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Sarah Dunant

    August 8, 1950

    Sarah Dunant is an award-winning thriller writer whose novels are set in Renaissance Italy. She explores women’s lives through the lenses of art, sex, and religion, uncovering their hidden worlds. Her incisive commentary on history and culture brings the past to life with compelling vividness and intellectual depth. Dunant offers a unique and accessible lens into a pivotal era of European history.

    Sarah Dunant
    Elizabeth, Captive Princess
    The Birth of Venus
    In the Company of the Courtesan
    In The Name of the Family
    Jamaica Inn
    BP Portrait Award 2009
    • The BP Portrait Award, now in its nineteenth year, is a popular fixture on the summer calendar, and is the leading showcase for artists specializing in portraiture. The competition is open to all artists aged eighteen and over from around the world. The 2008 award received 1,600 entrants, all competing for the main prize of GBP25,000 and a possible commission.

      BP Portrait Award 2009
      4.2
    • When her mother dies, Mary Yellan makes the grim journey across bleak Cornish moorland to Jamaica Inn, the home of her Aunt Patience and her husband, Joss Merlyn. On arriving at the gloomy, threatening inn, with the coachman's warning echoing in her mind, she finds her aunt a cowering shadow, and her uncle a hulking, vicious brute. Even more alarming, Jamaica Inn has no guests and is never open to the public. Mary finds herself powerless to help her aunt, and is drawn unwillingly into the misdeeds of Joss and his accomplices. Even more disturbing are her feelings for Jem, a man she dare not trust . . . Jamaica Inn is a dark and gripping gothic tale that will remind readers of two other great classics, Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights.

      Jamaica Inn
      4.0
    • In The Name of the Family

      • 496 pages
      • 18 hours of reading

      Sarah Dunant's sparkling novel, In the Name of the Family, is girded by a keen political intelligence and a stunning feel for Italy in the years around 1500 Lauro Martines, Emeritus Professor off European history at University of California and one of world's foremost authorities on the Italian Renaissance

      In The Name of the Family
      3.8
    • Set in Renaissance Italy, this follow-up to Dunant's "The Birth of Venus" recounts the fantastic escapades of Bucino Teodoldo, a wily dwarf, and his mistress, celebrated courtesan Fiammetta Bianchini, who escape to Venice where intrigue awaits.

      In the Company of the Courtesan
      3.8
    • The Birth of Venus

      • 432 pages
      • 16 hours of reading

      Alessandra is not quite fifteen when her prosperous merchant father brings a young painter back with him from Holland to adorn the walls of the new family chapel. She is fascinated by his talents and envious of his abilities and opportunities to paint to the glory of God. Soon her love of art and her lively independence are luring her into closer involvement with all sorts of taboo areas of life. On excursions into the streets of night-time Florence she observes a terrible evil stalking the city and witnesses the rise of the fiery young priest, Savanarola, who has set out to rid the city of vice, richness, even art itself. Alessandra must make crucial decisions about the shape of her adult life, as Florence itself must choose between the old ways of the luxury-loving Medicis and the asceticism of Savanorola. And through it all, there is the painter, whose love will change everything.

      The Birth of Venus
      3.8
    • Elizabeth, Captive Princess

      • 336 pages
      • 12 hours of reading

      In July, 1553, sibling rivalry has never been more tumultuous than between the daughters of King Henry VIII. Queen Mary Tudor has just won possession of the throne, but her half-sister - the Princess Elizabeth - holds the hearts of the people. Knowing this, Mary banishes her to a country retreat, determined to keep her as far away from court life.

      Elizabeth, Captive Princess
      3.5
    • Sacred hearts

      • 471 pages
      • 17 hours of reading

      Santa Catarina, a convent near Venice, is home to over one hundred women in 1567. But with powerful forces for change raging outside the convent, and with the world of the women within threatened by a new arrival, passions, hysteria, and conflict will come to threaten their very survival.

      Sacred hearts
      3.7
    • Blood and Beauty

      • 529 pages
      • 19 hours of reading

      By the end of the fifteenth century, the beauty and creativity of Italy is matched only by its brutality and corruption. When Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia buys his way into the papacy, he is defined not just by his wealth, charisma and power, but by his blood: a Spanish Pope in a city run by Italians. If he is to succeed, he must use his Machiavellian son and innocent daughter. Stripping away the myths around the Borgias, Blood & Beauty breathes life into the astonishing family of Alexander VI and celebrates the raw power of history itself: compelling, complex, and relentless.

      Blood and Beauty
      3.7
    • The War of the Words

      The Political Correctness Debate

      This work looks at the political correctness challenge to liberalism; how each generation redefines what is acceptable; what we mean by equality and how we go about achieving it. The topics explored range from date rape, the call for a new curriculum, to policing.

      The War of the Words
      3.3
    • Kriminalroman. Hannah Wolfe, kynisk og selvironisk privatdetektiv, tror ikke på selvmord, da en ung danserinde, som hun var hyret til at opspore, dukker op i Themsens mudrede vande, druknet og højgravid

      Birth Marks
      3.2
    • Fatlands

      • 232 pages
      • 9 hours of reading

      Recognized for her exceptional writing, Sarah Dunant's Fatlands introduces readers to Hannah Wolfe, a compelling detective navigating a complex mystery. Set against a backdrop that foreshadows the author's later success, this novel showcases Dunant's skill in crafting intricate plots and engaging characters, earning her the Silver Dagger award.

      Fatlands
      3.4
    • Transgressions

      • 352 pages
      • 13 hours of reading

      Psychological thriller about a woman being preyed upon by a stalker - a dark, cumbersome, large woman of limited capability.

      Transgressions
      2.8
    • Anna packs her bags one day without telling anyone where and why she is going - just that she'll be back soon. Her thoughts, as she boards a plane, is that this journey will give her time to think about her life - as a woman hitting forty, a journalist and a single mother. She has no premonition that she will become a statistic in a missing person file. Left at home is Anna's beloved six year old daughter Lily, her gay friend Paul who is surrogate father to Lily, and her eccentric best friend Estella. When Anna doesn't return, they make uneasy excuses, until, as time passes, the mind-numbing possibility that Anna might not be coming back, becomes terrifyingly real. And while those closest to her battle with their imaginations, Anna is on a dark journey - in one scenario Anna is on a ravishing, sexual adventure, on the other, much darker voyage, she is the victim of a stranger's dangerous sexual fantasy. In a masterpiece of emotionally intelligent and nerve-wracking suspense, Sarah Dunant takes us to the very edge.

      Mapping the Edge
      3.3
    • Onder het mes

      • 256 pages
      • 9 hours of reading

      Als er op een Engelse beauty-farm sabotage gepleegd wordt, gaat privé-detective Hannah Wolfe daar als cliënte rondkijken.

      Onder het mes
      3.0
    • Double sens

      • 338 pages
      • 12 hours of reading

      People go missing every day. They walk out of their front doors and out of their lives into the silence of cold statistics. For those left behind it is the cruelest of long good-byes. Anna, a self-sufficient and reliable single mother, packs her bags one day for a short vacation to Italy. She leaves her beloved six-year-old daughter, Lily, at home in London with good friends. But when Anna doesn't return, everyone begins to make excuses until the likelihood that she might not come back becomes chillingly clear. And the people who thought they knew Anna best realize they don't know her at all. How could she leave her daughter? Why doesn't she call? Is she enjoying a romantic tryst with a secret lover? Or has she been abducted or even killed by a disturbed stranger? Did that person you loved so much and thought you knew so well did they simply choose to go and not come back? Or did someone do the choosing for them? Dunant, a masterly British suspense writer, skillfully interweaves parallel narratives that are stretched taut with tension even as they raise difficult questions about motherhood, friendship, and accountability. In this compelling hybrid of sophisticated crime writing and modern women's fiction, Dunant challenges and unnerves us as she redefines the boundaries of the psychological thriller. Missing rubs the soul raw. In place of answers all you have is your imagination.

      Double sens
    • Privatdetektivin Hannah Wolfe ist gerade aus Hongkong nach London zurückgekehrt und ziemlich pleite. Da ihre Untermieterin in ihrer Abwesenheit ihre Wohnung verwüstet hat, muss sie ihren Ex-Boss Frank Comfort um einen Job bitten. Der schickt sie aufs Land zu der altjüngferlichen Ballettlehrerin Miss Patrick, die ihren Schützling Carolyn Hamilton vermisst. Carolyn war nach London gegangen, um als Tänzerin Karriere zu machen. Sie hatte Kontakt mit ihrer Lehrerin gehalten, doch dann blieben die monatlichen Postkarten plötzlich aus. Hannah hat Carolyns Spur gerade aufgenommen, da wird ihre hochschwangere Leiche aus der Themse gezogen. Eigentlich gibt es nun für Hannah keinen Grund mehr, sich weiter mit Carolyns Angelegenheiten zu befassen, aber ein anonymer Auftraggeber bezahlt sie dafür, weiterzuforschen.

      Der Baby-Pakt
    • Spoorloos in Italië

      • 309 pages
      • 11 hours of reading

      De mysterieuze verdwijning van een alleenstaande moeder leidt tot vele speculaties: is ze ontvoerd of heeft ze misschien een nieuwe vriend?

      Spoorloos in Italië