“They saw him flung clear of the waves almost upon the rocks and twice the sea snatched him back. It seemed to play with him like an angler with a fish on the line; and, like a hooked fish, Fergus was tiring…”

When Fergus saved his sister, Stella, from drowning in Tangie Bay, it should have been a triumph.

But now that Stella is head of her own company, Fergus seems to have festered in his retirement, growing more and more resentful, caring only for his fish.

His wife, Flora, can feel him slipping away. Flora views her husband’s inadequacies with wry tolerance and occasional despair and it and doesn’t help that their ghastly neighbours, Eleanor and Letty, keep calling at all hours and indulging Fergus’s drinking habit.

Now that Stella is visiting again, Flora is hoping for brother and sister to reconcile, for another miracle.

But it doesn’t look like she will get it.

If anything, Fergus and Stella seem to be dragging each other down.

Hoping to escape, Fergus and Flora take their fateful trip to Tangie Bay...

A delicately crafted tragicomedy, The Daisy Rock is a book that refuses to let you go.
 

Praise for Eva Hanagan

‘Eva Hanagan tells a story of supernatural evil with such quiet conviction and sets it in such pleasing rural domesticity that its full force only slowly pervades the reader’s consciousness. When it does it is absolute …’ - Shirley Toulson, British Book News

‘Eva Hanagan writes with an easy and natural grace which gives to the life of her recluse an evocative, unforced descriptiveness of an impressive order.’ - Derek Stanford, Scotsman

‘Mrs Hanagan is good at uneasy states of mind and feelings, and very good at the temptations of suicide … an accomplished beginning.’ - Robert Nye, - Guardian

‘Between the covers of this book is a really thrilling story … It should restore to many a reader his faith in the pleasure of reading for reading’s sake.’ - West Sussex County Times

‘ … so beautifully and precisely visualised that I too was enthralled … a delicious piece of water-colour Gothic.’ - Michael Maxwell-Scott, Daily Telegraph

Eva Hanagan was a Scottish author, who died at the age of 85, in 2009. During a Foreign Office posting to Vienna after the Second World War, Hanagan met her husband, with whom she had two sons. She published her first novel, In Thrall, in 1977. Following which, there was a fairly rapid succession of novels: Playmates (1978), and A Knock at the Door (1982). She settled in Sussex, from where she authored her novels.

'If you read one historical novel this year, make it THE QUEEN'S MARY by Sarah Gristwood. It's a superb fictional rendering of a difficult subject. I could not put it down.' - bestselling author Alison Weir

Mary Seton is lady-in-waiting to the legendary Mary Queen of Scots.

Torn between her own desires and her duty to serve her mistress, she is ultimately drawn into her Queen's web of passion and royal treachery - and must play her part in the game of thrones between Mary and Elizabeth I.

Must she choose between survival, and sharing the same fate as the woman she has served, loyally and lovingly, since a child?

The Queen's Mary is an engaging and insightful novel, which allows the reader to peek behind the curtain of history - and see into the heart and mind of a forgotten woman who helped shape the Tudor era.

Fans of Phillipa Gregory, Alison Weir and The Tudors will love The Queen’s Mary.

Praise for The Queen’s Mary

'Sarah Gristwood breathes new life into the deeply tragic story of Mary Queen of Scots by telling it through the perspective of the invisible woman who sacrificed her life to serve her.' Elizabeth Freemantle, bestselling author of The Girl in the Glass Tower

Adapted for a magnificent George Roy Hill film three years later (perhaps the only film adaptation of a masterpiece which exceeds its source), Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) is the now famous parable of Billy Pilgrim, a World War II veteran and POW, who has in the later stage of his life become "unstuck in time" and who experiences at will (or unwillingly) all known events of his chronology out of order and sometimes simultaneously.

Traumatized by the bombing of Dresden at the time he had been imprisoned, Pilgrim drifts through all events and history, sometimes deeply implicated, sometimes a witness. He is surrounded by Vonnegut's usual large cast of continuing characters (notably here the hack science fiction writer Kilgore Trout and the alien Tralmafadorians who oversee his life and remind him constantly that there is no causation, no order, no motive to existence).

The "unstuck" nature of Pilgrim's experience may constitute an early novelistic use of what we now call Post Traumatic Stress Disorder; then again, Pilgrim's aliens may be as "real" as Dresden is real to him. Struggling to find some purpose, order or meaning to his existence and humanity's, Pilgrim meets the beauteous and mysterious Montana Wildhack (certainly the author's best character name), has a child with her and drifts on some supernal plane, finally, in which Kilgore Trout, the Tralmafadorians, Montana Wildhack and the ruins of Dresden do not merge but rather disperse through all planes of existence.

Slaughterhouse-Five was hugely successful, brought Vonnegut an enormous audience, was a finalist for the National Book Award and a bestseller and remains four decades later as timeless and shattering a war fiction as Catch-22, with which it stands as the two signal novels of their riotous and furious decade.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) is one of the most beloved American writers of the twentieth century. Vonnegut's audience increased steadily since his first five pieces in the 1950s and grew from there. His 1968 novel Slaughterhouse-Five has become a canonic war novel with Joseph Heller's Catch-22 to form the truest and darkest of what came from World War II.

Vonnegut began his career as a science fiction writer, and his early novels--Player Piano and The Sirens of Titan--were categorized as such even as they appealed to an audience far beyond the reach of the category. In the 1960s, Vonnegut became closely associated with the Baby Boomer generation, a writer on that side, so to speak.

Now that Vonnegut's work has been studied as a large body of work, it has been more deeply understood and unified. There is a consistency to his satirical insight, humor and anger which makes his work so synergistic. It seems clear that the more of Vonnegut's work you read, the more it resonates and the more you wish to read. Scholars believe that Vonnegut's reputation (like Mark Twain's) will grow steadily through the decades as his work continues to increase in relevance and new connections are formed, new insights made.

ABOUT THE SERIES

Author Kurt Vonnegut is considered by most to be one of the most important writers of the twentieth century. His books Slaughterhouse-Five (named after Vonnegut's World War II POW experience) and Cat's Cradle are considered among his top works. RosettaBooks offers here a complete range of Vonnegut's work, including his first novel (Player Piano, 1952) for readers familiar with Vonnegut's work as well as newcomers.

‘Audacious and spectacular’ -The Times

Every single one of us contains landscapes and characters, no matter if they’re real or imaginary, that no one, no partner, no lover, friend or even psychic can ever hope to see…

Anna Maria von Doderer is waiting. Waiting for a therapy patient she hasn’t seen for many years. She has to tell her about her diagnosis all that time ago. That she’d got it all wrong.

Chrissie knows she must meet the “Dod” and is apprehensive. Will Anna-Maria be able to see straight through her? But the news she now brings can only be told face to face.

The news about Egon.

Egon, the wild child of the woods, abandoned by his mother in a desperate bid for survival during the second world war.

Egon, who, in total innocence, has drawn so many lives together in a complex tapestry, with both miraculous and disastrous outcomes.

Margot, ex-Hollywood stand-in, British secret agent in the war and survivor of the Russian Gulags (labour camps), knows she is dying and looks back on her life; and the one pressing question: should she finally reveal the secret that she has been holding for the past forty years?

Told in their own voices, this story of fantastic coincidence and tragic consequence explores the human spirit; it’s amazing strengths and fatal weaknesses. It is indeed a glorious journey through many landscapes, both in the real world and of the mind.

How To Push Through is the fourth and final book of Carey Harrison’s The Heart Beneath Quartet, following Richard’s Feet, Cley and Egon.
Carey Harrison was born in Britain and raised in the United States where he has spent the majority of his working life. He began as a stage playwright, completing 42 plays for the stage and forty plays for BBC radio. He is also an actor, teach and novelist and was described in the Dublin Evening News as ‘one of the most accomplished writers of our time’. He lives in Woodstock, New York.

South African Abernathy Jones has thought a lot about dying…

At 20 years old, she has no desire for a long life. In the past year, she’s become quite adept at fantasising about how she’ll go; jumping off a building, swallowing a handful of pills, flinging herself off a bridge into oncoming traffic.

So when she finds herself on the verge of unconsciousness in the middle of a car wreck somewhere in southern California, she doesn’t think it’s a bad way to go.

Except for the fact that she’s not alone in that car.

There’s someone else bleeding next to her, and it’s not looking good for either of them.

There was a plan for dying, sure, but not one that included another person. Especially not someone she might be in love with.
Seemingly on the verge of something she’s desired for so long, Abby is confronted with a decision.

Live or die. Give up or fight on.

Simple enough, right?

Especially when you thought the choice was already made…

Reaching across the globe from Cape Town to California, A Sky Full of Stars is a story about despair, friendship, hope, love and being brave.

Melissa Josias is a young writer from Cape Town, South Africa. A self-proclaimed book nerd, she also loves avocados and thinks whales are cool. When she’s not writing or devouring ridiculous amounts of books, she’s daydreaming of faraway places that look good on postcards. When she’s not doing that, she is fervently busy writing her next novel.

PREGNANT VIRGIN WALKS INTO A TOWN...THE WEEK BEFORE CHRISTMAS!

"Expect the unexpected! ... A story with an intriguing premise, an author with a great witty voice, and characters that are well developed..." – Storm Goddess Book Reviews

A literary twist on the traditional Christmas story, A SEASON OF SECRETS is the perfect winter read for fans of Barbara Kingsolver, LOVE, ACTUALLY, and THE FAMILY STONE.

There's Something About Mary—something noticeable—that baby bump she’s sporting. And something no one could ever guess—her prenatal exam shows she’s never had sex. Which really puts tiny Bellingham, Indiana on the map! And thereon hangs the real tale—a funny, warm, surprising one.

Mary’s got her own secrets—lots of them. But so does everyone else in Bellingham. Violet the waitress wants something badly! Dr. Bob has big plans. Joe the Postman has regrets. Cammy has a secret love. And Ted may not be quite as godly as he’d like people to think.

The varied ways the townsfolk welcome this waif from nowhere, enfolding her into their hearts and lives despite the air of mystery and strangeness surrounding her (not to mention the TV cameras and paparazzi), is one part heartwarming, one part laugh-out-loud funny.

WHO WILL LIKE IT: Sophisticated readers who like their Christmas goodies a little bit tart and a little sweet--like lemon bars or cranberry shortbread; who prefer LOVE, ACTUALLY to A CHRISTMAS CAROL; who'd like to leave the true meaning of Christmas a little bit mysterious--and possibly open to miracles.

WHO WILL BE OFFENDED: No one! It isn't anti-religious or anti-Christian or anti-Christmas. But it isn't religious either. Whether you're Baptist, or Pagan or Jewish or atheist, it's guaranteed not to offend your sensibilities! Because it's not about religion any more than BAD SANTA is. Although it may poke gentle fun at some of our more materialistic traditions, it's a good-hearted tale that's all about hope. It might even make you feel festive!
 

The book is divided into four chapters, and each chapter serves a different purpose. Deals with a different pain. Heals a different heartache. Milk and Honey takes readers through a journey of the most bitter moments in life and finds sweetness in them because there is sweetness everywhere if you are just willing to look.

In Lotería, the spellbinding literary debut by Mario Alberto Zambrano, a young girl tells the story of her family’s tragic demise using a deck of cards of the eponymous Latin American game of chance.
 
With her older sister Estrella in the ICU and her father in jail, eleven-year-old Luz Castillo has been taken into the custody of the state. Alone in her room, she retreats behind a wall of silence, writing in her journal and shuffling through a deck of lotería cards. Each of the cards’ colorful images—mermaids, bottles, spiders, death, and stars—sparks a random memory.
 
Pieced together, these snapshots bring into focus the joy and pain of the young girl’s life, and the events that led to her present situation. But just as the story becomes clear, a breathtaking twist changes everything.

Beautiful full-color images of lotería cards are featured throughout this intricate and haunting novel.

The essence and meaning of transcendent love between two people—the kernel of human existence—is often found in the crucible of war. Such was the love between Bosko, a Serbian boy, and Admira, a Bosnian girl, who were caught in one of the most barbaric and brutal periods of the last century: the breakup of Yugoslavia.

The true story of Bosko and Admira captured the world’s attention, and the couple was embraced as the Romeo and Juliet of war-torn Sarajevo.

They would not be parted, even as they lived like animals among the dead and the dying; even as they hid from those who sought to destroy them. Bosko would not leave Admira when he had the chance. Admira risked her life so that they would never be separated. Caught in the maelstrom of a war, they lived their lives with passion and unbounded love for each other.

This novel is a fictionalized account of their love story.

In Sarajevo, where there was peace within despair and love amongst the hate on the blood-soaked sidewalks and ancient walls, it is said by some that you can still hear the whisper of these two lovers:

"Was there a time my love when we were not together."
"Never…never a time we shall not be together."

Mady Barnard is a thirty-three year old unmarried woman, who still lives with her mother…

However, it cannot go unnoticed that “Bad luck’s been on her even since she was born” .

Ever since then, her difficulties, combined with her unfriendly temperament, have become a favourite topic of conversation in the local community…

The Women’s League, in particular, can’t stop discussing Mady’s life, with their enthusiastic gossiping over regular cups of tea making it all too-clear that traditional village life is full of secrets and rumours.

But then a trip to Bristow results in an unlikely relationship forming between Mady and a local Welshman and no one is quite sure what the future has in store for them…

And soon flooding and forest fires disrupt family harmony and despite everything, the idea of community has never felt so strong, or as necessary.

Empathy and grievance are combined as each family tells of their distressing events and before long, marriage, birth and death connect them together.

Upon Several Occasions is an emotional literary tale, full of lively characters and creates a portrait of a community bound together.

Elizabeth Berridge (December 1919 – December 2009) was a novelist and critic. Born in London, where she was partly educated here, she later moved to Geneva. Berridge won the Yorkshire Post Novel of the Year Award, in 1964 for Across The Common.

‘No Hymn of Hate is among them, no glorification of slaughter, no note of boastfulness or blatancy, but a deep love of country, a clear, rational sense of the tragedy and dire necessity of what must be done...’

Published in 1918, this book is a biographical collection of war poems written by soldiers who lost their lives serving their country on the Western Front during the Great War.

Written tenderly and with a surfeit of emotion, Arthur St. John Adcock, a skilled anthologist, takes Chaucer and Pope as evidence that English poets have always discussed warfare and conflict.

Some of the soldiers who perished were scholarly, who had been to good public schools and the great universities to learn discipline and the arts, and combined them in their texts. Many others were less educated, and experimented for the first time, leaving behind raw emotion unencumbered by rhetorical flourishes.

Poets whose names have lasted the ages feature, such as Rupert Brooke, among forty or so men who wrote of various subjects while on the front. Sometimes they recalled happier times, while at others they documented the grim realities of war.

The natural world, the danger of weapons and the sense of honour and patriotism all come through in the verses quoted in the book, the lives of whose writers gives a context to already powerful text.

We have an anthology here from men who did not live to see their words inside it which, a hundred year after Armistice, remains a glorious tribute to the words of the fallen.

Arthur St. John Adcock (17 January 1864 – 9 June 1930), was a journalist, novelist and poet whose books included Songs of the War, Love in London and The Booklover’s London.

Becca Meister Fitzpatrick—wife, mother, grandmother, and pillar of the community—is the dutiful steward of her family’s iconic summer tradition . . . until she discovers her recently deceased husband squandered their nest egg. As she struggles to accept that this is likely her last season in Long Harbor, Becca is inspired by her granddaughter’s boldness in the face of impending single-motherhood, and summons the courage to reveal a secret she was forced to bury long ago: the existence of a daughter she gave up fifty years ago. The question now is how her other daughter, Rachel—with whom Becca has always had a strained relationship—will react.


Eden is the account of the days leading up to the Fourth of July weekend, as Becca prepares to disclose her secret and her son and brothers conspire to put the estate on the market, interwoven with the century-old history of Becca’s family—her parents’ beginnings and ascent into affluence, and her mother’s own secret struggles in the grand home her father named “Eden.”

A brief, unnerving, and exceptionally hard-hitting novel about time and loss as only the bestselling and National Book Award-winning author of White Noise and Underworld can tell it.

In this potent and beautiful novel, the writer The New York Times calls “prophetic about twenty-first-century America” looks into the mind and heart of a scholar who was recruited to help the military conceptualize the war.

We see Richard Elster at the end of his service. He has retreated to the desert, in search of space and geologic time. There he is joined by a filmmaker and by Elster’s daughter Jessica—an “otherworldly” woman from New York. The three of them build an odd, tender intimacy, something like a family. Then a devastating event turns detachment into colossal grief, and it is a human mystery that haunts the landscape of desert and mind.

“Fast-paced, interesting—and as deep as they come! It’s Cloud Atlas meets a Course in Miracles, after Hemingway meets Bukowski in a cafe for drinks!”

“An emotional tour de force and breathtaking adventure in forgiveness!”

“Engripping! A novel so novel it takes a new word to describe.” ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

A quiet night over coffee. A new page in life.

Both would be Maya's last.

And that was just the beginning...

Cut from equal parts steel and soul, Maya Lee is tenacious and smart as they come.

She might bend—but she never breaks.

Outmaneuvered, exiled, bleeding out on a cold December coffeehouse floor... only to open her eyes to a blood-stained forest, in the middle of Rome’s worst nightmare since Hannibal.

These are the past and future lives of Maya Lee,

Her epic sweep through history

Spurned in her yearning for the love of a charismatic revolutionary, struggling against the weight of an Empire, she struggles to walk the gripping, gut-wrenching line between death and redemption, loss and forgiveness, illusions and peace…

Can Maya awaken in love before she loses everyone and everything—before she loses hereself?

“A modern spiritual parable... but with characters you'll actually give a damn about.”

“The path to enlightenment, in all its awesome, gruesome—and ultimately redeeming vision!”

“Choose: Snakes or Ladders: A Psychological Coming-of-Age Novel” from hot new contemporary fiction author, Sally Forest.

This is “a well-plotted tale of human growth, sexuality, and self-discovery which will be enjoyed by readers of women’s fiction and literary fiction alike.”
Mitty is a young girl brought up in a punitive sect who escapes to a typist job in the city - a step to fulfilling her dreams of being a lady. She is hampered by deep fears of hell and punishment, and utter ignorance of the facts of life.

The 1950’s – sex, drugs and rock and roll, but not in the small towns of Australia. There were lots of jobs, clothes and wealth in the cities but this threatened the values of the past - a culture where men desire and decide, while women love and serve.

Miss Mitty Bedford knew the outside world through Hollywood movies at the local Pictures, only to find in real life that there can be nasties behind smiling, beautiful faces.

A stalker’s attack clashes with her newfound joy in sensual self-discovery inspired by a crush on her boss, and her love for decent, loving, traditional Col. She writhes between shame, repentance and joy.  Mitty wants a career and respect, but what path must she choose? She needs love, but does she want freedom more?

This emotional and dramatic journey to win trust, love and independence, will keep readers turning the pages, as well as provoking questions that still apply today.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • Los Angeles Times • San Francisco Chronicle • Harper’s Bazaar • St. Louis Post-Dispatch • The Guardian • The Kansas City Star • National Post • BookPage • Kirkus Reviews

From Salman Rushdie, one of the great writers of our time, comes a spellbinding work of fiction that blends history, mythology, and a timeless love story. A lush, richly layered novel in which our world has been plunged into an age of unreason, Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights is a breathtaking achievement and an enduring testament to the power of storytelling.

In the near future, after a storm strikes New York City, the strangenesses begin. A down-to-earth gardener finds that his feet no longer touch the ground. A graphic novelist awakens in his bedroom to a mysterious entity that resembles his own sub–Stan Lee creation. Abandoned at the mayor’s office, a baby identifies corruption with her mere presence, marking the guilty with blemishes and boils. A seductive gold digger is soon tapped to combat forces beyond imagining.

Unbeknownst to them, they are all descended from the whimsical, capricious, wanton creatures known as the jinn, who live in a world separated from ours by a veil. Centuries ago, Dunia, a princess of the jinn, fell in love with a mortal man of reason. Together they produced an astonishing number of children, unaware of their fantastical powers, who spread across generations in the human world.

Once the line between worlds is breached on a grand scale, Dunia’s children and others will play a role in an epic war between light and dark spanning a thousand and one nights—or two years, eight months, and twenty-eight nights. It is a time of enormous upheaval, in which beliefs are challenged, words act like poison, silence is a disease, and a noise may contain a hidden curse.

Inspired by the traditional “wonder tales” of the East, Salman Rushdie’s novel is a masterpiece about the age-old conflicts that remain in today’s world. Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights is satirical and bawdy, full of cunning and folly, rivalries and betrayals, kismet and karma, rapture and redemption.

Praise for Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights

“Rushdie is our Scheherazade. . . . This book is a fantasy, a fairytale—and a brilliant reflection of and serious meditation on the choices and agonies of our life in this world.”—Ursula K. Le Guin, The Guardian

“One of the major literary voices of our time . . . In reading this new book, one cannot escape the feeling that [Rushdie’s] years of writing and success have perhaps been preparation for this moment, for the creation of this tremendously inventive and timely novel.”—San Francisco Chronicle

“A wicked bit of satire . . . [Rushdie] riffs and expands on the tales of Scheherazade, another storyteller whose spinning of yarns was a matter of life and death.”—USA Today

“A swirling tale of genies and geniuses [that] translates the bloody upheavals of our last few decades into the comic-book antics of warring jinn wielding bolts of fire, mystical transmutations and rhyming battle spells.”—The Washington Post

“Great fun . . . The novel shines brightest in the panache of its unfolding, the electric grace and nimble eloquence and extraordinary range and layering of his voice.”—The Boston Globe


From the Hardcover edition.

A high school jock and nerd fall in love senior year, only to part after an amazing summer of discovery to attend their respective colleges. They keep in touch at first, but then slowly drift apart.

Flash forward twenty years.

Travis and Craig both have great lives, careers, and loves. But something is missing .... Travis is the first to figure it out. He's still in love with Craig, and come what may, he's going after the boy who captured his heart, even if it means forsaking his job, making a fool of himself, and entering the great unknown. Told in narrative, letters, checklists, and more, this is the must-read novel for anyone who's wondered what ever happened to that first great love.

COSTA BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD WINNER

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2017 MAN BOOKER PRIZE

"A true leftfield wonder: Days Without End is a violent, superbly lyrical western offering a sweeping vision of America in the making."—Kazuo Ishiguro, Booker Prize winning author of The Remains of the Day and The Buried Giant

“A haunting archeology of youth . . . Barry introduces a narrator who speaks with an intoxicating blend of wit and wide-eyed awe, his unsettlingly lovely prose unspooling with an immigrant’s peculiar lilt and a proud boy’s humor.”—The New York Times Book Review

From the two-time Man Booker Prize finalist Sebastian Barry, “a master storyteller” (Wall Street Journal), comes a powerful new novel of duty and family set against the American Indian and Civil Wars

Thomas McNulty, aged barely seventeen and having fled the Great Famine in Ireland, signs up for the U.S. Army in the 1850s. With his brother in arms, John Cole, Thomas goes on to fight in the Indian Wars—against the Sioux and the Yurok—and, ultimately, the Civil War. Orphans of terrible hardships themselves, the men find these days to be vivid and alive, despite the horrors they see and are complicit in.

Moving from the plains of Wyoming to Tennessee, Sebastian Barry’s latest work is a masterpiece of atmosphere and language. An intensely poignant story of two men and the makeshift family they create with a young Sioux girl, Winona, Days Without End is a fresh and haunting portrait of the most fateful years in American history and is a novel never to be forgotten.

A “gripping dystopian fantasy” (Kirkus Reviews) that brims with romance and suspense, from the author of The Body Finder.

In the violent country of Ludania, the language you speak determines your class, and there are harsh punishments if you forget your place—looking a member of a higher class in the eye can result in immediate execution. Seventeen-year-old Charlaina (Charlie for short) can understand all languages, a dangerous ability she’s been hiding her whole life. The only reprieve from oppression is within the drug-filled underground club scene. There, she meets a beautiful and mysterious boy who speaks a language she’s never heard, and her secret is almost exposed. As the violent clashes between the totalitarian monarchy and the rebel forces escalate, it becomes clear that Charlie is the key to something much bigger: her country’s only chance for freedom from the terrible grip of a deadly regime.
     Kimberly Derting, author of The Body Finder series, writes powerfully and movingly of a girl with dangerous powers in an unusual and expertly crafted setting.