Anne Youngson4.5 When Tina Hopgood writes a letter of regret to a man she has never met, she doesn't expect a reply.
When Anders Larsen, a lonely museum curator, answers it, neither does he.
They're both searching for something - they just don't know it yet.
Anders has lost his wife, along with his hopes and dreams for the future. Tina is trapped in a marriage she doesn't remember choosing.
Slowly their correspondence blossoms as they bare their souls to each other with stories of joy, anguish and discovery. But then Tina's letters suddenly cease, and Anders is thrown into despair.
Хезер Моррис4.1 Основанный на реальных событиях жизни Людвига (Лале) Соколова, роман Хезер Моррис является свидетельством человеческого духа и силы любви, способной расцветать даже в самых темных местах. И трудно представить более темное место, чем концентрационный лагерь Освенцим/Биркенау.
В 1942 году Лале, как и других словацких евреев, отправляют в Освенцим. Оказавшись там, он, благодаря тому, что говорит на нескольких языках, получает работу татуировщика и с ужасающей скоростью набивает номера новым заключенным, а за это получает некоторые привилегии: отдельную каморку, чуть получше питание и относительную свободу перемещения по лагерю. Однажды в июле 1942 года Лале, заключенный 32407, наносит на руку дрожащей молодой женщине номер 34902. Ее зовут Гита. Несмотря на их тяжелое положение, несмотря на то, что каждый день может стать последним, они влюбляются и вопреки всему верят, что сумеют выжить в этих нечеловеческих условиях. И хотя положение Лале как татуировщика относительно лучше, чем остальных заключенных, но не защищает от жестокости эсэсовцев. Снова и снова рискует он жизнью, чтобы помочь своим товарищам по несчастью и в особенности Гите и ее подругам. Несмотря постоянную угрозу смерти, Лале и Гита никогда не перестают верить в будущее. И в этом будущем они обязательно будут жить вместе долго и счастливо…
Su Bristow4.2 Donald is a young fisherman, eking out a lonely living on the west coast of Scotland. One night he witnesses something miraculous, and makes a terrible mistake. His action changes lives—not only his own, but those of his family and the entire tightly knit community in which they live. Can he ever atone for the wrong he has done, and can love grow when its foundation is violence? Based on the legend of the selkies—seals who can transform into people—evokes the harsh beauty of the landscape, the resilience of its people, both human and animal, and the triumph of hope over fear and prejudice. With exquisite grace, Su Bristow transports us to a different world, subtly and beautifully exploring what it means to be an outsider, and our innate capacity for forgiveness and acceptance. Rich with myth and magic, Sealskin is, nonetheless, a very human story, as relevant to our world as to the timeless place in which it is set.
Шейла Луэллин0.0 A stirring debut novel about the complex relationship between a soldier and his psychiatrist, set in a failing psychiatric hospital between the end of the Second World War and the founding of the NHS.
Set in Northfield, an understaffed military psychiatric hospital immediately before the NHS is founded, Walking Wounded is the story of a doctor and his patient: David Reece, a young journalist-to be whose wartime experiences in Burma have come back to haunt him violently; and Daniel Carter, one of the senior psychiatrists, a man who is fighting his own battles as well as those of his patients.
This moving and impressive debut explores violence and how much harm it does to those forced to inflict it in the name of war. It also captures the dilemmas of the medics themselves as they attempt to 'fix' their patients, each of whom raise the question of what has happened to their humanity, what can be done to help them, and what we are willing to sacrifice in the name of healing.
Norma MacMaster0.0 ‘I eke out my days here with care; spend them carefully, one at a time, like pennies in this one little room where all the straggles and strays of my life are gathered up neat as a ball of wool; the eighty-three years of them drawn taut to a single hard knot that weighs me down like a stone.’
From her bed in a Dublin nursing home, Harriet Campbell reflects on the time, long ago, when the second greatest joy in her life was her newborn son James; only her God had a greater claim to her love.
It is the 1920s in the shadowlands south of the border. Harriet and her husband Thomas are respected members of their strict Presbyterian Congregation; indeed, Thomas has just been made an Elder. But this is a changing Ireland, where the sway of the Roman Catholic Church is at its height, and the community is becoming increasingly isolated. Little does Harriet realise that, as James grows up, she will be forced to choose between faith and family.
Written in startlingly beautiful prose, Norma MacMaster’s Silence Under a Stone is an intimate, deeply moving human story, where sometimes the price of an unyielding faith is too great to bear.
Салли Магнуссон0.0 In 1627 Barbary pirates raided the coast of Iceland and abducted some 400 of its people, including 250 from a tiny island off the mainland. Among the captives sold into slavery in Algiers were the island pastor, his wife and their three children. Although the raid itself is well documented, little is known about what happened to the women and children afterwards. It was a time when women everywhere were largely silent.
In this brilliant reimagining, Sally Magnusson gives a voice to Ásta, the pastor's wife. Enslaved in an alien Arab culture Ásta meets the loss of both her freedom and her children with the one thing she has brought from home: the stories in her head. Steeped in the sagas and folk tales of her northern homeland, she finds herself experiencing not just the separations and agonies of captivity, but the reassessments that come in any age when intelligent eyes are opened to other lives, other cultures and other kinds of loving.
The Sealwoman's Gift is about the eternal power of storytelling to help us survive. The novel is full of stories - Icelandic ones told to fend off a slave-owner's advances, Arabian ones to help an old man die. And there are others, too: the stories we tell ourselves to protect our minds from what cannot otherwise be borne, the stories we need to make us happy.
