Barbara Trapido

The moment Jem joins her class in the middle of Silent Reading, Alice knows her life is changed. Jem seduces Alice with esoteric literature and the fabric of the past - and then she vanishes. Five years on, Jem blazes across her sphere again. And then the infuriating Giovanni appears.

Temples of Delight

Bright, stylish Katherine is offered a place to study philosophy by Jacob Goldman because of her unusual views on Jane Austen's Emma. She little expects to find herself in the Goldmans' home, a rambling house in Sussex, while Jacob's untidy but enchanting wife Jane gives birth to their 6th child, while little Rosie does headstands, while stroppy Jonathan goes off fishing and Roger wins her heart playing beautiful music on his violin. Katherine and Roger embark on a love affair that ends in tears and Katherine leaves for Rome. Years later, after much heartache of a different kind, she returns and meets the Goldmans again, who enable her to bury the past and face her own promising future.

Brother of the More Famous Jack

Jem McCrail is a fantastical godsend to the timid young Alice Pilling. "Like a dropped acorn," she appears halfway through the week, halfway through the term, and halfway through Miss Aldridge's Silent Reading Hour. Through the doorway she barely clears, wearing clothes like the cowshed-crouching urchin she encountered in her favorite P. G. Wodehouse story, Jem leads the stammering Alice into a world of culture, truancy, and bizarrerie--a world far beyond the desiccated lessons of school. The girls cultivate a steadfast bond based on a wicked and encircling sense of humor, an impish joy in indelicate literature, and Mozart's The Magic Flute. Then, as abruptly as she came, Jem disappears. The years and schools that follow, as well as the lovers--one stuffy but competent, the other a smug would-be Thatcherite--do not dim the image of the wondrous Jem. The disheartened Alice is almost ready to settle when an accident and the intervention of a latter-day fallen angel impel her on one more wild and extravagant journey. At the end her quest will lead her through the portals opening to life's profoundest joys. Like the opera it echoes, the result is pure enchantment.

Lydia is killed in a car accident, but she returns to her bereft sister as a benign ghost who, nonetheless, comes to haunt the lives of those around her in unexpected ways: Jonathan Goldman, whose flat Lydia is running from when she is knocked down; his daughter Stella, who has discovered that her father has been having an affair with the gladiatorial Sonia; Stella's genius painter-boy lover Izzy, whom she leaves behind as she flees to the arms of kindly Peregrine. Along with good stepmothers, bad mothers, strange professors and wicked monks, their lives collide in a breathtaking finale.

The Travelling Hornplayer

The highly acclaimed novel and sequel to Temples of Delight by bestselling and much-loved novelist Barbara Trapido.

Juggling

Dinah and her sister Lisa are growing up in South Africa in the fifties. It is at school that Dinah first learns about racism. As we follow Dinah from childhood, through adolcescence and marriage, to voluntary exile in London, we get a vivid glimpse of one of the darker passages of 20th century history.

Frankie and Stankie

Dinah and her sister Lisa are growing up in 1950s South Africa, where racial laws are tightening. They are two little girls from a dissenting liberal family. Big sister Lisa is strong and sensible, while Dinah is weedy and arty. At school, the sadistic Mrs Vaughan-Jones is providing instruction in mental arithmetic and racial prejudice. And then there's the puzzle of lunch break. 'Would you rather have a native girl or a koelie to make your sandwiches?' a first-year classmate asks. But Dinah doesn't know the answer, because it's her dad who makes her sandwiches. As the apparatus of repression rolls on, Dinah finds her own way. As we follow her journey through childhood and adolescence, we enter into one of the darker passages of twentieth-century history.

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Frankie & Stankie

From the bestselling author of Brother Of The More Famous Jack: it's 1995 and a mix of people from different parts of the globe - from Australia to South Africa, Senegal to Milan - are linked by their past.

Sex and Stravinsky

The wonderful and witty novel by the bestselling and much-loved novelist Barbara Trapido.

The Travelling Horn Player

Noah's Ark, with its lively wit, piquant insight and outrageous characters, more than fulfils the promise of the prize-winning Brother of the More Famous Jack

Noah's Ark

Eighteen-year-old Katherine bright, stylish, frustratedly suburban, doesn't know how her life will change when the brilliant Jacob Goldman first offers her a place at university. When she enters the Goldmans' rambling bohemian home, presided over by the beatific matriarch Jane, she realises that Jacob and his family are everything she has been waiting for. But when a romantic entanglement ends in tears, Katherine is forced into exile from the family she loves most. And her journey back into the fold, after more than a decade away, will yield all kinds of delightful surprises.

The 40th Anniversary Edition of a Classic, with New Introductions by Rachel Cusk and Maria Semple

Eine Familiengeschichte von Shakespearescher Leichtigkeit: Christina ist kein liebes Mädchen, auch wenn sie es gerne wäre. Ständig muss sie ihre Stachel ausfahren. Vor allem der Vater mit seinen extravaganten Ideen geht ihr gegen den Strich. Ihre Mutter hingegen hat zu wenig Biss, und die Großmutter, anfangs ihre liebste Verbündete, erweist sich als gnadenlos engstirnig. Nur Pam, ihre Adoptivschwester, liebt sie von Herzen. Kein Wunder, dass ihr Weg zu den Menschen, mit denen sie durchs Leben gehen möchte, nicht geradlinig verläuft. Im Internat lernen Christina und Pam die beiden Freunde Jago und Peter kennen. Allen vieren hat das Leben Schweres mitgegeben. Durch einen tragischen Vorfall werden sie in alle Winde zerstreut. Jahre später finden sie sich in Oxford wieder, zu einem Happy End mit glücklichen Paaren. Wer mit wem - das bleibt bis zum Schluss spannend. 1994 zuerst erschienen, war "Jonglieren" in England ein Bestseller, die erste Veröffentlichung in Deutschland folgte 1995. Als Klassikerin weiblicher Erzählkunst findet Barbara Trapido nun ihren Platz bei der edition fünf.

Jonglieren

Sparky Christina and her saintly adopted sister Pam couldn't be more different. And when they meet similarly mismatched friends Jago and Peter, the four embark on a dazzling series of pairings and partings, outrageous coincidences and eleventh-hour entrances interrupted one disastrous Halloween when schoolboy revelry turns horribly wrong. Three years on, as Christina analyses the wit, cruelty and crossed genders of Shakespearean comedy, the cast of her own life reunites and the curtain falls on some gloriously unexpected partnerships.

Barbara Trapido

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