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Books > Fiction > Genre fiction > Historical fiction
'A gorgeous, wildly seductive novel, shimmering with intelligence,
humour and joy' - Sarah Waters Financial Times Book of the Year In
1838 Frederic Chopin, George Sand and her children travel to a
monastery in Mallorca. They are there to create and to convalesce,
to live a simple life after the wildness of their Paris days.
Witness to this tumultuous arrival is Blanca, the ghost of a
teenage girl who has been at the monastery for over three hundred
years. Blanca's was a life cut short and she is outraged. Having
lived in a world full, according to her mother, of 'beautiful men',
she has found that in death it is the women she falls for, their
beauty she cannot turn away from, and it is the women and girls
who, over her centuries in the village and at the monastery, she
has sought to protect from the attentions of men with what little
power she has. And then George Sand arrives, this beautiful woman
in a man's clothes, and Blanca is in love. But the rest of the
village is suspicious of the newcomers, and as winter sets in, as
George tries to keep her family and herself from falling apart, as
Chopin writes prelude after prelude in despair on his tuneless
piano, their stay looks likely to end in disaster . . . Heady with
the delicious scent of the Mediterranean, richly witty, and utterly
compulsive, Briefly, A Delicious Life is a story about convention
and breaking convention, about love - yearning, secret, forbidden,
unrequited - and about men and women and the cruelty they mete out
to one another. 'Exquisite' - New York Times 'Deeply enjoyable' -
Telegraph 'Electrifyingly beautiful, exhilaratingly clever . . .
sensual, original, intelligent and brimming with love' - Imogen
Hermes Gowar
'Exceptionally brilliant. Immersive, sensual, compelling' - Marian
Keyes 'Intriguing, haunting . . . raw, beautiful' - Jennifer Saint,
author of Ariadne The gripping, historical novel from Kiran
Millwood Hargrave, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Mercies.
Set in an era of superstition, hysteria, and extraordinary change,
and inspired by the true events of a doomed summer, The Dance Tree
is an impassioned story of family secrets, forbidden love, and
women pushed to the edge. Strasbourg, 1518. In the midst of a
blisteringly hot summer, a lone woman begins to dance in the city
square. She dances for days without pause or rest, and as she is
joined by hundreds of others, the authorities declare an emergency.
Musicians will be brought in to play the Devil out of these women.
Just beyond the city's limits, pregnant Lisbet lives with her
mother-in-law and husband, tending the bees that are their
livelihood. And then, as the dancing plague gathers momentum,
Lisbet's sister-in-law Nethe returns from seven years' penance in
the mountains for a crime no one will name. It is a secret that
Lisbet is determined to uncover. As the city buckles under the beat
of a thousand feet, she finds herself thrust into a dangerous web
of deceit and clandestine passion, but she is dancing to a
dangerous tune . . . 'Extraordinary . . . An exceptionally
atmospheric, original story' - The Sunday Times 'Spellbinding' -
Elodie Harper, author of The Wolf Den
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Fox
(Hardcover)
John Reinhard Dizon
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R638
Discovery Miles 6 380
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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Anna's Tree
(Hardcover)
Cynthia Elliott Everest
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R1,008
R869
Discovery Miles 8 690
Save R139 (14%)
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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Two sisters. One brutal murder. A quest for vengeance that will
unleash Hell itself . . . A new series from the #1 New York Times
bestselling author of Stalking Jack the Ripper. Emilia and her twin
sister Vittoria are streghe - witches who live secretly among
humans, avoiding notice and persecution. One night, Vittoria misses
dinner service at the family's renowned Sicilian restaurant. Emilia
soon finds the body of her beloved twin . . . desecrated beyond
belief. Devastated, Emilia sets out to find her sister's killer and
to seek vengeance at any cost-even if it means using dark magic
that's been long forbidden. Then Emilia meets Wrath, one of the
Wicked-princes of Hell she has been warned against in tales since
she was a child. Wrath claims to be on Emilia's side, tasked by his
master with solving the series of women's murders on the island.
But when it comes to the Wicked, nothing is as it seems . . .
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