Bøger udgivet af Harper Perennial

"ThisBeautiful Life is a gripping, potent and blisteringly well-written story offamily, dilemma, and consequence. . . . I read this book with white-knuckledurgency, and I finished it in tears. Helen Schulman is an absolutely brilliantnovelist." --Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, LoveTheevents of a single night shatter one family's sense of security and identity inthis provocative and deeply affecting domestic drama from Helen Schulman, theacclaimed author of A Day at the Beach and Out of Time. In thetradition of Lionel Shriver, Sue Miller, and Laura Moriarty, Schulman crafts abrilliantly observed portrait of parenting and modern life, cunningly exploringour most deeply-held convictions and revealing the enduring strengths thatemerge in the face of crisis.

Winston Churchill rages against time and his own mortality, in conflict with friend and foe alike, in this tumultuous political drama about his last ten years of public life.Churchill Defiant is a gripping, fast-paced narrative of bare-knuckle politics, of life-and-death decisions, of old grudges and fresh blame.This is Churchill in close-up—a vivid, deeply poignant portrait of the great man at his most maddening and devious, but also at his most human and defiant.

"A keen sociological eye for class and ideology; an understanding of the contradictory impulses of the human heart; an ability to conjure a place, a mood and a time through seemingly matter-of-fact descriptions." -- Michiko Kakutani, New York TimesShocking, intimate, often uncomfortably honest, Adore reaffirms Doris Lessing's unrivaled ability to capture the truth of the human condition.Roz and Lil have been best friends since childhood. But their bond stretches beyond familiar bounds when these middle-aged mothers fall in love with each other's teenage sons--taboo-shattering passions that last for years, until the women end them, vowing to have a respectable old age.

"It's an admirable endeavor to have Iraq addressed by someone who is in so many ways able to approach it from two worlds. . . . Tamara Chalabi has the stuff, in every sense, that is needful to undertake this." --Christopher HitchensIn the tradition of Jung Chang's Wild Swans and Bhutto Benazir's Reconciliation comes Tamara Chalabi's unique memoir of returning to her family's homeland, Iraq. In this epic story of one daughter's journey through the annals of her family's tumultuous history, Chalabi's powerful voice and piercing vision illuminate her country and its people as never before.Just ten days after Baghdad's fall in 2003, Tamara Chalabi arrived in the city after a lifetime in exile--finally entering the homeland she'd known only through stories and her own imagination.Investigating four generations of her family's history at the forefront of Iraqi society, Chalabi offers a rich portrait of Middle Eastern life and a provocative look at a lost Iraq. Unforgettable characters provide glimpses of the end of the Ottoman Empire, the birth of the Iraqi state, the flowering of "the Paris of the Middle East," and Iraq's descent into chaos. At once intimate and magisterial, Chalabi's memoir of return and reclamation vividly captures the rich history of a country shattered by war and a family that has never forgotten its past.

Jo March, Scarlett O’Hara, Scout Finch—the literary canon is brimming with intelligent, feisty, never-say-die heroines and celebrated female authors. They placed a premium on personality, spirituality, career, sisterhood, and family, not unlike women of today. When they were up against the wall, authors like Jane Austen and Louisa May Alcott fought back—sometimes with words, sometimes with gritty actions.Witty, informative, and inspiring—full of beloved heroines and the remarkable writers who created them—The Heroine’s Bookshelf explores how the pluck and dignity of literary characters such as Jane Eyre and Lizzy Bennet can encourage modern women, showing them how to tap into their inner strengths and live life with intelligence and grace. From Zora Neale Hurston to Colette, Laura Ingalls Wilder to Charlotte Brontë, Harper Lee to Alice Walker, here are authors whose spirited stories and characters are more inspiring today than ever.

New York Times Bestseller"Delightful, energetic. . . . Trigiani is a seemingly effortless storyteller." -- Boston GlobeAward-winning playwright, television writer, and documentary filmmaker Adriana Trigiani returns with Brava, Valentine, continuing the heartwarming and hilarious story of Valentine Roncalli, her family, her love life, and the Angelini Shoe Company. Following on the heels of the New York Times bestseller Very Valentine (hailed by People magazine as "Sex and the City meets Moonstruck"), Brava, Valentine is another tour-de-force from the beloved author of bestselling novels Lucia, Lucia, The Queen of the Big Time, and the Big Stone Gap series.

“The bad blood had missed a generation. You’re just like your grandfather, my mother said.”Blood trickles down through every generation, seeps into every marriage. An international bestseller and winner of the Whitbread Biography Award, Bad Blood is a tragicomic memoir of one woman’s escape from a claustrophobic childhood in post–World War II Britain and the story of three generations of a family—its triumphs and its darkest secrets.With wit and a dose of self-deprecating humor, Sage’s prose brings to life in vivid detail a period—the 1940s and 1950s—that continues to influence and shape society in the twenty-first century. As a portrait of a family and a young girl’s place in it, Bad Blood is unsurpassed.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER"The most succinct and accessible overview of philosophy I have come across, and perfect for anyone who wants to dip their toe into the waters of philosophy without drowning in intimidating prose." ¿Matt Haig, Washington PostFrom the timeless wisdom of the ancient Greeks to Christianity, the Enlightenment, existentialism, and postmodernism, Luc Ferry's instant classic brilliantly and accessibly explains the enduring teachings of philosophy--including its profound relevance to modern daily life and its essential role in achieving happiness and living a meaningful life. This lively journey through the great thinkers will enlighten every reader, young and old.

When Nicholas Shakespeare stumbled across a box of documents belonging to his glamorous, mysterious late aunt, Priscilla, he was completely unaware of where this discovery would take him and what he would learn about her hidden past. Piecing together fragments of one woman's remarkable and tragic life, Priscilla is at once a stunning story of detection, a loving portrait of a flawed woman trying to survive in terrible times, and a spellbinding slice of history.

Vienna, 1913. Lysander Rief, a young English actor in town seeking psychotherapy, is caught up in a feverish affair with a beautiful, enigmatic woman—until she goes to the police to press charges of rape. Only a frenzied getaway plotted by two mysterious British diplomats saves him from trial. But after Lysander returns to a London on the cusp of war, the traumatic ordeal haunts him at every turn. The men who coordinated his escape recruit him to carry out a brutal murder. His lover shows up at a party, ready to resume their liaison. Suddenly plunged into the dangerous theater of wartime intelligence—a murky world of sex, scandal, and spies—Lysander must unravel a secret that threatens Britain's safety.Moving from Vienna to London's West End, from the battlefields of France to hotel rooms in Geneva, Waiting for Sunrise is a mesmerizing journey into the human psyche, a beautifully observed portrait of wartime Europe, a plot-twisting thriller, and a literary tour de force.

From the award-winning author of The Observations comes a beautifully conjured and wickedly sharp tale of art and deception in nineteenth-century Scotland. As she sits in her Bloomsbury home with her two pet birds for company, elderly Harriet Baxter recounts the story of her friendship with Ned Gillespie—a talented artist whose life came to a tragic end before he ever achieved the fame and recognition that Harriet maintains he deserved. In 1888, young Harriet arrives in Glasgow during the International Exhibition. After a chance encounter with Ned, she befriends the Gillespie family and soon becomes a fixture in their lives. But when tragedy strikes, culminating in a notorious criminal trial, the certainty of Harriet’s new world rapidly spirals into suspicion and despair.Infused with rich period detail, shot through with sly humor, and featuring a memorable cast of characters, Gillespie and I is an absorbing, atmospheric tale of one young woman’s friendship with a volatile artist and her place in the controversy that consumes him—a tour de force from one of the emerging names of modern fiction.

Twenty years have passed since Mary Ann Singleton left her husband and child in San Francisco to pursue her dream of a television career in New York. Now a pair of personal calamities has driven her back to the city of her youth and into the arms of her oldest friend, Michael “Mouse” Tolliver, a gardener happily ensconced with his much-younger husband. More than three decades in the making, Armistead Maupin's legendary Tales of the City series rolls into a new age, still sassy, irreverent, and curious, and still exploring the boundaries of the human experience with insight, compassion, and mordant wit.

Booger Bottom, in rural Georgia, has no road signs, no stoplights, no stores. Nobody knows how it got its name, whether from the mythical booger—part panther, part wild dog—that is rumored to have roamed there, or from the Feds (“boogers”) who raided local moonshine stills during Prohibition. Today Booger Bottom’s most famous product is Michael Waddell, one of the world’s most accomplished hunters. Growing up in this wild land near the Chattahoochee River, Waddell was blessed with two great gifts: a wonderful father who stoked his passion for hunting, and endless time in which to pursue it. He eventually left the backwoods of Georgia to stalk elk, moose, caribou, wildebeest, eland, and everything in between, from Alaska to Africa.Mixing Waddell's best hunting stories with hilarious anecdotes about the people he's met along the way, Hunting Booger Bottom is a must-read for anyone who has ever wandered into the woods with "a stick and a string."

Based on the letters and diaries of six members of Queen Victoria's household, Serving Victoria offers unique insight into the queen and her court. Seen through the eyes of her servants—including the governess to the royal children, her maid of honor, her chaplain, and her personal physician—Victoria emerges as more vulnerable, more emotional, more selfish, more comical than the austere figure depicted in her portraits.We see a woman prone to fits of giggles, who wept easily and often, who shrank from confrontation yet insisted on controlling the lives of those around her. We witness her extraordinary and debilitating grief at the death of her husband, Albert, and her sympathy toward the tragedies that afflicted her household.A perfect foil to the pomp and circumstance, prudery and conservatism that has become synonymous with Victoria's reign, Serving Victoria is an unforgettable glimpse of what it meant to serve the queen.

Thirty years ago, on the date in June known as Midsummer's Day, a young girl is mysteriously orphaned. Now, after a life of bizarre and troubling circumstances, she becomes obsessed with the idea that she too will die on Midsummer's Day . . . until she meets the one man who may be able to save her Azalea Lewis's life has been dominated by coincidences--a bizarre, and increasingly troubling, series of chance events so perfectly coordinated that any sane person would conclude that only the hidden hand of providence could explain them.On Midsummer's Day, 1982, at the age of three, Azalea was found wandering a fairground in England, alone, too young to explain what had happened to her or her parents. After a brief investigation, she was declared a ward of the court, and placed in foster care. The following year, the body of a woman--her mother--was found on a nearby beach, but by then everyone had forgotten about the little girl, and no connection was ever made. The couple who adopted Azalea brought her to Africa, where--on Midsummer's Day, 1992--they were killed in a Ugandan uprising while trying to protect their children. Azalea is spared on that day, but as she grows into adulthood, she discovers that her life has been shaped by an uncanny set of coincidences--all of them leading back to her birth mother, a single mother on the Isle of Man, and the three men who could have been her father, each of whom has played an improbable but very real role in her fate. Troubled by what she has uncovered-and increasingly convinced that she, too, will meet her fate on Midsummer's Day--she approaches Thomas Post, a rational-minded academic whose specialty is debunking our belief in coincidence: the belief that certain events are linked, even predestined, by the hands of fate. Even as they fall in love, Thomas tries to help to understand her past as a series of random events-not a divinely predetermined order. Yet as the fateful date draws closer, Thomas begins to fear that he may lose her altogether, and she may throw herself into the very fate she fears. A warm and romantic, yet intellectually fascinating, story of two souls trying to make sense of the universe and our place in it, Just Coincidence is an unforgettable novel by a storyteller of masterful gifts.

Today I buried my parents in the backyard.Neither of them were beloved.Marnie and her little sister, Nelly, are on their own now. Only they know what happened to their parents, Izzy and Gene, and they aren't telling. While life in Glasgow's Maryhill housing estate isn't grand, the girls do have each other.As the New Year comes and goes, Lennie, the old man next door, realizes that his young neighbors are alone and need his help. Lennie takes them in—feeds them, clothes them, protects them—and something like a family forms. But soon, the sisters' friends, their teachers, and the authorities start asking tougher questions. As one lie leads to another, dark secrets about the girls' family surface, creating complications that threaten to tear them apart.Written with ferce sympathy and beautiful precision, told in alternating voices, The Death of Bees is an enchanting, grimly comic tale of three lost souls who, unable to answer for themselves, can answer only for one another.

"One of those books that doesn't leave you, and probably never will." --Jacqueline Winspear, New York Times bestselling author of the Maisie Dobbs novelsThe onrush of World War I irrevocably intertwines the lives of two young couples in Louisa Young's epic tale of love in the midst of chaos. Perfect for readers of Atonement, The Mapping of Love and Death, and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society, Young's moving novel of class struggles, star-crossed romance, and the grim reality of the battlefield is a stunning exploration of the devastating consequences of a world enmeshed in total war.At eighteen years old, working-class Riley Purefoy and "posh" Nadine Waveney have promised each other the future, but when war erupts across Europe, everything they hold to be true is thrown into question. Dispatched to the trenches, Riley forges a bond of friendship with his charismatic commanding officer, Peter Locke, as they fight for their survival. Yet it is Locke's wife, Julia, who must cope with her husband's transformation into a distant shadow of the man she once knew. Meanwhile, Nadine and Riley's bonds are tested as well by a terrible injury and the imperfect rehabilitation that follows it, as both couples struggle to weather the storm of war that rages about them.Moving among Ypres, London, and Paris, this emotionally rich and evocative novel is both a powerful exploration of the lasting effects of war on those who fight--and those who don't--and a poignant testament to the enduring power of love.

The sensational tale of the first mixed-race girl introduced to high-society England and raised as a lady...The illegitimate daughter of a captain in the Royal Navy and an enslaved African woman, Dido Belle was raised by her great-uncle, the Earl of Mansfield, one of the most powerful men of the time and a leading opponent of slavery. When the portrait he commissioned of his two wards, Dido and her white cousin, Elizabeth, was unveiled, eighteenth-century England was shocked to see a black woman and white woman depicted as equals. Inspired by the painting, Belle vividly brings to life this extraordinary woman caught between two worlds, and illuminates the great civil rights question of her age: the fight to end slavery.The feature film Belle is produced by Damian Jones (The Iron Lady, The History Boys, Welcome to Sarajevo), written by Misan Sagay, and directed by Amma Asante, and stars the extraordinary Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Dido Belle, Tom Wilkinson, Sam Reid, Miranda Richardson, Penelope Wilton, Tom Felton, Matthew Goode, and Emily Watson.

The New York Times bestseller, now available in paperback--an investigation into the killing of a local man from Maisie's childhood neighborhood leads the sleuth from her own doorstep to London's halls of power.In this latest entry in Jacqueline Winspear's acclaimed, bestselling mystery series--"less whodunits than why-dunits, more P.D. James than Agatha Christie" (USA Today)--Maisie Dobbs takes on her most personal case yet, a twisting investigation into the brutal killing of a street peddler that will take her from the working-class neighborhoods of her childhood into London's highest circles of power. Perfect for fans of A Lesson in Secrets, The Mapping of Love and Death, or other Maisie Dobbs mysteries--and an ideal place for new readers to enter the series--Elegy for Eddie is an incomparable work of intrigue and ingenuity, full of intimate descriptions and beautifully painted scenes from between the World Wars, from one of the most highly acclaimed masters of mystery, Jacqueline Winspear.

Members of the cosmopolitan, cultural aristocracy of Florence at the beginning of the twentieth century, the Rosselli family—led by their fierce matriarch, Amelia—were vocal antifascists. As populist, right-wing nationalism swept across Europe after World War I and Italy’s prime minister, Benito Mussolini, began consolidating his power, Amelia’s sons Carlo and Nello led the opposition, taking a public stand against Il Duce that few others in their elite class dared risk. When Mussolini established a terrifying and brutal police state controlled by his Blackshirts—the squadristi—the Rossellis and their antifascist circle were transformed into active resisters.Renowned historian Caroline Moorehead paints an indelible picture of Italy in the first half of the twentieth century, offering an intimate account of the rise of Il Duce and his squadristi; life in Mussolini’s penal colonies; the shocking ambivalence and complicity of many prominent Italian families seduced by Mussolini’s promises; and the bold, fractured resistance movement whose associates sacrificed their lives to fight fascism.

One morning, Mel Toews put on his coat and hat, walked out of town, and took his own life. A loving husband and father, a faithful member of the Mennonite church, and an immensely popular schoolteacher, Mel was a pillar of his close-knit community. Yet after a lifetime of struggling with bipolar disorder, he could no longer face the darkness that clouded his world. In this moving meditation on illness, family, faith, and love, Mel’s daughter, critically acclaimed novelist and reporter Miriam Toews, recounts her father’s life as he would have told it, in his own voice, right up to the day of his final walk. Swing Low is a bold, gracefully written, and compassionate recounting of one man’s heartbreaking battle with depression.

This book of interconnected stories depicts the chaotic life of a young boy on the run with his teenage mother. When Sarah reclaims Jeremiah from his foster parents, he finds himself catapulted into her world of motels and truck stops, exposed to the abusive, exploitative men she encounters. As he learns to survive in this harrowing environment, Jeremiah also learns to love his mother, even as she descends into drug-fueled madness. Told in spare, lyrical prose, rich with imagination and dark humor, The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things transforms the savagery of Jeremiah’s world into an indelible experience of compassion. This special edition includes an additional seven stories, previously uncollected.

Mick Little used to be a shipbuilder on the Glasgow yards. But as they closed one after another down the river, the search for work took him and his beloved wife, Cathy, to Australia, and back again, struggling for a living, longing for home. Thirty years later the yards are nearly all gone and Cathy is dead. And now Mick will have to find a new way to live: to get away, start again, and try to deal with the guilt he feels over her death.With devastating vision, Ross Raisin brings to life the story of an ordinary man caught in the outer reaches of modern existence, suffering the loss of a great love. Waterline paints a captivating portrait of the alienation of lives lived quietly all around us, and of one man’s existence dissolved through grief, and the long journey home.

The daughter of a hard-drinking, smooth-tongued freethinker and a mother worn down by thirteen children, Margaret Sanger vowed her life would be different. Trained as a nurse, she fought for social justice, eventually channeling her energy to one singular cause: legalizing contraception. This complex, enigmatic revolutionary was at once vain and charismatic, generous and ruthless, sexually impulsive and coolly calculating—a competitive, self-centered woman who championed all women, a conflicted mother who suffered the worst tragedy a parent can experience. From opening the first illegal birth control clinic in America in 1916 through the founding of Planned Parenthood to the arrival of the Pill in the 1960s, Margaret Sanger sacrificed two husbands, three children, and scores of lovers in her fight for sexual equality and freedom.Deeply insightful, Terrible Virtue is Margaret Sanger’s story as she herself might have told it.

When a horrific act of violence shatters the peaceful October night in Provincetown, Massachusetts, the fates of nine-year-olds Gus Silva and Hallie Costa become inextricably entwined. Told in alternating voices, The Orphans of Race Point traces their relationship over the next three decades as they try to come to terms with the past. What begins as a childhood friendship evolves into something stronger, but when a terrible tragedy exhumes the ghosts they thought they'd put to rest, their dreams are abruptly destroyed.Hallie and Gus move forward to build separate lives, but Gus's hard-won peace is threatened when he meets a troubled woman who awakens memories of the childhood he has worked so hard to forget. Although helping her offers him a chance at the redemption he desperately desires, it will come at a devastating price. Turning around an unthinkable betrayal, this epic, all-consuming novel explores how far we will go for love, even if it means sacrificing everything—and in doing so, celebrates our capacity for faith, forgiveness, and hope.

When Sophia Al-Maria's mother sends her away from rainy Washington State to stay with her husband's desert-dwelling Bedouin family in Qatar, she intends it to be a sort of teenage cultural boot camp. What her mother doesn't know is that there are some things about growing up that are universal. In Qatar, Sophia is faced with a new world she'd only imagined as a child. She sets out to find her freedom, even in the most unlikely of places. Both family saga and coming-of-age story, The Girl Who Fell to Earth takes readers from the green valleys of the Pacific Northwest to the dunes of the Arabian Gulf and on to the sprawling chaos of Cairo. Struggling to adapt to her nomadic lifestyle, Sophia is haunted by the feeling that she is perpetually in exile: hovering somewhere between two families, two cultures, and two worlds. She must make a place for herself—a complex journey that includes finding young love in the Arabian Gulf, rebellion in Cairo, and, finally, self-discovery in the mountains of Sinai. The Girl Who Fell to Earth heralds the arrival of an electric new talent and takes us on the most personal of quests: the voyage home.

A gripping and deeply revealing history of an infamous slave rebellion that nearly toppled New Orleans and changed the course of American historyIn January 1811, five hundred slaves, dressed in military uniforms and armed with guns, cane knives, and axes, rose up from the plantations around New Orleans and set out to conquer the city. Ethnically diverse, politically astute, and highly organized, this self-made army challenged not only the economic system of plantation agriculture but also American expansion. Their march represented the largest act of armed resistance against slavery in the history of the United States.American Uprising is the riveting and long-neglected story of this elaborate plot, the rebel army's dramatic march on the city, and its shocking conclusion. No North American slave uprising—not Gabriel Prosser's, not Denmark Vesey's, not Nat Turner's—has rivaled the scale of this rebellion either in terms of the number of the slaves involved or the number who were killed. More than one hundred slaves were slaughtered by federal troops and French planters, who then sought to write the event out of history and prevent the spread of the slaves' revolutionary philosophy. With the Haitian revolution a recent memory and the War of 1812 looming on the horizon, the revolt had epic consequences for America.Through groundbreaking original research, Daniel Rasmussen offers a window into the young, expansionist country, illuminating the early history of New Orleans and providing new insight into the path to the Civil War and the slave revolutionaries who fought and died for justice and the hope of freedom.

Our computers and mobile devices do wonderful things for us. But they also impose a burden, making it harder for us to focus, do our best work, build strong relationships, and find the depth and fulfillment we crave. How to solve this problem? Hamlet’s BlackBerry argues that we just need a new way of thinking, an everyday philosophy for life with screens. William Powers sets out to solve what he calls the conundrum of connectedness. Reaching into the past—using his own life as laboratory and object lesson—he draws on some of history’s most brilliant thinkers, from Plato to Shakespeare to Thoreau, to demonstrate that digital connectedness serves us best when it’s balanced by its opposite, disconnectedness. Lively, original, and entertaining, Hamlet’s BlackBerry will challenge you to rethink your digital life.