Ann-Marie MacDonald Boeken

De vroege jaren zestig. De ruimtevaartwedloop zorgt voor veel opwinding en optimisme, maar de dreiging van de Koude Oorlog is permanent voelbaar. Het gezin McCarthy heeft zich net gevestigd op een rustige luchtmachtbasis in Ontario. De achtjarige Madeleine weet niet dat haar vader Jack algauw verstrikt raakt in een web van geheimen. Zijzelf durft niet te praten over wat er in het nablijfklasje gebeurt. Wanneer een schoolvriendinnetje van Madeleine dood in de bossen wordt gevonden, raakt het leven van de McCarthy's voorgoed ontwricht en leert Madeleine de dubbelzinnigheid van de menselijke moraal kennen - een les die ze pas begint te begrijpen wanneer ze twintig jaar later haar zoektocht naar de waarheid, en de moordenaar voortzet. De kraaien zullen het zeggen is een aangrijpende pageturner over de gevolgen die geheimen hebben voor het eigen leven en dat van een ander.

Noodlottige geschiedenis van een excentrieke familie op Nova Scotia (Canada) in het begin van de twintigste eeuw.

In the late nineteenth century, Charlotte Bell grows up at Fayne, a vast estate straddling the England-Scotland border, isolated by her devoted father, Lord Henry Bell, due to a mysterious condition. Strong-willed and curious, Charlotte thrives in the moorlands, learning the bog's treacherous and healing ways from Byrn, an enigmatic hired man. Her idyllic life is overshadowed by a striking portrait of her mother, a beautiful Irish-American heiress who died giving birth to Charlotte, and her older brother, Charles, who passed away shortly after. When Charlotte’s thirst for knowledge threatens the estate’s boundaries, her father defies tradition and hires a tutor to educate her as he would a son. However, their explorations of the bog uncover an unexpected artefact, prompting her father to arrange a cure for her condition, shattering Charlotte's world. This journey of discovery leads Charlotte to confront family secrets and the essence of her identity, intertwining themes of science, magic, love, and the power of storytelling. The narrative is a magnificent exploration of gender constructs and personal growth, praised for its engaging and beautiful prose.

Mary Rose McKinnon has two children with her partner Hilary and a fractured relationship with her mother Dolly; she also has issues with anger management and lives in fear of hurting the children, these feelings seem somehow rooted in a part of her childhood she has trouble remembering. Is Dolly - the kind of big personality who makes all Mary Rose's friends, and even waiters in coffee shops, exclaim 'I love your Mum!' - really harbouring a dark secret about what caused Mary Rose's childhood injuries, and is Mary Rose doomed to follow the same path with her own children?

Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) is an exuberant comedy and feminist revisioning of Shakespeare’s Othello and Romeo and Juliet. It takes us from a dusty office in Canada’s Queen’s University, into the fraught and furious worlds of two of Shakespeare’s best-known tragedies, and turns them upside-down. Constance Ledbelly is the beleaguered “spinster” academic, and unlikely heroine who embarks on a quest for Shakespearean origins and, ultimately, her own identity. When she deciphers an ancient and neglected manuscript, Constance is propelled through a very modern rabbit hole and lands smack in the middle of the tragic turning points of each play in turn. Her attempts to save first Desdemona, then Juliet, from their harrowing fates, result in a wild unpredictable ride through comedy and near-tragedy, as mild-mannered Constance learns to love, sword-fight, dance Renaissance-style, and master a series of disguises… Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) a gender-bendy, big-hearted and crazily intelligent romp, where irony and anger sing in perfect harmony with innocence and poignancy.