Margaret had been diagnosed with a rare, aggressive type of breast cancer and desperately wanted to find someone else who had the same disease or who had survived it, as the prognosis was not good. This is the poignant story of two people who met through a cancer website and who supported each other by e-mail and telephone through very trying times and who met in person only once. It is a highly personal story that offers insight into how you can build a different kind of friendship and find happiness in each other, even in the face of adversity. Margaret Darling, a retired medical secretary, lives in Fife, Scotland, with her husband. Since recovering from cancer, she felt it was quite unusual to find an Internet friend and make such a connection as she did. She felt she had a story to tell, and this is the result.
Every once in a blue moon, a masterful writer dives into gothic waters and emerges with a novel that—like Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, Minette Walters's The Breaker, and Donna Tartt's The Little Friend—simultaneously celebrates and transcends the tradition. Welcome Margaret Leroy to the clan. What's the matter with Sylvie? Such a pretty girl. Four years old; well loved by her young mother, Grace. But there's something . . . "off " about the child. Her deathly fear of water; her night terrors; most of all, her fixation with a photo of an Irish seaside town called Coldharbour. "Sylvie, tell me about your picture. Why's it so special, sweetheart?" My heart is racing, but I try to make my voice quite calm. "That's my seaside, Grace." Very matter-of-fact, as though this should be obvious. "I lived there, Grace. Before." Grace doesn't know what to do with this revelation—she's barely scraping by as it is. A single mother with no family, Grace works full-time at a London flower shop to support herself and Sylvie. Overwhelmed by her inability to help her daughter, she turns to Adam Winters, a dashing psychology professor with some unusual theories about what might be troubling the child. Together, they travel to seemingly idyllic Coldharbour, hoping to understand Sylvie's mysterious connection to the place. Impossible as it may seem, Grace has to accept that her daughter may be remembering a past life. And not only that: the danger bedeviling Sylvie from her past life is still very much a threat to her in this one. Margaret Leroy has been celebrated for writing "like a dream," and her previous novels have been praised for their "hypnotic prose" and "sensuously ethereal, subtly electric drama." Now, in Yes, My Darling Daughter, Leroy offers a novel both haunted and haunting—a wonderfully original, deliciously suspenseful story that enthralls from the first page to the very last.
In this story told mainly with words that begin with the letters "b" and "d," Bashful Bob, abandoned and raised by dogs, meets Doleful Dorinda, who deals with dirty dishes, and the two become fast friends and eventually heroes.
Margaret Atwood’s Good Bones and Simple Murders (published originally as Murder in the Dark) are now available together in this beautiful one-volume collector’s edition. This compilation is a concentrated burst of the trademark wit and virtuosity of Atwood’s bestselling novels, brilliant stories, and insightful poetry. Among the miniatures gathered here are Gertrude offering Hamlet a piece of her mind, the real truth about the Little Red Hen, a reincarnated bat explaining how Bram Stoker got Dracula all wrong, and five home-economist methods of making a man. Atwood has fashioned an enthralling collection of parables, monologues, prose poems, condensed science fictions, reconfigured fairy tales, and other diminutive masterpieces, punctuated with charming illustrations by the author. A feast of comic entertainment, Good Bones and Simple Murders is Atwood at her wittiest, most thoughtful, and most provoking.
Award-winning British novelist Margaret Drabble is renowned for her fiction, stories that gave voice to the new woman of the 1960s and continue to illuminate the conflicting roles of women in the twenty-first century. Drabble’s long affiliation with the theatrical world also inspired her to experiment with the dramatic form. She wrote two plays—one for television, Laura (1964), and one for the stage, Bird of Paradise (1969). Fernández’s penetrating new critical edition makes both plays available for the first time, giving Drabble fans a new vantage point from which to understand her work. In Laura and Bird of Paradise, Drabble mines the familiar territory of social class, domestic life, and questions of destiny, which have been the hallmark of her writing. Asin her novels, both plays reveal a deep curiosity about the world and a piercing commentary on the social issues of her time. The volume’s introduction and accompanying critical essays give valuable insight into the plays’ historical and social context, and explore the artistic solutions that an accomplished author of fiction found when writing for the stage. Offering a fascinating complement to Drabble’s prodigious oeuvre, this volume also provides a glimpse into a specific period in English letters, one that shaped an influential generation of writers.
https://www.marieantoinettethecourageousend.com This chilling but ultimately life affirming novel about the agonising last year of Marie Antoinette’s turbulent life will help you understand the tragic queen and her ill-fated decisions, better. It will help you decide if the shameless, sex-mad, Marie Antoinette deserved to be guillotined. The Parisians thought so. What would you have thought if you had been there during the French Revolution in August 1792? Whose side would you have been on? The side of the French princes, 7,000 French aristocrats and 80,000 awesome Austrian and Prussian soldiers advancing on Paris to raze it to the ground, wreaking destruction across France as they advanced? Or the side of the starving people, fighting to protect their brand new National Assembly and their brand new rights to liberty, equality and fraternity? What would you have thought of your deceitful king, Louis XVI, and his spendthrift wife Marie Antoinette, who had secretly invited these formidable German armies to march on Paris – to restore their absolute monarchy and annihilate all your new rights? Would you have stormed Marie Antoinette’s palace with the downtrodden people? Would you have guillotined her? As the shrieking Parisians stormed their palace, the apathetic Louis XVI waited passively for death. whilst Marie Antoinette fought valiantly for her children and her throne. She wanted to live – for the sake of her darling son, whom she burned to see on the throne of France. Not to mention her darling comte Axel de Fersen, the handsome Swedish nobleman she had fallen in love with 18 years before. Yes, 36 year old Marie Antoinette had loved the dashing Fersen for 18 years, because her hopeless, sweet, liar of a husband – was never enough of a man for the tragic queen. Find out why in this novel, based on the memoirs of those who were there, and twenty years of research and translation of original French resources by MacLeod. The furious Parisians stormed Marie Antoinette’s palace and imprisoned her. And this once thoughtless, pleasure seeking queen transformed herself into the courageous, admirable queen she should always have been. But it was too late to save her life and her throne. If only she had changed while she still had time. If only the people had got to know the new admirable queen. Share Marie Antoinette’s agony as she dutifully remained at the side of her hopeless, sweet, liar of a husband, as the Parisians stormed her palace. Witness the last heart-breaking meeting between Marie Antoinette and her husband – before he was led off to the guillotine. Experience her anguish on the day they wrenched her shrieking little boy (now a child-king) out of her arms – forever. Feel for her 14 year old daughter on the night the revolutionaries came for Marie Antoinette. No wonder the queen’s beauty had faded! No wonder her hair had begun to turn white! Based on contemporary accounts, and with characters (most of whom were actual historical personages) speaking the very words they recall in their memoirs. Includes as extras: 20 pages of snippets from Marie Antoinette’s letters to her beloved comte Axel de Fersen, the love of her life: “Most loved and most loving of men.” And extracts from the moving memoirs of Marie Therese, Marie Antoinette’s daughter, about her disturbing 2 and a half years of imprisonment, after they guillotined her mother: “The guards came to search my room at four o’clock in the morning. They were all drunk and their oaths and blasphemy dare not be repeated.” No wonder Marie Antoinette’s daughter Marie Therese, the only survivor of the family’s imprisonment, seemed to suffer for the rest of her life. And of course, there was the simply wicked treatment of Marie Antoinette’s beloved son, which only ended with his merciful death, whilst in solitary confinement – although not before the child had endured two years of hell on earth. “His look seemed to say: ‘Dispatch your victim.’”
PREFACE. THE Author of this very practical treatise on Scotch Loch - Fishing desires clearly that it may be of use to all who had it. He does not pretend to have written anything new, but to have attempted to put what he has to say in as readable a form as possible. Everything in the way of the history and habits of fish has been studiously avoided, and technicalities have been used as sparingly as possible. The writing of this book has afforded him pleasure in his leisure moments, and that pleasure would be much increased if he knew that the perusal of it would create any bond of sympathy between himself and the angling community in general. This section is interleaved with blank shects for the readers notes. The Author need hardly say that any suggestions addressed to the case of the publishers, will meet with consideration in a future edition. We do not pretend to write or enlarge upon a new subject. Much has been said and written-and well said and written too on the art of fishing but loch-fishing has been rather looked upon as a second-rate performance, and to dispel this idea is one of the objects for which this present treatise has been written. Far be it from us to say anything against fishing, lawfully practised in any form but many pent up in our large towns will bear us out when me say that, on the whole, a days loch-fishing is the most convenient. One great matter is, that the loch-fisher is depend- ent on nothing but enough wind to curl the water, -and on a large loch it is very seldom that a dead calm prevails all day, -and can make his arrangements for a day, weeks beforehand whereas the stream- fisher is dependent for a good take on the state of the water and however pleasant and easy it may be for one living near the banks of a good trout stream or river, it is quite another matter to arrange for a days river-fishing, if one is looking forward to a holiday at a date some weeks ahead. Providence may favour the expectant angler with a good day, and the water in order but experience has taught most of us that the good days are in the minority, and that, as is the case with our rapid running streams, -such as many of our northern streams are, -the water is either too large or too small, unless, as previously remarked, you live near at hand, and can catch it at its best. A common belief in regard to loch-fishing is, that the tyro and the experienced angler have nearly the same chance in fishing, -the one from the stern and the other from the bow of the same boat. Of all the absurd beliefs as to loch-fishing, this is one of the most absurd. Try it. Give the tyro either end of the boat he likes give him a cast of ally flies he may fancy, or even a cast similar to those which a crack may be using and if he catches one for every three the other has, he may consider himself very lucky. Of course there are lochs where the fish are not abundant, and a beginner may come across as many as an older fisher but we speak of lochs where there are fish to be caught, and where each has a fair chance. Again, it is said that the boatman has as much to do with catching trout in a loch as the angler. Well, we dont deny that. In an untried loch it is necessary to have the guidance of a good boatman but the same argument holds good as to stream-fishing...
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