Fiction
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
The Navigator Of New York - Wayne Johnston
Wayne Johnston’s breakthrough epic novel The Colony of Unrequited Dreams
was published in several countries and given high praise from the critics.
It earned him nominations for the highest fiction prizes in Canada and was a
national bestseller. His American editor said he hadn’t found such an
exciting author since he discovered Don DeLillo. Johnston, who has been
writing fiction for two decades, launched his next and sixth novel across
the English-speaking world to great anticipation.
The Navigator of New York is set against the background of the
tumultuous rivalry between Lieutenant Peary and Dr. Cook to get to the North
Pole at the beginning of the 20th century. It is also the story of a young
man’s quest for his origins, from St. John’s, Newfoundland, to the bustling
streets of New York, and the remotest regions of the Arctic.
A blockbuster masterpiece that combines
breath-taking scope with narrative immediacy, this grand historical epic
traces the history of New York through the lenses of several families: The
Van Dycks, a wealthy Dutch trading family; the Masters, scions of an English
merchant clan torn apart during the Revolution; the Hudsons, slaves who
fight for their freedom over several generations; the Murphys, who escape
the Famine in Ireland and land in the chaotic slum of Five Points; the
Rewards, robber barons of the Gilded Age; the Florinos, an immigrant Italian
clan who work building the great skyscrapers in the 1920s; and the
Rabinowitzs, who flee anti-Semitism in Europe and build a new life in
Brooklyn.
Over time, the lives of these families become
intertwined through the most momentous events in the fabric of America: The
founding of the colonies; the Revolution; the growth of New York as a major
port and trading centre; the Civil War; the Gilded Age; the explosion of
immigration and the corruption of Tammany Hall; the rise of New York as a
great world city in the early 20th-century; the trials of World War II, the
tumult of the 1960s; the near-demise of the city in the 1970s; its roaring
rebirth in the 1990s; culminating in the World Trade Center attacks at the
beginning of the new century.
Pillars Of The Earth - Ken Follet Set in 12th-century England, the narrative concerns the building of a cathedral in the fictional town of Kingsbridge. The ambitions of three men merge, conflict and collide through 40 years of social and political upheaval as internal church politics affect the progress of the cathedral and the fortunes of the protagonists. "Follett has written a novel that entertains, instructs and satisfies on a grand scale,"
