Fallen Land by Patrick Flanery set in the Midwest USA An
outstanding work. A book I finished a couple of days ago, and still feel
haunted by… read more of the post, which now appears on the new TripFiction blog here
As we do our research for the TripFiction website, we are continually amazed at the inspired variety and creativity of some of the book covers we have come across. Book covers are the single, important feature to attract readers. So, we thought that every now and then going forward we would bring together a selection of fiction with covers that are wonderfully eye catching and creative - a hugely subjective selection but add your favourites in the Comments Box below. There are so many out there that it is sometimes hard to choose, but here are a few of our current favourites to whet the appetite - and note how yellow has been the overriding colour of choice over the last calendar year.... We could of course also do a feature on the book covers that, well, might make a reader want to run a mile, but that is perhaps for another time...
SEATTLEBernadette Fox is notorious. To her Microsoft-guru husband, she's a fearlessly opinionated partner; to fellow private-school mothers in Seattle, she's a disgrace; to design mavens, she's a revolutionary architect, and to 15-year-old Bee, she is a best friend and, simply, Mom. Then Bernadette disappears. It began when Bee aced her report card and claimed her promised reward: a family trip to Antarctica. But Bernadette's intensifying allergy to Seattle--and people in general--has made her so agoraphobic that a virtual assistant in India now runs her most basic errands. A trip to the end of the earth is problematic. Bookish.com
Florence 1691. The Renaissance is long gone, and the city is a dark, repressive place, where everything is forbidden and anything is possible. The Enlightenment may be just around the corner, but knowledge is still the property of the few, and they guard it fiercely. Gaetano Zummo is forced to flee his native Siracusa at the age of twenty, first to Palermo, then Naples, but always has the feeling that he is being pursued by his past, and that he will never be free of it. Zummo works an artist in wax. Secrecy is a novel that buzzes with intrigue and ideas. It is a love story, a murder mystery, a portrait of a famous city in an age of austerity, an exercise in concealment and revelation, but above all it is a trapdoor narrative, one story dropping unexpectedly into another, the ground always slippery, uncertain... A Link to our blogpost
Martha's Vineyard. Nick and her cousin, Helena, have grown up sharing sultry summers at Tiger House, the glorious old family estate on the island of Martha’s Vineyard. As World War II ends they are on the cusp of adulthood, the world seeming to offer itself up to them. Helena is leaving for Hollywood and a new marriage, while Nick is to be reunited with her young husband Hughes, due to return from London and the war. Everything is about to change. Neither quite finds the life she had imagined, and as the years pass, the trips to Tiger House take on a new complexity. Then, on the brink of the 1960s, Nick’s daughter Daisy and Helena’s son Ed make a sinister discovery. It plunges the island’s bright heat into private shadow and sends a depth-charge to the heart of the family. Summer seemed to arrive at that moment, with its mysterious mixture of salt, cold flesh and fuel. Magnificently told from five perspectives, Tigers in Red Weather is an unforgettable debut: a simmering novel of passion, betrayal and secret violence beneath a polished and fragile facade. A Link to our blogpost on how this cover came into being.
Japan/Brooklyn As he approaches his fortieth birthday, the introverted monk Seido Oda is ordered by his superior to leave behind his peaceful, quiet refuge in the remote mountains of Japan and set up a temple in Brooklyn's Little Calabria. There Oda is confronted with an uphill struggle to get to understand the ways of his new host country, and finds his patience and beliefs tested by a motley crew of misguided American Buddhists - a shock which will enable him to come to terms with painful memories of his past and finally experience that sense of belonging he has always sought. A link to our blogpost
Isle of Wight It's the start of one of the hottest summers on record with weeks without rain; the summer of Abba, T-Rex and David Bowie; of the Notting Hill riots and when Big Ben stopped dead. Luke Wolff is about to turn 18 and is set to enjoy his last summer at home on the Isle of Wight before leaving for college. His job at a holiday camp promises new friendships and romance. But with the heat and open windows, secrets become harder to hide and his parents' seemingly ordered lives become unstuck and the community is gripped by scandal link to our blogpost
India,Paris, USA Ahalya Ghai is just seventeen when a tsunami rips through her Indian village. Ahalya and her sister Sita are the sole survivors of their family. Destitute, their only hope is to find refuge at a convent in Chennai, many miles away. A driver agrees to take them. But the second they get into that car they are doomed - the two sisters are sold. Ahalya doesn't understand why any man would pay so much money for them. She will soon find out. On the other side of the world, Washington, D.C. lawyer Thomas Clarke witnesses the kidnapping of a young girl. Struggling to cope after the death of his baby daughter and the collapse of his marriage to Priya, he takes a sabbatical from his high-pressure job and accepts a position with the Bombay branch of CASE, the Coalition Against Sexual Exploitation. He is now on a path that not only involves saving himself and his marriage, but the lives of Ahalya and Sita Ghai. A Walk Across The Sun is about cruelty and loss. It is about family and survival. And ultimately it is about love, and the immeasurable strength of the human spirit link to our blogpost
Alexandrine and the TripFiction Team
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