Charley Is My Darling : An evacuee coming of age tale by Joyce Cary (Lume Books) (20 Reviews)    Price verified 4 hours ago

A charming, accessible tale of childhood and youth, that offers plentiful insight and raises many questions. Charley is a London lad and an evacuee. Initially an outcast, his wit and humour win him friends, although not always of the best type. Among Charley Brown's first deeds as an evacuee to Longwater in the West Country is to let loose the local bull. Boys who one minute had taunted him with the refrain 'Ballocky baldy' (Charley's lice having been evacuated from London with him), were the next minute acknowledging him as their natural leader. Charley Brown, one of Joyce Cary's most uproarious and memorable creations, is a love and a terror. He is a quivering jelly in the hands of girls and women of any age who show him kindness; through the wild force of his imagination he holds children rapt with tales of desperate gunmen with exquisite manners and a taste for the beautiful. He leads his gang into daring acts both grand and bad. As Charley's sweetheart Lizzy Galor rightly puts it, he's every bit as good as the movies... But those movies don't always have a happy ending. Charley is My Darling will please those who already enjoy the work of Cary. Readers with an interest in social history, education and child development will also enjoy it. Praise for Charley is my Darling and Joyce Cary: 'To find a novelist who saw more deeply and conveyed more truly you have to go back to Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, Balzac and Goethe, Mann and Hesse' - Bernard Levin 'One of the best of our novelists, certainly one of the most original, in the great early tradition of Defoe and Fielding' - Elizabeth Bowen 'Whenever I am idle I choose a Cary novel in the way I might seek a friend's company, and it is not long before I am encouraged, inspired to write' - Paul Theroux Joyce Cary was born in 1888 into an old Anglo-Irish family and educated at Clifton. He studied art, first in Edinburgh and then in Paris, before going up to Trinity College, Oxford in 1909 to read law. On coming down he ...

Genre: Literary Fiction

Ninety Days Without You by Jennifer Woodward (38 Reviews)    Price verified 3 hours ago

Is falling in love your ambition? It's certainly Kat's. The high of giving your life over to love is exceptional. Finding the Person to Complete You = Mission Accomplished. Kat, a heartbroken American playwright, meets Charlie and is instantly smitten with his delightful British accent, his insight and humor, and his frank honesty at being 15-years sober. Finally, here's a man with the outgoing, fun-loving soul of an alcoholic -- but he doesn't drink. A whirlwind transatlantic romance ensues. But what looks like love turns into the shock of Kat's life. Can she face the reality of his other illness? Can she come to terms with her own addiction to him? Woodward's dark, funny and heartbreaking tale blends romance and comedy with brutal self-discovery and compelling readability. Ninety Days Without You is about relationships, addiction, mental health, family, friends, love, sex -- and the essential journey towards knowing and loving yourself.

Genre: Literary Fiction

The Note by Reggie Turk (169 Reviews)    Price verified 4 hours ago

One year ago Chellie Morris drove through a stop sign--less than a mile from her house--into the stampeding traffic of State Route 30. Nathan, her husband, arrived home after the accident to find a four-word note on a bookshelf; not a suicide note, not a goodbye, not even a reminder for something he might forget, just four unexplainable words. Too much alcohol and too little sleep have turned the last 365 days into a stagnant haze. Painful flashes from the last day, uneven rewinds of the past, and the haunting words of the note chaotically rumble and roll through his mind. Four words--only four words left.

Genre: Literary Fiction