Books with category 🎪 Circus
Displaying 4 books

The Night Circus

The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is called Le Cirque des Rêves, and it is only open at night. But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway—a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors. Unbeknownst to them, this is a game in which only one can be left standing, and the circus is but the stage for a remarkable battle of imagination and will. Despite themselves, however, Celia and Marco tumble headfirst into love—a deep, magical love that makes the lights flicker and the room grow warm whenever they so much as brush hands. True love or not, the game must play out, and the fates of everyone involved, from the cast of extraordinary circus performers to the patrons, hang in the balance, suspended as precariously as the daring acrobats overhead. Written in rich, seductive prose, this spell-casting novel is a feast for the senses and the heart.

Water for Elephants

2008

by Sara Gruen

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen is an atmospheric and gritty tale set against the backdrop of a second-rate circus struggling to survive during the Great Depression. Jacob Jankowski, a veterinary student who is almost a graduate, finds himself adrift and orphaned. His life takes an unexpected turn when he jumps onto a passing train and enters the world of the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth.

Within the circus, Jacob is put in charge of the menagerie and it is here that he meets Marlena, the captivating young star of the equestrian act, and Rosie, an elephant who appears untrainable until Jacob discovers a way to connect with her. The novel weaves a tale of star-crossed lovers and explores the bonds that develop among a group of diverse characters, including the charismatic but twisted animal trainer, August.

Set in a time when even love was considered a luxury, Water for Elephants is a story about the enduring power of love and the beauty that can be found amidst the struggle for survival.

Kiss an Angel

How did pretty, flighty Daisy Devreaux find herself in this fix? She can either go to jail or marry the mystery man her father has chosen for her. Alex Markov, however, has no intention of playing the loving bridegroom to a spoiled little featherhead with champagne tastes. As humorless as he is deadly handsome, he drags the irrepressible Daisy away from her uptown life and sets out to tame her. Except it won't be as easy as he thinks.

This man without a soul has met a woman who's nothing but heart. Will vows spoken in haste shatter... or offer the promise of love everlasting?

Geek Love

1989

by Katherine Dunn

Geek Love is the story of the Binewskis, a carny family whose mater- and paterfamilias set out—with the help of amphetamine, arsenic, and radioisotopes—to breed their own exhibit of human oddities. There’s Arturo the Aquaboy, who has flippers for limbs and a megalomaniac ambition worthy of Genghis Khan... Iphy and Elly, the lissome Siamese twins... albino hunchback Oly, and the outwardly normal Chick, whose mysterious gifts make him the family’s most precious—and dangerous—asset.

As the Binewskis take their act across the backwaters of the U.S., inspiring fanatical devotion and murderous revulsion; as its members conduct their own Machiavellian version of sibling rivalry, Geek Love throws its sulfurous light on our notions of the freakish and the normal, the beautiful and the ugly, the holy and the obscene. Family values will never be the same.

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