Results for 'hernan diaz'

1. Ayelet , Waldman

A Perfect Hand

A richly drawn, captivating, and endlessly amusing novel of love and subterfuge between a lady’s maid and her clandestine lover, set in the country estates of nineteenth-century England.Miss Alice Lockey, daughter of a tenant farmer, has by dint of hard work, innate intelligence, and a cunning ability to predict the moods of her betters, raised herself to the lofty status of lady’s maid at Alderwick Park. Though her mother has advised Alice to work only until marriage, Alice has thus far resisted the temptations of matrimony among the neighboring widowers and pig farmers, more content to enjoy the fruits of her labor—or at least the portion of it her father will share after it is paid to him. Alice spends her days arranging Lady Jemima Alderwick’s blond hair into the latest French styles, chignons and plaits, laundering her lady’s surprisingly malodorous petticoats and drawers, and carefully sewing all manner of fripperies, ribbons, lace, and silk flowers, to her lady’s bonnets and gowns.But when a visiting servant, a valet named Charlie Wells, catches her eye, Alice begins to understand the constraints of her position. In a ploy to spend time with the object of her affection, Alice attempts to arrange a romance between Lady Jemima Alderwick and Charlie’s employer, one Baronet Sir Nigel Wynstowe. If only they would fall in love—then Alice and Charlie might live together as man and wife! Challenged by Lady Jemima’s love for another and Sir Wynstowe’s eccentric personality, Alice must use all of her cunning to bring about this unlikely romantic union. Will this low-born servant successfully manipulate the hearts of these lords and ladies? Will Charlie and Alice ever improve their stations? Or, as the beginning of women’s suffrage begins to percolate in the drawing rooms and salons of London, will Alice discover a different sort of path for herself?A deliciously funny, gorgeously detailed, utter enthralling novel, A Perfect Hand is a glorious novel of class, gender, and England on the cusp of enormous change.

1. Amor , Towles

Rules of Civility

'Irresistible' 'Fabulous''Gripping'Daily TelegraphObserverThe Sunday TimesIn a jazz bar on the last night of 1937, watching a quartet because she couldn't afford to see the whole ensemble, there were certain things Katey Kontent knew: the location of every old church in Manhattanhow to sneak into the cinemahow to type eighty words a minute, five thousand an hour, and nine million a yearand that if you can still lose yourself in a Dickens novel then everything is going to be fine.By the end of the year she'd learned:how to live like a redheadand insist upon the very best;that riches can turn to rags in the trip of a heartbeat,chance encounters can be fated, and the word 'yes' can be a poison.That's how quickly New York City comes about, like a weathervane, or the head of a cobra. Time tells which.'A delicious and memorable novel that will leave you wistful - and desperate for a martini.' Stylist

1. Amy , Bloom

White Houses

In 1933, President Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt took up residence in the White House. With them went the celebrated journalist Lorena Hickok - Hick to friends - a straight-talking reporter from South Dakota, whose passionate relationship with the idealistic, patrician First Lady would shape the rest of their lives. Told by the indomitable Hick, White Houses is the story of Eleanor and Hick's hidden love, and of Hick's unlikely journey from her dirt-poor childhood to the centre of privilege and power. Filled with fascinating back-room politics, the secrets and scandals of the era, and exploring the potency of enduring love, it is an imaginative tour-de-force from a writer of extraordinary and exuberant talent.

1. Gina María Balibrera

The Volcano Daughters

Set in 20th-century El Salvador, The Volcano Daughters is a powerful novel about sisterhood, art, and a community of women who refuse to be silenced.

1. Yael Van Der Wouden

The Safekeep

1. Gina María , Balibrera

The Volcano Daughters

  Set in 20th-century El Salvador, The Volcano Daughters is a powerful novel about sisterhood, art, and a community of women who refuse to be silenced. 'A gripping and spellbinding novel about a sisterhood ripped apart by violence, narrated by a ghostly chorus. An unforgettable debut.' Brit Bennett, author of The Vanishing Half El Salvador, 1923. Two sisters, raised in the shadow of a brutal dictatorship, must take separate journeys to escape the genocide that engulfs the country they love. Each believing the other to be dead, they flee across the globe, reinventing themselves and building very different lives along the way. But their paths will cross once more, for neither girl can forget the ghosts of the murdered friends they left behind. Fate will bring them back together, and when that happens, the voices of the dead will be heard once more.  Their story is not yet over. Endlessly surprising, vividly imaginative, bursting with lush life, The Volcano Daughters is a story about the strength of sisterhood against all odds.  * A Most Anticipated Book of the Year from Vulture and Electric Literature *