The Evening Chorus: A Novel

( “The Evening Chorus serenades people brutally marked by...)

“The Evening Chorus serenades people brutally marked by war, yet enduring to live — and relish — the tiny pleasures of another day. With her trademark prose — exquisitely limpid — Humphreys convinces us of the birdlike strength of the powerless.” — Emma Donoghue Downed during his first mission, James Hunter is taken captive as a German POW. To bide the time, he studies a nest of redstarts at the edge of camp. Some prisoners plot escape; some are shot. And then, one day, James is called to the Kommandant’s office. Meanwhile, back home, James’s new wife, Rose, is on her own, free in a way she has never known. Then, James’s sister, Enid, loses everything during the Blitz and must seek shelter with Rose. In a cottage near Ashdown forest, the two women jealously guard secrets, but form a surprising friendship. Each of these characters will find unexpected freedom amid war’s privations and discover confinements that come with peace. The Evening Chorus is a beautiful, astonishing examination of love, loss, escape, and the ways in which the intrusions of the natural world can save us. “The Evening Chorus sparkles.” —Jo Baker “A poised, lyrical novel about the griefs of war, written with poetic intensity of observation.” —Helen Dunmore “This riveting novel is a song. Listen.” —Richard Bausch www.hhumphreys.com  

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The Frozen Thames (By: Helen Humphreys) published: March, 2009

(Will be shipped from US. Used books may not include compa...)

Will be shipped from US. Used books may not include companion materials, may have some shelf wear, may contain highlighting/notes, may not include CDs or access codes. 100% money back guarantee.

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The Evening Chorus by Helen Humphreys (2015-04-23)

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Nuns Looking Anxious, Listening to Radios

( Nuns Looking Anxious, Listening to Radios is a work in ...)

Nuns Looking Anxious, Listening to Radios is a work in the hazard of retrieval. What sticks in retrospect? Seldom what you would expect, not always the happiness. Otherwise you could train for life, you could actually learn from grandmothers, mothers; poems-those bodies of lines and spaces -would not appear unbidden bearing news you hold your breath to hear. Helen Humphreys comes through the rich reproach of the past into the present, a bruise, a beautiful bloom.

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Lost Garden by Helen Humphreys (2009-08-04)

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The Perils of Geography

( In her third book of poetry The Perils of Geography, He...)

In her third book of poetry The Perils of Geography, Helen Humphreys charts a world that opens under the prodding and promise of language. With the wit and eye for evocative detail which gained readers for both Gods and Other Mortals and Nuns Looking Anxious, Listening to Radios, Humphreys probes the immediacy of now, the intensity of this, the residue of then. Don't be deceived by the spare appearance; her poems are resonant and full, "all angles and confidence." Light falls slant across them. She maps "what surrounds not what's made still" - "the moving line." The line she traces connects the pull of memory and moment, open roads and winter aconite, transcendental basements and ornamental shrubbery. In "Singing to the Bees," the ten poem sequence which makes up the second of three sections in Perils, she slips inside folk wisdoms, wears them with an easy grace, all flesh and wit and possibility: dancing shoes, gifted pigs, swarming bees, airplane nuns and spectre ships. These poems make superstition delicious.

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The Reinvention of Love

( When Charles Sainte-Beuve, an ambitious French journali...)

When Charles Sainte-Beuve, an ambitious French journalist, meets Victor Hugo, a young writer on the verge of fame, he finds himself in a world of great passions, a world where words can become swords. But, to his surprise, he is more attracted to Victor’s long-suffering wife, Adèle. When the two lovers create a scandale in Paris, Victor exacts his price for betrayal. Set during the tumultuous reign of Napoleon III, and sweeping from France to the Channel Islands, to Halifax and back, The Reinvention of Love draws a rich portrait of the old city, where duels are fought in its parks and cholera-ridden bodies float in the Seine. Along its narrow, crime-filled streets, noble families and artists—Frédéric Chopin, Georges Sand, Alexandre Dumas—mix with ordinary citizens, who remain restless with ideas of revolution. Towering over all is the enormous talent of Victor Hugo, who is rapidly becoming the voice of France to the world.

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The Lost Garden: A Novel

( Leaving London to grow food for the war effort, Gwen di...)

Leaving London to grow food for the war effort, Gwen discovers a mysterious lost garden and the story of a love that becomes her own. This word-perfect, heartbreaking novel is set in early 1941 in Britain when the war seems endless and, perhaps, hopeless. London is on fire from the Blitz, and a young woman gardener named Gwen Davis flees from the burning city for the Devon countryside. She has volunteered for the Land Army, and is to be in charge of a group of young girls who will be trained to plant food crops on an old country estate where the gardens have fallen into ruin. Also on the estate, waiting to be posted, is a regiment of Canadian soldiers. For three months, the young women and men will form attachments, living in a temporary rural escape. No one will be more changed by the stay than Gwen. She will inspire the girls to restore the estate gardens, fall in love with a soldier, find her first deep friendship, and bring a lost garden, created for a great love, back to life. While doing so, she will finally come to know herself and a life worth living. Reading group guide included.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0393324915/?tag=2022091-20

The Frozen Thames

(In its long history, the river Thames has frozen solid fo...)

In its long history, the river Thames has frozen solid forty times. These are the stories of that frozen river. So begins this breathtaking and original work, which contains forty vignettes based on events that actually took place each time the historic Thames froze solid. Spanning more than seven centuries—from 1142 to 1895—and illustrated with stunning full-color period art, The Frozen Thames is an achingly beautiful feat of the imagination…a work of fiction that transports us back through history to cast us as intimate observers of unforgettable moments in time. Whether we’re viewing the magnificent spectacle of King Henry VIII riding across the ice highway (while plotting to rid himself of his second wife) or participating in a joyous Frost Fair on the ice, joining lovers meeting on the frozen river during the plague years or coming upon the sight of a massive ship frozen into the Thames…these unforgettable stories are a triumph of the imagination as well as a moving meditation on love, loss, and the transformative powers of nature.

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The Frozen Thames

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Gods and Other Mortals

( Precisely etched meditations on public and private expe...)

Precisely etched meditations on public and private experience, charged landscapes and reconceived Greek myths. "Words are signals, flares sent up in desperation, a cryptic language of longing." - Leslie McAllister, Toronto Star

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