tag: “historical”
Death of a Foreign Gentleman [Book] Google Books
author: Steven Carroll HarperCollins Australia 2024 - 04
From award-winning writer Steven Carroll comes the first book in a series of post-war literary crime novels featuring Detective Sergeant Stephen Minter.
Cambridge, UK, 1947. Martin Friedrich, a German philosopher, is cycling through an intersection on his way to give a lecture when a speeding car strikes and kills him. Shortly afterwards, Detective Sergeant Stephen Minter, an Austrian-born cockney Jew, whose parents were interned during the war as enemy aliens, stands over the body of Friedrich, contemplating the age-old question – who did it? Friedrich might be one of the finest minds of his age, but he's problematic: arrogant and a womaniser, he was also, in the 1930s, a member of the Nazi Party. As Stephen is soon to discover, there is no shortage of suspects. Friedrich was hated by almost everybody, even those who loved him. Is there any sense to his death or was it just a case of rotten, random luck? Has the universe spoken? Or are there more sinister factors at work?From one of Australia's finest, most critically acclaimed writers, Death of a Foreign Gentleman is a playful, poignant and absorbing literary crime novel, with shades of The Third Man and Brighton Rock, which examines the question of how to live a meaningful life in an indifferent, random, post-God world.'A novel of remarkable poise, which marries its weighty concerns and deeply felt sensibility to a playful delight in the very real pleasures of the genre it so deftly inhabits.' The Age
The Marriage Portrait [Book] Google Books
author: Maggie O'Farrell Tinder Press 2023
WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION FINALIST - REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK - NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER - The author of award-winning Hamnet brings the world of Renaissance Italy to jewel-bright life in this unforgettable fictional portrait of the captivating young duchess Lucrezia de' Medici as she makes her way in a troubled court. "I could not stop reading this incredible true story." --Reese Witherspoon (Reese's Book Club Pick) "O'Farrell pulls out little threads of historical detail to weave this story of a precocious girl sensitive to the contradictions of her station...You may know the history, and you may think you know what's coming, but don't be so sure." --The Washington Post Florence, the 1550s. Lucrezia, third daughter of the grand duke, is comfortable with her obscure place in the palazzo: free to wonder at its treasures, observe its clandestine workings, and devote herself to her own artistic pursuits. But when her older sister dies on the eve of her wedding to the ruler of Ferrara, Modena and Reggio, Lucrezia is thrust unwittingly into the limelight: the duke is quick to request her hand in marriage, and her father just as quick to accept on her behalf. Having barely left girlhood behind, Lucrezia must now enter an unfamiliar court whose customs are opaque and where her arrival is not universally welcomed. Perhaps most mystifying of all is her new husband himself, Alfonso. Is he the playful sophisticate he appeared to be before their wedding, the aesthete happiest in the company of artists and musicians, or the ruthless politician before whom even his formidable sisters seem to tremble? As Lucrezia sits in constricting finery for a painting intended to preserve her image for centuries to come, one thing becomes worryingly clear. In the court's eyes, she has one duty: to provide the heir who will shore up the future of the Ferranese dynasty. Until then, for all of her rank and nobility, the new duchess's future hangs entirely in the balance. Full of the beauty and emotion with which she illuminated the Shakespearean canvas of Hamnet, Maggie O'Farrell turns her talents to Renaissance Italy in an extraordinary portrait of a resilient young woman's battle for her very survival.
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