aNobii: News from [person name]'s shelf

Jamrach's Menagerie

Tue, 31 Jul 2012 23:25:57 PST

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Young Jaffy Brown never expects to escape the slums of Victorian London. Then, aged eight, a chance encounter with Mr Jamrach changes Jaffy's stars. And before he knows it, he finds himself at the docks waving goodbye to his beloved Ishbel and boarding a ship bound for the Indian Ocean. With his friend Tim at his side, Jaffy's journey will push faith, love and friendship to their utmost limits.

The Diamond Queen

Tue, 31 Jul 2012 23:22:55 PST

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With the flair for narrative and the meticulous research that readers have come to expect, Andrew Marr turns his attention to the monarch -- and to the monarchy, chronicling the Queen's pivotal role at the centre of the state, which is largely hidden from the public gaze, and making a strong case for the institution itself. Arranged thematically, rather than chronologically, Marr dissects the Que ...

Mystery in the Minster

Tue, 31 Jul 2012 23:18:20 PST

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In 1358 the fledging college of Michaelhouse in Cambridge is in need of extra funds. A legacy from the Archbishop of York of a parish close to that city promises a welcome source of income. However, there has been another claim to its ownership and it seems the only way to settle the dispute is for a deputation from Michaelhouse to travel north. Matthew Bartholomew is among the small party which ...

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

Tue, 31 Jul 2012 23:17:51 PST

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This is the story of Dr Alfred Jones, a fisheries scientist - for whom diary-notable events include the acquisition of a new electric toothbrush and getting his article on caddis fly larvae published in 'Trout and Salmon' - who finds himself reluctantly involved in a project to bring salmon fishing to the Highlands of the Yemen - a project that will change his life, and the course of British poli ...

The Sense of an Ending

Fri, 25 May 2012 3:45:55 PST

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Winner of the 2011 Man Booker Prize 　　By an acclaimed writer at the height of his powers, The Sense of an Ending extends a streak of extraordinary books that began with the best-selling Arthur & George and continued with Nothing to Be Frightened Of and, most recently, Pulse. 　　This intense new novel follows a middle-aged man as he contends with a past he has never much thought about—until his c ...

An Invisible Sign Of My Own

Fri, 11 May 2012 18:37:36 PST

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An incandescent novel by one of America's most gifted young writers. With her stunning debut collection of stories, The Girl in the Flammable Skirt, Aimee Bender showed herself to be "a writer who makes you glad for the very existence of language" San Francisco Chronicle. The book was a sensation; it spent seven weeks on The Los Angeles Times bestseller list, received ecstatic reviews nationwid ...

Revolutionary Road

Fri, 11 May 2012 18:33:22 PST

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The rediscovery and rejuvenation of Richard Yates's 1961 novel Revolutionary Road is due in large part to its continuing emotional and moral resonance for an early 21st-century readership. April and Frank Wheeler are a young, ostensibly thriving couple living with their two children in a prosperous Connecticut suburb in the mid-1950s. However, like the characters in John Updike's similarly themed ...

The Bed I Made

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 0:31:39 PST

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I haven't given up on you and I'm not going to. It's time to stop playing hard to get now. When Kate meets a dark, enigmatic man in a Soho bar, she doesn't hesitate long before going home with him. There is something undeniably attractive about Richard - and irresistibly dangerous, too. Now, after eighteen exhilarating but fraught months, Kate knows she has to finish their relationship and hopes ...

Annie Dunne

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 0:29:45 PST

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It is 1959 in Wicklow, Ireland, and Annie and her cousin Sarah are living and working together to keep Sarah's small farm running. Suddenly, Annie's young niece and nephew are left in their care. Unprepared for the chaos that the two children inevitably bring, but nervously excited nonetheless, Annie finds the interruption of her normal life and her last chance at happiness complicated further ...

Tiny Sunbirds, Far Away

Thu, 5 Apr 2012 2:49:32 PST

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After her parents separate, Blessing's mother moves with her and her brother Ezikiel to live in a village in the Niger Delta, where Blessing gradually adjusts, ...

Me Before You

Thu, 5 Apr 2012 2:47:04 PST

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Lou Clark knows lots of things. She knows how many footsteps there are between the bus stop and home. She knows she likes working in The Buttered Bun tea shop and she knows she might not love her boyfriend Patrick. What Lou doesn't know is she's about to lose her job or that knowing what's coming is what keeps her sane. Will Traynor knows his motorcycle accident took away his desire to live. He k ...

The Museum of Innocence

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 5:47:36 PST

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Tells the story of Kemal, the son of one of Istanbul's richest families, and of his obsessive love for a poor and distant relation, the beautiful Fusun, who is a shop-girl in a small boutique. This novel depicts a panoramic view of life in Istanbul and captures the identity crisis experienced by Istanbul's upper classes. "The Museum of Innocence" - set in Istanbul between 1975 and today - tells ...

Made in Britain

Mon, 5 Mar 2012 16:20:16 PST

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Looking at how Britain pays its way in the world today. Like Andrew Marr’s HISTORY OF MODERN BRITAIN or Michael Palin’s HIMALAYA, the book will have a coherence and life beyond the television series, mirroring its basic structure, but looking at some issues in greater depth, and telling additional stories to illustrate some of the ideas. This book is about the things that Britain produces in ord ...

Hard Times

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 21:55:08 PST

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Hard Times appeared in weekly parts in Household Words in 1854, printed on the pages usually occupied by leading articles on the major social issues of the day. In the overlapping worlds of Gradgrind's schoolroom, Bounderby the humbug industrialist and Sissy Jupe of Sleary's Circus, Dickens joyfully satirizes Utilitarianism, the self-help doctrines of Samuel Smiles and the mechanization of the mi ...

The Daughter of Time

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 5:18:18 PST

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Inspector Alan Grant of Scotland Yard, recuperating from a broken leg, becomes fascinated with a contemporary portrait of Richard III that bears no resemblance to the Wicked Uncle of history. Could such a sensitive, noble face actually belong to one of the world's most heinous villains - a venomous hunchback who may have killed his brother's children to make his crown secure? Or could Richard hav ...

The Five People You Meet in Heaven

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 1:14:30 PST

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THE FIVE PEOPLE YOU MEET IN HEAVEN is a wonderfully moving fable that addresses the meaning of life, and life after death, in the poignant way that made TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE such an astonishing book. The protagonist is an elderly amusement park maintenance worker named Eddie who, while operating a ride called the 'Free Fall', dies while trying to save a young girl who gets in the way of a falling ...

Ape House

Sun, 5 Feb 2012 4:58:32 PST

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The Bridge

Sun, 5 Feb 2012 4:49:23 PST

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In The Bridge, master storyteller and weaver of worlds, Iain Banks creates a mysterious structure that leads from nowhere to nowhere. Everyone lives on the Bridge, including a man named Orr, devoid of personality or memory, and haunted by dreams of war. Banks' engaging blend of the cutting-edge hypothetical and blistering reality collide in The Bridge . The Bridge is like none other: A multi-lay ...

Three Cups of Tea

Sun, 5 Feb 2012 4:48:27 PST

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The astonishing, uplifting story of a real-life Indiana Jones and his humanitarian campaign to use education to combat terrorism in the Taliban's backyard Anyone who despairs of the individual's power to change lives has to read the story of Greg Mortenson, a homeless mountaineer who, following a 1993 climb of Pakistan's treacherous K2, was inspired by a chance encounter with impoverished mounta ...

The Invisible Ones

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 3:18:11 PST

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Small-time private investigator Ray Lovell veers between paralysis and delirium in a hospital bed. But before the accident that landed him there, he had promised to find Rose Janko. Rose was married to the charismatic son of a travelling gypsy family, Ivo Janko. When Ray starts to investigate her disappearance he's surprised that her family are so hostile towards him. The Jankos have not had an e ...

Emotionally Weird

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 5:59:59 PST

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The latest magical mystery tour de force from one of Britain's most original novelists - winner of the Whitbread First Novel Award for "Behind the Scenes at the Museum," On a peat and heather island off the West Coast of Scotland, Effie and her mother, Nora, take refuge in the large mouldering house of their ancestors and tell each other stories. Nora, at first, recounts nothing that Effie real ...

The Sisters Brothers

Sun, 15 Jan 2012 1:32:10 PST

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The Secret Life of Bees

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 5:18:43 PST

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Lily has grown up believing she accidentally killed her mother when she was four. She not only has her own memory of holding the gun, but her father's account of the event. Now fourteen, she yearns for her mother, and for forgiveness. Living on a peach farm in South Carolina with her father, she has only one friend: Rosaleen, a black servant whose sharp exterior hides a tender heart. South Caroli ...

Parting Shots

Sun, 8 Jan 2012 6:17:40 PST

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Up till 2006 a British Ambassador leaving his post was encouraged to write what was known as a valedictory despatch, to be circulated to a small number of influential people in government. This was the parting shot, an opportunity to offer a personal and frank view of the host country, the manners and morals of its people, their institutions, the state of their cooking and their drains. But it wa ...

The Morville Hours

Sat, 31 Dec 2011 5:04:24 PST

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This is a book about time and the garden: all gardens, but also a particular one: that of the Dower House at Morville, where the author arrived in 1988 to make a new garden of her own. Katherine Swift takes the reader on a journey through time, back to the forces which shaped the garden, linking the history of those who lived in the same Shropshire house and tended the same red soil with the stor ...

'Dream on'

Sat, 31 Dec 2011 4:56:40 PST

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'I have a friend, a guy called John, who is undertaking a golf challenge. He has a full-time job and a wife and child and he's trying to shoot a level par round within the year. When he started the challenge he couldn't break one hundred. So he's trying to take thirty-three strokes off his game in one year and he asked me to find out your opinion on that.' Sam Torrance laughed, then slowly contem ...

The Lonely Polygamist

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 1:58:46 PST

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Golden Richards, husband to four wives, father to twenty-eight children, is having the mother of all midlife crises. His construction business is failing, his family has grown into an overpopulated mini-dukedom beset with insurrection and rivalry, and he is done in with grief: due to the accidental death of a daughter and the stillbirth of a son, he has come to doubt the capacity of his own heart ...

Water for Elephants

Wed, 23 Nov 2011 3:49:44 PST

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When Jacob Jankowski, recently orphaned and suddenly adrift, jumps onto a passing train, he enters a world of freaks, grifters, and misfits the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth a second-rate travelling circus struggling to survive during the Great Depression, making one-night stands in town after endless town. Jacob, a veterinary student who almost earned his degree, is put in char ...

So Much for That

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 4:35:14 PST

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What do you pack for the rest of your life? The explosive new novel from the Orange Prize-winning author of We Need to Talk About Kevin Shepherd Knacker has been saving all his working life for a one way ticket away from the daily grind. When he sells his handyman business for $1million, 'The Afterlife, seems tantalisingly within reach. Yet his wife has concocted one reason after another why now ...

The Miracle at Speedy Motors

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 1:38:24 PST

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Tea Time for the Traditionally Built

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 1:30:40 PST

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It is a troublesome fact on which even Mma Ramotswe and her assistant Mma Makutsi agree: there are things that men know and ladies do not, and vice versa. It is unfortunate, for example, when Mma Ramotswe's newest client is the big-shot owner of the ailing Kalahari Swoopers, that one thing lady detectives know very little about is football. And when the glamorous Violet Sephotho sets her sights o ...

The Help

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 5:11:34 PST

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It was Jackson, Mississippi, 1962. Black maids raise white children, but aren't trusted not to steal the silver. Some lines will never be crossed. Aibileen is a black maid: smart, regal, and raising her seventeenth white child. Yet something shifted inside Aibileen the day her own son died while his bosses looked the other way. Minny, Aibileen's best friend, is by some way the sassiest woman in M ...

Year of Wonders

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 5:09:02 PST

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When an infected bolt of cloth carries plague from London to an isolated village, a housemaid named Anna Frith emerges as an unlikely heroine and healer. Through Anna's eyes we follow the story of the fateful year of 1666, as she and her fellow villagers confront the spread of disease and superstition. As death reaches into every household and villagers turn from prayers to murderous witch-huntin ...

The Solitude of Prime Numbers

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 5:06:27 PST

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The Flood

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 5:04:08 PST

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Mary Miller had always been an outcast. As a young girl she had fallen into the hot burn - a torrent of warm chemical run-off from the local coal mine. Fished out white-haired and half-dead, sympathy for her quickly faded when the young man who pushed her in died in a mining accident just two days later. From then on she was regarded with a mixture of suspicion and fascination by her God-fearing ...

The Colour

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 5:00:59 PST

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Joseph and Harriet Blackstone emigrate from Norfolk to New Zealand in search of new beginnings and prosperity. But the harsh land near Christchurch threatens to destroy them almost before they begin. When Joseph finds gold in the creek he is seized by a rapturous obsession with the voluptuous riches awaiting him deep in the earth. Abandoning his farm and family, he sets off alone for the new gold ...

Harper Lee's to Kill a Mocking Bird

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 4:54:50 PST

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Mr. Rosenblum's List

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 4:51:28 PST

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List item 2: Never speak German on the upper decks of London buses. Jack Rosenblum is five foot three and a half inches of sheer tenacity. He's writing a list so he can become a Very English Gentleman. List item 41: An Englishman buys his marmalade from Fortnum and Mason. It's 1952, and despite his best efforts, his bid to blend in is fraught with unexpected hurdles - including his wife. Sadie do ...

The Making of Modern Britain

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 4:49:17 PST

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In "The Making of Modern Britain", Andrew Marr paints a fascinating portrait of life in Britain during the first half of the twentieth century as the country recovered from the grand wreckage of the British Empire. Between the death of Queen Victoria and the end of the Second World War, the nation was shaken by war and peace. The two wars were the worst we had ever known and the episodes of peace ...

One Moment, One Morning

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 4:47:26 PST

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The Brighton to London line. The 07:44 train. Carriages packed with commuters. A woman applies her make-up. Another occupies her time observing the people around her. A husband and wife share an affectionate gesture. Further along, a woman flicks through a glossy magazine. Then, abruptly, everything changes: a man has a heart attack, and can't be resuscitated; the train is stopped, an ambulance ...

The Elegance of the Hedgehog

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 4:40:16 PST

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The Earth Hums in B Flat

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 4:37:02 PST

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Young Gwenni Morgan has a gift. She can fly in her sleep. She's also fond of strawberry whip, detective stories and asking difficult questions. When a neighbor mysteriously vanishes, she resolves to uncover the secret of his disappearance and return him to his children. She truthfully records what she sees and hears: but are her deductions correct? What is the real truth? And what will be the con ...

Dreams from My Father

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 4:34:08 PST

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In this memoir written at the age of 33, Barack Obama, son of a black African father and a white American mother, describes the search for meaning in his life as a black American. He begins in New York where he learns that his father, more a myth than a man to him, has been killed in a car accident. This sudden death inspires an emotional odyssey that sees Obama travel to Kansas, Hawaii and Kenya ...

Started Early, Took My Dog

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 4:31:48 PST

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Blackberry Wine

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 4:29:06 PST

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Jay Mackintosh is trapped by memory in the old familiar landscape of his childhood, to which he longs to return. A bottle of home-brewed wine left to him by a long-vanished friend seems to provide the key to an old mystery. As the unusual properties of the strange brew take effect, Jay escapes to a derelict farmhouse in the French village of Lansquenet. There, a ghost from the past waits to confr ...

The Swimming Pool Season

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 4:25:47 PST

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This novel won the Angel Literary Award.

The Hand That First Held Mine

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 4:22:31 PST

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A gorgeously written story of love and motherhood, this is a tour de force from one of our most acclaimed and best loved novelists. When the bohemian, sophisticated Innes Kent turns up by chance on her doorstep, Lexie Sinclair realises she cannot wait any longer for her life to begin, and leaves for London. There, at the heart of the 1950s Soho art scene, she carves out a new life for herself, w ...

Small Wars

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 3:54:51 PST

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Hal Treherne is a young and dedicated soldier on the brink of a brilliant career. Impatient to see action, his other deep commitment is to Clara, his beautiful 'red, white and blue girl', who sustains him as he rises through the ranks. When Hal is transferred to the Mediterranean, Clara, now his wife, and their baby daughters join him. But Cyprus is no 'sunshine posting', and the island is in the ...

The River

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 3:54:25 PST

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Harriet is between two worlds. Her sister is no longer a playmate, her brother is still a child. The comforting rhythm of her Indian childhood - the noise of the jute works, the colourful festivals that accompany each season and the eternal ebb and flow of the river on its journey to the Bay of Benghal - is about to be shattered. She must learn how to reconcile the jagged edges of beginnings and ...

The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 3:51:43 PST

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Eight Feet in the Andes

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 3:51:17 PST

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For more than forty years, Dervla Murphy has been recording her remarkable adventurestraveling by bicycle and on footin some of the most inaccessible places on earth. The eight feet belong to Murphy, her nine-year-old daughter, Rachel, and Juana, an elegant mule, who together clambered the length of Peru, from Cajamarca near the border with Ecuador, to Cuzco, the ancient Inca capitaltraveling ...

Slowly Down the Ganges

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 3:50:53 PST

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The story of the 1,200 mile journey made by Eric Newby and his wife down the holy river of India, travelling in a variety of boats, and sometimes by rail, bus and bullock carts, and staying on sandbanks, in villages and towns where they encountered an assortment of characters. Last published in 1983.

The Lantern

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 3:50:29 PST

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When Eve falls for the secretive, charming Dom, their whirlwind relationship leads them to purchase Les Genevriers, an abandoned house in a rural hamlet in the south of France. As the beautiful Provence summer turns to autumn, Eve finds it impossible to ignore the mysteries that haunt both her lover and the run-down old house, in particular the mysterious disappearance of his beautiful first wife ...

The Lighthouse

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 3:49:55 PST

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Combe Island off the Cornish coast has a bloodstained history of piracy and cruelty but now, privately owned, it offers respite to over-stressed men and women in positions of high authority who require privacy and guaranteed security. But the peace of Combe is vilated when one of the distinguished visitors is bizarrely murdered. Adam Dalgliesh is called in to solve the mystery quickly and discree ...

The Distance Between Us

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 3:48:53 PST

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Gripping, insightful and deft, Maggie O'Farrell's third novel is a haunting story of the way our families shape our lives. It was winner of the Somerset Maugham Award. On a cold February afternoon, Stella catches sight of a man she hasn't seen for many years, but instantly recognises. Or thinks she does. At the same moment on the other side of the globe, in the middle of a crowd of Chinese New Y ...

The Murder Room

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 3:48:28 PST

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Commander Adam Dalgliesh is already acquainted with the Dupayne Museum in Hampstead, and with its sinister murder room celebrating notorious crimes committed in the interwar years, when he is called to investigate the killing of one of the trustees. He soon discovers that the victim was seeking to close the museum against the wishes of both staff and fellow trustees. Everyone, it seems, has somet ...

Songs of Blue and Gold

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 3:47:26 PST

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Sometimes the key to the future lies in the past...In the horseshoe bay of Kalami in Corfu, a tumultuous love affair begins between a renowned novelist and a woman escaping scandal. Years later, her daughter Melissa, running from her own past, returns to the island...Melissa's life in England is in disarray. There are cracks in her perfect marriage, and her elderly mother, Elizabeth, is losing he ...

Devices and Desires

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 3:46:24 PST

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Featuring the famous Commander Adam Dalgliesh, Devices and Desires is a thrilling and insightfully crafted novel of fallible people caught in a net of secrets, ambitions, and schemes on a lonely stretch of Norfolk coastline. Commander Dalgliesh of Scotland Yard has just published a new book of poems and has taken a brief respite from publicity on the remote Larksoken headland on the Norfolk coa ...

Watching the English

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 3:45:48 PST

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In WATCHING THE ENGLISH anthropologist Kate Fox takes a revealing look at the quirks, habits and foibles of the English people. She puts the English national character under her anthropological microscope, and finds a strange and fascinating culture, governed by complex sets of unspoken rules and byzantine codes of behaviour. Her minute observation of the way we talk, dress, eat, drink, work, pla ...

Snowdrops

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 3:45:18 PST

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A. D. Miller's Snowdrops is an intensely riveting psychological drama that unfolds over the course of one Moscow winter, as a young Englishman's moral compass is spun by the seductive opportunities revealed to him by a new Russia: a land of hedonism and desperation, corruption and kindness, magical dachas and debauched nightclubs; a place where secrets - and corpses - come to light only when the ...

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 3:44:15 PST

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It's 1946, and as Juliet Ashton sits at her desk in her Chelsea flat, she is stumped. A writer of witty newspaper columns during the war, she can't think of what to write next. Out of the blue, she receives a letter from one Dawsey Adams of Guernsey - by chance he's acquired a book Juliet once owned - and, emboldened by their mutual love of books, they begin a correspondence. Dawsey is a member o ...