Lucie van Rooijen Book order (chronological)

"In an alternate version of 1893 America, New York is part of the Free States, where people may live and love whomever they please (or so it seems). The fragile young scion of a distinguished family resists betrothal to a worthy suitor, drawn to a charming music teacher of no means. In a 1993 Manhattan besieged by the AIDS epidemic, a young Hawaiian man lives with his much older, wealthier partner, hiding his troubled childhood and the fate of his father. And in 2093, in a world riven by plagues and governed by totalitarian rule, a powerful scientist's damaged granddaughter tries to navigate life without him - and solve the mystery of her husband's disappearances. These three sections are joined in an enthralling and ingenious symphony, as recurring notes and themes deepen and enrich one another: A townhouse in Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village; illness, and treatments that come at a terrible cost; wealth and squalor; the weak and the strong; race; the definition of family, and of nationhood; the dangerous righteousness of the powerful, and of revolutionaries; the longing to find a place in an earthly paradise, and the gradual realization that it can't exist. What unites not just the characters, but these Americas, are their reckonings with the qualities that make us human: Fear. Love. Shame. Need. Loneliness."--Publisher

From the internationally acclaimed, best-selling author of The English Patient: a mesmerizing new novel that tells a dramatic story set in the decade after World War II through the lives of a small group of unexpected characters and two teenagers whose lives are indelibly shaped by their unwitting involvement. In a narrative as beguiling and mysterious as memory itself-- shadowed and luminous at once--we read 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--that he narrates in this masterwork from one of the great writers of our time.

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

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

Early one morning Guido Bruneti, commissario of the Venice Police, confronts a grisly sight when the body of a young man is fished out of a fetid Venetian canal. All the clues point to a violent mugging, but for Brunetti, robbery seems altogether too convenient a motive

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.--

The author recounts her transformative journey in Paris over two decades, starting with minimal resources and evolving into a rich life filled with culinary adventures and cultural experiences. Through vivid storytelling, she shares her love for French cuisine, the friendships forged, and the lessons learned in a city that became her home. The narrative highlights the challenges and joys of adapting to a new culture, ultimately celebrating the beauty of life in Paris.