Added by: Kahena | Karma: 11524.33 | Fiction literature | 6 February 2011
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The Wives of Henry Oades
An English accountant and his two wives are the subject of this intriguing and evocative debut novel based on a real-life 19th-century California bigamy case. A loving husband and attentive father, Henry Oades assures his wife, Margaret, that his posting to New Zealand will be temporary and the family makes the difficult journey. But during a Maori uprising, Margaret and her four children are kidnapped and the Oades's house is torched. Convinced his family is dead, Henry relocates to California and marries Nancy, a sad 20-year-old pregnant widow.
Added by: Kahena | Karma: 11524.33 | Fiction literature | 27 January 2011
4
From Doon with Death
When Margaret Parsons disappears, Inspector Burden tries to reassure her frantic husband that she will be back by morning. Privately, though, he is certain Margaret has run off with another man. But then the missing woman's body is found, strangled and abandoned in a nearby wood. And when Mr. Parsons lets the police into his home, a startling discovery leads everyone to question just who Margaret Parsons really was . . .
Dr. Brewer, an ex-botanist, has been acting strangely, spending nearly all his time in the basement of his house, working on his plant experiments. He had warned his children, Margaret and Casey, to stay out, but they sneak in and catch a glimpse of gigantic and very strange plants that almost seem life-like. They begin to worry even more when Margaret finds that her father has been eating plant food, sleeping on a layer of dirt, and bleeding green blood.
Walter has a rubbish job, so has Margaret. But when they meet through a dating agency, neither is who they seem. Margaret's married for a start and Walter's encounter with her husband Billy leaves him black and blue. Billy's a dodgy accountant for politician and racketeer Pink Harrison, who is about to come unstuck. Superintendent James Mallow is determined to nail Pink. Meanwhile Redmond O'Boyle, professional terrorist and occasional birdwatcher, is languishing in a Colombian jail and his only way out is to kill himself and trust in reincarnation...
Margaret Atwood has frequently been cited as one of the foremost writers of our time. MORAL DISORDER, her moving new book of fiction, could be seen either as a collection of ten stories that is almost a novel or as a novel broken up into ten stories. It resembles a photograph album—a series of clearly observed moments that trace the course of a life,
