Massimo Ortelio Knihy

Inspired by a true story, People of the Book is a novel of sweeping historical grandeur and intimate emotional intensity by an acclaimed and beloved author. Called "a tour de force"by the San Francisco Chronicle, this ambitious, electrifying work traces the harrowing journey of the famed Sarajevo Haggadah, a beautifully illuminated Hebrew manuscript created in fifteenth-century S pain. When it falls to Hanna Heath, an Australian rare-book expert, to conserve this priceless work, the series of tiny artifacts she discovers in its ancient binding-an insect wing fragment, wine stains, salt crystals, a white hair-only begin to unlock its deep mysteries and unexpectedly plunges Hanna into the intrigues of fine art forgers and ultra-nationalist fanatics.

'Caleb's Crossing' is inspired by the little known story of the first native American to graduate from Harvard College in 1665.

The stunning new novel from the bestselling author of Girl with a Pearl Earring.

In 1810, a sister and brother uncover the fossilized skull of an unknown animal in the cliffs on the south coast of England. With its long snout and prominent teeth, it might be a crocodile – except that it has a huge, bulbous eye.Remarkable Creatures is the story of Mary Anning, who has a talent for finding fossils, and whose discovery of ancient marine reptiles such as that ichthyosaur shakes the scientific community and leads to new ways of thinking about the creation of the world.Working in an arena dominated by middle-class men, however, Mary finds herself out of step with her working-class background. In danger of being an outcast in her community, she takes solace in an unlikely friendship with Elizabeth Philpot, a prickly London spinster with her own passion for fossils.The strong bond between Mary and Elizabeth sees them through struggles with poverty, rivalry and ostracism, as well as the physical dangers of their chosen obsession. It reminds us that friendship can outlast storms and landslides, anger and jealousy.

FROM THE GLOBALLY BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING 'A triumph... a brilliant idea carried out with confidence and brio and a deep love of an extraordinary city. The ingenuity of the time-skipping is beyond admiration' PHILIP PULLMAN 'Spellbinding.... Chevalier at her fabulous best. A rich, vivid and gently enchanting novel' ELIF SHAFAK Venice, 1486. Across the lagoon lies Murano. Time flows differently here - like the glass the island's maestros spend their lives learning to handle. Women are not meant to work with glass, but Orsola Rosso flouts convention to save her family from ruin. She works in secret, knowing her creations must be perfect to be accepted by men. But perfection may take a lifetime. Skipping like a stone through the centuries, we follow Orsola as she hones her craft through war and plague, tragedy and triumph, love and loss. The beads she creates will adorn the necks of empresses and courtesans from Paris to Vienna - but will she ever earn the respect of those closest to her? Tracy Chevalier is a master of her own craft, and The Glassmaker is vivid, inventive, spellbinding: a virtuoso portrait of a woman, a family and a city that are as everlasting as their glass.

From the award-winning author of The Observations comes a beautifully conjured and wickedly sharp tale of art and deception in nineteenth-century Scotland. As she sits in her Bloomsbury home with her two pet birds for company, elderly Harriet Baxter recounts the story of her friendship with Ned Gillespie—a talented artist whose life came to a tragic end before he ever achieved the fame and recognition that Harriet maintains he deserved. In 1888, young Harriet arrives in Glasgow during the International Exhibition. After a chance encounter with Ned, she befriends the Gillespie family and soon becomes a fixture in their lives. But when tragedy strikes, culminating in a notorious criminal trial, the certainty of Harriet’s new world rapidly spirals into suspicion and despair. Infused with rich period detail, shot through with sly humor, and featuring a memorable cast of characters, Gillespie and I is an absorbing, atmospheric tale of one young woman’s friendship with a volatile artist and her place in the controversy that consumes him—a tour de force from one of the emerging names of modern fiction.

"One life-changing summer Charlie meets Fran... In 1997, Charlie Lewis is the kind of boy you don't remember in the school photograph. His exams have not gone well. At home he is looking after his father, when surely it should be the other way round, and if he thinks about the future at all, it is with a kind of dread. Then Fran Fisher bursts into his life and despite himself, Charlie begins to hope. But if Charlie wants to be with Fran, he must take on a challenge that could lose him the respect of his friends and require him to become a different person. He must join the Company. And if the Company sounds like a cult, the truth is even more appalling. The price of hope, it seems, is Shakespeare."--Publisher description

The sweeping and compelling new novel from the bestselling author of Girl with a Pearl Earring. Dark, brutal, moving, powerful' Jane Harris A wonderful book; rich, evocative, original. I loved it' Joanne Harris

NATIONAL BESTSELLER It’s 1893, and at the Chicago World’s Fair, Louis Comfort Tiffany makes his debut with a luminous exhibition of innovative stained-glass windows that he hopes will earn him a place on the international artistic stage. But behind the scenes in his New York studio is the freethinking Clara Driscoll, head of his women’s division, who conceives of and designs nearly all of the iconic leaded-glass lamps for which Tiffany will long be remembered. Never publicly acknowledged, Clara struggles with her desire for artistic recognition and the seemingly insurmountable challenges that she faces as a professional woman. She also yearns for love and companionship, and is devoted in different ways to five men, including Tiffany, who enforces a strict policy: He does not employ married women. Ultimately, Clara must decide what makes her happiest—the professional world of her hands or the personal world of her heart.

From the bestelling author of GIRL IN HYACINTH BLUE, "A vivid exploration of one of the most beloved Renoir paintings in the world, done with a flourish worthy of Renoir himself" (USA Today) With her richly textured novels, Susan Vreeland has offered pioneering portraits of artists' lives. As she did in Girl in Hyacinth Blue, Vreeland focuses on a single painting, Auguste Renoir's instantly recognizable masterpiece, which depicts a gathering of Renoir's real friends enjoying a summer Sunday on a café terrace along the Seine. Narrated by Renoir and seven of the models, the novel illuminates the gusto, hedonism, and art of the era. With a gorgeous palette of vibrant, captivating characters, Vreeland paints their lives, loves, losses, and triumphs so vividly that "the painting literally comes alive" (The Boston Globe).

Meet Ella Turner and Isabelle du Moulin—two women born centuries apart, yet bound by a fateful family legacy. When Ella and her husband move to a small town in France, Ella hopes to brush up on her French, qualify to practice as a midwife, and start a family of her own. Village life turns out to be less idyllic than she expected, however, and a peculiar dream of the color blue propels her on a quest to uncover her family’s French ancestry. As the novel unfolds—alternating between Ella’s story and that of Isabelle du Moulin four hundred years earlier—a common thread emerges that unexpectedly links the two women. Part detective story, part historical fiction, The Virgin Blue is a novel of passion and intrigue that compels readers to the very last page.

Santa Catarina, a convent near Venice, is home to over one hundred women in 1567. But with powerful forces for change raging outside the convent, and with the world of the women within threatened by a new arrival, passions, hysteria, and conflict will come to threaten their very survival.

Od svojho prvého bozku žijú šťastne. A odrazu je koniec! Román o manželstve, rodičovstve a kríze stredného veku sleduje muža, ktorý sa snaží zachrániť svoj vzťah so ženou, ktorú miluje, a zblížiť sa so synom, ktorý mu pripadá ako cudzí. Po dvadsiatich rokoch manželstva vedca Douglasa a maliarky Connie, ich rodinné hniezdo ostáva prázdne. Douglas, nevýrazný a uzavretý vedec, má svojský zmysel pre humor, ktorý ho priviedol k tomu, že presvedčil krásnu Connie na druhé rande. Po šťastnom manželstve prichádza šok, keď mu Connie oznámi, že sa chce rozviesť. Jej načasovanie je katastrofálne, pretože plánuje mesačnú rodinnú okružnú cestu po Európe, aby podporila umelecké sklony svojho syna Albieho, ktorý sa chystá na univerzitu. Douglas verí, že ak sa výlet uskutoční, možno sa mu podarí zachrániť manželstvo a zblížiť sa so synom. Tak sa začína jeho odysea od parížskych múzeí cez amsterdamské ulice a benátske kaviarne až po barcelonské pláže. Bude to jeho posledné leto v úlohe manžela, alebo sa jeho život a manželstvo zmení?

Interweaves historical fact with fiction to explore the mystery behind the creation of the remarkable Lady and the Unicorn tapestries, woven at the end of the fifteenth century, which today hang in the Cluny Museum in Paris.

At a critical point in her career, painter Angelika Rossdal suddenly moves to Kvaloya, a small island deep in the Arctic Circle, to dedicate herself to the solitary pursuit of her craft. She takes her young daughter with her. Things take a dark turn - is there something supernatural happening on the island?

It is 1932, and the losses of the First World War are still keenly felt. Violet Speedwell, mourning for both her fiance and her brother and regarded by society as a 'surplus woman' unlikely to marry, resolves to escape her suffocating mother and strike out alone. A new life awaits her in Winchester. Yes, it is one of draughty boarding-houses and sidelong glances at her naked ring finger from younger colleagues; but it is also a life gleaming with independence and opportunity. Violet falls in with the broderers, a disparate group of women charged with embroidering kneelers for the Cathedral, and is soon entwined in their lives and their secrets. As the almost unthinkable threat of a second Great War appears on the horizon Violet collects a few secrets of her own that could just change everything... Warm, vivid and beautifully orchestrated, A Single Thread reveals one of our finest modern writers at the peak of her powers.

Londýn 1799. Mladá nádejná návrhárka šperkov Pandora Blakeová žije so svojím strýkom v kedysi preslávenom obchode so starožitnosťami svojich rodičov. Jedného dňa do obchodu tajne doručia záhadnú grécku vázu. Od tej chvíle sa v starožitníctve začínajú diať zvláštne veci. Pandora je odhodlaná zistiť o váze viac, a tak o pomoc požiada Edwarda Lawrenca, mladého muža, ktorý sa neúspešne uchádza o prijatie do ctihodnej Spoločnosti pre starožitníkov.Edward vidí v starodávnej váze kľúč k svojej akademickej budúcnosti, Pandora ju zas vníma ako šancu na obnovenie bývalej slávy starožitníctva a možnosť osamostatniť sa. Lenže Edwardove zistenia o váze náhle spochybňujú všetko, čo Pandora vie o vlastnom živote, rodine i svete. Postupne si začína uvedomovať, že niektoré dvere je lepšie neotvárať, pretože hranica medzi náhodou a osudom je niekedy až príliš tenká...

A darkly humorous and intriguing story of one woman's journey from a difficult past into an even more disturbing present.

Helen Franklinová už pred mnohými rokmi odišla z Anglicka. V Prahe, kde pracuje ako prekladateľka, našla pokojné útočisko. To sa však zmení, keď jej priateľ Karel objaví v knižnici zvláštny list, spoveď a záhadné varovanie pred Melmoth, temnou bytosťou, ktorá sa objavuje v ľudových legendách a obskúrnych rozprávkach. Podľa povier Melmoth cestuje časom a ľudí, ktorých presvedčí, aby sa k nej pridali, uvrhne do večného zatratenia, túlavej samoty. Helen to spočiatku považuje len za výmysly, ľudové povery. No potom, keď kráča po pražských uliciach vydláždených kameňom, má zrazu pocit, že ju niekto sleduje. A potom sa jej priateľ stratí...

Lambeth, London, 1859. By the time Dora Damage discovers that there is something wrong with her husband, Peter, it is too late. His arthritic hands are crippled, putting his book-binding business into huge debt and his family in danger of entering the poorhouse. Summoning her courage, Dora proves that she is more than just a housewife and mother. Taking to the streets, she resolves to rescue her family at any price-and finds herself lured into illegally binding expensive volumes of pornography commissioned by aristocrats. Then, when a mysterious fugitive slave arrives at her door, Dora realises she's entangled in a web of sex, money, deceit and the law. Now the very family she fought so hard for is under threat from a host of new, more dangerous foes. Belinda Starling's debut novel is a startling vision of Victorian London, juxtaposing its filth and poverty with its affluence. In Dora Damage we meet a daring young heroine, struggling in a very modern way against the constraints of the day, and whose resourcefulness and bravery has us rooting for her all the way.

Flames and funerals, circus feats and seduction, neighbours and nakedness: Tracy Chevalier's novel Burning Bright sparkles with drama. London 1792. The Kellaways move from familiar rural Dorset to the tumult of a cramped, unforgiving city. They are leaving behind a terrible loss, a blow that only a completely new life may soften. Against the backdrop of a city jittery over the increasingly bloody French Revolution, a surprising bond forms between Jem, the youngest Kellaway boy, and streetwise Londoner Maggie Butterfield. Their friendship takes a dramatic turn when they become entangled in the life of their neighbour, the printer, poet and radical, William Blake. He is a guiding spirit as Jem and Maggie navigate the unpredictable, exhilarating passage from innocence to experience. Their journey inspires one of Blake's most entrancing works. Georgian London is recreated as vividly in Burning Bright as 17th-century Delft was in Tracy Chevalier's bestselling masterpiece, Girl with a Pearl Earring.

Mary Lamb is confined by the restrictions of domesticity: her father is losing his mind, her mother watchful and hostile. It is no surprise when Mary falls for the bookseller's son, antiquarian William Ireland, from whom Charles has purchased a book.