Showing results by author "Joanne Harris" in All Categories

‘Stories are like Russian dolls; open them up, and in each one you’ll find another story.’ Conjured from a wickedly imaginative pen, here is a new collection of short stories that showcases Joanne Harris’s exceptional storytelling art. Sensuous, wicked, mischievous, uproarious and wry, here are tales that combine the everyday with the unexpected; wild fantasy with bittersweet reality.

Once there was a widow with three sons, and their names were Black, Brown, and Blue. Black was the eldest; moody and aggressive. Brown was the middle child, timid and dull. But Blue was his mother's favourite. And he was a murderer. Blueeyedboy is the brilliant novel from Joanne Harris: a dark and intricately plotted tale of a poisonously dysfunctional family, a blind child prodigy, and a serial murderer who is not who he seems.

Forced by circumstance to seek refuge with Fleur, her young daughter, in the remote abbey of Saint Marie-de-la-Mer, Juliette reinvents herself as Soeur Auguste under the tutelage of the kindly Abbess. But times are changing: the murder of Henri IV becomes the catalyst for massive upheaval in France. A new appointment is made, and Juliette's new life begins to unravel. For the new Abbess is Isabelle, the eleven-year-old child of a corrupt and noble family.

Tom is a photographer and dreamer, capturing snapshots of the city around him, talking to the people on the fringes of his world, always searching for something he knows is missing but can never quite grasp. He speaks to a beggar. He saves a woman from a gang on a darkened alley. He takes his photos...but only as he develops the negatives does he see the magical, hidden world he has brushed up against in all its beauty, and menace, and danger. And deep in those negatives is the clue he needs to continue his search.

A Pocketful of Crows balances youth and age, wisdom and passion, and draws on nature and folklore to weave a stunning modern mythology around a nameless wild girl. Only love could draw her into the world of named, tamed things. And it seems only revenge will be powerful enough to let her escape. This is a stunning and original modern fairy tale.

Henry Chester, a domineering and puritanical Victorian artist, is in search of the perfect model. In nine-year-old Effie he finds her. Ten years later, lovely, childlike and sedated, Effie seems the ideal wife. But something inside her is about to awaken. Drawn by her lover, Mose, into a dangerous underworld of intrigue and blackmail, she meets Fanny Miller, the brothel-keeper, and her shadowy daughter, Marta - murdered ten years ago on the day of Henry's weekly visit...

So begins a beautiful and tragic quest as a heartbroken mother sets out to save her lost daughter, through the realms of the real, of dream and even into the underworld itself. But determination alone is not enough. For to save something precious, she must give up something precious, be it a song, a memory, or her freedom itself....

The Blue Salt Road balances passion and loss, love and violence and draws on nature and folklore to weave a stunning modern mythology around a nameless, wild young man. Passion drew him to a new world, and trickery has kept him there - without his memories, separated from his own people. But as he finds his way in this dangerous new way of life, so he learns that his notions of home, and your people, might not be as fixed as he believed.

The place is St Oswald's, an old and long-established boys' grammar school in the north of England. A new year has just begun, and for the staff and boys of the school, a wind of unwelcome change is blowing. Suits, paperwork, and information technology rule the world, and Roy Straitley, Latin master, eccentric, and veteran of St Oswald's, is finally, reluctantly, contemplating retirement. But beneath the little rivalries, petty disputes, and everyday crises of the school, a darker undercurrent stirs.

Suburban witches, defiant old ladies, ageing monsters, suicidal Lottery winners, wolf men, dolphin women and middle-aged manufacturers of erotic leatherwear. In this eclectic short story collection, international bestseller Joanne Harris pairs the mundane with the miraculous and shows us modern life through her unique and evocative lens.

Best-selling author Joanne Harris joins Elise Italiaander in the Audible Studios for an exclusive interview.

Leading authors draw on themes of arrival, discovery and destination in a collection of six contemporary fiction works written especially for Audible. Commissioned for audio format, these stories are performed by narrators with an acknowledgement to the medieval culture of bards – professional storytellers.

Seeking refuge and anonymity in the cobbled streets of Montmartre, Yanne and her daughters, Rosette and Annie, live peacefully, if not happily, above their little chocolate shop. Nothing unusual marks them out; no red sachets hang by the door. The wind has stopped, at least for a while. Then into their lives blows Zozie de l'Alba, the lady with the lollipop shoes, and everything begins to change.

A Lansquenet, quieto villaggio al centro della Francia, la vita scorre placida. Un po' troppo placida: è una comunità chiusa, dove sono rimasti soprattutto anziani contadini e artigiani, dominata con rude benevolenza dal giovane curato Francis Reynaud. È martedì grasso - una tradizione pagana avversata dalla chiesa - quando nel villaggio arrivano Vianne Rocher e la sua giovane figlia Anouk. La donna è assai simpatica e originale, sexy e misteriosa, forse è l'emissaria di potenze superiori (o magari inferiori).

'Once there was a widow with three sons, and their names were Black, Brown and Blue. Black was the eldest; moody and aggressive. Brown was the middle child, timid and dull. But Blue was his mother's favourite. And he was a murderer.' Blueeyedboy is the brilliant new novel from Joanne Harris: a dark and intricately plotted tale of a poisonously dysfunctional family, a blind child prodigy, and a serial murderer who is not who he seems.