach along the English coast brims with fossils for those with the eye...From the moment she's struck by lightning as a baby, it is clear Mary Anning is different. Her discovery of strange fossilized creatures in the cliffs of Lyme Regis sets the world alight. But Mary must face powerful prejudice from a male scientific establishment, not to mention vicious gossip and the heartbreak of forbidden love.Then - in prickly, clever Elizabeth Philpot, a fossil-obsessed middle-class spinster - she finds a champion, and a rival. Despite their differences in class and age, Mary and Elizabeth's loyalty and passion for the truth must win out.Remarkable Creatures is a stunning novel of how one woman's gift transcends class and gender to lead to some of the most important discoveries of the nineteenth century. Above all, it is a revealing portrait of the intricate and resilient nature of female friendship.
Griet, a tilemaker's daughter in 17th-century Holland, starts her first job as a servant the Vermeer household. Through Griet's eyes the story is told of the family, the small town of Delft, and life with an obsessive genius. Griet is drawn into his life, but there is a price to pay.
