3 Books by Rachael King
Requirements: ePUB Reader | 785+397+263 kB | Version: Retail
Overview: Rachael King has worked in radio, television and magazines, and played bass guitar in several bands. She now writes full time and lives in Wellington. She is the recipient of the 2005/2006 Lilian Ida Smith Award.
Genre: Historical Fiction | New Zealand
Magpie Hall: “There were two rumours surrounding my great- great-grandfather Henry Summers: one, that his cabinet of curiosities drove him mad; and, two, that he murdered his first wife.” Rosemary Summers is a collector of tattoos and vintage clothing, and an amateur taxidermist. Grappling with her unfinished thesis on the Gothic Victorian novel and grieving the death of her beloved grandfather, she returns to Magpie Hall alone to collect her inheritance – her grandfather’s prized taxidermy collection, started by her great-great grandfather Henry Summers more than 100 years ago. However, his legacy extends beyond mere taxidermy and leads to a cabinet of Victorian curiosities; a proverbial ‘Pandora’s Box’. Will it explode the lid on the secret lives of Henry Summers and his wife, Dora, and throw a new light on her mysterious disappearance?
Magpie Hall explores the fleshly taboo around class and tattoos in the Victorian era; the intimacy and atavistic nature of a marriage and contemporary relationships; the potentially obsessive/ compulsive behaviour of collecting flora, fauna (and other things) that can decimate native species and ruin lives. A modern-day ghost story with a twist, this is story- telling at its most visceral and sublime. Magpie Hall is a multi-layered story; a delectable Gothic novel inside a ghost story inside a Gothic novel. Rachael King brings a sharp, dark edge to this literary drama and a playfulness to the genre of the Gothic novel. She recalls the ghostly spirit of Wuthering Heights and evokes past and present-day New Zealand with intelligence and ease.
The Sound of Butterflies: It is 1903. Thomas Edgar, a passionate collector of butterflies, is offered the chance of a lifetime: to travel to the Amazon as part of a scientific expedition. Hoping to find the mythical butterfly that will make his name and immortalise that of his wife, Sophie – for if he finds it, he will call it the "Papilo Sophia" – he eagerly accepts the invitation, and embarks on a journey that will take him to a whole new world.
On his return, Sophie greets her husband at the railway station, and is appalled by the change in him: he is thin, obviously sick, and apparently so traumatised by what he witnessed while he was away, he has been rendered mute. As Thomas struggles to find the words to describe what he’s seen, it’s unclear whether or not Sophie – and their marriage – will be able to withstand what he has to tell her, for the story that unfolds, the story behind Thomas’s silence, is one of great brutality. Like the butterflies Thomas is so obsessed by, the butterflies that he catches and kills, it’s a story of men who have been dazzled by surface splendour and wealth, and consequently refuse to acknowledge its underlying cruelty. But when that cruelty ends in murder, the question for Thomas – and Sophie – is whether or not he should be the one to speak out.
Red Rocks: Adventure tinged with magic when a boy finds a sealskin in a cave in this exciting junior novel. Winner of Esther Glen Medal 2013. While holidaying at his father’s house, Jake explores Wellington’s wild south coast, with its high cliffs, biting winds, and its fierce seals. When he stumbles upon a perfectly preserved sealskin, hidden in a crevice at Red Rocks, he’s compelled to take it home and hide it under his bed, setting off a chain of events that threatens to destroy his family. Red Rocks takes the Celtic myth of the selkies, or seal people, and transplants it into the New Zealand landscape, throwing an ordinary boy into an adventure tinged with magic. With its beautiful writing and eerie atmosphere, junior readers will be thrilled and moved by this captivating story.Shortlisted for the NZ Post Children’s Book Awards 2013.
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