検索キーワード： ナレーター "Deidre Rubenstein" すべてのカテゴリー

Evie loved the house. The bright, sunny rooms looking across the river. The terraced gardens with fruit trees growing against the high stone walls. The scent of lavender at the end of a hot day. It was a family house. As summer beckons, Evie's family gathers once more at the beautiful old riverside house they all adore. But when Evie discovers a secret that threatens their future, a shadow falls over them all: this summer by the river could be their last together.

>i>Mosaic is compelling storytelling at its best - from the fascinating details of Polish-Jewish culture and the rivalries and dramas of family life, to its moving account of lives torn apart by war and persecution, this an extraordinary true story of a family, and of one woman's journey to reclaim her heritage.

At a time when the world waits anxiously to see what will happen next in Zimbabwe - when there is little food in the country's shops, life expectancy is plunging and Zimbabweans are fleeing repression and unemployment - this book gets to grips with the man at the helm of a corrupt regime; the man behind the monster. Holland's tireless investigation begins with her having dinner with Mugabe the freedom fighter and ends in a searching interview with Zimbabwe's president in December 2007, more than 30 years later.

The women in black are run off their feet, what with the Christmas rush and the summer sales that follow. But it's Sydney in the 1950s, and there's still just enough time left on a hot and frantic day to dream and scheme... By the time the last marked-down frock has been sold, most of the staff of the Ladies' Cocktail section at F. G. Goode's have been launched into slightly different careers.

On a balmy midsummer's evening in 1923, a young woman - foreign, dishevelled and heavily pregnant - is found unconscious just off the railway tracks in the tiny logging community of Woody Creek. The town midwife, Gertrude Foote, is roused from her bed when the woman is brought to her door. Try as she might, Gertrude is unable to save her, but the baby lives.

Set in the leafy northern suburbs of Sydney during the 1940s, The Watch Tower is a novel of relentless and acute psychological power. Following their father's death, Laura and Clare are withdrawn from their elite private boarding school by their mother. As their mother slowly withdraws from them, the two are left to fend for themselves. Laura's boss, Felix, is there to help, even offering to marry Laura if she will have him. However Felix is not all that he seems, and little by little the two sisters grow complicit with his obsessions, his cruelty and his need to control.

Pru's husband has walked out, leaving her alone to contemplate her future. She's missing not so much him, but the life they once had - picnicking on the beach with small children, laughing together, nestling up like spoons in the cutlery drawer as they sleep. Now there's just a dip on one side of the bed and no one to fill it. In a daze, Pru goes off to a friend's funeral. Usual old hymns, words of praise and a eulogy but...it doesn't sound like the friend Pru knew. And it isn't. She's gone to the wrong service. 

When Ned Kelly's mother, Ellen, arrived in Melbourne in 1841 aged nine, British convict ships were still dumping their unhappy cargo in what was then known as the colony of New South Wales. By the time she died aged 91 in 1923, having outlived seven of her 12 children, motor cars plied the highway near her bush home north of Melbourne, and Australia was a modern sovereign nation.

Lori Smyth-Owen isn't your average teenager - as you'd expect from the only girl in a family of 12. Or they were a family, until their father took his own life to escape his bed-bound wife, too obese to leave her room. But for Lori and the remaining brothers, there is no escape from their volatile, mentally unstable mother. They raise themselves away from the gaze of the authorities, realising that though abandoned, they are now in charge. They can control everything, including their mother's food intake.

We all carry stories within us - wrenching, redemptive, extraordinary, and laced with unexpected and hard-won wisdom. These are the real-life stories that a group of women tell each other when they gather for a deep and structured conversation - once a month in a suburban living room - about the things that really matter. They discover that life can be a heartbeat away from chaos; that bad things happen to good people; that good people do outrageous things; that the desire for transformation is enduringly human.

After many tumultuous years spent grappling with the past, Jenny Hooper might have expected her latter years to be the best of her life, and they are - until tragedy strikes. Left floundering in a house full of memories, not all of them good, Jenny knows a reckoning is in order. But it won't be easy. History is beginning to repeat itself for Jenny's adopted daughter, Trudy, who finds herself trapped in an abusive relationship. Jenny and her older daughter, Georgie, can only stand by and watch as Trudy's life implodes.

In August 1948, 545 passengers boarded an overcrowded, clapped-out vessel in Marseilles to face an uncertain future in Australia and New Zealand. They came from displaced persons camps in Germany, death camps in Poland, labour camps in Hungary, gulags in Siberia and stony Aegean islands. There were those who had been hunted by the Nazis and those who had welcomed them; those who had followed the Communists and those who had fled them.

A whole family has been murdered with a pickaxe. They were old Danner the farmer, an overbearing patriarch, his put-upon devoutly religious wife, and their daughter, Barbara Spangler, whose husband, Vincenz, left her after fathering her daughter, Marianne. Also murdered was the Danners' new maidservant, Marie, who was regarded as slightly simple. Despite the brutal nature of the killings and the small village where it has taken place, the police have no leads. Officially the crime is unsolved. And then a former resident returns home....

Isaac Asimov said that "whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse." Such quandaries are the bread and butter of philosophy of religion. Questioning why evil exists, whether God could create a stone he couldn't lift, and if the wonder of life suggests a Creator, this fascinating branch of philosophy is concerned with arguments for and against religion, and what form an immortal god (or gods) would take if in existence. Charles Taliaferro provides a clear exploration of the discipline, introducing a wide range of philosophers.

The mysterious art of magic has been a source of wonderment since before the time of Christ. Ranging from the supernatural practices of "black" magic to demonstrations of dazzling illusion, magic has been called on to conjure the evil eye, burn villages to the ground, and slice women in half. From the astrology of the three wise men to David Blaine's "stunts", Robert Ralley delves into this magical underworld and illuminates the dangerous balance between illusion, fraud, and wickedness that still exists today.

Examining Judaism as a religion, philosophy, and lifestyle, this authoritative introduction asks what it means to be a Jew today. From the nature of God to worship and everyday life, Dan and Lavinia Cohn-Sherbok address the topics essential to an informed understanding of the beliefs, values, and enduring traditions of this highly influential religion.

The Enlightenment has been nothing if not divisive, being blamed for bloody disasters - Auschwitz, the gulags, Islamic terrorism - as well as being heralded as the harbinger of reason and equality. To this day historians disagree over when it was, where it was, and what it was. Kieron O’Hara deftly traverses these conflicts, presenting the history, ideology, culture, and social life of the Enlightenment, not as a simple set of easily enumerated ideas, but rather as an evolving conglomerate that spawned a diverse set of thinkers.

In this clear and accessible introduction to Hinduism, Klaus K. Klostermaier offers a unique overview of a tradition that spans thousands of years. Explaining the origins, beliefs, scriptures, and philosophies of the religion, Klostermaier succeeds in capturing the rich diversity of rituals and gods that comprise Hinduism, whilst keeping the tone both entertaining and informative. Klostermaier’s exploration of this fascinating and long-lasting belief system is essential for students, followers, and interested listeners alike.

Hetty’s family was torn apart following the German invasion of the Netherlands. Rounded up by the Nazis and then separated from their parents, Hetty and her brothers were sent to the Children’s House, within Belsen concentration camp. As one of the eldest, Hetty became the ‘Little Mother’, helping to care for not only her siblings, but the other children as well.In a direct and powerful style, Hetty recalls one of the remarkable, largely untold stories of the Holocaust – the extraordinary struggle and survival of this group of children through those terrible years.

Growing up in an Australian country town before World War I, Jackie Hanna and Cushie Moy are carefree and innocent in their love for each other, but Jackie is a dwarf, and his devotion to the beautiful Cushie is condemned by her parents. This is the story of their life-long odyssey, and of the triumph of a special kind of courage. In Swords and Crowns and Rings Ruth Park brilliantly captures the mood and tempo of Australian life from 1907 until 1931.