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In the pretty Devonshire town of Dartcross an elderly lady diarist struggles with her memory to write a history of her colourful past, her hateful cat and her murderous husband. At the same time, Janet Bretherton and her friend Belle try to discover a purpose to their retirement. Is it enough to discuss the latest novels in their readers’ group, go to the theatre or attend a séance? Perhaps, instead, they should try to solve the mystery of the dead Polish man whose body is found by the river? The Demented Lady Detectives’ Club is both a whodunit and a funny yet poignant account of a group of women growing old and seeking love and meaning in both the past and the present. The unnamed lady diarist finally faces up to the horror she has buried in her memory and the love she has lost. And Janet has to deal with the tender feelings she is still capable of evoking in a man who is twenty years her junior.
The unthinkable has happened at the Soviet nuclear plant at Sokolskoye. An accident of such terrifying proportions, of such catastrophic ecological and political consequence that a curtain of silence is drawn ominously over the incident. Major Pyotr Kirov of the KGB is appointed to extract the truth from the treacherous minefield of misinformation and intrigue and to obtain from the West the technology essential to prevent further damage. But the vital equipment is under strict trade embargo… And in London, George Twist, head of a company which manufactures the technology, is on the verge of bankruptcy and desperate to win the illegal contract. Can he deliver on time? Will he survive a frantic smuggling operation across the frozen wastes of Finland? Can he wrong-foot the authorities … and his own conscience? Is it possible to say farewell to Russia? Farewell to Russia is the first of Jim Williams’s astonishingly prophetic novels about the decline and fall of the Soviet Union.
Those who come after us will want to know we really lived and loved as intensely as they do. Tell them. WHO ARE YOU? WHY DO YOU ACT THE WAY THAT YOU DO? These questions capture the essential things we want to know about ourselves and explain to others. Yet so often we fail to do so. Instead many of us spend a great deal of effort researching the history of our ancestors to discover no more than the fact that they were workmen, servants and grocers of whom we can learn next to nothing. If only they had written the story of their lives! A Message to the Children is a book with a difference: an account of the author's life, a memoir to his children, a love letter to his wife, and a guide to how you, too, can write about your own life. Written in an easy and amusing style, it explains for the benefit of the non-writer such subjects as how to break the task down into manageable sections; how to exploit photographs and scrapbooks for materials; and what themes to write about. Then it applies those lessons in a way that will both touch and entertain you.Jim Williams is a Booker-nominated author of thirteen novels and two works of non-fiction.
A group of glamorous English socialites spend the summer of 1930 holidaying on the Italian Riviera where the poet Shelley died in a sailing accident in 1822. To pass the time, they tell amusing stories, much as Shelley, Byron and their friends had done a century earlier. For their theme they choose the death of Shelley and the stories progress towards a solution to the "murder mystery". Yet is that truly what the stories are about? Or, despite their witty surface, are they a code for dark and dangerous secrets hidden behind an urbane façade? Guy Parrot, a naive young doctor, finds himself falling in love with the beautiful and enigmatic Julia, the truth of whose past flickers between the lines of the stories, tantalising both Guy and the Reader. Guy discovers that truth, and its terrible reality leads to two murders and the destruction of his happiness and sanity. In 1945, in the aftermath of war, Guy returns to Italy with the army and is given an opportunity to re-examine the events of fifteen years before. This time will he understand what happened and finally redeem himself? The Strange Death of a Romantic offers the Reader romance, comedy, suspense, and an intriguing solution to a historical Whodunit - but without the inconvenience of a crime.
Janet Bretherton, a widow at 60, suspected of her husband's murder and involvement in the fraud which brought his company down, exiles herself to Puybrun, a small village in a picturesque corner of south-west France, where she nurses her grief and tries to rebuild her shattered world. She meets six other Englishwomen who live the expatriate life. Earthy has fled from a hippy camp in a damp corner of Wales. Carol claims to have slept with every man in the world called Dave. Belle has a husband, Charlie, who may or may not be real because no one has ever seen him. Joy is married to the appalling Arnold. And Veronica and Poppy try to discover the basis for the love they have for each other. The women form a group in which they take turns to teach each other the lessons life has taught them. At the same time, they grow more confident and gradually reveal the secrets of their pasts. When Janet finds she has attracted the attention of Leon, thirty years younger than she is, yet seems to find her still sexually desirable as he invites her to go dancing with him, she asks herself: What are his real motives? And does she care? In the end, the process of discovery reveals a terrible secret which forces the women to decide how much they love each other: how far they can rely upon each other ... even when the question is one of murder.
Irina’s Story is the history of the Uspensky family and its attempt to negotiate the perils of 20th century Russia. It begins in the twilight years of the Tsarist empire in the idyllic setting of the family’s country home at Babushkino, and describes a world which is destroyed by war, revolution and Stalin’s terror, and ends with the fall of communism and the beginning of a new Russia of gangsters and crony-capitalism. At the age of 90, Irina Uspenskaya is the last surviving witness of these events. In her Moscow apartment, while her young relative Slavochka and his friends in “the International Syndicate” aspire to become successful drug dealers, Irina collects the letters and diaries of her parents’ generation and sets down the tale of what happened to them all. In turn she describes the doomed marriage of her father Nikolai and her mother Xenia, who love but never understand each other; her idealistic aunt Adalia, who marries the sinister Grodsky; her disreputable uncle Alexander and his feisty wife Tatiana. These and a host of other colourful characters populate the story and we see their world through their eyes and understand it through their thoughts and writings. Our guide, Irina is wry, funny, insightful and humane. Born with a disability, she views events through detached yet sympathetic eyes and reflects on her own history and her unrequited love for a boy she met as a little girl and the family and children she will never have. Irina’s Story is told with verve, compassion and a command of the sweep of Russian history. It is at times funny, romantic, tragic and appalling, but suffused throughout with deep humanity.
For Colonel Pyotr Andreevitch Kirov there is only one inescapable truth in modern Russia – if the old order does not change, it is impossible to bury the past. When Kirov’s routine investigation into black market antibiotics is linked to the former head of the KGB – and Kirov himself is put under investigation by his own men – the course for collision is set. As the old and new factions in the Soviet machine grapple for power, the stock in trade is the hardest currency known to the Socialist Republic … murder. Will Mikhail Gorbachev share the same fate? Anti-Soviet Activities is the second of Jim Williams’s astonishingly prophetic novels about the decline and fall of the Soviet Union.
You get to be a lot of people when you are a vampire. Meet old Harry Haze: war criminal, Jewish stand-up comedian, friend of Marcel Proust and J. Edgar Hoover. John Harper encounters him while spending the summer in the South of France with his mistress Lucy, and is entranced by Harry’s stories of his fabulous past. Then Lucy disappears without explanation and both John and Harry fall under suspicion. Yet how are we to know the truth when it is hidden in the labyrinth of Harry’s bizarre memories and John’s guilt at abandoning his wife? Nothing in this story is certain. Is Lucy dead? Is Harry a harmless old druggie or really a vampire? Deep inside his humorous tales is the suppressed memory of a night of sheer horror. And it is possible that one of the two men is an insane killer.
A young woman disillusioned by love. A powerful and ruthless man haunted by the past. Neither entirely what they seem to be. Family and friends with their own agendas. Manipulation, deception and betrayal. A vindictive journalist, a beautiful brothel-keeper and a formidable henchman. Bribery, blackmail and intimidation. During a long hot summer their lives intertwine and many change forever. There are winners. There are losers.