This is the story of Cassandra, the Trojan princess with the gift of prophecy who no one believes, taken home with the Greek king Agamemnon as a trophy of war. It evokes the horrors evoked through brutal wars in unique ways, like the ghosts dead children who haunt Agamemnon’s palace with singing and leaving handprints. Later chapters alternate with those featuring the point of view of Clytmenstra, Agamemnon's queen and killer, who murders Cassandra as well. The consequences of war are personalized in stunning detail, a fresh look at Homer's and Greek tragedy's depictions of these two women.
The exhilarating follow-up to Pat Barker's The Women of Troy and The Silence of the Girls
'Brilliant, masterful . . . Barker strips away the glittering armour of myth' Guardian
After ten blood-filled years, the war is over. Troy lies in smoking ruins as the victorious Greeks fill their ships with the spoils of battle.
Alongside the treasures looted are the many Trojan women captured by the Greeks - among them the legendary prophetess Cassandra, and her watchful maid, Ritsa. Enslaved as concubine - war-wife - to King Agamemnon, Cassandra is plagued by visions of his death - and her…
I love how the different time periods work, all connected to the real stallion Lexington and Jarrett, the slave who’s with him since the day he foaled (and named him Darley). Insights on slavery from slaves’ POV, the Civil War and Reconstruction, horse racing and the owners and plantations, horse art and a Smithsonian search—and more. Beautifully written.
"Brooks' chronological and cross-disciplinary leaps are thrilling." -The New York Times Book Review
"Horse isn't just an animal story-it's a moving narrative about race and art." -TIME
A discarded painting in a junk pile, a skeleton in an attic, and the greatest racehorse in American history: from these strands, a Pulitzer Prize winner braids a sweeping story of spirit, obsession, and injustice across American history
Kentucky, 1850. An enslaved groom named Jarret and a bay foal forge a bond of understanding that will carry the horse to record-setting victories across the South. When the nation erupts in civil war, an…
Set in Nova Scotia and Maine, where the berries are picked by Indians, as they’re still called, this is amoving story, alternating chapters between Joe, the son of the berry-picking family, and Norma, his sister Ruthie, who was kidnapped by a child-hungry town woman and raised as her own. Suspense, sensory details, and so much emotion—guilt, loss, anger, and love—easily expressed by the Indian family and not at all, by Norma’s adoptive family—that influence course of the characters’ lives. I learned a lot about a historical era I knew nothing about.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER 2023 Barnes & Noble Discover Prize Winner Winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction
A four-year-old Mi’kmaq girl goes missing from the blueberry fields of Maine, sparking a mystery that will haunt the survivors, unravel a family, and remain unsolved for nearly fifty years
"A stunning debut about love, race, brutality, and the balm of forgiveness." —People, A Best New Book
July 1962. A Mi’kmaq family from Nova Scotia arrives in Maine to pick blueberries for the summer. Weeks later, four-year-old Ruthie, the family’s youngest child, vanishes. She is last seen by her six-year-old brother,…
Set in Bronze Age Greece, 'Serpent Visions' depicts the enigmatic history of the gender-switching seer Teiresias who changes sexes twice after striking apart coupling serpents. Near death, Teiresias recounts his long-secret adventures as a woman and later as the soothsayer involved with Oedipus and his descendants to his daughter Manto so she will keep his story alive. A character unique to mythology, Teiresias lives in a time where the gods involved themselves in mortal's lives. Zeus and Hera, king and queen of the gods, summon him to settle their nectar-fueled argument, who enjoys sex more, man or woman. His reply, 'Woman,' inspired this book. What in those seven years as woman inspired that reply?
