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Faber and Faber
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Is Santa Claus really a magic mushroom in disguise? Was Alice in Wonderland a thinly veiled psychedelic mushroom odyssey? Did mushroom tea kick-start ancient Greek philosophy? This book tells the story of how hallucinogenic mushrooms, once shunned in the West as the most pernicious of poisons, came to be the illicit drug of choice. |
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«When Daniel Kalder, acclaimed author of «Lost Cosmonaut», descended into the sewers of Moscow in pursuit of the mythical lost city of tramps, he didn`t realise that he was embarking on a bizarre, year-long odyssey that would lead him thousands of miles across Russia to the Arctic Circle via the heart of Asia.» |
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'People like to think that money and love are opposites. Anna Moore, tax inspector A2 Grade, has come to be less sure...' Anna is assigned to investigate John Law, code maker, code breaker and the world's first quadrillionaire. What follows is a lesson in generosity and greed, and a powerful discovery of love. |
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«Why is a left foot either trusty or educated, but a right foot is neither? Why is a bad back pass almost invariably suicidal? Why can you score from a corner with a free header, but never with a free shot? Why are hooligans always a tiny minority even when there seem to be hundreds of them throwing seats across Kenilworth Road? Discover how stock phrases — «schoolboy howler», «sweeper system» — are only part of the story in the artfully twisted language of football. Let Leigh and Woodhouse take you on a journey, from the «top-flight» vocabulary of commentators to the more «speculative efforts» of footballers, from the «Champions League circus» to a «Wednesday night in Rochdale». And prepare to be very entertained.» |
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An old man sits in a room, with a single door and window, a bed, a desk and a chair. Each day he awakes with no memory, unsure of whether or not he is locked into the room. Attached to the few objects around him are one-word, hand-written labels, and on the desk is a series of vaguely familiar black-and-white photographs and four piles of paper. Then a middle-aged woman called Anna enters and talks of pills and treatment, but also of love and promises. Who is this Mr Blank, and what is his fate? What does Anna represent from his past — and will he have enough time to ever make sense of the clues that arise? After the huge success of The Brooklyn Follies, his new novel sees Auster return to the metaphysical territory familiar from his enormously influential The New York Trilogy. A dark puzzle, and a game that implicates both reader and writer alike, Travels in the Scriptorium is a mind-altering exploration of language, responsibility and the passage of time. 'Travels in the Scriptorium returns to . . . the nihilistic gaiety of Beckett (in particular Krapp) or the sub-dermal violence of Pinter.' New Statesman |
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Twentieth-century history has thrown up a few sinister characters stranger and more cruel than Baron Ungern-Sternberg, but not many, and only he conquered a country with a cavalry army — the last person in history to do so — in the in the age of the aeroplane and the tank. This violent, anti-Semitic fanatic took over Mongolia in 1919 with a ragtag force of White Russians, Siberians, Japanese and native Mongolians. He dreamed of creating a huge horse army with which he would retake Moscow and install a new despotic Tsar. Some saw him as a promised reincarnation of Genghis Khan who would restore the greatness of the Mongolian Empire. This is an epic story, which moves from the Baltic through the vastness of Russia to Siberia and the Mongolian steppe. Ungern was born into the German aristocracy, descendants of the Teutonic Knights, which ruled the Baltic region under the Tsars. Ejected from his regiment for violence and instability, he found himself when he was posted to the Russian Far East before the First World War. He had already found his way to the cocktail of mystical beliefs and esoteric knowledge that was common among people of his class. Now he found Mongolian Buddhism, a very different creed from the doctrine of peace and love we associate with followers of the Buddha. Its hells and vengefulness chimed with his already extreme hatred of Jews, liberals and Bolsheviks. The aftermath of the war, in which he fought with reckless bravery, saw Ungern in the Far East leading a wild bunch of counter-revolutionaries. James Palmer describes his spiral into ever darker obsessions, and evermore cruel treatment of enemies. This was Mr Kurtz on horseback, covered in amulets and animal skins, leading a straggling horde of desperate men. In the end, Trotsky, then in charge of the Red Army, sent a formidable force against them. James Palmer does full justice to this barely believable story of a man who foreshadowed the Nazis in his combination of mysticism and genocidal violence, and he explains Ungern’s strange religious beliefs and the culture of Mongolia, of which this adventurer became, for a brief period, the absolute ruler. |
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A Russian woman named Lara arrives in Afghanistan at the house of Marcus Caldwell, an Englishman and widower living in the shadow of the Tora Bora mountains. Marcus' daughter, Zameen, may have known Lara's brother, a Soviet soldier who disappeared in the area many years previously. But like Marcus' wife, Zameen is dead; a victim of the age in which she was born. In the days that follow, further people arrive at the house: two Americans who have spent much of their adult lives in the area; a young Afghan teacher; and a radicalized young man intent on his own path. And Nadeem Aslam paints a moving, beautiful and powerful portrait of a land and a people torn apart through love and war. |
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Arthur has vanished, or so his family thinks. If they only knew that he is in the back garden, where he has been shrunk into the world of the Minimoys. It is a world of danger and excitement, where Arthur, helped by the fiery Princess Selenia and her mischievous brother Betameche, has a difficult quest: he must rescue his grandfather, find lost treasure and save the kingdom of the Minimoys. But the answer to his quest lies deep within the garden at Necropolis, a forbidden city ruled by the evil wizard Maltazard. And to reach it, Arthur must cross a vast world of fierce battles and terrible monsters. And once you he has found the forbidden city... will he ever return? |
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Nathan and Tom are an uncle and nephew double-act — one in remission from lung cancer, divorced, and estranged from his only daughter, the other hiding away from his once-promising academic career. Matters change when Lucy, a little girl who refuses to speak, comes into their lives... |
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Guides us through the monuments and lost paradises, dilapidated Ottoman villas, back streets and waterways of Istanbul — the city of the author's birth and the home of his imagination. This is an account of one man's love affair with the city that has been his home since his birth. |
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Golding's best-known novel is the story of a group of boys who, after a plane crash, set up a fragile community on a previously uninhabited island. As memories of home recede and the blood from frenzied pig-hunts arouses them, the boys' childish fear turns into something deeper and more primitive. |
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Meet the water bears that can live in suspension for hundreds of years, the parasite carried by your cat that makes men grumpy and women promiscuous, and the woodlouse that drinks through its bottom. Marvel at elephants that walk on tiptoe, the pigs that shine in the dark, and the woodpeckers that have ears on the end of their tongues. From the team that brought ignorance to millions, a Christmas bestseller — full of illuminating illustrations, maps and diagrams — shrunk down to a pocket-friendly, easily-searchable, portability-considerate size. |
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Chosen by Paul Auster out of 4000 stories submitted to his American radio programme, these 180 stories provide an illuminating portrait of America in the 20th century. The selection requirement of the stories was that they should be true and not previously published. |
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When railwayman Jim Stringer is assigned to drive holiday makers to Blackpool in the summer of 1905, he thinks he's struck lucky. But his dreams are soon destroyed — when his train meets a huge millstone on the line. A thriller of sabotage, this book brings a twist to tales of Edwardian England, steam railways and amateur sleuthing. |
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It's the year 1793, and Hanno Stiffeniis is a magistrate in Prussia. He has been called to investigate a spate of murders which has reduced the city to a state of terror, under the watchful gaze of his mentor, Kant. Four people have died, and there is no sign of an end to the killing spree. When the killer tries to murder him, the magistrate finds himself confronted by the demons of his own past. Therein lies the sinister source of those murders, and the true reason he has been enticed back to Konigsberg... Hugely atmospheric, entertaining and intelligent, Critique of Criminal Reason is the first in a series of compelling crime novels set in Prussia featuring Hanno Steffeniis. |
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Three children are massacred in their beds. The crushed corpse of their mother is discovered in a dockside warehouse. Then the husband, Bruno Gottewald, is dead and buried — killed while out on field manoeuvres. In less than a week, the entire Gottewald family has been wiped off the face of the earth. A tragic coincidence? Or are the invading French army using the massacre to expand their power? Hanno Stiffeniis, a Prussian magistrate, goes to investigate the deaths, seeking to discover how the crime was committed and the motive behind the massacre. But only Hanno's wife, Helena, knows what truly happened in that cottage in the woods... |
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When railwayman Jim Stringer moves to the garish and tawdry London of 1903, he finds his duties are confined to a mysterious graveyard line. Perplexingly, the men he works alongside have formed an instant loathing for him. And his predecessor has disappeared under suspicious circumstances. Can Jim work out what is going on before he too is travelling on a one-way coffin ticket aboard the Necropolis Railway? A gripping detective story, fabulously rich in atmosphere and period detail, The Necropolis Railway steams toward an unexpected conclusion. |
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When the corpse of the shady industrialist, who owns the local football team, is found both shot and stabbed with a Parmesan knife, Italian police inspector Aurelio Zen is called to Bologna to oversee the investigation. Recovering slowly from surgery, Zen is only too happy to take on what at first appears to be an undemanding assignment. |
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