Set in Saigon during the First Indochina War (1946 – 1954), this story is narrated by Thomas Fowler, a cynical British journalist, and revolves around his relationship with Alden Pyle, a naive and idealistic American CIA operative, and Phuong, a young Vietnamese woman. Fowler lives a comfortable, detached life in Saigon with his beautiful young […]

This story is narrated by Thomas McNulty, who escapes the starvation of Ireland’s Great Famine and arrives in Missouri. As a penniless teenager under the age of 16, he meets John Cole. The two boys form an immediate, deep bond that blossoms into a lifelong romantic relationship. To survive, they take a job in a

This novel is a comedy of manners set in post-war London. Mildred Lathbury’s predictable routine is disrupted when a glamorous, somewhat chaotic couple moves into the flat below hers. Helena Napier is an anthropologist, and her handsome husband, Rockingham (Rocky) Napier, is a recently demobilised naval officer. Mildred quickly finds herself drawn into their messy

Here’s 560 pages of hokum to get your teeth into. After a decades-long subterranean slumber, The Vampire Lestat awakens to a highly commercialised modern world. Captivated by the era, he joins a mortal rock band, becomes an international superstar, and explicitly breaks the sacred vampire law of secrecy by revealing his true nature to humanity

This collection of 33 nineteenth-century tales, captures a world of society women, playboys, prostitutes, and Normandy peasants. Guy de Maupassant (Remembering Maupassant | Arts and Entertainment | BBC World Service) lays bare the dual nature of humanity, highlighting both nobility and a deep-seated hypocrisy. Expect genuine levity and fun combined with severe psychological darkness, echoing

This is a tragic 1937 novella by John Steinbeck (John Steinbeck – Biographical – NobelPrize.org) that tells the story of George Milton and Lennie Small, two displaced migrant workers searching for job opportunities in California during the Great Depression. George is sharp and protective, while Lennie is a physically massive man with an intellectual disability.

This historical novel begins in 1752 in Liverpool. William Kemp, a merchant facing mounting debts, stakes his entire remaining fortune on constructing a slave ship named the Liverpool Merchant. To protect his investment, Kemp hires his idealistic nephew, Matthew Paris, a disgraced doctor and scientist, to serve as the ship’s surgeon. Kemp reasons that keeping

This story opens and closes in April 1950 with the discovery and retrieval of a sunken steam locomotive from the deep waters of Flathead Lake, Montana. Inside a boxcar are the skeletal remains of three individuals who had died forty-four years previously, hinting at a long-buried secret and a lost fortune. The core of the

Alicia Berenson is a successful London painter married to a fashion photographer, Gabriel. One evening, Gabriel returns home late, and Alicia shoots him five times in the face. When police arrive, she is found covered in blood next to his body, completely mute. She never speaks again, making her only statement through a haunting self-portrait