W&N strana 2 z 2

Every summer Teresa follows her father to his childhood home in Puglia, down in the heel of Italy, a land of relentless, shimmering heat, centuries-old olive groves and taciturn, proud people. There Teresa spends long afternoons enveloped in a sun-struck stupor, reading her grandmother's cheap crime paperbacks. Everything changes the summer she meets the three boys who live on the masseria next door: Nicola, Tommaso and Bern - the man Teresa will love for the rest of her life. Raised like brothers on a farm that feels to Teresa almost suspended in time, the three boys share a complex, intimate and seemingly unassailable bond. But no bond is unbreakable and no summer truly endless, as Teresa soon discovers. Because there is resentment underneath the surface of that strange brotherhood, a twisted kind of love that protects a dark secret. And when Bern - the enigmatic, restless gravitational centre of the group - commits a brutal act of revenge, not even a final pilgrimage to the edge of the world will be enough to bring back those perfect, golden hours in the shadow of the olive trees.

Ava, newly arrived in Hong Kong from Dublin, spends her days teaching English to rich children. Julian is a banker. A banker who likes to spend money on Ava, to have sex and discuss fluctuating currencies with her. But when she asks whether he loves her, he cannot say more than 'I like you a great deal'. Enter Edith, a lawyer. Refreshingly enthusiastic and unapologetically earnest, Edith takes Ava to the theatre when Julian leaves Hong Kong for work. Quickly, she becomes something Ava looks forward to. And then Julian writes to tell Ava he is coming back to Hong Kong... Should Ava return to the easy compatibility of her life with Julian or take a leap into the unknown with Edith? Politically alert, heartbreakingly raw, and dryly funny, Exciting Times is thrillingly attuned to the great freedoms and greater uncertainties of modern love. In stylish, uncluttered prose, Naoise Dolan dissects the personal and financial transactions that make up a life-and announces herself as a singular new voice.

The long-awaited new novel from the author of the global bestseller and modern classic, The Shadow of the Wind. In the heart of Barcelona's winding alleyways, Daniel Sempere runs the Sempere & Sons bookshop - a place of refuge for booklovers and wandering souls. Married and with a young son, Daniel is still haunted by the strange rumours surrounding his mother's death. One night, he dreams he is standing in The Cemetery of Forgotten Books, a secret library of forgotten titles known only by a few. There he finds a white coffin containing the body of his mother. As he reaches towards her, she utters the words 'You must tell the truth, Daniel.' Aided by his trusted friend Fermin, Daniel realises he must lay her ghost to rest. It is a journey that will take him back deep into the past. To a young girl abandoned amid the wreckage of the civil war. To a wealthy government minister tormented by an anonymous blackmailer. To the secrets behind a series of prohibited books called The Labyrinth of the Spirits. And at the heart of the enigma is Alicia Gris, born in the shadows of the war, who holds the secrets to the family's past. An electrifying story of passion, intrigue and adventure, The Labyrinth of Spirits is a Russian doll of a novel, of plots within plots, where even the shadows have a story to tell.

The novel Carlos Ruiz Zafón wrote just before THE SHADOW OF THE WIND. 'Fifteen years on, the remembrance of that day has returned to me. I have seen that boy wandering through the mist of the railway station, and the name of Marina has flared up again like a fresh wound. We all have a secret buried under lock and key in the attic of our soul. This is mine...' In May 1980, 15-year-old Oscar Drai suddenly vanishes from his boarding school in the old quarter of Barcelona. For seven days and nights no one knows his whereabouts... His story begins in the heart of old Barcelona, when he meets Marina and her father German Blau, a portrait painter. Marina takes Oscar to a cemetery to watch a macabre ritual that occurs on the fourth Sunday of each month. At 10 a.m. precisely a coach pulled by black horses appears. From it descends a woman dressed in black, her face shrouded, wearing gloves, holding a single rose. She walks over to a gravestone that bears no name, only the mysterious emblem of a black butterfly with open wings. When Oscar and Marina decide to follow her they begin a journey that will take them to the heights of a forgotten, post-war Barcelona, a world of aristocrats and actresses, inventors and tycoons; and a dark secret that lies waiting in the mysterious labyrinth beneath the city streets.