Gillian: 813 books

An agony aunt should have all the answers, drawn from the experience of her own perfect life, right? With a loving husband, two point four beautiful children and a charming home which is always neat as a pin, right? Wrong! Laura Green’s life is hurtling downhill fast. Her husband has left...

First published in 1989, this book analyses fiction and long narrative, drawing on a broad range of writing from earlier periods and on recent narrative theory. Gillian Beer looks at the work of writers as diverse as Thomas Carlyle and Philip Sydney, Samuel Richardson, and George Eliot. Three chapters...

The New African Diaspora in Vancouver documents the experiences of immigrants from countries in sub-Saharan Africa on Canada's west coast. Despite their individual national origins, many adopt new identities as ‘African’ and are actively engaged in creating a new, place-based ‘African community.’...

Founded in the late 1980s by Bruce Pavitt and Jonathan Poneman, Seattle-based Sub Pop Records released early recordings by then-upstart regional bands such as Green River, Soundgarden, Mudhoney, Tad, Nirvana, Flaming Lips, Afghan Whigs, and Screaming Trees. When the world went grunge crazy...

Shad Myers, the loveable bartender and town sleuth of Largo Bay, hunts down clues to a woman’s mysterious disappearance in this fourth riveting novel in the Shad detective series. Shannon, a photojournalist on assignment for a Canadian magazine, arrives in the impoverished but beautiful fishing...

Moving house links many lives—and sets off an unexpected series of events—in this compelling tale from “a novelist of the highest quality” (The Independent on Sunday).   What makes a house a home are the stories of the people who live there. And for the briefest of moments—when a house...

Desperate for a new life, a London woman engineers a cunning deception “in this tangled tale that twists and turns up to the very end” (Booklist).   Angela Harper’s life has never been simple. She’s an orphan who spent her childhood in foster homes. Her handsome, charming husband Billy...

One secret can bury an entire family forever . . . Desmond is a man ill equipped for today’s world. He is reclusive and unsocial, traits exacerbated by his domineering mother. As a result, Desmond is at his happiest when he’s absolutely alone. During a birdwatching outing along the Devon...

In this dark comedy, five siblings who are fed up with their mother’s negligent parenting conspire to teach her a lesson Caroline Townsend is a nightmare for her children. The former actress and current alcoholic hits her nadir on Christmas Eve. Her five young children hope for a Christmas...

Gillian White argues that the poetry wars among critics and practitioners are shaped by “lyric shame”—an unspoken but pervasive embarrassment over what poetry is, should be, and fails to be. “Lyric” is less a specific genre than a way to project subjectivity onto poems—an idealized poem that is nowhere and yet everywhere.

Romeo and Juliet is one of Shakespeare's most popular tragedies and has provoked a rich diversity of interpretations. Definitively passionate, it is much more than the archetypal love story: the play tests the limits of tragedy and comedy, challenges gender roles and explores the nature of language.In...

Rarely did ancient authors write about the lives of women; even more rarely did they write about the lives of ordinary women: not queens or heroines who influenced war or politics, not sensational examples of virtue or vice, not Christian martyrs or ascetics, but women of moderate status, who experienced...

From Giuseppe Arcimboldo’s painting of the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II as a heap of fruits and vegetables to artists depicting lavish banquets for wealthy patrons, food and art are remarkably intertwined. In this richly illustrated book, Gillian Riley provides fresh insight into how the relationship...

Placing the works of Charles Dickens and Walter Benjamin in conversation with one another, Gillian Piggott argues that the two writers display a shared vision of modernity. Her analysis of their works shows that both writers demonstrate a decreased confidence in the capacity to experience truth or...