"Published in a slightly different form as Shame, in 2015 in Great Britain by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, an imprint of the Orion Publishing Group, an Hachette UK Company"--Title page verso.
The best lives leave a mark.Mara's island is one of stories and magic, but every story ends in the same way. She will finish her days on the cliff, turned to stone and gazing out at the horizon like all the islanders before her.
From the author of Think of England and Fellowship Point, a captivating collection of stories—the title piece successfully made into an HBO film—about the complex relationships between lovers, spouses, neighbors, and family members. By turns funny, sad, and disturbing, these are stories of remarkable power. When the austere and moving title story of this collection appeared in The New Yorker in 1993, it inspired two memorable film adaptations, and John Updike selected it for inclusion in The Best American Short Stories of the Century. In these ten stories, Alice Elliott Dark visits the fictional town of Wynnemoor and its residents, present and past, with skill, compassion, and wit.
Once upon a chime... Every day at four o’ clock, an enchanted twilight sweeps over Vale Argantel. Strange things happen under its eldritch influence: mists boil up out of the ground, rain pours out of a cloudless sky, and the roses grow wild and fey. Such is the way of things. But when her friend falls through a magic mirror and disappears, Margot realises something’s changed. An ancient enchantment has gone awry, and chaos quickly spreads. Magic-drunk, confused and hampered at every turn, Margot must find a way to reclaim Oriane — and before anybody else disappears. But for Oriane, things are stranger still. Lost in a topsy-turvy world, how can she ever find her way home? For she’s adrift in a place very like Argantel — eerily familiar, yet strangely different; a place which follows none of the usual rules… Praise for Gloaming: "One part Eleanor Farjeon, one part Lord Dunsany, one part Vera Chapman, but mostly her unique self, Charlotte English is the first new (to me) writer to make me excited in a long, long time. Her faultless prose by turns ascends with the lark, leads you down secret paths like the willow-the-wisp, bewitches you into bewilderment, and sparkles with eye-bedazzling wonder, taking you at last to an enchanted ending that leaves you as drunk on words as her protagonists on ensorceled rose-wine. Please, milady, more!" - Mercedes Lackey
'Gloaming' is a graphic novel by the artist/musician Keaton Henson. The book's concept is essentially a field guide to a spirit world beyond our reality. Its melancholic narrative shows spirits that are lost in the city, lonely and seeking escape.
A reckless woman, a story of violence, the possibility of redemption... Ex-journalist Kay and her family are spending the summer in a rented farmhouse in Vermont. Kay is haunted by her traumatic past in Africa, and is struggling with her troubled marriage and the constraints of motherhood. Then her husband is called away unexpectedly on business and Kay finds herself alone with the children, obsessed by the idea that something terrible has happened to the owners of the house. The locals are reticent when she asks about their whereabouts; and she finds disturbing writing scrawled across one of the walls. As she starts to investigate she becomes involved with a local man, Ben, whose life is complicated by his own violent past, his involvement in a drug-trafficking operation, and his desire to adopt an abused child. Their two stories collide and intertwine, heading towards a dramatic denouement. The Underneath is a tense, intelligent, beautifully written thriller which is also a considered exploration of violence, both personal and national, and whether it can ever be justified.
* 2021 Vermont Book Award, Winner. * 2021 New England Book Awards, Finalist. * A3C Reads: March 2023 Book of the Month. "A Most Anticipated Book of 2021" —Elle, Bustle, BuzzFeed, Vulture The Hare is an affecting portrait of Rosie Monroe, of her resilience and personal transformation under the pin of the male gaze. Raised to be obedient by a stern grandmother in a blue-collar town in Massachusetts, Rosie accepts a scholarship to art school in New York City in the 1980s. One morning at a museum, she meets a worldly man twenty years her senior, with access to the upper crust of New England society. Bennett is dashing, knows that “polo” refers only to ponies, teaches her which direction to spoon soup, and tells of exotic escapades with Truman Capote and Hunter S. Thompson. Soon, Rosie is living with him on a swanky estate on Connecticut’s Gold Coast, naively in sway to his moral ambivalence. A daughter—Miranda—is born, just as his current con goes awry forcing them to abscond in the middle of the night to the untamed wilderness of northern Vermont. Almost immediately, Bennett abandons them in an uninsulated cabin without a car or cash for weeks at a time, so he can tend a teaching job that may or may not exist at an elite college. Rosie is forced to care for her young daughter alone, and to tackle the stubborn intricacies of the wood stove, snowshoe into town, hunt for wild game, and forage in the forest. As Rosie and Miranda’s life gradually begins to normalize, Bennett’s schemes turn malevolent, and Rosie must at last confront his twisted deceptions. Her actions have far-reaching and perilous consequences. An astounding new literary thriller from a celebrated author at the height of her storytelling prowess, The Hare bravely considers a woman’s inherent sense of obligation—sexual and emotional—to the male hierarchy, and deserves to be part of our conversation as we reckon with #MeToo and the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court confirmation hearing. Rosie Monroe emerges as an authentic, tarnished feminist heroine.
The Gloaming Meadows, What Roams in the Gloam? is about the adventures of the night critters that come out and about in the late afternoon near sunset, just before the evening fades into night, and the sun is almost no longer bright. While the daytime critter's day is just about to come to an end, the nighttime critters' lingering into the dim afternoon starts to begin. From dark mountains, blossoming fields, and high grassy hills, to the plants, shrubs, leaves, and trees of a dark dense forest, the gloaming meadows glows best at sunset. Come see and know what roams in the gloam!
Two women are guests for the ceremony of an old Vietnamese gentleman one evening in a Louisiana cemetery. One woman loses her jade gold ring, and decides to go back to locate it. They flee after an apparition arises from a tomb screeching a warning, ¿Take not what is yours.¿ They are drawn towards an unfamiliar house and met by a hound that desperately tries to prevent them from entering. They unknowingly steal belongings of others, which an old man has strategically placed there. If they cannot return objects into their rightful places before midnight, their souls will be trapped forever¿