Kirjahaku

In rural Wiltshire, England, a six month-old baby disappears from a stroller while its mother is inside a store for just two minutes.A young Englishman begins a summer of adventure on the Greek island of Crete.By pure chance, the two events, although separated by over twenty years, are irrevocably linked by the taverna where the young Englishman ends up helping out.The result is life-changing, both for the mother of the child that disappeared, and for the young Englishman. A chance visit to the same taverna by these two separate individuals brings on a crisis in both of their lives, but will it end well for either?

Adrian Dando has a good marriage, and a steady, if somewhat pedestrian life in the West of England. Without warning it all goes horribly wrong and he is left alone and bereft. Having two friends who have already moved out to Greece, he decides, with their encouragement, to do likewise. After all, a new start, a new life, new experiences, all of these should enable him to kick-start his life again, maybe even bring him some degree of happiness. A 'chance' discovery of a woman's body in a quiet location not far from his home starts a chain of events that just may turn his idyll into a nightmare. But is everything as it seems? With a plot that twists like series of old olive branches, ""Two in the Bush"" carries enough surprises to keep you wondering to the last page.

Two teenage sisters, growing up in the Plaka district of Athens, Greece. Life seems idyllic, and the girls can't think of anything that they ought to worry about, except for having a good time.The only problem is, this is the late 1930's, and things are about to change in ways they could never have imagined.An old woman lies dying in a hospice in the UK. She has an incurable cancer and is in the early stages of dementia. Yet, in her lucid moments, she wants to tell her story, before it's too late and her secrets are lost forever, to the only person who will listen. That person is her nephew, a retired accountant who has the time to sit and keep her company during her long, lonely, final days.Panayiota was a teenager when the Germans walked into Athens in 1941. How she ended up in a hospice in the UK is the subject of an extraordinary tale, during the telling of which her nephew will learn things that will shake what he believes about his family and himself to the very core.

Robbie Ducharme is pursuing his dream, leading clients in canoes down the remote Lower Canyons of the Rio Grande on the Texas/Mexico border. Newly-divorced Janey Hart decides Robbie's week-long canoe trip may be just the thing to help her bond with her distant teenaged daughter. Others find themselves fording these treacherous waters for even greater stakes. Fifteen-year-old Sayda Pacheco is fleeing the gang violence of Honduras, hoping to start a new life in the U.S. Meanwhile, vigilante, Danny Gallagher, aims to stop any "illegals" from crossing the river. In a drama reminiscent of Deliverance, all these characters collide on the Lower Canyons of the Rio Grande. The novel is full of insight into the way people struggle to remake their lives after a major setback. Within its magnificent walls, The Lower Canyons captures the personal and political trials of our times.

When Lewis and his Greek wife Katerini return to the island of her birth for a visit, neither could have predicted the series of events that would unfold, resulting in both of them coming to wonder if they'll ever see each other again. Katerini, though, wonders if she'll even live to see anyone at all. From the author of "The View From Kleoboulos", "A Brief Moment of Sunshine" and "Eve of Deconstruction" comes a dark tale of the results arising from misdeeds done many years in the past - with potentially tragic consequences.

'Moving Islands' is John's seventh memoir book, and it continues very much in the same vein as the previous six, in that it's highly amusing, even laugh-out-loud in places, yet also informative and educational, giving a unique insight into what it's like not only to move to Greece from the UK, but also how one goes about moving from one island to another, a watershed in their lives that neither the author nor his wife had foreseen coming. If you've ever wondered what might be involved in upping sticks and moving house to a different Greek island, always assuming that, like the author, you'd made the life-changing decision to move countries many years earlier, then read this book and you'll either vow never to do it yourself, or to keep this work close-by as a guide for getting through the whole complicated and sometimes hugely frustrating experience.

An affectionate look back at numerous characters that the author has come to know over his more than four decades of being married to a half-Greek girl. Some are funny, some are tragic, but all are life-affirming, in the sense that they've added immeasurably to his experience of Greece, both before and after he moved there to live permanently in August 2005. Each chapter is loosely based on one particular friend, group of friends or acquaintance of the author. This book gives a unique flavour of the country through the many types of ordinary, and the not-so ordinary people who live there. This is a second edition with six extra chapters over the first edition.

A changing climate brings heavy rains to West Texas and gives river guide, Robbie Ducharme, the opportunity to take his clients down a never-before-run desert arroyo.The landscape they enter, the people they encounter, and the relics they find, give these modern-day explorers the thrill of a lifetime. They also threaten Robbie's relationship with the woman he loves and the life of the assistant he admires.In Solitario-The Lonely One, John Manuel asks if we are right to be bold with our lives and the lives of others when the potential rewards are great - or are we venturing where we should not tread?

One evening, Amanda left work as usual. Then she disappeared. No one saw anything. No one knew what had happened to her. There was simply no sign of her. When she allows her estranged birth-father back into her life, 22 year-old Amanda thinks it could only lead to better prospects, and maybe a slightly better bank balance. Yet she is unprepared for just what an effect he was going to have on her life and that of her friends and family. This story shows how the perpetrators of crimes can often become such, simply by allowing themselves to take one step too many down a dangerous path. As the story unfolds, the consequences eventually lead both the perpetrator and the victim to the point of wondering just which of them has the most power, which of them is the dominant participant in the perilous game into which they both become immersed. Amanda wonders if she'll ever see a way out of her nightmare, and her estranged father Philip Trent if he'll have any chance at all of escaping a very long prison sentence. That's always assuming, of course, that the situation doesn't remain unresolved, in which case the stakes are impossibly high, and the future extremely uncertain, for Amanda.