(0)Juliet Stevenson
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" A glorious, sweeping novel of desire, ambition, and the thirst for knowledge, from the # 1 New York Times bestselling author of Eat, Pray, Love and Committed. In The Signature of All Things, Elizabeth Gilbert returns to fiction, inserting her inimitable voice into an enthralling story of love, adventure and discovery. Spanning much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the novel follows the fortunes of the extraordinary Whittaker family as...
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Recruited into MI5 against a backdrop of the Cold War in 1972, Cambridge student Serena Frome, a compulsive reader, is assigned to infiltrate the literary circle of a promising young writer whose politics align with those of the government, a situation that is compromised when she falls in love with him.
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"Natalie Jenner, the internationally bestselling author of The Jane Austen Society, returns with a compelling and heartwarming story of post-war London, a century-old bookstore, and three women determined to find their way in a fast-changing world in Bloomsbury Girls. Bloomsbury Books is an old-fashioned new and rare book store that has persisted and resisted change for a hundred years, run by men and guided by the general manager's unbreakable fifty-one...
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It is 1922, and London is tense. Ex-servicemen, the out-of-work and hungry are demanding change. In a genteel Camberwell villa -- a large, silent house now bereft of brothers, husband, and servants -- impoverished widow Mrs. Wray and her spinster daughter, Frances, are obliged to take in lodgers. Little do the Wrays know just how profoundly their new tenants will alter the course of Frances's life -- or how far-reaching the disturbances will be.
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On a dark midwinter's night in an ancient inn on the river Thames, a wounded stranger carries in the lifeless body of a small child. Hours later the girl stirs, and returns to life. Is it a miracle? Magic? As the days pass the child remains mute and unable to answer questions. Three families are keen to claim her: the wealthy mother of a kidnapped daughter missing for two years; a farming family sure it is their son's secret daughter; a parson's housekeeper,...
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In 1780s London, a prosperous merchant finds his quiet life upended when he unexpectedly receives a most unusual creature --and meets a most extraordinary woman-- in this much-lauded, atmospheric debut that examines our capacity for wonder, obsession, and desire with all the magnetism, originality, and literary magic of The Essex Serpent. One September evening in 1785, Jonah Hancock hears an urgent knocking on his front door near the docks of London....
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In Sweden there is a kind of decluttering called döstädning, dö meaning "death" and städning meaning "cleaning." Margareta instructs readers to embrace minimalism, and suggests which possessions you can easily get rid of (unworn clothes, unwanted presents, more plates than you'd ever use) and which you might want to keep (photographs, love letters, a few of your children's art projects). Digging into her late husband's tool shed, and her own...
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Ten years on from her last novel, Edna O'Brien reminds us why she is thought to be one of the great Irish writers of this and any generation. When a wanted war criminal from the Balkans, masquerading as a faith healer, settles in a small west coast Irish village, the community are in thrall. One woman, Fidelma McBride, falls under his spell and in this astonishing novel, Edna O'Brien charts the consequences of that fatal attraction. The Little Red...
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"The Nine follows the true story of the author's great aunt Hélène Podliasky, who led a band of nine female resistance fighters as they escaped a German forced labor camp and made a ten-day journey across the front lines of WWII from Germany back to Paris. The nine women were all under thirty when they joined the resistance. They smuggled arms through Europe, harbored parachuting agents, coordinated communications between regional sectors, trekked...
12) Miss Austen
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""A deeply imagined and deeply moving novel. Reading it made me happy and weepy in equally copious amounts." -Karen Joy Fowler For fans of Jo Baker's Longbourn, a witty, poignant novel about Cassandra Austen and her famous sister, Jane. Whoever looked at an elderly lady and saw the young heroine she once was? England, 1840. For the two decades following the death of her beloved sister, Jane, Cassandra Austen has lived alone, spending her days visiting...
13) Northanger Abbey
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In 18th century Bath, a girl bursting with freshness and passion for macabre Gothic novels experiences intrigue, adventure, and romance, especially when the romantic Henry Tilney invites her to his ancestral home.
14) Belgravia
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"On the evening 15 June 1815, the great and the good of British society have gathered in Brussels at what is to become one of the most tragic parties in history -- the Duchess of Richmond's ball. For this is the eve of the Battle of Waterloo, and many of the handsome young men attending the ball will find themselves, the very next day, on the battlefield. For Sophia Trenchard, the young and beautiful daughter of Wellington's chief supplier, this night...
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"Jane Start is thirty-three, broke, and recently single. Ten years prior, she had a hit song--written by world-famous superstar Jonesy--but Jane hasn't had a breakout since. Now she's living out of four garbage bags at her parents' house, reduced to performing to Karaoke tracks in Las Vegas. Rock bottom. But when her longtime manager Pippa sends Jane to London to regroup, she's seated next to an intriguing stranger on the flight--the other Tom Hardy,...
16) Apple Tree Yard
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"An intelligent, erotically charged thriller with deep moral implications. Yvonne Carmichael, renowned geneticist, public authority, happily married mother of two, sits in the accused box. The charge is murder. Across the courtroom, not meeting her eye, sits her alleged accomplice. He wears the beautiful pin-striped suit he wore on their first meeting in the Houses of Parliament, when he put his hand on her elbow, guided her to a deserted and ancient...
17) Persuasion
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Appears on list
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"Jane Austen's final novel is her most mature and wickedly satirical. It follows the story of Anne Elliott, a teenager engaged to a seemingly ideal man, Frederick Wentworth. But after being persuaded by her friend Lady Russell that he is too poor to be a suitable match, Anne ends their engagement. When they are reacquainted eight years later, their circumstances are transformed: Frederick is returning triumphantly from the Napoleonic War, while Anne's...
18) Emma
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Emma Woodhouse is a young woman who, having engineered the marriage of her companion, turns her attention toward making a match for the local vicar and her new protegée, Harriet Smith. Her one voice of reason and restraint is Mr. Knightley, who has known her since she was a child and who watches her behaviour with wry amusement and sometimes with real anger. Emma presides over the small provincial world of Highbury with enthusiasm, but she will...
19) Black Beauty
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One of the best loved animal stories ever written, the dramatic and heartwarming Black Beauty is told by the magnificent horse himself, from his idyllic days on a country squire's estate to his harsh fate as a London cab horse. No one can ever forget the gallant Black Beauty, a horse with a white star on his forehead and a heart of unyielding courage.
20) Jane Eyre
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In early nineteenth-century England, an orphaned young woman accepts employment as a governess and soon finds herself in love with her employer who has a terrible secret. Charlotte Bronte's novel about the passionate love between Jane Eyre, a young girl alone in the world, and the rich, brilliant, domineering Rochester has enthralled every kind of reader, from the most critical and cultivated to the youngest and most unabashedly romantic, ever since...
