Russell Banks – författare

Hannah Musgrave is on the run: from her adoring parents, her many lovers, even from herself. As a young woman, she worked for a Boston terrorist group which has put her on the FBI's most wanted list, forcing her to flee to Liberia in West Africa. There, she marries an ambitious young politician and settles down. But, Hannah can never quite bridge the differences between herself and her African husband. Liberia is a country on the verge of explosion and the threat of civil war is ever present. The violent events that follow touch everyone close to Hannah and, once again, she has to flee. This time, though, the past won't disappear.

Owen Brown is the last surviving son of America's most famous political terrorist, John Brown, who in 1859 raided the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, intending to galvanise the Southern slaves into rebellion. Now Owen tells John's story. This incredible novel recreates pre-Civil War America, when slavery was tearing the country apart, and tells of one man's passage from abolitionist to guerrilla fighter and, finally, martyr. Cloudsplitter is a dazzling, suspenseful, heartbreaking story filled with both intimate scenes of domestic life and chilling violence.

Bone is a punked-out teenager, living in a trailer with his alcoholic mother and abusive stepfather. Rejected by his parents, out of school and in trouble with the police, he's now into drugs and shoplifting as he drifts through dope squats and shopping malls. Until, breaking away from a group of biker thieves, he finds refuge in an abandoned school bus with I-Man, an exiled Rastafarian who dramatically changes his life.

July, 1936. Vanessa Cole, notorious for her scandalous affairs with the rich and famous, has returned to her parents' home after the collapse of her second marriage. Rumours are rife as the family gathers to celebrate the 4th of July at the Adirondack Camp deep in their privately-owned wilderness, The Reserve, only to be interrupted by Jordan Groves, who brazenly lands his bi-plane on the pristine Second Lake. Groves is easy prey for Vanessa's blend of electrifying charm and destructiveness. But in order to protect his two young sons and his marriage, he must try to keep his distance. Especially when it becomes clear that Vanessa carries a deeply scarring family secret.

Suspended in a strangely modern-day version of limbo, a young man must create a life for himself in the wake of incarceration. Known only as the Kid, and on probation after doing time for a liaison with an underage girl, he is shackled to a GPS monitoring device and forbidden to live within 2,500 feet of anywhere children might gather. With nowhere else to go, the Kid takes up residence in a makeshift encampment with other convicted sex offenders.Barely beyond childhood himself, the Kid is in many ways an innocent, trapped by impulses and foolish choices. Enter the Professor, a man who has built his own life on secrets and lies. A university sociologist of enormous size and intellect, he finds in the Kid the perfect subject for his research on homelessness and reoffending sex offenders. The two men forge a tentative partnership. But when the Professor's past resurfaces and threatens to destroy his carefully constructed world, the balance in the two men's relationship shifts.Suddenly, the Kid must reconsider everything he has come to believe, and choose what course of action to take when faced with a new kind of moral decision.