The Long, Long Afternoon

Author: Inga Vesper
Publisher: Bonnier Zaffre Ltd.
ISBN: 1838772294
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 270

Book Description
A Stylist Best New Fiction of 2021 Selection, this stunning 1950s set debut mystery is a perfect summer read. 'A remarkably assured debut. A tale of inequality, broken dreams and quiet desperation behind a picture-perfect facade' Guardian 'A clever and absorbing debut by Inga Vesper, who bricks Joyce up in her perfect house, then smashes it to pieces with aplomb' The Times ________ Yesterday, I kissed my husband for the last time . . . It's the summer of 1959, and the well-trimmed lawns of Sunnylakes, California, wilt under the sun. At some point during the long, long afternoon, Joyce Haney, wife, mother, vanishes from her home, leaving behind two terrified children and a bloodstain on the kitchen floor. While the Haney's neighbours get busy organising search parties, it is Ruby Wright, the family's 'help', who may hold the key to this unsettling mystery. Ruby knows more about the secrets behind Sunnylakes' starched curtains than anyone, and it isn't long before the detective in charge of the case wants her help. But what might it cost her to get involved? In these long hot summer afternoons, simmering with lies, mistrust and prejudice, it could only take one spark for this whole 'perfect' world to set alight . . . A beguiling, deeply atmospheric debut novel from the cracked heart of the American Dream, The Long, Long Afternoon is at once a page-turning mystery and an intoxicating vision of the ways in which women everywhere are diminished, silenced and ultimately under-estimated. Everyone is talking about The Long, Long Afternoon 'Beguiling and evocative. This vivid and atmospheric pageturner will keep readers guessing all the way to its satisfying finale' Sunday Express 'Beautifully crafted, claustrophobic and compelling. As delicious as a long drink on a hot day' Stacey Halls, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Familiars and The Foundling 'Such a vivid atmosphere of stifling LA heat and stifling 50s domesticity' Clare Chambers, author of Small Pleasures 'Breathtakingly stylish, hypnotic and masterfully gripping' Chris Whitaker, author of We Begin at the End, Waterstones Thriller of the Month 'A triumph. What a pleasure to read something fresh and original. For once the hype is justified and Inga Vesper's gripping page turner must surely now be bound for Netflix' Evening Standard 'A tasty, tense, page-turning combo of James Ellroy and Kate Atkinson with a bit of Mad Men thrown in' Liz Hyder 'For fans of Revolutionary Road and Mad Men, this is an atmospheric tale of repression and style at the heart of the American Dream' Stylist

Hothouse

Author: Brian W. Aldiss
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1504010353
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 228

Book Description
A Hugo Award–winning classic about a far-future Earth dominated by gargantuan plants and the few humans who remain Millions of years beyond our time, our Earth has long since stopped spinning—and giant flora have taken over the sunlit half of the motionless world. Here humans are among the very few animal species that still exist, struggling to survive against enormous odds, but they have become small and weak, and their numbers have dwindled to almost nothing. When the aging leader of Gren’s tribe decrees it is time for the old ones to go “Up,” the younger are left to make their own way below. Although the journey will not be an easy one for young Gren, he sets off on an odyssey across a perilous world populated by carnivorous plants and other evolved vegetation. But any knowledge to be gained at the terminator—the forbidding boundary between the day world and the night—might well prove worthless for the boy and the companions he amasses along the way when the expanding sun goes nova and their Earth is no more. A thrilling parable of courage, discovery, and survival, Hothouse is among Grand Master Brian W. Aldiss’s most beloved and enduring works. Ingeniously inventive, richly detailed, and breathtakingly lush and vibrant, the doomed world and people that Aldiss creates will live forever in the minds of all those who enter this remarkable realm.

Afternoon Men

Author: Anthony Powell
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022618689X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 236

Book Description
A social comedy about "a company of giddyheads" and their wanderings in London's Bohemia.

The Longest Afternoon

Author: Brendan Simms
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465039944
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 209

Book Description
From the prizewinning author of Europe, a riveting account of the heroic Second Light Battalion, which held the line at Waterloo, defeating Napoleon and changing the course of history. In 1815, the deposed emperor Napoleon returned to France and threatened the already devastated and exhausted continent with yet another war. Near the small Belgian municipality of Waterloo, two large, hastily mobilized armies faced each other to decide the future of Europe-Napoleon's forces on one side, and the Duke of Wellington on the other. With so much at stake, neither commander could have predicted that the battle would be decided by the Second Light Battalion, King's German Legion, which was given the deceptively simple task of defending the Haye Sainte farmhouse, a crucial crossroads on the way to Brussels. In The Longest Afternoon, Brendan Simms captures the chaos of Waterloo in a minute-by-minute account that reveals how these 400-odd riflemen successfully beat back wave after wave of French infantry. The battalion suffered terrible casualties, but their fighting spirit and refusal to retreat ultimately decided the most influential battle in European history.

The Long Afternoon

Author: Giles Waterfield
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 1472211561
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 182

Book Description
In the 1930s, Henry and Helen Williamson arrive on the French Riviera looking for a house. Barely thirty, Henry has been forced to retire from the Indian civil service through ill-health. They fall in love with the dreamlike Lou Paradou and set about constructing a life of ease, and a ravishing garden. But as the political conflict gathers, so the atmosphere of their new home becomes increasingly unquiet and a tragic fate befalls them. THE LONG AFTERNOON enchants and involves the reader, just as the Williamsons' garden seduces its visitors.

The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

Author: Douglas Adams
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1476783004
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Book Description
Detective Dirk Gently investigates after a passenger at Heathrow airport erupts into a mysterious ball of flames. Mystery, hilarity, and the fantastical are combined in this title from the author of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. -- HPL Readers Advisor.

Five Minute Stories

Author: Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
Publisher: Good Press
ISBN:
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 231

Book Description
Five Minute Stories is a collection of sweet, innocent, a little moralizing, and humorous short stories for children by Laura Elizabeth Richards. She is known for writing more than 90 books, including biographies, poetry, and several for children. One well-known children's poem is her literary nonsense verse "Eletelephony." Containing illustrations by Wheelan, A. R, this volume has about one hundred three delightful stories and short poems written for children. Excerpt from the book "The little sweet Child tied on her hood, and put on her warm cloak and mittens. "I am going to the wood," she said, "to tell the creatures all about it. They cannot understand about Christmas, mamma says, and of course she knows, but I do think they ought to know about New Year!""

Long Afternoon of the World

Author: Graeme Kinross-Smith
Publisher: Wakefield Press
ISBN: 9781862547377
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 388

Book Description
In mid-life Tim Menzies finds himself surrounded by a sheaf of letters and photographs he has never seen before - words and images that completely refigure his past and sense of identity. Wartime chidhood, red farm dust, fragile contacts with his children, lithe and satisfying strategies of the tennis court, new sex and love - all must rearrange themselves before his eyes. He is not who he has always thought himself to be.

A SURFEIT OF AUNTS

Author: Daphne Coyne
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 129150639X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 175

Book Description
This book concerns life in the twenty-five years before and during the second world war. Born in 1922, my first ten years were very happy years. Things changed with the sudden death of my father. Because he was a vicar, the family had to leave the vicarage in six weeks with no home to go to and very little money. To help my mother, her three widowed sisters (the aunts) came on the scene. The only security, away from this merry-go-round of our family life, was in boarding school and then the services. My brother in the Army and I in the WRNS. I was a plotter and worked in operations rooms at several naval bases. The last one was shortly before the invasion began. I was sent to Fort Southwick, near Portsmouth. I worked here, in the underground, steel lined, plotting room of 'combined headquarters' as 'Operation Overlord' unfolded in miniature on the plotting table in front of me. When the invasion was safely under way, I was posted to 'tactical anti-submarine training' in Scotland.

Afternoons with Puppy

Author: Aubrey H. Fine
Publisher: Purdue University Press
ISBN: 9781557534705
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 220

Book Description
Afternoons with Puppy is a heartwarming account of dynamic relationships and outcomes involving a therapist, his therapy animals, and his patients over the course of almost two decades. Afternoons with Puppy is a narrative of Dr. Fine's experiences and the growing respect for the power of the animals effect on his patients and himself. This book documents some of the magnificent discoveries that Dr. Fine has witnessed and made over the past few decades working with these animals, and showing how the reader can apply these observations and discoveries to their lives. The authors illustrate the deeper and more fundamental elements of life found in our bonds with animals. more at ease but still reserved. As we sit and talk, Hart [therapy dog] sits close to her chair. At one point in our session, Sarah's reserve finally crumbles. Pushing up her left sleeve, she shows me her scars. As she lowers her arm, Sarah notices that Hart's eyes are fixed on that arm. At that moment, Hart lifts her gaze from the arm and connects with Sarah's eyes. Hart then looks over at me. With an expression on her face that I can only call puzzled, Hart looks back at Sarah, and then Hart lowers her head and begins to lick the scars. Sarah is startled for a moment but then sits quietly as Hart continues to lick the wounds. Finally, she bends over hart and holds her close.