Kategoriarkiv: Språk: engelska

Sarah Vaughan: Anatomy of a Scandal

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Saaah Vaughan: Anatomy of a Scandal. 2018
Ljudbok (BookBeat 11 h)

Sophie’s husband James is a loving father, a handsome man, a charismatic and successful public figure. And yet he stands accused of a terrible crime. Sophie is convinced he is innocent and desperate to protect her precious family from the lies that threaten to rip them apart. Kate is the lawyer hired to prosecute the case: an experienced professional who knows that the law is all about winning the argument. And yet Kate seeks the truth at all times. She is certain James is guilty and is determined he will pay for his crimes. Who is right about James? Sophie or Kate? And is either of them informed by anything more than instinct and personal experience? Despite her privileged upbringing, Sophie is well aware that her beautiful life is not inviolable. She has known it since she and James were first lovers, at Oxford, and she witnessed how easily pleasure could tip into tragedy. Most people would prefer not to try to understand what passes between a man and a woman when they are alone: alone in bed, alone in an embrace, alone in an elevator… Or alone in the moonlit courtyard of an Oxford college, where a girl once stood before a boy, heart pounding with excitement, then fear. Sophie never understood why her tutorial partner Holly left Oxford so abruptly. What would she think, if she knew the truth?

Taylor Jenkins Reid: The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

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Taylor Jenkins Reid: The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. 2017
Ljudbok (BookBeat 12 h 10 min)

Aging and reclusive Hollywood movie icon Evelyn Hugo is finally ready to tell the truth about her glamorous and scandalous life. But when she chooses unknown magazine reporter Monique Grant for the job, no one is more astounded than Monique herself. Why her? Why now? Monique is not exactly on top of the world. Her husband has left her, and her professional life is going nowhere. Regardless of why Evelyn has selected her to write her biography, Monique is determined to use this opportunity to jumpstart her career. Summoned to Evelyn’s luxurious apartment, Monique listens in fascination as the actress tells her story. From making her way to Los Angeles in the 1950s to her decision to leave show business in the ’80s, and, of course, the seven husbands along the way, Evelyn unspools a tale of ruthless ambition, unexpected friendship, and a great forbidden love. Monique begins to feel a very real connection to the legendary star, but as Evelyn’s story near its conclusion, it becomes clear that her life intersects with Monique’s own in tragic and irreversible ways.

 

Ursula Parrott: Ex-Wife

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Ursula Parrott: Ex-Wife. 1929
Ljudbok (BookBeat 7 h)

An instant bestseller when it was published anonymously in 1929—the story of a divorce and its aftermath, which scandalized the Jazz Age.
It’s 1924, and Peter and Patricia have what looks to be a very modern marriage. Both drink. Both smoke. Both work, Patricia as a head copywriter at a major department store. When it comes to sex with other people, both believe in ”the honesty policy.” Until they don’t. Or, at least, until Peter doesn’t—and a shell-shocked, lovesick Patricia finds herself starting out all over again, but this time around as a different kind of single woman: the ex-wife.

Tessa Hadley: Late in th Day

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Tessa Hadley: Late in th Day. 2019
Ljudbok (BookBeat 7 h 48 min)

Alexandr and Christine and Zachary and Lydia have been close friends since they first met in their twenties. Thirty years later Alex and Christine are spending a leisurely summer evening at home when they receive a call from a distraught Lydia. Zach is dead. In the wake of this profound loss, the three friends find themselves unmoored; all agree that Zach was the sanest and kindest of them all, the irreplaceable one they couldn’t afford to lose. Inconsolable, Lydia moves in with Alex and Christine. But instead of loss bringing them closer, the three of them find over the following months that it warps their relationships, as old entanglements and grievances rise from the past, and love and sorrow give way to anger and bitterness.

Paul Auster: Oracle Night

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Paul Auster: Oracle Night. 2005
Ljudbok (BookBeat 7 h 23 min)
Uppläsare: Författaren

The novel is about a writer named Sidney Orr. After making a miraculous recovery from a near fatal illness, Orr buys a new notebook and starts writing a story about a man who completely changed his life when he realized how much his existence was ruled by randomness.

The basic premise of the novel is that Sidney Orr is trying to come back to his life and begin writing again. The narrative proceeds by relating the things that happen both in Sidney’s work and personal life, and also to the life of Nick Bowen, the central character of Orr’s work-in-progress novel. Before the end of this period in Sidney’s life, events will take place that are truly life-altering, and Sidney will, much like the fictional character he writes of, have to deal with issues and questions he has previously (perhaps unconsciously) been avoiding for several years.

Pamela Hicks: The Daughter of Empire

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Pamela Hicks: The Daughter of Empire. My Life as a Mountbatten. 2012
Ljudbok (stadsbibban Libby 7 h 53)

Few families can boast of not one but two saints among their ancestors, a great-aunt who was the last tsarina of Russia, a father who was Grace Kelly’s pinup, and a grandmother who was not only a princess but could also argue the finer points of naval law. Pamela Mountbatten entered a remarkable family when she was born at the very end of the Roaring Twenties.
As the younger daughter of the glamorous heiress Edwina Ashley and Lord Louis Mountbatten, Pamela spent much of her early life with her sister, nannies, and servants-and a menagerie that included, at different times, a bear, two wallabies, a mongoose, and a lion. Her parents each had lovers who lived openly with the family. The house was always full of guests like Sir Winston Churchill, Noël Coward, Douglas Fairbanks, and the Duchess of Windsor.
When World War II broke out, Lord Mountbatten was in command of HMS Kelly before being appointed chief of Combined Operations, and Pamela and her sister were sent to live on Fifth Avenue in New York City with Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt. In 1947, her parents were appointed to be the last viceroy and vicereine of India and oversee the transfer of power to an independent Indian government.
Amid the turmoil of political change, Pamela worked with student leaders, developed warm friendships with Gandhi and Nehru, and witnessed both the joy of Independence Day and its terrible aftermath. Soon afterwards, she was a bridesmaid in Princess Elizabeth’s wedding to Prince Philip, and was a lady-in-waiting at the young princess’s side when she learned her father had died and she was queen.

 

Robert Johnson: Catherine, the Princess of Wales

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Robert Johnson: Catherine, the Princess of Wales. The Biography. 2024
Ljudbok (BookBeat 8 h 52 min)

From the Sunday Times bestselling author and Royal correspondent, Robert Jobson. Kate Middleton’s life’s story seems like a modern-day fairy-tale. An attractive, clever, and ambitious girl from unexceptional beginnings meets and falls in love with a wealthy prince destined to be King when they are both university undergraduates. Now, with the British monarchy in transition, Catherine is Princess of Wales and is set to become Queen.Since her wedding on 29 April 2011, Catherine has endeared herself to the people of the UK, the Commonwealth and worldwide on her extensive travels, with her infectious smile, sense of style and down-to-earth nature. Her self-deprecation, willingness to laugh at herself, solid work-ethic – along with her husband, William, warmth, and accessibility – this royal family’s dynamic duo have become the most popular members of the Royal Family. But it’s not come without its fair share of commentary and scandal, particularly with recent revelations on the relationship of the ’Fab Four’ with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle as well as her own health scares.

Kate Quinn: The Briar Club

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Kate Quinn: The Briar Club. 2024
Ljudbok (BookBeat 15 h)

Washington, D.C., 1950: Everyone keeps to themselves at Briarwood House, an all-female boarding house in the heart of the US capital, where secrets hide behind respectable facades. But when the mysterious Grace March moves into the attic room, she draws her oddball collection of neighbours – a poised English beauty, a policeman’s daughter, a frustrated female baseball star, and a rabidly pro-McCarthy typist – into an unlikely friendship. Grace’s weekly attic-room dinner parties and window-brewed sun tea become a healing balm on all their troubled lives, but she hides a terrible secret of her own. And when a shocking act of violence tears the house apart, the Briar Club must decide once and for all: who is the true enemy in their midst?

Barbara Leaning: Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis

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Barbara Leaning: Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis – The Untold Story. 2014
Ljudbok (Åbo stadsbibliotek 13 h 23 min)

Barbara Leaming’s extraordinary and deeply sensitive biography is the first book to document Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’ brutal, lonely and valiant thirty-one year struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that followed JFK’s assassination.

Leaming’s biography makes clear the pattern of Jackie’s life as a whole. We see how a spirited young woman’s rejection of a predictable life led her to John F. Kennedy and the White House, how she sought to reconcile the conflicts of her marriage and the role she was to play, and how the trauma of her husband’s murder which left her soaked in his blood and brains led her to seek a very different kind of life from the one she’d previously sought.

 

David Nicholls: You Are Here

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David Nicholls: You Are Here. 2024
Ljudbok (BookBeat 8 h 27 min)

From the internationally bestselling and Booker Prize-longlisted author of One Day.

Adrift after his wife’s departure, Michael has begun taking himself on long, solitary walks across the English countryside. Marnie, hiding alone in her London flat, avoids old friends and any reminders of her rotten, selfish ex-husband. Curled up with a good book, she’s battling the long afternoons of a life that feels like it’s passing her by.When a persistent mutual friend and some very unpredictable weather conspire to toss Michael and Marnie together on the most epic of ten-day hikes, neither of them can think of anything worse.