The Silver Swan

Riddle me this... "I am neither dead, nor alive, and I'm not something little Madison can hide. But you will be dead, by the time this is done... the timer starts now, and the games have just begun..." Madison Montgomery comes from money and power, but when someone close to her commits the ultimate crime, Madison must live with her tainted name for the rest of her life. When she begins Riverside Preparatory Academy, the private school her father has swept her into in The Hamptons, she hopes for a fresh start. What she wasn't hoping for was the pack of bad boys who run the school; ten, to be exact. When Madison gains the attention of their leader, Bishop Vincent Hayes, a whole new world that she didn't think existed is exposed to her. A whole world that starts and ends with The Elite Kings Club and these boys, are about to flip her world upside down. Secrets are overflowing and family lies are about to be exposed. Is there more to Madison Montgomery than even she knows? About this book: I need to admit something right now. The Silver Swan is f*cked. It might be the most insane story I've ever written with equally insane characters. Who knew? You know, when I started this book, it was supposed to be YA. I wanted to write a book that my sisters could read. A book that won't have people look at my mum like "damn... what sort of messed up shit happened to your kid?." The angst, the assholeness, the games, the f**kery, the WHAT THE F**KING F**K ARE YOU DOING !!!... I cannot even.... anyway, this is a warning (and the only one I'll give you). It's crazy. I don't compare my work to my others, but this book is f**ked. It will most likely stomp all the f**k over people's hard limits (and not give a sh*t while it's doing it) and will make you second guess all the morals you thought you had. This most definitely is not looking like a love story right now... more like a..... I don't even.... anyway, I apologise now. You asked for it..

The inimitable Quirke returns in another spellbinding crime novel, in which a young woman's dubious suicide sets off a new string of hazards and deceptions Two years have passed since the events of the bestselling Christine Falls, and much has changed for Quirke, the irascible, formerly hard-drinking Dublin pathologist. His beloved Sarah is dead, his surrogate father lies in a convent hospital paralyzed by a devastating stroke, and Phoebe, Quirke's long-denied daughter, has grown increasingly withdrawn and isolated. With much to regret from his last inquisitive foray, Quirke ought to know better than to let his curiosity get the best of him. Yet when an almost forgotten acquaintance comes to him about his beautiful young wife's apparent suicide, Quirke's "old itch to cut into the quick of things, to delve into the dark of what was hidden" is roused again. As he begins to probe further into the shadowy circumstances of Deirdre Hunt's death, he discovers many things that might better have remained hidden, as well as grave danger to those he loves. Haunting, masterfully written, and utterly mesmerizing in its nuance, The Silver Swan fully lives up to the promise of Christine Falls and firmly establishes Benjamin Black (a.k.a. John Banville) among the greatest of crime writers.

"Men who inherit great wealth are respected, but women who do the same are ridiculed. In The Silver Swan, Sallie Bingham rescues Doris Duke from this gendered prison and shows us just how brave, rebellious, and creative this unique woman really was, and how her generosity benefits us to this day.” —Gloria Steinem A bold portrait of Doris Duke, the defiant and notorious tobacco heiress who was perhaps the greatest modern woman philanthropist In The Silver Swan, Sallie Bingham chronicles one of the great underexplored lives of the twentieth century and the very archetype of the modern woman. “Don’t touch that girl, she’ll burn your fingers,” FBI director J. Edgar Hoover once said about Doris Duke, the inheritor of James Buchanan Duke’s billion-dollar tobacco fortune. During her lifetime, she would be blamed for scorching many, including her mother and various ex-lovers. She established her first foundation when she was twenty-one; cultivated friendships with the likes of Jackie Kennedy, Imelda Marcos, and Michael Jackson; flaunted interracial relationships; and adopted a thirty-two year-old woman she believed to be the reincarnation of her deceased daughter. This is also the story of the great houses she inhabited, including the classically proportioned limestone mansion on Fifth Avenue, the sprawling Duke Farms in New Jersey, the Gilded Age mansion Rough Point in Newport, Shangri La in Honolulu, and Falcon’s Lair overlooking Beverly Hills. Even though Duke was the subject of constant scrutiny, little beyond the tabloid accounts of her behavior has been publicly known. In 2012, when eight hundred linear feet of her personal papers were made available, Sallie Bingham set out to probe her identity. She found an alluring woman whose life was forged in the Jazz Age, who was not only an early war correspondent but also an environmentalist, a surfer, a collector of Islamic art, a savvy businesswoman who tripled her father’s fortune, and a major philanthropist with wide-ranging passions from dance to historic preservation to human rights. In The Silver Swan, Bingham is especially interested in dissecting the stereotypes that have defined Duke’s story while also confronting the disturbing questions that cleave to her legacy.

A boy living by a Scottish loch sees a beautiful silver swan land on the water. She remains at the loch, mates and there are soon five cygnets too. The boy watches them in awe and pride. When snowy winter sets in, all the birds and animals around the loch must scavenge desperately for food. The fox also has cubs to feed... A remarkably dramatic and compassionate story about Nature, magnificently told and stunningly illustrated with sweeping pastel landscapes.

"I thought I knew who I was, but I was wrong." The Silver Swan - 1. A girl who is tarnished. Tainted. One who does not fit into the confinement of legend. The Silver Swan -2. Madison Montgomery. I was lied to. I was cheated. Resigned to pick up the scraps of empty memories and disarrayed thoughts, I left. After finally cutting the strings of manipulation, I resorted to do what I've done since I was a child, something my father drilled into my brain since I could handle my first rifle. Run. I'm a mere shadow of the girl they all knew. Lies and deceit change you. They alter your entire outlook on life. I'm Madison Montgomery, and I want to play a game. Here's what happens when I win. Riddle me this, Mads. What goes bump in the night, but is something you can't see with sight? You may run, and you may hide. If by happily ever after, you mean Bonnie & Clyde.

He held a darkness that could never be touched. She carried a light that could never be seen. Not by anyone. Only by each other. Simply two halves of the same soul, Brantley and Saint were fused together with equal parts wrath and peace. Nothing could break through their bond. Nothing. Until now.