Douglas Kennedy Boeken

In En de liefde, dat zich afspeelt in New York, vertelt Douglas Kennedy het tragische liefdesverhaal van Sara Smythe en Jack Malone. Hij doet dat tegen de achtergrond van het vrolijke optimisme van de jaren kort na de Tweede Wereldoorlog en de politieke repressie die daarop al snel volgde. En de liefde is een indringende roman die met veel emotie verhaalt van loyaliteit, morele keuzes en de duistere wegen van het Lot. New York, eind 1945. Eric Smythe geeft een daverend feest voor zijn talrijke vrienden. Tot de gasten behoort ook zijn zus Sara - een onafhankelijke jonge vrouw die aan het begin van een veelbelovende carrière staat. Dan komt, onuitgenodigd, Jack Malone binnen. Hij is oorlogscorrespondent en pas terug uit het verslagen en verwoeste Duitsland. Zijn kijk op de wereld is totaal anders dan die van de overige feestgangers. De ontmoeting tussen Sara en Jack zal beider levens ingrijpend veranderen.

On the face of it, Ben Bradford is a standard Wall Street hotshot - six-figure income, wife and two young kids straight out of a Gap catalogue. But with the WASP lifestyle comes the sting: Ben hates it. Whe he realizes that the state of his marriage has less to do with baby-induced sleeplessness and more to do with a wife who's playing outside the ground, a moment of madness provides Ben with the opportunity to redesign his life. But as the roller-coaster trajectory of his new existence takes hold, he begins to question the price of fulfilment. Because finding yourself means nothing when you're pretending to be someone else.

'Accomplished...a strangely mesmerising effect...absolutely excellent'New StatesmanNew York, 1980sAlice Burns - a young book editor - is deep into a manuscript about the morass of family life.

On the face of it, Ben Bradford is your standard Wall Street hot shot - Junior partner in a legal firm, 6 figure income, wife and two young kids straight out of a Gap catalogue. But along with the WASP lifestyle comes the sting - Ben hates it. He wants - has always wanted - to be a photographer. When he discovers his wife is playing outside the ground, the conseqences of a moment of madness force him to question not just the design of his life but the price of fulfiment. Because finding yourself means nothing when you're pretending to be someone else. From the picket fences of yuppie New England to Montana's untouchable splendour, THE BIG PICTURE spans states and states of mind in a thrilling novel of genuine originality.

Before Isabelle I knew nothing of sex. Before Isabelle I knew nothing of freedom. Before Isabelle I knew nothing of life. Paris in the early Seventies. Sam, an American student, meets a woman in a bookshop. Isabelle is enigmatic, beautiful, older and, unlike Sam, experienced in love's many contradictions. Sam is instantly smitten but wary of the wedding ring on her finger. What begins as a regular arrangement in Isabelle's tiny Parisian apartment transforms into a true affair of the heart, and one which lasts for decades to come. Isabelle in the Afternoon is a novel that questions what we seek, what we find, what we settle for and shows how love, when not lived day in, day out, can become the passion of a lifetime.

Thomas Nesbitt is a divorced American writer living a very private life in Maine. Until, one wintry morning, his solitude is disrupted by the arrival of a package postmarked Berlin. But what is more unsettling is the name accompanying the return address on the package- Petra Dussmann. For she is the woman with whom Thomas had an intense love affair twenty-five years before in a divided Berlin, where people lived fearfully under the shadows of the Cold War. And so Thomas is forced to grapple with a past he has always kept hidden. For Petra Dussman was a refugee from the police state of East Germany. And her tragic secrets were to re-write both their destinies.

America in the Sixties was an era of radical upheaval - of civil rights protests and anti-war marches; of sexual liberation and hallucinogenic drugs. More tellingly, it was a time when you weren't supposed to trust anyone over the age of thirty; when, if you were young, you rebelled against your parents and their conservative values. But not Hannah Buchan. Hannah is a great disappointment to her famous radical father and painter mother. Instead of mounting the barricades and embracing this age of profound social change, she wants nothing more than to marry her doctor boyfriend and raise a family in a small town. Hannah gets her wish. But once installed as the doctor's wife in a nowhere corner of Maine, boredom sets in ... until an unforeseen moment of personal rebellion changes everything. Especially as Hannah is forced into breaking the law. For decades, this one transgression in an otherwise faultless life remains buried. But then, in the charged atmosphere of America after 9/11, her secret comes out and her life goes into freefall.

This is serious popular fiction -- a true page-turner -- about an American woman in London whose entire life is turned upside down, and London becomes a very foreign place. This is the story of Sally Goodchild, a thirty-seven-year-old American, who, after nearly two decades as a highly independent journalist, suddenly finds herself pregnant and in London, married to an English foreign correspondent, Tony Thompson, whom she met while they were both on assignment in Cairo. From the outset, Sally’s relationship with both Tony and London is an uneasy one -- especially as she finds her husband and his city to be far more foreign than she imagined. But her adjustment problems are soon overshadowed by a troubled pregnancy. When she goes into premature labour, there are doubts whether her child will survive unscathed. And then, out of nowhere, Sally is hit by an appalling post-natal depression -- a descent into a temporary, but very personal hell, which even sees her articulating a homicidal thought against her baby. However, when she does manage to extricate herself from this desperate dark wood, she finds herself in a fresh new nightmare -- as she discovers that everything can be taken down and used against you…especially by a spouse who now considers you an unfit mother and wants to bar you from ever seeing your child again. From the Trade Paperback edition.

In the heady strangeness of Morocco, Paul is everything Robin wants him to be - passionate, talented, knowledgeable. Robin is convinced that it is here she will finally become pregnant. But when Paul disappears, and Robin finds herself under suspicion, everything changes. Suddenly she is on a roller-coaster journey into a heart of darkness that asks the question : What would you be capable of doing if your life depended on it ?

Douglas Kennedy's outstanding new novel, THE JOB, is a thrilling page-turner involving downsizing, blackmail and murder in the Manhattan business world. Ned Allen is young, smart, and upwardly mobile. Several years into his career as an ad salesman for a successful computer magazine, Ned's finally left his small-town roots behind, and is certain that the sophisticated Manhattan world he covets is his forever. His wife Lizzie is also a rising star of a prestigious PR firm. It seems that Ned's made it. But then what appeared to be a career break shows its true colours. Ned's forced to make some tough calls, among them a question of ethics and the small matter of whether to lie to his wife - and when the tough calls just keep getting tougher he finds himself on the brink of losing everything ... Cautionary tale, compelling thriller, portrait of a man on the edge, Douglas Kennedy's THE JOB is a ruthlessly entertaining exploration of the fragility of modern life and the depths we'll go to in our quest to preserve it.