Ann-Marie MacDonald Ordine dei libri (cronologico)

In the late nineteenth century, Charlotte Bell grows up at Fayne, a vast estate straddling the England-Scotland border, isolated by her devoted father, Lord Henry Bell, due to a mysterious condition. Strong-willed and curious, Charlotte thrives in the moorlands, learning the bog's treacherous and healing ways from Byrn, an enigmatic hired man. Her idyllic life is overshadowed by a striking portrait of her mother, a beautiful Irish-American heiress who died giving birth to Charlotte, and her older brother, Charles, who passed away shortly after. When Charlotte’s thirst for knowledge threatens the estate’s boundaries, her father defies tradition and hires a tutor to educate her as he would a son. However, their explorations of the bog uncover an unexpected artefact, prompting her father to arrange a cure for her condition, shattering Charlotte's world. This journey of discovery leads Charlotte to confront family secrets and the essence of her identity, intertwining themes of science, magic, love, and the power of storytelling. The narrative is a magnificent exploration of gender constructs and personal growth, praised for its engaging and beautiful prose.

Mary Rose McKinnon has two children with her partner Hilary and a fractured relationship with her mother Dolly; she also has issues with anger management and lives in fear of hurting the children, these feelings seem somehow rooted in a part of her childhood she has trouble remembering. Is Dolly - the kind of big personality who makes all Mary Rose's friends, and even waiters in coffee shops, exclaim 'I love your Mum!' - really harbouring a dark secret about what caused Mary Rose's childhood injuries, and is Mary Rose doomed to follow the same path with her own children?

A murder causes tensions in the McCarthy's household to build; Jack, Madeleine's father must decide where his loyalties lie. Madeleine learns about the ambiguity of human morality - a lesson she will only begin to understand when she carries her quest for the truth, and the killer, into adulthood.

Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) is an exuberant comedy and feminist revisioning of Shakespeare’s Othello and Romeo and Juliet. It takes us from a dusty office in Canada’s Queen’s University, into the fraught and furious worlds of two of Shakespeare’s best-known tragedies, and turns them upside-down. Constance Ledbelly is the beleaguered “spinster” academic, and unlikely heroine who embarks on a quest for Shakespearean origins and, ultimately, her own identity. When she deciphers an ancient and neglected manuscript, Constance is propelled through a very modern rabbit hole and lands smack in the middle of the tragic turning points of each play in turn. Her attempts to save first Desdemona, then Juliet, from their harrowing fates, result in a wild unpredictable ride through comedy and near-tragedy, as mild-mannered Constance learns to love, sword-fight, dance Renaissance-style, and master a series of disguises… Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) a gender-bendy, big-hearted and crazily intelligent romp, where irony and anger sing in perfect harmony with innocence and poignancy.

Un’isola livida e crudele della Nuova Scozia sul finire dell’Ottocento, un giovane accordatore di pianoforti, una tredicenne libanese. I due si amano, e per sposarsi non esitano a fuggire. La loro passione sarà breve e bruciante, immani le conseguenze: sulle loro figlie si abbatterà un destino di colpe indicibili e occulte menzogne che finirà per distruggerle. Con ipnotica sapienza narrativa, la MacDonald aggroviglia e dipana le vicende di un’intera famiglia, orchestrando una fosca melodia che, pagina dopo pagina, avvince il lettore senza dargli tregua: come è stato scritto, «non c’è modo di resistere a questa storia». Incesti e santità, fobie e attrazioni razziali, delitti e prostituzione, atrocità e meraviglie si stagliano su un fondo che sembra avere la sostanza terribile e raggiante dei sogni. Chiedi perdono è apparso per la prima volta nel 1996.