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In 1944, British bomber pilot Hugo Langley parachuted from his stricken plane into the verdant fields of German-occupied Tuscany. Badly wounded, he found refuge in a ruined monastery and in the arms of Sofia Bartoli. But the love that kindled between them was shaken by an irreversible betrayal. Nearly 30 years later, Hugo's estranged daughter, Joanna, has returned home to the English countryside to arrange her father's funeral. Among his personal effects is an unopened letter addressed to Sofia. In it is a startling revelation.
In early 1943, Magda Ritter's parents send her to relatives in Bavaria, hoping to keep her safe from the Allied bombs strafing Berlin. Young German women are expected to do their duty - working for the Reich or marrying to produce strong, healthy children. After an interview with the civil service, Magda is assigned to the Berghof, Hitler's mountain retreat. Only after weeks of training does she learn her assignment: she will be one of several young women tasting the Führer's food, offering herself in sacrifice to keep him from being poisoned.
Zadie Anson and Emma Colley have been best friends since their early 20s, when they first began navigating serious romantic relationships amid the intensity of medical school. Now they're happily married wives and mothers with successful careers - Zadie as a pediatric cardiologist and Emma as a trauma surgeon. Their lives in Charlotte, North Carolina are chaotic but fulfilling, until the return of a former colleague unearths a secret one of them has been harboring for years.
In 1918, Philadelphia was a city teeming with promise. Even as its young men went off to fight in the Great War, there were opportunities for a fresh start on its cobblestone streets. Into this bustling town came Pauline Bright and her husband, filled with hope that they could now give their three daughters - Evelyn, Maggie, and Willa - a chance at a better life. But just months after they arrive, the Spanish flu reaches the shores of America.
In his final days, beloved and ailing patriarch Miguel Angel de La Cruz, affectionately called Big Angel, has summoned his entire clan for one last legendary birthday party. But as the party approaches, his mother, nearly 100, dies herself, leading to a farewell doubleheader in a single weekend. Among the guests is Big Angel's half-brother, known as Little Angel, who must reckon with the truth that although he shares a father with his siblings, he has not, as a half gringo, shared a life. Across two bittersweet days in their San Diego neighborhood, the revelers mingle.
A Gentleman in Moscow immerses us in an elegantly drawn era with the story of Count Alexander Rostov. When, in 1922, he is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, the count is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel's doors.
In 1944, British bomber pilot Hugo Langley parachuted from his stricken plane into the verdant fields of German-occupied Tuscany. Badly wounded, he found refuge in a ruined monastery and in the arms of Sofia Bartoli. But the love that kindled between them was shaken by an irreversible betrayal. Nearly 30 years later, Hugo's estranged daughter, Joanna, has returned home to the English countryside to arrange her father's funeral. Among his personal effects is an unopened letter addressed to Sofia. In it is a startling revelation.
In early 1943, Magda Ritter's parents send her to relatives in Bavaria, hoping to keep her safe from the Allied bombs strafing Berlin. Young German women are expected to do their duty - working for the Reich or marrying to produce strong, healthy children. After an interview with the civil service, Magda is assigned to the Berghof, Hitler's mountain retreat. Only after weeks of training does she learn her assignment: she will be one of several young women tasting the Führer's food, offering herself in sacrifice to keep him from being poisoned.
Zadie Anson and Emma Colley have been best friends since their early 20s, when they first began navigating serious romantic relationships amid the intensity of medical school. Now they're happily married wives and mothers with successful careers - Zadie as a pediatric cardiologist and Emma as a trauma surgeon. Their lives in Charlotte, North Carolina are chaotic but fulfilling, until the return of a former colleague unearths a secret one of them has been harboring for years.
In 1918, Philadelphia was a city teeming with promise. Even as its young men went off to fight in the Great War, there were opportunities for a fresh start on its cobblestone streets. Into this bustling town came Pauline Bright and her husband, filled with hope that they could now give their three daughters - Evelyn, Maggie, and Willa - a chance at a better life. But just months after they arrive, the Spanish flu reaches the shores of America.
In his final days, beloved and ailing patriarch Miguel Angel de La Cruz, affectionately called Big Angel, has summoned his entire clan for one last legendary birthday party. But as the party approaches, his mother, nearly 100, dies herself, leading to a farewell doubleheader in a single weekend. Among the guests is Big Angel's half-brother, known as Little Angel, who must reckon with the truth that although he shares a father with his siblings, he has not, as a half gringo, shared a life. Across two bittersweet days in their San Diego neighborhood, the revelers mingle.
A Gentleman in Moscow immerses us in an elegantly drawn era with the story of Count Alexander Rostov. When, in 1922, he is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, the count is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel's doors.
Annabelle and Bayard Van Duyvil live a charmed life in New York: He's the scion of an old Knickerbocker family, she grew up in a Tudor house in England, they had a fairy-tale romance in London, and he's recreated her family home on the banks of the Hudson. Yes, there are rumors that she's having an affair with the architect, but rumors are rumors. But then Bayard is found dead with a knife in his chest on the night of their Twelfth Night Ball; Annabelle goes missing, presumed drowned; and the papers go mad.
Set in the London of the 1660s and of the early 21st century, The Weight of Ink is the interwoven tale of two women of remarkable intellect: Ester Velasquez, an emigrant from Amsterdam who is permitted to scribe for a blind rabbi, just before the plague hits the city, and Helen Watt, an ailing historian with a love of Jewish history. As the novel opens, Helen has been summoned by a former student to view a cache of 17th-century Jewish documents newly discovered in his home during a renovation.
In the chaotic aftermath of World War II, American college girl Charlie St. Clair is pregnant, unmarried, and on the verge of being thrown out of her very proper family. She's also nursing a desperate hope that her beloved cousin Rose, who disappeared in Nazi-occupied France during the war, might still be alive.
It is 1911, and Jean is about to join the mass strike at the Singer factory. For her, nothing will be the same again. Decades later, Connie sews coded moments of her life into a notebook, as her mother did before her. More than 100 years after his grandmother's sewing machine was made, Fred unpicks the secrets of four generations, one stitch at a time.
Russia, July 17, 1918: Under direct orders from Vladimir Lenin, Bolshevik secret police force Anastasia Romanov, along with the entire imperial family, into a damp basement in Siberia where they face a merciless firing squad. None survives. At least that is what the executioners have always claimed.
In the well-heeled milieu of New York's Upper East Side, coolly elegant Philippa Lye is the woman no one can stop talking about. Despite a shadowy past, Philippa has somehow married the scion of the last family-held investment bank in the city. And although her wealth and connections put her in the center of this world, she refuses to conform to its gossip-fueled culture. Then, into her precariously balanced life, come two women.
Newlyweds Celestial and Roy are the embodiment of both the American Dream and the New South. He is a young executive, and she is an artist on the brink of an exciting career. But as they settle into the routine of their life together, they are ripped apart by circumstances neither could have imagined. Roy is arrested and sentenced to 12 years for a crime Celestial knows he didn't commit. Though fiercely independent, Celestial finds herself bereft and unmoored, taking comfort in Andre, her childhood friend, and best man at their wedding.
New York, 1879: After an epic snow storm ravages the city of Albany, Dr. Mary Sutter, a former Civil War surgeon, begins a search for two little girls, the daughters of close friends killed by the storm who have vanished without a trace. Mary's mother and niece Elizabeth, who has been studying violin in Paris, return to Albany upon learning of the girls' disappearance - but Elizabeth has another reason for wanting to come home, one she is not willing to reveal. Despite resistance from the community, who believe the girls to be dead, the family persists in their efforts to find the two.
Anna Kerrigan, nearly 12 years old, accompanies her father to the house of a man who, she gleans, is crucial to the survival of her father and her family. Anna observes the uniformed servants, the lavishing of toys on the children, and some secret pact between her father and Dexter Styles. Years later her father has disappeared, and the country is at war. Anna works at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where women are allowed to hold jobs that had always belonged to men.
A reckless wager between a tennis pro with a fading career and a drunken party guest - the stakes are an antique motorcycle and an heiress' diamond necklace - launches a narrative odyssey that braids together three centuries of aspiration and adversity. In The Maze at Windermere Gregory Blake Smith weaves these intersecting worlds into a brilliant tapestry, charting a voyage across the ages into the maze of the human heart.
Ernt Allbright, a former POW, comes home from the Vietnam war a changed and volatile man. When he loses yet another job, he makes an impulsive decision: He will move his family north, to Alaska, where they will live off the grid in America’s last true frontier.
Profoundly moving and gracefully told, Pachinko follows one Korean family through the generations, beginning in early 1900s Korea with Sunja, the prized daughter of a poor yet proud family, whose unplanned pregnancy threatens to shame them. Betrayed by her wealthy lover, Sunja finds unexpected salvation when a young tubercular minister offers to marry her and bring her to Japan to start a new life.
A sweeping saga about four generations of a family who live and love on an enchanting island off the coast of Italy - combining the romance of Beautiful Ruins with the magical tapestry of works by Isabel Allende.
Castellamare is an island far enough away from the mainland to be forgotten but not far enough to escape from the world's troubles. At the center of the island's life is a café draped with bougainvillea called the House at the Edge of Night, where the community gathers to gossip and talk.
Amedeo Esposito, a foundling from Florence, finds his destiny on the island with his beautiful wife, Pina, whose fierce intelligence, grace, and unwavering love guide her every move. An indiscretion tests their marriage, and their children - three sons and an inquisitive daughter - grow up and struggle with both humanity's cruelty and its capacity for love and mercy.
Spanning nearly a century, through secrets and mysteries, trials and sacrifice, this beautiful and haunting novel follows the lives of the Esposito family and the other islanders who live and love on Castellamare: a cruel count and his bewitching wife, a priest who loves scandal, a prisoner of war turned poet, an outcast girl who becomes a pillar of strength, a wounded English soldier who emerges from the sea. The people of Castellamare are transformed by two world wars and a great recession, by the threat of fascism and their deep bonds of passion and friendship, and by bitter rivalries and the power of forgiveness.
Catherine Banner has written an enthralling, character-rich novel, epic in scope but intimate in feeling. At times the island itself seems alive, a mythical place where the earth heaves with stories - and this magical novel takes you there.
Castellamare is a fictional, relatively isolated island - far enough from the mainland to be insular (for good or for ill) but close enough to be accessed by boat. The more things change around them, the more the islanders stay the same, with gossip lasting for decades. The island both grips and spits out its residents, particularly those of the family featured in this lushly written book.
I wanted to visit the House at the Edge of Night, to meet the Espositos, to have a good strong Italian coffee, to spend some time by the sea.
Another reviewer pointed out that you really got to know the first two generations of Espositos really well, less so with the latter two generations. It's probably the only drawback to this book, because Lena in particular was not at all drawn out nearly as well as her grandmother and her great-grandfather were.
It's well-written, well-read, and a perfect summer getaway read.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful
This book wasn’t for you, but who do you think might enjoy it more?
I think that people who are extremely interested in Italian history would appreciate it. The book is barely a novel. It is, as the blurb says, the story of the people who live on a tiny island off the coast of Italy. The characters in the book have rather ordinary lives, with the exception of the primary family, who lose two of their sons in WWII. Their daughter, who gets way too much attention from the author (unless this is an autobiography) falls in love with Robert, an American who loves her and then goes back to the US for five years. She pines away. You would be forgiven for thinking that this is an Italian soap opera.
What do you think your next listen will be?
Nothing like this. I love Edoardo Ballerini, but he is beginning to amass a collection of audiobooks which focus in very large detail on the history of Italy, which may be of interest to a small audience of readers, but, frankly, I am not among them.
Would you be willing to try another one of Edoardo Ballerini’s performances?
Certainly. I love listening to him. His voice is beautiful, the mellifluous tones of Italian and several other languages just melting in his mouth, so to speak. He is extremely versatile, and has read a number of American novels that are well plotted, with characters who interest you. The Owen Laukkenan books are delightful to read, both the plots and the characters are the work of a truly gifted author, and Mr. Ballerini does them justice. Carla, an FBI agent, and Stevens, a Minnesota police officer, make a great team. Come to think of it,I am really eagerly anticipating the next book by these two men.
What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?
Not much, which is, I believe, the point.
Any additional comments?
Nope.
8 of 10 people found this review helpful
This is a lovely story, perhaps a little too slow in parts, but overall quite an immersive listen. The wonderful prose and excellent narration ( Eduardo Bellerini is one of the best ) took me to the island of Castelemarre.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
After finishing this book, it reminded me of exactly what I have wanted out of a book for so long. A sense of belonging, community, and an environment that is seemingly realistic but also wildly surreal. That's what I found in the book, "The House at the Edge of Night." What I found most refreshing about this book is how it told the story of the people of Castellamare, at times ambiguous but mostly candid and realistic. Whilst describing, in perfect detail, the tales of war, growing pains, and history through the lens of this tiny Italian island for the past century. You become personally invested and immersed in the characters' lives and their struggles. The book was profound, touching, and truly human in its approach and I would definitely recommend it to anyone who enjoys a poignant novel about the faith that the human experience can affect on a reader.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
Enjoyed most of the story- felt long with the 2nd set of brat brothers 2/3 in. Why do great characters have awful, insipid sons- twice? But would LOVE to visit The House on the Edge of Night and drink limoncello with the Esposito family and the islanders!
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
I loved living on this island among these characters. Three generations dedicated to a way of life and a culture all revolving around a local bar/cafe. Really good entertainment.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
I am very stingy with my 5 star reviews, but this one was easy. I simply loved this book. The characters, the island, the house... I’m sorry it’s over. Also, this is the second audible book I’ve listened to by narrator Edoardo Ballerini-he is an amazing voice for this story.
This is a beautiful book, made even better by the marvelous Edoardo Ballerini. The characters, the setting, and the historical context were beautifully rendered, and the story was everything a good narrative should be. One of my all time favorites,
This is a lovely story about a place and time one is grateful to connect to. Would that we could all live with our neighbors the way the island-folk of this story do... taking care of each other's across the years!
The book is full of unique characters and stories, and it is so vivid that you can almost feel the heat of the sun and smell the spray of the ocean.