Ann Radcliffe (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Radcliffe) published this very early horror/thriller in 1794, establishing the popularity of the Gothic. Beautiful young heiress Emily St. Aubert is frightened when she finds herself orphaned and in the hands of her cold and distant aunt, Madame Cheron. But her fear turns to terror when Madame Cheron agrees to marry the haughty and […]
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This 1956 Arabic work from Naguib Mahfouz (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahfouz,_Naguib) is the first volume of his masterful Cairo Trilogy. It was translated into English in 1990. A national best-seller in both hardcover and paperback, Palace Walk introduces the engrossing saga of the Muslim al-Jawad family in Cairo during Egypt’s occupation by British forces during, and just after, the First World War. The modern day reader (I write
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Bill Bryson (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Bryson) offers us an education in science within one volume. Written in an entertaining style his approach to the subject matter is through the lives of the scientists who made the discoveries. The tone is conversational and the explanation assisted by homely metaphor. Bryson interviews leading researchers in their fields and reveals many an amusing
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This 1982 work from Thomas Keneally (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Keneally) is not so much historical fiction as fiction written in the service of history. Keneally takes great trouble to stick to the documented facts about The Holocaust. The result is a powerful evocation of the full horror of what happened within living memory, namely the greatest crime in human history.
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The advent of the First World War brought about the end of a whole way of life in the Scottish countryside that had persisted for perhaps a thousand years. With technological change picking up pace as well, the old patterns were swept away. It was a ‘sunset song’ for a harsh yet beautiful existence. In this novel of 1932
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This is the 2012 offering of ‘chick lit’ purveyor Sophie Kinsella. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophie_Kinsella) and (http://www.sophiekinsella.co.uk/) The summary goes as follows. Poppy Wyatt has never felt luckier. She is about to marry her ideal man, Magnus Tavish, but in one afternoon her ‘happily ever after’ begins to fall apart. Not only has she lost her engagement ring
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This is the first of Ellroy’s ‘L.A. Quartet’ – The Black Dahlia (1987), The Big Nowhere (1988) L.A. Confidential (1990), and White Jazz (1992). It’s Los Angeles 1947. Warrants Squad cops Bucky Bleichart and Lee Blanchard are called in to investigate the brutal murder of a beautiful young girl (christened ‘The Black Dahlia’ by the press) found
Penelope Fitzgerald (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penelope_Fitzgerald) gives us a historical novel set in Germany at the very end of the eighteenth century. The Blue Flower (1995) is the story of the brilliant Fritz von Hardenberg, a graduate of the Universities of Jena, Leipzig and Wittenberg. He is learned in Dialectics and Mathematics, and later became the great romantic poet and philosopher
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John Updike’s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Updike) most famous work is his Harry ‘Rabbit’ Angstrom quartet Rabbit Run (1960); Rabbit Redux (1971); Rabbit is Rich (1981); and Rabbit at Rest (1990). ‘Rabbit’ is the nickname that American high school basketball star Harry Angstrom obtains as a youngster. The series chronicles the life of Harry over several decades from young adulthood
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