Showing results by author "Tracy Chevalier" in All Categories

1932. After the Great War took both her beloved brother and her fiancé, Violet Speedwell has become a "surplus woman," one of a generation doomed to a life of spinsterhood after the war killed so many young men. Yet Violet cannot reconcile herself to a life spent caring for her grieving, embittered mother. After countless meals of boiled eggs and dry toast, she saves enough to move out of her mother's place and into the town of Winchester, home to one of England's grandest cathedrals. 

A poor family moves to 18th-century London, where the father has been offered a job as a carpenter for a circus. His children befriend a young girl who introduces them to the great city. Their neighbor is none other than the real-life poet, William Blake.

After earning a graduate degree in creative writing from the University of East Anglia, Tracy Chevalier was immediately recognized for her literary talent. In Girl with a Pearl Earring, she recreates the 17th-century world of Johannes Vermeer.

Nous sommes en 1664, à Delft aux Pays-Bas. Griet a 16 ans. Sa famille n'a jamais été riche, mais depuis peu, elle est tombée dans la pauvreté. Le père, qui fabriquait des carreaux de faïence, est devenu aveugle après l'explosion d'un four et il n'a plus de travail. Alors, c'est décidé, Griet sera servante, placée chez un peintre dont on parle beaucoup à Delft ; Johannes Vermeer. Elle va y découvrir un milieu hostile, harcelée par une épouse acariâtre, une enfant fourbe et méchante, une servante hargneuse.

From the moment she's struck by lightening as a baby, it is clear that Mary Anning is marked for greatness. On the windswept, fossil-strewn beaches of the English coast, she learns that she has "the eye"-and finds what no one else can see. When Mary uncovers an unusual fossilized skeleton in the cliffs near her home, she sets the religious fathers on edge, the townspeople to vicious gossip, and the scientific world alight.

In best-selling author Tracy Chevalier’s newest historical saga, she introduces Honor Bright, a modest English Quaker who moves to Ohio in 1850, only to find herself alienated and alone in a strange land. Sick from the moment she leaves England, and fleeing personal disappointment, she is forced by family tragedy to rely on strangers in a harsh, unfamiliar landscape. Nineteenth-century America is practical, precarious, and unsentimental, and scarred by the continuing injustice of slavery. In her new home Honor discovers that principles count for little, even within a religious community meant to be committed to human equality.

Bewitching art experts and enthusiasts alike for centuries, the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries hang today in the Cluny Museum in Paris.

A celebration of adult literature and reading. The whole book industry, including booksellers, librarians and publishers, were invited come together and pick out their favourite titles to be included the final list of 25 books by authors from the UK and Ireland. The final list included fiction, poetry and memoirs, among others. There were some best sellers, some classics and some lesser known.  

A toy soldier. A butter dish. A compass. Mundane objects, perhaps, but to the remarkable authors in this collection, artifacts such as these have inspired stories that go to the heart of the human experience of World War I. Each author was invited to choose an object that had a connection to the war - a writing kit for David Almond, a helmet for Michael Morpurgo - and use it as the inspiration for an original short story.

Part of a remarkable family that produced three acclaimed female writers at a time in 19th-century Britain when few women wrote and fewer were published, Charlotte Brontë has been a great source of inspiration to writers, especially women, ever since. Now, in Reader, I Married Him, 20 of today's most celebrated woman authors have spun original stories using Jane Eyre as a springboard.

It's 1838. James and Sadie Goodenough have settled where their wagon got stuck - in the muddy, stagnant swamps of northwest Ohio. They and their five children work relentlessly to tame their patch of land, buying saplings from a local tree man known as John Appleseed so they can cultivate the 50 apple trees required to stake their claim on the property. But the orchard they plant sows the seeds of a long battle.

Dans les années 1810, à Lyme Regis, sur la côte du Dorset battue par les vents, Mary Anning découvre ses premiers fossiles et se passionne pour ces "prodigieuses créatures" dont l'existence remet en question toutes les théories sur la création du monde. Très vite, la jeune fille issue d'un milieu modeste se heurte aux préjugés de la communauté scientifique, exclusivement composée d'hommes, qui la cantonne dans un rôle de figuration. Mary Anning va trouver heureusement en Elizabeth Philpot, une vieille fille intelligente et acerbe, une alliée inattendue.

An elegant, original, and compelling novel, set against a gaslit backdrop of social and political turbulence in early 20th-century London, Falling Angels draws a picture of family life that exposes the prejudices and flaws of a changing time. Chevalier ( Girl with a Pearl Earring) "shows imaginative skill in two neatly accomplished surprises, and the denouement packs an emotional wallop," says Publishers Weekly.

England, dreißiger Jahre. Die Abende, an denen Violet mit einer Gruppe ungewöhnlicher Frauen wunderschöne Stickereien für die Kathedrale in Winchester anfertigt, sind der Aufbruch in eine neue Welt. Chevaliers neuer Roman ist episch, warmherzig und lebendig - eine Hommage an die weibliche Kunstfertigkeit und ein Buch darüber, wie Schönheit auch ein bescheidenes Leben erfüllen kann.

A celebration of adult literature and reading. The whole book industry, including booksellers, librarians and publishers, were invited come together and pick out their favourite titles to be included the final list of 25 books by authors from the UK and Ireland. The final list included fiction, poetry and memoirs, among others. There were some best sellers, some classics and some lesser known. Interviews with Graeme Simsion, Lucy Fleming, Jojo Moyes, Lemn Sissay, Mark Haddon, Tracy Chevalier, Victoria Hislop, Rupert Thomson and Andrew Motion.

Quand Honor Bright se décide à franchir l'Atlantique pour accompagner sa sœur au cœur de l'Ohio, elle pense pouvoir recréer auprès d'une nouvelle communauté le calme de son existence de jeune quaker : broderie, prière, silence. Mais l'Amérique de 1850 est aussi périlleuse qu'enchanteresse. Honor découvre bientôt l'existence d'un "chemin de fer clandestin", réseau de routes secrètes tracées par les esclaves pour rejoindre les terres libres du Canada. Elle fait alors la connaissance de personnages hauts en couleur.

Elizabeth Philpot ist eine junge Frau aus besseren Kreisen, deren Familienerbe nicht zu einem standesgemäßen Leben in London reicht...

Die junge Quäkerin Honor verlässt 1850 aus Liebeskummer ihre Heimat, um in Amerika ein neues Leben zu beginnen. Doch schon kurz nach ihrer Ankunft wird sie von einer harten Realität eingeholt, die Frage der Sklaverei spaltet die Nation. Zu ihrer einzigen Vertrauten wird die temperamentvolle Belle. Dass sich ausgerechnet der Sklavenjäger Donovan für Honor interessiert, bringt sie in eine schwierige Lage, und sie muss sich zwischen schönen Worten und mutigem Handeln entscheiden.

Delft, 1664. Die junge Magd Griet wird in den Haushalt des holländischen Malers Johannes Vermeer gegeben und avanciert schnell zur Schülerin und Muse des Malers. Sie zeigt eine scheue, in Andeutungen belassene Zuneigung zu dem Künstler, dem sie schließlich Modell sitzt, was für Schikanen seitens Vermeers eifersüchtiger Gattin sorgt. Als der Maler das junge Mädchen bittet, den Perlenohrring seiner Frau für ein Porträt anzulegen, löst er eine Katastrophe aus, die Griets Zukunft bedroht.