Bøger af Patricia O'Sullivan

A revised version of the November 2010 publication.In 1656, a small community of Spanish Catholic merchants lived in London bound by a sacred secret: they were Portuguese Jews. This is the story of one of them, Domingo de Lacerda, who learns early on that survival in seventeenth-century Europe requires both deceit and conformity. But then he meets Lucy, who has secrets of her own and who challenges Domingo to question everything he has been taught to value. The political and spiritual conflicts that characterized the Iberian Inquisition, the English Civil War, and the English Interregnum provide a backdrop against which Domingo must choose between his obligation to the Jewish community that protects him and the Catholic woman who loves him.

"There is no deeper mark of being a Jew than exile"In 1654, fifteen hundred Jews were driven from a Dutch colony in Brazil by a conquering Portuguese army. A fleet of sixteen ships transported the Jews back to Europe. However, one ship got lost in a storm. Drifting alone in the Atlantic, the ship was captured by pirates who brought the Jews to New Amsterdam. Penniless and unwelcome there, the refugees struggled to survive the wilderness of North America and the hostility of those seeking to control it. One young refugee, Benjamin Vieira, works in the fur trade along the North River before being captured by a Mohawk warrior. After a daring escape, he makes his way east to New England where he takes refuge with the powerful Narragansett tribe. Benjamin believes a Jew must make his home wherever he is able. But tribal elders disagree. They contend Benjamin must live among his own people, Jewish merchants who have settled in Newport, Rhode Island. But Benjamin's life in the colonies is soon threatened by a bloody war between the English colonists and the Native Americans. And Benjamin doesn't know which side he is on. Set against the backdrop of the first Jewish settlement in North America in 1654 and King Philip's War from 1675-1676, Legend of the Dead is a story about the transformation of the New World and one young man's attempt to carve his place within it.

Rachel Meares is unhappily married to a German merchant, in love with a British physician, and forced to spy for the American rebels by her African slaves, who know too many of her secrets, including how her brother and father are smuggling guns to the Americans from a Dutch island in the Caribbean. There seems to be no escape for Rachel from her marriage or from Newport when the rebel spy blackmailing Rachel decides to take matters into his own hands.Set against the British occupation of Newport in Narragansett Bay and of St. Eustatius in the Caribbean Sea during the American War for Independence, A Notable Occupation is a story about a young Jewish woman trying to find love in a time of war.

Straight-A student, Austin Justice, is only four weeks away from graduating high school. But after being outed as gay, he's harassed by his classmates. When he's suspended from school for fighting back, Austin has had enough. He goes to live with his sister, a college student working in a summer theater program. Pulled into the world of dark theaters, dingy costume shops, and free-thinking actors, Austin realizes that his whole life has been a dull performance. For the first time, he lives life unscripted, allowing himself to follow his heart and learning that love can overcome fear even in the most difficult circumstances.

With aspirations to be a physician, Emma applies to Boston Female Medical College. But her plans are threatened by the school's limited vision of the role of female physicians, an entanglement with an Irish family, and a city tragedy that leaves hundreds dead.

After being kicked out of the house at 15 because he is gay, Sean spends years trying to put his life back together. He finally seems to be putting his past behind him when his younger sister, who he hasn't seen in six years, runs away from home and into his life. Coming face to face with the parents who abandoned him, Sean must find the strength to confront them and to put the past behind him.

Kwan was sick of feeling second-class to her husband's concubine. Late one humid night, she grabbed the cleaver. Within minutes, three people were dead: the concubine with over 70 gashes.Kwan became the last woman in Hong Kong to suffer the death penalty. Behind the stories of the city's female murderers lie complex webs of jealousies, poverty and despair.