Helen Dunmore Books In Order

Amina’s Blanket

Yellow Bananas are captivating chapter books designed to help young readers make the transition from storybooks to text based books. The next level up from Blue Bananas, each book features short chapters, engaging full color illustrations, and a strong story about interesting characters. As their reading abilities develop, kids will want to make the jump from Blue to Yellow Bananas! As Josie and the other children in her class make a beautiful patchwork quilt to send to a war torn country, Amina who lives far away, shivers in her darkened apartment surrounded by noisy explosions. One night in a dream, Josie visits Amina, experiences the traumas of war, and discovers a very special secret that her friends at school don’t know.

Bestiary

A collection of poems about a range of beasts, both real and imaginary.

Clyde’s Leopard

Clyde’s Leopard has been written by Helen Dunmore, award winning author of both adult and children’s fiction, and winner of the Orange prize for fiction. When Clyde saw the leopard at the zoo, trapped in a cage, he knew he had to somehow set it free. Then one day, an artist called Sam Florio visits Clyde’s school. Sam just might have the answer to Clyde’s dilemma. Clyde’s Leopard is one of thirteen books that make up Independent Reading Level B, for children in Year 4/Primary 5. This phase of Cambridge Reading aims to extend children’s reading tastes and understanding of language features, and motivate them to enjoy reading. The book has black and white illustrations, helping to make the book accessible and attractive to its target readership.

Great-Grandma’s Dancing Dress

Great Grandma’s Dancing Dress has been written by Helen Dunmore, award winning author of both adult and children’s fiction, and winner of the Orange prize for fiction. Rosa doesn’t know how to break free from her friendship with the horrible Charmaine. But Rosa’s great grandma has a story to tell that will help Rosa to make an important decision. Great Grandma’s Dancing Dress is one of thirteen books that make up Independent Reading Level B, for children in Year 4/Primary 5. This phase of Cambridge Reading aims to extend children’s reading tastes and understanding of language features, and motivate them to enjoy reading. The book has black and white illustrations, helping to make the book accessible and attractive to its target readership.

The Zillah Rebellion

When Rudolph comes down with the flu, it’s up to Rover the dog and the Mack children to help Santa complete his Christmas deliveries.

The Siege

Called ‘elegantly, starkly beautiful’ by The New York Times Book Review, The Siege is Helen Dunmore’s masterpiece. Her canvas is monumental the Na*zis’ 1941 winter siege on Leningrad that killed six hundred thousand but her focus is heartrendingly intimate. One family, the Levins, fights to stay alive in their small apartment, held together by the unlikely courage and resourcefulness of twenty two year old Anna. Though she dreams of an artist’s life, she must instead forage for food in the ever more desperate city and watch her little brother grow cruelly thin. Their father, a blacklisted writer who once advocated a robust life of the mind, withers in spirit and body. At such brutal times everything is tested. And yet Dunmore’s inspiring story shows that even then, the triumph of the human heart is that love need not fall away. ‘The novel’s imaginative richness,’ writes The Washington Post, ‘lies in this implicit question: In dire physical circumstances, is it possible to have an inner life? The answer seems to be that no survival is possible without one.’ Amid the turmoil of The Siege, the unimaginable happens two people enter the Levins’ frozen home and bring a kind of romance where before there was only bare survival. A sensitive young doctor becomes Anna’s devoted partner, and her father is allowed a transcendent final episode with a mysterious woman from his past. The Siege marks an exciting new phase in a brilliant career, observed Publishers Weekly in a starred review: ‘Dunmore has built a sizable audience…
but this book should lift her to another level of literary prominence.’ ‘Dunmore’s…
novel…
is an intimate record of an extraordinary human disaster…
a moving story of personal triumph and public tragedy.’ Laura Ciolkowski, San Francisco Chronicle ‘In Helen Dunmore’s hands, this epic subject assumes a lyrical honesty that sometimes wrenches but more often lifts the spirit.’ Frances Taliaferro, The Washington Post ‘Dunmore unravels the tangle of suffering, war, and base emotions to produce a story woven with love…
Extraordinary.’ Barbara Conaty, Library Journal starred review

Ingo

I wish I was away in Ingo Far across the briny sea, Sailing over deepest waters Where love nor care never trouble me…
.

By the Cornwall coast where Sapphire lives with her family, it’s easy to hear the call of the sea. Too easy.

When the sea called to Sapphy’s father, he vanished from her life. When the sea called to her brother, he started disappearing for hours on end. And now the sea is calling to Sapphy, and she feels its pull more strongly than she’s ever felt anything in her life.

In a novel full of longing, mystery, and magic, Helen Dunmore takes us to a new world that has the power both to captivate and to destroy. At the waterline, the two worlds of Air and Ingo meet. Sapphy and her brother, Conor, find themselves at the boundary between these worlds, in a place of danger and amazing discoveries.

The Tide Knot

In a seaside town of sandy beaches and ocean breezes, Sapphy has never felt so far from the sea. The crowded shore at St. Pirans is nothing like the cove at Sapphy’s old home, where she first found her way into the underwater world of Ingo.

But Ingo’s pull is strong, and it always finds a way. Soon Sapphy and her brother, Conor, are swimming beneath the waves again, riding the currents and teasing their Mer friend Faro. As Sapphy goes deeper into Ingo, she learns to feel more at home in the sea even as she begins to be aware of its dangers.

There’s the danger of going in too deep, and breaking the delicate balance between Sapphy’s life on land and her life in Ingo. There’s the mysterious disappearance of Sapphy’s father, an experienced sailor who should never have drowned. And then there’s Ingo itself a restless power as old as the world, as strong as the tides, and more dangerous than anything Sapphy has ever known.

The Deep

Sapphire lives in two worlds. On land she walks the rocky shores of the Cornwall coast but under the sea she can swim like a seal by the side of her Mer friend Faro. Now both of Sapphy’s worlds are threatened. In the profound depths of the ocean, where the Mer cannot go, a monster called the Kraken is stirring. He has the power to sweep Ingo away and shake the land from its foundation. Because of her mixed blood, Sapphire can enter The Deep. With a great whale as her guide, she will journey to a place so far from the sun, no light can find it and confront an evil that’s even darker.

Burning Bright

A 16 year old girl leaves home to live with her Finnish lover, Kai and his business partner, Tony. Nadine is bright but naive, she likes feeling looked after and doesn’t question where the money comes from. The story charts her growing friendship with the elderly Enid who is a sitting tenant.

A Spell of Winter

First Winner of the Orange Prize for best novel in the English language written by a woman. An electrifying and original talent, a writer whose style is characterized by a lyrical, dreamy intensity. The Guardian Helen Dunmore’s most celebrated work is a compelling turn of the century tale of innocence corrupted by secrecy, and the grace of second chances. Catherine and her brother, Rob, do not know why they have been abandoned by their parents. In the house of their grandfather, they forge a passionate refuge for themselves while the world outside moves to the brink of war. Through decades of changing seasons, the two siblings mature within an enclosed world, surrounded by servants who guard the mysteries of their heritage. First Rob and then Catherine will dare to break through the wall that encircles their stifled lives…

Talking to the Dead

Praised by critics on both sides of the Atlantic for its elegant and sensuous prose, ‘Talking to the Dead‘ tells the story of two sisters whose lives are bound by the hidden and surprising truth about the long ago death of their infant brother.

Your Blue Eyed Boy

When the letter arrives opposite side of the ocean, Simone, a thirty eight year old judge, suspects that a long ago lover has targeted her for ‘the most intimate of crimes,’ black mail. The prospects shatters an already tenuous peace: Simone is shouldering the burden of her husband’s breakdown, her family’s mounting debts, and the unexpected demands of a new job. Soon the ripple of terror that flows through Simone’s world like the ghost of a former self threatens to propel her public and private lives onto a harrowing collision course.

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Mourning Ruby

Abandoned as a baby, Rebecca has no tie to her parents other than the men’s size eleven shoebox in which she was found. Yet she grows from a child of no one and nowhere into a woman who creates her own unorthodox but tender family. First, there is Joe a brilliant historian and loyal friend who longs for more than Rebecca can give him, but whose devotion sustains her. Adam, Joe’s friend, is the man who becomes her husband. And Ruby is the daughter whom Rebecca loves with almost unbearable intensity. Then this hopeful life is dealt a blow that could shatter the strongest ties. Rebecca flees her marriage, and Adam sinks into a life numbed by routine and isolation. In the end, it is Joe who enables them to find the way back to understanding, and offers Rebecca a history that she can call her own. Illuminated by both sorrow and vivid joy, Mourning Ruby is ultimately about the transcendent power of storytelling itself.

House of Orphans

Set in Finland in the year 1901: Eeva, the young orphaned daughter of a revolutionary, is sent from the orphanage to work as housekeeper for Thomas, a widowed country doctor. Her challenging, independent, enigmatic presence disturbs Thomas as much as it fascinates him. Their relationship will shatter all the certainties of his life. Meanwhile, Eeva is drawn back to Helsinki, to the comrades of her childhood, and in particular to Lauri, the son of her father’s friend. It is a world full of danger. For this is Finland in political ferment the power of the Russian Empire over its subject peoples is growing more oppressive, but resistance to the Tsar’s rule is growing too, both in Finland and in Russia. Some call such resistance terrorism; others call it a fight for freedom. Just as Helen Dunmore’s ‘The Siege’ is a novel about how huge public events bear down on private lives, so ‘House of Orphans‘, while a spellbinding story of love and loneliness is also about the tension between reform and revolution, and a country emerging into Independence.

Counting the Stars

In the heat of Rome’s long summer, the poet Catullus and his older married lover, Clodia Metelli, meet in secret. Living at the heart of sophisticated, brittle and brutal Roman society at the time of Pompey, Crassus and Julius Caesar, Catullus is obsessed with Clodia, the Lesbia of his most passionate poems. He is jealous of her husband, of her maid, even of her pet sparrow. And Clodia? Catullus is ‘her dear poet’, but possibly not her only interest…
Their Rome is a city of extremes. Tenants are packed into ramshackle apartment blocks while palatial villas house the magnificence of the families who control Rome. Armed street gangs clash in struggles for political power. Slaves are the eyes and ears of everything that goes on, while civilization and violence are equals, murder is the easy option and poison the weapon of choice. Catallus’ relationship with Clodia is one of the most intense, passionate, tormented and candid in history. In love and in hate, their story exposes the beauty and terrors of Roman life in the late Republic.

The Greatcoat

A terrifyingly atmospheric ghost story by the Orange prize winning Helen Dunmore. In the summer of 1954, newly wed Isabel Carey arrives in a Yorkshire town with her husband Philip. As a GP he spends much of his time working, while Isabel tries hard to adjust to the realities of married life. Life is not easy: she feels out of place and constantly judged by the people around her, so she spends much of her time alone. One cold winter night, Isabel finds an old RAF greatcoat in the back of a cupboard that she uses to help keep warm. Once wrapped in the coat she is beset by dreams. And not long afterwards, while her husband is out, she is startled to hear a knock at her window, and to meet for the first time the intense gaze of a young Air Force pilot, handsome, blond and blue eyed, staring in at her from outside. His name is Alec, and his powerfully haunting presence both disturbs and excites Isabel. Her initial alarm soon fades, and they begin a delicious affair. But nothing could have prepared her for the truth about Alec’s life, nor the impact it will have on her own marriage.

Love of Fat Men

In this collection of short stories, the author takes the reader into a sensuous world of endless winters and midnight sun. As far apart as Finland, the Austrian Tyrol, and upstate New York, these stories come alive to the touch of estrangement, misunderstanding, sexuality and loss.

Ice Cream

With Ice Cream, her first story collection published in the United States, award winning New York Times notable author of The Siege and A Spell of Winter, Helen Dunmore confirms her status as a world class storyteller. In each taut, agile tale, characters negotiate situations that are often both mundane and bizarre: a cafeteria cook confronts her Polish pen pal; a divorced mother gains insight from a parking meter; a beautiful, thin, and famous woman succumbs to the lure of comfort food. In several stories a soulful, curious woman named Ulli takes up residence in the reader’s imagination stumbling across a strange collector of religious icons, contemplating a youthful pregnancy, and remembering a troubled lover. In Ice Cream, Dunmore reveals both her poet’s ear for the concise and piercing potentialities of language and the novelist’s ambition of scope.

Out of the Blue

Presents a comprehensive selection from the poet’s seven previous books of poetry.

Glad Of These Times

In crack haunted alleys, overhangs,/ plots of sour earth that pass for gardens,/ in the space between wall and wheelie bin// in all these places the city lilacs are pushing/ their cones of blossom into the spring. With a keen eye for detail and an ear for the sweet, subtle music of the world around her, Dunmore proves herself to be as adept at unwinding wry, curious, and fascinating stories in her poetry as she is in her acclaimed fiction e.g., A Spell of Winter. These new poems, her first collection since Out of the Blue: Poems 1975 2001, continue her lyrical investigation into the corners of life quiet, joyous, or dark. Honest and generous, this work can also be haunting: ”a bunch of violets/ laid on a grave, and a woman walking,/ and black rain falling on the headstone/ of ‘the handsomest man I’ve ever seen.”’ This tender yet intense new collection is recommended, particularly for contemporary British poetry collections.” LJ 07/07 ”The poetry comprising this enthusiastically recommended volume of her work have sic been drawn from seven previously published collections and are especially noteworthy for their lyrical language, the emotional impact, and their literary artistry.” The Midwest Book Review