Showing results for "Bird" in Literature & Fiction

In a rare and gorgeous departure, beloved novelist Alice Hoffman weaves a web of tales, all set in Blackbird House. This small farm on the outer reaches of Cape Cod is a place that is as bewitching and alive as the characters we meet. These interconnected narratives are as intelligent as they are haunting, as luminous as they are unusual. Inside Blackbird House more than a dozen men and women learn how love transforms us and how it is the one lasting element in our lives.

From the opening story, "Willing" - about a second-rate movie actress in her 30s who has moved back to Chicago, where she makes a seedy motel room her home and becomes involved with a mechanic who has not the least idea of who she is as a human being - Birds of America unfolds a startlingly brilliant series of portraits of the unhinged, the lost, the unsettled of our America. Lorrie Moore explores the personal and the universal, the idiosyncratic and the mundane, with all the wit, brio, and verve that have made her one of the best storytellers of our time.

It all started with a simple, yet sneakily difficult challenge from global best-selling author Harlan Coben: Pick a bird of prey, then use it as the inspiration for a brand-new story. The response from some of the best writers on the planet: Game on! The result: Eleven stories that are twisty, scary, surprising and bursting with imagination. An egg worth more than its weight in gold. A mysterious operative known only as Owl. An eagle-watcher who sees more than she should. Even a story that somehow places the Maltese Falcon in a nursing home.

It is 1667, and the war between the Dutch and the English continues apace. Sir Francis Courtney, his son Hal and their crew are carried around the southern tip of the African colonies by the good ship Lady Edwina, licensed to attack and seize the treasure-laden ships of the Dutch East India company. When they capture a Dutch trader and hold the passengers to ransom, Sir Francis hopes only for a good price and a small sense of satisfaction.

Josh Malerman’s debut novel Bird Box is a terrifying, Hitchcockesque psychological horror that is sure to stay with you long after reading. Malorie raises the children the only way she can; indoors. The house is quiet. The doors are locked, the curtains are closed, mattresses are nailed over...

Here is a BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation of Daphne du Maurier's classic tale of horror. The idea for this famous story came to du Maurier one day when she was walking across to a farm from her house. She saw a farmer busily ploughing a field while above him the seagulls were diving and...

From the Sunday Times bestseller comes a warm, tender and utterly hilarious story about love and betrayal Love can sting. Or make you fly ... Romance writer and single mum Stevie Honeywell has only weeks to go to her wedding when her fiancé Matthew runs off with her glamorous new friend Jo...

Brought to you by Penguin. THE SUNDAY TIMES TOP 3 BESTSELLER AND RICHARD & JUDY PICK DAVID RAKER IS BACK WITH ANOTHER HEART-POUNDING MISSING PERSONS CASE CCTV footage captures Cate and Aiden Gascoigne driving home seconds before their car plunges into a ravine and explodes. When fire crews...

More preoccupied with drinking, sleeping, and writing, an unnamed student neglects his studies and invents three separate openings for a novel. The first introduces the Pooka MacPhellimey, "a member of the devil class", the second involves Mr. John Furriskey, a character belonging to another of the student's creations (writer Dermot Trellis), while the final opening features legendary Irish heroes Finn Mac Cool and Mad King Sweeny. Soon, Trellis' creations rebel against him, doing as they like while he sleeps, and the characters begin wandering in and out of each other's tales.

Ellie Gleason has protected the town of Samford, Alabama, for decades. It's not as glamorous as her glory days as the WitchLight Hub, but it keeps her active during her golden years. Life is good. Well, it's okay. It could be bloodier with a smidge more gore, but retirement is meant to be low-key. It's not like her fragile bones could handle the strenuous hunt for monsters anymore, even if her current duties are dull as dishwater. But when her great-nephew shows up on her doorstep in tears, begging for help, Ellie straps on her beloved shotgun, Bam-Bam, and gets the coven back together.

Deborah Harkness first introduced the world to Diana Bishop, Oxford scholar and witch, and vampire geneticist Matthew de Clairmont in A Discovery of Witches. Drawn to each other despite long-standing taboos, these two other-worldly beings found themselves at the centre of a battle for a lost, enchanted manuscript known as Ashmole 782. Since then, they have fallen in love, travelled to Elizabethan England, dissolved the Covenant between the three species, and awoken the dark powers within Diana's family line.

'Will break your heart and open your eyes' Heather Morris, author of The Tattooist of Auschwitz 'I've never read anything quite like Songbirds - a beautifully crafted novel.' Jodi Picoult, bestselling author of Wish You Were Here. Her courage to cross oceans. Her hope for a better life. Her love...

Brought to you by Penguin. Toru Okada's cat has disappeared and this has unsettled his wife, who is herself growing more distant every day. Then there are the increasingly explicit telephone calls he has started receiving. As this compelling story unfolds, the tidy suburban realities of Okada's...

Considered by Rumi to be "the master" of Sufi mystic poetry, Attar is best known for this epic poem, a magnificent allegorical tale about the soul's search for meaning. He recounts the perilous journey of the world's birds to the faraway peaks of Mount Qaf in search of the mysterious Simorgh, their king. Attar's beguiling anecdotes and humor intermingle the sublime with the mundane, the spiritual with the worldly, while his poem models the soul's escape from the mind's rational embrace.

Ann Cleeves Classic Crime - engaging mysteries to savour, beloved characters to meet again A Bird in the Hand is the first mystery novel featuring George and Molly Palmer-Jones by Ann Cleeves, author of the Shetland and Vera Stanhope crime series. In England’s birdwatching paradise, a new...

Sometimes when he didn't know he was being watched, Meggie would look at him and try desperately to imprint his face upon her brain's core. And he would turn to find her watching him, a look in his eyes of haunted grief, a doomed look. She understood the implicit message, or thought she did; he must go, back to the Church and his duties. Never again with the same spirit, perhaps, but more able to serve. For only those who have slipped and fallen know the vicissitudes of the way.

The Battle of Britain defined the future for Britain, Europe, and America. Bluebirds tells the story of four ordinary young men who are thrown together as Hitler plunges the European continent into its darkest hours. Andrew Francis and Gerry Donaldson were born on different sides of the Atlantic just before The Great War. Together with the mildly psychotic Bryan Hale, they fly Spitfires through the summer of 1940. 

Quail and Christe are a drunken pair of ghosthunters, solving creepy hauntings, using practical methods. When a ghost causes a lightbulb to flicker, Quail and Christe change the bulb. When doors creak, they oil the hinges; when rocking chairs rock of their own volition, Quail and Christe knock off the rockers and be done with it. That is, until trends change and the forces of evil take on a more direct approach. Qauil and Christe find themselves out of their depth, washed up, and fucked.

Birds Without Wings tells of the inhabitants of a small coastal town in South West Anatolia in the dying days of the Ottoman empire: the local Potter and fount of proverbial wisdom; a Christian girl of legendary beauty; childhood friends who play in the hills above the town, and the two holy men of different faiths, who greet each other with the words 'infidel efendi'.

Tom and Charlie are living out what's left of their lives on their own terms in a remote forest, two pot growers their only connection to the outside world. But then two women arrive - a photographer on the trail of survivors of a decades-ago forest fire and an elderly escapee from a psychiatric institution - and everything changes. And the Birds Rained Down, the recipient of several prizes, is a haunting meditation on aging and self-determination.