Книги, похожие на «Michael Dobbs, To Play the King»

From the Orange Prize-winning author of WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN comes a bold and savage story of the intersection of politics and human relationships, set in turbulent Northern Ireland.Having abandoned Philadelphia for the life of an international nomad, Estrin Lancaster has a taste for hot spots. She now finds herself in Belfast, a city scarred by twenty years of ritualised violence.As the former purveyor of his own bomb-disposal service, Farrell O’Phelan courts the company of destruction. Technically a Catholic, he shuns allegiance of any kind.For these two, normal life is anathema; love is a trap. What ensues is an affair between two loners who are beset with a fear of domesticity and a hunger for devastation.

Stunning repackage of the story of a woman trapped in the wrong time. Abandoned by her twentieth century lover, she plots a terrible revenge on him and his family.Adam Craig is fourteen when he meets Brid near an isolated Celtic stone in the wild Scottish Highlands – he is fascinated by her exotic, gypsy-like dress and strange attitudes. They become friends, and, in time, passionate lovers. She leads him, unsuspecting, into the sixth century, where she has mastered the ancient mysteries and dangerous magic of the Druids.In her obsession with Adam, Brid is seen as a traitor by her people, only escaping death by following Adam to Edinburgh, when he leaves home to study medicine.As the years pass he makes new friends and finds new love. But Brid is consumed by jealousy and haunts him like an evil shadow, until, fifty years on, Adam’s granddaughter helps him discover the secret that will free them from the terror of Brid’s curse.

A big, intensely involving and evocative Indian novel, with its story of a woman’s fight for her place in the world, reminiscent of Khaled Hosseini’s ‘A Thousand Splendid Suns’.The dew hasn't formally evaporated off the mustard leaves outside. Except for the sleeping baby, she is alone at home. Her mother gave her this much. As an excuse Lata Bai left Shanti behind for Mamta to look after. She has an hour before her mother will return from the well.Mamta runs her hand over her wedding sari. For a minute she considers why it is already lying unwrapped, in precise folds gleaming like a treasure in her mother's tin trunk, then she remembers her mother had used the wrapping to deliver Shanti. She picks up a corner and looks through the sheerness of the fabric. Everything turns red, the red of love. Mamta smiles. It is as it should be. «Keep my world red, oh Devi,» she prays. «Jai ho Devi, Devi Jai ho,» she recites her mother's words. Almost a married woman, she feels she has an equal right to them.’Mamta is one of seven children and learns early on in her childhood what it means to be born female in rural India. Married to a savagely unkind and brutal husband, she flees to the city to try and make a new life for herself. Sharing her story are her mother, Lata Bai, the saintly Lokend, her ever-loving brother Prem, a soul-searching bandit and a brutal landlord. This is a redemptive story, despite the often unforgiving setting, and one that is difficult to put down.