This was one of the most beautifully written books I have ever read. Every sentence and turn of phrase was a gem.
It transported me to this small Irish village and introduced me to an eccentric and lovable group of characters. Every time I picked up this book, I felt as though I were taking an amble through town that I could picture vividly.
Shortlisted for Best Novel in the Irish Book Awards
Longlisted for the 2020 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction
From the acclaimed author of Man Booker-longlisted History of the Rain
'Lyrical, tender and sumptuously perceptive' Sunday Times
'A love letter to the sleepy, unhurried and delightfully odd Ireland that is all but gone' Irish Independent
After dropping out of the seminary, seventeen-year-old Noel Crowe finds himself back in Faha, a small Irish parish where nothing ever changes, including the ever-falling rain.
But one morning the rain stops and news reaches the parish - the electricity is finally arriving. With it…
We all know who Leonardo was, but only in the broadest brush. I learned so much from this book about one of the true geniuses to ever grace the planet.
The depth and breadth of Leonardo’s talents – painter, sculptor, engineer, inventor, anatomist – was staggering. And I was in awe of Isaacson’s ability to gather so much information about a man who lived centuries ago and turn it into a highly readable and engaging biography.
The #1 New York Times bestseller from Walter Isaacson brings Leonardo da Vinci to life in this exciting new biography that is "a study in creativity: how to define it, how to achieve it...Most important, it is a powerful story of an exhilarating mind and life" (The New Yorker).
Based on thousands of pages from Leonardo da Vinci's astonishing notebooks and new discoveries about his life and work, Walter Isaacson "deftly reveals an intimate Leonardo" (San Francisco Chronicle) in a narrative that connects his art to his science. He shows how Leonardo's genius was based on skills we can improve…
I have always loved Tim Egan’s columns in The New York Times for their clarity and powerful writing.
In this book, he examines the rise of a con man and charlatan who became one of the most powerful political figures in the Midwest and who nearly ran for president – D.C. Stephenson, the Grand Dragon of the Indiana Ku Klux Klan. He was eventually brought down by a woman he sexually abused and whose death he caused, but not before her deathbed testimony destroyed him.
The parallels to modern American politics are inescapable.
"With narrative elan, Egan gives us a riveting saga of how a predatory con man became one of the most powerful people in 1920s America, Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, with a plan to rule the country—and how a grisly murder of a woman brought him down. Compelling and chillingly resonant with our own time." —Erik Larson, author of The Splendid and the Vile
“Riveting…Egan is a brilliant researcher and lucid writer.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune
A historical thriller by the Pulitzer and National Book Award-winning author that tells the riveting story of…
In 1894, my great-grandaunt, a young Jewish mother of three from Boston, took off on a bicycle to go around the world. She was an audacious self-promoter with a keen sense of the moment: her journey combined three public fascinations of the day – the bicycle, the women’s movement for social equality, and globalization wrought by advances in transportation and communications technology. She financed her trip with corporate sponsorships, pioneering sports-related marketing for women. In fact, she traveled under an assumed name, Annie Londonderry, as her first sponsor was the Londonderry Lithia Spring Water Co. of New Hampshire. My first book about her was non-fiction. In Spin I revisit her story as historical fiction.
