What would you think if your husband, one day, with no word of explanation or warning, vanished? When would you begin to panic - the first hour, the first night? A deceptively simple story about a deserted woman, My Phantom Husbandis Marie Darrieussecq's eerie follow-up to Pig Tales, showing her to be a writer of great subtlety and depth. When her husband goes to buy fresh bread and never returns, the young narrator's life changes for ever. Night after night she has to learn to be alone, to sleep alone, to live in a space she has shared with a man for seven years. Yet who was he, her husband, and did they really have much in common? Why can't she remember her love for him - or even what he looked like? Dragged into a world of visions, she is besieged by childhood terrors - monsters behind the furniture, vampires floating around in the dark, strangers walking in other rooms. She begins to see her husband, or an apparition of him. Is he a supernatural visitation or the product of madness - or a figment of her guilty conscience? My Phantom Husband is a profoundly unsettling parable about the way love appears and disappears, about the absences and evasions that can lie hidden in any relationship.

From the #1 international-bestselling master of Scandinavian noir: a “marvelously told mystery” of murder in Sweden and corruption in Africa (Austin American-Statesman). In an African convent, four nuns and an unidentified fifth woman are found with their throats slit. The local police do little to investigate . . . and cover up the unknown woman’s death. A year later in Sweden, Holger Eriksson, a retired car dealer and birdwatcher, is skewered to death after falling into a pit of carefully sharpened bamboo poles. Soon after, the body of a missing florist is discovered strangled and tied to a tree. Baffled and appalled by the crimes, the only clues Inspector Kurt Wallander has to go on are a skull, a diary, and a photo of three men. What ensues is a complex, meticulously plotted investigation that will push the detective to his limits. The key is the unsolved killing of the fifth woman in Africa—who was she, and what did she have to do with the brutal deaths of two seemingly innocent men? Are more victims in danger? The answers will lead Wallander to question everything he thought he knew about the psychology of murder. An international bestseller, this “scary and cunning tale” (Rocky Mountain News) “achieves the satisfying density of plot and characterization” that established Henning Mankell as one of the twentieth-century’s finest crime writers. His Kurt Wallander mysteries are now the basis for the hit TV show Wallander starring Kenneth Branagh (The Baltimore Sun).

HAPPILY MARRIED for over a year and more in love than ever, Darcy and Elizabeth can’t imagine anything interrupting their bliss-filled days. Then an intense snowstorm strands a group of travelers at Pemberley, and terrifying accidents and mysterious deaths begin to plague the manor. Everyone seems convinced that it is the work of a phan-tom—a Shadow Man who is haunting the Darcy family’s grand estate. Darcy and Elizabeth believe the truth is much more menacing and that someone is trying to murder them. But Pem-berley is filled with family guests as well as the unexpected travelers—any one of whom could be the culprit—so unraveling the mystery of the murderer’s identity forces the newlyweds to trust each other’s strengths and work together. Written in the style of the era and including Austen’s romantic playfulness and sardonic humor, this suspense-packed sequel to Pride and Prejudice recasts Darcy and Elizabeth as a husband-and-wife detective team who must solve the mystery at Pemberley and catch the murderer—before it’s too late.

Lizzie was born into a rough life, and everyone thinks she will forever be a prisoner of her own lack of opportunities. Fighting for every small advantage wears on her young soul, leaving her filled with doubt, insecurity, and a complete lack of self-respect. But despite the many challenges she faces, Lizzie never loses sight of a better life. She puts her nose to the grindstone, and she works her way through college as a model. Inspired by his sisters success, her brother works hard to catch the eye of college football scouts, and he too finds a future with his abilities. But despite the seemingly glamorous life she now leads, Lizzie feels an emptiness within her heart. Shes let the love of her life slip through her fingers, and now she is once again struggling to keep her eye on the prize despite the pain in her heart. A tragic death darkens the lives of everyone she knows, and things are only going to get worse. When tragedy rips her world apart, Lizzie fights for what she knows and loves.

“There is much to enjoy in this sumptuous novel.”—Sunday Mirror “My name is Mary Seymour and I am the daughter of one queen and the niece of another.” Browsing an antiques shop in Wiltshire, Alison Bannister stumbles across a delicate old portrait—identified as the doomed Tudor queen, Anne Boleyn. Except Alison knows better. The subject is Mary Seymour, the daughter of Katherine Parr, who was taken to Wolf Hall in 1557 and presumed dead after going missing as a child. And Alison knows this because she, too, lived at Wolf Hall and knew Mary...more than four hundred years ago. The painting of Mary is more than just a beautiful object for Alison—it holds the key to her past life, the unlocking of the mystery surrounding Mary’s disappearance and how Alison can get back to her own time. To when she and Mary were childhood enemies yet shared a pact that now, finally, must be fulfilled, no matter the cost. Bestselling author of House of Shadows Nicola Cornick offers a provocative alternate history of rivals, secrets and danger, set in a time when a woman’s destiny was determined by the politics of men and luck of birth. A spellbinding tale for fans of Kate Morton, Philippa Gregory and Barbara Erskine.

Read this classic romance by New York Times bestselling author Penny Jordan, now available for the first time in e-book! She had weathered life’s storms alone. Tara had been only seventeen when she’d given herself to James. She had borne him twins in secret, inventing a short-lived marriage to protect her fatherless children and to hide her shame. The years had brought Tara added wisdom, though time hadn’t dulled the pain of James’s rejection or the aching pleasure of their remembered passion. Meeting him again was a shock, but Tara was determined never to let him know the price she had paid in silence for her first and only love. Title originally published in 1983.

Theory of Mind is what enables us to "put ourselves in another's shoes." It is mindreading, empathy, creative imagination of another's perspective: in short, it is simultaneously a highly sophisticated ability and a very basic necessity for human communication. Theory of Mind is central to such commercial endeavors as market research and product development, but it is also just as important in maintaining human relations over a cup of coffee. Not surprisingly, it is a critical tool in reading and understanding literature, which abounds with characters, situations, and "other people's shoes." Furthermore, it is becoming increasingly apparent that reading literature also hones these critical mindreading skills. Theory of Mind and Literature is a collection of nineteen essays by prominent scholars (linguists, cognitive scientists, and philosophers) working in the cutting-edge field of cognitive literary studies, which explores how we use Theory of Mind in reading and understanding literature.

A woman walks out on her life, taking only her young daughter. She drives down to the seaside and they spend the first night camping out on the beach. They then settle in a small town and make new friends, but one is a private investigator.

Born in Holland after the war, a son grows up an outsider in his family and in the world, and endure the brutal military training his father puts him through, and wonders about the hardships the family has suffered. Years later, the son begins a quest into his family's past and the origins of his father's brutality.

What is 'the literary fantastic' and how does it manifest itself in the texts of French and francophone women writers publishing at the close of the twentieth and start of the twenty-first century? What do we mean today when we talk of 'the real' and 'realism'? These are just some of the questions addressed by the papers in this volume which derive from a conference entitled 'The Fantastic in Contemporary Women's Writing in French' held in London in September 2007. This book sets out to refocus through a non-realist lens on the works of high-profile authors (Darrieussecq, Nothomb, Germain, Cixous and NDiaye) and some of their less highly publicised contemporaries. It analyses and mobilises a wide range of both gendered and non-gendered practices and theories of 'the contemporary fantastic' whilst critically interrogating both of the latter terms and their inter-relation.