Dogside Story

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Beryl Bainbridge

"The literary world of Georgian London and the more private arena of its most celebrated man of letters, Samuel Johnson, come to life in this tale of unrequited love and compelling passion. Although melancholia and the gout have jaded the middle-aged Dr. Johnson's palate for society, the eminent, if increasingly irascible lexicographer nonetheless accepts an introduction to the excellent table of the wealthy Southwark brewer Henry Thrale. So it is that an evening in 1764, instead of meeting Johnson's very low expectations, takes him into the social orbit of the charming, vivacious Mrs. Thrale - and marks the beginning of an extraordinary relationship that will span the final two decades of his life. As Johnson settles more and more comfortably into his niche among the Thrales, the family's already hectic domain is thrown further into lively chaos by the literary giant's retinue of sycophants, admirers, scholars, and friends like the illustrious actor David Garrick, poet Oliver Goldsmith, novelist Fanny Burney, and painter Joshua Reynolds. Ambiguities have meanwhile begun to complicate the bond between Johnson and Mrs. Thrale. Possessiveness vies with rejection, and sexual tensions stir beneath the decorous surfaces of everyday life."--BOOK JACKET.

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Ian McEwan

Atonement is a 2001 British metafiction novel written by Ian McEwan. Set in three time periods, 1935 England, Second World War England and France, and present-day England, it covers an upper-class girl's half-innocent mistake that ruins lives, her adulthood in the shadow of that mistake, and a reflection on the nature of writing. Widely regarded as one of McEwan's best works, it was shortlisted for the 2001 Booker Prize for fiction. In 2010, Time magazine named Atonement in its list of the 100 greatest English-language novels since 1923.

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Peter Carey

The chemistry of tears is a celebrated work by Peter Carey (Double Booker Prize Winner), recognized for masterclass storytelling and lasting literary resonance.

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Clifford Jackman

Traces decades in the lives of a post-Civil War Oklahoma family that includes such members as a psychopathic killer, a group of cruel brothers, an impassive ex-slave, a dangerous child prodigy and a pathologically deviant patriarch. After their actions during the Civil War lead to a courtmartial, a group of hardened Union soldiers recasts themselves as outlaws, and find that the disorder of Reconstruction allows for all sort of savage freedom. The psychopathic killer Quentin Ross; the mean and moronic Empire brothers; the impassive ex-slave Fred Johnson; dangerous child prodigy Lukas Shakespeare-- but the malevolent center of this 'family' is their cold, hardened leader, Augustus Winter, a man with an almost pathological resistance to the rules of society and a preternatural gift for butchery.