MacLehose Press All the Lives We Never Lived Roy Anuradha

Four narrators, a student from a cafe, a private detective hired by an aggrieved husband, the heroine herself and one of her lovers, construct a portrait of Jacqueline Delanque, otherwise known as Louki • The daughter of a single mother who works in the Moulin Rouge, Louki grows up in poverty in Montmartre. Her one attempt to escape her background fails when she is rejected from the Lycee Jules-Ferry. She meanders on through life, into a cocaine habit, and to frequenting the Cafe Conde, whose regulars begin calling her "Louki". She drifts into marriage with a real estate agency director, but finds no satisfaction with him or his friends and so makes the simple decision not to return to him one evening. She turns instead to a young man almost as aimless and adrift as she, but who perhaps loves her all the same

For reasons that will eventually become clear, Paul Hansen is in prison. He's been in prison for a couple of years now, sharing his cell with a fearsome Hells Angel murderer, who often reminds Paul that he could kill him at any moment • But life wasn't always like this for Paul Hansen. Before prison, there were his parents: Danish pastor Johannes and free-spirited Anna, the proprietor of a controversial art house cinema. There were his friends in L'Excelsior, the block of luxury flats where Paul worked officially as a caretaker, and unofficially as a restorer of souls and comforter of the afflicted. And above all, there was his partner, Winona, the daring seaplane pilot, and their beloved dog Nouk • Many of them are dead now: his parents, friends, Winona and Nouk

In 1927, the great and the good of Paris gather at the funeral of the wealthy banker, Marcel Pericourt. His daughter, Madeleine, is poised to take over his financial empire (although, unfortunately, she knows next to nothing about banking). More unfortunately still, when Madeleine's seven-year-old son, Paul, tumbles from a second floor window of the Pericourt mansion on the day of his grandfather's funeral, and suffers life-changing injuries, his fall sets off a chain of events that will reduce Madeleine to destitution and ruin in a matter of months • Using all her reserves of ingenuity, resourcefulness, and a burning desire for retribution, Madeleine sets about rebuilding her life. She will be helped by an ex-Communist fixer, a Polish nurse who doesn't speak a word of French, a brainless petty criminal with a talent for sabotage, an exiled German Jewish chemist, a very expensive forger, an opera singer with a handy flair for theatrics, and her own son with ideas for a creative new business to take Paris by storm

A modern saga spanning the whole of the 20th century, by one of Iceland's most celebrated writers • At the beginning of this story there is death, and yet it is a celebration of life - the passion between a man and a woman, forbidden love, violence, sorrow, betrayal. Happiness and misfortune are passed down from one generation to the next. The sorrow over what was and what might have been weighs heavily on the characters and at the end of this chain, for now, stands Ari, on his way to his dying father, with a score still to be settled • The raw beauty of life is written into the dramatic Icelandic landscape, and into a society that has undergone great transformation within a century. In language both archaic and lyrical, and yet entirely contemporary and full of humour, Jon Kalman Stefansson proves himself one of the finest European writers of his generation

A twenty-four-hour whirlwind of death and life • In the depths of a winter's night, the heart of Simon Limbeau is resting, readying itself for the day to come. In a few hours' time, just before six, his alarm will go off and he will venture into the freezing dawn, drive down to the beach, and go surfing with his friends. A trip he has made a hundred times and yet, today, the heart of Simon Limbeau will encounter a very different course • But for now, the black-box of his body is free to leap, swell, melt and sink, just as it has throughout the years of Simon's young life • 5.50 a.m • This is his heart • And here is its story

A morose provincial inspector of roads in Aragon settles down to write the fable of the Snow Queen. The Netherlands has now been stretched into a vast country with Northern flatlands and hazardous Alpine ranges in the south. Kai and Lucia are circus illusionists, and when Kai is kidnapped, Lucia must rescue him from the Snow Queen's palace • In the Dutch Mountains is an elegantly constructed story within a story, laced with the wit that characterises the work of this outstanding European writer

I lived for and loved a bird-heart that summer; I only knew it afterwards • Sunday Forrester lives with her sixteen-year-old daughter, Dolly, in the house she grew up in. She does things more carefully than most people. On quiet days, she must eat only white foods. Her etiquette handbook guides her through confusing social situations, and to escape, she turns to her treasury of Sicilian folklore. The one thing very much out of her control is Dolly – her clever, headstrong daughter, now on the cusp of leaving home • Into this carefully ordered world step Vita and Rollo, a couple who move in next door, disarm Sunday with their charm, and proceed to deliciously break just about every rule in Sunday’s book. Soon they are in and out of each others’ homes, and Sunday feels loved and accepted like never before

«Весь невидимый нам свет» — последний роман от лауреата многих престижных литературных премий Энтони Дорра. Эта книга, вынашивавшаяся более десяти лет, немедленно попала в списки бестселлеров — и вот уже который месяц их не покидает. «Весь невидимый нам свет» рассказывает о двигающихся, сами того не ведая, навстречу друг другу слепой французской девочке и робком немецком мальчике, которые пытаются, каждый на свой манер, выжить, пока кругом бушует война, не потерять человеческий облик и сохранить своих близких. Это книга о любви и смерти, о том, что с нами делает война, о том, что невидимый свет победит даже самую безнадежную тьму • Книга на английском языке • A beautiful, stunningly ambitious novel about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II • Marie Laure lives with her father in Paris within walking distance of the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of the locks (there are thousands of locks in the museum)

Blood is thicker than water . . . and murder is best kept in the family • At first the townspeople of Cherryvale welcome the arrival of medium Kate Bender and her family • Kate's messages from the Beyond give their dreams hope, and her mother's potions cure their ills - for a price • No one knows about their other business, the shortcut they offer to a better life. And why shouldn't Kate's family prosper? They're careful. It's only from those who are marked, those who travel alone and can easily disappear, that the Benders demand their pound of flesh • But even a gifted seer like Kate can make a misstep • Now as the secrets festering beneath the soil of the family orchard threaten to bring them all to ruin, the Benders must sharpen their craft - or vanish themselves

Set in Finland in 1939, this is the story of one man who remains in his home town when everyone else has fled, burning down their houses in their wake, before the invading Russians arrive • Timo remains behind because he can't imagine life anywhere else, doing anything else besides felling the trees near his home. This is a novel about belonging - a tale of powerful and forbidden friendships forged during a war, of unexpected bravery and astonishing survival instincts • The Burnt-Out Town of Miracles is not a novel about war, but about the lives of ordinary people dragged into war, each of whom only wants to find the path back home • Roy Jacobsen uses the dramatic natural landscape of light and darkness, fire-blazing heat and life-robbing cold to spectacular effect

A renowned photographer probes a traumatic incident in the life of a fellow guest at a countryside ranch. A chance meeting at a regimental reunion obliges a Korean War veteran to confront a shameful secret. And in the title story, an internet search for a book published in 1887 leads to the discovery of the life of a remarkable woman: Aurelia de Leon, who arrives in Colombia as a child orphan of the Great War, but as a free-spirited adult runs foul of her adoptive country's deep conservatism • The characters in Songs for the Flames are all men and women touched by violence - sometimes directly, sometimes tangentially - but the lives of all of them are irrevocably changed by the experience

Lord of All the Dead is a courageous journey into Javier Cercas' family history and that of a country collapsing from a fratricidal war. The author revisits Ibahernando, his parents' village in southern Spain, to research the life of Manuel Mena. This ancestor, dearly loved by Cercas' mother, died in combat at the age of nineteen during the battle of the Ebro, the bloodiest episode in Spain's history • Who was Manuel Mena? A fascist hero whose memory is an embarrassment to the author, or a young idealist who happened to fight on the wrong side? And how should we judge him, as grandchildren and great-grandchildren of that generation, interpreting history from our supposed omniscience and the misleading • perspective of a present full of automatic answers, that fails to consider the particularities of each personal and family drama? • Wartime epics, heroism and death are some of the underlying themes of this unclassifiable novel that combines road trips, personal confessions, war stories and historical scholarship, finally becoming an incomparable tribute to the author's mother and the incurable scars of an entire generation