C'est un grand jour à Ferrare. On y célèbre les noces du duc Alfonso et de Lucrèce de Médicis. La mariée a quinze ans. La discrète et sensible troisième fille du grand-duc de Toscane n'était pas préparée à cela. Mais le décès soudain de sa soeur aînée a changé son histoire. La fête terminée, Lucrèce est seule dans un palais immense et froid, face aux intrigues de la cour et à cet homme aussi charismatique que terrifiant qu'est son mari. Et tandis que Lucrèce pose pour le portrait de mariage qui figera son image pour l'éternité, elle voit se dessiner ce que l'on attend d'elle : donner vie à un héritier. Son propre destin en dépend...

B>b>b>b>NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER /b>/b> Of all the stories that argue and speculate about Shakespeares life ... here is a novel ... so gorgeously written that it transports you." --The Boston Globe/b>br>br>/b>England, 1580: The Black Death creeps across the land, an ever-present threat, infecting the healthy, the sick, the old and the young alike. The end of days is near, but life always goes on. A young Latin tutor--penniless and bullied by a violent father--falls in love with an extraordinary, eccentric young woman. Agnes is a wild creature who walks her familys land with a falcon on her glove and is known throughout the countryside for her unusual gifts as a healer, understanding plants and potions better than she does people. Once she settles with her husband on Henley Street in Stratford-upon-Avon, she becomes a fiercely protective mother and a steadfast, centrifugal force in the life of her young husband, whose career on the London stage is just taking off when his beloved young son succumbs to sudden fever. Lire la suite Fermer

The instant Sunday Times bestseller from the acclaimed author of Hamnet, The Marriage Portrait is a dazzling evocation of the Italian Renaissance in all its beauty and brutality.

Winter, 1561. Lucrezia, Duchess of Ferrara, is taken on an unexpected visit to a country villa by her husband, Alfonso. As they sit down to dinner it occurs to Lucrezia that Alfonso has a sinister purpose in bringing her here. He intends to kill her.
Lucrezia is sixteen years old, and has led a sheltered life locked away inside Florence''s grandest palazzo. Here, in this remote villa, she is entirely at the mercy of her increasingly erratic husband.

What is Lucrezia to do with this sudden knowledge? What chance does she have against Alfonso, ruler of a province, and a trained soldier? How can she ensure her survival.

The Marriage Portrait is an unforgettable reimagining of the life of a young woman whose proximity to power places her in mortal danger. Lire la suite Fermer

Après Cette main qui a pris la mienne, récompensé du Costa Award, Maggie O'Farrell signe un roman éblouissant, chargé de délicatesse et de grâce. Des rues de Londres aux studios arty du New York des seventies, en passant par un village irlandais, le portrait inoubliable d'une famille suffoquant sous les mensonges et les non-dits.

Comme chaque matin depuis trente ans, Robert Riordan part acheter son journal. Mais en ce jour caniculaire de juillet 1976, Robert part et ne revient pas.
Dans leur maison londonienne, Gretta, sa femme, s'interroge : quelle mouche a bien pu le piquer ? Doit-elle prévenir les enfants ?
À peine réunis, ces derniers tentent de prendre la situation en main : les placards sont retournés, les tiroirs vidés, chaque pièce fouillée en quête d'indices.
Mais, alors que le mystère autour de leur père s'épaissit, les vieilles rancoeurs ressurgissent. L'aîné en a assez : pourquoi est-ce toujours à lui de prendre en charge sa famille ? Quant aux deux soeurs, jadis si proches, quel événement a brisé leur lien, si terrible que la cadette a décidé de mettre un océan entre elles ? Et Gretta, a-t-elle vraiment tout dit ?
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SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA NOVEL AWARD - A RICHARD AND JUDY PICK 2017 A top-ten bestseller, THIS MUST BE THE PLACE by Maggie O'Farrell crosses time zones and continents to reveal an extraordinary portrait of a marriage. 'A complex, riveting novel of love and hope that grips at the heart' The Sunday Times A reclusive ex-film star living in the wilds of Ireland, Claudette Wells is a woman whose first instinct, when a stranger approaches her home, is to reach for her shotgun. Why is she so fiercely protective of her family, and what made her walk out of her cinematic career when she had the whole world at her feet? Her husband Daniel, reeling from a discovery about a woman he last saw twenty years ago, is about to make an exit of his own. It is a journey that will send him off-course, far away from the life he and Claudette have made together. Will their love for one another be enough to bring Daniel back home?
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REESES BOOK CLUB DECEMBER PICK The author of award-winning I could not stop reading this incredible true story. --Reese Witherspoon (Reeses Book Club December 22 Pick) "OFarrell pulls out little threads of historical detail to weave this story of a precocious girl sensitive to the contradictions of her station ... You may know the history, and you may think you know whats coming, but dont be so sure.

Un jour d'été 1596, dans la campagne anglaise, une petite fille tombe gravement malade. Son frère jumeau, Hamnet, part chercher de l'aide... Agnes, leur mère, cueille des herbes médicinales dans les champs et leur père est à Londres pour son travail.Une écriture splendide pour une histoire bouleversante. Celle d'un frère et d'une soeur unis par un lien indéfectible, d'un couple atypique marqué par un deuil impossible, d'une maladie « pestilentielle » qui se propage. Mais surtout, tendre portrait d'un petit garçon qui inspira à son père, William Shakespeare, sa pièce la plus célèbre. Édition adaptée facile à lire : malvoyance ; fatigue visuelle ; troubles de l'apprentissage ; troubles cognitifs ; troubles DYS ; dyslexie ; dysgraphie ; TDA/H ; alphabétisation, FLE.
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B>On seventeen occasions, award-winning novelist Maggie OFarrell has stared death in the face--and lived to tell the tale. In this astonishing memoir, the New York Times bestselling author of Hamnet shares the near-death experiences that have punctuated and defined her life./b>br>br>The childhood illness that left her bedridden for a year, which she was not expected to survive. A teenage yearning to escape that nearly ended in disaster. An encounter with a disturbed man on a remote path. And, most terrifying of all, an ongoing, daily struggle to protect her daughter from a condition that leaves her unimaginably vulnerable to lifes myriad dangers. br>br>Here, OFarrell stiches together these discrete encounters to tell the story of her entire life. In taut prose that vibrates with electricity and restrained emotion, she captures the perils running just beneath the surface, and illuminates the preciousness, beauty, and mysteries of life itself. Lire la suite Fermer

Gripping, insightful, and deft,

On a cold February afternoon, Stella catches sight of a man she hasn''t seen for many years, but instantly recognises. Or thinks she does. At the same moment on the other side of the globe, in the middle of a crowd of Chinese New Year revellers, Jake realises that things are becoming dangerous.

They know nothing of one another''s existence, but both Stella and Jake flee their lives: Jake in search of a place so remote it doesn''t appear on any map, and Stella for a destination in Scotland, the significance of which only her sister, Nina, will understand.

From the author of

When Lily moves into new boyfriend Marcus''s apartment and plunges headlong into their relationship, she must contend with an intangible, hostile presence--Marcus's ex-girlfriend, Sinead. As Lily and Marcus become more deeply involved, Lily becomes obsessed with Sinead''s fate and thinks she sees her everywhere. She must question not only her sanity, but whether the man she loves is someone she can, or should, be with at all.