A. L. Kennedy Libri

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Mary, a young girl born in a beautiful city full of rose gardens and fluttering kites. When she is still very small, Mary meets Lanmo, a shining golden snake, who becomes her very best friend. The snake visits Mary many times, he sees her grow and her city change, as bombs drop and war creeps in. Lanmo wonders, can having a friend possibly be worth the pain of knowing you will lose them?

"Five years after the end of World War II, Alfie Day, an RAF airman and former World War II POW, is given the chance to relive the glory of the war as an extra on a POW film, an opportunity that leads him to new revelations about himself, the world around him, and the challenges and violence of modern life"--NoveList.

After six novels, five story collections and two books of non-fiction, and countless international prizes, A.L. Kennedy certainly has the authority to talk about the craft of writing books - it's just a wonder she's found the time. These are missives from the authorial front line - urgent and vivid, full of the excitement, fury and frustration of trying to make thousands of words into a publishable book. At the core of On Writing is the hugely popular blog that Kennedy writes for the Guardian - and we follow her during a three-year period when she finished one collection of stories and started another, and wrote a novel in between. Readers and aspiring writers will have almost everything they need to know about the complexities of researching, writing and publishing fiction, but they will be receiving this wisdom conversationally, from one of the funniest and most alert of our contemporary authors.Alongside the blogs are brilliant essays on character, voice, writers' workshops and writers' health and the book ends with the transcript of Kennedy's celebrated one-person show about writing and language that she has performed round the world to huge acclaim. Read together, all these pieces add up to the most intimate master-class imaginable from one of the finest - and most humane - writers in our language.

Nathan Staples is consumed by loathing and love in roughly equal measures. Frustrated by his life and the way he lives it, he is sustained only by his passionate devotion for his estranged wife and their teenage daughter, Mary. When Nathan contrives to have Mary invited to the island where he lives in retreat, he sets in motion the possiblity of telling her he is her father, and becoming whole and complete and alive again.

Uncle Shawn and his best friend Badger Bill are back for another brilliantly bonkers adventure. With their trusty llama pals they've seen off the nasty Dr P'Klawz and everything on their farm up on the sunny side of Scotland should be just about perfect. What could possibly go wrong?

This collection features a series of short stories from a celebrated author recognized as one of Granta's Best Young British Novelists in both 1993 and 2003. The narratives showcase the author's distinctive voice and keen insights into human experiences, exploring themes of identity, relationships, and the complexities of modern life. Each story offers a unique perspective, highlighting the author's talent for crafting compelling and thought-provoking tales.

Bullfighting - the ultimate spectator sport. Beyond the theatre, the costume and the well-worn plot she focuses on the fact that a man faces his death while a crowd looks on. The result is a startling confrontation with her own, and mankind's, mortality. schovat popis

The dazzling new collection from the Costa Prize-winning author of Day and The Blue Book. She doesn't ever lie to him unless it's for the best. A husband and wife wait for a train as their relationship unspools silently around them. A woman contemplates the idea of her lover dying as she queues in a bank. An almost impossibly uncomfortably lunch culminates in a passionate kiss. In this dazzling collection of stories lies the battlefield of the heart, where characters who have suffered somehow emerge - haltingly, awkwardly - into the astonishment of intimacy.

From the north-east of Scotland to Dublin, from London to Montreal, to Budapest and onwards, Hannah Luckraft travels beyond her limits, beyond herself, in search of the ultimate altered state: the one where she can be happy - her paradise.