In the Company of Angels

by Thomas E Kennedy

Published 16 March 2010
How much of a survivor, in fact, survives? How much must remain of a survivor for him also to be called a man? You tell me to remember. All over again. To remember. Perhaps there is nothing left there, doctor. Perhaps it is all gone.

Bernardo Greene is attempting to rebuild his life. Imprisoned and tortured by Pinochet's regime for introducing his students to political poetry, he has arrived at Copenhagen's centre for rehabilitating torture victims at the age of forty-nine, to begin, to begin again.

Across from the King's Garden, Michela Ibsen also seeks a new beginning. She has survived an abusive marriage and the death of a child, but does not know whether this makes her strong, or even whole. Her latest boyfriend is young, vain and dangerously possessive.

Why do men hit me? Why is it happening again?

Michela's eyes meet Bernardo's over a cup of coffee in the café across the lake. During a long Scandinavian summer of endless days and pin-point nights, these two lost souls begin to heal, to forgive and to trust themselves to love.

A novel about passion in the wake of loss, pain in the wake of truth, and salvation in the wake of despair, In the Company of Angels is the mesmeric and quietly devastating masterpiece from internationally celebrated author Thomas E. Kennedy.

Falling Sideways

by Thomas E Kennedy

Published 1 March 2011
There has never been any shortage of business at the Tank, a high-profile firm in Copenhagen. There are round-table meetings to attend, circular memos to write, colleagues to indirectly undermine.But when the Tank's nefarious CEO announces a period of downsizing, everyone is exposed and the game-playing begins in deadly earnest.

Top executive Frederick Breathwaite suspects his days might be numbered, and is frantically trying to ensure a foothold on the career ladder for his son Jes. Harald Jaeger, estranged from his wife and daughters, harbours desperate passions for an alarming number of women (including, dangerously, the Tank's married financial officer). Lost in his amorous fantasies, he has somehow managed to catch the CEO's eye - as a possible replacement for Breathwaite. Meanwhile the CEO's son Adam should be following in his father's alpha-male footsteps but instead is head-over-heels in puppy love with his au pair. And in a nearby shoe repair shop, Jes, who personally can't imagine anything worse than his father's corporate life, is pursuing a very different kind of future.

As the city settles into autumn,a season of brittle days and foreboding nights, the impending downsizing causes a ripple effect that touches not just every employee in the Tank but their spouses, children and lovers as well. Sharp, funny but remarkably tender, Falling Sideways is a shrewdly observed tale of ambition and anxiety, of backstabbing and backsliding, of office politics and family affairs.