The Book of Speculation
KShs 650.00
Simon Watson lives alone on the Long Island Sound in his family home, a house perched on the edge of a cliff that is slowly crumbling into the sea. His parents are long dead, his mother having drowned in the water his house overlooks. His younger sister, Enola, works for a travelling carnival and seldom calls. On a day in late June, Simon receives a mysterious book from an antiquarian bookseller; it has been sent to him because it is inscribed with the name Verona Bonn, Simon’s grandmother. The book tells the story of two doomed lovers who were part of a travelling circus more than two hundred years ago. The paper crackles with age as Simon turns the yellowed pages filled with notes and sketches. He is fascinated, yet as he reads Simon becomes increasingly unnerved. Why do so many women in his family drown on 24th July? And could Enola, who has suddenly turned up at home for the first time in years, risk the same terrible fate? As 24th July draws ever closer, Simon must unlock the mysteries of the book, and decode his family history, before it’s too late.
Simon Watson lives alone on the Long Island Sound in his family home, a house perched on the edge of a cliff that is slowly crumbling into the sea. His parents are long dead, his mother having drowned in the water his house overlooks. His younger sister, Enola, works for a travelling carnival and seldom calls. On a day in late June, Simon receives a mysterious book from an antiquarian bookseller; it has been sent to him because it is inscribed with the name Verona Bonn, Simon’s grandmother. The book tells the story of two doomed lovers who were part of a travelling circus more than two hundred years ago. The paper crackles with age as Simon turns the yellowed pages filled with notes and sketches. He is fascinated, yet as he reads Simon becomes increasingly unnerved. Why do so many women in his family drown on 24th July? And could Enola, who has suddenly turned up at home for the first time in years, risk the same terrible fate? As 24th July draws ever closer, Simon must unlock the mysteries of the book, and decode his family history, before it’s too late.
| Author | Erika Swyler |
|---|
Customer Reviews
There are no reviews yet.
Related products
-
Americanah
KShs 395.00Ifemelu and Obinze are young and in love when they depart military-ruled Nigeria for the West. Beautiful, self-assured Ifemelu heads for America, where despite her academic success, she is forced to grapple with what it means to be Black for the first time. Quiet, thoughtful Obinze had hoped to join her, but with post–9/11 America closed to him, he instead plunges into a dangerous, undocumented life in London.
At once powerful and tender, Americanah is a remarkable novel that is “dazzling…funny and defiant, and simultaneously so wise.” —San Francisco Chronicle
-
Love Letters
KShs 650.00With the bookshop where she works about to close, hopeless romantic Laura Horsley recklessly finds herself agreeing to help organise a literary festival in the heart of the English countryside. But her initial excitement is rapidly followed by a mounting sense of panic when she realises just how much work is involved – especially when an innocent mistake leads the festival committee to believe that Laura is a personal friend of the author at the top of their wish-list. Laura might be secretly infatuated with the infamous Dermot Flynn, but travelling to Ireland to persuade the notorious recluse to come out of hiding is another matter. Determined to rise to the challenge, she sets off to meet her literary hero. But all too soon she’s confronted with more than she bargained for – Dermot the man is maddening, temperamental and up to his ears in a nasty case of writer’s block. But he’s also infuriatingly attractive – and, apparently, out to add Laura to his list of conquests
-
In Praise of Savagery Paperback
KShs 1,000.00One man’s journey in the footsteps of a great explorer into the heart of Africa.
As a young man, Warwick Cairns met the then elderly explorer Wilfred Thesiger and the two men struck up an unlikely friendship. Invited to visit him at his African home, Cairns decides to make a bit of an adventure of it and do some of the journey on foot.
When he himself was a young man, Thesiger led an expedition to explore the course of the Awash river in Ethiopia. Every westerner that had gone before him had been killed by local tribesmen. Needless to say, he survived.
Alternating chapters chart Warwick’s journey with that of Thesiger creating a captivating dual narrative that is part travel book, part biography, part autobiography, part history with fair doses of philosophy and humour thrown in for good measure.
In Praise of Savagery is a highly original book that defies classification but is always effortlessly readable.
-
An Abundance of Katherines
KShs 650.00When it comes to relationships, Colin Singleton’s type is girls named Katherine. And when it comes to girls named Katherine, Colin is always getting dumped. Nineteen times, to be exact. On a road trip miles from home, this anagram-happy, washed-up child prodigy has ten thousand dollars in his pocket, a bloodthirsty feral ho
-
Righteous Men
KShs 650.00A teenage computer prodigy is strangled in Mumbai. A far-right extremist is killed in a remote cabin in the Pacific Northwest. A wealthy businessman is murdered in Thailand. A pimp in Brooklyn is found stabbed to death and mysteriously covered by a brown shroud.
What connects the victims is an ancient prophecy that foretells the end of everything. Now it’s up to fledgling New York Times reporter Will Monroe to prevent it. But his investigation could cost Monroe the woman he loves, as it leads him into a dangerous shadow world of fundamentalist religion, mysticism, and biblical prophecies—and toward a set of ancient texts that could save humankind . . . or destroy every man, woman, and child on the face of the Earth.
-
Hot Pursuit
KShs 650.00As team leader of the popular personal security company Troubleshooters Inc., Alyssa Locke is no stranger to dealing with danger. Her next assignment, though, is supposed to be a breeze: teach self-defense techniques to an assemblywoman and her chief of staff after a political controversy generates a blizzard of hate mail—including death threats. But then, while in New York City, Alyssa and her squad of moonlighting Navy SEALs discover a dead body. And then another one. While investigating a suspect, Alyssa is ambushed and finds herself imprisoned by the deranged serial killer she’s been after for years: The Dentist. Cut off from everyone, Alyssa must call upon all of her strength and skill to survive this confrontation with the sadistic monster, meanwhile trusting that her Troubleshooter teammates—led by her husband, operative Sam Starrett—will reach her before it’s too late
-
Trevayne
KShs 650.00Trevayne was a self-made millionaire by the time he was thirty. Then he went into government, carving out a brilliant and honourable career. Now he is head of one of the biggest foundations in the USA. Fearless, intelligent and incorruptible, he thought no one could touch him…Then his investigation into the ‘secret government’ led him beyond the corridors of official power into a nightmare maze where Mafia leaders and ‘legitimate’ billionaires mixed, where even the Presidency can be bought and sold. And where a man like Trevayne could be a dreaded enemy, a duped victim, or maybe, just maybe, a king.
-
Eclipse
KShs 650.00In a novel of international intrigue, an American lawyer, Damon Pierce, attempts to save Bobby Okari, the West African leader of a protest movement, from execution by the country�s corrupt and autocratic leader. Complicating matters further is Okari�s wife, Marissa Brand, with whom Pierce had a relationship years before that he�s never quite forgotten; she, in fact, persuaded him to take the case in the first place, and it is who she plays a crucial role in the eventual outcome…
Culminating in a dramatic show trial and a desperate race against time, Eclipse combines a thrilling narrative with a vivid look at the human cost of the global lust for oil.
Be the first to review “The Book of Speculation”