Salley Vickers

Sylvia Blackwell, a young woman in her twenties, moves to East Mole, a quaint market town in middle England, to start a new job as a children's librarian. But the apparently pleasant town is not all it seems. Sylvia falls in love with an older man - but it's her connection to his precocious young daughter and her neighbours' son which will change her life and put them, the library and her job under threat. How does the library alter the young children's lives and how do the children fare as a result of the books Sylvia introduces them to?

Librarian The

After the death of her longtime friend Harriet, schoolteacher Julia Garnet takes an apartment in Venice for six months, falls in love for the first time with an art dealer named Carlo, and unravels the ancient story of Tobias and the Angel at her new church. A first novel. Reprint.

Miss Garnet's Angel

At the end of his life, an elderly and ailing Sigmund Freud waits in his office in England for the arrival of a stranger, the enigmatic Teiresias, who relates the story of his life, which offers a unique twist on a story strangely familiar to the proponent of the Oedipus complex theory, in a retelling of the ancient Greek myth of Oedipus.

The Myth of Oedipus

Where Three Roads Meet

The new novel from Salley Vickers, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Librarian - available for pre-order now Artist, Hassie Days, and her sister, Margot, buy a run down Jacobean house in Hope Wenlock on the Welsh Marches. While Margot continues her London life in high finance, Hassie is left alone to work the large, long-neglected garden. She is befriended by eccentric, sharp-tongued, Miss Foot, who recommends, Murat, an Albanian migrant, made to feel out of place among the locals, to help Hassie in the garden. As she works the garden in Murat's peaceful company, Hassie ruminates on her past life: the sibling rivalry that tainted her childhood and the love affair that left her with painful, unanswered questions. But as she begins to explore the history of the house and the mysterious nearby wood, old hurts begin to fade as she experiences the healing power of nature and discovers other worlds. In her haunting new novel, Salley Vickers, the bestselling author of The Librarian and The Cleaner of Chartres, writes with the profound psychological insight and sense of the numinous power of place that is the hallmark of all her novels. 'Salley Vickers sees with a clear eye and writes with a light hand. She's a presence worth cherishing' Philip Pullman 'The Gardener is a novel of regrowth & regeneration, of sisters overcoming a toxic parental legacy & of the healing power of seed packets. The perfect fictional promise to draw us through a harsh winter' Patrick Gale 'Steeped in a sense of the redemptive power of place, Sally Vickers's 11th novel is a paean to green-fingered regeneration that is both rigorous and charming' Observer

The Gardener

Working as a cleaner in the famed medieval cathedral of Chartres for more than 20 years, Agnès Morel profoundly transforms local lives by performing small tasks and using her subtle influence until an accidental encounter reveals tragic incidents from her youth, causing her to be targeted by mean-spirited gossips. By the author of the best-selling Miss Garnet's Angel.

A Novel

The Cleaner of Chartres

Grandmothers follows four grandmothers - Blanche, who can't seem to stop stealing things from the local pharmacy; Minna, who just wants a quiet life in her shepherd's hut, though the local children have other ideas; Cherry, who's adjusting to life in a care home; and Nan, whose favourite occupation is researching funerals - whose lives and grandchildren become unexpectedly entangled.

Grandmothers

the myth of Oedipus

Where three roads meet

"How much can love ask of us? Brilliant and mercurial Will Tye suffers a life changing accident. The terrible event ripples through three generations of the complex and eccentric Tye family, bringing to light old tragedies and dangerous secrets. Each member of the family holds some clue to the chain of events which may have led to the accident and each holds themselves to blame. Most closely affected is Will's cousin Cecelia, whose affinity with Will leaves her most vulnerable to his suffering and whose own life is for ever changed by how she will respond to it. Told through the eyes of three women close to Will, his sister, his grandmother and his aunt, 'Cousins'is a novel weaving darkness and light which takes us from the outbreak of WW2 to the present day, exploring the recurrence of tragedy, the nature of transgression, and the limits of morality and love."

Cousins

Roddy Doyle

William Boyd

Philip Pullman

John Wood

Pico Iyer

Chigozie Obioma

Jan Morris

Candice Carty-Williams

Madeleine Thien

Robert Macfarlane

Michael Ondaatje

Jackie Morris

Imtiaz Dharker

Alice Pung

Max Porter

S.F. Said

Jancis Robinson

Dina Nayeri

David Pilling

Andy Miller

Sisonke Msimang

Markus Zusak

'This story, like so many stories, begins with a gift. The gift, like so many gifts, was a book...' So begins the essay by Robert Macfarlane that inspired this collection. In this cornucopia of an anthology, you will find essays by some of the world's most beloved novelists, nonfiction writers, essayists and poets. 'You will see books taking flight in flocks, migrating around the world, landing in people's hearts and changing them for a day or a year or a lifetime. 'You will see books sparking wonder or anger; throwing open windows into other languages, other cultures, other minds; causing people to fall in love or to fight for what is right. 'And more than anything, over and over again, you will see books and words being given, received and read - and in turn prompting further generosity.' Published to coincide with the 20th anniversary of global literacy non-profit, Room to Read, The Gifts of Reading forms inspiring, unforgettable, irresistible proof of the power and necessity of books and reading. Inspired by Robert Macfarlane Curated by Jennie Orchard With contributions by: William Boyd, Candice Carty-Williams, Imtiaz Dharker, Roddy Doyle, Pico Iyer, Andy Miller, Jackie Morris, Jan Morris, Sisonke Msimang, Dina Nayeri, Chigozie Obioma, Michael Ondaatje, David Pilling Max Porter, Philip Pullman, Alice Pung, Jancis Robinson, S.F.Said, Madeleine Thien, Salley Vickers, John Wood and Markus Zusak

The Gifts of Reading

The Other Side of You

Sigmund Freud seeks refuge in England in 1938 where he will spend the last fifteen months of his life dying of cancer. During his stay he is visited by a stranger who comes and goes and tells the famed proponent of the Oedipus complex this strange story.

Elizabeth Von Arnim

Enchanted April

Gardener

Many years ago, Mr. Golightly wrote a work of dramatic fiction that grew to be an astonishing international bestseller. But his reputation is on the decline and he finds himself badly out of touch with the modern world. He decides to take a holiday and comes to the historic village of Great Calne, hoping to use the opportunity to bring his great work up to date. But he soon finds that events take over his plans and that the themes he has written on are being strangely replicated in the lives of the villagers around him. As he comes to know his neighbors better, Mr. Golightly begins to examine his attitude toward love and to ponder the terrible catastrophe of his only son's death -- so, too, we begin to learn the true and extraordinary identity of Mr. Golightly.

Mr Golightly's Holiday

Violet Hetherington, recently widowed, has taken the rash step of joining a transatlantic cruise to New York to visit Edwin, an old friend and long-ago lover. As she makes the six-day crossing, she relives the traumatic events that led to losing his friendship and abandoning her career as a poet for the safety of marriage. Moving between the late sixties and the present day, Dancing Backwards is written with the lightness of touch and psychological insight that characterizes much of Salley Vickers’s widely acclaimed work. This bittersweet novel is subtle, poignant, and wonderfully entertaining.

Dancing Backwards

It is 1938 and Sigmund Freud, suffering from the debilitating effects of cancer, has been permitted by the Nazis to leave Vienna. He seeks refuge in England, taking up residence in the house in Hampstead in which he will die only fifteen months later. But his last months are made vivid by the arrival of a stranger, who comes and goes according to Freud's state of health. Who is the mysterious visitor and why has he come to tell the famed proponent of the Oedipus complex his strange story? Set partly in pre-war London and partly in ancient Greece, Where Three Roads Meet is as brilliantly compelling as it is moving. Former psychoanalyst and acclaimed novelist Salley Vickers revisits a crime committed long ago which still has disturbing reverberations for us all.

The boy who could see death

After the death of her longtime friend and flatmate, retired British history teacher Julia Garnet does something completely out of character: She takes a six-month rental on a modest apartment in Venice. She befriends a young Italian boy and English twins who are restoring a fourteenth-century chapel. And she falls in love for the first time in her life with an art dealer named Carlo. Juxtaposing Julia's journey of self-discovery with the apocryphal tale of Tobias and the Archangel Raphael, Miss Garnet's Angel tells a lyrical, incandescent story of love, loss, miracles, and redemption and of one woman's transformation and epiphany.

Salley Vickers

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