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Ambo/Anthos Ambo/Anthos i(A80426 works by) (Organisation) assertion (a.k.a. Anthos; Ambo)
Born: Established: Amsterdam,
c
Netherlands,
c
Western Europe, Europe,
;
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6 2 y separately published work icon The Night Swim Megan Goldin , ( trans. Roelof Posthuma with title Nachtduik ) Amsterdam : Ambo/Anthos , 2021 19616477 2020 single work novel thriller

'In this new thriller from the author of The Escape Room, a podcast host covering a controversial trial in a small town becomes obsessed with a brutal crime that took place there years before.

'After the first season of her true crime podcast became an overnight sensation and set an innocent man free, Rachel Krall is now a household name – and the last hope for thousands of people seeking justice. But she’s used to being recognised for her voice, not her face. Which makes it all the more unsettling when she finds a note on her car windshield, addressed to her, begging for help.

'The small town of Neapolis is being torn apart by a devastating rape trial. The town’s golden boy, a swimmer destined for Olympic greatness, has been accused of raping a high school student, the beloved granddaughter of the police chief. Under pressure to make Season Three a success, Rachel throws herself into interviewing and investigating – but the mysterious letters keep showing up in unexpected places. Someone is following her, and she won’t stop until Rachel finds out what happened to her sister twenty-five years ago. Officially, Jenny Stills tragically drowned, but the letters insists she was murdered – and when Rachel starts asking questions, nobody seems to want to answer. The past and present start to collide as Rachel uncovers startling connections between the two cases that will change the course of the trial and the lives of everyone involved.

'Electrifying and propulsive, The Night Swim asks: What is the price of a reputation? Can a small town ever right the wrongs of its past? And what really happened to Jenny?' (Publication summary)

4 9 y separately published work icon The Weekend Charlotte Wood , ( trans. Ireen Niessen with title Het weekend ) Amsterdam : Ambo/Anthos , 2021 16866680 2019 single work novel

'The brilliant new novel from Charlotte Wood, acclaimed author of The Natural Way of Things .

'People went on about death bringing friends together, but it wasn't true. The graveyard, the stony dirt - that's what it was like now. They knew each other better than their own siblings, but Sylvie's death had opened up strange caverns of distance between them.

'Four older women with a lifelong friendship of the best kind: loving, practical, frank and steadfast. But when Sylvie dies, the ground shifts dangerously for the remaining three. Can they survive together without her?

'They are Jude, a once-famous restaurateur, Wendy, an acclaimed public intellectual, and Adele, a renowned actress now mostly out of work. Struggling to recall exactly why they've remained close all these years, the grieving women gather for Christmas at Sylvie's old beach house - not for festivities, but to clean the place out before it is sold.

'Without Sylvie to maintain the group's delicate equilibrium, frustrations build and painful memories press in. Fraying tempers, an elderly dog, unwelcome guests and too much wine collide in a storm that brings long-buried hurts to the surface - and threatens to sweep away their friendship for good.

'The Weekend explores growing old and growing up, and what happens when we're forced to uncover the lies we tell ourselves. Sharply observed and excruciatingly funny, this is a jewel of a book, a celebration of tenderness and friendship that is nothing short of a masterpiece.'  (Publication summary)

6 y separately published work icon The Escape Room Megan Goldin , ( trans. Roelof Posthuma with title De escaperoom ) Amsterdam : Ambo/Anthos , 2019 13873943 2018 single work novel thriller

'‘Welcome to the escape room. Your goal is simple. Get out alive.’

'In the lucrative world of Wall Street finance, Vincent, Jules, Sylvie and Sam are the ultimate high-flyers. Ruthlessly ambitious, they make billion-dollar deals and live lives of outrageous luxury. Getting rich is all that matters, and they'll do anything to get ahead.

'When the four of them become trapped in an elevator escape room, things start to go horribly wrong. They have to put aside their fierce office rivalries and work together to solve the clues that will release them. But in the confines of the elevator the dark secrets of their team are laid bare. They are made to answer for profiting from a workplace where deception, intimidation and sexual harassment thrive.

'Tempers fray and the escape room’s clues turn more and more ominous, leaving the four of them dangling on the precipice of disaster. If they want to survive, they’ll have to solve one final puzzle: which one of them is a killer?'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

2 2 y separately published work icon Wife on the Run Fiona Higgins , ( trans. Nellie Keukelaar-van Rijsbergen with title Weg Van Alles ) Amsterdam : Ambo/Anthos , 2015 7761712 2014 single work novel

'A mother's greatest fear... A wife's worst nightmare... What would you do?

'When two technology-related disasters hit within days of each other, Paula knows her comfortable suburban life has been irrevocably blown apart. One involves the public shaming of her teenage daughter, the other is a discovery about her husband that shocks her to her core. With her world unravelling around her, Paula does the only thing that makes any sense to her: she runs away from it all.

'She pulls her children out of school and takes off on a trip across Australia with her elderly father and his caravan. The only rule is No Technology - no phones, no Facebook, no Instagram, no tablets, games or computers. It's time to get back to basics and learn how to be a family again.

'It all sounds so simple - and for a while, it is. But along the way Paula will meet new, exciting complications, and realise that running away is only a temporary solution. The past has to be faced before the future can begin.

'A thrilling, tender and hugely entertaining story of loss, love and discovery from the bestselling author of The Mothers' Group.' (Publication summary)

17 10 y separately published work icon Lost & Found Brooke Davis , ( trans. Harry Pallemans with title De Ongelooflijke Zoektocht Van Millie Bird ) Amsterdam : Ambo/Anthos , 2015 6864471 2014 single work novel (taught in 1 units)

'A heart-warming debut about finding out what love and life is all about.

'At seven years old, Millie Bird realises that everything is dying around her. She wasn't to know that after she had recorded twenty-seven assorted creatures in her Book of Dead Things her dad would be a Dead Thing, too.

'Agatha Pantha is eighty-two and has not left her house since her husband died. She sits behind her front window, hidden by the curtains and ivy, and shouts at passers-by, roaring her anger at complete strangers. Until the day Agatha spies a young girl across the street.

'Karl the Touch Typist is eighty-seven when his son kisses him on the cheek before leaving him at the nursing home. As he watches his son leave, Karl has a moment of clarity. He escapes the home and takes off in search of something different.

'Three lost people needing to be found. But they don't know it yet. Millie, Agatha and Karl are about to break the rules and discover what living is all about.' (Publication summary)

7 39 y separately published work icon Barracuda Christos Tsiolkas , ( trans. Tjadine Stheeman )expression Amsterdam : Ambo/Anthos , 2014 Z1917126 2013 single work novel (taught in 10 units)

'He asked the water to lift him, to carry him, to avenge him. He made his muscles shape his fury, made every stroke declare his hate. And the water obeyed; the water would give him his revenge. No one could beat him, no one came close.

'His whole life Danny Kelly's only wanted one thing: to win Olympic gold. Everything he's ever done - every thought, every dream, every action - takes him closer to that moment of glory, of vindication, when the world will see him for what he is: the fastest, the strongest and the best. His life has been a preparation for that moment.

'His parents struggle to send him to the most prestigious private school with the finest swimming program; Danny loathes it there and is bullied and shunned as an outsider, but his coach is the best and knows Danny is, too, better than all those rich boys, those pretenders. Danny's win-at-all-cost ferocity gradually wins favour with the coolest boys - he's Barracuda, he's the psycho, he's everything they want to be but don't have the guts to get there. He's going to show them all.

'He would be first, everything would be alright when he came first, all would be put back in place. When he thought of being the best, only then did he feel calm.

'A searing and provocative novel by the acclaimed author of the international bestseller The Slap, Barracuda is an unflinching look at modern Australia, at our hopes and dreams, our friendships, and our families.

'Should we teach our children to win, or should we teach them to live? How do we make and remake our lives? Can we atone for our past? Can we overcome shame? And what does it mean to be a good person?

'Barracuda is about living in Australia right now, about class and sport and politics and migration and education. It contains everything a person is: family and friendship and love and work, the identities we inhabit and discard, the means by which we fill the holes at our centre. It's brutal and tender and blazingly brilliant; everything we have come to expect from this fearless vivisector of our lives and world. ' (Publisher's blurb)

6 y separately published work icon The Donor Helen FitzGerald , ( trans. Inge de Heer with title De donor ) Amsterdam : Ambo/Anthos , 2012 Z1873859 2011 single work novel 'Will's 47. His wife bailed out when the twins were in nappies and hasn't been seen since. He coped OK by himself at first, giving Georgie and Kay all the love he could, working in a boring admin job to support them. Just after the twins turn sixteen, Georgie suffers kidney failure and is placed on dialysis. Her type is rare, and Will immediately offers to donate an organ. Without a transplant, she would probably never see adulthood. So far so good. But then Kay gets sick. She's also sixteen. Just as precious. Her kidney type just as rare. Time is critical, and he has to make a decision. Should he buy a kidney - be an organ tourist? Should he save one child? If so, which one? Should he sacrifice himself? Or is there a fourth solution - one so terrible it has never even crossed his mind?' (From the publisher's website.)
14 12 y separately published work icon Mice Gordon Reece , ( trans. Inge de Heer with title Muis ) Amsterdam : Ambo/Anthos , 2011 Z1726667 2010 single work novel young adult thriller

'Shelley and her mom have been menaced long enough. Excused from high school where a trio of bullies nearly killed her, and still reeling from her parents’ humiliating divorce, Shelley has retreated with her mother to the quiet of Honeysuckle Cottage in the countryside. Thinking their troubles are over, they revel in their cozy, secure life of gardening and books, hot chocolate and Brahms by the fire. But on the eve of Shelley’s sixteenth birthday, an unwelcome guest disturbs their peace and something inside Shelley snaps. What happens next will shatter all their certainties—about their safety, their moral convictions, the limits of what they are willing to accept, and what they’re capable of.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

3 y separately published work icon Bloody Women Helen FitzGerald , ( trans. Inge de Heer with title Ex ) Amsterdam : Ambo/Anthos , 2011 10442372 2009 single work novel crime mystery

Returning to Scotland tp organise her wedding, Catriona is overcome with the jitters. She decides to tie up loose ends by seeking out her ex-boyfriends. Trouble is they are all dead and she is getting the blame!

Source: Publisher's Blurb

4 13 y separately published work icon After the Fire, a Still Small Voice Evie Wyld , ( trans. Iris van der Blom with title Na het vuur, een ademloze stilte ) Amsterdam : Ambo/Anthos , 2010 Z1608121 2009 single work novel

'Following the breakdown of a turbulent relationship, Frank moves from Canberra to a shack on the east coast once owned by his grandparents. There, among the sugar cane and sand dunes, he struggles to rebuild his life.

Forty years earlier, Leon is growing up in Sydney, turning out treacle tarts at his parents' bakery and flirting with one of the local girls. But when he's conscripted as a machine-gunner in Vietnam, he finds himself suddenly confronting the same experiences that haunt his war-veteran father.

As these two stories weave around each other - each narrated in a voice as tender as it is fierce - we learn what binds together Frank and Leon, and what may end up keeping them apart.' (From the publisher's website.)

3 6 y separately published work icon The Devil's Staircase Helen FitzGerald , ( trans. Inge de Heer with title De Duivelskamer ) Amsterdam : Ambo/Anthos , 2010 Z1584738 2009 single work novel mystery 'Bronny, a young Australian, finds herself down and out in London. She's a sweet girl who has spent her teenage years in a fearful, cautious bubble. She's never taken drugs, had sex or killed anyone. Within a few weeks she's done all three.

'It all starts when Bronny and her backpacker friends decide to break into a vacant townhouse in London. During the day they work as cleaners, pool attendants and bartenders; at night they take lots of drugs and have sex. The house becomes the centre of their world, and, for a while, Bronny is happier than she ever thought possible. Then the banging noises begin... And what Bronny doesn't realise is that the basement isn't empty.' (From the publisher's website.)

26 114 y separately published work icon The Slap Christos Tsiolkas , ( trans. Paul Bruijn et. al.agent with title De Klap ) Amsterdam : Ambo/Anthos , 2010 Z1739894 2008 single work novel (taught in 40 units)

'At a suburban barbecue, a man slaps a child who is not his own.

'This event has a shocking ricochet effect on a group of people, mostly friends, who are directly or indirectly influenced by the event.

'In this remarkable novel, Christos Tsiolkas turns his unflinching and all-seeing eye onto that which connects us all: the modern family and domestic life in the twenty-first century. The Slap is told from the points of view of eight people who were present at the barbecue. The slap and its consequences force them all to question their own families and the way they live, their expectations, beliefs and desires.

'What unfolds is a powerful, haunting novel about love, sex and marriage, parenting and children, and the fury and intensity - all the passions and conflicting beliefs - that family can arouse. In its clear-eyed and forensic dissection of the ever-growing middle class and its aspirations and fears, The Slap is also a poignant, provocative novel about the nature of loyalty and happiness, compromise and truth.' (Publisher's blurb)

4 y separately published work icon My Last Confession Helen FitzGerald , ( trans. Wim Scherpenisse with title Mijn Laatste Bekentenis ) Amsterdam : Ambo/Anthos , 2010 10442257 2009 single work novel crime

A parole officer in her first month on the job. A convicted murderer. What could go wrong?

When she starts her new job as a parole officer, Krissie is happy and in love. Then she meets convicted murderer Jeremy, and begins to believe he may be innocent. Her growing obsession with his case threatens to jeopardise everything - her job, her relationship and her life.

Source: Publisher's Blurb

14 44 y separately published work icon Wanting Richard Flanagan , ( trans. Ankie Blommesteijn with title Verlangen ) Amsterdam : Ambo/Anthos , 2009 Z1534034 2008 single work novel historical fiction (taught in 5 units)

'It is 1839. A young Aboriginal girl, Mathinna, is running through the long wet grass of an island at the end of the world to get help for her dying father, an Aboriginal chieftain. Twenty years later, on an island at the centre of the world, the most famous novelist of the day, Charles Dickens, realises he is about to abandon his wife, risk his name, and forever after be altered because of his inability any longer to control his intense passion.

'Connecting the two events are the most celebrated explorer of the age, Sir John Franklin - then governor of Van Diemen's Land - and his wife, Lady Jane, who adopt Mathinna, seen as one of the last of a dying race, as an experiment. Lady Jane believes the distance between savagery and civilisation is the learned capacity to control wanting. The experiment fails, the Franklins throw the child onto the streets and into a life of prostitution and alcoholism. A few years later Mathinna is found dead in a puddle. She is nineteen years old. By then Sir John too is dead, lost in the blue ice of the Arctic seeking the North West Passage. A decade later evidence emerges that in its final agony, Franklin's expedition resorted to the level and practice of savages: cannibalism. Lady Jane enlists Dickens's aid to put an end to such scandalous suggestions.

'Dickens becomes ever more entranced in the story of men entombed in ice, recognising in its terrible image his own frozen inner life. He produces and stars in a play inspired by Franklin's fate to give story to his central belief: that discipline and will can conquer desire. And yet the play will bring him to the point where he is finally no longer able to control his own wanting and the consequences it brings.

'Based on historic events, Wanting is a novel about art, love, and the way in which life is finally determined never by reason, but only ever by wanting.' (Provided by publisher.)

5 49 y separately published work icon The Lieutenant Kate Grenville , ( trans. Iris van der Blom with title Het verre paradijs ) Amsterdam : Ambo/Anthos , 2009 Z1515910 2008 single work novel historical fiction (taught in 1 units)

'Daniel Rooke, soldier and astronomer, was always an outsider. As a young lieutenant of marines he arrives in New South Wales on the First Fleet in 1788 and sees his chance. He sets up his observatory away from the main camp, and begins the scientific work that he hopes will make him famous.

'Aboriginal people soon start to visit his isolated promontory, and a child named Tagaran begins to teach him her language. With meticulous care he records their conversations. An extraordinary friendship forms, and Rooke has almost forgotten he is a soldier when a man is fatally wounded in the infant colony. The lieutenant faces a decision that will define not only who he is but the course of his entire life.

'In this profoundly moving novel Kate Grenville returns to the landscape of her much-loved bestseller The Secret River. Inspired by the notebooks of William Dawes, The Lieutenant is a compelling story about friendship and self-discovery by a writer at the peak of her powers.' (Publisher's blurb)

4 31 y separately published work icon The Pages Murray Bail , ( trans. Peter Abelsen with title De bladzijden ) Amsterdam : Ambo/Anthos , 2009 Z1510310 2008 single work novel

'On a family sheep station in western New South Wales, a brother and sister work the property while their reclusive brother, Wesley Antill, spends years toiling away in one of the sheds, writing his philosophy.

'Now he has died. Erica, a philosopher, is sent from Sydney to appraise his life's work. Accompanying her is Sophie, who needs distracting from a string of failed relationships. Her field is psychoanalysis.

'The pages Wesley wrote lie untouched in the shed, just as he left them. What will they reveal? Was he a genius? These turn out to be only a couple of the questions in the air. How will the visit change the lives of Erica and Sophie?' (Publisher's blurb)

8 2 y separately published work icon Blood Kin Ceridwen Dovey , ( trans. Inge de Heer with title Bloedverwanten ) Amsterdam : Ambo/Anthos , 2008 Z1468673 2007 single work novel thriller

'A chef, a portraitist and a barber are taken hostage in a coup to overthrow their boss, the president of a nameless country. They are held captive in a palatial retreat in the mountains high above the capital city. Meanwhile, the chef's daughter, the portraitist's pregnant wife and the barber's lover watch their men from the shadows – for in such precarious times, intimate relationships are as dangerous as political ones. As the old order falls, so does the veil that hides the truth about the secret passions of these men and women.

'Drawing her readers masterfully towards the novel's devastating climax, Ceridwen Dovey reveals how humanity's most atavistic impulses – vanity, vengeance and greed – seethe, relentlessly, just beneath the surface of everyday life. '

4 33 y separately published work icon Orpheus Lost Janette Turner Hospital , ( trans. Nicolette Hoekmeijer with title De stad van Orpheus ) Amsterdam : Ambo/Anthos , 2008 Z1364404 2007 single work novel (taught in 5 units)

'In this compelling reimagining of the Orpheus story, Leela May travels into an underworld of kidnapping, torture and despair in search of her lover, Mishka.

'Leela is a mathematical genius who escaped her hardscrabble Southern home town to study in Boston. It's there that she meets a young Australian musician, Mishka. From the moment she first hears him play, busking in a subway, his music grips her, and they quickly become lovers.

'Then one day Leela is picked up off the street and taken to an interrogation centre somewhere outside the city. There has been an 'incident', an explosion on the underground; terrorists are suspected, security is high. And her old childhood friend Cobb is conducting a very questionable interrogation. Over the years Cobb has never forgotten Leela and the secrets she knows.

'Now he reveals to her that Mishka may not be all he seems. That there may be more to him than growing up in the Daintree rainforest in northern Queensland in an eccentric musical family. Leela has already discovered on her own account that some nights when Mishka claims to be at the music lab are actually spent at a cafe. A cafe, Cobb tells her, known to be a terrorist contact point.

'Who can she believe?

'And then Mishka disappears.' (Publisher's blurb)

2 y separately published work icon Dead Lovely Helen FitzGerald , ( trans. Inge de Heer with title Kleine meisjes ) Amsterdam : Ambo/Anthos , 2007 Z1475854 2007 single work novel mystery

'Krissie Donald has no desire to 'settle down'. Committed men are hers for the taking, but she prefers explosive liaisons to any sort of full-blown relationship. Krissie's best friend, Sarah, couldn't be more different. Married to a good-catch-doctor in her early twenties, it isn't long before Sarah's dying to start a family.

Krissie and Sarah's relationship starts to go awry when Krissie becomes pregnant after a holiday dalliance in Tenerife. For Sarah, who's been trying to conceive for what seems like forever, Krissie's pregnancy can't help but seem a little unfair.

Things between Krissie and Sarah go from bad to worse during a holiday in the Scottish Highlands with Sarah's husband, Kyle. What starts out as an enjoyable and much-needed break soon becomes a nightmarish combination of sexual tension, murder and mayhem. Fast-paced and brilliantly told, with wickedly observed characters and a spectacular denouement, Dead Lovely is a compulsive read from start to finish.' (Publisher's blurb)

15 58 y separately published work icon The Unknown Terrorist Richard Flanagan , ( trans. Ton Heuvelmans with title De onbekende terrorist ) Amsterdam Antwerp : Manteau Ambo/Anthos , 2006 Z1297994 2006 single work novel (taught in 1 units)

'Gina Davies, aka The Doll, is a 26-year-old pole dancer at the Chairman's Lounge in Sydney's Kings Cross. She's a flawed woman, racist, obsessed with money, who finds her life suddenly being destroyed by the things she has up until that moment most firmly believed in. The evening of the Mardi Gras, 2007. Three unexploded bombs have been found that day at Homebush Stadium, so the country is on high-alert. When wandering through the Mardi Gras' crowds the Doll runs into a good-looking, young dark man. They end up at his place. When she wakes, it's Sunday morning and he has gone. She is getting a coffee in a café opposite the apartment block she spent the night in when she sees armed police surround the building she has just left. Later in the day while shopping in the city she sees a story on a big video screen in which the news is of a suspected terrorist entering the same building she had spent the night in. That night, on television news, the story has altered a little. In an exclusive, the network has security camera footage of the terrorist entering the building the night before with an accomplice, a woman she recognises as herself. And so a case is brought against her by the media, and the hunt for her begins. From a 26-year-old pole dancer in the Chairman's Lounge, she quickly becomes the most wanted woman in Australia as every truth of her life is turned into a lie...' (Publisher's blurb)

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