Bøger af Graeme Lay

Brave, inquisitive, entrepreneurial: Joseph Banks personified the spirit of late 18th century Enlightenment Europe. Banks' fascination with the plant and animal kingdom began when he was a boy in rural Lincolnshire. A privileged upbringing saw him schooled at the famous institutions Harrow, Eton and Oxford. As a well-connected, independently wealthy adult, Banks developed a particular friendship with Montagu, fourth Earl of Sandwich, who introduced Banks to the pleasures of angling, and the debaucheries of the London club scene. In 1768, 25-year-old Joseph joined a round-the-world voyage led by the great English navigator, James Cook. This introduced Banks to the freedoms of traditional Polynesian society. He became an ardent lover of indigenous women and an assiduous collector of exotic flora and fauna. Following his return to England, Banks became a figure of renown, lionised by English society. But his dreams of a second world voyage with Cook ended before they began. How did this happen? How did Banks' vision become a chimera? This novel tells all.

'A very enjoyable book.' The Otago Daily Times"Lay has written a superb series of novels, which get under the skin of the protagonist and puts us aboard ship during his mesmerising voyages. Fans of Maturin and Aubrey will enjoy the relationship between Cook and Joseph Banks... The author deserves praise for the scale of his research and scope of his narrative." Richard Foreman.Novelist Graeme Lay re-imagines the peerless navigator James Cook's life up to, and including, his first circumnavigation of the world. A fictionalised account of the famous navigator's early life, the Secret Life of James Cook charts the sailor's early naval career, his marriage to Elizabeth and their family life.The novel examines the relationship between James and his equally remarkable wife, Elizabeth, the woman he married when he was 34 and she 21, and by whom he had six children, all born while he was away at sea.The Secret Life of James Cook also depicts the often-stormy relationship between the self-made English naval commander and the dashing, privileged naturalist Joseph Banks, who accompanied Cook on his first world voyage.Cook must negotiate the troubled waters of his professional, as well as personal life, however. The ship becomes impaled on the Great Barrier Reef. Endeavour's hull is holed, her lower decks begin to flood, they are many miles from land.How can the ship and her crew possibly survive?' The Secret Life of James Cook is the first novel in an acclaimed trilogy. Read the sequels, James Cook's New World and James Cook's Lost World.A full-time writer, editor and reviewer, Graeme Lay has written prolifically, including short stories, young adult fiction and travel writing, and has won numerous awards. He has a deep interest in the islands of the South Pacific and Australasia.Praise for The Secret Life of James Cook: 'Graeme Lay ... is well placed to attempt what no one has ever managed to achieve, by telling us not just what Cook did, but what he was like.' North & South'A wonderful read. I enjoyed it enormously.' Graham Beattie, Radio New Zealand

"Lay takes the reader on a new voyage of discovery alongside the great navigator, providing a fascinating re-assessment of the remarkable James Cook and his relationships with his colleagues and his wife." Scoop"Lay has written a superb series of novels, which get under the skin of the protagonist and puts us aboard ship during his mesmerising voyages. Fans of Maturin and Aubrey will enjoy the relationship between Cook and Joseph Banks... The author deserves praise for the scale of his research and scope of his narrative." Richard Foreman1771.James Cook, recently returned from his first, epic world voyage, is promoted to captain and instructed to embark on a search for the last undiscovered landmass, the Great Unknown Southern Continent. It proves to be one of the longest and most perilous voyages ever undertaken.Like an 18th-century Ulysses, Cook drives himself and his men onward, traversing the entire South Pacific, putting into place the last pieces of Earth's great jigsaw puzzle.And though it marks a personal triumph for Cook, his prolonged absence from his wife Elizabeth and their surviving children is marked by domestic tragedy and heartbreak.Cook must keep his mind on his voyage however. HMS Resolution and her consort HMS Adventure are sailing south. Icebergs surround them. Freezing fogs limits visibility. Can both ships endure, without suffering tragedy?In this thrilling sequel to The Secret Life of James Cook the biggest question of all is: where does duty to King and Country end, and loyalty to wife and family begin?James Cook's New World is the second book in the acclaimed trilogy, which also features The Secret Life of James Cook and James Cook's Lost World.Graeme Lay has written novels for adults and young adults, collections of short stories, as well as collections of short stories and books of travel writing. Many of his books are set in the islands of the South Pacific, a region through which he has travelled extensively. He writes full-time from his home in the marine suburb of Devonport in Auckland, New Zealand.Praise for the James Cook series: 'Graeme Lay ... is well placed to attempt what no one has ever managed to achieve, by telling us not just what Cook did, but what he was like.' North & South'A wonderful read. I enjoyed it enormously.' Graham Beattie, Radio New Zealand

'I wasn't happy. I wasn't unhappy. I was there at that time and that was all. I didn't involve myself in philosophical reflections, but my mind was like a camera, imprinting forever the idyllic beauty of the European summer of 1939.' The idyll does not last long. Within days a young Jewish girl and her family are engulfed by the Second World War in Warsaw, Poland. Outside the concentration camps and mostly outside the ghetto, the adolescent heroine and her family experience the war with a secret. Living in a country house, they survive on false papers and 'good looks', while hiding four of their close relatives in the cellar. One day they have to cope with waves of German soldiers bursting through their houses; the next moment the Warsaw ghetto burns; another day they wake to find the front line in their front garden.The author recreates this inhuman world though the eyes of her adolescent self. There are moments of poetic vision and moments of searing pain, but the book is a testament to heroism and concern.