Quiet As A Nun

I lit the candle and began rather gingerly to climb up the ladder. Then I heard a distinct sound above my head. A scrape on the floor, an irregular jarring on the floor above my head, like something rocking . . . A nun is dead - her emaciated corpse has been discovered locked in the tower of Blessed Eleanor's Convent. The tragic consequence of a neurotic young woman committing to a life of isolation and piety, the inquest concludes. But this young woman held unusual power over the convent ¿ power she was planning to use. Jemima Shore tries to keep her distance from the case, but when her lover cancels their holiday she finds herself reluctantly getting involved. A violent attack in the dead of night and another death convinces her that the convent is not the haven of peace it appears to be. Suspicion and fear hang heavy in the air but how do you solve a murder no-one will admit happened?

One of Lady Antonia Fraser's gripping Jemima Shore mysteries, set in a secluded nunnery. 'I lit the candle and began rather gingerly to climb up the ladder. Then I heard a distinct sound above my head. A scrape on the floor, an irregular jarring on the floor above my head, like something rocking . . .' A nun is dead - her emaciated corpse has been discovered locked in the tower of Blessed Eleanor's Convent. The tragic consequence of a neurotic young woman committing to a life of isolation and piety, the inquest concludes. But this young woman held unusual power over the convent - power she was planning to use. Jemima Shore tries to keep her distance from the case, but when her lover cancels their holiday she finds herself reluctantly getting involved. A violent attack in the dead of night and another death convinces her that the convent is not the haven of peace it appears to be. Suspicion and fear hang heavy in the air but how do you solve a murder no-one will admit happened?

"A good story and first-rate social science."—New York Times Book Review. A sinisterly funny modern-day Through the Looking Glass that begins with cyanide poisoning and ends in strawberry ice cream. The idea of the Native American living in perfect harmony with nature is one of the most cherished contemporary myths. But how truthful is this larger-than-life image? According to anthropologist Shepard Krech, the first humans in North America demonstrated all of the intelligence, self-interest, flexibility, and ability to make mistakes of human beings anywhere. As Nicholas Lemann put it in The New Yorker, "Krech is more than just a conventional-wisdom overturner; he has a serious larger point to make. . . . Concepts like ecology, waste, preservation, and even the natural (as distinct from human) world are entirely anachronistic when applied to Indians in the days before the European settlement of North America." "Offers a more complex portrait of Native American peoples, one that rejects mythologies, even those that both European and Native Americans might wish to embrace."—Washington Post "My story, the story of 'how I became a nun,' began very early in my life; I had just turned six. The beginning is marked by a vivid memory, which I can reconstruct down to the last detail. Before, there is nothing, and after, everything is an extension of the same vivid memory, continuous and unbroken, including the intervals of sleep, up to the point where I took the veil ." So starts Cesar Aira's astounding "autobiographical" novel. Intense and perfect, this invented narrative of childhood experience bristles with dramatic humor at each stage of growing up: a first ice cream, school, reading, games, friendship. The novel begins in Aira's hometown, Coronel Pringles. As self-awareness grows, the story rushes forward in a torrent of anecdotes which transform a world of uneventful happiness into something else: the anecdote becomes adventure, and adventure, fable, and then legend. Between memory and oblivion, reality and fiction, Cesar Aira's How I Became a Nun retains childhood's main treasures: the reality of fable and the delirium of invention. A few days after his fiftieth birthday, Aira noticed the thin rim of the moon, visible despite the rising sun. When his wife explained the phenomenon to him he was shocked that for fifty years he had known nothing about "something so obvious, so visible." This epiphany led him to write How I Became a Nun. With a subtle and melancholic sense of humor he reflects on his failures, on the meaning of life and the importance of literature.

'One of the great British novels of the twentieth century: a narrative of extraordinary reach, power and beauty' Sarah Waters The nuns who enter a medieval Norfolk convent are told to renounce the world, but the world still finds ways to trouble them, whether it is through fire, floods, pestilence, a collapsing spire, jealous rivalries, a priest with a secret or a plague of caterpillars. As we follow their daily lives over three centuries, this masterpiece of historical fiction re-creates a world run by women. 'As an act of imagined history this novel has few rivals. Also, as it happens, a work of high, frequent comedy' George Steiner, The Times Literary Supplement 'Spellbinding . . . One starts rereading as soon as one has reached the last page' Sunday Times 'Magnificent' Philip Hensher, Daily Telegraph

A National Book Foundation "5 Under 35" Honoree “An enchanting, sparkling book about the many meanings of sisterhood.” —Kristin Iversen, Refinery29 Claire Luchette's debut, Agatha of Little Neon, is a novel about yearning and sisterhood, figuring out how you fit in (or don’t), and the unexpected friends who help you find your truest self Agatha has lived every day of the last nine years with her sisters: they work together, laugh together, pray together. Their world is contained within the little house they share. The four of them are devoted to Mother Roberta and to their quiet, purposeful life. But when the parish goes broke, the sisters are forced to move. They land in Woonsocket, a former mill town now dotted with wind turbines. They take over the care of a halfway house, where they live alongside their charges, such as the jawless Tim Gary and the headstrong Lawnmower Jill. Agatha is forced to venture out into the world alone to teach math at a local all-girls high school, where for the first time in years she has to reckon all on her own with what she sees and feels. Who will she be if she isn’t with her sisters? These women, the church, have been her home. Or has she just been hiding? Disarming, delightfully deadpan, and full of searching, Claire Luchette’s Agatha of Little Neon offers a view into the lives of women and the choices they make.