Two babies are born five minutes apart in a UK hospital.Immersed in her rich Nigerian heritage, Yewande grows up able to hear her ancestors' voices - a double edged sword that heightens her spiritual awareness, but alienates her sister and brings horrifying revelations about her family's past. Mary is rejected at birth by her mother who has abandoned her African roots as she tries to blend into a small town in suburban Britain.How will each girl survive these legacies on her journey to adulthood?A big, important novel leavened with fun and studded with episodes of astonishing beauty.
Among the stark contrasts that separate the rich few from the plentiful poor, Under the Emerald Sky is a tale of love and betrayal in a land teetering on the brink of disaster - the Great Famine that would forever change the course of Ireland's history.It's 1843 and the English nobleman Quinton Williams has come to Ireland to oversee the running of his father's ailing estate and escape his painful past. Here he meets the alluring Alannah O'Neill, whose Irish family is one of few to have retained ownership of their land, the rest having been supplanted by the English over the course of the country's bloody history. Finding herself drawn to the handsome Englishman, Alannah offers to help Quin communicate with the estate's Gaelic-speaking tenants, as much to assist him as to counter her own ennui. Aware of her controlling brother's hostility towards the English, she keeps her growing relationship with Quin a secret - a secret that cannot, however, be kept for long from those who dream of ridding Ireland of her English oppressors.
Contessa Rose and her siblings are forced to move to a small town in northern Oregon with their grandparents after the premature death of their parents. There they hope to lead normal lives. Instead, they come face to face with the supernatural. Contessa picks up her role as a social outcast, where she meets the secretive Thorne family, and the elusive Elliot. Contessa is sure that the family is hiding a secret as dark as her own, and she is determined to figure it out. In a strange twist of fate, Contessa is forced to participate in a school fundraiser by her twin sister. During her forced participation, she discovers a strange truth about Elliot, and his family, a truth that could possibly mean the end of Contessa if she reveals it. Never one to run from a challenge, she exposes herself to the dark family. Now that she is exposed, Contessa is in more danger than ever before. However, Contessa and the pixie-like Angelique Thorne become friends fast. Angelique and the other Thorne siblings force Elliot and Contessa together, believing that there is something deeper between them. Their interference forces Contessa into a world of magic and secrets that she believed only existed in fairytales. As Contessa heads deeper into a strange and dark relationship, the world around her begins to unfold. As her relationship with the Thornes grows stronger, her relationships with her family and friends become more strained. Her sister and best friend cast her out, and her brother begins to pull further away from both sisters. With no one else to turn to, Contessa engulfs herself completely into understanding the supernatural that surrounds her. Unable to step aside, Contessa continues to use her own gift to save everyone around her. She is soon to find that her luck is running out. It becomes apparent to Contessa that she needs a little protection of her own when a dark figure from her past comes back to haunt her. When the monster that killed her parents comes looking for revenge, Contessa is forced to return to her childhood home to save her brother. In a life or death battle, Contessa is forced to put aside her pride, and let someone else take care of her for once.
In elegant, precise prose Donald Antrim crafts funny, tender stories of men and women disorientated by love, loss, and bouts of sorrow. An unfaithful husband goes out to buy flowers for his wife, while across town a new couple, both survivors of difficult childhoods, find comfort together in other people's apartments. On the edge of a university campus, a group of students are brought together by their ageing drama professor, whose predilection for pot and crush on his star pupil threaten to tip their performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream into a surreal and dangerous farce. And in the title story, a bereaved art teacher drives into the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia intending to throw away his ex-girlfriend's paintings.
This book takes a post-racial approach to the representation of race in contemporary British fiction, re-imagining studies of race and British literature away from concerns with specific racial groups towards a more sophisticated analysis of the contribution of a broad, post-racial British writing. Examining the work of writers from a wide range of diverse racial backgrounds, the book illustrates how contemporary British fiction, rather than merely reflecting social norms, is making a radical contribution towards the possible future of a positively multi-ethnic and post-racial Britain. This is developed by a strategic use of the realist form, which becomes a utopian device as it provides readers with a reality beyond current circumstances, yet one which is rooted within an identifiable world. Speaking to the specific contexts of British cultural politics, and directly connecting with contemporary debates surrounding race and identity in Britain, the author engages with a wide range of both mainstream and neglected authors, including Ian McEwan, Zadie Smith, Julian Barnes, John Lanchester, Alan Hollinghurst, Martin Amis, Jon McGregor, Andrea Levy, Bernardine Evaristo, Hanif Kureishi, Kazuo Ishiguro, Hari Kunzru, Nadeem Aslam, Meera Syal, Jackie Kay, Maggie Gee, and Neil Gaiman. This cutting-edge volume explores how contemporary fiction is at the centre of re-thinking how we engage with the question of race in twenty-first-century Britain.
"Necessary for all of humankind, Under the Broken Sky is a breathtaking work of literature."—Booklist, starred review A beautifully told middle-grade novel-in-verse about a Japanese orphan’s experience in occupied rural Manchuria during World War II. Twelve-year-old Natsu and her family live a quiet farm life in Manchuria, near the border of the Soviet Union. But the life they’ve known begins to unravel when her father is recruited to the Japanese army, and Natsu and her little sister, Cricket, are left orphaned and destitute. In a desperate move to keep her sister alive, Natsu sells Cricket to a Russian family following the 1945 Soviet occupation. The journey to redemption for Natsu's broken family is rife with struggles, but Natsu is tenacious and will stop at nothing to get her little sister back. Literary and historically insightful, this is one of the great untold stories of WWII. Much like the Newbery Honor book Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai, Mariko Nagai's Under the Broken Sky is powerful, poignant, and ultimately hopeful. Christy Ottaviano Books
In this engaging and accessible guide, Eugen Bacon explores writing speculative fiction as a creative practice, drawing from her own work, and the work of other writers and theorists, to interrogate its various subgenres. Through analysis of writers such as Stephen King, J.R.R. Tolkien and J. K. Rowling, this book scrutinises the characteristics of speculative fiction, considers the potential of writing cross genre and covers the challenges of targeting young adults. It connects critical and cultural theories to the practice of creative writing, examining how they might apply to the process of writing speculative fiction. Both practical and critical in its evaluative gaze, it also looks at e-publishing as a promising publishing medium for speculative fiction. This is essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students of creative writing, looking to develop a critical awareness of, and practical skills for, the writing of speculative fiction. It is also a valuable resource for creators, commentators and consumers of contemporary speculative fiction. Chapter 8, 'Horror and the Paranormal' was shortlisted for the Australasian Horror Writers Association (AHWA)'s 2019 Australian Shadows Awards.
"A very important study of one of the most important institutions in Chinese history, one without which the China we have today would certainly be a vastly different place."—Peter Bol, author of "This Culture of Ours": Intellectual Transitions in T'ang and Sung China
