Archives de l’auteur : WebmasterBenisti

THE GHOST OF SAM WEBSTER de Craig Higginson

At once a murder mystery, a war novel and a moving investigation into what it is to be human.

THE GHOST OF SAM WEBSTER
by Craig Higginson
Picador Africa, 2023
(via The Lennon-Ritchie Agency)

Daniel Hawthorne is drawn to Zululand by the ghost of Sam Webster, a seventeen-year-old girl who went missing from her family’s luxury lodge and whose body was seen a week later on the Buffalo River.
As Daniel tries to get to the truth of what might have happened to Sam, he also starts to write the story of his disgraced ancestor, Lieutenant Charles Hawthorne, the notorious coward who was accused of three times abandoning his fellow men at the height of the conflict during the Battle of Isandlwana in 1879.
Nothing is as it seems, however. As Daniel gains access to the carefully concealed secrets of his ancestor and of the whole Webster family, the lines between betrayal and loyalty, love and hate, cowardice and moral courage become blurred. Written in Craig Higginson’s stark and indelible prose, THE GHOST OF SAM WEBSTER is a novel that plunges into the darkest recesses of human endeavour and emerges with an irrepressible humanity and hard-won hope.

Craig Higginson is an internationally acclaimed playwright and novelist. His plays have been performed and produced in many theatres and festivals around the world. His novels include Last Summer, The Landscape Painter, The Dream House and The White Room. Craig has won several national awards in South Africa and Britain for his writing.

THE QUALITY OF MERCY de Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu

“In her most magnificent novel yet, award-winning author Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu showcases the history of a country transitioning from a colonial to a postcolonial state with a deft touch and a compassionate eye for poignant detail … Dickensian in its scope, with the proverbial bustling cast of colleagues both good and bad, villagers, guerrillas, neighbours, ex-soldiers, suburban madams, shopkeepers, would-be politicians and more, THE QUALITY OF MERCY proposes that ties of kinship and affiliation can never be completely broken – and that love can heal even the most grievous of wounds.” –Litnet

THE QUALITY OF MERCY
by Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu
Penguin Random House South Africa, September 2022
(via The Lennon-Ritchie Agency)

On the eve of his country’s independence, Spokes Moloi investigates his first ‘white case’ and finds a very confusing crime scene. Having recently been promoted to Chief Inspector, it is up to Spokes – a man of impeccable rectitude and moral spotlessness who is supported in all things by his paragon spouse, Loveness – to solve long-standing mysteries. His task now is to unravel the alleged murder of a man, Emil Coetzee, but also the tangled web that his life created.
Following on her award-winning novels The Theory of Flight and The History of Man, Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu’s The Quality of Mercy is a novel of comfort and, indeed, mercy. Ndlovu weaves together elements of social comedy and cosy crime while examining the history of a country transitioning from a colonial to a postcolonial state. From the City of Kings and surrounding villages steps a cast of engaging characters who will criss-cross each other’s lives in delightful and poignant ways. Here, where everyone knows everyone else, the ties of kinship and affiliation can never be completely broken.
The final book in the City of Kings trilogy of three overlapping but standalone novels, preceded by The Theory of Flight and The History of Man. Ndlovu is the winner of the Windham Campbell Prize and the 2019 Sunday Times Fiction Prize.

Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu is the author of the bestselling novel The Theory of Flight, winner of the 2019 Sunday Times Fiction Prize and currently a school set work, and its follow-up, The History of Man. A Winner of Yale University’s 2022 Windham Campbell Prize, she is a writer, filmmaker and academic who holds a PhD from Stanford University as well as master’s degrees in African Studies and Film from Ohio University. She has published research on Saartjie Baartman and she wrote, directed and edited the award-winning short film Graffiti. She was born in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe.

IDLEWILD de James Frankie Thomas

A darkly funny and much gayer imagining of the classic prep school novel, IDLEWILD will appeal to readers of Curtis Sittenfeld’s Prep and Donna Tartt’s The Secret History.

IDLEWILD
by James Frankie Thomas
Overlook/Abrams, Fall 2023
(via Frances Goldin Literary)

Idlewild is a tiny, artsy Quaker high school in lower Manhattan. Students call their teachers by their first names, there are no grades or awards, and every day begins with 20 minutes of contemplative silence. It is during one of those moments of worship that two airplanes hit the World Trade Center.
For two Idlewild outcasts, 9/11 serves as the first day of an intense, 18-month friendship. Fay is a prickly, aloof rich kid who is obsessed with gay men; Nell is a shy, sensitive scholarship student who is obsessed with Fay. The two of them bond fiercely over being the only two openly queer kids at Idlewild. But, as they rehearse for the school’s production of Othello, they notice two sexually ambiguous boys, Theo and Christopher, who are potential candidates for their exclusive Invert Society (née Gay-Straight Alliance). The pairs become mirrors of one another’s desires, anxieties, and loneliness. Their devotion to one another becomes an obsession, driving them to do things that they’ll regret for the rest of their lives.
Looking back on these events as adults, Fay and Nell, who haven’t spoken to each other in fifteen years, are haunted by shame over their Idlewild days. From alternating perspectives, they wonder if they could have done anything to save their friendship, or if it was meant to remain an artifact that couldn’t have existed outside of Idlewild’s walls.

James Frankie Thomas holds an MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Their fiction has been published in the Paris Review online, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, and The Toast, among other publications. One of these essays is included in the anthology We Are the Baby-Sitters Club, and another was adapted into a PBS NewsHour segment.

ADULT BRACES de Lindy West

ADULT BRACES will provide exercises, thought experiments, and prescriptions that will help her reader map the fears that prevent her from becoming the attentive, active navigator of her own life.

ADULT BRACES:
A Self-Help Book from a Self-in-Progress, or, How You Can Go from Being a Mess to Being a Way Happier Mess
by Lindy West
Hachette US, 2024
(via David Black Literary)

Through SHRILL, the book and then the Hulu series, Lindy West became an inspiration. To this day she is stopped on the street and told she is a beacon of empowerment by women who felt they couldn’t conform to the categories deemed acceptable—thin, straight, compliant—and felt bad about it. To them she modeled someone who had achieved self-actualization.
But what if casting off society’s pre-conceived notions was only the first part of the journey? What if it all the progress that culminated in SHRILL—the actualized self—turned out not to be a destination but an overnight stay on the way to somewhere else even more fulfilling?
Modeled on the sturdy breed of self-esteem-builders like the Sinceros, Mansons, Hollises, and even The Artist’s Way (which Lindy loves), ADULT BRACES uses Lindy’s own, post-SHRILL emotional implosion to chart her way back to an evolving, non-static happiness, and to the realization that the roads to self-actualization are infinite, unpredictable, and endlessly gratifying—and long as you don’t pull over.
ADULT BRACES takes Lindy back to SHRILL yet leaps ahead to something entirely new. She is providing a guide out of indolence and fear. For her, as has been made quite public, it led to a complete reinvention of her marriage. It doesn’t have to be precisely that for every reader, but that is the bold standard she sets. Whatever the particulars, she wants to help readers find what she has, a map to more love, more sex, more trust, more openness. And the courage to keep driving.

Lindy West is a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times and a contributor to This American Life. She is the bestselling author of the essay collection The Witches Are Coming as well as Shrill, a memoir, which she adapted into a comedy for Hulu starring Aidy Bryant. She lives in Seattle.

Série A HUNDRED NAMES FOR MAGIC de Rin Chupeco

An unforgettable alternative history fairy-tale trilogy from the author of The Bone Witch, about found family, modern-day magic, and finding the place you belong.

‘A HUNDRED NAMES FOR MAGIC’ SERIES
by Rin Chupeco
Sourcebooks Fire, 2020 – 2023

Book 1: WICKED AS YOU WISH (March 2020)
What if every story you’d ever heard was true? Jack killed the giants. Red slayed the wolf. Rapunzel fled the tower. But the greatest one of all, had yet to be told. Once upon a time, the magical Kingdom of Avalon was left to wither and die after the Snow Queen encased it in ice. Its former citizens are now refugees. Which is why crown prince Alex and his protectors are stuck in… Arizona.
Tala Makiling has lived her life as an outsider. Her family curse, the one that’s doomed her to be a spellbreaker, someone who destroys magic, hasn’t won her too many friends. Except Alex, who trusts her and her family to keep his royal identity a secret.
And then one night, a famous creature of legend, the Firebird, appears in their tiny town, reigniting hope for their abandoned homeland. Alex and Tala team up with a ragtag group of new friends to journey back to Avalon. Their path is filled with danger—from deadly prophecies, to terrifying ice wolves, a traitor among them, and the Snow Queen herself. But if they succeed… their story would be legendary.

Book 2: AN UNRELIABLE MAGIC (May 2022)
It’s been six months since the lost city of Avalon was thawed and retaken. And Alex is doing his best to be a good leader, even though he’s not entirely sure what he’s doing. He needs all the help he can get, which is why his best friend, Tala, is by his side. Unfortunately, when the Nameless Sword in the stone appears suddenly in the castle courtyard, it brings a new set of problems. Avalon custom dictates that anyone is free to try to pull it out, attracting people from all walks of life and leaving the kingdom vulnerable to attack.
Attempts to infiltrate Avalon begin in the form of mysterious portals that start appearing without warning bringing nightwalkers, ice maidens, and even a surly dragon.
When the Snow Queen comes out of the woodwork with an unlikely ally and attempts to open a portal to the legendary Buyan, a long-lost country whose life-giving waters could make her even more powerful, Alex, Tala, and their friends will have to work together to stop her, even after their biggest betrayal leaves them broken.

Book 3: THE WORLD’S END (November 2023)
It’s been three months since the Snow Queen and OzCorp infiltrated Maidenkeep and nearly seized the Nine Maidens. Ryker is still unconscious after the Snow Queen attacked him and is being monitored at the hospital. Abigail Fey’s curse has far-reaching consequences, and many in the Royal States have been using it to stir unrest and hostilities against Avalon.
When the Adarna, a firebird-like creature, appears in Avalon, the gang discovers it is one of seven magical artifacts that the Snow Queen has been searching for, in her bid to open a portal to Buyan. Determined to find the artifacts first, the Bandersnatchers find information about the other five artifacts: the Lotus Lantern in China, the tamatabeko in Japan, the Pied Piper’s Flute and the Singing Bone in Germany, and the raskovnik at World’s End, the site where Peter Pan and Captain Hook had fought and had destroyed. The final relic is a portal somewhere inside Wonderland. But the Snow Queen will stop at nothing to get to the relics first. And when one of their own is killed in the fight, it takes everything they have to continue the fight to save Avalon once and for all.

Despite uncanny resemblances to Japanese revenants, Rin Chupeco has always maintained their sense of humor. Raised in Manila, Philippines, they keep four pets: a dog, two birds, and a husband. They’ve been a technical writer and a travel blogger but now make things up for a living. They are the author of The Girl from the Well, The Suffering, The Bone Witch trilogy, and the A Hundred Names for Magic trilogy.