An American landscape designer searches for clues to her grandfather's suicide while gathering information for a wealthy client in Vita Sackville-West's famous White Garden at Sissinghurst Castle. She uncovers an intriguing mystery surrounding the death of Virginia Woolf and how and when it may have occurred. The passages that reflect the voices of Woolf and her contemporaries are the most compelling and full of period detail. Politics, literature and gardening blend in a thoroughly engaging read.
We Recommend
This new edition, 20 years after the third edition, has a modern, cleaner look with lots of white space and will be welcomed by birders who are fans of Peterson's approach. The editors have retained Peterson's preference for drawings rather than photographs, and many drawings are identical to the ones in the third edition but with brighter colours. The main differences for the birder lie in the colour-coded sections and the addition of small maps with each entry. The larger maps remain at the back of the book as in the former edition. Drawings and entries have been updated to include new information and name changes.
The story of Little Bee, orphaned when her village was burned, and the English woman who tries to help her. Little Bee was shortlisted for the Costa Award for Best Novel.
A New York Times correspondent’s affectionate, irreverent portrait of the Middle East he’s known since childhood – an unexplored place hidden behind the usual headlines.
The Sputnik Sweetheart tells the story of three acquaintances: the narrator, a 24-year-old Tokyo schoolteacher; his friend Sumire, an erratic, dreamy writer; and Miu, a beautiful married businesswoman with a secret in her past so harrowing it has turned her hair snowy white. Murakami plunges us into an urbane Japan of jazz bars, coffee shops, Jack Kerouac and the Beatles in this story of a tangled triangle of unrequited loves.
Danielle Trussoni describes growing up with her Vietnam veteran father, a man haunted by his wartime experiences as a tunnel rat. This memoir details their fierce commitment to each other despite the anger, unhealed battle scars, drinking and outrageous behaviour that permeated their lives.
Narrated in part by an unborn child, Mathur's novel traces the history of an Indian family and of India itself over several generations as the child manipulates fate to ensure its birth. A tale of physical and emotional journeys with just a touch of the surreal.
An irreverent and illuminating journey through a day in the life of the affectionately named Trauma Farm with numerous ruminations on the future of farming, rural life and civilization, as well as tales from Brett's 18 years of working his Saltspring Island farm, expressed with the poet's trademark lyricism and ebullience.
This is a beautifully crafted story of three brothers who lived, worked and loved in a time of turmoil and incalulable loss. At the heart of it is the love between Andras Lévi, a young talented architecture student from Hungary, and Klara Morgenstern. As Andras learns of Klara's painful past, they embark on a journey that takes them back from Paris to Budapest against the looming evil of the Nazis. This debut novel sheds light on the fate of Hungarian Jews and life in the Hungarian labour service camps. Orringer's lush and powerful writing will catapult you into the abyss of human suffering and lift you up to the reverberating truth of hope and love.
In this latest sharing of recipes, Deborah Madison entices you to enter the world of seasonal fruits in all their luscious glory. With more than 175 recipes, Deborah gives you techniques and advice on selecting and working with fruit. From homey classics to surprising fruit pairings, this book on fruit desserts will help you enjoy this summer’s bounty and encourage you to support our local growers.
David Trevellyan is summoned to the British Consulate in Chicago, to the same office where, just a week before, his new handler was attacked and shot by a Royal Navy Intelligence operative gone bad. Assigned the job of finding the rogue agent, Trevellyan finds that his hopes of saving countless innocent lives lie not within the system, but in his own instincts and skills.
The English Channel may be only 20 miles wide, but it's 1,000 years deep. Stephen Clarke takes a penetrating look into those murky depths, guiding us through all the times when Britain and France have been at war – or at least glowering at each other across the English Channel.
The story of Harrison William Shepherd, a man caught between two worlds – Mexico and the United States in the 1930s, '40s and '50s – and whose search for identity takes readers to the heart of the 20th century's most tumultuous events.
A sharp-witted knockdown of America's love affair with positive thinking and an urgent call for a new commitment to realism, existential clarity and courage.
Charles Croker, a middle-aged, egotistical former college football star turned tycoon, finds his life turned upside down and the delicate racial balance of Atlanta threatened, when star runningback Fareek Fanon is accused of date raping the daughter of a pillar of the white establishment.
David Sedaris takes us along on his catastrophic detours through a nudist colony, a fruit-packing plant, his own childhood and a dozen more of the world's little purgatories.
Ella Rubenstein is 40 years old and unhappily married when she takes a job as a reader for a literary agent. Her first assignment is to read and report on Sweet Blasphemy, a novel written by a man named Aziz Zahara. Ella is taken by his tale of Shams's search for Rumi and the dervish's role in transforming the successful but unhappy cleric into a committed mystic, passionate poet and advocate of love. Ella realizes that Rumi's story mirrors her own and that Zahara, like Shams, has come to set her free.
Alexandra Fuller details her unique friendship with one of her parents' neighbors in Zambia: a white African banana farmer, veteran of the Rhodesian war and born-again Christian. Together, they travel through Africa to revisit scenes of the war, meet other veterans and come to terms with the horrors of warfare.
Victor, a freelance professional killer, is in Paris to perform a standard kill and collect for an anonymous client. The contract is simple, routine, and Victor completes it with trademark efficiency, only to find himself in the middle of an ambush and fighting for his life. But Victor is no easy target, and he's every bit as ruthless as those hunting him. He will find out who wants him dead and why, one corpse at a time.
Founded in 1977 by Sir Frank Williams and Patrick Head, Williams F1 represents the last of the true independent teams. At the heart of the book are Sir Frank's personal recollections, along with memories and anecdotes from those at every level: from the shop floor to the upper strata of management; from the mechanics and machinists to the drivers. Conveying the history and soul of a unique band of people, Williams explains exactly why the Williams team is held in more affection than any other team in Britain, if not the world.
Varieties of Disturbance is a collection of 57 rule-breaking short stories in which Lydia Davis proposes a clear account of the sexual act, rides the bus, gets lost in a foreign city, and addresses uncommon anxieties regarding etiquette, work, taste, the fourth grade, death and conversation.
Canadian artist Edward Burtynsky presents a decade's worth of photographs of the world's largest oil fields, refineries, freeway interchanges, automobile plants, junked vehicles and oil-tanker shipbreaking operations in an attempt to comprehend the scale of production attending this most politicized of resources. Warning: this book is heavy in more ways than one. Carry it home and prepare your body for the post-oil era.
A tale of love, lust and lucre where obsessive behaviour is exacerbated by the tedium of a long, snow-filled winter. Sounds like Winnipeg.
"A dog would follow you to the edge of the earth but anyone who has tried to put kitty in a pet carrier for a six-minute journey knows that cats ain’t going nowhere for nobody." You get the idea.
Nobel Prize-winning author Kenzaburo Oe takes readers from the forests of southern Japan to the washed-out streets of Berlin as he investigates the impact our real and imagined pasts have on our lives.
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