Books about Recluse from Amazon.com

Sometimes, when you open the door to thepast, what you confront is your destiny

Reclusive author Vida Winter, famous for her collection of twelve enchantingstories, has spent the past six decades penning a series of alternate livesfor herself Now old and ailing, she is ready to reveal the truth about herextraordinary existence and the violent and tragic past she has kept secret forso long. Calling on Margaret Lea, a young biographer troubled by her ownpainful history, Vida disinters the life she meant to bury for good. Margaret ismesmerized by the author's tale of gothic strangeness -- featuring the beautifuland willful Isabelle, the feral twins Adeline and Emmeline, a ghost, a governess,a topiary garden and a devastating fire. Together, Margaret and Vida confront the ghosts that have haunted them while becoming, finally, transformed by the truth themselves..
Price: $5.98 [Notify me when price goes down.]

From the author of the best-selling Snow Falling on Cedars, a dazzling new novel about youth and idealism, adulthood and its compromises, and two powerfully different visions of what it means to live a good life.

John William Barry has inherited the pedigree—and wealth—of two of Seattle’s elite families; Neil Countryman is blue-collar Irish. Nevertheless, when the two boys meet in 1972 at age sixteen, they’re brought together by what they have in common: a fierce intensity and a love of the outdoors that takes them, together and often, into Washington’s remote backcountry, where they must rely on their wits—and each other—to survive.

Soon after graduating from college, Neil sets out on a path that will lead him toward a life as a devoted schoolteacher and family man. But John William makes a radically different choice, dropping out of college and moving deep into the woods, convinced that it is the only way to live without hypocrisy. When John William enlists Neil to help him disappear completely, Neil finds himself drawn into a web of secrets and often agonizing responsibility, deceit, and tragedy—one that will finally break open with a wholly unexpected, life-altering revelation.
Riveting, deeply humane, The Other is David Guterson’s most brilliant and provocative novel to date.

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Price: $6.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

J. W. Jackson, the ex-Boston cop turned fisherman, cook, and jack-of-all-trades, delves deep into the mysterious depths of his beloved Vineyard in author Philip Craig's most compelling caper yet.

With his wife, Zee, and two kids visiting relatives in "America," J.W. is alone and quickly tiring of his temporary bachelor status. A request from Carole Cohen comes as a blessed diversion. Carole wants J.W. to find the person who's stalking her brother, Roland. Known locally as "The Monk" for his reclusive ways, Roland lives on a beautiful piece of Vineyard real estate that he co-owns with his cousin Sally Oliver. A number of people, including Sally, would do almost anything to convince Roland to sell his valuable property. But does that include violence?

J.W. is happy to take on what looks like a short and easy assignment, though he soon realizes that Roland may lead a more complicated life than his austere living arrangements suggest. And when a body turns up near Roland's land, what seemed like a property dispute takes a detour into murder -- with J.W. in the midst of the action once again.

Featuring a rich mix of money, lust, pride, and jealousy, spiced with a little poignant regret, Vineyard Stalker is a page-turning and deftly plotted addition to this popular and engaging series in which Martha's Vineyard itself is always the star..
Price: $3.10 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Drawing on knowledge based on 20 years as a resident of China, Porter examines the ancient Chinese hermit tradition Part travelogue, part history, part sociology, and part religious study, this record of extraordinary journeys to an unknown China sheds light on a phenomemon unparalleled in the West, and the philosophies that underlie it. Photographs..
Price: $14.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This spiritual classic was written by Lorenzo Scupoli, a sixteenth-century Venetian priest. Immensely popular in its own day, it was ranked by Francis de Sales with the Imitation of Christ. In the general rapport between Western and Eastern Christendom, it reached Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain, who first recognized its immense spiritual worth, and later, in the nineteenth century, Theophan the Recluse, both of whom edited and translated the work.

Rich in its references to the teachings of the saints and Fathers, Unseen Warfare combines the insights of West and East on that spiritual combat which is the road to perfection and the stripping away of all that militates against it. Staretz Theophan wrote in his foreword, "the arena, the field of battle, the site where the fight actually takes place is our own heart and all our inner man. The time of battle is our whole life."

Unseen Warfare is a perfect complement to the Philokalia..
Price: $16.20 [Notify me when price goes down.]

For many mystery readers, Alpine, Washington–Mary Daheim’s fictional small town in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains–has become a beloved second home, a delicious retreat from the stresses of life. Yet the editor of The Alpine Advocate, Emma Lord, knows all too well that the picturesque old logging town is loaded with scandal: family feuds, illicit romance, chicanery, and sometimes deadly violence.

THE ALPINE RECLUSE

In the middle of a hot midsummer night, Emma is awakened by fire trucks rushing to a blaze at the nearby home of newlyweds Tim and Tiffany Rafferty. At daybreak, Tiffany and her unborn child are safe, but Tim, never blessed with good luck in all his thirty-plus years, has perished in the fierce conflagration. Sheriff Milo Dodge suspects murder and arson, and rumors fly from the Burger Barn and Mugs Ahoy to the Grocery Basket and the Venison Inn. Some swear the Rafferty marriage was crumbling. Others hint at stock fraud. A few mention momentary sightings of a possibly mad recluse known as Old Nick.

Sacrificing the heady enticements of a budding romance to nail down a great story, Emma shifts into high investigative gear while her fearless House & Home editor, Vida Runkel, rushes in where angels fear to tread: straight into the private lives of some of Alpine’s most respectable–and now terminally edgy–citizens. But neither Emma nor Vida suspects the unbelievable truth.


From the Hardcover edition..
Price: $1.50 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Hailed for her rich and powerful works of psychological suspense as well as her New York Times bestselling mysteries, Laurie R. King now takes us to a remote cottage in Cornwall where a gripping tale of intrigue, terrorism, and explosive passions begins with a visit to a recluse upon whom the fate of an entire nation may rest—a man code-named . . .

It’s eight years after the Great War shattered Bennett Grey’s life, leaving him with an excruciating sensitivity to the potential of human violence, and making social contact all but impossible. Once studied by British intelligence for his unique abilities, Grey has withdrawn from a rapidly changing world—until an American Bureau of Investigation agent comes to investigate for himself Grey’s potential as a weapon in a vicious new kind of warfare. Agent Harris Stuyvesant desperately needs Grey’s help entering a world where the rich and the radical exist side by side—a heady mix of the powerful and the celebrated, among whom lurks an enemy ready to strike a deadly blow at democracy on both sides of the Atlantic.

Here, among a titled family whose servants dress in whimsical costumes and whose daughter conducts an open affair with a man who wants to bring down the government, Stuyvesant finds himself dangerously seduced by one woman and—even more dangerously—falling in love with another. And as he sifts through secrets divulged and kept, he uncovers the target of a horrifying conspiracy, and wonders if he can trust his touchstone, Grey, to reveal the most dangerous player of all ….

Building to an astounding climax on an ancient English estate, Touchstone is both a harrowing thriller by a master of the genre and a thought-provoking exploration of the forces that drive history—and human destinies..
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From the best-selling author of Drinking: A Love Story, and Appetites: Why Women Want comes this unforgettable collection spanning fifteen years of observations on modern culture and women's lives.

Caroline Knapp's readers are known not just for their number, but for their intense connection to her work. Knapp connected so well in part because of the intense focus she brought to her subjects. Now, with The Merry Recluse: A Life in Essays, Knapp shows us that her vision through a wider lens is as brilliant as through a narrow one. These essays paint the fullest picture of this wonderful writer that we've yet seen, but they are also a full portrait of a writing life, showing how the same themes can engage-and expand-a writer over a lifetime. Knapp, who died in 2002, was considered one of the country's more intelligent and graceful voices in memoirs. This collection also shows her to be a witty, provocative observer of the world around her..
Price: $2.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]