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The Masquerade
by Nicholas GriffinOff the coast of Liguria, 1713 - accompanied by his valet Thomas Noon and tutor Lucius Jelbourne, young aristocrat Lord Stilwell is bound for Genoa and that essential part of an English gentleman's education; the Grand Tour of Italy. Jelbourne has long been wary of Noon: his standing at Dengby Hall, his relationship with Stilwell and his intelligence do not tally with his role as a servant. Noon, likewise is suspicious of Jelbourne: why does Stilwell's tutor enjoy better hospitality than Stilwell himself? And why, when Jelbourne is purchasing Italian pictures supposedly a century old, is the paint still fresh?The English who visit eighteenth-century Italy normally consider it only for its past: Jelbourne, as Noon is to discover, is different. For there is a new king on the throne of England - a German, a protestant - and not all of his subjects are loyal. As the Grand Tour weaves its way to Venice, Rome and Naples, Noon finds himself drawn into a deadly world of intrigue, and double lives: a world where nothing and no-one are as they seem. And though Noon would like to unmask the mysterious Jelbourne, his attentions are drawn to the delectable Natalia Silver, and the unmistakable lure of love . . . THE MASQUERADE is a sophisticated literary thriller that confirms Nicholas Griffin's growing reputation as one our finest exponents of historical fiction.
The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan
by Robert KanigelThe Man Who Knew Infinity is the true story of a friendship between Srinivasa Ramanujan and G.H. Hardy that forever changed mathematics. In 1913, a young unschooled Indian clerk wrote a letter to G H Hardy, begging the pre-eminent English mathematician's opinion on several ideas he had about numbers. Realising the letter was the work of a genius, Hardy arranged for Srinivasa Ramanujan to come to England. Thus began one of the most improbable and productive collaborations ever chronicled.With a passion for rich and evocative detail, Robert Kanigel takes us from the temples and slums of Madras to the courts and chapels of Cambridge University, where the devout Hindu Ramanujan, 'the Prince of Intuition,' tested his brilliant theories alongside the sophisticated and eccentric Hardy, 'the Apostle of Proof'. In time, Ramanujan's creative intensity took its toll: he died at the age of thirty-two and left behind a magical and inspired legacy that is still being plumbed for its secrets today.
The Little Town Where Time Stood Still
by Bohumil HrabalFrom the flamboyant and unpredictable Maryska, who scandalises the town when she cuts short her golden tresses, to the eccentric Uncle Pepin, who always has to have a ready supply of furniture to smash when he's angry, Bohumil Hrabal creates a range of enchanting and memorable characters - confirming his status as one of Europe's greatest writers.Includes THE LITTLE TOWN WHERE TIME STOOD STILL and CUTTING IT SHORT.
The Little Town Where Time Stood Still
by Bohumil HrabalFrom the flamboyant and unpredictable Maryska, who scandalises the town when she cuts short her golden tresses, to the eccentric Uncle Pepin, who always has to have a ready supply of furniture to smash when he's angry, Bohumil Hrabal creates a range of enchanting and memorable characters - confirming his status as one of Europe's greatest writers. Includes THE LITTLE TOWN WHERE TIME STOOD STILL and CUTTING IT SHORT.
Closely Observed Trains
by Bohumil HrabalFor gauche young apprentice Milos Hrma, life at the small but strategic railway station in Bohemia in 1945 is full of complex preoccupations. There is the exacting business of dispatching German troop trains to and from the toppling Eastern front; the problem of ridding himself of his burdensome innocence; and the awesome scandal of Dispatcher Hubicka's gross misuse of the station's official stamps upon the telegraphist's anatomy. Beside these, Milos's part in the plan for the ammunition train seems a simple affair.CLOSELY OBSERVED TRAINS, which became the award-winning Jiri Menzel film of the 'Prague Spring', is a classic of postwar literature, a small masterpiece of humour, humanity and heroism which fully justifies Hrabal's reputation as one of the best Czech writers of today.
Closely Observed Trains
by Bohumil HrabalFor gauche young apprentice Milos Hrma, life at the small but strategic railway station in Bohemia in 1945 is full of complex preoccupations. There is the exacting business of dispatching German troop trains to and from the toppling Eastern front; the problem of ridding himself of his burdensome innocence; and the awesome scandal of Dispatcher Hubicka's gross misuse of the station's official stamps upon the telegraphist's anatomy. Beside these, Milos's part in the plan for the ammunition train seems a simple affair.CLOSELY OBSERVED TRAINS, which became the award-winning Jiri Menzel film of the 'Prague Spring', is a classic of postwar literature, a small masterpiece of humour, humanity and heroism which fully justifies Hrabal's reputation as one of the best Czech writers of today.
Jennifer Government
by Max BarryIn Max Barry's twisted, hilarious and terrifying vision of the near future, the world is run by giant corporations and employees take the last names of the companies they work for. It's a globalised, ultra-capitalist free market paradise!Hack Nike is a lowly merchandising officer who's not very good at negotiating his salary. So when John Nike and John Nike, executives from the promised land of Marketing, offer him a contract, he signs without reading it. Unfortunately, Hack's new contract involves shooting teenagers to build up street cred for Nike's new line of $2,500 trainers. Hack goes to the police - but they assume that he's asking for a subcontracting deal and lease the assassination to the more experienced NRA.Enter Jennifer Government, a tough-talking agent with a barcode tattoo under her eye and a personal problem with John Nike (the boss of the other John Nike). And a gun. Hack is about to find out what it really means to mess with market forces.
The Drop
by Dennis LehaneThe Drop follows lonely bartender Bob Saginowski through a cover scheme of funelling cash to local gangsters -- 'money drops' -- in the underworld of Boston bars. Under the heavy hand of his employer and cousin Marv, Bob finds himself at the centre of a robbery gone awry and entwined in an investigation that digs deep into the neighbourhood's past where friends, families and foes all work together to make a living -- no matter the cost.A moving, gripping thriller, from Dennie Lehane, acclaimed New York Times bestselling autor of Shutter Island, Gone, Baby, Gone and Mystic River, The Drop will stay with you long after you turn the last page.
Murderous Liaisons
by Philippa StockleyLondon, 1784. A stinking metropolis. One freezing April morning, a veiled woman steps off the boat from Holland. She is a former French aristocrat, on the run and in fear for her life. But she is far from helpless. With the deceitful ease with which she has played so many roles before, she assumes an alias befitting one who is hunted: she becomes the alluring Mrs Fox. It takes Mrs Fox little time to insinuate herself into London society. Immoral and beautiful, she has always manipulated others for her own gain or amusement and begins to revel in this pastime once more. It is only when she encounters the degenerate predator Earl Much that she discovers an adversary whose sadistic viciousness is a match for her own. In a dark, quick world of liars and lechers, where infidelity and intellect cross swords with desire and death, the two begin a deadly game. 'What makes [Murderous Liaisons] such a great pleasure, apart from its uncanny ability to inhabit the past, is its glee in its own lack of moral heart . . . Virtue has never seemed so unappealing, nor quite as badly dressed' Guardian Murderous Liaisons is a sequel to the classic Les Liaisons dangereuses.
Where Or When (Harvest Book Ser.)
by Anita ShreveWhen Charles Callahan chances on a newspaper photograph of Sian Richards, a woman he loved when they were both only thirteen, he is hardly in a position to do anything about it. He has been faithfully married for years and his Rhode Island real estate business has been hit hard by the recession. He is scrambling to stave off bankruptcy and save his house. But Charles cannot resist the hand of fate. He writes to Sian, now a poet living with a family of her own on a farm in upstate New York.Three decades after they last saw each other, the two lovers meet. Powerfully drawn together once again, Charles and Sian are forced to come to terms with the nature of erotic love and betrayal, moral quandaries in an age of shifting values, and the elusive nature of time. Struggling to reclaim what once they lost, they set in motion a passionate and tumultuous series of events that moves to a shocking conclusion.
Strange Fits Of Passion
by Anita ShreveA young and successful journalist working in New York, Maureen English appears to have the perfect life and family. But Maureen's husband, a highly respected fellow reporter, has in private a tendency towards alcohol and violent abuse. When the situation at home becomes intolerable, Maureen takes her baby daughter and flees. In a Maine fishing town she assumes a new identity and spends six weeks battling sub-zero temperatures, the intrusive glare of the townsfolk - and her fears of discovery.Against the force of the wintry sea- the cawing of the gulls, the lobstermen hauling their catch, the press of waves against the rocks - Maureen settles into the rhythms of a new life. Two married men pursue her, and one captures her heart. But this calming respite ends suddenly, leaving in its wake a murder, a rape charge, a suicide and a helpless child.Nearly nineteen years later, a cache of documents regarding Maureen English - abused, accused and imprisoned - are given to her daughter by the journalist who made her name reporting the case. The truth should lie within them, but the papers raise far more questions than they answer...
The Pilot's Wife
by Anita ShreveAn Oprah's Book Club selection, this gripping and powerfully wrought novel from the bestselling author of The Weight of Water is a stunning meditation on grief, betrayal and 'the ultimate unknowability of those closest to us' (Daily Telegraph) Who can guess what a woman will do when the unthinkable becomes her reality? Being married to a pilot has taught Kathryn Lyons to be ready for emergencies, but nothing has prepared her for the late-night knock on her door and the news of her husband's fatal crash. As Kathryn struggles through her grief, she is forced to confront disturbing rumours about the man she loved and the life that she took for granted. Torn between her impulse to protect her husband's memory and her desire to know the truth, Kathryn sets off to find out if she ever really knew the man who was her husband. In her determination to test the truth of her marriage, she faces shocking revelations about the secrets a man can keep and the actions a woman is willing to take.'Enthralling' -Anita Brookner, author of the Booker Prize-winning Hotel du Lac 'Compellingly told, brilliantly observed, lyrically written and when you get to the last page you simply want to run out and buy everything she's ever written' -Sunday Independent
Resistance
by Anita ShreveAs the wife of a Resistance member in German-occupied Belgium, Claire Daussois has grown used to hiding strange men in her attic. By the end of 1943, the tiny room has housed dozens of Allied airmen, soldiers and other refugees, whom Claire nurses and harbours from the perpetual threat of discovery by the Gestapo.The B-17 bomber that crash-lands outside Claire's village of Delahaut contains the man who will be both the last and the most significant of the attic's residents: US Air Force pilot Ted Brice. Ted is found severely wounded and semi-conscious by ten-year-old Jean Benoit minutes before the Germans begin their search for survivors. Knowing of Claire's connections with the Resistance, and desperate to atone for his father's shameful collaboration, Jean realises that Claire is the pilot's only hope of survival.The month that follows will stay with them both for the rest of their lives. A few weeks only, a handful of days, it is a period in which the war recedes in the face of more powerful forces - before imposing itself once more with shocking suddenness.
The Weight Of Water
by Anita ShreveOn Smuttynose Island, off the coast of New Hampshire, more than a century ago, two Norwegian immigrant women were brutally murdered. A third woman survived by hiding in a cave until dawn. In 1995, Jean, a photographer, is sent on an assignment to shoot a photo essay about the legendary crime. Taking her extended family with her, Jean stays in a sailboat anchored off the coast, and finds herself gradually becoming more and more engrossed in the bay's mysterious and gruesome past. Wandering into a library one day, she unearths letters written by Maren, the sole survivor of the murder spree. Jean's fear of losing all that she cares about is reflected in Maren's poignant tale of love and loss, and her obsession with the ancient story drives her to wild impulsive action -- with unrecoverable consequences.
Fortune's Rocks
by Anita ShreveFortune's Rocks transports the reader to the turn of the twentieth century, to the world of a prominent Boston family summering on the New Hampshire coast...'No praise is too high for Fortune's Rocks. The book will take hold of you and not let you go until the last word' USA Today'Exceptionally fine . . . Shreve writes with power and passion' Daily ExpressFourteen-year-old Olympic Biddeford is spending the summer with her parents at their seasonal house at Fortune's Rocks. Her father handles her education himself and is in fact a publisher of mildly liberal literature. One author he admires, who also practises as a physician, comes to visit the house. Forty years old, married with four children, he embarks on an affair with Olympia. They have a swift, passionate summer, torn apart when they are discovered together during Olympic's fifteenth birthday party. Her parents are mortified and immediately take Olympia back to Boston. When a baby boy is born nine months later, he is taken from her and she finds herself in exile at a ladies college and then as a governess. She decides she must get her child back, which means returning to Fortune's Rocks...
Eden Close
by Anita ShreveAndrew, an advertising executive in his mid-30s, returns to his hometown in upstate New York for his mother's funeral. He does not intend to stay in the slow rural backwater he left seventeen years before. But the dreams and memories persist and in the darkened farmhouse he relives that hot, bloody night when Eden Close was blinded - by the same gun that killed her father.The enigmatic Eden had been Andrew's childhood companion. Together the two roamed summer cornfields, smoked their first forbidden cigarettes, skated, fished and fought until the tomboy turned temptress - then their friendship ended. Now, despite warnings, Andrew is drawn again to this lost, blind girl of his youth, drawn to save her from the cruel neglect she has endured for seventeen sightless years without him. But first he must discover the grisly truth about that night...
Light On Snow
by Anita ShreveI watched my father run forward in his snowshoes the way one sometimes does in dreams, unable to make the legs move fast enough. I ran to the place where he knelt. I looked down into the sleeping bag. A tiny face gazed up at me, the eyes wide despite their many folds. The baby was wrapped in a bloody towel, and its lips were blue.' The events of a December afternoon on which a father and his daughter find an abandoned infant in the snow will forever alter eleven-year-old Nicky Dillon's understanding of the world which she is about to enter and the adults who inhabit it: a father who has taken great pains to remove himself from society in order to put behind him an unthinkable tragedy; a young woman who must live with the consequences of the terrible choices she has made; and a detective whose cleverness is superseded only by his sense of justice. Written from the point of view of thirty-year-old Nicky as she recalls the vivid images of that fateful December, hers is a tale of love and courage, of tragedy and redemption, and of the ways in which the human heart always seeks to heal itself.
A Wedding In December
by Anita ShreveAt an inn in the Berkshire Mountains of western Massachusetts, seven former schoolmates gather for a wedding. Nora, the owner of the inn, has recently had to reinvent her life following the death of her husband. Avery, who still hears echoes from a horrific event at Kidd Academy twenty-six years ago, has made a life for himself in Toronto with his wife and two sons. Agnes, now a history teacher at Kidd is a woman who longs to tell a secret she cannot reveal to the others, a secret that would stun them all. Bridget, the mother of a fifteen-year-old boy, has agreed to marry Bill, an old high school lover whom she has recently remet, despite uncertainties about her health and future. Indeed, it is Bill who passionately wants this wedding and who has brought everyone together for an astonishing weekend of revelation and recrimination, forgiveness and redemption. This is Anita Shreve's most ambitious and moving novel to date, probing into human motivation with extraordinary grace and skill.
All He Ever Wanted
by Anita ShreveA man escaping from a hotel fire sees a woman standing beneath a tree. He approaches her and sets in motion a series of events that will change his life forever. Years later, traveling from New England to Florida by train, he reflects back on his obsession with this unknown and ultimately unknowable woman - his courtship of her, his marriage to her, and the unforgivable act that ripped their family apart.Spanning three decades from 1899 to 1933, All He Ever Wanted gives us a tale of marriage, betrayal and the search for redemption. It has the unmatched attention to details of character, place and emotion that have made Anita Shreve one of the world's best-loved and bestselling novelists.
The Last Time They Met
by Anita ShreveWhen Linda Fallon and Thomas Janes meet at a writers' festival in Toronto, it is the first time they have seen each other for twenty-six years. Theirs is a story bound by the irresistible pull of true passion -- a love which begins in Massachusetts in the early 1960s, is rekindled in Kenya in the mid 1970s and which is about to play out its astonishing final episode . . . Written with reverse chronology, Anita Shreve's new novel is a haunting story of mesmerising beauty, with a strong narrative pull that inescapably draws the reader in, and leaves its most stunning revelation until the very last pages. Brilliantly ambitious and powerfully written, THE LAST TIME THEY MET is a tale not so much of life, but of a life not lived.
Sea Glass
by Anita ShreveThe year is 1929 and Honora Beecher and her husband, Sexton, are just settling into a new marriage and a cottage on the coast of New Hampshire. While Honora fixes up the derelict house and searches for bits of sea glass on the beach, Sexton risks everything they own to buy the house they both love. Along with millions of other Americans, he is blindsided by the stock market crash and finds himself penniless. The only work he can find is at a nearby mill, where a labour conflict is erupting into violence. Shaken by forces they scarcely understand, Honora and Sexton try to build a marriage and home while overwhelmed by passions of every kind.Writing with the power and immediacy that have made her novels bestsellers, Shreve unfolds interlocking lives, each with its own share of love, loss and challenge. This is another gripping and unforgettable story of the human heart from one of the most accomplished novelists of our time.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny
by Justin Hill Wang Du LuWhen master warrior Shulien learns of the death of her family's patron, she abandons retirement and returns to the capital to protect Green Legend, a sword renowned for its historic triumphs. But much has happened in the years she has been in seclusion, and she finds herself beset on all sides with hidden enemies, and the tragic past which she had hoped to forget returns to haunts her.In her hour of need arrives a beautiful young warrior, Snow Vase, who is seeking a master. But the new apprentice is not all that she seems. When she falls in love with the bandit Wei-fang, a secret is revealed that makes all of them question who is friend and who is foe. In an age of thwarted love, can these two youths find happiness? Based on the original novels by Wang Du Lu, this is a beautiful love story set in the fading years of nineteenth century Imperial China.
Playing Hard Ball: County Cricket and Big League Baseball
by E. T. SmithPLAYING HARD BALL is a unique sports book, a cultural comparison of two national games - cricket, English in origin and American baseball - written from the viewpoint of a top-class practitioner of both codes. Ed Smith - the young Cambridge University and Kent batsman - has spent the winters since 1998 in Spring Training with the New York Mets baseball team. It has enabled Ed to contrast and compare arguably the two most iconic of sports from the inside. In fact, baseball had a thriving following in Britain until the Great War: Derby County's former stadium was called the Baseball Ground; Tottenham Hotspur was at first a baseball club. Apart from learning two very different techniques, Ed learned that the sports' ultimate heroes, the Babe and the Don - Babe Ruth and Don Bradman - might as well have come from different planets, whilst baseball's pristine Hall of Fame in Cooperstown is a far cry from the ramshackle cricket museum at Lord's. Ed Smith's PLAYING HARD BALL draws on these intriguing comparisons to paint a two-sided portrait of sports most illustrous 'hitting games'.
Playing Hard Ball: County Cricket and Big League Baseball
by E.T. SmithPLAYING HARD BALL is a unique sports book, a cultural comparison of two national games - cricket, English in origin and American baseball - written from the viewpoint of a top-class practitioner of both codes. Ed Smith - the young Cambridge University and Kent batsman - has spent the winters since 1998 in Spring Training with the New York Mets baseball team. It has enabled Ed to contrast and compare arguably the two most iconic of sports from the inside. In fact, baseball had a thriving following in Britain until the Great War: Derby County's former stadium was called the Baseball Ground; Tottenham Hotspur was at first a baseball club. Apart from learning two very different techniques, Ed learned that the sports' ultimate heroes, the Babe and the Don - Babe Ruth and Don Bradman - might as well have come from different planets, whilst baseball's pristine Hall of Fame in Cooperstown is a far cry from the ramshackle cricket museum at Lord's. Ed Smith's PLAYING HARD BALL draws on these intriguing comparisons to paint a two-sided portrait of sports most illustrous 'hitting games'.
Brendan Behan
by Ulick O'ConnorWhen Brendan Behan died in 1964 at the age of 41, he had rung the changes in his short life: bomber, gunman, borstal boy, alcoholic and, finally, international literary figure with the success of The Quare Fellow , The Hostage and Borstal Boy . But Behan drowned his talent in a whiskey bottle and became the caricature of an Irish stage drunk, clowning his way with oaths and stories between bars in Dublin, London, Paris and New York. Written in association with his widow, his mother and others of his family and friends, and old IRA comrades, this is a biography of Brendan Behan.