THE PENAL COLONY - SECOND HAND

Longlisted for the Booker Prize, a mesmerizing new novel from the award-winning author of Old God's Time

A first-person narrative of Lilly Bere’s life, On Canaan’s Side opens as the eighty-five-year-old Irish émigré mourns the loss of her grandson, Bill. Lilly, the daughter of a Dublin policeman, revisits her eventful past, going back to the moment she was forced to flee Ireland at the end of the First World War. She continues her tale in America, where—far from her family—she first tastes the sweetness of love and the bitterness of betrayal.

Spanning nearly seven decades, Sebastian Barry’s extraordinary fifth novel explores memory, war, family ties, love, and loss, distilling the complexity and beauty of life into his haunting prose.

The solitude of the Upper Michigan Peninsula is Michael Collins’s heart of darkness in this compelling story of the unquiet dead. Frank Cassidy’s parents burned to death almost thirty years ago; now his uncle is dead—shot by a mysterious stranger who lies in a coma in the local hospital. Frank, working menial jobs to support his unfaithful wife and two children, heads north in a series of stolen cars to dispute his cousin’s claim to the family farm. Once there, Frank wants answers, but realizes that what he is searching for—and the promise of the American Dream—is quickly receding from his grasp. Brilliant and unsettling, The Resurrectionists is an ironic yet chilling display of American culture in the seventies and a compassionate novel about a man struggling to overcome the crimes and burdens of his past.

A passionate but ultimately tragic love affair starts when two students - one French, one English - meet at university at the beginning of the 60s. From its tentative, unpromising early stages, the relationship develops into a life-changing one, whose profound impact continues to reverberate 40 years later.

The highly praised author of Hideous Kinky, returns with a searing and sensuous tale young love set amid the heat and beauty of a Tuscan summer The Independent calls Esther Freud “the best writer on childhood we have.” In Love Falls this brilliant novelist proves her power once again with an utterly charming and irresistible tale of adolescent love and self-discovery set in a foreign land. When 17-year-old Lara accepts her father’s invitation to accompany him to Tuscany for the summer, she’s excited and trepidatious. But, her fears prove groundless, for the villa’s closest neighbors are the contagiously adventurous Willoughbys, the teenaged brood of a wealthy British lord. Caught up in their torrential good humor—and snared particularly by Kip Willoughby’s dark, flirtatious eyes—Lara sets off on a summer adventure full of danger, first love, and untold consequences that will change her life.