New Releases by Trilby Kent

History isn't just a subject: it's the subject. So why aren't we treating it that way? Part personal essay, part investigation featuring commentary from leading educators and historians, The Vanishing Past is a heartfelt defence of a subject we malign at our peril and an impassioned manifesto for its restoration to the centre of education. A lively, accessible primer for anyone interested in how we learn to be human-and how one subject, above all others, defines our very humanity.

Powerful historical literary fiction set in South Africa during the Boer War that follows a girl's struggle to survive after she and her family are interned in a British concentration camp. Corlie Roux's farm life in South Africa is not easy: the Transvaal is beautiful, but it is also a harsh place where the heat can be so intense that the very raindrops sizzle. When her beloved father dies, she is left with a mother who is as devoted to her sons as she is cruel to her daughter. Despite this, Corlie finds solace in her friend, Sipho, and in Africa itself and in the stories she conjures for her brothers. But Corlie's world is about to vanish: the British are invading and driving Boer families like hers from their farms. Some escape into the bush to fight the enemy. The unlucky ones are rounded up and sent to internment camps. Will Corlie's resilience and devotion to her country sustain her through the suffering and squalor she finds in the camp at Kroonstad? That may depend on a soldier from faraway Canada and on inner resources Corlie never dreamed she had. . . .

Ana is not your typical teenager. She grew up in a tiny Mennonite colony in Bolivia, and her mother fled the colony when Ana was a young girl. Now Ana and her father have also fled, and Ana doesn't know why. She only knows that something was amiss in their tight-knit community. Arriving in Toronto, Ana has to fend for herself in this alien environment, completely isolated in a big city with no help and no idea where to even begin. But begin she does: she makes a friend, then two. She goes to school and tries to understand the myriad unspoken codes and rules. She is befriended by a teacher. She goes to the library, the mall, parties. And all the while, she searches for the mother who left so long ago, and tries to understand her father -- also a stranger in a strange land, with secrets of his own. This is a beautifully told story that will resonate with readers who have struggled with being new and unsure in a strange place, even if that place is in a classroom full of people they know. Ana's story is unique but universal; strange but familiar; extraordinary but ordinary: a fish out of water tale that speaks to us all.

A story of displacement, betrayal – and the lingering past September 1953. Fourteen-year-old Barney Holland is promised a fresh start when he is offered a place at a boarding school on the remote North Sea island of Lindsey. Instead, he is shunned by his peers both for his status as a charity pupil and for being the replacement of a recently deceased student, the popular Cray. The arrival of Belinda Flood, a housemaster's daughter stigmatized by her expulsion from another school, provides Barney with an unexpected ally. Both outsiders soon fall under the influence of charismatic senior pupil Ivor Morrell, who reigns over the forbidden corners of the school. A gruesome find and the friendship with a local woman rumoured to have been a wartime collaborator draw the three into an increasingly dangerous web of personal and social shame. Gripped by mounting horror at his discovery of secrets harboured by the isolated school community, Barney personifies the struggle of a young peacetime generation finding its way out of the shadow of war.

Voor de jonge Engelse Glen valt er in 1936 weinig opwindends te beleven in Engeland. Ze besluit een poosje bij haar tante te gaan wonen, die op Ceylon een theeplantage beheert. Daar begint Glen een briefwisseling met een Belgische gevangene. Maar de brieven komen per ongeluk terecht bij Marten, een eenzame Vlaamse puberjongen. Hij snakt naar contact met de wereld buiten zijn dorp en besluit terug te schrijven uit naam van de gevangene. Hun correspondentie ontwikkelt zich tot een voorzichtige vriendschap, die cruciaal blijkt te zijn in de schaduw van de ophanden zijnde Tweede Wereldoorlog. Meeslepende literaire roman die zich afspeelt op het koloniale Ceylon en het Belgische Mechelen tijdens de opkomst van het fascisme in Europa. Trilby Kent is geboren in Toronto, Canada. Ze studeerde in Oxford, werkte als journaliste en woont en werkt nu in Londen.

Door een verkeerd bezorgde brief ontstaat in de jaren dertig van de 20e eeuw een ongewone correspondentie tussen een Vlaamse jongen en een Engelse schrijfster.

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In the grimy London of 1935, eleven-year-old Dominic Walker has lost his voice. His mother is sick and his father’s unemployed. Rescue comes in the form of his Uncle Roo, who arrives to take him and his young sister, Marlo, to Cornwall. There, in a boarding house populated by eccentric residents, Marlo, who keeps a death grip on her copy of The New Art of Cooking, and Dominic, armed with Incredible Adventures for Boys: Colonel Lawrence and the Revolt in the Desert, find a way of life unlike any they have known. Dominic’s passion for Lawrence of Arabia is tested when he finds himself embroiled in a village uprising against a band of travelers who face expulsion. In defending the vulnerable, Dominic learns what it truly means to have a voice. Trilby Kent brilliantly handles a far-off time and place to present a story of up-to-the-minute relevance.