My first novel, The Dogs of Babel, grew out of a couple of intersecting ideas. I was interested in the deep connection that people have with their pets and wondered what the range and limits of human communication with animals might be. In addition, I was interested in exploring the lengths to which a grief-stricken character might go in order to find answers about their loss. In addition to being a fundamental human experience, I think that grief can serve as an interesting plot element: in the depths of loss, a character might consider actions that would seem impossible under normal circumstances.
George Saunders is the kind of author who makes his readers believe that anything is possible, and I would follow him anywhere. This strange and lyrical novel grew out of a small kernel of historical fact: in 1862, while Abraham Lincoln was in the White House and the country was in the midst of the Civil War, Lincoln lost his 11-year-old son Willie to typhoid fever, and he was so devastated that he visited the cemetery where the boy had been laid to rest, to hold the child in his arms one last time. The story is told in bits and pieces, from a chorus of narrators, including (most prominently) a number of ghosts who have lingered in the cemetery, unable to move on to whatever comes next.
WINNER OF THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2017
A STORY OF LOVE AFTER DEATH
'A masterpiece' Zadie Smith
'Extraordinary' Daily Mail
'Breathtaking' Observer
'A tour de force' The Sunday Times
The extraordinary first novel by the bestselling, Folio Prize-winning, National Book Award-shortlisted George Saunders, about Abraham Lincoln and the death of his eleven year old son, Willie, at the dawn of the Civil War
The American Civil War rages while President Lincoln's beloved eleven-year-old son lies gravely ill. In a matter of days, Willie dies and is laid to rest in a Georgetown cemetery. Newspapers report that a grief-stricken Lincoln returns…
This is a novel that approaches grief from a different direction: what if you were told the exact date you were going to die and had to live the rest of your life with that knowledge? In 1969 New York, four siblings visit a traveling psychic who gives each of them this information. The rest of the novel unfolds from that moment, as they try to figure out how to move on from there. A lyrical and sprawling novel, spun from a question that most of us have considered, but few of us would really want answered.
It's 1969, and holed up in a grimy tenement building in New York's Lower East Side is a travelling psychic who claims to be able to tell anyone the date they will die. The four Gold children, too young for what they're about to hear, sneak out to learn their fortunes.
Such prophecies could be dismissed as trickery and nonsense, yet the Golds bury theirs deep. Over the years that follow they attempt to ignore, embrace, cheat…
The Pact is a contemporary fiction novel about Australian sisters, Samantha and Annie, who are doubles tennis champions. This story amplifies the usual sibling issues and explores their professional partnership and personal relationships – similarities, differences, motivation, competition, abandonment, and grief – and how they each respond to the stress…
This book has been on my list of all-time favorites since it was first published in 1993. The premise can be a tough sell; it’s the story of a family with five daughters, all of whom commit suicide over the course of a year. But the book’s greatest strength lies in the way the story is told: narrated by the collective voice of the neighborhood boys, who admired and wondered about the Lisbon girls from afar, the novel has one of the most unusual and compelling narrative voices of any book I know.
Introducing the Collins Modern Classics, a series featuring some of the most significant books of recent times, books that shed light on the human experience - classics which will endure for generations to come.
That girl didn't want to die. She just wanted out of that house. She wanted out of that decorating scheme.
The five Lisbon sisters - beautiful, eccentric and, now, gone - had always been a point of obsession for the entire neighbourhood.
Although the boys that once loved them from afar have grown up, they remain determined to understand a tragedy that has defied explanation. The…
This short, beautiful novel is about a woman whose life changes in two major ways as the result of one event: her closest friend dies, and she inherits the enormous dog he has left behind. She doesn’t want the dog, and his presence raises a number of problems for her; in addition, both dog and human are reeling with the fallout of sudden grief and their mutual change of circumstances. But as time goes on, and she struggles to make sense of what has happened, she begins to find solace in the unexpected companionship. The book is at once moving and funny, lyrical, and heart-rending.
On the run from her abusive husband, Kyra Smith hits the road. Destination unknown. With a dog she rescued in tow, she lands in the peaceful California mountain town of Gold Creek and is immediately befriended by an openhearted group of women who call themselves the Tattooed Ladies. They’re there…
I picked up this slim YA novel, which one of my kids had brought into the house, without knowing anything about it, and that may be the best way to read it. It’s about a teenage girl named Cadence who spends her summers on her family’s private island with a close-knit group of friends and cousins. But during the summer when she’s fifteen, Cadence is involved in a catastrophic event that remains hazy and fragmented in her mind. A riveting book, beautifully written and utterly compelling.
The TikTok phenomenon and #1 New York Times bestseller.
A beautiful and distinguished family. A private island. A brilliant, damaged girl; a passionate, political boy. A group of four friends-the Liars-whose friendship turns destructive. A revolution. An accident. A secret. Lies upon lies. True love. The truth.
We Were Liars is a modern, sophisticated suspense novel from New York Times bestselling author, National Book Award finalist, and Printz Award honouree E. Lockhart.
Read it.
And if anyone asks you how it ends, just LIE.
Don't miss FAMILY OF LIARS, the thrilling prequel to We Were Liars, published in May 2022.
A poignant and beautiful debut novel explores a man's quest to unravel the mystery of his wife's death with the help of the only witness -- their Rhodesian ridgeback, Lorelei.
Magnolia Merryweather, a horse breeder, is eager to celebrate Christmas for the first time after the Civil War ended even as she grows her business. She envisions a calm, prosperous life ahead after the terror of the past four years. Only, all of her plans are thrown into disarray when…
Four sisters in hiding. A grand duchess in disguise. Dark family secrets revealed. An alternate future for the Romanovs from Jennifer Laam, author of The Secret Daughter Of The Tsar.
With her parents and brother missing and presumed dead, former Grand Duchess Olga Romanova must keep her younger sisters…
