Книги, похожие на «Tom Perrotta, The Leftovers»

The landmark first novel by acclaimed Cold War thriller writer Derek Lambert.Derek Lambert’s classic spy novel exposes the truth about the life of the Western community in post Stalin Moscow, and their existence in which tensions and hostility of the Soviet Union sometimes prove intolerable.An American working for the US embassy and the CIA, a young Englishman at the British Embassy gradually cracking under the strain of Moscow life, and a member of the Twilight Brigade. In an alien land their lives become inextricably joined in a vivid and tense story of diplomats, traitors, Soviet secret police and espionage.FROM DEREK LAMBERT’S OBITUARY IN THE TELEGRAPH:‘His first novel, Angels in the Snow (1969), was the fruit of a year's posting in Moscow for the Daily Express. It contains a vivid picture of the western community in the Soviet capital. Under constant surveillance and cut off from ordinary Muscovites, the cautious diplomats and cynical journalists are shown bored and lonely with only the solace of drink and sex.‘Its most touching portrait is of a drunken defector with a loving Russian wife, who was based on Len Wincott, a leader of the 1931 Invergordon naval mutiny. Lambert's ability to write taut dialogue and dramatic scenes encouraged a host of followers who, like him, came to realise that the espionage tale contained the essence of Cold War reality.‘With a ready eye for drama, which gave his journalism and fiction its air of authenticity, Lambert smuggled his incomplete manuscript out of Russia in a wheelchair when he was invalided home with suspected rheumatic fever. He finished it on his battered Olivetti typewriter in a flat over a grocer's shop in Ballycotton, Co Cork, and earned himself the then impressive sum of £10,000, which set him firmly on his career as a novelist.’‘A novel of terrific atmosphere’ Daily Express‘Excitingly real’ Sunday Telegraph‘Mr Lambert has written an eminently readable and poignant documentary novel. I predict that we shall hear a great deal more about him’ Sunday Express

POWER.CORRUPTION.CONSPIRACY.BUSINESS AS USUAL.Two corpses. A country on the edge of a political precipice. A conspiracy so bold it would make Machiavelli wince.The first novel from Britain’s most celebrated political commentator is a gleefully twisted take on what goes on behind the door of 10 Downing Street.Andrew Marr’s first novel is a darkly comic tale of murder and skulduggery, played out at the very heart of Downing Street against the backdrop of a crucial, once-in-a-generation referendum.Making full use of his unrivalled inside knowledge of the British political scene, Marr has created a sparkling entertainment, a wholly original depiction of Westminster and its denizens, and a fascinating, irreverent glimpse behind the parliamentary curtain.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES, a remarkable tomb was carved to cover the bones of an English hero. For centuries, tales spread about dragons, giants and devils. How and why this happened is the subject of this book.Do you wonder where dragons once lurked and where the local fairies baked their loaves? Or where wolves were trapped and suicides buried? Did people in the past really believe the marvellous stories they told and can those beliefs and those stories still teach us something about how to live in the world today?These questions lie at the heart of Christopher Hadley’s Hollow Places as it searches through the centuries for the truth behind the legend of Piers Shonks, a giant from a village in Hertfordshire, who slew a dragon that once had its lair under ancient yew in a field called Great Pepsells.Hadley’s quest takes us on a journey into the margins of history: to the margins of the Bayeux Tapestry where strange creatures gather, of ancient woodland where hollow trees hide secrets, of 18th century manuscripts where antiquaries scribbled clues to the identity of folk heroes.Hollow Places takes us back shivering to a church in Georgian England, to stand atop its tower triangulating the Elizabethan countryside, and to confront the zealous Mr Dowsing and his thugs looting the brasses and smashing the masonry during the Civil War. It asks why Churchwarden Morris could not sleep at night, and how long bones last in a crypt, and where a medieval stonemason found his inspiration.Hollow Places rescues a vanished world and wrestles with superstition, with what people really believed; with what that tells us about them and how very much we are still alike– dragons or nay.The story of Piers Shonks is an obscure tale, but it has endured: the survivor of an 800-year battle between storytellers and those who would mock or silence them. Shonks’ story stands for all those thousands of seemingly forgotten tales that used to belong to every village. It is an adventure into the past by a talented and original new writer and a meditation on memory and belief that underlines the importance and the power of the folk legends we used to tell and why they still matter.