Pocketful of Pearls - second hand

Jim Crace is a writer of spectacular originality and a command of language that moves a reader effortlessly into the world of his imagination. In The Pesthouse he imagines an America of the future where a man and a woman trek across a devastated and dangerous landscape, finding strength in each other and an unexpected love.

Once the safest, most prosperous place on earth, the United States is now a lawless, scantly populated wasteland. The machines have stopped. The government has collapsed. Farmlands lie fallow and the soil is contaminated by toxins. Across the country, families have packed up their belongings to travel eastward toward the one hope passage on a ship to Europe.

Franklin Lopez and his brother, Jackson, are only days away from the ocean when Franklin, nearly crippled by an inflamed knee, is forced to stop. In the woods near his temporary refuge, Franklin comes upon an isolated stone building. Inside he finds Margaret, a woman with a deadly infection and confined to the Pesthouse to sweat out her fever. Tentatively, the two join forces and make their way through the ruins of old America. Confronted by bandits rounding up men for slavery, finding refuge in the Ark, a religious community that makes bizarre demands on those they shelter, Franklin and Margaret find their wariness of each other replaced by deep trust and an intimacy neither one has ever experienced before.

The Pesthouse is Jim Crace’s most compelling novel to date. Rich in its understanding of America’s history and ethos, it is a paean to the human spirit.

In this amazingly timely story about what the wealthy do when Wall Street lays an egg, the author of Gilding Lily once again delivers a witty and insightful treatment of today's woman, as she explores the sacrifices they make, the bargains they strike, the rules they follow, and what happens when it all starts to fall apart. Who could have guessed that Wall Street would go south just as Marcy Emerson and her husband moved east? Down to earth Marcy relocated from Chicago to New York when her husband was offered a big time job as a hedge fund manager. She gives up her own job—after all, hedge fund wives don't work! And while at first it's fun to shop all day and party all night, Marcy quickly learns that life among the rich can be anything but easy and that behind every smile can be a stab in the back. Still, it's not until her husband leaves her for his thinner, blonder mistress—a woman who is higher up the social ladder than the original Mrs. Emerson will ever be—that Marcy decides to stand on her own two feet once again, and fight for the things that are far more important than money.