Gail Anderson-Dargatz – författare

Gail Anderson-Dargatz, the acclaimed and bestselling author of The Cure for Death by Lightning and A Recipe for Bees, brings readers once again into the heart of rural Canada with A Rhinestone Button. As funny as it is tender, it is a novel full of true-to-life characters, natural wonder, and sweet surprises.Despite growing up in the small farming town of Godsfinger, Alberta, Job Sunstrum was always a bit of an outsider. A thin young man with blond, curly hair, he loved baking and cooking, and certainly did not fit in with the rough-and-tumble farm boys around town. Even when Job takes over the farm after his father’s death and his brother’s departure to train as a pastor, his community remains his animals, and perhaps the church women with whom he shares his baking on Sundays. Lonely beyond belief, overwhelmed by religious guilt, and taut with fear at the thought of what life might have in store for him, Job can only turn to God and hope that someday, things will turn around. Only his synesthesia — his ability to see sounds as colours, and feel vibrations as solid forms — provides him with passing moments of solace, but it also reaffirms for him that he experiences the world in a way the other people of Godsfinger could not possibly understand. Then one year, Job’s “tightly coiled” life begins to fall apart, and even the small sureties that got him through the days are torn away from him. The colours even disappear from sounds. Faced with change on every level and not knowing how to live outside the world he was brought up in, Job allows himself to be caught up in the Pentecostal drive of a preacher named Jack Divine, in hopes that clinging to his beliefs, proving his faith, and doing what others expect of him will make everything all right. But when his new-found religious fervour only accelerates his despair and his world continues to crumble, Job is surprised to find that true faith can be found in earthly experiences, and come from the most unlikely of sources. That a world without the familiar colours and shapes of sound is not half-heard, as he feared, but freed to break out in song.Like Anderson-Dargatz’s previous novels, A Rhinestone Button is a loving and magical portrait of small-town life that makes us question what we believe is real, and true.

If you almost had everything that you wanted, how hard would you fight to protect it?

Kira is engaged to the man of her dreams: he’s charming, handsome, wealthy, and a great dad to their baby, Evie, and his thirteen-year-old daughter, Olive. Having grown up with a troubled relationship with her mother and mostly estranged from her father, Kira craves a close family and secure home, and with Aaron, Evie and Olive, she almost has it. The only problem is Aaron’s ex-wife, Madison, who’s out of control and trying to get to Olive. When Kira takes the girls out of town to her childhood summer home and finds out that Madison has followed them, she panics.

Between the beach and the forest on Manitoulin Island, Kira fights to protect Olive, Evie and her fiancé, until a dark secret threatens to unravel the life that is almost hers. With the future she has built hanging in the balance, and her past haunting her at every turn, Kira must choose who to believe and who she wants to be.

En skola utsätts för bombhot på sociala medier. Trots stora insatser hittar man ingen bomb. Journalisten Claire Abbott tror sig veta vem den skyldige är, men polisen lyssnar inte på henne. Nu är det upp till Claire att lösa fallet på egen hand. Hon tar hjälp av skolans vaktmästare. Men tiden är knapp ...

Småstadsjournalisten Claire Abbott har ett sjätte sinne när det gäller svårlösta brott. Hon får syner som leder henne till de skyldiga, och därmed kan hon hjälpa polisen att lösa fallen. Det är både farligt och spännande. Samtidigt får vi följa hennes privatliv och hennes nya förhållande med chefen för räddningstjänsten.

Kampen mot klockan är tredje boken i serien om journalisten Claire Abbott. Böckerna är skrivna av den kanadensiska författaren Gail Anderson-Dargatz. Hon visste redan som 18-åring att hon ville skriva om kvinnor på landsbygden. I dag är hon storsäljande författare och finns utgiven i många länder världen över. Detta är den tredje av hennes böcker som översatts till svenska.

Sagt om första boken i serien, Kidnappad: ”Det är rappt och effektivt skrivet, karaktärerna är tydliga, och antydda stämningar och situationer skapar fin närvarokänsla. Riktigt bra.” Staffan Engstrand, BTJ

Sagt om andra boken i serien, Leka med elden: ”Det är också en riktigt spännande och lite humoristisk roman som både handlar om relationer och att hitta sig själv, men också om ett brott som måste lösas. /.../ En effektivt berättad, trevlig och lagom nervkittlande liten spänningsroman. Pia Lindestrand, BTJ

Viljas böcker är uppskattade av personer som är ovana vid att läsa eller kanske har någon form av lässvårigheter. Språket är enkelt med innehållet är anpassat för vuxna läsare.