Lucie van Rooijen Books

I've no history here, and no character: and what I am, is all in what I will be...

After backpacking her way around India, twenty-one-year-old Sarah Macdonald decides she hates the country with a passion. And when a beggar at the airport reads her palm and insists that she will one day return - and for love - she gives India, and him, the finger. But eleven years later, his prophecy comes ture. When the love of her life is posted to New Delhi, she leaves her dream job as a radio DJ in Sydney to follow her fiance to the most polluted ciry on earth. It seems like the ultimate sacrifice and it almost kills her - literally. One smoggy night, a sadhu smeared in human ashes curses her and she fall dangerously ill with double pneumonia. She survives, but not before she has faced some serious questions about her own morality and inner void, not to mention unsightly hair loss.--

From the author of the classic A Little Life comes a bold novel that spans three centuries and explores different versions of the American experience through themes of love, family, loss, and the elusive promise of utopia. In an alternate 1893 America, New York is part of the Free States, where individuals can love freely. Here, a young heir resists an arranged marriage, drawn instead to a charming but impoverished music teacher. Fast forward to 1993 Manhattan, where a young Hawaiian man navigates life with his wealthy, older partner while concealing a troubled past and the fate of his father amid the AIDS crisis. In 2093, a world ravaged by plagues and totalitarianism sees a powerful scientist’s granddaughter grappling with her grandfather's absence and the mystery of her husband's disappearances. These interconnected narratives weave an intricate tapestry of recurring motifs: a townhouse in Greenwich Village, the cost of illness, the divide between wealth and poverty, and the complexities of race and family. Ultimately, the novel delves into the human experience, exploring fear, love, shame, and the longing for an earthly paradise, while confronting the painful reality that such a paradise may never exist. This emotionally charged work showcases the profound desire to protect loved ones and the heartache that arises when we cannot.

A novel that tells a story set in the decade after World War II through the lives of a small group of characters and two teenagers whose lives are indelibly shaped by their unwitting involvement. The story of fourteen-year-old Nathaniel, and his older sister, Rachel. In 1945, just after World War II, they stay behind in London when their parents move to Singapore, leaving them in the care of a mysterious figure named The Moth. They suspect he might be a criminal, and they grow both more convinced and less concerned as they come to know his eccentric crew of friends: men and women joined by a shared history of unspecified service during the war, all of whom seem, in some way, determined now to protect, and educate (in rather unusual ways) Rachel and Nathaniel. But are they really what and who they claim to be? And what does it mean when the siblings' mother returns after months of silence without their father, explaining nothing, excusing nothing? A dozen years later, Nathaniel begins to uncover all that he didn't know and understand in that time, and it is this journey—through facts, recollection, and imagination.

In Rue Tatin vertelt Loomis op levendige wijze over de wonderbaarlijke manier waarop ze met haar man het vervallen klooster restaureert waar zij van plan is haar kookschool te vestigen. Terwijl binnen de okergele en azuurblauwe tegels tevoorschijn komen, nemen de uitdagingen buiten het gebouw toe. Van krakers en een knorrige priester als buurman tot een hechte gemeenschap die niets moet hebben van buitenstaanders. Loomis neemt de lezer mee naar een wereld waar de mensen eeuwenoude tradities koesteren en uitgebreid genieten van lang tafelen met overheerlijke gerechten en volle wijnen. Rue Tatin schetst een ontroerend beeld van de vriendschappen, het heerlijke eten en de eenvoudige geneugten van het dagelijks leven in dit prachtige stukje Frankrijk.

Als in 1982 bij Newfoundland een booreiland zinkt en alle bemanningsleden omkomen, blijft een vrouw achter met drie kinderen.

Venetië in het vroege ochtendlicht biedt een onvergetelijk schouwspel van grote schoonheid. Maar de vroege ochtend dat commissario Brunetti wordt opgeroepen bij het dode lichaam van een jonge man in het canale, ziet er al snel heel anders uit. Alle aanwijzingen doen vermoeden dat het om een gewelddadige beroving gaat. Wanneer Brunettie in het appartement van het slachtoffer vervolgens enkele belastende zaken worden gevonden die wijzen op een complot van hogerhand, raakt hij ervan overtuigd dat iemand er veel belang bij heeft dat de echte daders van deze moord nooit worden gevonden.