Bruce Holsinger

In Chaucer's London, betrayal, murder, royal intrigue, mystery, and dangerous politics swirl around the existence of a prophetic book that foretells the deaths of England's kings. Bruce Holsinger's A Burnable Book is an irresistible historical thriller reminiscent of the classics An Instance of the Fingerpost, The Name of the Rose, and The Crimson Petal and the White. London, 1385. Surrounded by ruthless courtiers—including his powerful uncle, John of Gaunt, and Gaunt's artful mistress, Katherine Swynford—England's young, still untested king, Richard II, is in mortal peril, and the danger is only beginning. Songs are heard across London—catchy verses said to originate from an ancient book that prophesies the end of England's kings—and among the book's predictions is Richard's assassination. Only a few powerful men know that the cryptic lines derive from a "burnable book," a seditious work that threatens the stability of the realm. To find the manuscript, wily bureaucrat Geoffrey Chaucer turns to fellow poet John Gower, a professional trader in information with connections high and low. Gower discovers that the book and incriminating evidence about its author have fallen into the unwitting hands of innocents, who will be drawn into a labyrinthine conspiracy that reaches from the king's court to London's slums and stews—and potentially implicates his own son. As the intrigue deepens, it becomes clear that Gower, a man with secrets of his own, may be the last hope to save a king from a terrible fate. Medieval scholar Bruce Holsinger draws on his vast knowledge of the period to add colorful, authentic detail—on everything from poetry and bookbinding to court intrigues and brothels—to this highly entertaining and brilliantly constructed epic literary mystery that brings medieval England gloriously to life.

A Novel

A Burnable Book

Displacements

Ambitious parents, wilful kids, and the pursuit of prestige - no matter the cost... A gripping page-turner, perfect for fans of Big Little Lies. 'More than a touch of Liane Moriarty's Big Little Lies' The Observer In the peaceful, privileged community of Crystal, Colorado, a group of close friends are raising their families in harmony. Until one day, news begins to spread that a 'gifted school' will be opening its doors in their town. There are only a few prestigious places, and the competition will be ferocious. As parents and children begin to compete, cracks start to show in this picturesque community. Fault lines appear between friends and siblings, in marriages and careers, as old resentments start to simmer and long-buried secrets threaten to detonate under the pressure... Just how far will these parents go to give their children a good education, and what will be the ultimate price? Praise for The Gifted School . . .font> 'Wise and addictive... an incisive inspection of privilege, race and class' NEW YORK TIMES 'Snapping with tension, this is a book for our times. It will push a lot of buttons for a lot of people' SHARI LAPENA, AUTHOR OF THE COUPLE NEXT DOOR 'Like Big Little Lies with standardized testing... a deeply pleasurable read' MEG WOLITZER, AUTHOR OF THE FEMALE PERSUASION 'Exposes how easily a mix of good intentions, self-delusions, and minor sins can escalate' THE NEW YORKER 'The summer read that predicted the college-admissions scandal' THE WALL STREET JOURNAL 'Timely and relevant' OPRAHMAG.COM 'A (hilariously) timely book that explores the lengths to which privileged parents will go to get their kids a top education' NEW YORK POST 'On the pulse of modern times' MAGIC BOOK CLUB 'If you loved the shananigans of the pushy parents in TV hit Big Little Lies you'll love this scorching novel . . . bitingly dark' PETERBOROUGH TELEGRAPH 'Relevant and relatable' I PAPER

The pursuit of prestige, no matter the cost...

The Gifted School

'A gripping, full-throttle page-turner... puts the reader right in the eye of the emotional storm' Miranda Cowley Heller, author of THE PAPER PALACE _________________________________________ An adrenaline-fueled story of lives upended and privilege lost in a swiftly changing world. Daphne Larsen-Hall has every reason to believe that her life as an artist in a luxury Miami house with her surgeon husband, Brantley, and their family, will carry on forever. But Luna - the world's first Category 6 hurricane - changes everything. With Brantley missing in the aftermath of the massive storm, Daphne and their children find themselves in a vast shelter for the displaced a thousand miles from home, their finances abruptly cut off. As days turn into weeks, the family confronts losses and circumstances they never imagined, and a world that has changed beneath their feet. When tensions in the shelter reach a breaking point, Daphne's resilience is put to the ultimate test as she realises 'normal' will never return - and faces the shocking truths that threaten to tear her family apart once more. _________________________________________ Praise for Bruce Holsinger's The Gifted School: 'More than a touch of Liane Moriarty's Big Little Lies' Observer 'An incisive inspective of privilege, race and class' New York Times 'Snapping with tension, this is a book for our times' Shari Lapena 'Exposes how easily a mix of good intentions, self-delusions and minor sins can escalate' The New Yorker

The Displacements

A suspenseful family drama about moral responsibility in the age of artificial intelligence.

When the Cassidy-Shaws’ autonomous minivan collides with an oncoming car, seventeen-year-old Charlie is in the driver’s seat, with his father, Noah, riding shotgun. In the back seat, tweens Alice and Izzy are on their phones, while their mother, Lorelei, a world leader in the field of artificial intelligence, is absorbed in her work. Yet each family member harbors a secret, implicating them all in the tragic accident.

During a weeklong recuperation on the Chesapeake Bay, the family confronts the excruciating moral dilemmas triggered by the crash. Noah tries to hold the family together as a seemingly routine police investigation jeopardizes Charlie’s future. Alice and Izzy turn strangely furtive. And Lorelei’s odd behavior tugs at Noah’s suspicions that there is a darker truth behind the incident—suspicions heightened by the sudden intrusion of Daniel Monet, a tech mogul whose mysterious history with Lorelei hints at betrayal. When Charlie falls for Monet’s teenaged daughter, the stakes are raised even higher in this propulsive family drama that is also a fascinating exploration of the moral responsibility and ethical consequences of AI.

Culpability explores a world newly shaped by chatbots, autonomous cars, drones, and other nonhuman forces in ways that are thrilling, challenging, and unimaginably provocative.

Culpability

The author of the acclaimed medieval mystery A Burnable Book once again brings fourteenth-century London alive in all its color and detail in this riveting thriller featuring medieval poet and fixer John Gower—a twisty tale rife with intrigue, danger, mystery, and murder London, 1386. A mass murder has taken place within the city walls. Sixteen corpses have been dumped where they are sure to be found, bearing wounds like none seen before. John Gower, middling poet and expert trader in secrets, is summoned to investigate the killings even as the ruthless mayor of London seeks to thwart an open inquiry for reasons unknown. Gower learns that the men have fallen victim to handgonnes, new and terrifying weapons that threaten to change the future of war. Challenged by deception and treachery on all sides, Gower struggles against his failing vision even as his inquiries take him from the city's labyrinthine slums to the port of Calais to the forests of Kent, where his friend Geoffrey Chaucer serves as justice of the peace. As Gower strives to discover the source of the new guns and the identity of those who wielded them, he must risk everything to reveal the truth—and prevent a more devastating massacre on London's crowded streets. . . .

The Invention of Fire

Burnable Book

• OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • “I was riveted until the very last shocking sentence!”—Oprah Winfrey “The most of-the-moment novel I’ve read all year, and it’s the book of the summer.”—Real Simple “If you want an engaging novel sure to spark great discussion about that thorny [AI] future, this is it.”—Ron Charles, The Washington Post A suspenseful family drama about moral responsibility in the age of artificial intelligence. When the Cassidy-Shaws’ autonomous minivan collides with an oncoming car, seventeen-year-old Charlie is in the driver’s seat, with his father, Noah, riding shotgun. In the back seat, tweens Alice and Izzy are on their phones, while their mother, Lorelei, a world leader in the field of artificial intelligence, is absorbed in her work. Yet each family member harbors a secret, implicating them all in the tragic accident. During a weeklong recuperation on the Chesapeake Bay, the family confronts the excruciating moral dilemmas triggered by the crash. Noah tries to hold the family together as a seemingly routine police investigation jeopardizes Charlie’s future. Alice and Izzy turn strangely furtive. And Lorelei’s odd behavior tugs at Noah’s suspicions that there is a darker truth behind the incident—suspicions heightened by the sudden intrusion of Daniel Monet, a tech mogul whose mysterious history with Lorelei hints at betrayal. When Charlie falls for Monet’s teenaged daughter, the stakes are raised even higher in this propulsive family drama that is also a fascinating exploration of the moral responsibility and ethical consequences of AI. Culpability explores a world newly shaped by chatbots, autonomous cars, drones, and other nonhuman forces in ways that are thrilling, challenging, and unimaginably provocative.

Culpability (Oprah’s Book Club)

A sweeping exploration of the shaping role of animal skins in written culture and human imagination over three millennia “Richly detailed and illustrated. . . . An engaging exploration of book history.”—Kirkus Reviews For centuries, premodern societies recorded and preserved much of their written cultures on parchment: the rendered skins of sheep, cows, goats, camels, deer, gazelles, and other creatures. These remains make up a significant portion of the era’s surviving historical record. In a study spanning three millennia and twenty languages, Bruce Holsinger explores this animal archive as it shaped the inheritance of the Euro-Mediterranean world, from the leather rolls of ancient Egypt to the Acts of Parliament in the United Kingdom. Holsinger discusses the making of parchment past and present, the nature of the medium as a biomolecular record of faunal life and environmental history, the knotty question of “uterine vellum,” and the imaginative role of parchment in the works of St. Augustine, William Shakespeare, and a range of Jewish rabbinic writers of the medieval era. Closely informed by the handicraft of contemporary makers, painters, and sculptors, the book draws on a vast array of sources—codices and scrolls, documents and ephemera, works of craft and art—that speak to the vitality of parchment across epochs and continents. At the center of On Parchment is the vexed relationship of human beings to the myriad slaughtered beasts whose remains make up this vast record: a relationship of dominion and compassion, of brutality and empathy.

Animals, Archives, and the Making of Culture from Herodotus to the Digital Age

On Parchment

Invention of Fire

"A gripping, full-throttle page turner."– Miranda Cowley Heller, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Paper Palace An adrenaline-fueled story of lives upended and transformed by an unprecedented catastrophe To all appearances, the Larsen-Hall family has everything: healthy children, a stable marriage, a lucrative career for Brantley, and the means for Daphne to pursue her art full-time. Their deluxe new Miami life has just clicked into place when Luna—the world’s first category 6 hurricane—upends everything they have taken for granted. When the storm makes landfall, it triggers a descent of another sort. Their home destroyed, two of its members missing, and finances abruptly cut off, the family finds everything they assumed about their lives now up for grabs. Swept into a mass rush of evacuees from across the American South, they are transported hundreds of miles to a FEMA megashelter where their new community includes an insurance-agent-turned-drug dealer, a group of vulnerable children, and a dedicated relief worker trying to keep the peace. Will “normal” ever return? A suspenseful read plotted on a vast national tapestry, The Displacements thrillingly explores what happens when privilege is lost and resilience is tested in a swiftly changing world.

Uprostřed životu nebezpečné zápletky. Jsme v Londýně roku 1385. Ve městě plném stínů a strachu, kterým obchází přízrak povstání a jemuž vládne svéhlavý král Richard II. John Gower je občasným básníkem a stálým obchodníkem ožehavými informacemi a utajovanými skutečnostmi. Když mu jeho důvěrník a rovněž básník Geoffrey Chaucer připomene starý dluh, Gower mu nemůže odepřít pomoc. Přítel požaduje, aby pro něho vyhledal pohřešovanou knihu. Gower však neví, že kvůli ní už došlo k vraždě a že může zničit život i jemu. V jejích slovech se totiž skrývá ta nejstrašnější velezrada – spiknutí.

Bruce Holsinger

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