Tag: fiction

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Terry falls for “Pixie Pamela”

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Pamela Pixie Colman Smith is young woman of stark contradictions:  plucky yet naïve, artistically gifted despite lacking classical training, fascinated by the esoteric but skeptical of the world around me. After the deaths fo her beloved mother and her troubled but well-intentioned father, Pixie finds herself in the complex, political world of fin-de-siécle art, trying to get her stunning work seen and to forge a name and a path for herself in life. Across Jamaica, Devon, London and Brooklyn, Pixie is a novel of epic proportions, a tale of the twists and turns, séances and secrets, successes and devastation, of one … Continue reading Terry falls for “Pixie Pamela”

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Hunting the Hunted

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A Rebel and a Traitor is the story of a rogue consul, Sir Roger Casement, a decorated diplomat who turned his back on the British empire and instead joined the rising Irish cause and sought to forge a new nation in the middle of a war- and the mercurial spy chief who sought to destroy him by any means. The manhunt for Casement led by intelligence officer Reginald Blinker Hall, the legendary British spy chief who pioneered codebreaking early mass surveillance and media manipulation. As he did for the critically acclaimed Killing Thatcher, master storyteller Rory Carroll has scanned diaries, … Continue reading Hunting the Hunted

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Five repressed women humiliated by men, discover new paths

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Women Without Men, by Shahrnush Parsipur, now 80, we follow the lives of five women against the background of revolution and coups as they find their way to a garden, drawing on recent Iranian history and transcendent elements of Islamic mysticism, Parsipur’s unforgettable novel sees women escaping strict confines of family and society. Five repressed women abandoned or humiliated by men, discover new, sometimes surreal paths for themselves. As societal expectations and the fear of spinsterhood weigh on, Iran tried and failed to silence Women Without Men ( Zanan bedun-e Mardan in Persian) exposed the brutality of Iranian regime and … Continue reading Five repressed women humiliated by men, discover new paths

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Family tensions amid America’s immigration policies

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Lionel Shriver’s A Better Life, is a provocative novel addressing contemporary immigration, where a New York family takes in a Honduran migrant- who may or may not be the innocent paragon she claims to be. Shriver rages about the influx of illegal immigrants to America, but when asked if he writes op-eds about this, he replies “Oh no, no, no, no,.. I most certainly do not,”. Gloria Bonaventura, living in a sprawling house in Brooklyn with her 26-year-old son Nico, an Italian American engineering major  who spent  four years since graduation telling on the dime of his divorced mother of three, decides … Continue reading Family tensions amid America’s immigration policies

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Guilt and regret

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Fila, a protagonist of Michelle Steinbeck’s Favorita, receives an anonymous phone call from Italy telling her that her mother Magdalena is dead, her instinctive feeling is one of relief. Fila hasn’t seen her in years, not since she disgraced their family by advertising her brothel in the newspaper. Fila is already unmoored by the recent death of her grandmother Lavinia, who raised her. In Lavinia’s kitchen in Switzerland Fila now sits, listening to the voice on the “mortadella-coloured rotary telephone” that says “they say it’s because of her liver, but I can assure you that it was not her liver… … Continue reading Guilt and regret

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Focus on Parenting

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Narrator Sandra embarks on an odyssey through the afterlife to her autistic son, who is literally and figuratively lost at sea: a hilarious and deeply moving voyage of the body and the mind. “It was a strange experience, speaking to someone who didn’t tune in to you. It was like talking hallucinogens” Sandra said. Following a documentary producer who dies and desperately tries to rescue her child while her spirit still roams the earth, Amie Barrodale’s debut novel Trip as much about neurodivergence and the impossibility of human empathy as it is about the bizarreness of the afterlife. Trip is … Continue reading Focus on Parenting

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Redemptive power of friendship

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Set in 2011, Crux is a story of intense friendship between two Californian teenagers, bookish Dan and his near-feral best friend Tamma, a lesbian from the wrong side of the tracks and grit, two-down-and-out teens escape the hopelessness of their lives and chase a different future through rock-climbing- from Gabriel Tallent, the New York Times bestselling author of My Absolute Darling. Dan and Tamma are two teenagers in their last year of high school in the southern Mojave Desert, are passionate climbers, one is a gifted golden child, the other a mouthy burnout, who spend their evenings and weekends conquering … Continue reading Redemptive power of friendship

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Murder of a politician

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A third-two-year-old sex worker is shocked when she’s approached by undercover government agents to aid them in a top-secret plot to assassinate a politician known as Meat Neck. But once the deed is done, she realizes what-made her the perfect recruit: She’s 100 per cent disposable. Holed up in an off-the-grid cabin in the woods, she now has only two days, her wits, and a laptop to save her own life. Her best bet is to reach out to the wildly popular feminist investigative podcast Justice for Bimbos, in a hastily typed series of emails, the newly minted “Murder Bimbo” … Continue reading Murder of a politician

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Fever Pitch: Two protoganists rivalry

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Nadia Davids, an award-winning South African author, paints a gothic psychological thriller set in the 1920s in her latest novel Cape Fever. A young Muslim maid finds herself entangled with the spirits of a decaying manor and the secrets of its enigmatic owner. In small unnamed city in a colonial empire in 1920, Soraya Matas believes she has found the ideal job as a personal maid to the eccentric Mrs Hattingh, whose beautiful, decaying home is not far from The Muslim Quarter of a harbour city where Soraya lives with her parents. She comes highly recommended to Mrs Hottingh through … Continue reading Fever Pitch: Two protoganists rivalry

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Where are the future book lovers

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In this digital age, the decline in children’s reading habits has become a significant conern for parents, educators and researchers alike.  Although reading is essential and fundamental skill critical for academic success and cognitive development, why children today avoid reading books, is it lack of motivation, as it plays a pivotal role in shaping a child’s willingness to engage with texts. When children do not find reading enjoyable, they are less likely to pursue it actively. Not many children find reading literature that resonates with their interests or reading levels, leading to disinterest. Parents should play a pivotal role in shaping … Continue reading Where are the future book lovers