The Keepsake
Автор: Sheelagh Kelly
Год издания:
A stunning saga set in the city of York, as a poor boy falls for a rich girl – a tale of passion, poverty, and ultimately great bravery as they fight to keep together against everyone’s expectations.Marty Lanegan is working as a boot boy in York’s splendid Station Hotel when he catches sight of the most beautiful girl he’s ever seen. Henrietta Ibbetson is the daughter of a prominent landowner, who’s far from pleased with his rebellious daughter. When she announces her love for a mere servant, he throws her out.Marty’s family is none too delighted with his choice – Etta can’t cook, sew, clean or make herself useful in any way. However, Marty is ambitious, Etta is content and they are wildly in love. But is that enough to sustain them as they raise a family of their own?Sheelagh Kelly is back with a tremendously compelling saga of life below the poverty line in her home town of York, as the rigid conventions of Edwardian England crumble in the onslaught of the Great War – and her characters face the changes with warmth, humour and determination.
Keepsakes & Other Stories
Автор: Jon Hassler
Год издания:
From Publishers Weekly<br /><br />?These seven gentle tales set in Minnesota and North Dakota and all written during the 1970s treat fans of novelist Hassler (A Green Journey; Jemmy) to the earliest fruits of his talent. Some are folksy portraits of small-town characters, while others are drier and more plot driven. Both the title story and "Resident Priest" feature crusty, 74-year-old Father Fogarty, a pastor who's leaving his parish after 23 years. In "Chief Larson," a seven-year-old Indian boy, known (rather improbably) only as "chief" on the reservation, rebels in a small but telling way against his white adoptive family. "Good News in Culver Bend" tracks two city reporters who travel to a small town and discover "the heart of Christmas." "Chase" and "Christopher, Moony, and the Birds" show how frustrated residents of small towns seek solace. The former, so brief it's nearly a prose poem, hints at Hassler's own adolescent discovery of his talent for fiction; the latter follows a lonely 50-year-old college professor as he goes on a consolatory walk with a student's awkward wife and child, watching "birds on family outings, hopping and halting on the grass." The cleverest story, "Yesterday's Garbage," follows a "garbologist" who finds the truth about a murder in a trash bin, and is then led to commit one himself. The publisher plans to issue Hassler's later short fiction in three more volumes, starting in the year 2000. (Sept.)