A woman haunted by dreams of her dead mother. An adulterous couple stepping over the line where the initial excitement ends and the pain begins. A widow visiting a Scottish village in search of her husband's past - and instead discovering unsettling truths about a total stranger. The ten stories in this collection not only astonish and delight but also convey the unspoken mysteries at the heart of all human experience.
Isabel vient de fêter ses quarante ans. Ce n'est pas le désastre annoncé par son amie Carlotta. À peine une ponctuation dans la douce fuite des jours. Un mari, une fille, un atelier de confection de masques : la vie continue. Toutefois, Dan, le mari, lassé de son métier, ne vit plus que pour le théâtre. Il a connu un premier succès à Oxford et n'aime pas voir ses manuscrits refusés. Sylvie, la fille, a beau porter un regard affectueux sur le couple que forment ses parents, elle n'en est pas moins une adolescente en conflit ouvert avec sa mère et n'en fait qu'à sa tête. Quant à Bert, l'ami de jeunesse de Dan, de retour après avoir travaillé à New York, il n'est ni aveugle, ni sourd, ni muet vis-à-vis des femmes qui l'entourent. Et Carlotta, la bonne copine célibataire, qui cumule les aventures, éprouve un gros faible pour Dan. Des êtres fragiles et ambigus, les troubles du désir, une valse des sentiments, des épilogues amoureux inattendus... Un roman fort et tendre sur la vie contemporaine.
'For a while, she wasn't sure that her husband was her husband. Sometimes she thought he was, and sometimes not.' Berta and Tomas meet in Madrid and, though both young, they decide to spend their lives together. Eighteen and betrothed, Tomas leaves to study at Oxford. His talent for languages quickly catches the interest of a certain government agency, but Tomas resists their offers - until one day he makes a mistake that will affect the rest of his life, and that of his beloved Berta. After university he returns to marry her, knowing he won't be able to stay for long . . . Gripping and intricate, Berta Isla is about a relationship built on secrets and lies - and the counter forces of resentment and loyalty at its core.
William and Grace share what seems to them an ideal marriage. William enjoys a successful career in a relatively famous string quartet, and Grace is a children's book illustrator. Both in their 50s, neither have any reason to believe that their relationship could be threatened. But when Andrew, the quartet's viola player, retires with arthritis, he is replaced by the beautiful Bonnie, and the remaining male trio find the internal relations of the quartet have changed dramatically. Soon William can't think of anyone or anything else, and begins to work out stratagems for inviting Bonnie to lunch or to prevent her from spending too much time with Grant, the cello player, who is his main rival for her attention. It is not long before William has even begun to think the unthinkable: that his faithful, loving wife Grace Has Got To Go... Angela Huth has been compared to Jane Austen and Mrs Gaskell, and her novels gleam with beautiful observations and utterly convincing characters. In this, her ninth novel, she is at her superlative best, casting a wise and witty eye on mid-life crises and modern marriage.
Flames and funerals, circus feats and seduction, neighbours and nakedness: Tracy Chevalier's novel Burning Bright sparkles with drama. London 1792. The Kellaways move from familiar rural Dorset to the tumult of a cramped, unforgiving city. They are leaving behind a terrible loss, a blow that only a completely new life may soften. Against the backdrop of a city jittery over the increasingly bloody French Revolution, a surprising bond forms between Jem, the youngest Kellaway boy, and streetwise Londoner Maggie Butterfield. Their friendship takes a dramatic turn when they become entangled in the life of their neighbour, the printer, poet and radical, William Blake. He is a guiding spirit as Jem and Maggie navigate the unpredictable, exhilarating passage from innocence to experience. Their journey inspires one of Blake's most entrancing works. Georgian London is recreated as vividly in Burning Bright as 17th-century Delft was in Tracy Chevalier's bestselling masterpiece, Girl with a Pearl Earring.
