Recommendations based on "The Line of Beauty"

"The Transit of Venus is one of the great English-language novels of the twentieth century." - The Paris ReviewFinalist for the National Book AwardWinner of the National Book Critics' Circle AwardThe award-winning, New York Times bestselling literary masterpiece of Shirley Hazzard—the story of two beautiful orphan sisters whose fates are as moving and wonderful, and yet as predestined, as the transits of the planets themselvesThe Transit of Venus is considered Shirley Hazzard's most brilliant novel. It tells the story of two orphan sisters, Caroline and Grace Bell, as they leave Australia to start a new life in post-war England. What happens to these young women--seduction and abandonment, marriage and widowhood, love and betrayal--becomes as moving and wonderful and yet as predestined as the transits of the planets themselves. Gorgeously written and intricately constructed, Hazzard's novel is a story of place: Sydney, London, New York, Stockholm; of time: from the fifties to the eighties; and above all, of women and men in their passage through the displacements and absurdities of modern life.

Ethan Allen Hawley has lost the acquisitive spirit of his wealthy and enterprising forebears, a long line of proud New England sea captains and Pilgrims. Scarred by failure, Ethan works as a grocery clerk in a store his family once owned. But his wife is restless and his teenage children troubled and hungry for the material comforts he cannot provide. Then a series of unusual events reignites Ethan’s ambition, and he is pitched on to a bold course where all scruples are put aside...Steinbeck’s searing examination of the evil influences of money, immorality, greed and ambition on American drew acclaim from the Nobel Committee who hailed him as an 'independent expounder of the truth'.

After twelve-year-old Annika, a foundling living in late nineteenth-century Vienna, inherits a trunk of costume jewelry, a woman claiming to be her aristocratic mother arrives and takes her to live in a strangely decrepit mansion in Germany.

THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER‘Sheer joy' Graham Norton, author of Home Stretch‘Utterly beautiful … filled with hope’ Joanna Cannon, author of Three Things About Elsie‘A bear-hug of a book’ Rachel Joyce, author of Miss Benson’s BeetleFrom the author of When God was a Rabbit and Tin Man, Still Life is a big-hearted story of people brought together by love, war, art and the ghost of E.M. Forster.1944, in the ruined wine cellar of a Tuscan villa, as bombs fall around them, two strangers meet and share an extraordinary evening.Ulysses Temper is a young British soldier, Evelyn Skinner is a sexagenarian art historian and possible spy. She has come to Italy to salvage paintings from the wreckage and relive memories of the time she encountered EM Forster and had her heart stolen by an Italian maid in a particular Florentine room with a view.Evelyn’s talk of truth and beauty plants a seed in Ulysses’ mind that will shape the trajectory of his life – and of those who love him – for the next four decades.Moving from the Tuscan Hills and piazzas of Florence, to the smog of London’s East End, Still Life is a sweeping, joyful novel about beauty, love, family and fate.‘Four course nourishment for all Winman fans’ Patrick Gale, author of Take Nothing With You‘Extraordinary . . . my book of the year’ Liz Nugent, author of Our Little Cruelties‘The kind of story that bolsters the heart and soul’ Donal Ryan, author of Strange FlowersSunday Times bestseller 09/06/2021

After a lonely boyhood, and the painful ordeal of his schooldays, Philip's yearning for adventure takes him to Germany and later Paris where he tries to make his mark as an artist before returning to London to study medicine. Here, a tortured and one-sided love affair with Mildred, a vulgar yet irresistible waitress, changes the course of his life for ever. Commenting later on the novel's autobiographical aspects, Maugham recalled how in writing the book he mingled fact and fiction and 'found myself free from the pains and unhappy recollections that had tormented me'.However, like Dickens' David Copperfield to which it is often compared, Of Human Bondage goes far beyond autobiography, and is Maugham's most ambitious and unsparing novel, revealing the author's undoubted gift for storytelling as he explores the timeless theme of human freedom - freedom to act, to think and to love.

A novel of the enduring power of love and commitment - against the forces of war and the equally dangerous forces of keeping the peace From the bestselling author of The Girl in Times Square, comes the magnificent conclusion to the saga that was set in motion when Tatiana fell in love with her Red Army officer, Alexander Belov, in wartime Leningrad in 1941. Tatiana and Alexander have since suffered the worst the twentieth century had to offer. After years of separation, they are miraculously reunited in America, the land of their dreams. They have a beautiful son, Anthony. They have proved to each other that their love is greater than the vast evil of the world. But though they are only in their twenties, in their hearts they are old, and they are strangers. In the climate of fear and mistrust of the Cold War, dark forces are at work in the US that threaten their life and their family. Can they be happy? Or will the ghosts of yesterday reach out to blight even the destiny of their firstborn son? Epic in scope, masterfully told, The Summer Garden is a novel of unique and devastating emotional power that spans two thirds of the twentieth century, and three continents

In this final volume of The Forsyte Saga Galsworthy writes about the lives and loves of the Cherrell family, cousins of the Forsytes. For centuries, the Cherrell sons have left their home of Condaford Grange to serve the state as soldiers, clergymen and administrators, but the 1930s bring uncertainty in a world of rapidly altering morals and unemployment. Galsworthy’s portrayal of the effect of political change on individuals show him as a great social novelist as well as the author of one of the most gripping family sagas ever written.

The women of No. 13 Article Row know that joy is short lived in the London of 1941. It's a treacherous place, especially for the tender-hearted. As Valentine's Day approaches, the perils of war threaten life as they know it and all matters of the heart.

Ottercombe Bay was originally published as a four-part serial. This is the complete story in one package.

These interconnected tales are devoted to a family living in a fertile valley in California, and the effects that one particular family has on them all. Two traditions are present: American naturalism (natural instincts versus conforming to society's norms) and the short story cycle.