aNobii: News from [person name]'s shelf

The Psychopath Test

Sat, 4 May 2013 3:53:11 PST

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This is a story about madness. It all starts when journalist Jon Ronson is contacted by a leading neurologist. She and several colleagues have recently received a cryptically puzzling book in the mail, and Jon is challenged to solve the mystery behind it. As he searches for the answer, Jon soon finds himself, unexpectedly, on an utterly compelling and often unbelievable adventure into the world o ...

Madame Bovary

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 15:33:27 PST

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Gustave Flaubert's "Madame Bovary" is one of the most influential - and scandalous - novels of the nineteenth century. This "Penguin Classics" edition is translated with an introduction by Geoffrey Wall, with a preface by Michele Roberts. Emma Bovary is beautiful and bored, trapped in her marriage to a mediocre doctor and stifled by the banality of provincial life. An ardent reader of sentimental ...

Straw Dogs

Sat, 20 Apr 2013 23:01:44 PST

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John Gray's Straw Dogs attempts to present a world view in which humans are not central and which argues against the humanist belief in progress. The heart of the book is summed up in the idea that modern humanists have still not come to terms with Darwin, still not come to terms with the idea that humans are like other animals. Christians and modern humanists in the Platonic-Cartesian tradition ...

For Whom the Bell Tolls

Sun, 31 Mar 2013 19:12:55 PST

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High in the pine forests of the Spanish Sierra, a guerrilla band prepares to blow up a vital bridge. Robert Jordan, a young American volunteer, has been sent to handle the dynamiting. There, in the mountains, he finds the dangers and the intense comradeship of war. And there he discovers Maria, a young woman who has escaped from Franco's rebels.

Les Miserables

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 22:09:25 PST

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Now a major musical film from Oscar-winning director Tom Hooper ("The King's Speech"), starring Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe and Anne Hathaway, and also featuring Amanda Seyfreid, Helena Bonham-Carter and Sacha Baron-Cohen, Victor Hugo's "Les Miserables" is one of the great works of western literature. Victor Hugo's tale of injustice, heroism and love follows the fortunes of Jean Valjean (Hugh Jac ...

Carmilla (Fantasy and Horror Classics)

Mon, 25 Feb 2013 18:21:34 PST

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Ayesha - 1903

Sat, 16 Feb 2013 4:31:05 PST

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The Slaves of Solitude

Tue, 15 Jan 2013 17:35:18 PST

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A welcome reissue of one of Patrick Hamilton's best, with an introduction by Doris Lessing. "The Slaves of Solitude" is set in a wartime boarding house in a small town on the Thames. The Rosamund Tea Rooms is an oppressive place, as grey and lonely as its residents. For Miss Roach, slave of her task-master, solitude, a window of opportunity is suddenly presented by the appearance of a charismatic ...

The Purple Cloud

Fri, 11 Jan 2013 3:33:46 PST

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Dark, desolate and fantastical, "The Purple Cloud" was a pioneer in the genre of apocalyptic novels, and the first great science fiction work of the twentieth century. It inspired authors such as H. P. Lovecraft and Stephen King. "The Purple Cloud" tells the grandly bleak story of Adam Jeffson: the first man to reach the North Pole and the last man left alive on earth. A sweet-smelling, deadly cl ...

She

Wed, 19 Dec 2012 3:31:19 PST

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Drawing on his fascination with African lore and his love of adventure to create a seminal work of fantasy, H. Rider Haggard's "She" is edited with an introduction by Patrick Brantlinger in "Penguin Classics". On his twenty-fifth birthday, Leo Vincey opens the silver casket that his father has left to him. It contains a letter recounting the legend of a white sorceress who rules an African tribe ...

The Magus

Sat, 8 Dec 2012 3:42:57 PST

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On a remote Greek Island, Nicholas Urfe finds himself embroiled in the deceptions of a master trickster. As reality and illusion intertwine, Urfe is caught up in the darkest of psychological games. John Fowles expertly unfolds a tale that is lush with over-powering imagery in a spellbinding exploration of human complexities. By turns disturbing, thrilling and seductive, "The Magus" is a feast for ...

Steppenwolf

Sun, 18 Nov 2012 1:28:53 PST

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A modernist work of profound wisdom that continues to enthral readers with its subtle blend of Eastern mysticism and Western culture, the "Penguin Modern Classics" edition of Hermann Hesse's "Steppenwolf" is revised by Walter Sorell from the original translation by Basil Creighton. At first sight Harry Haller seems a respectable, educated man. In reality he is the Steppenwolf: wild, strange, alie ...

Mr Weston's Good Wine

Sat, 20 Oct 2012 16:24:01 PST

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"Mr Weston's Good Wine" is the unusual tale of the struggle between the forces of good and evil in a small Dorset village. Its action is limited to one winter's evening when time stands still and the bitter-sweet gift of awareness falls upon a dozen memorable characters. During the book a child knocked down by his car is miraculously brought back to life; the sign 'Mr Weston's Good Wine' lights u ...

The Turn of the Screw

Thu, 18 Oct 2012 3:12:03 PST

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A young governess is sent to a great country house to care for two orphaned children. At first Flora and Miles seem to be model pupils but gradually the governess begins to suspect that something is very wrong with them. As she sets out to uncover the corrupt secrets hidden in the house, she is increasingly convinced that something evil is watching her. Several other of Henry James’s most gruesom ...

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Sat, 6 Oct 2012 17:45:41 PST

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Oscar Wilde's story of a fashionable young man who sells his soul for eternal youth and beauty is one of his most popular works. Written in Wilde's characteristically dazzling manner, full of stinging epigrams and shrewd observations, the tale of Dorian Gray's moral disintegration caused something of a scandal when it first appeared in 1890. Wilde was attacked for his decadence and corrupting inf ...

Cannery Row

Sat, 29 Sep 2012 19:02:39 PST

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'"Cannery Row in Monterey in California" is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, nostalgia, and a dream". Meet the gamblers, whores, drunks, bums and artists of Cannery Row in Monterey, California, during the Great Depression. They want to throw a party for their friend Doc, so Mack and the boys set about, in their own inimitable way, recruiting everyone in the n ...

Mr Pye

Sat, 22 Sep 2012 15:05:45 PST

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Equipped with love, Mr Harold Pye lands on the island of Sark, his mission to convert the islanders into a crusading force for the undiluted goodness that he feels within. The extraordinary inhabitants of the island range from the formidable Miss George in her purple busby to the wanton, raven-haired Tintagieu, 'five foot three inches of sex'. Mr Pye, however, is prone to excess and in the increa ...

A Gentle Creature and Other Stories

Sat, 8 Sep 2012 17:22:52 PST

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In these stories, Dostoevsky explores both the figure of the dreamer divorced from reality, and also his own ambiguous attitude toward utopianism, ...

Sputnik Sweetheart

Sat, 1 Sep 2012 15:27:58 PST

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Twenty-two-year-old Sumire is in love with a woman seventeen years her senior. But whereas Miu is glamorous and successful, Sumire is an aspiring writer who dresses in an oversized second-hand coat and heavy boots like a character in a Kerouac novel. Surprised that she might, after all, be a lesbian, Sumire spends hours on the phone talking to her best friend K about the big questions in life: wh ...

Tortilla Flat

Sat, 1 Sep 2012 15:22:35 PST

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John Steinbeck's first major critical and commercial success, and perhaps his funniest novel, "Tortilla Flat" includes a critical introduction by Thomas Fensch in "Penguin Modern Classics". Danny is a paisano, descended from the original Spanish settlers who arrived in Monterey, California, centuries before. He values friendship above money and possessions, so when he suddenly inherits two houses ...

Nineteen Eighty-Four

Sun, 26 Aug 2012 18:41:43 PST

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Hidden away in the Record Department of the sprawling Ministry of Truth, Winston Smith skilfully rewrites the past to suit the needs of the Party. Yet he inwardly rebels against the totalitarian world he lives in, which demands absolute obedience and controls him through the all-seeing telescreens and the watchful eye of Big Brother, symbolic head of the Party. In his longing for truth and libert ...

The Alchemist

Sun, 26 Aug 2012 18:39:52 PST

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The Alchemist is the magical story of Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd boy who yearns to travel in search of a worldly treasure as extravagant as any ever found. From his home in Spain he journeys to the markets of Tangiers and across the Egyptian desert to a fateful encounter with the alchemist. The story of the treasures Santiago finds along the way teaches us, as only a few stories have done, ...

Siddhartha

Wed, 22 Aug 2012 2:21:46 PST

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Hermann Hesse's moving and inspirational chronicle of spiritual evolution, "Siddhartha", includes a new introduction by bestselling author Paulo Coehlo in "Penguin Classics". "Siddhartha" is perhaps the most important and compelling moral allegory our troubled century has produced. Integrating Eastern and Western spiritual traditions with psychoanalysis and philosophy, this strangely simple tale, ...

The RSC Shakespeare

Sun, 12 Aug 2012 16:13:33 PST

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This is the first and only edition to be developed by and for the Royal Shakespeare Company, the world's leading Shakespeare theatre company. It is illustrated with photographs of performances chosen by RSC Directors. It is beautifully packaged, with clear, reader-friendly single-column page design on crisp white paper. It features outstanding on-page notes which explain words and phrases unfamil ...

Hangover Square

Sat, 11 Aug 2012 17:51:31 PST

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London 1939, and in the grimy publands of Earls Court, George Harvey Bone is pursuing a helpless infatuation with Netta who is cool, contemptuous and hopelessly desirable to George. George is adrift in hell, until something goes click in his head and he realizes that he must kill her.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Tales of Terror

Sat, 11 Aug 2012 17:40:48 PST

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His innovative thriller, as shocking now as when it was first published, the "Penguin Classics" edition of Robert Louis Stevenson's "The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Other Tales of Terror" is edited with an introduction by Robert Mighall. Published as a 'shilling shocker', Robert Louis Stevenson's dark psychological fantasy gave birth to the idea of the split personality. The story o ...

The Black Swan

Sat, 11 Aug 2012 17:39:29 PST

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What have the invention of the wheel, Pompeii, the Wall Street Crash, Harry Potter and the internet got in common? Why should you never run for a train or read a newspaper? What can Catherine the Great's lovers tell us about probability? Why are almost all forecasters con-artists? This book is all about Black Swans: the random events that underlie our lives, from bestsellers to world disasters. T ...

To Have and Have Not

Sat, 11 Aug 2012 17:37:47 PST

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Harry Morgan was hard - the classic Hemingway hero - rum-running, gun-running and man-running from Cuba to the Florida Keys in the Depression. He ran risks, too, from stray coastguard bullets and sudden double-crosses. But it was the only way he could keep his boat, keep his independence, and keep his belly full...

Metamorphosis and Other Stories

Sun, 27 May 2012 21:26:13 PST

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This collection of new translations brings together the small proportion of Kafka's works that he thought worthy of publication. It includes "Metamorphosis", his most famous work, an exploration of horrific transformation and alienation; "Meditation", a collection of his earlier studies; "The Judgement", written in a single night of frenzied creativity; "The Stoker", the first chapter of a novel ...

Third Man: AND "The Fallen Idol"

Sat, 19 May 2012 16:00:22 PST

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WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY IAN THOMPSON. The Third Man is Graham Greene's brilliant recreation of post-war Vienna, a 'smashed dreary city' occupied by the four Allied powers. Rollo Martins, a second-rate novelist, arrives penniless to visit his friend and hero, Harry Lime. But Harry has died in suspicious circumstances, and the police are closing in on his associates...The Fallen Idol is the chillin ...

Beowulf

Sun, 25 Mar 2012 3:24:05 PST

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A translation of the 10th-century Anglo-Saxon poem relating Beowulf's triumphs as a young warrior and his fated death as a defender of his people. Heaney has aimed to produce a work true both to the original, which is one of the classics of European literature, and to his own creativity.

The Thirty-nine Steps

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 2:50:52 PST

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Richard Hannay has just returned to England after years in South Africa and is thoroughly bored with his life in London. But then a murder is committed in his flat, just days after a chance encounter with an American who had told him about an assassination plot which could have dire international consequences. An obvious suspect for the police and an easy target for the killers, Hannay goes on th ...

Perfume

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 3:09:15 PST

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Survivor, genius, perfumer, killer: this is Jean-Baptiste Grenouille. He is abandoned on the filthy streets of Paris as a child, but grows up to discover he has an extraordinary gift: a sense of smell more powerful than any other human's. Soon, he is creating the most sublime fragrances in all the city. Yet there is one odor he cannot capture. It is exquisite, magical: the scent of a young virgin ...

Outlaws of the Marsh

Thu, 9 Feb 2012 23:55:47 PST

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To the Ends of the Earth

Sun, 27 Nov 2011 0:32:13 PST

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This is a new one-volume edition of this classic sequence of sea novels set in the early nineteenth century, about a voyage from England to Australia. "Rites of Passage" (Winner of the Booker Prize): "The work of a master at the full stretch of his age and wisdom". ("The Times"). "Close Quarters": "A feat of imaginative reconstruction, as vivid as a dream". ("Daily Mail"). "Fire Down Below": "Lad ...

Audition

Wed, 2 Nov 2011 2:07:31 PST

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Documentary-maker Aoyama hasn't dated anyone in the seven years since the death of his beloved wife, Ryoko. Now even his teenage son Shige has suggested he think about remarrying. So when his best friend Yoshikawa comes up with a plan to hold fake film auditions so that Aoyama can choose a new bride, he decides to go along with the idea. Of the thousands who apply, Aoyama only has eyes for Yamasa ...

1Q84

Sat, 29 Oct 2011 18:43:50 PST

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1Q84

Sat, 29 Oct 2011 18:43:50 PST

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Book Two of 1Q84 ends with Aomame standing on the Metropolitan Expressway with a gun between her lips. She has come tantalisingly close to meeting her beloved Tengo only to have him slip away at the last minute. The followers of the cult leader she assassinated are determined to track her down and she has been living in hiding, completely isolated from the world. However, Tengo has also resolved ...

Memories of My Melancholy Whores

Sat, 29 Oct 2011 17:33:22 PST

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"Memories of My Melancholy Whores" is a powerful novel about a man who so far has never felt love from Nobel Laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez, author of the "One Hundred Years of Solitude". "The year I turned ninety, I wanted to give myself the gift of a night of wild love with an adolescent virgin." On the eve of his ninetieth birthday a newspaper columnist in Colombia decides to give himself 'a ...

Why Does E=mc2?

Sat, 29 Oct 2011 17:31:51 PST

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This is an engaging and accessible explanation of Einstein's equation that explores the principles of physics through everyday life. Professor Brian Cox and Professor Jeff Forshaw go on a journey to the frontier of 21st century science to consider the real meaning behind the iconic sequence of symbols that make up Einstein's most famous equation. Breaking down the symbols themselves, they pose a ...

Life of Pi

Sun, 9 Oct 2011 21:54:19 PST

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Winner of the 2002 Man Booker Prize for Fiction Pi Patel is an unusual boy. The son of a zookeeper, he has an encyclopedic knowledge of animal behavior, a fervent love of stories, and practices not only his native Hinduism, but also Christianity and Islam. When Pi is sixteen, his family emigrates from India to North America aboard a Japanese cargo ship, along with their zoo animals bound for ne ...

Fiesta: The Sun Also Rises

Sun, 9 Oct 2011 19:50:00 PST

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Paris in the twenties: Pernod, parties and expatriate Americans, loose-living on money from home. Jake is wildly in love with Brett Ashley,aristocratic and irresistibly beautiful, but with an abandoned, sensous nature that she cannot change. When the couple drifts to Spain to the dazzle of the fiesta and the heady atmosphere of the bullfight, their affair is strained by new passions, new jealou ...

Blink

Sun, 9 Oct 2011 19:22:05 PST

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From the author of "The Tipping Point", Malcolm Gladwell's international bestseller "Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking" is a revolution in the understanding of the mind. An art expert sees a ten-million-dollar sculpture and instantly spots it's a fake. A marriage analyst knows within minutes whether a couple will stay together. A fire-fighter suddenly senses he has to get out of a bla ...

The Gift of Rain

Sun, 9 Oct 2011 19:22:05 PST

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Penang, 1939, sixteen-year-old Philip Hutton is a loner. Half English, half Chinese and feeling neither, he discovers a sense of belonging in an unexpected friendship with Hayato Endo, a Japanese diplomat. Philip shows his new friend around his adored island of Penang, and in return Endo trains him in the art and discipline of aikido. But such knowledge comes at a terrible price. The enigmatic En ...

Batavia's Graveyard

Sun, 9 Oct 2011 19:15:11 PST

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When the Dutch East Indiaman Batavia struck an uncharted reef off the new continent of Australia on her maiden voyage in 1629, 332 men, women and children were on board. While some headed off in a lifeboat to seek help, 250 of the survivors ended up on a tiny coral island less than half a mile long. A band of mutineers, whose motives were almost beyond comprehension, then started on a cold-bloo ...

The Golden Ocean

Sun, 9 Oct 2011 19:07:32 PST

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The first novel Patrick O'Brian ever wrote about the sea -- and the precursor to the famous Aubrey/Maturin series -- is now available in paperback for the first time in forty years. The Golden Ocean is the first novel Patrick O'Brian ever wrote about the sea. The novel shares the same sense of excitement and the rich humour of the Aubrey/Maturin novels, invoking the eloquent style and attention ...

Nausea

Sun, 9 Oct 2011 19:05:15 PST

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Jean-Paul Sartre's first published novel, "Nausea" is both an extended essay on existentialist ideals, and a profound fictional exploration of a man struggling to restore a sense of meaning to his life. This "Penguin Modern Classics" edition is translated from the French by Robert Baldick with an introduction by James Wood. "Nausea" is both the story of the troubled life of an introspective histo ...

The Adulterous Woman

Sun, 9 Oct 2011 17:47:44 PST

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[person name] commented on "[title]"

She was waiting, but she didn't know for what. She was aware only of her solitude, and of the penetrating cold, and of a greater weight in the region of her heart.' Camus' writing confronts the great philosophical dilemmas of our time with piercing clarity. These three powerful and evocative stories are heavy with the weight of the human condition, and rich with atmosphere. In them, an ageing lab ...

The Leopard

Sat, 8 Oct 2011 2:36:15 PST

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INCLUDES RECENTLY DISCOVERED NEW MATERIAL. In the spring of 1860, Fabrizio, the charismatic Prince of Salina, still rules over thousands of acres and hundreds of people, including his own numerous family, in mingled splendour and squalor. Then comes Garibaldi's landing in Sicily and the Prince must decide whether to resist the forces of change or come to terms with them.

The Nation's Favourite Poems

Sun, 2 Oct 2011 15:55:10 PST

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In a nationwide poll to discover Britain's favourite poem, Rudyard Kipling's 'If...' was voted number one. This unique anthology brings together the results of the poll in a collection of the nation's 100 best loved poems. Among the selection are popular classics such as Tennyson's 'The Lady of Shallott' and Wordsworth's 'The Daffodils' alongside contemporary poetry such as Allan Ahlberg's 'Plea ...

A Sea of Words, Third Edition

Sun, 2 Oct 2011 15:55:10 PST

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This comprehensive lexicon provides definitions of nautical terms, historical entries describing the people and political events that shaped the period, and detailed explanations of the scientific, medical, and biblical references that appear in the novels.

Chronicle of a Death Foretold

Sat, 1 Oct 2011 19:47:29 PST

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"Chronicle of a Death Foretold" is a compelling, moving story exploring injustice and mob hysteria by the Nobel Laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez, author of "One Hundred Years of Solitude" and "Love in the Time of Cholera". "On the day they were going to kill him, Santiago Nasar got up at five-thirty in the morning to wait for the boat the bishop was coming on." Santiago Nasar is brutally murdered ...

The Doors of Perception: WITH Heaven and Hell

Sat, 1 Oct 2011 19:35:50 PST

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WITH A FORWARD BY J. G. BALLARD. In 1953, in the presence of an investigator, Aldous Huxley took four-tenths of a gramme of mescalin, sat down and waited to see what would happen. When he opened his eyes everything, from the flowers in a vase to the creases in his trousers, was transformed. Huxley described his experience with breathtaking immediacy in The Doors of Perception. In its sequel Heave ...

Tropic Moon

Sat, 1 Oct 2011 19:35:50 PST

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Newly translated for this edition. A young Frenchman, Joseph Timar, travels to Gabon carrying a letter of introduction from an influential uncle. He wants work experience; he wants to see the world. But in the oppressive heat and glare of the equator, Timar doesn't know what to do with himself, and no one seems inclined to help except Adèle, the hotel owner's wife, who takes him to bed one day ...

The Shadow-line

Sat, 1 Oct 2011 19:35:50 PST

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'A sudden passion of anxious impatience rushed through my veins and gave me such a sense of the intensity of existence as I have never felt before or since.' link title to catalogue entry](exact date?)Written in 1915, The Shadow-Line is based upon events and experiences from twenty-seven years earlier to which Conrad returned obsessively in his fiction. A young sea captain's first command brings ...

The Plague

Sat, 1 Oct 2011 19:35:49 PST

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The townspeople of Oran are in the grip of a virulent plague. Cut off from the rest of the world, living in fear, they each respond in their own way to the grim challenge of the deadly bacillus. Among them is Dr Rieux, a humanitarian and healer, and it is through his eyes that we witness the devastating course of the epidemic. Written in 1947, just after the Nazi occupation of France, Camus' magn ...

The Picture Book of Body Language

Mon, 26 Sep 2011 2:36:14 PST

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95% of communication is non-verbal: the shifty glance, the gentle touch, the folded arms or the hard stare. Wordless communication is instant and instinctive. So it's astonishing that we don't take time to learn the subtleties of this ancient and revealing language. Understanding the body's responses puts you in control. You can make the right impression; show someone you care; know when they fan ...

Point Omega

Sat, 3 Sep 2011 2:10:42 PST

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'Point Omega is a treat: the most satisfying and least cryptic of DeLillo's late novels' Sunday Telegraph Reading the fiction of Don DeLillo is an utterly original experience: powerful, prescient, perceptive. Writing in a prose that is both majestic and muscular, his unerringly accurate vision penetrates deep into the soul of America and consistently leaves readers with a fresh perspective on the ...

Nostromo

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 0:28:03 PST

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In his evocation of the republic of Costaguana, set amid the exotic and grandiose scenery of South America, Conrad reveals not only the lives and fates of his characters but also the physical and political composition of a whole country.

The Fall

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 0:27:12 PST

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Jean-Baptiste Clamence is a soul in turmoil. Over several drunken nights he regales a chance acquaintance with his story. From this successful former lawyer and seemingly model citizen a compelling, self-loathing catalogue of guilt, hypocrisy and alienation pours forth. "The Fall" (1956) is a brilliant portrayal of a man who has glimpsed the hollowness of his existence. But beyond depicting one m ...

The Power And The Glory

Sat, 27 Aug 2011 16:26:13 PST

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This title includes a reading guide. During a vicious persecution of the clergy in Mexico, a worldly priest, the 'whisky priest', is on the run. With the police closing in, his routes of escape are being shut off, his chances getting fewer. But compassion and humanity force him along the road to his destiny, reluctant to abandon those who need him, and those he cares for.

The Outsider

Sat, 27 Aug 2011 16:26:12 PST

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A peerless work of philosophical fiction that is as shocking today as when it was first published, the "Penguin Modern Classics" edition of Albert Camus' "The Outsider" is translated by Joseph Laredo. Meursault will not pretend. After the death of his mother, everyone is shocked when he shows no sadness. And when he commits a random act of violence in Algiers, society is baffled. Why would this s ...

The Remains of the Day

Sat, 27 Aug 2011 16:26:12 PST

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A tragic, spiritual portrait of a perfect English butler and his reaction to his fading insular world in post-war England. A wonderful, wonderful book.

Salammbo

Sat, 27 Aug 2011 16:26:12 PST

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An epic story of lust, cruelty, and sensuality, this historical novel is set in Carthage in the days following the First Punic War with Rome.

Love in the Time of Cholera

Sat, 27 Aug 2011 16:20:28 PST

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Nobel prize winner and author of "One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel Garcia Marquez" tells a tale of an unrequited love that outlasts all rivals in his masterpiece "Love in the Time of Cholera". "It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love". Fifty-one years, nine months and four days have passed since Fermina Daza rebuffed hopeless romantic ...

Brighton Rock

Sat, 27 Aug 2011 16:20:28 PST

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This title is presented with an introduction by J.M. Coetzee. A gang war is raging through the dark underworld of Brighton. Seventeen-year-old Pinkie, malign and ruthless, has killed a man. Believing he can escape retribution, he is unprepared for the courageous, life-embracing Ida Arnold. Greene's gripping thriller, exposes a world of loneliness and fear, of life lived on the 'dangerous edge of ...

Crome Yellow

Sat, 27 Aug 2011 16:20:27 PST

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This title includes an introduction by Malcolm Bradbury. Denis Stone, a naive young poet, is invited to stay at Crome, a country house renowned for its gatherings of 'bright young things'. His hosts, Henry Wimbush and his exotic wife Priscilla, are joined by a party of colourful guests whose intrigues and opinions ensure Denis' stay is a memorable one. First published in 1921, "Crome Yellow" was ...

Island

Sat, 27 Aug 2011 16:20:27 PST

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WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY DAVID BRADSHAW. For over a hundred years the Pacific island of Pala has been the scene of a unique experiment in civilisation. Its inhabitants live in a society where western science has been brought together with eastern philosophy and humanism to create a paradise on earth. When cynical journalist, Will Farnaby, arrives to search for information about potential oil reser ...

The Hobbit

Sat, 27 Aug 2011 3:40:41 PST

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The Lord of the Rings

Sat, 27 Aug 2011 3:40:40 PST

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Frodo the hobbit and his eight companions undertake a perilous quest to destroy the One Ring and break the power of the Dark Lord before he can overcome the peoples of Middle Earth.

Brave New World

Sat, 27 Aug 2011 3:28:03 PST

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Far in the future, the World Controllers have created the ideal society. Through clever use of genetic engineering, brainwashing and recreational sex and drugs all its members are happy consumers. Bernard Marx seems alone harbouring an ill-defined longing to break free. A visit to one of the few remaining Savage Reservations where the old, imperfect life still continues, may be the cure for his d ...

One Hundred Years of Solitude

Sat, 27 Aug 2011 3:28:03 PST

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One of the 20th century’s enduring works, One Hundred Years of Solitude is a widely beloved and acclaimed novel known throughout the world, and the ultimate achievement in a Nobel Prize–winning career. The novel tells the story of the rise and fall of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendia family. It is a rich and brilliant chronicle of life and death, and the tragicome ...

The Collector

Sat, 27 Aug 2011 3:28:03 PST

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Withdrawn, uneducated and unloved, Frederick collects butterflies and takes photographs. He is obsessed with a beautiful stranger, the art student Miranda. When he wins the pools he buys a remote Sussex house and calmly abducts Miranda, believing she will grow to love him in time. Alone and desperate, Miranda must struggle to overcome her own prejudices and contempt if she is understand her capto ...

The Devils of Loudon

Sat, 27 Aug 2011 3:28:03 PST

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In 1634 Urbain Grandier, a handsome and dissolute priest of the parish of Loudun was tried, tortured and burnt at the stake. He had been found guilty of conspiring with the devil to seduce an entire convent of nuns in what was the most sensational case of mass possession and sexual hysteria in history. Grandier maintained his innocence to the end and four years after his death the nuns were still ...

How to Read a Book

Sun, 14 Aug 2011 15:38:11 PST

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How to Read a Book, originally published in 1940, has become a rare phenomenon, a living classic. It is the best and most successful guide to reading comprehension for the general reader. And now it has been completely rewritten and updated.You are told about the various levels of reading and how to achieve them -- from elementary reading, through systematic skimming and inspectional reading, to ...

The Secret Agent

Sun, 14 Aug 2011 15:38:11 PST

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"The Secret Agent" is Joseph Conrad's dark satire on English society, edited with an introduction and notes by Michael Newton in "Penguin Classics". In the only novel Conrad set in London, "The Secret Agent" communicates a profoundly ironic view of human affairs. The story is woven around an attack on the Greenwich Observatory in 1894 masterminded by Verloc, a Russian spy working for the police, ...

The Black Ship

Sun, 14 Aug 2011 2:02:05 PST

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Dudley Pope meticulously researches the story of the bloodiest mutiny in the history of the Royal Navy - the butchering of the officers aboard His Majesty's Frigate HERMIONE 32 guns, in the West Indies in 1797. The captain of the frigate, Hugh Pigot, was a brutal and sadistic commander who flogged his men mercilessly and drove them beyond the limits of endurance. However, nothing could excuse the ...

The Speedwell voyage

Sun, 14 Aug 2011 1:57:45 PST

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The true story of a 22-gun privateer's epic 1718 journey in the South Sea.

In the Heart of the Sea

Sun, 14 Aug 2011 1:39:42 PST

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The Number One best-selling, epic true-life story of one of the most notorious maritime disasters of the 19th century, beautifully reissued alongside Philbrick's new paperback, Sea of Glory. The sinking of the whaleship Essex by an enraged spermwhale in the Pacific in November 1820 set in motion one of the most dramatic sea stories of all time: the twenty sailors who survived the wreck took to th ...

Moby Dick

Sun, 14 Aug 2011 1:39:41 PST

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This classic story of high adventure, manic obsession, and metaphysical speculation was Melville's masterpiece. The tale of Captain Ahab's frantic pursuit of the cunning and notorious white whale Moby Dick, is packed with drama, and draws heavily on the author's own experiences on the high seas. This edition includes passages from Melville's correspondence with Nathaniel Hawthorne, in which the t ...

Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Sun, 14 Aug 2011 1:28:56 PST

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A narrative particle-accelerator that zooms between Wild Turkey Whiskey and Bob Dylan, unicorn skulls and voracious librarians, John Coltrane and Lord Jim. Science fiction, detective story and post-modern manifesto all rolled into one rip-roaring novel, Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World is the tour de force that expanded Haruki Murakami's international following. Tracking one man's ...

The Temple of Dawn

Sun, 14 Aug 2011 1:18:35 PST

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Honda, a brilliant lawyer and man of reason, is called to Bangkok on legal business, where he is granted an audience with a young Thai princess - an encounter that radically alters the course of his life. He is convinced she is a reincarnated spirit, and undertakes a long, arduous pilgrimage to the holy places of India, where, in the climatic scene, he encounters her once more, only to have his n ...

The Decay of the Angel

Sun, 14 Aug 2011 1:18:35 PST

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The dramatic climax of "The Sea of Fertility" tetraology takes place in the late 1960s. Honda, now an aged and wealthy man, discovers and adopts a sixteen-year-old orphan, Toru, as his heir, identifying him with the tragic protagonists of the three previous novels, each of whom died at the age of twenty. Honda raises and educates the boy, yet watches him, waiting.

Spring Snow

Sun, 14 Aug 2011 1:18:34 PST

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Tokyo, 1912. The closed world of the ancient aristocracy is being breached for the first time by outsiders - rich provincial familes, a new and powerful political and social elite. Kiyoaki has been raised among the elegant Ayakura family - members of the waning aristocracy - but he is not one of them. Coming of age, he is caught up in the tensions between old and new, and his feelings for the exq ...

Runaway Horses

Sun, 14 Aug 2011 1:18:34 PST

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Isao is a young, engaging patriot, and a fanatical believer in the ancient samurai ethos. He turns terrorist, organising a violent plot against the new industrialists, who he believes are threatening the integrity of Japan and usurping the Emperor's rightful power. As the conspiracy unfolds and unravels, Mishima brilliantly chronicles the conflicts of a decade that saw the fabric of Japanese life ...

A Wild Sheep Chase

Sun, 14 Aug 2011 0:19:02 PST

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His life was like his recurring nightmare: a train to nowhere. But an ordinary life has a way of taking an extraordinary turn. Add a girl whose ears are so exquisite that, when uncovered, they improve sex a thousand-fold, a runaway friend, a right-wing politico, an ovine-obsessed professor and a manic-depressive in a sheep outfit, implicate them in a hunt for a sheep, that may or may not be runni ...

After Dark

Sun, 14 Aug 2011 0:19:01 PST

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The midnight hour approaches in an almost empty all-night diner. Mari sips her coffee and glances up from a book as a young man, a musician, intrudes on her solitude. Both have missed the last train home. Later, Mari is interrupted a second time by a girl from the Alphaville Hotel; a Chinese prostitute has been hurt by a client, the girl has heard Mari speaks fluent Chinese and requests her help. ...

The Wind-up Bird Chronicle

Sun, 14 Aug 2011 0:19:00 PST

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Toru Okada's cat has disappeared and this has unsettled his wife, who is herself growing more distant every day. Then there are the increasingly explicit telephone calls he has started receiving. As this compelling story unfolds, the tidy suburban realities of Okada's vague and blameless life, spent cooking, reading, listening to jazz and opera and drinking beer at the kitchen table, are turned i ...

South of the Border, West of the Sun

Sun, 14 Aug 2011 0:19:00 PST

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Following the massive complexity of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle--Haruki Murakami's best-selling, award-winning novel--comes this deceptively simple love story, a contemporary rendering of the romance in which a boy finds and then loses a girl, only to meet her again years later. Hajime--"Beginning" in Japanese--was an atypical only child growing up in a conventional middle-class suburb. Shimamot ...

The Trial

Sun, 14 Aug 2011 0:14:46 PST

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A terrifying psychological trip into the life of one Joseph K., an ordinary man who wakes up one day to find himself accused of a crime he did not commit, a crime whose nature is never revealed to him. Once arrested, he is released, but must report to court on a regular basis-an event that proves maddening, as nothing is ever resolved. As he grows more uncertain of his fate, his personal life--in ...

The Name of the Rose

Sun, 14 Aug 2011 0:14:46 PST

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The year is 1327. Franciscans in a wealthy Italian abbey are suspected of heresy, and Brother William of Baskerville arrives to investigate. When his delicate mission is suddenly overshadowed by seven bizarre deaths, Brother William turns detective. He collects evidence, deciphers secret symbols and coded manuscripts, and digs into the eerie labyrinth of the abbey where extraordinary things are h ...

Kafka on the Shore

Sun, 14 Aug 2011 0:14:46 PST

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Kafka on the Shore follows the fortunes of two remarkable characters. Kafka Tamura runs away from home at fifteen, under the shadow of his father's dark prophesy. The aging Nakata, tracker of lost cats, who never recovered from a bizarre childhood affliction, finds his pleasantly simplified life suddenly turned upside down. Their parallel odysseys are enriched throughout by vivid accomplices and ...

The Star of the Sea

Sun, 14 Aug 2011 0:14:46 PST

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In the bitter winter of 1847, from an Ireland torn by injustice and natural disaster, the Star of the Sea sets sail for New York. On board are hundreds of fleeing refugees. Among them are a maidservant with a devastating secret, bankrupt Lord Merridith and his family, an aspiring novelist, a maker of revolutionary ballads, all braving the Atlantic in search of a new home. Each is connected more d ...

Dance, Dance, Dance

Sat, 13 Aug 2011 23:47:27 PST

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High-class call girls billed to Mastercard. A psychic 13-year-old dropout with a passion for Talking Heads. A hunky matinee idol doomed to play dentists and teachers. A one-armed beach-combing poet, an uptight hotel clerk and one very bemused narrator caught in the web of advanced capitalist mayhem. Combine this offbeat cast of characters with Murakami's idiosyncratic prose and out comes Dance Da ...

Down and Out in Paris and London

Sat, 6 Aug 2011 20:48:24 PST

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'You have talked so often of going to the dogs - and well, here are the dogs, and you have reached them'. George Orwell's vivid memoir of his time among the desperately poor and destitute in London and Paris is a moving tour of the underworld of society. Here he painstakingly documents a world of unrelenting drudgery and squalor - sleeping in bug-infested hostels and doss houses, working as a dis ...

The Lover

Sat, 6 Aug 2011 14:51:49 PST

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As featured on BBC Radio 4's Good Reads this October, THE LOVER is an unforgettable portrayal of two lovers, and the hate that tears the girl's family apart. Saigon, 1930s: a poor young French girl meets the elegant son of a wealthy Chinese family. Soon they are lovers, locked into a private world of passion and intensity that defies all the conventions of their society. A sensational internation ...

The Old Man and the Sea

Sat, 30 Jul 2011 23:19:02 PST

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Set in the Gulf Stream off the coast of Havana, Hemingway's magnificent fable is the story of an old man, a young boy and a giant fish. It was The Old Man and the Sea that won for Hemingway the Nobel Prize for Literature. Here, in a perfectly crafted story, is a unique and timeless vision of the beauty and grief of man's challenge to the elements in which he lives.

The Heart of Darkness: AND Youth

Wed, 27 Jul 2011 3:08:39 PST

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WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY TIM BUTCHER. The silence of the jungle is broken only by the ominous sound of drumming. Life on the river is brutal and unknown threats lurk in the darkness. Marlow's mission to captain a steamer upriver into the dense interior leads him into conflict with the others who haunt the forest. But his decision to hunt down the mysterious Mr Kurtz, an ivory trader who is the sub ...

The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea

Mon, 25 Jul 2011 18:15:57 PST

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