Дэн Вилета – лучшие книги

Англия. Век тому назад, плюс-минус несколько лет. Англия, где люди, порочные в мыслях или делах, отмечены дымом — он истекает из их тел, и это признак человеческого падения. Аристократы не испускают дыма, и это доказательство их праведности и права на власть, ведь низшие классы в отличие от них погрязли в грехе и саже. Элитная школа-пансион, где сыновья богачей готовятся принять власть как свое право по рождению. Учителя, связанные загадочными узами с противоборствующими партиями в высших правительственных кругах. Трое подростков, узнающих, что все, чему их учили, — ложь, и знание это может стоить им жизни. Старинное поместье, чьи…

Vienna, 1948. The war is over, and as the initial phase of de-Nazification winds down, the citizens of Vienna struggle to rebuild their lives amidst the rubble.

Anna Beer returns to the city she fled nine years earlier after discovering her husband's infidelity. She has come back to find him and, perhaps, to forgive him. Traveling on the same train from Switzerland is 18-year-old Robert Seidel, a schoolboy summoned home to his stepfather's sickbed and the secrets of his family's past.

As Anna and Robert navigate an unrecognizable city, they cross paths with a war-widowed American journalist, a hunchbacked young servant girl, and a former POW whose primary purpose is to survive by any means and to forget. Meanwhile, in the shells of burned-out houses and beneath the bombed-out ruins, a ghost of a man, his head wrapped in a red scarf, battles demons from his past and hides from a future that is deeply uncertain for all.

In The Crooked Maid, Dan Vyleta returns to the shadows of war-darkened Vienna, proving himself once again 'a magical storyteller, master of the macabre' (David Park).

Set in Vienna during the first weeks of WWII, Vyleta’s captivating detective story, told from multiple perspectives, examines the paranoia and mistrust of neighbors during the height of Hitler’s regime. Neighborhood physician Dr. Anton Beer, a specialist in nervous disorders and forensics, is asked by his colleague, Dr. Speckstein, to investigate the death and disembowelment of his beloved pet dog. As the mystery of the slain dog deepens, it becomes apparent that the animal’s death may be tied to a serial killer in the city, or perhaps something even more sinister. Also central to the plot are Zuzka, Speckstein’s hypochondriac niece, who becomes fascinated with a mime living across the courtyard, and Anneliese Grotter, a hunchbacked seven-year-old with an alcoholic father. Anton and the two girls are on the verge of unraveling the mystery when Det. Franz Teuben, a zealous Nazi, begins to investigate the killings. Vyleta (Pavel & I) carefully provides political and historical context, resulting in a plot that takes a while to get going. However, when the pace picks up, readers will appreciate the novel’s well-crafted pathos, dark humor, and chills.

Welcome to a world where every desire is visible, rising from the body as a plume of Smoke. A world where bodies speak to one another and infect each other with desire, anger, greed. It is 1909 and this world stands on a precipice - some celebrate this constant whisper of skin to skin, and some seek to silence it forever.

Enter Eleanor, a young woman with a strange power over Smoke and niece of the Lord Protector of England. Running from her uncle and home, she finds shelter in a New York theatre troupe.

Then Nil, a thief hiding behind a self-effacing name. He's an orphan snatched from a jungle-home and suspects that a clue to his origins may lie hidden in the vaults of the mighty, newly-risen East India Company.

And finally Thomas, one of the three people to release Smoke into the world. On a clandestine mission to India, he hopes to uncover the origins of Smoke and lay to rest his doubts about what he helped to unleash.

In a story that crosses continents - from India to England's Minetowns - these three seek to control the power of Smoke. As their destinies entwine, a cataclysmic confrontation looms: the Smoke will either bind them together or forever rend the world.