Wesley, spurting with kinetic energy, nasty wit, and kindness to animals, ought to be a star. Or so it seems to those who nip at his heels, turn up everywhere he goes, and lie in wait for him around every corner. They are his followers -- he calls them Be
An ingenious, highly imaginative early novella, The Spell—a remarkable tale of love and jealousy, rivalry and thwarted ambition—is a testimony to Charlotte Brontë's craft as a writer. When the infant Marquis of Almeida is pronounced dead, the kingdom
Nicola Barker weaves humor and tragedy through this fresh and original collection, as her characters struggle to find love, independence, and fulfillment in this new addition to the Ecco Art of the Story seriesNicola Barker's collection of her nineteen mo
The Dialogue of the Dogs is an inspired work of psychological observation by the master of the picaresque novel. In it, Cervantes displays all the clarity and warmth that marks the rich prose of Don Quixote. Given the gift of speech for a day, two dogs se
As winner of the highly prestigious IMPAC International Dublin Literary Award, Wide Open beat out books by such masters as Toni Morrison, Philip Roth, and Michael Cunningham. It is truly extraordinary work of fiction, taking readers into a small English
On September 5, 2003, illusionist David Blaine entered a small Perspex box adjacent to London's Thames River and began starving himself. Forty-four days later, on October 19, he left the box, fifty pounds lighter. That much, at least, is clear. And the re
Nicola Barker's teen queen heroine, Medve, has no truck with the niceties of polite expression. Medve is six foot three and living with her family in a crumbling art deco hotel on a small island, off the coast of England. She is "single-minded, oestrogen-
If history is just a sick joke, then who exactly is telling it and why? Could it be John Scogin, Edward IV's court jester, whose favourite pastime was to burn people alive? Or is it Andrew Boarde, Henry VIII's physician, who kindly wrote Scogin's biograph
‘Open yourself up again to all that terrible light and savage bliss and deafening reverberation …’Nicola Barker’s readers are primed to expect surprises, but her tenth novel delivers mind-meld on a metaphysical scale. From quiet beginnings in the
