When Kay Lansing marries wealthy widower Peter Carrington, she is well aware of the rumours surrounding the mysterious death of Peter's first wife Grace, who was found floating in the family pool ten years ago, pregnant at the time. Kay also discovers that Peter is a chronic sleepwalker who suffers from periodic nightmares. When the police arrive at her doorstep with a warrant for Peter's arrest in connection with another murder – that of a woman Peter had escorted to a high school senior prom twenty-two years ago – Kay begins to fear that she has married a sleepwalking murderer, and she resolves to find out the truth behind the puzzling deaths. But are the two deaths linked? And why does a melody that Kay cannot identify keep playing in her head every time she approaches the family chapel?

He was only a hick from Kain-tuck; but when he got mixed up with some big-time crooks... he wasn’t so dumb!

A devilishly intelligent new novel by the internationally bestselling author and Prix Médicis winner. A black writer from Montreal has found the perfect title for his next book I Am a Japanese Writer. His publisher loves it and gives him an advance. The problem is, he can't seem to write a word of it. He nurses his writer's block by taking baths, re-reading the Japanese poet Basho and engaging in amorous intrigues with rising pop star Midori. The book, still unwritten, becomes a cult phenomenon in Japan, and the writer an international celebrity. A Japanese writer publishes a book called I Am a Malagasy Writer. Even the Japanese consulate is intrigued. Our hero is delighted — until things start to go wrong. Part postmodern fantasy, part Kafkaesque nightmare and part travelogue to the inner reaches of the self, I Am a Japanese Writer calls into question everything we think we know about what-and who-makes a work of art

Dupont University—the Olympian halls of learning housing the cream of America's youth, the roseate Gothic spires and manicured lawns suffused with tradition . . . Or so it appears to beautiful, brilliant Charlotte Simmons, a freshman from Sparta, North Carolina (pop. 900), who has come here on full scholarship in full flight from her tobacco-chewing, beer-swilling high school classmates. But Charlotte soon learns, to her mounting dismay, that Dupont is closer in spirit to Sodom than to Athens, and that sex, crank, and kegs trump academic achievement every time. As Charlotte encounters Dupont's privileged elite—her roommate, Beverly, a fleshy, Groton-educated Brahmin in lusty pursuit of lacrosse players; Jayjay Johanssen, the only white starting player on Dupont's godlike basketball team, whose position is threatened by a hotshot black freshman from the projects; the Young Turk of Saint Ray fraternity, Hoyt Thorpe, whose heady sense of entitlement and social domination is clinched by his accidental brawl with a bodyguard for the governor of California; and Adam Geller, one of the Millennium Mutants who run the university's "independent" newspaper and who consider themselves the last bastion of intellectual endeavor on the sex-crazed, jock-obsessed campus—she gains a new, revelatory sense of her own power, that of her difference and of her very innocence, but little does she realize that she will act as a catalyst in all of their lives

A mind-opening collection of short science fiction from one of the genre's most revered Grand Masters. Legendary author Robert A. Heinlein proclaimed, "To read science fiction is to read Simak. A reader who does not like Simak stories does not like science fiction at all." The remarkably talented Clifford D. Simak was able to ground his vast imagination in reality, and then introduce readers to fantastical worlds and concepts they could instantly and completely dig into, comprehend, and enjoy. People work; folk play. That is how it has been in this country for as long as Sam can remember. He is happy, and he understands that this is the way it should be. People are bigger than folk. They are stronger. They do not need food or water. They do not need the warmth of a fire. All they need are jobs to do and a blacksmith to fix them when they break. The people work so the folk can drink their moonshine, fish a little, and throw horseshoes. But once Sam starts to wonder why the world is like this, his life will never be the same. Along with the other stories in this collection, “I Am Crying All Inside” is a compact marvel—a picture of an impossible reality that is not so different from our own. Also included in this volume is the newly published “I Had No Head and My Eyes Were Floating Way Up in the Air,” originally written for Harlan Ellison’s The Last Dangerous Visions.™

The edgy diary of a 1960s housewife’s adventure of self-realization. Turning 29 years old, Janet Giddings Kurland starts a journal and records her comfortably routine suburban lifestyle. But when she rolls the dice with her friend’s husband, she starts down a path that will lead her to the hip streets of Greenwich Village. Amidst the sexually free, Janet blossoms and her housewife’s journal turns into a sex diary filled with unexpected encounters, dangerous partners, and drug-fueled sexual escapades. Will her adventures destroy her? Or will she find, as the poet William Blake proclaimed, that the road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom?

Seven days after she had been abducted, the body of a twenty-year-old woman is found on a green patch of grass by the Los Angeles International Airport. She has been left with her limbs stretched out and spread apart, placing her in a five-point human star. The autopsy reveals that she had been tortured and murdered in a most bizarre way. But the surprises don’t end there. This killer likes to play, and he left a note lodged inside his victim’s throat. Detective Robert Hunter, who leads LAPD’s Special Section, Ultra Violent Unit, is assigned the case. But almost immediately a second body turns up. Hunter knows he has to be quick. Surrounded by new challenges as every day passes, Hunter finds himself chasing a monster. A predator whose past hides a terrible secret, whose desire to hurt people and thirst for murder can never be quenched — for he is DEATH

Это первая книга в России, которая повествует о человеке, прошедшем полное физическое и ментальное восстановление после ограничительных расстройств пищевого поведения (ОРПП) с помощью протокола HDRM, который не предполагает любых рамок в еде и обращений к диетологам. Через автобиографию девушки можно проследить, как невидимое расстройство разрушает человека, какие голоса в голове при этом он слышит и как выходит из этого опасного состояния

Diabolically funny and subversively philosophical, Italian novelist Giacomo Sartori’s I Am God is the diary of the Almighty’s existential crisis that erupts when he falls in love with a human. I am God. Have been forever, will be forever. Forever, mind you, with the razor-sharp glint of a diamond, and without any counterpart in the languages of men. So begins God’s diary of the existential crisis that ensues when, inexplicably, he falls in love with a human. And not just any human, but a geneticist and fanatical atheist who’s certain she can improve upon the magnificent creation she doesn’t even give him the credit for. It’s frustrating, for a god. God has infinitely bigger things to occupy his celestial attentions. Yet he can’t tear his eyes (so to speak) from the geneticist who’s unsettlingly avid when it comes to science, sex, and Sicilian cannoli. Whatever happens, he must safeguard his transcendental dignity. So he watches—disinterestedly, of course—as the handsome climatologist who has his sights set on her keeps having strange accidents. And as the lanky geneticist becomes hell-bent on infiltrating the Vatican’s secret files, for reasons of her own…. A sly critique of the hypocrisy and hubris that underlie faith in religion, science, and macho careerism, I Am God takes us on a hilarious and provocative romp through the Big Questions with the universe’s supreme storyteller

Short stories addressing the surreal realities of mental illness, from a British modernist writer often compared to Franz Kafka and Virginia Woolf — The tortured life of Anna Kavan yielded much in the way of writing material. Her drug addiction bore fruit in the Julia and the Bazooka collection of stories, while this volume recalls her asylum experiences, continuing in the vein of Asylum Piece, her first book published under the name Anna Kavan. These are powerful, haunting works which can be harrowing but are also full of sympathy

Robert Neville is the last living man on Earth… but he is not alone. Every other man, woman, and child on Earth has become a vampire, and they are all hungry for Neville's blood. By day, he is the hunter, stalking the sleeping undead through the abandoned ruins of civilization. By night, he barricades himself in his home and prays for dawn. How long can one man survive in a world of vampires? “The most clever and riveting vampire novel since Dracula.”

When the Taliban took control of the Swat Valley in Pakistan, one girl spoke out. Malala Yousafzai refused to be silenced and fought for her right to an education. On Tuesday, October 9, 2012, when she was fifteen, she almost paid the ultimate price. She was shot in the head at point-blank range while riding the bus home from school, and few expected her to survive. Instead, Malala’s miraculous recovery has taken her on an extraordinary journey from a remote valley in northern Pakistan to the halls of the United Nations in New York. At sixteen, she has become a global symbol of peaceful protest and the youngest nominee ever for the Nobel Peace Prize. I AM MALALA is the remarkable tale of a family uprooted by global terrorism, of the fight for girls’ education, of a father who, himself a school owner, championed and encouraged his daughter to write and attend school, and of brave parents who have a fierce love for their daughter in a society that prizes sons. I AM MALALA will make you believe in the power of one person’s voice to inspire change in the world

A mesmerizing novel about memory, privacy, fear, and what happens when our past catches up with us. After a decade living in England, Jeremy O'Keefe returns to New York, where he has been hired as a professor of German history at New York University. Though comfortable in his new life, and happy to be near his daughter once again, Jeremy continues to feel the quiet pangs of loneliness. Walking through the city at night, it's as though he could disappear and no one would even notice. But soon, Jeremy's life begins taking strange turns: boxes containing records of his online activity are delivered to his apartment, a young man seems to be following him, and his elderly mother receives anonymous phone calls slandering her son. Why, he wonders, would anyone want to watch him so closely, and, even more upsetting, why would they alert him to the fact that he was being watched? As Jeremy takes stock of the entanglements that marked his years abroad, he wonders if he has unwittingly committed a crime so serious that he might soon be faced with his own denaturalization. Moving towards a shattering reassessment of what it means to be free in a time of ever more intrusive surveillance, Jeremy is forced to ask himself whether he is 'no one', as he believes, or a traitor not just to his country but to everyone around him

Цей роман Антін Мухарський писав понад 20 років. Перші нотатки з’явилися ще в 1997-му, коли він задумав описати пригоди акторів київської театральної трупи «Золоті ворота» на фестивалі в Единбурзі. Вони вийшли окремою книжкою «Попса для еліти» у 2003-му. Але останні роки автора не полишала думка, що ті нариси можна розгорнути у щось епічніше й веселіше. І от маємо справжній роман про диявола (глибоко переконані, що кожен письменник, якщо хоче зватися таким, мусить опрацювати цю тему). Ця книжка писалася і в турецькій Анталії, і в грецьких Афінах, а ще трохи у Нью-Йорку та Сан-Франциско — де тільки доля не носила митця останнім часом. У 2018 році книжка побачила світ, та зараз, у 2020-му, назрів час її перевидати. Текст за жанром можна охарактеризувати як «націоналістично-містичний», або «антисоросівський», чи «правий роман». Він буде цікавий тим, хто хоч раз замислювався над питанням: ким задумувався і як конструювався той лівацький, глобалістичний світ, у якому ми опинилися після розпаду СРСР? Звичайно, у ньому є «історія кохання», детективна лінія, купа автобіографічних історій, ну і карколомний мікс містики, націоналістичної люті та чорного гумору. Але передусім автору дуже хотілося, щоб ця книжка вийшла веселою і легкою для читання; романом, завдяки якому українці часом жахнуться, а часом посміються із себе, часом пустять сльозу над своїми бідами, а часом спроможуться на вчинок, гідний героїв давніх епосів. Сподіваємося, у пана Антіна вийшло. Принаймні він дуже старався

An irresistible comic novel from the master storyteller Percival Everett, and an irreverent take on race, class, and identity in America. I was, in life, to be a gambler, a risk-taker, a swashbuckler, a knight. I accepted, then and there, my place in the world. I was a fighter of windmills. I was a chaser of whales. I was Not Sidney Poitier.Not Sidney Poitier is an amiable young man in an absurd country. The sudden death of his mother orphans him at age eleven, leaving him with an unfortunate name, an uncanny resemblance to the famous actor, and, perhaps more fortunate, a staggering number of shares in the Turner Broadcasting Corporation. Percival Everett’s hilarious new novel follows Not Sidney’s tumultuous life, as the social hierarchy scrambles to balance his skin color with his fabulous wealth. Maturing under the less-than watchful eye of his adopted foster father, Ted Turner, Not gets arrested in rural Georgia for driving while black, sparks a dinnertable explosion at the home of his manipulative girlfriend, and sleuths a murder case in Smut Eye, Alabama, all while navigating the recurrent communication problem: “What’s your name?” a kid would ask. “Not Sidney,” I would say. “Okay, then what is it?”

Chosen by Glamour magazine as a Woman of the Year in 2008, Nujood of Yemen has become an international hero for her astonishingly brave resistance to child marriage. Sold off by her impoverished family at the age of 10, continually raped by her husband before she even reached puberty, Nujood found the courage to run away, and with the help of an activist lawyer, sympathetic judges, and the international press, she divorced her husband and returned home. Her clear, first-person narrative, translated from the French and written with Minoui, is spellbinding: the horror of her parents’ betrayal and her mother-in-law’s connivance, the “grown-ups” who send the child from classroom and toys to nightmare abuse. She never denies the poverty that drives her parents and oppresses her brothers, even as she reveals their cruelty. Unlike her passive mother, she is an activist, thrilled to return to school, determined to save others, including her little sister. True to the child’s viewpoint, the “grown-up” cruelty is devastating. Readers will find it incredible that such unbelievable abuse and such courageous resistance are happening now

In the beginning they were a group of nine. Nine aliens who left their home planet of Lorien when it fell under attack by the evil Mogadorian. Nine aliens who scattered on Earth. Nine aliens who look like ordinary teenagers living ordinary lives, but who have extraordinary, paranormal skills. Nine aliens who might be sitting next to you now. The Nine had to separate and go into hiding. The Mogadorian caught Number One in Malaysia, Number Two in England, and Number Three in Kenya. All of them were killed. John Smith, of Paradise, Ohio, is Number Four. He knows that he is next. I AM NUMBER FOUR is the thrilling launch of a series about an exceptional group of teens as they struggle to outrun their past, discover their future—and live a normal life on Earth. I AM NUMBER FOUR. I AM NEXT

“They’ve said some crazy things about me over the years. I mean, okay: ‘Нe bit the head off a bat.’ Yes. ‘He bit the head off a dove.’ Yes. But then you hear things like, ‘Ozzy went to the show last night, but he wouldn’t perform until he’d killed fifteen puppies…’ Now me, kill fifteen puppies? I love puppies. I’ve got eighteen of the f**king things at home. I’ve killed a few cows in my time, mind you. And the chickens. I shot the chickens in my house that night. It haunts me, all this crazy stuff. Every day of my life has been an event. I took lethal combinations of booze and drugs for thirty f**king years. I survived a direct hit by a plane, suicidal overdoses, STDs. I’ve been accused of attempted murder. Then I almost died while riding over a bump on a quad bike at f**king two miles per hour. People ask me how come I’m still alive, and I don’t know what to say. When I was growing up, if you’d have put me up against a wall with the other kids from my street and asked me which one of us was gonna make it to the age of sixty, which one of us would end up with five kids and four grandkids and houses in Buckinghamshire and Beverly Hills, I wouldn’t have put money on me, no f**king way. But here I am: ready to tell my story, in my own words, for the first time. A lot of it ain’t gonna be pretty. I’ve done some bad things in my time. I’ve always been drawn to the dark side, me. But I ain’t the devil. I’m just John Osbourne: a working-class kid from Aston, who quit his job in the factory and went looking for a good time.”

The moment just before Radar Radmanovic is born, all of the hospital’s electricity mysteriously fails. The delivery takes place in total darkness. Lights back on, the staff sees a healthy baby boy — with pitch-black skin — born to the stunned white parents. No one understands the uncanny electrical event or the unexpected skin color. “A childbirth is an explosion,” the ancient physician says by way of explanation. “Some shrapnel is inevitable, isn’t it?” I Am Radar begins with Radar’s perplexing birth but rapidly explodes outward, carrying readers across the globe and throughout history, as well as to unknown regions where radio waves and subatomic particles dance to their own design, where a century of conflict and art unite in a mesmerizing narrative whole. Deep in arctic Norway, a cadre of Norwegian schoolteachers is imprisoned during the Second World War. Founding a radical secret society that will hover on the margins of recorded history for decades to come, these schoolteachers steal radioactive material from a hidden Nazi nuclear reactor and use it to stage a surreal art performance on a frozen coastline. This strange society appears again in the aftermath of Cambodia’s murderous Khmer Rouge regime, when another secret performance takes place but goes horrifically wrong. Echoes of this disaster can be heard during the Yugoslavian wars, when an avant-garde puppeteer finds himself trapped inside Belgrade while his brother serves in the genocidal militia that attacks Srebrenica. Decades later, in the war-torn Congo, a disfigured literature professor assembles the largest library in the world even as the country around him collapses. All of these stories are linked by Radar — now a gifted radio operator living in the New Jersey Meadowlands — who struggles with love, a set of hapless parents,and a terrible medical affliction that he has only just begun to comprehend

During the last desperate days of the Vietnam War, American soldier Israel Broussard is assigned to a secret CIA PSYOP far behind enemy lines meant to drive terror into the heart of the North Vietnamese and end an unwinnable war. When the mission goes sideways, Broussard is plunged into a nightmare that he soon finds he is unable to escape, dragging a remnant of that night in the Laotian wilderness with him no matter how far he runs. Five years later, too damaged to return home and holed up in the slums of Bangkok, where he battles sleep, guilt, and a creeping sense of madness, Broussard discovers that he must journey back to the jungles of Laos in an attempt to set things right and reclaim what is left of his life. A fever dream with a Benzedrine chaser, I Am The River provides a daring, often surreal examination of the Vietnam War and the days after it, burrowing down past the bullets and battlefields to discover the lingering horror of warfare, the human consequences of organized violence, and the lasting effects of trauma on the psyche, and the soul

Con il loro salotto artistico e letterario - che negli anni tra le due guerre era frequentato, tra gli altri, da Picasso, Picabia, Matisse, Braque, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Sherwood Anderson - Alice B. Toklas e Gertrude Stein hanno fatto un pezzo di storia. Ma quando, dopo la morte di Gertrude, un editore chiese ad Alice di scrivere le sue memorie, lei si schermì dicendo che al massimo sarebbe stata in grado di scrivere un libro di cucina. Lui promise di accontentarsi, ma lei fece molto di più. Uscito nel 1954 in America con il titolo "The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook", "I biscotti di Baudelaire" è una ricchissima raccolta di ricette e di ricordi non solo culinari, di aneddoti divertenti, di convinte opinioni su questioni gastronomiche ma anche artistiche, di viaggi tra Francia e America, di pranzi e cene a casa di artisti bohémien ma anche di ricchi e famosi. Un libro che si legge non solo per consultare le ricette e catturare i sapori amati da artisti e scrittori, ma soprattutto per rivivere l'atmosfera di un tempo e di un ambiente davvero speciali. E così ecco i piatti, le idee, gli spunti di ricette che Alice condivideva con gli amici: il branzino di Picasso, per esempio, decorato con uova sode, tartufi ed erbe tritate, le uova alla Francis Picabia, le mele glassate di Cecil Beaton, la crema di Josephine Baker, la minestra di alloro di Dora Maar, il caffé di James Joyce e quegli incredibili biscotti di Baudelaire

Sulla scia di Robert Heinlein e di Isaac Asimov, Larry Niven ha costruito una serie di racconti e romanzi che costituiscono un coerente e dettagliato affresco dell’avvenire dell’uomo nello spazio. I Burattinai, premio Hugo e Nebula nel 1971, rappresenta l’apice narrativo di questa magnifica storia futura e la inconfutabile dimostrazione della grandezza di Niven come autore della migliore fantascienza tecnologica. Qui Niven ci narra la storia del viaggio esplorativo organizzato dalla buffissima e misteriosa razza dei “burattinai” (specie di centauri paranoici con tre gambe, senza testa, e con due braccia su cui si ergono due busti separati) con la complicità di alcuni terrestri verso il Mondo ad Anello, un gigantesco anello che orbita intorno a una stella lontana, con un’area pari a tre milioni di volte quella della Terra e pieno di fantastiche meraviglie come antiche rovine, castelli fluttuanti nell’aria e strane razze barbare. Un romanzo bizzarro e affascinante: una creazione indimenticabile e una pietra miliare della fantascienza moderna

Twenty-year-old Taguchi Hiro has spent the last two years of his life living as a hikikomori — a shut-in who never leaves his room and has no human interaction — in his parents' home in Tokyo. As Hiro tentatively decides to reenter the world, he spends his days observing life around him from a park bench. Gradually he makes friends with Ohara Tetsu, a middle-aged salaryman who has lost his job but can't bring himself to tell his wife, and shows up every day in a suit and tie to pass the time on a nearby bench. As Hiro and Tetsu cautiously open up to each other, they discover in their sadness a common bond. Regrets and disappointments, as well as hopes and dreams, come to the surface until both find the strength to somehow give a new start to their lives. This beautiful novel is moving, unforgettable, and full of surprises. The reader turns the last page feeling that a small triumph has occurred. I Called Him Necktie won the 2012 Austrian Alpha Literature Prize

“You’ll Change Your Mind.” That’s what everyone says to Jen Kirkman— and countless women like her—when she confesses she doesn’t plan to have children. But you know what? It’s hard enough to be an adult. You have to dress yourself and pay bills and remember to buy birthday gifts. You have to drive and get annual physicals and tip for good service. Some adults take on the added burden of caring for a tiny human being with no language skills or bladder control. Parenthood can be very rewarding, but let’s face it, so are margaritas at the adults-only pool. Jen’s stand-up routine includes lots of jokes about not having kids (and some about masturbation and Johnny Depp), after which complete strangers constantly approach her and ask, “But who will take care of you when you’re old?” (Servants!) Some insist, “You’d be such a great mom!” (Really? You know me so well!) Whether living rent-free in her childhood bedroom while trying to break into comedy (the best free birth control around, she says), or taking the stage at major clubs and joining a hit TV show— and along the way getting married, divorced, and attending excruciating afternoon birthday parties for her parent friends—Jen is completely happy and fulfilled by her decision not to procreate. I Can Barely Take Care of Myself is a beacon of hilarious hope for anyone whose major life decisions have been questioned by friends, family, and strangers in a comedy club bathroom. And it should satisfy everyone who wonders if Jen will ever know true love without looking into the eyes of her child

Riktor doesn’t like the way the policeman comes straight into the house without knocking. He doesn’t like the arrogant way he observes his home.The policeman doesn’t tell him why he’s there, and Riktor doesn’t ask. Because he knows he’s guilty of a terrible crime. But it turns out that the policeman isn’t looking for a missing person. He is accusing Riktor of something totally unexpected. Riktor doesn’t have a clear conscience, but this is a crime he certainly didn’t commit

Evie Wilson was the victim of the villain in DON'T TELL, an assault which resulted in paralysis on one side of her face. After her injury, Evie retreated into the virtual realm, seeking refuge from the public eye by interacting with online friends. Now, with the help of a surgeon, Evie's face is restored and she is ready to return to the real world. However, she remains connected to the Internet for her graduate thesis on using the virtual world as therapy to improve self-esteem. She has become an online shopkeeper who sells faces and bodies to users interested in building a new avatar on a website called "Shadowland." In her new role, Evie maintains "surveillance" over her test subjects to ensure they don't become too caught up in the intoxicating virtual realm. Meanwhile, homicide detective Noah Webster has been investigating a string of suspicious suicides that he believes are connected murders. Noah's investigation leads him to Evie when one of her online test subjects is found dead of apparent suicide, but Evie believes otherwise. Evie is shocked to find herself drawn to someone for the first time in many years and she's reluctant to trust Noah. However, he's the only one who believes her story about the suspicious death of her test subject, and he soon discovers that many of the apparent suicides in his case had avatars in "Shadowland." As murder victims connected to the website begin to appear more frequently, Noah asks Evie to be his virtual guide in the investigation. However, they don't realize that the killer is closer than they think-and that he holds a special grudge against Evie

Before there was Homer the Blind Wonder Cat, there was Scarlett—the adorable, maddeningly aloof, gray rescue tabby... Every cat lover remembers the very first feline they fell in love with. For celebrated cat writer Gwen Cooper, that first love is Scarlett—a pint-sized rescue kitten with a king-sized personality. A natural-born troublemaker and wary at first after life on the streets, Scarlett is quick to win hearts with her kittenish mischief, but slow to open her own heart to the woman who saved her. Yet as the months go by, and bonds of trust are painstakingly forged link by link, Gwen begins to realize that the love you have to earn just may be the love that means the most. Poignant, tender, and laugh-out-loud funny, “I Choo-Choo-Choose You!” is the first in the Curl Up with a Cat Tale series of true short stories from Gwen Cooper—bestselling author of the smash hit Homer’s Odyssey: A Fearless Feline Tale—and sure to warm the heart of any cat enthusiast. Read and fall in love for the first time all over again!

They won’t all live to tell the tale... An addictive and twisty standalone psychological thriller from the bestselling Alex Barclay. Seven friends. One killer. No escape... A group of childhood friends are reunited at a luxury inn on a remote west coast peninsula in Ireland. But as a storm builds outside, the dark events that marred their childhoods threaten to resurface. And when a body is discovered, the group faces a shocking realisation: a killer is among them, and not everyone will escape with their lives

Una bala a través de la mirilla de la puerta acabó con la vida de Isabelle. En el juicio por el asesinato, el acusado David Berney, esposo de la victima, fue absuelto por falta de pruebas. Seis años despúes, uno de los ex maridos de Isabelle decide interponer una demanda por lo civil contra Barney. El investigador que llevaba el caso ha fallecido recientemente y Kinsey Millhone lo sustituye en el que es su primer trabajo para el bufete de abogados Kingman e Ives. Uno de los principales escollos que Kinsey deberá afrontar es la caótica acumulación de datos. Algunos de sus archivos están vacios, otros contienen información relativa a entrevistas que al parecer nunca mantuvo, y toda la acusación se basa en las declaraciones de un ex convicto cuya credibilidad es más que cuestionable. Resuelta a recomponer esta embrollada historia, Kinsey se pierde en un mar de dudas e incongruencias. Hay tantos cabos sueltos, tantas preguntas sin respuesta que ni siquiera la probada pericia de la detective parece suficiente para desvelas el venenoso secreto del asesino

A non fiction book A powerful, moving and tragic account of the families shattered and children orphaned as a result of the spread of HIV and, through the Memory Books project, a hope for the future. Henning Mankell is best known for his highly successful crime novels, but few people are aware of his work with Aids charities in Africa and how he actively promotes and encourages the writing of memory books throughout the country. Memory Books is a project through which the HIV-infected parents of today are encouraged to write portraits of their lives and testaments of their love for their orphans of tomorrow. Through a combination of words and drawings they can leave a legacy, a hope that future generations may not suffer the same heartbreaking fate. In I Die, but the Memory Lives on, this master storyteller has written a fable to illustrate the importance of books as a means of education, of preserving memories and of sharing life. In a very personal account he tells of his own fears and anxieties for the sufferers of HIV and Aids and, drawing on his experiences in many parts of Africa, proposes a way to help. This fable, The Mango Plant, comprises most of the book and is followed by factual afterwords from Dr Rachel Baggaley (Head of the Christian Aid HIV Unit) and Anders Wijkman (Member of the European Parliament, formerly Assistant Secretary General of the UN, and board member of Plan Sweden), and ends with a template for a memory book as an appendix. The problem of Aids has been kept largely under control in Europe and is not therefore an issue at the forefront of our minds, but in the Third World it is a very different story. Lack of education about the disease and lack of money to buy life-prolonging drugs for existing sufferers have turned the problem into a plague of biblical proportions. 30 million people are HIV positive in Africa, almost 39 percent of the adult population in countries such as Botswana. In Zimbabwe life expectancy has now sunk to below 40 years of age, by 2010 it is predicted to fall to 30 years. As thousands die in their prime, there begins a shortage of teachers, labourers, and essential personnel that enable a country to run efficiently, not to mention the 14 million children that have been orphaned by HIV/Aids since the 1980s. These children are taken out of school in order to care for the sick and elderly. A lack of education and continued poverty perpetuates the problem. Because levels of literacy are so low, the memory books also contain photographs (Mankell campaigns for cheap disposable cameras) and anything else that will evoke a memory, whether it be a drawing, a crushed flower or a lock of hair, anything that the orphan will relate to and inspire them to try the best they can to create a future. Henning Mankell was first introduced to the Memory Book Project by Plan, a child-focused international development organisation, who had established the scheme in Uganda. UNAIDS estimate 1 million people in Uganda are infected with the disease and 200,000 have died from Aids-related illnesses. Since the outbreak in 1978, it is estimated 1.2 million children have been orphaned in Uganda alone. Plan Uganda encourages parents with the disease to create a memory book about their family history, matters of death, separation and sexuality for the child or children they will leave behind. There are numerous worldwide charities and organisations working to fight the spread of HIV/Aids – further information and contact details can be found at the end of I Die, but the Memory Lives on. Henning Mankell has kindly agreed to donate the royalties from I Die, but the Memory Lives on to an Aids charity of his choice. The publication of I Die, but the Memory Lives on will raise awareness of this international problem, which, though it may not always be on the front pages of our newspapers, must always be on our minds until something has truly changed for the better

A deeply moving debut novel set amid the perilous world of Nigerian email scams, I Do Not Come to You by Chance tells the story of one young man and the family who loves him. Being the opera of the family, Kingsley Ibe is entitled to certain privileges-a piece of meat in his egusi soup, a party to celebrate his graduation from university. As first son, he has responsibilities, too. But times are bad in Nigeria, and life is hard. Unable to find work, Kingsley cannot take on the duty of training his younger siblings, nor can he provide his parents with financial peace in their retirement. And then there is Ola. Dear, sweet Ola, the sugar in Kingsley's tea. It does not seem to matter that he loves her deeply; he cannot afford her bride price. It hasn't always been like this. For much of his young life, Kingsley believed that education was everything, that through wisdom, all things were possible. Now he worries that without a "long-leg"-someone who knows someone who can help him-his degrees will do nothing but adorn the walls of his parents' low-rent house. And when a tragedy befalls his family, Kingsley learns the hardest lesson of all: education may be the language of success in Nigeria, but it's money that does the talking. Unconditional family support may be the way in Nigeria, but when Kingsley turns to his Uncle Boniface for help, he learns that charity may come with strings attached. Boniface-aka Cash Daddy-is an exuberant character who suffers from elephantiasis of the pocket. He's also rumored to run a successful empire of email scams. But he can help. With Cash Daddy's intervention, Kingsley and his family can be as safe as a tortoise in its shell. It's up to Kingsley now to reconcile his passion for knowledge with his hunger for money, and to fully assume his role of first son. But can he do it without being drawn into this outlandish mileu?

Sospesi tra storia e invenzione in un Medioevo che sembra vero, sono qui raccolti in un unico volume tre romanzi di Laura Mancinelli, in cui l'autrice approda a una visione fantastica e affettuosamente ironica della tradizione e della società medioevale: "I dodici abati di Challant", dove, in una cornice di ironia mondana e gaudente, dodici monaci ricevono l'incarico di sorvegliare un feudatario che eredita un castello con la clausola di mantener fede a un maligno obbligo di castità; "Il miracolo di Santa Odilia", immagine della vita che si afferma in chiave religiosa, ma non trascendente, attraverso la storia di due Odilie: la prima devota e pia, la seconda giovane e bella; e infine, conclusione ideale di questa metafora ideale, "Gli occhi dell'imperatore", dove una contessa piemontese, un cavaliere-musico-poeta e l'imperatore Federico II, ormai prossimo alla morte, partecipano a un affascinante percorso di avventure e sentimenti, che è anche un intreccio di entusiasmo, rassegnazione e senso del destino

A victim of time famine, thirty-five-year-old Kate counts seconds like other women count calories. As she runs between appointments, through her head spools the crazy tape-loop of every high-flying mother's life: client reports, bouncy castles, Bob The Builder, transatlantic phone calls, dental appointments, pelvic floor exercises, flights to New York, sex (too knackered), and stress-busting massages she always has to cancel (too busy). Factor in a controlling nanny, a chauvinist Australian boss, a long-suffering husband, two demanding children and an e-mail lover, and you have a woman juggling so many balls that some day soon something's going to hit the ground. Pearson brings her sharp wit and compassionate intelligence to this hilarious and, at times, piercingly sad study of the human cost of trying to Have It All. Women everywhere are already talking about the Kate Reddy column which appears weekly in the "Daily Telegraph", and recommending it to their sisters, mothers, friends and even their bewildered partners.This fictional debut by one of Britain's most gifted journalists is the subject of a movie deal with Miramax rumoured to be for almost $ 1 million and has sold around the world, sparking bidding wars in Spain, Germany and Japan. Everyone is getting Reddy for Kate

Long ago, when they were all a lot younger, Zenia stole a man from each of them. Then she died. Now she’s come back. Or has she? There’s a lot more than one kind of ghost. Margaret Atwood revisits her classic characters from The Robber Bride. This story first appeared in the July/August 2012 issue of The Walrus magazine

Quale segreto legame stringe in una sola terrificante identità il misterioso tempio preistorico di Stonehenge, in Inghilterra, al punto piú solitario dei globo, l’isola di Pasqua, sperduta con le sue enigmatiche statue antichissime nell’immensa distesa equorea del Pacifico meridionale? Perché una catena di tremende sciagure è connessa alla indescrivibile statuetta verdastra, vibrante, antica di milioni di anni, dalle origini cosmiche, trovata da un archeologo in un cimitero abbandonato? E che cosa si cela nell’intrico dell’immensa rete di gallerie sotterranee, che sembrano collegare tra loro le misteriose sedi di entità e vicende che si direbbero incomprensibili all’uomo, antitetiche al suo destino e alla sua natura? Con Giganti di Pietra, Donald Wandrei segna una tappa fulgida nella letteratura dell’orrore e del mistero cosmico, aprendo nuove prospettive alla letteratura d’anticipazione e di fantasia, e rinnovando la tradizionale materia del romanzo “gotico” con le risorse piú recenti della narrativa fantascientifica. I Giganti di Pietra è un romanzo che non si dimentica facilmente!

Sinistri presagi indicano che da Antiqua è salpata una flotta di navi: navi nere, cariche di neri guerrieri, di strani animali capelluti e di armi che portano una morte senza volto. La guerra è imminente. Il Bene e il Male, come nel più epico dei racconti, esploderanno in una battaglia cruenta alla quale parteciperanno anche forze soprannaturali e magiche. Tutti i popoli del continente, superate le antiche divisioni, si uniranno a combattere con l’esercito del Cervo, guidato dal valoroso Dulkancellin. Gli uomini di pace si trasformeranno in guerrieri, e i guerrieri in eroi. La salvezza del continente dipende dal loro coraggio

La notte di Mosca è pericolosa. Criminali e assassini si aggirano per le strade e si mescolano agli Altri: vampiri e mutanti, stregoni e fattucchiere che escono in caccia dopo il tramonto. La loro forza è immensa, ma non bastano le armi tradizionali per combatterli. Solo Anton e quelli come lui possono riconoscerli, perché compito dei Guardiani e quello di far rispettare l'antica tregua stipulata tra le Forze della Luce e le Forze delle Tenebre. Ma qualcosa nella pace millenaria che divide il popolo della Notte da quello del Giorno sì e incrinato, e il destino dell'umanità ora è legato a quello di un ragazzo che non sa di possedere un enorme potere. Comincia così una guerra senza esclusione di colpi, tra macchine di lusso e una civetta parlante, mafia russa e minacce apocalittiche, vodka e sortilegi

What if you told the truth and the whole world heard you? What if you lived in a country swamped with Internet outrage? What if you were a woman in a society that hated women? Set in the San Francisco of 2013, I Hate the Internet offers a hilarious and obscene portrayal of life amongst the victims of the digital boom. As billions of tweets fuel the city’s gentrification and the human wreckage piles up, a group of friends suffers the consequences of being useless in a new world that despises the pointless and unprofitable. In this, his first full-length novel, Jarett Kobek tackles the pressing questions of our moment. Why do we applaud the enrichment of CEOs at the expense of the weak and the powerless? Why are we giving away our intellectual property? Why is activism in the 21st Century nothing more than a series of morality lectures typed into devices built by slaves? Here, at last, comes an explanation of the Internet in the crudest possible terms

As with many of us, the life of acclaimed novelist Howard Norman has had its share of incidents of “arresting strangeness.” Yet few of us connect these moments, as Norman has done in this spellbinding memoir, to show how life tangles with the psyche to become art. Norman’s story begins with a portrait, both harrowing and hilarious, of a Midwest boyhood summer working in a bookmobile, in the shadow of a grifter father and under the erotic tutelage of his brother’s girlfriend. His life story continues in places as far-flung as the Arctic, where he spends part of a decade as a translator of Inuit tales — including the story of a soapstone carver turned into a goose whose migration-time lament is “I hate to leave this beautiful place”—and in his beloved Point Reyes, California, as a student of birds. In the Arctic, he receives news over the radio that “John Lennon was murdered tonight in the city of New York in the USA.” And years later, in Washington, D.C., another act of deeply felt violence occurs in the form of a murder-suicide when Norman and his wife loan their home to a poet and her young son. Norman’s story is also stitched together with moments of uncanny solace. Of life in his Vermont farmhouse Norman writes, “Everything I love most happens most every day.” In the hands of Howard Norman, author of The Bird Artist and What Is Left the Daughter, life’s arresting strangeness is made into a profound, creative, and redemptive memoir

William Gay established himself as "the big new name to include in the storied annals of Southern Lit" (Esquire) with his debut novel, The Long Home, and his highly acclaimed follow-up, Provinces of Night. Like Faulkner's Mississippi and Cormac McCarthy's American West, Gay's Tennessee is redolent of broken souls. Mining that same fertile soil, his debut collection, I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down, brings together thirteen stories charting the pathos of interior lives. Among the colorful people readers meet are: old man Meecham, who escapes from his nursing home only to find his son has rented their homestead to "white trash"; Quincy Nell Qualls, who not only falls in love with the town lothario but, pregnant, faces an inescapable end when he abandons her; Finis and Doneita Beasley, whose forty-year marriage is broken up by a dead dog; and Bobby Pettijohn — awakened in the night by a search party after a body is discovered in his back woods. William Gay expertly sets these conflicted characters against lush backcountry scenery and defies our moral logic as we grow to love them for the weight of their human errors

Detective Inspector Sean Duffy returns for the incendiary sequel to The Cold Cold Ground. Sean Duffy knows there's no such thing as a perfect crime. But a torso in a suitcase is pretty close.Still, one tiny clue is all it takes, and there it is. A tattoo. So Duffy, fully fit and back at work after the severe trauma of his last case, is ready to follow the trail of blood - however faint - that always, always connects a body to its killer. A legendarily stubborn man, Duffy becomes obsessed with this mystery as a distraction from the ruins of his love life, and to push down the seed of self-doubt that he seems to have traded for his youthful arrogance.So from country lanes to city streets, Duffy works every angle. And wherever he goes, he smells a rat

James Hadley Chase has given us An Ace Up my Sleeve, then The Joker in the Pack, and now I Hold the Four Aces. Each novel, complete in itself, follows the sexually frustrated life of Helga Rolfe, one of the richest of women, shrewd and ruthless, with a penchant for men. In I Hold the Four Aces Helga finds, at long last, the man she wants to marry, but, as we have come to expect from the ‘thriller maestro of the generation’, unexpected and dangerous complications arise. As the New Statesman has called him, this ‘master of the art of deception’ once again has written a tense, fast-moving story that will keep you up long past your bedtime.An Ace Up my Sleeve is now a major movie with Karen Black playing Helga and Omar Sharif playing Archer

In this high concept YA novel debut that’s We All Looked Up meets The Sun Is Also a Star, three teens must face down the mistakes of their past after they learn that life on Earth might end in less than a week. News stations across the country are reporting mysterious messages that Earth has been receiving from a planet—Alma—claiming to be its creator. If they’re being interpreted correctly, in seven days Alma will hit the kill switch on their “colony” Earth. True or not, for teenagers Jesse Hewitt, Cate Collins, and Adeem Khan, the prospect of this ticking time bomb will change their lives forever. Jesse, who has been dealt one bad blow after another, wonders if it even matters what happens to the world. Cate, on the other hand, is desperate to use this time to find the father she never met. And Adeem, who hasn’t spoken to his estranged sister in years, must find out if he has it in him to forgive her for leaving. With only a week to face their truths and right their wrongs, Jesse, Cate, and Adeem’s paths collide as their worlds are pulled apart

From Kirkus Reviews California's formidable p.i. Kinsey Millhone (``A'' Is for Alibi, etc.), fired from her comfortable berth with Fidelity Insurance, now rents office space from busy Santa Teresa lawyer Lonnie Kingman. His usual outside investigator Morley Shine has died of a heart attack, and he hires Kinsey to take over the case that Morley was working on. It involves the upcoming trial of David Barney, acquitted of the six-year-old murder of his wife, Isabelle, but now being sued for wrongful death in civil court by Isabelle's first husband, Ken Voigt. Voigt, represented by Lonnie Kingman, is sure that Barney killed Isabelle and wants to keep her considerable fortune out of his hands. Lonnie thinks he has a strong case, buoyed by damning new evidence from drifter Curtis McIntyre. But what Kinsey finds as she begins to probe is a surprising number of people with reasons to hate Isabelle-among them Voigt's second wife, Francesca, and Isabelle's business mentor Peter Weidmann and his overprotective wife, Yolanda. She also uncovers curious gaps in Morley's files and begins to question his ``heart attack,'' as Lonnie's seemingly solid case collapses bit by bit, with her own life on the line in the gritty finale. A sober, resolute Kinsey, romanceless at the moment, and a clever, meaty puzzle-for which the publisher plans a 300,000 first printing. Rack up another winner for Grafton

A best-seller across Europe, Italian author Faletti’s first novel is a top-notch thriller. Monte Carlo, in Monaco, is supposed to be one of the safest places on earth, with a police force more concerned with paparazzi than with homicide, but that all changes when a mystery man calls a popular radio show. The next day two faceless bodies are discovered, along with I kill written in blood. The substantial cast of characters that assembles to find the killer is led by Frank, a former FBI agent; Frank’s best friend, Nicholas, the police commissioner; and the charismatic DJ Jean-Loup Verdier. All the characters are fully fleshed and three-dimensional, which makes the use of multiple viewpoints particularly enjoyable. The dialogue and narration could have been a little tighter, but Faletti manages to pull it off, maintaining a good pace and masterfully building tension through 600 pages, a clear sign of a major new talent. This one will appeal not only to devotees of European crime fiction but also to thriller fans in general. *** The voice on the radio. The writing, red as blood. I kill…A detective and an FBI agent embark upon the most harrowing case of their careers as they attempt to track down an enigmatic killer in this relentlessly suspenseful thriller. The killer announces his heinous acts in advance with desperate phone calls and ties his crimes together with songs that point to his victims; he then mutilates them and removes their faces. Set in Monte Carlo and featuring an international cast of intriguing characters, the hunt for the deranged perpetrator remains gripping and unsettling, possibly even more so, after the killer's identity is revealed and the detectives must close in on their target before he strikes again

I have a secret. And someone wants to make sure I never tell... In a house decorated with horror movie posters, a young woman’s body is found. She lies on her bed, two bloodied objects clutched in her palm. Detective Jane Rizzoli and Forensic Pathologist Maura Isles are called to the murder scene, but even faced with this gruesome sight they are unable to identify the immediate cause of death. Their investigation leads them to a high-profile murder case that was seemingly solved years before. But when another body is found in horrific circumstances, the link between the two victims is clear. Was the wrong person sent to prison? Is the real killer out there right now, picking off new targets? One woman knows the killer is coming for her next. She’s the only one who can help Rizzoli and Isles catch him. But she has a secret that she has to keep

I saw it. He smothered her, pressing his hands on her face. The police don't believe me, they say it's impossible – but I know what I saw. Xander Shute – once a wealthy banker, now living on the streets – shelters for the night in an empty Mayfair flat. When he hears the occupants returning home, he scrambles to hide. Trapped in his hiding place, he hears the couple argue, and he soon finds himself witnessing a vicious murder. But who was the dead woman, who the police later tell him can't have been there? And why is the man Xander saw her with evading justice? As Xander searches for answers, his memory of the crime comes under scrutiny, forcing him to confront his long-buried past and the stories he's told about himself. How much he is willing to risk to understand the brutal truth?

In a split second, Jenna Gray's world descends into a nightmare. Her only hope of moving on is to walk away from everything she knows to start afresh. Desperate to escape, Jenna moves to a remote cottage on the Welsh coast, but she is haunted by her fears, her grief and her memories of a cruel November night that changed her life forever. Slowly, Jenna begins to glimpse the potential for happiness in her future. But her past is about to catch up with her, and the consequences will be devastating