Showing results by author "Lucy Rand" in All Categories

Mina is 30 and living in London. She fled there at 20 to reinvent herself to escape her small-town past, but a decade later she is drifting, untethered, and uncertain. When her Moroccan-born father Omar dies, she returns to her childhood home on the Calabrian coast, where he ran a bar called the Tangerinn. It was more than just a bar—it was a gathering place, a haven for migrants and misfits, a dream that Mina's sister, Aisha, is struggling to keep alive.

When Yui loses her mother and daughter in the tsunami, she wonders how she will ever carry on. Yet, in the face of this unthinkable loss, life must somehow continue. Then one day she hears about a man who has an old disused telephone box in his garden. There, those who have lost loved ones find the strength to speak to them and begin to come to terms with their grief. As news of the phone box spreads, people will travel to it from miles around. Soon, Yui will make her own pilgrimage to the phone box, too. But once there she cannot bring herself to speak into the receiver.

On the peaceful Japanese island of Teshima there is Shinzo¯-on no A¯kaibu, a library of heartbeats, a place where the heartbeats of visitors from all around the world are collected. In this small, isolated building, the heartbeats of people who are still alive or have already passed away continue to echo. Several miles away, in the ancient city of Kamakura, two lonely souls meet: Shuichi, a forty-year-old illustrator, who returns to his home-town to fix up the house of his recently deceased mother, and eight-year-old Kenta, a child who wanders like a shadow around Shuichi's house.

Fleeing a pitch-dark past, Emilia Innocenti arrives in a tiny village deep in the mountains of Piedmont, Northern Italy, with one aim: to hide away from the world. Equally intent on cutting himself off from the world is Bruno, one of her only neighbours. In the wake of a devastating loss, living in complete solitude seems like the perfect complement to the pain in his heart. But when Emilia and Bruno meet, the two realise they can't be alone forever—and maybe, they no longer want to be.