Showing results by author "Joanne Harris" in All Categories

This novel is a brilliant first-person narrative of the rise and fall of the Norse gods - retold from the point of view of the world's ultimate trickster, Loki. A number-one best seller in the UK, The Gospel of Loki tells the story of Loki's recruitment from the underworld of Chaos; his many exploits on behalf of his one-eyed master, Odin; through to his eventual betrayal of the gods and the fall of Asgard.

On the evening of July 4th, a young woman scatters her mother’s ashes in New York and follows the call of the changing winds to the French coastal city of Marseille. For the first time in her life, Vianne feels in control of her future. Charming her way into a job as a waitress, she tries to fit in, make friends, and come to terms with her pregnancy, knowing that by the time her child is born, the turning wind will have changed once again.

Rebecca Buckfast has spilled blood to reach this position. Barely 40, she is just starting to reap the harvest of her ambition. As the new regime takes on the old guard, the ground shifts. And with it, the remains of a body are discovered.

Bernie Moon's ambitions and dreams have been forgotten by everyone, even Bernie herself. At nineteen she was full of promise, but now, facing fifty and going through the menopause, she's a fading light. Until the murder of a woman in a local park unlocks a series of childhood memories, and with them, a talent that she has hidden all her adult life. What happens when the frustrations and power of an older woman are finally given their chance to be revealed?

The beauty of stories; you never know where they will take you. Full of dreams and nightmares, Honeycomb is an entrancing mosaic novel of original fairy tales from best-selling author Joanne M. Harris. The toymaker who wants to create the perfect wife; the princess whose heart is won by words, not actions; the tiny dog whose confidence far outweighs his size; and the sinister Lacewing King who rules over the Silken Folk. These are just a few of the weird and wonderful creatures who populate Joanne Harris’s first collection of fairy tales.

Since she was a little girl, the wind has dictated every move Vianne Rocher has made, buffeting her from place to place, from the small French village of Lansquenet-sous-Tannes to the crowded streets of Paris. Cloaked in a new identity, that of widow Yanne Charbonneau, she opens a chocolaterie on a small Montmartre street, determined to still the wind at last and keep her daughters, Anouk and the baby, Rosette, safe.

Join Joanne Harris on a beautiful journey through her gloriously reimagined take on traditional British folktales. Drawing inspiration from The Child Ballads, this collection brings together her award-winning novellas A Pocketful of Crows, The Blue Salt Road and Orfeia. Published in one beautiful volume for the first time, this collection also includes a brand new introduction by Joanne Harris, and three original short stories.

Deep in the heart of London, a photographer walks the streets and captures whatever catches his eye: an old man drinking coffee; a beautiful woman sipping champagne in St. Pancras station; a cloud of moths, disturbed, taking flight across the sky. But with each photo, he captures something unseen by the eye, and as each negative develops—revealing a person he hadn’t met, a danger he hadn’t noticed, and a world he hadn’t seen—he is drawn further into a hidden war.

Take a trip to a terrifying carnival and uncover the secrets within, solve a mysterious puzzle box and await your reward, join a travelling circus and witness the strangest ventriloquist act you've ever seen. In this follow-up to the bestselling Cursed: An Anthology, you'll unearth curses old and new. From a very different take on Snow White, to a new interpretation of The Red Shoes, the best in fantasy spin straw into gold, and invite you into the labyrinth.

For generations, elite young men have attended St. Oswald’s School for Boys, groomed for success by the likes of Roy Straitley, the eccentric classics teacher who has been a revered fixture for more than 30 years. But this year, things are different. Suits, paperwork, and Information Technology rule the world, and Straitley is reluctantly contemplating retirement.

After saving her family farm from falling into disrepair Framboise, a secretive widow, lives a quiet life splitting her time between home and the creperie where she brings her mother's recipes to life. When her nephew approaches her to exploit her family's culinary legacy, Framboise is forced to confront her dramatic childhood at the heart of the German Occupation of France.

The best stories pull readers in and keep them turning the pages, eager to discover more—to find the answer to the question: "And then what happened?" The true hallmark of great literature is great imagination, and as Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio prove with this outstanding collection, when it comes to great fiction, all genres are equal.

When Vianne Rocher receives a letter from beyond the grave, she has no choice but to follow the wind that blows her back to Lansquenet, the beautiful French village in which eight years ago she opened a chocolate shop and first learned the meaning of home. But returning to one's past can be a dangerous pursuit. Vianne, with her daughters, Anouk and Rosette, finds Lansquenet changed in unexpected ways: women veiled in black, the scent of spices and peppermint tea - and there, on the bank of the river Tannes, facing the church, a minaret. Most surprising of all, her old nemesis, Father Francis Reynaud, desperately needs her help.

The end of the world - also known as Ragnarok to the Norse gods - has occurred, and Loki has been trapped in a seemingly endless purgatory, in torture, until he finds a way to escape. It seems that he still exists in the minds of humanity and uses that as a way to our time. Back in the ninth world (Earth), Loki finds himself sharing the mind of a teenage girl named Jumps, who is a bit of a mess.

A Pocketful of Crows balances youth and age, wisdom and passion, and draws on nature and folklore to weave a stunning modern mythology around a nameless wild girl. Only love could draw her into the world of named, tamed things. And it seems only revenge will be powerful enough to let her escape. This is a stunning and original modern fairy tale.

A Lansquenet, quieto villaggio al centro della Francia, la vita scorre placida. Un po' troppo placida: è una comunità chiusa, dove sono rimasti soprattutto anziani contadini e artigiani, dominata con rude benevolenza dal giovane curato Francis Reynaud. È martedì grasso - una tradizione pagana avversata dalla chiesa - quando nel villaggio arrivano Vianne Rocher e la sua giovane figlia Anouk. La donna è assai simpatica e originale, sexy e misteriosa, forse è l'emissaria di potenze superiori (o magari inferiori).

In the year 1605, a young, pregnant widow seeks sanctuary at the Abbey of Sainte Marie-de-la-mer. After the birth of her daughter, she takes up the veil, and a new name, Soeur Auguste. But the peace she has found is shattered five years later by the events that follow the death of her kind benefactress, the Reverend Mother.

The Blue Salt Road balances passion and loss, love and violence and draws on nature and folklore to weave a stunning modern mythology around a nameless, wild young man. Passion drew him to a new world, and trickery has kept him there - without his memories, separated from his own people. But as he finds his way in this dangerous new way of life, so he learns that his notions of home, and your people, might not be as fixed as he believed.

The villagers of Les Salants say that if you kiss the feet of their patron saint and spit three times, something you've lost will come back to you. And so Madeleine, who grew up on the island, returns after an absence of ten years spent in Paris. She is haunted by this place and has never been able to feel at home anywhere else. But when she arrives, she finds her father, who once built the fishing boats that fueled the village's livelihood, has become more silent than ever...

So begins a beautiful and tragic quest as a heartbroken mother sets out to save her lost daughter, through the realms of the real, of dream and even into the underworld itself. But determination alone is not enough. For to save something precious, she must give up something precious, be it a song, a memory, or her freedom itself....