{"title":"Books by Lisa St Aubin de Terán","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9781914278129","title":"Better Broken Than New","description":"\u003cp\u003eFollowing a successful career as an award-winning, best- selling novelist, in 2004 Lisa St Aubin de Terán retreated to a remote village in northern Mozambique. There she found her own African roots, founded a charity, and confronted new challenges.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMuch has been written about her life and escapades with a trio of Venezuelan exiles, life on an Andean hacienda, her return to literary fame, and two decades living in a crumbling Umbrian palace. But despite all the media hype about her, she managed to hide much of her actual life.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNow, like the Japanese art of kintsugi, in this new memoir Lisa puts the shattered pieces of her life back together, filling in many of the dramatic, and often scandalous, gaps. While her life has been said to be stranger than fiction, it is fiction that has kept her afloat. This autobiography sets the record straight and shows a writer who for over half a century has enjoyed following her dreams, even when those dreams outdistanced her reach.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56308876181877,"sku":"9781914278129","price":19.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781914278129_1e3a25e8-a5af-4563-9369-217e3d55ef74.jpg?v=1786030675"},{"product_id":"9781914278198","title":"The Slow Train To Milan","description":"\u003cp\u003eA new edition of the best-selling, award-winning second book.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eTo Lizaveta, César remained as much of an enigma after two years of their nomadic exile together as he had that first day in Clapham when he took up his peculiar vigil in her mother’s kitchen and showed no signs of shifting out of her life, ever. ‘South America,’ this total stranger had pronounced unaccountably and then had fallen silent until hours later when Lisaveta decided to introduce herself. in response to her name he replied, 'No'.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e'What do you mean \"No\"?' she demanded, but was to remain in the dark on this, as on other vital questions: such as why César’s friends Otto and Elías were on the run and from whom, why she was expected to carry guns on a holiday to Paris, and why there was so thick an atmosphere of mystery about everything when she couldn’t pinpoint the danger. Through her 16-year-old eyes she saw 35-year-old César as old and slightly debauched but strikingly beautiful. His air of dissipated grandeur seemed to disarm almost everyone and she marvelled how even in London he was treated like some kind of protected species or listed building. ‘My friends are waiting for a bullet,’ Cesar told her, 'they don’t shoot people like me'.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFrom London the now indivisible foursome drift southwards from Paris to Milan and back – stopping in Bologna, Grenoble, and Venice – wherever the slow train takes them. They live like divine fugitives, resplendent in silks and Mercedes one month, warding off starvation the next. The danger for Otto and Elías is constant and palpable. For all of them, tension circumscribes an almost flamboyant kind of lassitude.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis new edition accompanies the publication of Lisa’s new memoir, Better Broken Than New.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56309204877685,"sku":"9781914278198","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781914278198_96964ef4-5ff5-45e1-87b8-b1cb729e8bcc.jpg?v=1786030676"},{"product_id":"9781914278259","title":"The Bay of Silence","description":"\u003cp\u003eA new edition of the best-selling fourth novel.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIt all appears innocent enough: a handsome couple in their thirties – she an actress, he a successful graphic designer – revisiting Sestri Levante on the Italian Riviera where they once spent their honeymoon. But it is not at all innocent. The couple have been driven here by paranoia – by a slow dread of what will happen to the two of them and to their daughters if anyone finds out about their baby Amadeo, whose identity, and even whose existence, is at the heart of the schizophrenic illness from which Rosalind has long suffered. Two people hiding the world from each other, Rosalind and William cannot escape the chilling truth that lies at the centre of Lisa St Aubin de Terán's compelling novel.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe resort of Sestri Levante has twin, Janus-facing bays: one which Hans Christian Andersen called the Bay of Fairytales and another which the local people have long called the Bay of Silence. It is to the Bay of Silence that Rosalind now retraces her steps – to the spot where she first encountered the exotic golden stranger Angelo who was to play such a seductive and haunting role on her honeymoon and in her marriage. Both she and her husband independently try to make sense of the tragic events which have engulfed their lives. They each try to analyse the pressure placed on their marriage – which has allowed distressing events to be forgotten and self-delusion to herald the unthinkable.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn her fourth novel, Lisa St Aubin de Terán creates an atmosphere which is profoundly unsettling. She weaves an escalating story of tension and human drama, combining the depth of character analysis which was so admired in The Tiger, with a striking new sense of pace and menace.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLisa St Aubin de Terán is the prize-winning Anglo-Guyanese London-born author of 20 books, including novels, short stories and nonfiction. Much of her writing draws on her varied life experiences. And time warps, rural communities, isolation and grace under pressure are still the dominant themes in both her life and work.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56309205041525,"sku":"9781914278259","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781914278259_bd6c83ab-8061-439b-83b4-e905fa00c67b.jpg?v=1786030677"},{"product_id":"9781914278273","title":"The Hobby","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eA dark psychological police procedural from the award-winning author Lisa St Aubin de Terán\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eA dark psychological police procedural in the tradition of P. D. James and Tana French. When a routine police visit to investigate a peeping-tom complaint uncovers the first thread of a hidden network of abuse and murder, Detective John Custer becomes determined to pursue crimes that others would rather leave buried - even as the narrative enters the minds of those responsible.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhen London police pay a visit to what appears to be nothing more than an elderly peeping tom, they unexpectedly stumble upon a loose thread that leads Detective John Custer into a dismal world of sex crimes, hidden graves and powerful and respected paedophiles. Ignoring the scepticism of his colleagues and superiors, Custer stubbornly follows his intuition to unravel the web of crimes gone cold.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe Hobby is a psychologically layered police procedural that follows Custer and his assistant, Sergeant Jolly Campbell, as they discover a network of crimes. Moving beyond the investigation itself, the narrative also enters the minds of the perpetrators, revealing the disturbing logic and hidden histories behind their crimes. From the fan club of a 1940s child star, through Istanbul, war-torn Burma and Cairo, and back to 1980s Britain, Custer and Campbell seek to bring justice to long-forgotten victims while vying for their own personal redemption.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"The author has an enviable narrative gift, and there is something magical about her deployment of it.\" The Guardian, on Lisa St Aubin de Terán\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA tense and disturbing psychological crime novel likely to appeal to readers of writers such as P. D. James, Ian Rankin, Elizabeth George, Tana French, Kate Atkinson and Alan Parks\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56309276541301,"sku":"9781914278273","price":22.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781914278273_4528528c-1300-4480-95e9-bfac3448cb9b.jpg?v=1786030677"},{"product_id":"9781914278167","title":"Keepers of the House","description":"\u003cp\u003eA new edition of the best-selling, award-winning first book.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhen the Beltrán brothers came to this Andean valley, they found behind barred windows beautiful twin sisters – last in the line of an illustrious conquistador. Through them the Beltrán dynasty was born – a dynasty that ruled the valley for 200 years and was now returning to the dust.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eTwo centuries later, Lydia Sinclair was scarcely out of school when she fell in love with Don Diego Beltrán and left England behind for her husband’s Andean estate. Benito, the family’s oldest retainer, said that through her the valley would not be forgotten: 'Fate has brought you here to us, to chronicle our decline.'\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the night's stillness he told her of romance and battle, drought and pestilence, splendour and suffering.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe characters in the valley's tumultuous history rose up before Lydia as if they still roamed the dusty slopes: Admiral Silence who enjoyed no one's company so decided never to speak again; General Mario who prophesied the ruin of their valley as he decayed from leprosy behind a mask; María Candelaria whose beauty and wildness caused the massacre of nearly half of the Beltráns; La Comadre Matilide, the peasant woman of striking ugliness whom people bribed to stay in their houses because her departure left a sense of ill omen; the aged sisters who sat amidst hoards of china and gambled at cards for their every move. Finally there was Cristóbal Beltrán, who sifted the sand in the hourglass, ageless and all-knowing and indestructable.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOut of the upheaval and decay come a narrative and language astonishing in their fertility. This new edition accompanies the publication of Lisa’s new memoir, Better Broken Than New.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56309385691509,"sku":"9781914278167","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781914278167_e432afcc-d8e4-44af-a616-3093a22980e1.jpg?v=1786030675"},{"product_id":"the-hacienda","title":"The Hacienda","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe Hacienda is an extraordinary memoir from prize-winning novelist, Lisa St Aubin de Terán. At the age of seventeen she followed her husband, South American aristocrat and bank robber Don Jaime Terán, to his hacienda, deep in the Venezuelan Andes. Once there, Jaime virtually left his new bride to fend for herself on the vast sugar-cane and avocado plantation. The Hacienda tells the fascinating story of how, from half starving on a diet of mangoes and guavas and with two pedigree beagles, a pet vulture and one peasant girl for company, Lisa St Aubin de Terán became la Doña – managing the estate, bearing her first child, handling her increasingly unstable husband, and living for seven years amongst la gente, an illiterate, feudal people who she says “have been the greatest influence on my life and work.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Over and over again before I ever went there, I heard the name ‘La Hacienda’. It was a place where sugar-cane grew in unimaginable abundance and avocado pears that dwarfed all others… When I asked where it was, I was told it was in the Andes, never anywhere specific, just en los Andes… when I asked how big it was, the answer was that it stretched as far as the eye could see and then further… Everything else I was told thereafter was woven in a tapestry of myth and history. Characters from the past were discussed and criticised with the same familiarity as the cousins who had just left the breakfast table. Time, it seemed, had warped on the hacienda and spun its web over all its sons and daughters. It spun its web over me.”\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57593979863413,"sku":"9781914278488","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781914278488.jpg?v=1790001561"}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-lisa-st-aubin-de-teran.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}