Valerie Martin

Property

From the acclaimed author of Orange Prize winning PROPERTY comes a fresh twist on the classic Jekyll and Hyde story, a novel told from the perspective of Mary Reilly, Dr. Jekyll's dutiful and intelligent housemaid. Faithfully weaving in details from Robert Louis Stevenson's classic, Martin introduces an original and captivating character: Mary is a survivor-scarred but still strong-familiar with evil, yet brimming with devotion and love. As a bond grows between Mary and her tortured employer, she is sent on errands to unsavory districts of London and entrusted with secrets she would rather not know. Unable to confront her hideous suspicions about Dr. Jekyll, Mary ultimately proves the lengths to which she'll go to protect him. Through her astute reflections, we hear the rest of the classic Jekyll and Hyde story, and this familiar tale is made more terrifying than we remember it, more complex than we imagined possible.

Mary Reilly

Writing a short story inspired by the unsolved disappearance of a merchant vessel's crew, unproven young writer Arthur Conan Doyle stirs up a sensation involving a Philadelphia medium, a journalist who would expose the medium as a fraud and the ship captain's grieving family. By the award-winning author of Mary Reilly.

The Ghost of the Mary Celeste

"It's 1954 on far-flung Verona Island, a tropical paradise with a fragile economy and a rising crime rate. Prostitution is legal and Lila Gulliver is proud of her business, a high-end brothel where her clients are guaranteed privacy and discretion. When Carità Bercy, a young, destitute, and beautiful blind woman arrives at her door seeking employment, Lila decides to give her a chance. Carità proves a valuable asset to the house, as well as a psychological puzzle to her employer. One hot night, Ian Drohan, a handsome youth and the scion of the wealthiest family on the island, visits Lila's house and falls madly in love with Carità. Lila doubts his sincerity and fears for Carità 's future. Carità has no such fears. In fact, Carità is a reckless force of nature, determined to succeed in ways Lila hasn't even contemplated. Spirits of the star-crossed lovers Romeo and Juliet, as well as the devilish denizens of the magical island in The Tempest, haunt this steamy tale of passionate love, found and lost, and found again"--

A Novel

Mrs. Gulliver

From the bestselling author of "Mary Reilly" and the internationally acclaimed "Property, "a brilliant collection featuring Valerie Martin's finest short stories to date. For four decades Valerie Martin has been publishing novels and stories that demonstrate her incredible range as a writer, moving between realism and fantasy while employing a voice that is at once whimsical and tragic. The twelve stories in this collection showcase Martin's enviable control, precision, and grace and are organized around her three fictional obsessions--the natural world, the artistic sphere, and stunning transformations. In "The Change," a journalist watches his menopausal wife, an engraver, create some of her eeriest and most affecting works even as she seems to be willfully destroying their marriage. In "The Open Door," an American poet in Rome finds herself forced to choose between her lover and a world so alien it takes her voice away. "Sea Lovers" conjures up a hideous mermaid whose fatal seduction of a fisherman provides better reason than "Jaws" for staying out of the water. In "The Incident at Villedeau" a respected gentleman confesses to killing his wife's former lover, an event that could be construed as an accident, an impulsive act, or a premeditated crime. Exploring themes of obsession, justice, passion, and duplicity, these drolly macabre stories buzz with tension.

New and Selected Stories

Sea Lovers

Lisa Martin

A swashbuckling story of two very different cat brothers and their adventures at sea. Cecil and Anton are as different as port and starboard. Cecil, stocky and black with white patches, thirsts for seafaring adventure as he roams the docks of his harborside home, taking day trips on fishing boats when the chance comes along. Slim, gray Anton prefers listening to the sailors’ shanties at the town saloon. But one day when Anton goes to port, he’s taken to be a ratter on a ship bound for the high seas. Knowing little of the wide open ocean that lies beyond the harbor, Cecil boards another ship in hopes of finding Anton. But what begins as a rescue mission turns into a pair of high-seas adventures. Anton takes on a fierce rat, outwits hungry birds, and forges a forbidden friendship, while Cecil encounters dolphins and whales and finds himself in the middle of a pirate raid. On an ocean as vast as the one Anton and Cecil have discovered, will they ever see home—or each other—again? Orange Prize–winning author Valerie Martin and Lisa Martin present a colorful cast of characters, rich historical detail, and lyrical storytelling that will delight fans of such classic animal adventures as The Wind in the Willows, Stuart Little, and Poppy.

Cats at Sea

Anton and Cecil, Book 1

Anton and Cecil, Book 2: Cats on Track

Manon Gaudet is unhappily married to the owner of a Louisiana sugar plantation. She misses her family and longs for the vibrant lifestyle of her native New Orleans, but most of all, she longs to be free of the suffocating domestic situation. The tension revolves around Sarah, a slave girl who may have been given to Manon as a wedding present from her aunt, whose young son Walter is living proof of where Manon's husband's inclinations lie. This private drama is being played out against a brooding atmosphere of slave unrest and bloody uprisings. And if the attacks reach Manon's house, no one can be sure which way Sarah will turn . . . Beautifully written, Property is an intricately told tale of both individual stories and of a country in a time of change, where ownership is at once everything and nothing, and where belonging, by contrast, is all.

Told from the perspective of the young housemaid, Mary Reilly, this novel is a retelling of the horror story Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

"A story of family, war, art, and betrayal set around an ancient, ancestral home in the Tuscan countryside"--

I Give It to You

Inspired by the great frescoes of St Francis of Assisi, the author of Italian Fever has produced this biography composed in a series of panels. It begins with the dying Francesco - and the rivalry for his body among the towns of medieval Italy - and moves back in time toward his mystical conversion. The old friar, exhausted by illness and division among his brotherhood, gives way to the zealous missionary who joins the Fifth Crusade, confident that he can convert Sultan al-Kamil in Egypt. Later, we see the unwashed and innocent revolutionary, unafraid to lecture a pope on Christ's message, and finally the frivolous young Francesco on the deserted road where his encounter with a leper leads him to an ecstatic embrace of God.

Scenes from the Life of St Francis

Salvation

Chloe Dales's growing dislike of her college-age son Toby's romantic relationship with Salome Drago, a Croatian refugee who is a seductive but somehow toxic blend of the old world and the new, threatens to alienate her from her tolerant husband and besotted son, just as the dangerous secrets of Salome's past bring darkness into all of their lives. 40,000 first printing.

Trespass

Marlene Kliman

Nuria Jaumot-Pascual

Play games, build towers, move to the beat, and go on a pretend picnic—all with math Developed by the Mixing in Math group at TERC, an education nonprofit, and based on research funded in part by the National Science Foundation, this book is packed with all kinds of math games for matching colors with numbers, comparing and counting, and simple addition and subtraction. These projects and games, which use everyday materials such as paper towel tubes and cardboard boxes, can be used as icebreakers, party games, and group activities for indoors and out as well as special events throughout the calendar year. Whether in the car, on the bus, in a waiting room, or at the dinner table, the varied games and activates in this book serve as the perfect introduction to math for young children.

Say It with Shapes and Numbers

Claude is a middle-aged man unwillingly attached to Mona, a woman obsessed with marriage and respectability. Then one night he meets the exotic Alexandra - regal, tall and spare, skittish and powerfully independent. When her rich friend Diana falls pregnant, Alexandra and Claude agree to accompany her to Diana's house hidden deep in the bayou, where they will assist her with the birth. They are joined by Collie, the housekeeper and Banjo, a drunken old handyman. At the house, Claude hears a disturbing and haunting story of a man similar to himself who was also involved with Alexandra and Diana and was found murdered in a hotel room. This is a gothic and mysterious tale set deep in the heart of the bayou.

Alexandra

Jan Vidor seems like the ideal tenant for a long summer holiday in a Tuscan villa. Unobtrusive and quietly sociable, the American academic can be relied upon to entertain herself - but her aristocratic landlady Beatrice has made a terrible mistake. A chance remark about a violent death at Villa Chiara during the war piques Jan's writerly interest and sends her digging into the Salviati family's tragic past. Was Beatrice's uncle Sandro really mistaken for a partisan, or was his killer someone closer to home? Does it matter if Jan just fills in the gaps? After all, Beatrice said she could do as she liked with the story, she even said 'I give it to you' . . . Written with a deep understanding of loyalty and temptation, I Give It To You is a riveting novel about who owns a story, whether we have a right to what we inherit, and what a gift really means.

I Give It To You

While trying to contain the infectious disease that is threatening the animals at the New Orleans zoo where she is a veterinarian, Ellen struggles to treat her ailing marriage. By the author of Mary Reilly. 20,000 first printing. $20,000 ad/promo. Tour.

The great divorce

"Ms. Martin's trademarks: a preoccupation with the dark underside of life, a taste for disturbing, even macabre imagery . . . excursions into an unseen realm [of] strange and magical events. . . . Martin possesses a sure storytelling gift, [an] ability to transform a myriad of specific details into larger, symbolic shapes."--New York Times

Short Stories

Love

Just as Lucy Stark, employed by a writer named DV, begins to read her employer's latest manuscript, she receives word that he has died under suspicious circumstances and journeys to Italy to search for the rest of DV's manuscript and to uncover the truthabout his death.

Part romance, part suspense, and wholly entertaining, "Italian Fever" tells the story of the awakening of Lucy Stark, an American pragmatist. Martin redefines the Gothic novel in this compelling tale of one woman's headlong tumble into mystery, art, and eros.

a novel

Italian fever

From the acclaimed author of the bestselling Italian Fever and award winning Property, comes a fresh twist on the classic Jekyll and Hyde story, a novel told from the perspective of Mary Reilly, Dr. Jekyll's dutiful and intelligent housemaid. Faithfully weaving in details from Robert Louis Stevenson's classic, Martin introduces an original and captivating character: Mary is a survivor–scarred but still strong–familiar with evil, yet brimming with devotion and love. As a bond grows between Mary and her tortured employer, she is sent on errands to unsavory districts of London and entrusted with secrets she would rather not know. Unable to confront her hideous suspicions about Dr. Jekyll, Mary ultimately proves the lengths to which she'll go to protect him. Through her astute reflections, we hear the rest of the classic Jekyll and Hyde story, and this familiar tale is made more terrifying than we remember it, more complex than we imagined possible.

A brilliant new novel set in the bohemian, glamorous theater world of 1970s New York, by the Orange Prize-winning author of Property. It’s the 1970s in New York—rents are cheap, love is free, and with the explosion of theater venues off and off-off Broadway, aspiring actors will work for nothing in no clothes. Enter Edward Day, who wants more than anything to move an unsuspecting audience to an experience of emotional truth. But he must also contend with the drama of his own life: he is locked in a bitter rivalry with fellow actor Guy Margate, with whom he shares a marked physical resemblance and a fatal attraction to the beautiful, talented, and all-too-available Madeleine Delavergne. Edward’s pursuit of Madeleine is complicated by the fact that he owes Guy his life. In this riveting tale of paranoia, passion, jealousy, and relentless ambition, Edward will learn that the truth, in the theater as in life, is ever elusive and never inert.

Valerie Martin

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