Wildly funny and wonderfully moving, Bad Ideas is about just that — a string of bad ideas — and the absurdity of love Trudy works nights in a linen factory, avoiding romance and sharing the care of her four-year-old niece with Trudy's mother, Claire. Claire still pines for Trudy's father, a St. Lawrence Seaway construction worker who left her twenty years ago. Claire believes in true love. Trudy does not. She's keeping herself to herself. But when Jules Tremblay, aspiring daredevil, walks into the Jubilee restaurant, Trudy's a goner. Loosely inspired by Ken 'the Crazy Canuck' Carter's attempt to jump the St. Lawrence River in a rocket car, and set in a 1970s hollowed-out town in eastern Ontario, Bad Ideas paints an indelible portrait of people on the forgotten fringes of life. Witty and wise, this is a novel that will stay with you a long time.
Pastoral fiction
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Author:Marston, MissySummary: - Author:Giguère, DianeSummary:
Qui n’a pas rêvé de posséder une maison à la campagne et de vivre en harmonie avec la nature ?
C’est dans cette atmosphère de dépaysement utopique que le destin des personnages de ce roman, qui n’est pas sans cruauté, se croisent et se scellent.
Or la vie à la campagne est loin d’être de tout repos et la quête d’une vie en
dehors du tissu banal de l’existence n’a rien à voir avec la réalité.
Paul et Gisèle l’apprendront à leurs dépens lorsqu’ils seront entraînés dans
une suite d’évènements dont l’achat d’une maison de campagne n’est pas
le moindre. -
Author:Berry, WendellSummary:Berry opens this latest installment of the Port William series with young Andy Catlett preparing to visit a place he'd been to many times before, though this would be an adventure he will take very seriously. Nine years old, Andy embarks on the trip by bus, alone for the first time.
- Author:Taylor, PatrickSummary:
An Irish Country Yuletide is a charming Christmas entry in Patrick Taylor's beloved internationally bestselling Irish Country series. December 1965. 'Tis the season once again in the cozy Irish village of Ballybucklebo, which means that Doctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly, his young colleague Barry Laverty, and their assorted friends, neighbors, and patients are enjoying all their favorite holiday traditions: caroling, trimming the tree, finding the perfects gifts for their near and dear ones, and anticipating a proper Yuletide feast complete with roast turkey and chestnut stuffing. There's even the promise of snow in the air, raising the prospect of a white Christmas. Not that trouble has entirely taken a holiday as the season brings its fair share of challenges as well, including a black-sheep brother hoping to reconcile with his estranged family before it's too late, a worrisome outbreak of chickenpox, and a sick little girl whose faith in Christmas is in danger of being crushed in the worst way. As roaring fireplaces combat the brisk December chill, it's up to O'Reilly to play Santa, both literally and figuratively, to make sure that Ballybucklebo has a Christmas it will never forget! Bonus: This heartwarming Yuletide tale also includes several mouth-watering recipes, straight from an Irish country kitchen. A Macmillan Audio production from Forge Books
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Author:Taylor, PatrickSummary:"The charm of Taylor's Irish Country tales is brought to life in John Keating's performance. His Irish lilt will transport listeners straight to Ballybucklebo...Keating's pacing and inflections are perfect as he gives a unique vocal personality to each character." ' AudioFile Magazine on An Irish Country Love Story An Irish Country Cottage is a charming audiobook in Patrick Taylor's beloved New York Times and internationally bestselling Irish Country series. The New Year brings challenges and changes to the colorful Irish village of Ballybucklebo. The Christmas holidays have barely passed before a fire engulfs the humble thatched cottage housing of Donal Donnally and his family. Although the family escapes the blaze more or less unsinged, Donal, his wife, their three small children, and their beloved dog find themselves with nothing left but the clothes on their back. Good thing Doctors O'Reilly and Laverty are on hand to rally the good people of Ballybucklebo to come to their aid. Rebuilding the cottage won't be quick or easy, but good neighbors from all walks of life will see to it that the Donallys get back on their feet again, no matter what it takes. Meanwhile, matters of procreation occupy the doctors and their patients. Young Barry Laverty and his wife Sue, frustrated in their efforts to start a family, turn to modern medicine for answers. O'Reilly must tread carefully as he advises a married patient on how to avoid another dangerous pregnancy. As a new and tumultuous decade approaches, sectarian division threaten to bring unrest to Ulster, but in Ballybucklebo at least, peace still reigns and neighbors look after neighbors.
- Author:Eliot, GeorgeSummary:
Hailed for its sympathetic and accurate rendering of nineteenth-century English pastoral life, Adam Bede was George Eliot's first full-length novel and a bestseller from the moment of publication. Eliot herself called it "a country story - full of the breath of cows and scent of hay." In the early days of the Napoleonic Wars, Adam Bede is hardworking carpenter with enormous physical strength and considerable force of will. But Adam has a single flaw, his blind love of Hetty Sorrel, a vain, shallow dairymaid who spurns Adam but is easily seduced by the local squire. The bitter and tragic consequences of her actions shake the very foundations of their serene rural community.
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Author:Seethaler, Robert, Collins, CharlotteSummary:Shortlisted for The 2016 Man Booker International PrizeAndreas lives his whole life in the Austrian Alps, where he arrives as a young boy taken in by a farming family. He is a man of very few words and so, when he falls in love with Marie, he doesn't ask for her hand in marriage, but instead has some of his friends light her name at dusk across the mountain. When Marie dies in an avalanche, pregnant with their first child, Andreas' heart is broken. He leaves his valley just once more, to fight in WWII — where he is taken prisoner in the Caucasus — and returns to find that modernity has reached his remote haven . . .Like John Williams' Stoner or Denis Johnson's Train Dreams, A Whole Life is a tender book about finding dignity and beauty in solitude. An exquisite novel about a simple life, it has already demonstrated its power to move thousands of readers with a message of solace and truth. It looks at the moments, big and small, that make us what we are.
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Author:Smiley, JaneSummary:Three daughters and their husbands are pulled into a triangle of love, jealousy, and fear when their father grows too old to manage the family's fertile thousand acre farm.
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Author:Berry, WendellSummary:Mat Feltner struggles to accept the loss of his son as the rest of the Port William community watches the progress of World War II.
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Author:Baume, SaraSummary:The author of the award-winning Spill Simmer Falter Wither returns with a stunning new novel about a young artist's search for meaning and healing in rural Ireland. Struggling to cope with urban life-and life in general-Frankie, a twenty-something artist, retreats to her family's rural house on "turbine hill," vacant since her grandmother's death three years earlier. It is in this space, surrounded by countryside and wild creatures, that she can finally grapple with the chain of events that led her here-her shaky mental health, her difficult time in art school-and maybe, just maybe, regain her footing in art and life. As Frankie picks up photography once more, closely examining the natural world around her, she reconsiders seminal works of art and their relevance. With "prose that makes sure we look and listen,"* Sara Baume has written an elegant novel that is as much an exploration of wildness, the art world, mental illness, and community as it is a profoundly beautiful and powerful meditation on life. *Atlantic
- Author:McKinley, TamaraSummary:
Surviving a vicious massacre, the Aboriginal boy, Mandawuy is the last of his tribe. He will face the ultimate choice - to join with the white man, or to rebel alongside the warriors who are waging a war against them, pitting their stone-age weapons against guns. When George Collinson meets Eloise at the Governor's Mansion in Sydney, it is love at first sight. But Eloise is married to Edward Cadwallader - George's nemesis and a man capable of great brutality, a man who will never let Eloise or their son leave him alive...
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Author:Taylor, PatrickSummary:Patrick Taylor's devoted readers know Doctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly as a pugnacious general practitioner in the quaint Irish village of Ballybucklebo. Now Taylor turns back the clock to give us a portrait of the young Fingal-and show us the pivotal events that shaped the man he would become. In the 1930s, fresh from a stint in the Royal Navy Reserve, and against the wishes of his disapproving father, Fingal O'Reilly goes to Dublin to study medicine. Fingal and his fellow aspiring doctors face the arduous demands of Trinity College and Sir Patrick Dun's Hospital. The hours are long and the cases challenging, but Fingal manages to find time to box and play rugby-and to romance a fetching, gray-eyed nurse named Kitty O'Hallorhan. Dublin is a city of slums and tenements, where brutal poverty breeds diseases that the limited medical knowledge of the time is often ill-equipped to handle. His teachers warn Fingal not to become too attached to his patients, but can he truly harden himself to the suffering he sees all around him-or can he find a way to care for his patients without breaking his heart' A Dublin Student Doctor is a moving, deeply human story that will touch longtime fans of the Irish Country Books series as well as readers who are meeting Doctor Fingal O'Reilly for the very first time.
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