Voir les résultats lus par "Maggie Mash"

Drawing on letters and diaries, some of which have never been published before, this book will reveal Jane Austen's bond with a family servant, the amateur playwright Anne Sharp, how Charlotte Brontë was inspired by the daring feminist Mary Taylor, the transatlantic relationship between George Eliot and the author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and the underlying erotic charge that lit the friendship of Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield - a pair too often dismissed as bitter foes.

The setting of this very funny novel, one of Barbara Pym's earliest, is an English village where Jane's husband is the newly appointed vicar, and where Prudence will pay Jane a visit and find herself courted by a fatuous young widower.

The Checquy: a centuries-old covert organisation that protects the nation from supernatural threat. The Grafters: a centuries-old supernatural threat. After centuries of rivalry and bloodshed The Checquy and The Grafters are on the verge of joining forces and only one person has the supernatural skills to get the job done - Myfanwy Thomas. But as a wave of gruesome atrocities sweep London, old hatreds ignite and negotiations grind to a halt....

Mary Boleyn was the mistress of two kings, Francois I of France and Henry VIII of England, and sister to Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII’s second wife. In this astonishing and riveting biography, Alison Weir’s extensive research gives a new and detailed portrayal, in which she recounts that, contrary to popular belief, Mary was entirely undeserving of her posthumous notoriety as a great whore.

Lancater and York is a riveting account of the Wars of the Roses, from beloved historian Alison Weir. The war between the houses of Lancaster and York was characterised by treachery, deceit, and bloody battles. Alison Weir's lucid and gripping account focuses on the human side of history. At the centre of the book stands Henry VI, the pious king whose mental instability led to political chaos, and his wife Margaret of Anjou, who took up her arms in her husband's cause and battled in a violent man's world.

Bryony and Hannah are sisters, but they couldn't be more different, and war has brought even more of a rift between them. Bryony is happiest at Combe Lodge, the family home, while young, headstrong Hannah has fled to Jersey. At Combe Lodge, everyone else is pitching in with the war effort. The family home fills with evacuees, and Bryony is doing her bit, flying planes at the nearby Combe Lodge Airlines. But Bryony knows that she needs to reach out to Hannah. Only she will be able to keep her flighty younger sister's feet on the ground. But is Bryony too late to help her? Will Hannah ever come home?

In 1972 Elizabeth Romer moved to a farmhouse in Tuscany, where she discovered a life moulded by the past and tasted the simple, sublime flavours of traditional Italian cooking for the first time. Here, she introduces the Cerotti family, who farm one section of the valley, and vividly describes, month by month, the Tuscan year. From January's prosciutto and salami, to cheese-making in March, to threshing the corn in high summer, to the game and chanterelles of autumn and the chestnut woods of November and December.

Eighty-two-year-old Nettie still hears the occasional gossiping, but most have forgotten what she did. Now, living alone in a run-down farmhouse, she surrounds herself with memories of her late husband and estranged daughter, Catherine. When Catherine's friend James appears out of the blue, Nettie is grateful for the company and keen to learn more about her daughter. But soon James starts asking Nettie questions she doesn't want to answer, about some things she can't remember and others she's tried to forget.

Born into hardship in a Northumbrian mining village, Annie Manon needs all her strength to survive the bleak years following the First World War. As her family fractures around her, she longs to make something of her life. Through hard work and determination Annie eventually leaves the poverty and despair of her childhood behind her. But then war breaks out once more, taking her further away from her dreams and those she loves most. And it is all Annie can do to keep hope alive....

October 1943. Nineteen-year-old Polly Holmes is leaving poor bombed London behind to join the war effort on Britain's canals. Stepping aboard the Marigold amid pouring rain, there's lots for Polly to get to grips with. Not least her fellow crew: strong and impetuous Verity, whose bark is worse than her bite, and seasoned skipper Bet. With her sweetheart away fighting in the RAF and her beloved brother killed in action, there's plenty of heartache to be healed on the waterway.

June 1940, and newly qualified teacher Phyllis Saunders is evacuated with her school to Dorset. Here she encounters prejudice and suspicion, but she is determined to make the best of life for herself and the children in her care. All the while her fiancé, submariner Sammy, is facing danger out at sea. On a visit to London, Phyllis gets caught up in the Blitz but manages to escape. Shaken but alive, she returns to the relative peace of the countryside - but soon she is nursing a secret she can tell no-one about.

In his heyday, during the 1960s and early 1970s, B. S. Johnson was one of the best-known novelists in Britain. House Mother Normal: A Geriatric Comedy is Johnson's most richly characterised, humane and sympathetic work. Eight residents in a home for the elderly sit down to dinner, along with the House Mother herself, and each takes it in turn to relay the proceedings of the evening from their own, individual perspective.

Phoebe Stanbury was killed in the summer of secrets.... One balmy June evening in 1881, Phoebe Stanbury stands before the guests at her engagement party: this is her moment, when she will join the renowned Raycraft family and ascend to polite society. As she takes her fiancé's hand, a stranger holding a knife steps forward and ends the poor girl's life. Amid the chaos, he turns to her aristocratic groom and mouths: 'I promised I would save you.'

From the internationally best-selling author of A Woman of Substance. Three generations of beautiful women and their journeys from rags to riches. Audra is an impoverished children's nanny from Leeds who sacrificed everything for her daughter. Christina is a talented art student who won world renown as a fashion designer - yet who has known heartache. Kyle is a rebellious young woman who chafes against her mother's success - and in whom her grandmother's spirit of duty and sacrifice is reborn.

In June 2014, Julia White - a beautiful and intelligent young woman - blows up a coffee shop in central London, killing 24 people before turning herself in to the police. Apart from publishing a potentially ironic manifesto, she refuses to explain the reasons for her actions.... Clare Hardenberg, an investigative journalist, has been commissioned to write a biography of Julia, but at the start of the novel she is on her way to prison herself. What has brought her to this point?

In England in the 1930s, eighteen-year-old Helen Carstairs braves the prejudice of friends and family to marry Heine, a young German photographer who has fled the growing horror of the Nazis. But the storm clouds are gathering in Europe. When fighting breaks out Heine is interned, their small son is evacuated and Helen is left to face the Blitz alone. And the agony of war threatens to divide a family already tormented by conflicting passions of loyalty, shame, betrayal - and love.

Brilliant and mercurial Will Tye suffers a life-changing accident. The terrible event ripples through three generations of the complex Tye family, bringing to light old tragedies and dangerous secrets. Each member of the family holds some clue to the chain of events which may have led to the accident, and all hold themselves to blame. Most closely affected is Will's cousin Cecelia, whose own life will change forever depending on how she responds to such unbelievable and shocking truths.

On a cold winter's day, a preschool teacher is shot to death in front of parents and children at the Jewish Congregation in Stockholm. Just a few hours later, two Jewish boys go missing on their way to tennis practice. A heavy snowstorm hits Stockholm, and the traces of the perpetrator are few and far between. Fredrika Bergman and Alex Recht are faced with one of their toughest challenges ever as they hunt for a killer who seems as merciless as he is effective.

The eldest was a razor-sharp novelist of upper-class manners; the second was loved by John Betjeman; the third was a fascist who married Oswald Mosley; the fourth idolized Hitler and shot herself in the head when Britain declared war on Germany; the fifth was a member of the American Communist Party; the sixth became Duchess of Devonshire. They were the Mitford sisters....

When the king sends Radmer of Donmouth on a mission to Rome, Donmouth is left in the safekeeping of his only daughter, Elfrun. This is the story of daughters in a man's world: Wynn, daughter of the smith; Saethryth, daughter of the village steward; and Auli, daughter of a merchant. Above all it is the story of Elfrun of Donmouth, uncertain of her father's fate, not knowing who she can trust or who she can love....