Jasper Fforde
Three separate interviews in which Jasper Fforde discusses the Thursday Next series, his Nursery Crime novels and Shades of Grey, the first in a trilogy set in a future world recognizable as our own - but only just.
Abraham Verghese
An interview with Abraham Verghese about his life and writing and in particular about his extraordinary 2009 novel Cutting for Stone, set in 1960s and '70s Ethiopia and 1980s New York.
Martha A Sandweiss
An interview with Martha Sandweiss in which she discusses her book Passing Strange, a biography of Clarence King who lived a double life—as the celebrated white explorer, geologist, and writer Clarence King and as a black Pullman porter named James Todd, married to Ada with whom he had five children.
Amy Greene
Amy Greene talks about her first novel, Bloodroot, which brings her native Appalachia—and the faith and fury of its people—to rich and vivid life.
Easter Island: Summary and book reviews of Easter Island by Jennifer Vanderbes, plus links to an excerpt from Easter Island and a biography of Jennifer Vanderbes.
Easter Island
by
Jennifer Vanderbes
Hardcover: Jun 2003,
320 pages.
Paperback: Jun 2004,
320 pages.
In this extraordinary fiction debut—rich with love and betrayal, history and intellectual passion—two remarkable narratives converge on Easter Island, one of the most remote places in the world.
It is 1913. Elsa Pendleton travels from England to Easter Island with her husband, an anthropologist sent by the Royal Geographical Society to study the colossal moai statues, and her younger sister. What begins as familial duty for Elsa becomes a grand adventure; on Easter Island she discovers her true calling. But, out of contact with the outside world, she is unaware that World War I has been declared and that a German naval squadron, fleeing the British across the South Pacific, is heading toward the island she now considers home.
Sixty years later, Dr. Greer Farraday, an American botanist, travels to Easter Island to research the island's ancient pollen, but more important, to put back the pieces of her life after the death of her husband.
A series of brilliant revelations brings to life the parallel quests of these two intrepid young women as they delve into the centuries-old mysteries of Easter Island. Slowly unearthing the island's haunting past, they are forced to confront turbulent discoveries about themselves and the people they love, changing their lives forever.
Easter Island is a tour de force of storytelling that will establish Jennifer Vanderbes as one of the most gifted writers of her generation.
Book Reviews
Publishers Weekly
Like the overcast skies of Easter Island, this impressive debut is rich in shades of gray meteorological, scientific, intellectual and emotional.
Kirkus Reviews
Impressively researched, persuasively detailed a first novel destined to become a reading club favorite.
Booklist - Marta Segal
This historical novel deftly combines romance, warfare, and science for the rationalist and romantic alike.
Time Out (New York)
... weaves together history, science and romance, while maintaining an undercurrent of suspense.
St. Louis Post Dispatch
Captivating ... one of those impressive debut novels that come along once a year ... and demands that readers take notice of its existence.
The Christian Science Monitor
A gorgeous debut.
Newsday - Dan Cryer
Intelligently conceived and elegantly written ... combines gripping traditional storytelling with scientist-explorer protagonists ... makes the quest for scientific breakthroughs both exciting and all too human.
People Magazine
Critics Choice. ... a rich and worldy first novel. Bottom line Glorious.
The San Francisco Chronicle
Exquisitely imagined ... one of those rare novels that appeals equally to mind, heart, and soul.
The Washington Post - Heather Hewett
... exemplifies the continuing appeal of the historical-fiction genre to young, talented writers. An engrossing blend of adventure, romance and mystery.
Fort Worth Star - Telegran
... a beautiful story, a journey of mystery and surprise that readers will want to take again and again.
The Times (London)
... brilliant ... this novel is an impressive, strikingly carved feat.
The Sunday Telegraph (UK)
...an ambitious undertaking, triumphantly achieved.
Robert Stone - author of Dog Soldiers
One of the best novels of the year.
Andrea Barrett - author of Servants of the Map
Splendid ... captures in the intertwined stories of two women a passion for life and for science that transcends time.
Named for a flower whose blood-red sap possesses the power both to heal and poison, Bloodroot is a stunning fiction debut about the legacies—of magic and madness, faith and secrets, passion and loss—that haunt one family across the generations, from the Great Depression to today.
Samara Taylor used to believe in miracles. But her mother is in rehab, and her father seems more interested in his congregation than his family. And when a young girl in her small town is kidnapped, her already-worn thread of faith begins to unravel.
When she's not digging up bones or other ancient objects, quirky, tart-tongued archaeologist Ruth Galloway lives happily alone in Norfolk. But when a child's bones are found on a desolate beach nearby, and Detective Chief Inspector Harry Nelson calls Galloway for help, Ruth finds herself in...
Few works of literature are as universally beloved as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Now, in this spellbinding historical novel, we meet the young girl whose bright spirit sent her on an unforgettable trip down the rabbit hole –and the grown woman whose story is no less...
The Coral Thief, as riveting and beautifully rendered as Ghostwalk, Rebecca Stott’s first novel, is a provocative and tantalizing mix of history, philosophy, and suspense. It conjures up vividly both the feats of Napoleon and the accomplishments of those working without fame or...
I rarely read anything before this. Years ago I picked this one up and couldn't put it down. It changed me into a book nut. It was a wonderful ...
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I can't believe I waited so long to read this book. Shame on me. This book was wonderful, lyrical, entertaining - all the makings of a wonderful ...
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The book held so much for the reader but in the end I felt robbed. The evolution of Trudy was disturbing and somewhat insulting. She came across as ...
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Justice Department still has issues with Google Settlement(Feb 05 2010) The Department of Justice dealt a serious blow Thursday evening to the chances that the Google Book Search settlement will gain court approval later this...
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Hachette formally adopts 'agency model'(Feb 05 2010) Hachette Book Group USA became the second major U.S. publisher to officially announce its intention to move to an agency model for the sale of e-books....
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Easter Island
Publishers Weekly
Robert Stone - author of Dog Soldiers
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