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Bloomsbury Publishing
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When Alton's ageing, blind uncle asks him to attend bridge games with him, he agrees. After all, it's better than a crappy summer job in the local shopping mall, and Alton's mother thinks it might secure their way to a good inheritance sometime in the future. But, like all apparently casual choices in any of Louis Sachar's wonderful books, this choice soon turns out to be a lot more complex than Alton could ever have imagined. As his relationship with his uncle develops, and he meets the very attractive Toni, deeply buried secrets are uncovered and a romance that spans decades is finally brought to a conclusion. Alton's mother is in for a surprise! |
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Lily is the daughter of a humble farmer, and to her family she is just another expensive mouth to feed. Then the local matchmaker delivers startling news: if Lily's feet are bound properly, they will be flawless. In nineteenth-century China, where a woman's eligibility is judged by the shape and size of her feet, this is extraordinary good luck. Lily now has the power to make a good marriage and change the fortunes of her family. To prepare for her new life, she must undergo the agonies of footbinding, learn nu shu, the famed secret women's writing, and make a very special friend, Snow Flower. But a bitter reversal of fortune is about to change everything. |
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Walking to Hollywood is a dazzling triptych — obsessive, satirical, elegiac — in which Will Self burrows down through the intersections of time, place and psyche to explore some of our deepest fears and anxieties with characteristic fearlessness and jagged humour. 'Very Little' is ostensibly the account of a curative journey to Canada and the USA, but in fact the record of a nematode's progress, as the worm of obsession — with scale and packing and the 'stuff' of our lives — bores through a mind in extremesis. 'Walking to Hollywood' is an extreme satire on celebrity, in which the narrator believes that everyone he meets is played by a famous actor, and that only he can solve the mystery of who murdered the movies. 'Spurn Head' leads Self to a tormented sojourn with a madman whose house is sliding over the edge of a cliff, to a game of checkers with Death, and finally to an encounter with one of Swift's immortal Struldbruggs and a march through a tear in time itself. In Walking to Hollywood Will Self pushes memoir to the limits of invention. |
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Tom Ripley is quietly living a life of luxury at his chateau at Villeperce, and, as ever, is keeping one step ahead of the law — he has, after all, a past that would not bear too much close scrutiny... The fifth novel featuring the protagonist Tom Ripley finds the sophisticated and amoral American expatriate being harassed by David Pritchard, a fellow American whose boorishness marks him as something of Ripley's alter-ego. Inexplicably familiar with all the incriminating details of Ripley's past, Pritchard is determined to expose him. He shadows Ripley's every move, first spying on him at home in France and then following him to Morocco. Tensions build on the return to Villeperce as Pritchard sets out to locate a body Ripley would prefer remain hidden in a nearby river. |
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Afghanistan, 1975: Twelve-year-old Amir is desperate to win the local kite-fighting tournament and his loyal friend Hassan promises to help him. But neither of the boys can foresee what will happen to Hassan that afternoon, an event that is to shatter their lives. After the Russians invade and the family is forced to flee to America, Amir realises that one day he must return to Afghanistan under Taliban rule to find the one thing that his new world cannot grant him: redemption. |
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«In this enigmatic, surreal, wonderfully entertaining tale, three mysterious figures set out from Willowdale, travelling by handcar. On the way to nowhere in particular they pass a number of odd characters and observe a series of baffling phenomena, from a house burning down in a field to a palatial mansion perched precariously on a bluff. At once deeply vexing and utterly hilarious, darkly mysterious and amusingly absurd, «The Willowdale Handcar» is vintage Edward Gorey.» |
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Carries EU Toy Safety Directive 'CE' logo. This small library, perfect for little baby hands, features not only the selfish crocodile but a whole host of his friends, as familiar themes for pre-school readers are explored. Children will relish learning about numbers, colours, animals, sounds, food and first words in these bright and brilliant board books. |
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Every night, Kawashima Masayuki creeps from his bed and watches over his baby girl's crib while his wife sleeps. But this is no ordinary domestic scene. He has an ice pick in his hand, and a barely controllable desire to use it. Deciding to confront his demons, Kawashima sets into motion a chain of events seeming to lead inexorably to murder. |
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Michael Vyner recalls a terrible story, one that happened to him. One that would be unbelievable if it weren't true! Michael's parents are dead and he imagines that he will stay with the kindly lawyer, executor of his parents' will... Until he is invited to spend Christmas with his guardian in a large and desolate country house. His arrival on the first night suggests something is not quite right when he sees a woman out in the frozen mists, standing alone in the marshes. But little can prepare him for the solitude of the house itself as he is kept from his guardian and finds himself spending the Christmas holiday wandering the silent corridors of the house seeking distraction. But lonely doesn't mean alone, as Michael soon realises that the house and its grounds harbour many secrets, dead and alive, and Michael is set the task of unravelling some of the darkest secrets of all. A nail-biting story of hauntings and terror by the master of the genre, Chris Priestley. |
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It takes a particular kind of man to want an embroidered polo player astride his left nipple. Occasionally, when I am tired and emotional, or consumed with self-dislike, I try to imagine myself as someone else, a wearer of Yarmouth shirts and fleecy sweats, of windbreakers and rugged Tyler shorts, of baseball caps with polo players where the section of the brain that concerns itself with aesthetics is supposed to be. But the hour passes. Good men return from fighting Satan in the wilderness the stronger for their struggle, and so do I. Man Booker Prize-winning Howard Jacobson shimmers with life in this collection of his most acclaimed journalism. From the unusual disposal of his father-in-law's ashes and the cultural wasteland of Chitty Bang to the melancholy sensuality of Leonard Cohen and desolation of Wagner's tragedies, Jacobson writes with all the hostility and joy of a man possessed. Absurdity piles upon absurdity, and glorious sentences weave together to create a hilarious, hearty, heartbreaking and uniquely human collection. You will laugh, you will cry, and you will read it again and again. |
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A book about one of the most ridiculous hairstyles of all-time. |
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A little fox is in a big bad mood, and is worried that its mother won't love it forever. In this beautiful and lyrical picture book, we see a clever and resourceful mother prove to her child that a parents love is limitless — no matter what! In this reassuring and warm picture book, the hugely talented Debi Gliori manages to treat the familiar subject of childhood worries in a very fresh, original and inventive way. |
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In this wide-ranging history of debt Margaret Atwood investigates its many meanings through the ages, from ancient times to the current global financial meltdown. Many of us wonder: how could we have let such a collapse happen? How old or inevitable is this human pattern of debt? Imaginative, topical and insightful, Payback urges us to reconsider our ideas of ownership and debt — before it is too late. |
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Richard and Lelia's child is conceived in a moment of giggling chaos as they dress for a Christmas party. They arrive rudely late and still glowing, and barely register a slight, drab woman in the hall. Sylvie. As their baby grows, so does the presence of Sylvie — she seems to be nowhere, yet everywhere, harmless yet sinister. Richard is seduced by her subtle, inexplicable charm, while Lelia, struggling with Richard's sudden ambivalence towards their baby, finds that she is haunted by painful memories. And Sylvie remains as invisible as she wants to be — that is the source of her power. Beware of mice. |
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A boy is put on a train by his stepmother to make his first journey on his own. But soon that journey turns out to be more of a challenge than anyone could have imagined as the train stalls at the mouth of a tunnel and a mysterious woman in white helps the boy while away the hours by telling him stories — stories with a difference. |
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From the Arab Spring to the Royal Wedding, the rescue of the Chilean miners to the fall of the News of the World and the London Riots, compelling tweet-by-tweet accounts freeze-frame the breaking of the biggest news stories of the past twelve months, alongside profiles of top tweeters, striking visual analysis and fascinating statistics. In the year the 'micro-blogging' website celebrates its fifth anniversary, Twitter continues to grow at an incredible rate. A global phenomenon, there are now an estimated 200 million accounts around the world, with everyone from the British monarchy to Lady Gaga tweeting their perfectly formed 140 character messages. And it shows no sign of slowing down: during two hours on the night of Osama bin Laden's death, average activity peaked at a record-breaking 3,440 tweets per second. The Twitter Year gathers together some of the funniest, sharpest and most insightful voices on Twitter to bring you a unique celebration of modern global communication. |
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It's 1946 and author Juliet Ashton can't think what to write next. Out of the blue, she receives a letter from Dawsey Adams of Guernsey — by chance, he's acquired a book that once belonged to her — and, spurred on by their mutual love of reading, they begin a correspondence. When Dawsey reveals that he is a member of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, her curiosity is piqued and it's not long before she begins to hear from other members. As letters fly back and forth with stories of life in Guernsey under the German Occupation, Juliet soon realizes that the society is every bit as extraordinary as its name. |
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It's 3 a.m. and Elizabeth Gilbert is sobbing on the bathroom floor. She's in her thirties, she has a husband, a house, they're trying for a baby — and she doesn't want any of it. A divorce and a turbulent love affair later, she emerges battered and bewildered and realises it is time to pursue her own journey in search of three things she has been missing: pleasure, devotion and balance. So she travels to Rome, where she learns Italian from handsome, brown-eyed identical twins and gains twenty-five pounds, an ashram in India, where she finds that enlightenment entails getting up in the middle of the night to scrub the temple floor, and Bali where a toothless medicine man of indeterminate age offers her a new path to peace: simply sit still and smile. And slowly happiness begins to creep up on her. |
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When Peter's parents are killed, he is sent to an orphanage in Warsaw. Then German soldiers take him away to be measured and assessed. They decide that Peter is racially valuable. He is Volksdeutsche: of German blood. With his blond hair, blue eyes, and acceptably proportioned head, he looks just like the boy on the Hitler Jugend poster. Someone important will want to adopt Peter. They do. He is sent to Germany to meet his new family. Professor Kaltenbach and his wife have three daughters, but they have always wanted a son. The professor in particular is very pleased to welcome such a fine Aryan specimen to his household. People will be envious. But Peter is not quite the specimen they think. He is forming his own ideas about what he is seeing, what he is told. Peter doesn't want to be a Nazi, and so he is going to play a very dangerous game. The most dangerous game he could possibly choose to play in 1941, in Berlin. |
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A lot of people wonder how Chinese parents raise such stereotypically successful kids. They wonder what Chinese parents do to produce so many math whizzes and music prodigies, what it's like inside the family, and whether they could do it too. Well, I can tell them, because I've done it... Amy Chua's daughters, Sophia and Louisa (Lulu) were polite, interesting and helpful, they had perfect school marks and exceptional musical abilities. The Chinese-parenting model certainly seemed to produce results. But what happens when you do not tolerate disobedience and are confronted by a screaming child who would sooner freeze outside in the cold than be forced to play the piano? Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother is a story about a mother, two daughters, and two dogs. It was supposed to be a story of how Chinese parents are better at raising kids than Western ones. But instead, it's about a bitter clash of cultures, a fleeting taste of glory, and how you can be humbled by a thirteen-year-old. Witty, entertaining and provocative, this is a unique and important book that will transform your perspective of parenting forever. |
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