VENDELA VIDA

Smart, perceptive, elegant, sad, surprising and addictive. And its also FUNNY. Nick HornbyWhat We Run the Tides probes so poignantly is the volatility of female adolescence... Knowing and powerfully enigmatic.Observer Teenage Eulabee and her magnetic best friend, Maria Fabiola, own the streets of Sea Cliff, their foggy oceanside San Francisco neighbourhood. They know Sea Cliffs homes and beaches, its hidden corners and eccentric characters - as well as the upscale all-girls school they attend. One day, walking to school with friends, they witness a horrible act - or do they? Eulabee and Maria Fabiola vehemently disagree on what happened, and their rupture is followed by Maria Fabiolas sudden disappearance - a potential kidnapping that shakes the quiet community and threatens to expose unspoken truths. Suspenseful and poignant, We Run the Tides is Vendela Vidas masterful portrait of an inimitable place on the brink of radical transformation. Pre-tech boom San Francisco finds its mirror in the changing lives of the teenage girls at the centre of this story of innocence lost, the pain of too much freedom, and the struggle to find ones authentic self. Told with a gimlet eye and great warmth, We Run the Tides is both a gripping mystery and a tribute to the wonders of youth, in all its beauty and confusion.We Run the Tides is hypnotic, knowing, and propulsive as it examines girlhood, friendship, and the strong pull of the past. Meg Wolitzer

I missed a train stop twice on the same journey while reading it. Thats how distractingly good it is. -- Viv Groskop, Independent on Sunday Yvonne is newly widowed, her children grown. Hoping to revisit memories of a happier time, she travels to Turkey. Despite the sand and sea, Yvonnes memories of her past are overwhelming and she clings to a newfound friendship with Ahmet, a local boy who makes his living as a shell collector. With Ahmet as her guide, Yvonne finally begins to enjoy the shimmering waters and relaxed pace of the Turkish coast. But when a devastating accident suddenly upends her hard-won peace, she finds her life thrown into chaos and with it her fragile sense of belonging.

Part glamorous travelogue, part slow-burn mystery, this full-bodied tale of a runaway is at once formally inventive and heartbreakingly familiar... (Its also insanely funny.) -- Lena Dunham From the acclaimed author of Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name and The Lovers comes a tensely drawn, spellbinding literary thriller. In Vendela Vidas taut and mesmerizing novel of ideas, a woman travels to Casablanca, Morocco, on mysterious business. Almost immediately, while checking into her hotel, she is robbed, her passport and all identification stolen. The crime is investigated by the police, but the woman feels there is a strange complicity between the hotel staff and the authorities-she knows shell never see her possessions again. Stripped of her identity, she feels both burdened by the crime and liberated by her sudden freedom to be anyone at all. Then, a chance encounter with a film crew provides an intriguing opportunity: A producer sizes her up and asks, would she be willing to be the body-double for a movie star filming in the city? And so begins a strange journey in which shell become a stand-in-both on-set and off-for a reclusive celebrity who can no longer circulate freely in society while gradually moving further away from the person she was when she arrived in Morocco.

A gun is pointed at 21-year-old Ellis as she walks through a New York park. Although she escapes unharmed she is left psychologically reeling. Over the next few weeks Ellis keeps everyone at bay: the police, suitors who want to save her, and the university therapist who hints that her sweaters are too tight. But when Ellis accompanies her mother, a nurse, on a mission in the Philippines, she finds the life - even if held up - cannot be held back, and neither, finally, can she.

An exciting plot which follows the emotional journey of a confused young woman from NY to Helsinki. The constantly flowing narrative carries you along whilst dealing with the serious issues of imagination and credibility. A very good read!

n Vendela Vida's taut and mesmerizing novel of ideas, a woman travels to Casablanca, Morocco, on mysterious business. While checking into her hotel, the woman is robbed of her wallet and passport - all of her money and identification. Though the police investigate, the woman senses an undercurrent of complicity between the hotel staff and the authorities - she knows she'll never recover her possessions. Stripped of her identity, she feels burdened by the crime yet strangely liberated by her sudden freedom to be anyone she chooses. A chance encounter with a movie producer leads to a job posing as a stand-in for a well-known film star. The star reels her in deeper, though, and soon she's inhabiting the actress's skin off set, too - going deeper into the Casablancan night and further from herself. And so continues a strange and breathtaking journey full of unexpected turns, an adventure in which the woman finds herself moving further and further away from the person she once was. Told with vibrant, lush detail and a wicked sense of humour, The Diver's Clothes Lie Empty is part literary mystery, part psychological thriller - an unforgettable novel that explores free will, power, and a woman's right to choose not her past, perhaps not her present, but certainly her future. This is Vendela Vida's most assured and ambitious novel yet.