The Girl In The Red Coat

When she first saw Schindler's List--to whose premiere in Germany she was invited--Roma Ligocka suddenly realized she was witnessing a part of her own life. She felt instinctively that the little girl in the red coat--the only spot of color in the film--was her. When she had lived in the Krakow ghetto during the Second World War she had worn a strawberry-red coat given to her by her grandmother. Unlike the girl in Spielbeg's film, however, Roma survived the war. Startled by this eerie conjunction of art and reality, Ligocka determined to write the story of her own life, to find out what had become of the little girl, and to measure who she now was. From a harrowing childhood under the Nazis, described with a simplicity and innocence that lends it even greater power, through the trials of living in Communist Poland, to a career in the theater and film (an artistic struggle paralleling that of her cousin, Roman Polanski), Ligocka traces her struggle for self-defiition and happiness. The Girl in the Red Coat is a courageous and moving story of survival and triumph.

Shortlisted for the 2015 Costa First Novel Award Shortlisted for the CWA John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger Award 'Mesmerising, compulsive, deliciously dark' LUCY FOLEY Carmel is missing - but doesn't know she's lost. When sensitive, distracted eight-year-old Carmel becomes separated from her mother at a local children's festival, a man claiming to be her estranged grandfather finds her - and takes her. Unable to accept the possibility that her daughter might be gone for good, Beth makes it her mission to find her. But in what she's told is her new family, Carmel has embarked on an extraordinary journey, one that will make her question who she is - and who she might become. 'Keeps the reader turning pages at a frantic clip . . . What's most powerful here is not whodunnit, or even why, but how this mother and daughter bear their separation.' CELESTE NG **Carmel and Beth's story continues in The Lost Girls - pre-order now!**

Think Downton Abbey, set in the heart of Boston Irish domestic worker Norah King's decision to ask her wealthy employer, Caroline Parker, for an elegant red coat that the Beacon Hill matriarch has marked for donation ignites a series of events that neither woman could have fathomed. The unlikely exchange will impact their respective daughters and families for generations to come, from the coat's original owner, marriage-minded collegian Cordelia Parker, to the determined and spirited King sisters of South Boston, Rosemary, Kay, and Rita. As all of these young women experience the realities of life – love and loss, conflict and joy, class prejudices and unexpected prospects – the red coat reveals the distinction between cultures, generations, and landscapes in Boston during the 1940s and 50s, a time of change, challenge, and opportunity. Meet the proud, working-class Irish and staid, upper-class Brahmins through the contrasting lives of these two families and their friends and neighbors. See how the Parkers and the Kings each overcome sudden tragedy with resolve and triumph. And witness the profound impact of a mother’s heart on her children’s souls. Carlson brings us front and center with her knowing weave of Celtic passion – both tragic and joyful – words of wisdom, romance, humor, and historical events. Dive into Boston feet first! The Red Coat is a rich novel that chronicles the legacy of Boston from both sides of the city, Southie and the Hill.

My name is Ruby. I live with Barbara and Mick. They're not my real parents, but they tell me what to do, and what to say. I'm supposed to say that the bruises on my arms and the black eye came from falling down the stairs. But there are things I won't say. I won't tell them I'm going to hunt for my real parents. I don't say a word about Shadow, who sits on the stairs, or the Wasp Lady I saw on the way to bed.I did tell Mick that I saw the woman in the buttercup dress, hanging upside down from her seat belt deep in the forest at the back of our house. I told him I saw death crawl out of her. He said he'd give me a medal for lying. I wasn't lying. I'm a hunter for lost souls and I'm going to be with my real family. And I'm not going to let Mick stop me.

The Man Booker Prize-winning author of The Sense of an Ending takes us on a rich, witty, revelatory tour of Belle Époque Paris, via the life story of the pioneering surgeon Samuel Pozzi. IN THE SUMMER OF 1885, three Frenchmen arrived in London for a few days' shopping: a prince, a count and a commoner with an Italian name. In time, each of these men would achieve a certain level of renown, but who were they then and what was the significance of their sojourn to England? Answering these questions, Julian Barnes unfurls the stories of their lives, playing out against the backdrop of the Belle Époque in Paris. Our guide through this world is Samuel Pozzi, the society doctor, free-thinker and man of science with a famously complicated private life, and the subject of one of John Singer Sargent's greatest portraits. In this vivid tapestry of people (Henry James, Sarah Bernhardt, Oscar Wilde, Proust, James Whistler, among many others), place, and time, we see not merely an epoch of glamour and pleasure, but, surprisingly, one of violence, prejudice and nativism--with more parallels to our own age than we might imagine. The Man in the Red Coat is, at once, a fresh portrait of the Belle Époque; an illuminating look at the longstanding exchange of ideas between Britain and France; and a life of a man who lived passionately in the moment but whose ideas and achievements were far ahead of his time.

From THE BESTSELLING author Bernard Cornwell comes Redcoat . . . NOW AT THIS SPECIAL EBOOK PRICE Philadelphia in 1777 is a city at war - not just between American troops and the British army, but within itself. For an occupied city throws together loyalist and patriot, soldier and civilian, man and woman; divides families and breeds treachery. Here ruthless Captain Kit Vane and beautiful Martha Crowl, passionate patriot Caroline and her idealist young lover Jonathon, unscrupulous Ezra Woollard and the brutal Sergeant Scammell, forge and break shifting allegiances that drive them to dangerous lengths. And caught between them Private Sam Gilpin, seduced into war by a dare and a red coat, must learn the bitter lessons of love, loss and the real meaning of loyalty.

Dr. Kevin Flynn, a family physician and a coroner in Ontario, Canada accidentally breaks a family heirloom and finds four documents that start him on the trail of documenting a family tragedy set in his school-teacher parents' home in rural Ireland nine decades past. His family in Ireland did not talk about the past and what little information became available in his younger years proved to be incorrect. Using his experience of death investigation in Canada for thirty years, his odyssey takes him back to the land of his birth in search of documents in the National Archives of Ireland and interviews with people still alive who helped to throw light on the mystery and to discover and document the truth about how two sisters, Philomena, age one year and ten months and Maureen age six years and nine months, whom he never knew, came to their deaths at the hands of a teenage girl. Mary Cole had been a pupil at the Camross National School and was taught by the parents of Dr. Flynn. They took the girl into their home after she finished her primary education to care for their family of five small children in the village of Camross, nestled in the shade of the Slieve Bloom Mountains in the Irish midlands. Mr. Flynn discovered that the live-in 15 year old girl, mature beyond her years, misbehaved with some local boys at night, and after she was confronted by her employers, she denied her guilt two times until the truth was revealed before the local Parish Priest. This true story of deceit and betrayal by a young girl who nursed, fed and cared for the children of the schoolmaster and his teacher wife unites the tragedy that unfolded with Ireland's recovery from a brutal civil war with the transition from the English colonial education system that suppressed the proud traditions of the Irish language and history until the War of Independence that fostered the rebirth of national pride. It is a tale of revenge for being exposed twice before the priest and the perceived loss of her good name at the cost of two innocent and vulnerable children. So ingenious was Mary Cole that two deaths and two fires were deemed to be accidental, even after an inquest by the local coroner until after Michael and Statia Flynn had left Camross for the town of Tipperary where the author was later born and where he grew up thinking that he was 'one of ten' instead of 'one of twelve'. Astute investigation by An Garda Síochána detectives based their suspicions on a simple red woollen coat, hand made by the children's mother. Read how the poignant discovery of the little red coat in the National Archives in Dublin and the striking out of Maureen's name from the school roll book by her teacher mother were revealed.