Here is an unforgettable epic that brilliantly dramatizes the choices we must make in order to insure the survial of our selves, our society, and our planet. This powerful novel of ideas and the future of human life itself is written by the bestselling author of The Spiral Dance.
Ein New Yorker Notar sucht für seine Kanzlei einen Kopisten - vorstellig wird der ebenso harmlos wie unscheinbar wirkende Bartleby, der fortan schweigsam und wie mechanisch seiner Arbeit nachgeht. Doch dann beginnt der blasse Mann, sich zu verweigern: Immer öfter erklärt er mit sanfter Stimme, dass er es vorziehe, einen Auftrag nicht zu erledigen, und alle Versuche des Notars, seinen seltsamen Schreiber zur Vernunft zu bringen, scheinen zum Scheitern verurteilt ... Mit seiner absurden Komik und pointierten Sprache zählt Herman Melvilles "Bartleby" (1853) zu den bedeutendsten Erzählungen der Weltliteratur.
"A web of spying, subterfuge, deceit and betrayal...Acute, witty ...winningly cunning". ("Sunday Times"). The year is 1972. The Cold War is far from over. Britain is being torn apart by industrial unrest and terrorism. Serena Frome, in her final year at Cambridge, is being groomed for MI5. Serena is sent on a secret mission - Operation Sweet Tooth - which brings her into the world of Tom Haley, a promising young writer. First she loves his stories, then she begins to love the man. Can she maintain the fiction of her undercover life? And who is inventing whom? To answer these questions, Serena must abandon the first rule of espionage - trust no one.
Cult horror director Stanislas Cordova hasn't been seen in public since 1971. To his fans he is an enigma. To journalist Scott McGrath he is the enemy. To Ashley he was a father. On a damp October night the young, beautiful Ashley Cordova is found dead in an abandoned warehouse in lower Manhattan. Her suicide appears to be the latest tragedy to hit a severely cursed dynasty. For McGrath, another death connected the legendary director seems more than coincidence. Driven by revenge, curiosity and a need for the truth, he finds himself pulled into a hypnotic, disorientating world, where almost everyone seems afraid. The last time McGrath got close to exposing Cordova, he lost his marriage and his career. This time he could lose his grip on reality.
Part of the Penguin Orange Collection, a limited-run series of twelve influential and beloved American classics in a bold series design offering a modern take on the iconic Penguin paperback Winner of the 2016 AIGA + Design Observer 50 Books - 50 Co
'A brilliant excursion into the decadence of contemporary culture' - "Sunday Times". Eric Packer is a twenty-eight-year-old multi-billionaire asset manager. We join him on what will become a particularly eventful April day in turn-of-the-twenty-first-century Manhattan. He's on a personal odyssey, to get a haircut. Sitting in his stretch limousine as it moves across town, he finds the city at a virtual standstill because the President is visiting, a rapper's funeral is proceeding, and a violent protest is being staged in Times Square by anti-globalist groups. Most worryingly, Eric's bodyguards are concerned that he may be a target ...An electrifying study in affectlessness, infused with deep cynicism and measured detachment; a harsh indictment of the life-denying tendencies of capitalism; as brutal a dissection of the American dream as Wolfe's "Bonfire" or Ellis' "Psycho", "Cosmopolis" is a caustic prophecy all too quickly realized. 'A prose-poem about New York ...DeLillo has always been good at telling us where we're heading ...we ignore him at our peril' - Blake Morrison, "Guardian".
There is an ancient saying that when lovers fall out, a plane goes down. This is the story of one such plane. Why did a Hercules C130, the world's sturdiest plane, carrying Pakistan's military dictator General Zia ul Haq, go down on 17 August, 1988? Was it because of: 1.Mechanical failure 2.Human error 3.The CIA's impatience 4.A blind woman's curse 5.Generals not happy with their pension plans 6.The mango season Or could it be your narrator, Ali Shigri? Teasing, provocative, and very, very funny, Mohammed Hanif's debut novel takes one of the subcontinent's enduring mysteries and out if it spins a tale as rich and colourful as a beggar's dream. Winner of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Novel and shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2008.
Quentin Compson and Shreve, his Harvard room-mate, are obsessed by the tragic rise and fall of Thomas Sutpen. As a poor white boy, Sutpen was turned away from a plantation owner's mansion by a negro butler. From then on, he was determined to force his way into the upper echelons of Southern society. His relentless will ensures his ambitions are soon realised; land, marriage, children. But in after the chaos of Civil War, secrets from his own past threaten to destroy everything he has worked for.
Written in his early twenties and retrieved from his private papers following his death in 1960, A HAPPY DEATH is a remarkably candid portrait of its author as a young man. As the novel follows the protagonist, Patrice, to his victim's house--and then, fleeing, in a journey that takes him through stages of exile, hedonism, privation, and death--it gives readers a glimpse into the imagination of one of the great writers of the 20th century.
This is by the author of Stoner. Will Andrews is no academic. He longs for wildness, freedom, hope and vigour. He leaves Harvard and sets out for the West to discover a new way of living. In a small town called Butcher's Crossing he meets a hunter with a story of a lost herd of buffalo in a remote Colorado valley, just waiting to be taken by a team of men brave and crazy enough to find them. Will makes up his mind to be one of those men, but the journey, the killing, harsh conditions and sheer hard luck will test his mind and body to their limits.
Set in the closing months of World War II in an American bomber squadron off the coast of Italy, Catch-22 is the story of a bombardier named Yossarian who is frantic and furious because thousands of people he has never even met keep trying to kill him. Hilarious and tragic, as its heart is savage indictment of twentieth-century madness, and a desire of the ordinary man to survive it.
Set in Brooklyn in 1947, this novel tells the story of Sophie, a Polish Catholic immigrant who is haunted by her memories of the concentration camp in wartime Europe and the terrible choice she was forced to make.
"Northern Lights" introduces Lyra, an orphan, who lives in a parallel universe in which science, theology and magic are entwined. Lyra's search for a kidnapped friend uncovers a sinister plot involving stolen children and turns into a quest to understand a mysterious phenomenon called Dust. In "The Subtle Knife" she is joined on her journey by Will, a boy who possesses a knife that can cut windows between worlds. As Lyra learns the truth about her parents and her prophesied destiny, the two young people are caught up in a war against celestial powers that ranges across many worlds and leads to a thrilling conclusion in "The Amber Spyglass". The epic story Pullman tells is not only a spellbinding adventure featuring armoured polar bears, magical devices, witches and daemons, it is also an audacious and profound re-imagining of Milton's "Paradise Lost". An utterly entrancing blend of metaphysical speculation and bravura storytelling, "His Dark Materials" is a monumental and enduring achievement.
Winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction From the master of the literary supernatural and author of The Bloody Chamber, her acclaimed novel about the exploits of a circus performer who is part-woman, part-swan
Its 2001 in New York City, in between the dot-com collapse and the events of September 11th. Things are going well with Maxine Tarnows fraud investigation business, until she starts looking into the finances of a computer-security firm and its billionaire geek CEO. With excursions into the DeepWeb and out to Long Island, this is a historical romance of New York in the early days of the internet.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEARNAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2020 BY THE NEW YORK TIMES THE WASHINGTON POST NPR PEOPLE TIME MAGAZINE VANITY FAIR GLAMOUR New York Times Readers Pick: 100 Best Books of the 21st Century 2021 WOMEN'S PRIZE FINALIST Bennett s tone and style recalls James Baldwin and Jacqueline Woodson, but it s especially reminiscent of Toni Morrison s 1970 debut novel, The Bluest Eye. Kiley Reid, Wall Street Journal A story of absolute, universal timelessness . . . For any era, it's an accomplished, affecting novel. For this moment, it s piercing, subtly wending its way toward questions about who we are and who we want to be . Entertainment WeeklyFrom The New York Times-bestselling author of The Mothers, a stunning new novel about twin sisters, inseparable as children, who ultimately choose to live in two very different worlds, one black and one white. The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Many years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters' storylines intersect?Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Brit Bennett produces a story that is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing. Looking well beyond issues of race, The Vanishing Half considers the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person's decisions, desires, and expectations, and explores some of the multiple reasons and realms in which people sometimes feel pulled to live as something other than their origins. As with her New York Times-bestselling debut The Mothers, Brit Bennett offers an engrossing page-turner about family and relationships that is immersive and provocative, compassionate and wise.
The Edgar-winning short story from the author of GONE GIRL. The perfect stocking filler for Flynn fans. A young woman is making a living faking it as a cut-price psychic (with some illegal soft-core sex work on the side). She makes a decent wage mostly by telling people what they want to hear. But then she meets Susan Burke. Susan moved to the city one year ago with her husband and 15-year-old stepson Miles. They live in a Victorian house called Carterhook Manor. Susan has become convinced that some malevolent spirit is inhabiting their home. The young woman doesn't believe in exorcism or the supernatural. However when she enters the house for the first time, she begins to feel it too, as if the very house is watching her, waiting, biding its time . . .The Grownup, which originally appeared as 'What Do You Do?' in George R. R. Martin's Rogues anthology, proves once again that Gillian Flynn is one of the world's most original and skilled voices in fiction.
This is introduced by Paul McCartney About the Awful. I was bored on the 9th of Octover 1940 when, I believe, the Nasties were still booming us led by Madalf Heatlump (Who only had one). Anyway they didn't get me. I attended to varicous schools in Liddypol. And still didn't pass-much to my Aunties supplies. As a member of the most publified Beatles my and (P, G, and R's) records might seem funnier to some than this book, but as far as I'm conceived this correction of short witty is the most wonderful loaf I've ever ready. In His Own Write is John Lennon's literary debut, a book of stories, drawings and poems that was first published in 1964 to great critical acclaim and became a phenomenon, selling over 600,000 copies in the UK alone and revealing a hitherto unseen side to Lennon's artistic output and talent.
When Vic Wilcox (MD of Pringle's engineering works) meets English lecturer Dr Robyn Penrose, sparks fly as their lifestyles and ideologies collide head on. What, after all, are they supposed to learn from each other? But in time both parties make some surprising discoveries about each other's worlds - and about themselves.
The sleepy town of Heartsdale, Georgia, is jolted into panic when Sara Linton, paediatrician and medical examiner, finds Sibyl Adams dead in the local diner. As well as being viciously raped, Sibyl has been cut: two deep knife wounds form a lethal cross over her stomach. But it's only once Sara starts to perform the post-mortem that the full extent of the killer's brutality becomes clear. Police chief Jeffrey Tolliver - Sara's ex-husband - is in charge of the investigation, and when a second victim is found, crucified, only a few days later, both Jeffrey and Sara have to face the fact that Sibyl's murder wasn't a one-off attack. What they're dealing with is a seasoned sexual predator. A violent serial killer...
Widely regarded as a revolutionary novel, Bront's masterpiece introduced the world to a radical new type of heroine. This edition includes newly written explanatory notes.
An enchanting Japanese novel about a brilliant mathematician who only has 80 minutes of short term memory, and the young housekeeper entrusted to look after him. Translated by Stephen Snyder.
"If you thought the true gothic novel died with the nineteenth century, this will change your mind...This is one gorgeous read."--Stephen King. "Anyone who enjoys novels that are scary, erotic, touching, tragic, and thrilling should pick up "The Shadow of the Wind.""--The Washington Post.
Flying out of India, a light aircraft is hi-jacked and flown into the high Tibetan Himalayas. The passengers on board anxiously await their fate, among them Conway, a talented British consul. But on landing they are unexpectedly conducted to a remote valley, a legendary paradise of peace and beauty, known as Shangri-La. Have they been kidnapped?
The sequel to the number-one bestseller Girl Online. Penny joins her rock-star boyfriend, Noah, on his European music tour. But, between Noah's jam-packed schedule, less-than-welcoming bandmates and threatening messages from jealous fans, Penny wonders whether she's really cut out for life on tour. She can't help but miss her family, her best friend Elliot . . . and her blog, Girl Online.
Eine faustische Geschichte, eine fiktionale Erinnerung eines ehemaligen SS Offiziers, der sich als Familienmensch und Fabrikbesitzer im Nachkriegsfrankreich niedergelassen hat.
This is a new edition to celebrate Alan Turing's centenary, that includes a new foreword by the author and a preface by Douglas Hofstadter. Alan Turing was the extraordinary Cambridge mathematician who masterminded the cracking of the German Enigma ciphers and transformed the Second World War. But his vision went far beyond this crucial achievement. Before the war he had formulated the concept of the universal machine, and in 1945 he turned this into the first design for a digital computer. Turing's far-sighted plans for the digital era forged ahead into a vision for Artificial Intelligence. However, in 1952 his homosexuality rendered him a criminal and he was subjected to humiliating treatment. In 1954, aged 41, Alan Turing committed suicide and one of Britain's greatest scientific minds was lost.
*** Featured on BBC Radio 2 Book Club on 22nd April 2014 *** Harry August is on his deathbed. Again. No matter what he does or the decisions he makes, when death comes, Harry always returns to where he began, a child with all the knowledge of a life he has already lived a dozen times before. Nothing ever changes. Until now. As Harry nears the end of his eleventh life, a little girl appears at his bedside. 'I nearly missed you, Doctor August,' she says. 'I need to send a message.' This is the story of what Harry does next, and what he did before, and how he tries to save a past he cannot change and a future he cannot allow.
At some point, maybe twenty minutes after he'd begun refreshing Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Gmail in a continuous cycle - with an ongoing, affectless, humorless realisation that his day 'was over' - he noticed with confusion, having thought it was early morning, that it was 4:46PM Taipei is an ode - or lament - to the way we live now. Following Paul from New York, where he comically navigates Manhattan's art and literary scenes, to Taipei, Taiwan, where he confronts his family's roots, we see one relationship fail, while another is born on the internet and blooms into an unexpected wedding in Las Vegas. From one of this generation's most talked-about and enigmatic writers comes a deeply personal and uncompromising novel about memory, love, and what it means to be alive.
Edward Rutherfurd tells the story of this great city as no other author could - from the epic, empty grandeur of the New World to the skyscrapers of the City that Never Sleeps, from the intimate detail of lives long forgotten to those lived today at breakneck speed. The novel begins with a tiny Indian fishing village and the Dutch traders who first carved out their hopes amidst the splendour of the wilderness. The British settlers and merchants followed, with their aristocratic governors and unpopular taxation which led to rebellion, war, the burning of the city and the birth of the American Nation. Yet a country that had already rent itself asunder once did so again over slavery. As the country fought its bloody Civil War, the city was torn apart by deadly riots. Hopes and dreams, greed and corruption - they have always been the companions of freedom and opportunity in the city's teeming streets. As the immigrant ships berthed next to Ellis Island in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty, they poured more and more Germans, Irish, Italians and Jews into the churning ethnic mix of the city.Deals were struck, politicians corrupted, men bought or assassinated, heiresses wooed, fortunes were speculated on Wall Street and men became rich beyond the dreams of avarice. The heady seesaw of wealth and poverty was seen in the Roaring Twenties and the Great Crash, the city's future symbolised by its buildings which literally touched the sky: the Empire State, the Chrysler Building, the Twin Towers. Rutherfurd tells this irresistible story through a cast of fictional and true characters whose fates interweave in the rise and fall, fall and rise of the city's fortunes. It is the story of how in four centuries New York became the envy of the world. And in telling the story through the lens of New York, Rutherfurd brings the story of America itself to unforgettable life in this epic masterpiece.
In the past year, the narrator of 10:04 has enjoyed unexpected literary success, been diagnosed with a potentially fatal heart condition, and been asked by his best friend to help her conceive a child. Now, in a New York of increasingly frequent superstorms and political unrest, he must reckon with his biological mortality, the possibility of a literary afterlife, and the prospect of (unconventional) fatherhood in a city that might soon be under water. In prose that Jonathan Franzen has called 'hilarious...cracklingly intelligent...and original in every sentence', Lerner's new novel charts an exhilarating course through the contemporary landscape of sex, friendship, memory, art and politics, and captures what it is like to be alive right now.
'Searing, profoundly unsettling. An unforgettable novel' - "Sunday Times". "Falling Man" begins on September 11, in the smoke and ash of the burning towers. In the days and the years following, we trace the aftermath of this global tremor in the private lives of a few reticulated individuals. Theirs are lives choreographed by loss, by grief and by the enormous force of history. From these intimate portraits, DeLillo shifts to an extrapolated vision: he charts the way the events have reconfigured our emotional landscape, our memory and our perception of the world. This is an unforgettable novel, at once cathartic and beautiful and heartbreaking. 'These are pages of magnificent force and control, DeLillo's genius at full pelt. Reading them, you have to remind yourself to keep breathing' - "New Statesman".
From the editor of the popular Annotated Pride and Prejudice comes an annotated edition of Jane Austen's Emma that makes her beloved tale of an endearingly inept matchmaker an even more satisfying read. Here is the complete text of the nov
"I can't remember the last time I was so gripped simply by a novel's voice...Aaliya is thoughtful, she's complex, she's humorous and critical."--NPR.com "Beautiful and absorbing."--"New York Times" "An Unnecessary Woman" is a breathtaking portrait of one reclusive woman's late-life crisis, which garnered a wave of rave reviews and love letters to Alameddine's cranky yet charming septuagenarian protagonist, Aaliya, a character you "can't help but love" (NPR). Aaliya's insightful musings on literature, philosophy, and art are invaded by memories of the Lebanese Civil War and her volatile past. As she tries to overcome her aging body and spontaneous emotional upwellings, Aaliya is faced with an unthinkable disaster that threatens to shatter the little life she has left. Here, the gifted Rabih Alameddine has given us a nuanced rendering of one woman's life in the Middle East and an enduring ode to literature and its power to define who we are. "A paean to the transformative power of reading, to the intellectual asylum from one's circumstances found in the life of the mind."--"LA Review of Books" "[The novel] throbs with energy...[Aaliya's] inventive way with words gives unfailing pleasure, no matter how dark the events she describes, how painful the emotions she reveals."--"Washington Post"
Renowned as the inventor of modern Greek fiction, Alexandros Papadiamantis is a magical mythmaker and unflinching realist whose work looks forward to that of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The Murderess is a bone-chilling book with the force of an Appalachian backwoods ballad. The Murderess is the story of old Hadoula, a peasant woman from the island of Skiathos-in the nineteenth century, when the story is set, as bitterly poor a place as anywhere on earth. Old Hadoula knows the burdens of women's lives and she knows the herbs that can remedy them; over the years many women have come to her in secret for help. She is both an outcast and a fixture of the community, and as the book begins she is trying to get her newborn granddaughter to stop crying so that her daughter can get some sleep. That's when it hits her: there's nothing worse than being born a woman-and she strangles the baby. This first killing is not the last, as old Hadoula unleashes the pentup fury and pity of a life in this stark tragedy of stunning force.
As imagined by Leonard Cohen, hell is an apartment in Montreal, where a bereaved and lust-tormented narrator reconstructs his relations with the dead. In the hell two men and a woman twine impossibly and betray one another again and again. Memory blurs into blasphemous sexual More ... fantasy- and redemption takes the form of an Iroquois saint and virgin who has been dead for all of 300 years but still has the power to save even the most degraded of her suitors.§First published in 1996, "Beautiful Losers" demonstrates that its author is not only a superb songwriter but also a novelist of visionary power. Funny, harrowing, and fiercely moving, it is a classic erotic tragedy, incandescent in its prose and exhilarating for its risky union of sexuality and faith.
Melanie Stryder refuses to fade away. The earth has been invaded by a species that takes over the minds of their human hosts while leaving their bodies intact, and most of humanity has succumbed. Wanderer, the invading
The world is a hard place to be good in...Struggling to keep a grip on reality after his wife's death, Bunny Munro does the only thing he can think of: with his young son in tow, he hits the road. An epic chronicle of one man's judgement, The Death of Bunny Munro is also an achingly tender portrait of the relationship between father and son.
Language: English, Binding: Paperback, Number of pages: 96, Publishers: Pushkin Press, Author: Louise Heal Kawai, ISBN-13: 9781782276722, Date of issue: 2020
"Absolutely brilliant - tragic, funny, eccentric and so perfectly suited to this particularly weird time. Claire Kohda takes the vampire trope and makes it her own in a way that feels fresh and original. Serious issues of race, disability, misogyny, body image, sexual abuse are handled with subtlety, insight, and a lightness of touch. The spell this novel casts is so complete I feel utterly, and happily, bitten." -- Ruth Ozeki, Booker-shortlisted author of A Tale for the Time BeingA young, mixed-race vampire must find a way to balance her deep-seated desire to live amongst humans with her incessant hunger in this stunning debut novel from a writer-to-watch.Lydia is hungry. She's always wanted to try Japanese food. Sashimi, ramen, onigiri with sour plum stuffed inside - the food her Japanese father liked to eat. And then there is bubble tea and iced-coffee, ice cream and cake, and foraged herbs and plants, and the vegetables grown by the other young artists at the London studio space she is secretly squatting in. But, Lydia can't eat any of these things. Her body doesn't work like those of other people. The only thing she can digest is blood, and it turns out that sourcing fresh pigs' blood in London - where she is living away from her vampire mother for the first time - is much more difficult than she'd anticipated.Then there are the humans - the other artists at the studio space, the people at the gallery she interns at, the strange men that follow her after dark, and Ben, a boyish, goofy-grinned artist she is developing feelings for. Lydia knows that they are her natural prey, but she can't bring herself to feed on them. In her windowless studio, where she paints and studies the work of other artists, binge-watches Buffy the Vampire Slayer and videos of people eating food on YouTube and Instagram, Lydia considers her place in the world. She has many of the things humans wish for - perpetual youth, near-invulnerability, immortality - but she is miserable; she is lonely; and she is hungry - always hungry.As Lydia develops as a woman and an artist, she will learn that she must reconcile the conflicts within her - between her demon and human sides, her mixed ethnic heritage, and her relationship with food, and, in turn, humans - if she is to find a way to exist in the world. Before any of this, however, she must eat.
Edgar Allan Poe was a master of tales of the mysterious and macabre. From the eerie incantations of "The Raven" to the persistent fright of "The Tell-Tale Heart," his stories and poems are unforgettable explorations of the darker side of life that still offer lessons and insight into human behavior today, making them an integral component of just about any library. This Canterbury Classics edition of "Edgar Allan Poe" collects some of his best-known work--from "Annabel Lee" to "The Fall of the House of Usher," "Lenore" to "The Pit and the Pendulum," and many, many more. With an impressive leather cover, specially designed endpapers, and other all-new enhancements, as well as an essay by a Poe scholar, Edgar Allan Poe is the perfect introduction for new readers and the perfect resource for devoted fans. Poe's writings were truly original--and this unique book is the perfect look at his uncommon genius.
THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER. A couple in their thirties live in a small rented cottage in a quiet part of Tokyo. They work at home as freelance writers. They no longer have very much to say to one another. One day a cat invites itself into their small kitchen. She is a beautiful creature. She leaves, but the next day comes again, and then again and again. New, small joys accompany the cat; the days have more light and colour. Life suddenly seems to have more promise for the husband and wife; they go walking together, talk and share stories of the cat and its little ways, play in the nearby Garden. But then something happens that will change everything again. The Guest Cat is an exceptionally moving and beautiful novel about the nature of life and the way it feels to live it. The book won Japan's Kiyama Shohei Literary Award, and was a bestseller in France and America.
Portuguese Nobel Laureate Saramago tells a fantastic tale about a city hit by an epidemic of "white blindness," in this work that is the basis for the upcoming movie with Julianne Moore.
At the heart of this 1930 novel is the Bundren family's bizarre journey to Jefferson to bury Addie, their wife and mother. Faulkner lets each family member--including Addie--and others along the way tell their private responses to Addie's life.
