Skjønnlitteratur

In this series, a contemporary poet selects and introduces a poet of the past. By their choice of poems and by the personal and critical reactions they express in their prefaces, the editors offer insights into their own work as well as providing an accessible and passionate introduction to the most important poets in our literature.Earth has not anything to show more fair:Dull would he be of soul who could pass by A sight so touching in its majesty . . .-- Composed Upon Westminster Bridge,September 3, 1802

Naomi Novik's stunning series of novels follow the global adventures of Captain William Laurence and his fighting dragon Temeraire as they are thrown together to fight for Britain during the turbulent time of the Napoleonic Wars.Laurence and Temeraire have been banished from the country they've fought so hard to protect - and the friends they have made in the British Aerial Corps.Found guilty of treason, man and dragon have been deported to Australia to start a new life and many new adventures.

With this rich masterfully written extravaganza of myth and magic, the internationally acclaimed author of the Fionovar trilogy has created an epic that will change forever the boundaries of fantasy fiction.Set in a beleaguered land caught in a web of tyranny, Tigana is the deeply moving story of a people struggling to be free. A people so cursed by the dark sorceries of the tyrant King Brandin that even the very name of their once beautiful land cannot be spoken or remembered.But not everyone has forgotten. A handful of men and women, driven by love, hope and pride set in motion the dangerous quest for freedom and bring back to the world the lost brightness of an obliterated name: Tigana

At the centre of this collection, which includes groups of elegies and love poems, there is a short sonnet sequence which concentrates themes apparent elsewhere in the book: the individual's responsibility for his own choices, the artist's commitment to his vocation, the vulnerability of all in the face of circumstance and death.'Throughout the volume Heaney's outstanding gifts, his eye, his ear, his understanding of the poetic language are on display - this is a book we cannot do without.' Martin Dodsworth, Guardian

Sylvia Plath is one of the defining voices in twentieth-century poetry. This classic selection of her work, made by her former husband Ted Hughes, provides the perfect introduction to this most influential of poets. The poems are taken from Sylvia Plath's four collections Ariel, The Colossus, Crossing the Water and Winter Trees, and includes many of her most-celebrated works, such as 'Daddy', 'Lady Lazarus' and 'Wuthering Heights'.

Ted Hughes's Birthday Letters are addressed, with just two exceptions, to Sylvia Plath, the American poet to whom he was married. They were written over a period of more than twenty-five years, the first a few years after her suicide in 1963, and represent Ted Hughes's only account of his relationship with Plath and of the psychological drama that led both to the writing of her greatest poems and to her death. The book became an instant bestseller on its publication in 1998 and won the Forward Prize for Poetry in the same year. 'To read [Birthday Letters] is to experience the psychic equivalent of "e;the bends"e;. It takes you down to levels of pressure where the undertruths of sadness and endurance leave you gasping.' Seamus Heaney 'Even if it were possible to set aside its biographical value . . . its linguistic, technical and imaginative feats would guarantee its future. Hughes is one of the most important poets of the century and this is his greatest book.' Andrew Motion

'Vlautin is nothing less than the Dylan of the dislocated.' Independent on SundayAt twenty-two, Allison Johnson is a lost young woman in need of a new start. Down among the lowlifes in Las Vegas, clinging to drink and to Jimmy, the abusive boyfriend whose child she is expecting, she has hit rock bottom. So when the opportunity arises to escape, Allison knows she must take it. She reaches Reno with just a few dollars and her ever-present best friend - Paul Newman. And as she struggles to start a better life it is imaginary conversations with the movie star's greatest characters and real acts of kindness from people she barely knows that might just rescue her from the difficult world she has found herself in.'Vlautin has written the American novel I've been hoping to find.' George Pelecanos'A compassionate look at everyday, ordinary people struggling to make a new life for themselves in America.' Herald

Set in the mid-1970s in India, A Fine Balance tells the story of four unlikely people whose lives come together during a time of political turmoil soon after the government declares a 'State of Internal Emergency'. Through days of bleakness and hope, their circumstances - and their fates - become inextricably linked in ways no one could have foreseen.Written with compassion, humour and insight, A Fine Balance is a vivid, richly textured and powerful novel by one of the most gifted writers of our time.'A masterpiece of illumination and grace. Like all great fiction, it transforms our understanding of life.' Guardian

'I am alone in the dark, turning the world around in my head as I struggle through another bout of insomnia, another white night in the great American wilderness.' Seventy-two-year-old August Brill is recovering from a car accident in his daughter's house in Vermont. When sleep refuses to come, he lies in bed and tells himself stories, struggling to push back thoughts about things he would rather forget - his wife's recent death and the horrific murder, in Iraq, of his granddaughter's boyfriend, Titus. Brill, a retired book critic, imagines a parallel world in which America is not at war with Iraq but with itself. In this other America the Twin Towers did not fall on 9/11, and the 2000 election results led to secession, as state after state pulled away from the union and a bloody civil war ensued. As the night progresses, Brill's story grows increasingly intense, and what he is so desperately trying to avoid insists on being told. Joined in the early hours by his granddaughter, he gradually opens up to her and recounts another hidden story, this time of his own marriage. After she falls asleep, he at last finds the courage to revisit the trauma of Titus's death.Passionate and shocking, political and personal: Man in the Dark is a novel that reflects the consequences of 9/11, that forces us to confront the blackness of night even as it celebrates the existence of ordinary joys in a world capable of the most grotesque violence.

The legendary Emma Harte, heroine of A Woman of Substance, returns...The legendary Emma Harte, the heroine of A Woman of Substance, returns in this sweeping saga of power, corruption, love and secrets...Paula O'Neill, beloved granddaughter of Emma Harte and the guardian of her vast business empire, believes all that Emma left to the family is secure. However, beneath the surface tension is mounting and sibling rivalry brewing.Into this volatile mix walks Evan Hughes, a young American fashion designer. Her grandmother's dying wish was that Evan find Emma Harte. But Emma has been dead for thirty years...Troubled by Evan's presence, and her uncanny resemblance to the family, Paula turns to Emma's war-time diaries.Emma Harte comes vividly back to life. It is London during the Blitz. As bombs drop, sirens wail and her sons go off to war, Emma's trademark resilience, will power and strength all come to the fore. And as the pages unfurl, Paula discovers the secret Emma took to the grave.

With her jaunty dissection of the sex life and the private grooming habits of the novel's 18-year-old narrator, Helen Memel, Charlotte Roche has turned the previously unspeakable into the national conversation in Germany.Since its debut in February, the novel ("e;Feuchtgebiete,"e; in German) has sold more than a million copies, and is the biggest selling book on Amazon anywhere in the world.The book is a headlong dash through every crevice and byproduct, physical and psychological, of its narrator's body and mind. It is difficult to overstate the raunchiness of the novel. Wetlands opens in a hospital room after an intimate shaving accident. It gives a detailed topography of Helen's hemorrhoids, continues into the subject of anal intercourse and only gains momentum from there, eventually reaching avocado pits as objects of female sexual satisfaction and - here is where the debate kicks in - just possibly female empowerment. Clearly the novel has struck a nerve, catching a wave of popular interest in renewing the debate over women's roles and image in society.

With over 400 million copies of his books sold worldwide, Dean Koontz is one of the most popular writers of our time. Read this page-turning, heart-breaking thriller to find why Odd Thomas is the master storyteller's most-loved creation.He sees what no one else does. He does what no one else can.Odd, a charismatic young man with a sense for the otherworldly and the downright strange, is in self-imposed exile. Tragic events have led him from his sun-bleached desert home of Pico Mundo to a monastery in the High Sierra, searching for peace. It's December and the remote abbey is besieged by icy winds and snow. But even in the silence of the mountains, danger and desperation haunt him still...As ever, where Odd Thomas goes, strangeness goes too. A white dog named Boo befriends him - as does the ghost of Elvis. And a world-famous physicist is conducting experiments in the catacombs of the abbey. Could this be why Odd can once again see bodachs, shadowy harbingers of violence? They prowl the halls, suggesting horror to come.But what form will it take? And how will Odd defeat an enemy that eclipses any he has met before?

The 400 million copy worldwide bestseller Dean Koontz is at his very best in this critically-acclaimed page-turner - soon to be a major motion picture. Find out why Odd Thomas is the master storyteller's most-loved creation.Odd by name, a hero by nature.He's Odd. Odd Thomas, to be precise. Genius fry-cook at the Pico Mundo grill; boyfriend to the gorgeous Stormy Llewellyn - and possibly the only person with a chance of stopping one of the worst crimes in the bloody history of murder...Something evil has come to the desert town that Odd and Stormy call home. It comes in the form of a mysterious man with a macabre appetite, a filing cabinet full of information on the world's worst killers, and strange, hyena-like shadows following him wherever he goes. Odd is worried. He knows things, sees things - about the living, the dead and the soon to be dead. Things that he has to act on. Now he's terrified for Stormy, himself and Pico Mundo. Because he knows that on Wednesday August 15, a savage, blood-soaked whirlwind of violence and murder will devastate the town.Today is August 14. And Odd is far from sure he can stop the coming storm...

For the first time in English, the third psychological thriller from No 1 bestselling Swedish crime sensation Camilla LAckberg.The remote resort of FjAllbacka has seen its share of tragedy, though perhaps none worse than that of the little girl found in a fisherman's net. But this was no accidental drowningaLocal detective Patrik HedstrAm has just become a father. It is his grim task to discover who could be behind the murder of a child both he and his partner Erica knew well.What he does not know is how the case will reach into the dark heart of FjAllbacka and tear aside its idyllic faAade, perhaps forever.

Forty years ago, the world was introduced to Emma Harte. Now meet M, a new woman of substance guaranteed to win our hearts all over again. A new era has begun...When those you love are threatened, there's nothing you won't do to protect them... you'll even resort to Breaking the Rules.Following a terrifying encounter in the quiet English countryside, a dark beauty flees to New York in search of a new life. Adopting the initial M as her name, she embarks on a journey that will lead her to the catwalks of Paris where she becomes the muse and star model to France's iconic top designer Jean-Louis Tremont.When M meets charming and handsome actor Larry Vaughan they fall instantly in love with one another. Soon they become the most desired couple on the international scene, appearing on the front cover of every celebrity magazine, adored by millions. With a successful career and a perfect marriage, M believes she has truly put the demons of her past to bed.But M's fortunes are about to take another dramatic turn when a dark figure from her past, someone who she thought she'd never see again, is back and determined to shatter M's world forever.From the chic fashion capitals of London and Paris, to the exotic locations of Istanbul and Hong Kong, Breaking the Rules is an enthralling story of love and redemption, secrets and survival from the bestselling author of A Woman of Substance.

The new blockbuster from one of the world's greatest storytellers concludes the extraordinary tale of Emma Harte, the original Woman of Substance, and the powerful Harte clan...Love, passion, duty and honour collide as the members of this extraordinary dynasty try to protect their family name at all costs.Linnet O'Neill, heir apparent to Emma Harte and all she created, is determined to bring the Harte empire into the twenty-first century. But she and her mother Paula, head of the dynasty, lock horns. When Paula falls dangerously ill, Linnet is suddenly alone at the helm, just as her great-grandmother Emma once was.Linnet finds herself following in the footsteps of the original woman of substance as she battles to save what Emma created - upsetting her sister Tessa, who believes herself to be the rightful heir, in the process.Meanwhile, Emma's American great-granddaughter Evan faces her own headache. Her adopted sister Angharad is making trouble in the family, latching on to Jonathan Ainsley - deadly enemy of the Hartes - and so putting them all in danger.And when grief and heartbreak strike the family, all of Emma's great-granddaughters are tested to the limit as the extraordinary story of the Harte family takes another astonishing turn ...

The magical new novel from the number 1 bestselling author of 'PS, I Love You' and 'Where Rainbows End'.Sandy Shortt has been obsessed about where missing things - and people - end up ever since the disappearance of a childhood friend twenty years ago. It has even motivated her to become a private investigator, attempting to track down missing loved ones and giving devastated families hope.So when she finds herself one of the missing people, stuck in a strange place with people who vanished into thin air years ago, she wonders if she has found the answer to one of life's greatest mysteries. But if she has, will she be able to return to life as she knows it? If Jack Ruttle, her latest client and mystified by her own disappearance, has anything to do with it she will...

Nick Buckley was an unusual name for a pretty young woman. But then she had led an unusual life. First, on a treacherous Cornish hillside, the brakes on her car failed. Then, on a coastal path, a falling boulder missed her by inches. Later, an oil painting fell and almost crushed her in bed.Upon discovering a bullet-hole in Nick's sun hat, Hercule Poirot decides the girl needs his protection. At the same time, he begins to unravel the mystery of a murder that hasn't been committed. Yet.

Tolkien's acclaimed modern classic 'fairie' tale, read by Derek Jacobi. Farmer Giles of Ham is one of Tolkien's most popular stories, full of wit and humour, set in the days when giants and dragons walked the earth. He did not look like a hero. He was fat and red-bearded and enjoyed a slow, comfortable life. Then one day a rather deaf and short-sighted giant blundered on to his land. More by luck than skill, Farmer Giles managed to scare him away. The people of the village cheered: Farmer Giles was a hero. His reputation spread far and wide across the kingdom. So it was natural that when the dragon Chrysophylax visited the area it was Farmer Giles who was expected to do battle with it! Two further stories in this collections are Smith of Wooton Major which tells of the preparation of the Great Cake to mark the Feast of Good Children, and the strange events which follow, and Leaf by Niggle, which recounts the strange adventures of the painter, Niggle.

Third volume in the Starbuck Chronicles. The battle for control of Richmond, the Confederate capital, continues through the hot summer of 1862.Available for the first time as a downloadable audio file.Captain Nate Starbuck, yankee fighting for the Southern cause, has to survive and win with his ragged Company in the bitter struggle not only against the formidable Northern army but equally in opposition to his own superiors who would like nothing better than to see Nate Starbuck dead and dishonoured.Starbuck's courage is tested to the limit in his desperate manoeuvres to retrieve his own and the Legion's honour in this the thrid narrative of Bernard Cornwell's sweeping epic of the American Civil War.

A superbly exciting novel which vividly captures the horror of the battlefield, The Bloody Ground is the fourth volume in the Starbuck Chronicles.It is late summer 1862 and the Confederacy is invading the United States of America.Nate Starbuck, a northern preacher's son fighting for the rebel South, is given command of a punishment battalion - a despised unit of shirkers and cowards. His enemies expect it to be his downfall, as Starbuck must lead this ramshackle unit into a battle that will prove to be the bloodiest of the Civil War.

'Now he found out a new thing - namely, that to promise not to do a thing is the surest way in the world to make a body want to go and do that very thing.'An idyllic snapshot of a boy's childhood along the banks of the Mississippi River, Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is the author's work that comes closest to his boyhood experiences of growing up in Hannibal in the 1840s.Mischievous and full of energy, Tom enjoys childish pranks and pastimes with his friends, Huck Finn, the town outcast and Joe Harper, his best friend. However, at the town graveyard, Huck and Tom witness a murder, carried out by local vagabond Injun Joe. They vow never to tell a soul about what they have seen and so begins their journey into adulthood as Tom wrestles with his own morality, guilt and anxiety.A 'coming of age' tale, it is through Tom's adventures and relationships with others that he becomes more responsible and more aware of his own inner conflict. Through the central characters of Tom and Huck, Twain satirises the moral rigidity of society and adult hypocrisy, whilst at the same time giving a nostalgic portrayal of a young boy's journey into adulthood.

The second book in Bernard Cornwell's bestselling series on the American Civil War.Nathanial Starbuck is a Copperhead: a northerner fighting for the rebel South in America's Civil War.Expelled from the Faulconer Legion, Starbuck must travel a hard road before he can rejoin his comrades. He must join the shadowy war of betrayal and espionage, where nothing is certain and no one can be trusted. Starbuck's journey will take him through the savage prisons of Richmond, across the blood-sodden battlefields of Virginia, and into the deadly high command of the northern army.

Sharpe, having just received his commission, faces his toughest battle yet in this return to India, the terrain of the bestselling Sharpe's Tiger.Sir Arthur Wellesley's army is closing on the retreating Mahrattas in western India. Marching with the British is Ensign Richard Sharpe, newly made an officer, wishing he had stayed a sergeant.An act of treachery by Sharpe's old enemy, Sergeant Hakeswill puts him in terrible danger, and leads him to the horror of the impregnable Gawilghur's ravine. To regain his confidence and his authority, Sharpe will fight as he has never fought before.Soldier, hero, rogue - Sharpe is the man you always want on your side. Born in poverty, he joined the army to escape jail and climbed the ranks by sheer brutal courage. He knows no other family than the regiment of the 95th Rifles whose green jacket he proudly wears.

Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin tales are widely hailed as the greatest series of historical novels ever written. This naval adventure finds Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin in the Dutch East Indies and there's trouble brewing.Captain Jack Aubrey, RN, arrives in the Dutch East Indies to find himself appointed to the command of the fastest and best-armed frigate in the Navy. He and his friend Stephen Maturin take passage for England in a despatch vessel. But the war of 1812 breaks out while they are en route. Bloody actions precipitate them both into new and unexpected scenes where Stephen's past activities as a secret agent return on him with a vengeance.

Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin tales are widely hailed as the greatest series of historical novels ever written.It is still the War of 1812. Patrick O'Brian takes his hero Jack Aubrey and his tetchy, sardonic friend Stephen Maturin on a voyage as fascinating as anything he has ever written. They set course across the South Atlantic to intercept a powerful American frigate outward bound to play havoc with the British whaling trade.If they do not come up with her before she rounds the Horn, they must follow her into the Great South Sea and as far across the Pacific as she may lead them. It is a commission after Jack's own heart. Maturin has fish of his own to fry in the world of secret intelligence.Aubrey has to cope with a succession of disasters - men overboard, castaways, encounters with savages, storms, typhoons, groundings, shipwrecks, to say nothing of murder and criminal insanity. That the enemy is in fact faithfully dealt with, no one who has the honour of Captain Aubrey's acquaintance can take leave to doubt.

Toms eventyr, der fortælles i denne bog, er for størstedelen virkeligt oplevet, enkelte af mig selv, de øvrige af mine skolekammerater. Huck Finn er grebet lige ud af livet, Tom Sawyer ligeledes, dog med den forskel, at karakteregenskaberne hos tre drenge, som jeg kendte, er blevet forenet i fremstillingen af ham. De mærkelige overtroiske forestillinger, der berøres, var alle udbredte blandt børn og slaver i vesten i den periode, hvori denne fortælling foregår - det vil sige for 30-40 år siden. Selv om min bog især er tænkt som underholdning for drenge og piger, håber jeg ikke, at mænd og kvinder af den grund vil gå uden om den, for det har været en del af min plan på en behagelig måde at minde de voksne om det, de selv engang har været, og om hvordan de følte og tænkte og talte, og hvad for underlige gøremål de undertiden var beskæftiget med. - Mark Twain

Winner of The Golden Laurels 2016. Multi-award-winning Scandi crime series from the third bestselling author in Denmark. When the bound, hooded corpse of an unidentified man is found propped up against a gravestone in the central cemetery, Axel Steen is assigned the case. Rogue camera footage soon suggests police involvement and links to the demolition of a nearby youth house, teeming with militant left-wing radicals. But Axel soon discovers that many people, both inside and out of the force, have an unusual interest in the case - and in preventing its resolution. With a rapidly worsening heart condition, an estranged ex-wife and beloved five-year-old daughter to contend with, Axel will not stop until the killer is caught, whatever the consequences. But the consequences turn out to be greater than expected - especially for Axel himself. Danish title: 'Uro'.

Jeg må opgive at finde Weasel-øen og Gunnar og i stedet for forsøge at finde tilbage til slæden med Sverri. Jeg vender mig 180 grader og fikserer, hvordan vinden nu rammer mig bagfra og så prøve at holde retningen tilbage til Sverri ved at bruge vindens retning som kompas, og kompas har vi ikke noget af. Heroppe langt mod nord er misvisningen på et magnetkompas så stor, 40-45 grader, at det er vanskeligt at anvende. Nu er jeg virkelig bekymret! I begyndelsen af tilbagevejen kan jeg se lidt af mine egne skispor, men de fyger hurtigt væk. Så har jeg kun vindretningen at forholde mig til. Og jeg går og går, ved ikke hvor længe. Det eneste jeg tænker på er vindens retning og så det ene skridt på skiene efter det andet. Jeg gør mig ingen forestillinger om, hvor langt jeg skal gå eller om jeg overhovedet er i stand til at finde Sverri derude på havisen den snestorm. Men så hører jeg et skarpt svagt smæld! Er det isen, som knager eller hvad? Noget senere hører jeg den samme lyd, og igen, stadig mere tydeligt. Det går op for mig, at det må være Sverri, som står og skyder op i luften. På grund af mit lange fravær er han blevet klar over, at jeg er kommet i vanskeligheder.

Now a major TV series on HBO! Set in the late 1960s and the 1970s, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay continues the story of the feisty and rebellious Lila and her lifelong friend, the brilliant and bookish Elena. Lila, after separating from her husband, is living with her young son in a new neighborhood of Naples and working at a local factory. Elena has left Naples, earned a degree from an elite college, and published a novel, all of which has opened the doors to a world of learned and fascinating interlocutors. The era, with its dramatic changes in sexual politics and social costumes, with its seemingly limitless number of new possibilities, is rendered with breathtaking vigor. This third Neapolitan Novel is not only a moving story of friendship but also a searing portrait of a rapidly changing world.