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Editorial Content for Us
Book
Teaser
The highly anticipated new novel from David Nicholls, author of the mega-bestselling fiction sensation ONE DAY, which follows one man’s efforts to salvage his marriage --- and repair his troubled relationship with his teenaged son --- during the course of a trip around Europe.
Promo
The highly anticipated new novel from David Nicholls, author of the mega-bestselling fiction sensation ONE DAY, which follows one man’s efforts to salvage his marriage --- and repair his troubled relationship with his teenaged son --- during the course of a trip around Europe.
About the Book
David Nicholls brings the wit and intelligence that graced his enormously popular New York Times bestseller, ONE DAY, to a compellingly human, deftly funny new novel about what holds marriages and families together --- and what happens, and what we learn about ourselves, when everything threatens to fall apart.
Douglas Petersen may be mild-mannered, but behind his reserve lies a sense of humor that, against all odds, seduces beautiful Connie into a second date…and eventually into marriage. Now, almost three decades after their relationship first blossomed in London, they live more or less happily in the suburbs with their moody 17-year-old son, Albie. Then Connie tells him she thinks she wants a divorce.
The timing couldn’t be worse. Hoping to encourage her son’s artistic interests, Connie has planned a month-long tour of European capitals, a chance to experience the world’s greatest works of art as a family, and she can’t bring herself to cancel. And maybe going ahead with the original plan is for the best anyway? Douglas is privately convinced that this landmark trip will rekindle the romance in the marriage, and might even help him to bond with Albie.
Narrated from Douglas’s endearingly honest, slyly witty and at times achingly optimistic point of view, US is the story of a man trying to rescue his relationship with the woman he loves, and learning how to get closer to a son who’s always felt like a stranger. US is a moving meditation on the demands of marriage and parenthood, the regrets of abandoning youth for middle age and the intricate relationship between the heart and the head. And in David Nicholls’s gifted hands, Douglas’s odyssey brings Europe --- from the streets of Amsterdam to the famed museums of Paris, from the cafés of Venice to the beaches of Barcelona --- to vivid life just as he experiences a powerful awakening of his own. Will this summer be his last as a husband, or the moment when he turns his marriage, and maybe even his whole life, around?
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Editorial Content for Help for the Haunted
Book
Contributors
Reviewer (text)
“Whenever the phone rang late at night, I lay in my narrow bed and listened.” So begins John Searles’s latest novel, HELP FOR THE HAUNTED, which describes a fairly typical night in the life of Sylvie Mason and her family. Her parents, Rose and Sylvester Mason, are what could best be described as “demonologists.” They provide aid and assistance for those poor souls troubled by spirits and apparitions. It wasn’t unusual for the couple to get emergency calls at odd hours, summoning them to help their troubled clients find peace. Read More
Teaser
Sylvie Mason’s parents have an unusual occupation --- helping “haunted souls” find peace. After receiving a strange phone call one winter’s night, they leave the house and are later murdered in an old church in a horrifying act of violence. A year later, the inquisitive teenager pursues the mystery, moving closer to the knowledge of what occurred that night --- and to the truth about her family’s past and the secrets that have haunted them for years.
Promo
Sylvie Mason’s parents have an unusual occupation --- helping “haunted souls” find peace. After receiving a strange phone call one winter’s night, they leave the house and are later murdered in an old church in a horrifying act of violence. A year later, the inquisitive teenager pursues the mystery, moving closer to the knowledge of what occurred that night --- and to the truth about her family’s past and the secrets that have haunted them for years.
About the Book
Winner of the 2014 Alex Awards!
It begins with a call one snowy February night. Lying in her bed, young Sylvie Mason overhears her parents on the phone across the hall. This is not the first late-night call they have received, since her mother and father have an uncommon occupation: helping “haunted souls” find peace. And yet something in Sylvie senses that this call is different from the others, especially when they are lured to the old church on the outskirts of town. Once there, her parents disappear, one after the other, behind the church’s red door, leaving Sylvie alone in the car. Not long after, she drifts off to sleep, only to wake to the sound of gunfire.
As the story weaves back and forth through the years leading up to that night and the months following, the ever-inquisitive Sylvie searches for answers and uncovers secrets that have haunted her family for years.
Capturing the vivid eeriness of Stephen King’s works and the quirky tenderness of John Irving’s novels, HELP FOR THE HAUNTED is told in the captivating voice of a young heroine who is determined to discover the truth about what happened on that winter night.
Editorial Content for Ludwig Conspiracy
Contributors
Reviewer (text)
“To be honest….Ludwig the Second is far more than a fat drowned body to many Bavarians. He’s their identity and a myth at the same time, and as a myth, of course he lives forever.” Read More
Teaser
An encoded diary by one of Ludwig II’s confidants falls into the hands of modern-day rare book dealer Steven Lukas, who soon realizes that the diary may bring him more misery than money. Others want the diary as well --- and they will kill to get it. Lukas teams up with a beautiful art detective to investigate each of Ludwig’s three famous castles for clues to crack the diary’s code as mysterious thugs and Ludwig’s fanatical followers chase them at every step. Just what in the diary could be so explosive?
Promo
An encoded diary by one of Ludwig II’s confidants falls into the hands of modern-day rare book dealer Steven Lukas, who soon realizes that the diary may bring him more misery than money. Others want the diary as well --- and they will kill to get it. Lukas teams up with a beautiful art detective to investigate each of Ludwig’s three famous castles for clues to crack the diary’s code as mysterious thugs and Ludwig’s fanatical followers chase them at every step. Just what in the diary could be so explosive?
About the Book
In 1886, Ludwig II, the fairytale king of Bavaria, was deposed after being declared insane by doctors who had never met him. He died mysteriously soon thereafter, his eccentric and beautiful castles his only legacy.
When an encoded diary by one of Ludwig’s confidants falls into the hands of rare book dealer Steven Lukas, he soon realizes that the diary may bring him more misery than money. Others want the diary as well --- and they will kill to get it. Believing the diary to contain the secret truth behind Ludwig’s death, Steven and the detective Sara Lengfeld go on the run, investigating each of Ludwig’s three famous castles for clues. Just what in the diary could be so explosive that Ludwig's deranged modern-day followers will do whatever it takes to keep it hidden?
Combining contemporary mystery and a gripping historical saga, putting computers and smartphones alongside derringers and palace intrigue, THE LUDWIG CONSPIRACY is a bold new thriller from the bestselling author of The Hangman’s Daughter series.
Editorial Content for Teatime for the Firefly
Contributors
Reviewer (text)
First-time novelist Shona Patel has entered that rarified world of writers who see their first book published. Her manuscript was snapped up by an agent at a California writer’s conference, and she was on her way. Her engaging historical novel of India’s class culture, racial divides and struggle for independence, laced with an adventurous romance, looked like gold. Set during a time of strife and historical significance in India, TEATIME FOR THE FIREFLY was inspired by her own unusual childhood. Read More
Teaser
TEATIME FOR THE FIREFLY is a charming tale of unexpected romance between two misfits in traditional Indian society. Shona Patel's debut novel is a fish-out-of-water love story told partially through letters, and set within an exotic and enchanting world where social upheaval and the threat of World War II lingers on their doorstep.
Promo
TEATIME FOR THE FIREFLY is a charming tale of unexpected romance between two misfits in traditional Indian society. Shona Patel's debut novel is a fish-out-of-water love story told partially through letters, and set within an exotic and enchanting world where social upheaval and the threat of World War II lingers on their doorstep.
About the Book
Layla Roy has defied the fates.
Despite being born under an inauspicious horoscope, she is raised to be educated and independent by her eccentric grandfather, Dadamoshai. And, by cleverly manipulating the hand fortune has dealt her, she has even found love with Manik Deb --- a man betrothed to another. All were minor miracles in India that spring of 1943, when young women's lives were predetermined --- if not by the stars, then by centuries of family tradition and social order.
Layla's life as a newly married woman takes her away from home and into the jungles of Assam, where the world's finest tea thrives on plantations run by native labor and British efficiency. Fascinated by this culture of whiskey-soaked expats who seem fazed by neither earthquakes nor man-eating leopards, she struggles to find her place among the prickly English wives with whom she is expected to socialize, and the peculiar servants she now finds under her charge.
But navigating the tea-garden set will hardly be her biggest challenge. Layla's remote home is not safe from the powerful changes sweeping India on the heels of the Second World War. Their colonial society is at a tipping point, and Layla and Manik find themselves caught in a perilous racial divide that threatens their very lives.