After years of poverty, heartbreak, loss and betrayal, Tomas enters Annalise's world and shatters the iron casing she's erected around her heart. Tomas is kind, intelligent, romantic and handsome, but he's also her husband's brother! Once Tomas and Annalise meet, they are forever intertwined and repeatedly ripped apart by fate, self-doubt and blackmail. Her husband, Jens, is a brilliant, jealous and manipulative scoundrel who keeps her psychologically under lock and key,...
One of China's Four Great Classical Novels, «The Dream of the Red Chamber» is perhaps the greatest novel written in the Chinese vernacular. Its authorship is attributed to Cao Xueqin, who lived sometime from the early to mid-eighteenth century. Little is known of Cao Xueqin, except from what was passed down from his contemporaries and friends. An intelligent and artistic man, known for both his poetry and his paintings, Xueqin spent a decade working diligently on «The Dream of the Red...
Joseph Schneider grows up in a Cherokee-Jewish family in the Smokey mountains of North Carolina. He dreams to be a cook on the biggest ship there is in the world but his attachment to his mother Rachel and his rootedness to the little mountain village keep him from moving on. When his mother falls ill she reveals she stole him from a Palestinian girl Aliya in the 80s when she volunteered at a hospital in Gaza. Joseph refuses to know anything more about his biological mother, but later when...
When Winston receives a telegram informing him of his father's imminent death, his decision to return to Jamaica is very reluctant. The memories opened up by his return tell us why. But twenty-five years in the USA without contact with his family has allowed mutual resentments to mature and trapped Winston in the traumas of his childhood. And when he discovers he has a half-sister no one has told him about, his fury knows no bounds. But it is Rosa, his father's outside child, who in...
The futuristic Caribbean island of Jacaranda is a place under the constant pressures of crime, globalisation, advancing technology and environmental decay. Under these ominous skies Curdella Forbes builds a compelling tale of love, murder and psychological mayhem – a forbidden, tragic love affair, and a family torn apart by injustice. Published to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Jamaica's independence, and written in a heady, lyrical mix of English and Jamaican Creole, Ghosts...
A man lies in a newspaper-lined room dreaming an other life. Bob Marley's spirit flew into him at the moment of the singer's death. A woman detaches herself from her perfunctory husband and finds the erotic foreplay she longs for in journeying round the island. A man climbs Blue Mountain Peak to fly and hear the voice of God. Sonia paints her new friend Joan and hopes that this will be the beginning of a sexual adventure. Dawes's characters are driven by their need for...
First published in 1897, “The Blood of the Vampire” is a vampire novel by prolific writer Florence Marryat. The story revolves around one Miss Harriet Brandt, the daughter of a mad scientist and a voodoo priestess who leaves her home in Jamaica for the first time to travel to Europe. However, Harriet is not a normal young woman, as everybody who gets close to her becomes ill or even dies. Boasting a sensational plot and utterly bizarre characters, Florence Marryat's Victorian vampire tale...
Around two hundred years ago the famous writer Lord Byron rented the mansion known as the Villa Diodati on Lake Geneva. Accompanying Byron, among others, was the 23-year-old poet Percy Shelley, his mistress, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, and Byron's physician John William Polidori. The summer would be forever known as the 'Lost Summer of 1816'. For three days they were shut up in the Villa due to cold and stormy weather, which would serve as the backdrop to the telling and writing...
Set amidst the real world events which occurred following the Jacobite rising of 1745, Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1886 novel “Kidnapped” is the story of David Balfour, who travels to meet his uncle and collect his inheritance following the death of his father. Betrayed by his Uncle, David finds himself kidnapped by Captain Hoseason of the brig “Covenant”, who plans to sell him into slavery in the Carolina Colonies of America. However the ship is blown of course and driven back towards Scotland...
First published in 1842, “Dead Souls” is the story of Chichikov, a young middle-class gentleman who comes to a small town in Russia with a dubious plan to improve his wealth and position in life. He begins by spending beyond his means on the premise that he can impress the local officials and gain standing and connections in the community. At the heart of his plan is the idea of acquiring “dead souls” or more explicitly serfs of landowners who have died since the last census. Since the taxes of...
First published in 1862, Ivan Turgenev’s “Fathers and Sons” is widely considered to be the author’s greatest literary achievement. It is a novel about the clash of ideologies of two generations. The older generation, the fathers, represents an upper class whose power and influence is fading and giving way to the younger generation, the sons, who represent an increasing objection to the status quo. This conflict is embodied in the characters of Arkady Nikolaevich Kirsanov and Yevgeny Vasilevich...