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Little, Brown and Company
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«The Dream of Scipio», Iain Pears' first mainstream novel since «An Instance of the Fingerpost», is a work of astonishing ambition that appeals equally to the head and heart. It is set in Provence at three different critical moments of Western Civilisation — the collapse of the Roman Empire in the fifth century, the Black Death in the fourteenth, and the Second World War in the twentieth — and follows the fortunes of three men. The story of each man is woven through the narrative, linked by the classical text that gives the book its title, and by each man's love for an extraordinary woman. The narratives intertwine seamlessly, but what joins them thematically is an ancient text — «The Dream of Scipio» — a work of neo-Platonism that poses timeless philosophical questions. Expertly imagined and perfectly realised, «The Dream of Scipio» is a bonafide novel of ideas, a dazzling feat of storytelling, a fiction for our times. Dense, dark, erudite and yet utterly compelling.» |
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Max Skinner is a man at the heart of London's financial universe until his employers embark on a little asset-stripping of their own. Himself. Amid the grey London drizzle, there is one potential ray of sunshine: Max's Uncle Harry has left him his estate in his will — an eighteenth-century chateau and vineyard an hour's drive from Avignon. Out of a job, and encouraged by his friend Charlie about the money in modern wine, he heads for France. What Max discovers is a beautiful house, wonderful weather and a bustling village. The downside is the quality of the wine in his vineyard, but when Max suggests calling in an expert, Roussel, a former employee of his uncle's, is resistant. Help is at hand, however, when a beautiful blonde Californian arrives unexpectedly at the chateau. Peter Mayle's delightful novel will enchant the audiences who bought A Year In Provence and Toujours Provence in their millions. |
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When John Sutter's aristocratic wife killed her mafia don lover, John left America and set out in his sailboat on a three-year journey around the world, eventually settling in London. Now, ten years later, he has come home to the Gold Coast, the stretch of land on the North Shore of Long Island that once held the greatest concentration of wealth and power in America, to attend the imminent funeral of an old family servant. Taking up temporary residence in the gatehouse of Stanhope Hall, John finds himself living only a quarter of a mile from Susan, who has also returned to Long Island. But Susan isn't the only person from John's past who has reemerged. Though Frank Bellarosa, infamous Mafia don and Susan's ex-lover, is long dead, his son, Anthony, is alive and well, and intent on two missions: drawing John back into the violent world of the Bellarosa family, and exacting revenge on his father's murderer — Susan Sutter. |
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Englishness is an ancient and powerful concept, but no one seems sure exactly what it means in the twenty-first century. In exploring our national identity, Tony Thorne has compiled a fascinating compendium of the hundred words and phrases that have become the cornerstones of modern English, and have been used — sometimes deliberately, but often inadvertently — to stake out our common ground, to define what makes us essentially English, and thus different from those beastly foreigners who lurk just off our shores. |
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COUNTRY BUSINESSMAN SEEKS RELIABLE WIFE. COMPELLED BY PRACTICAL REASONS. REPLY BY LETTER. Rural Wisconsin, 1907. In the bitter cold, Ralph Truitt, a successful industrialist, stands alone on a train platform waiting for the woman who answered his newspaper advertisement. But when Catherine steps of the train she's not the woman that Ralph is expecting. She is both complex and devious. And, haunted by a terrible past, she is motivated by greed. Catherine's plan is simple. She will win Ralph's devotion. Later, she will leave him as a wealthy woman. What Catherine has not counted on however is that Ralph might have plans of his own for his new wife... |
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'The door closed with a sickening thud of finality, shutting my friends out and leaving me alone with my enemy, a fallen angel, and the monstrous bird creature his ancient lust had created. Then I did something I'd only done twice before in my entire life. I fainted.' It's all happening, though Zoey Redbird wishes it wasn't. She has her friends back, which is great. But a dark angel has taken over the House of Night, supported by High Priestess Neferet. Not so great. This leaves Zoey hiding out with the (supposedly friendly) red fledglings in Tulsa's prohibition-era tunnels. The not greatness continues. Zoey has some boy-thoughts to distract her, with a chance to make-up with super-hot-ex Eric. But thoughts of the archer that died, semi-permanently, in her arms also keep distracting her. Then he shows up as Neferet's newest minion. Well, hell. Zoey and friends need a plan to put things right, soon, if she's to keep both head and heart intact. — Not suitable for younger readers? |
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A week ago Zoey had a group of special friends, three boyfriends and a (kinda) clear conscience. Now she has none of the above. Luckily ice-queen Aphrodite is showing signs of melting and ex-roomie Stevie Rae isn't as dead as she'd thought. Though Stevie's now hanging out in tunnels with freaks — gross. If she can get them to listen, Zoey will need all her friends as events take a frightening turn at the House of Night school for vampyres. Shocking true intentions are about to come to light, loyalties will be tested and an ancient evil is about to rise again. Some days being special just doesn't seem all that... |
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«I guess it had gone okay with Stevie Rae. I mean, she had agreed to meet me tomorrow. And she hadn't tried to bite me, which was a plus. Of course, the whole trying-to-eat-the-street-person thing was highly disturbing... «Zoey's best friend, Stevie Rae, is undead — in an eww! zombie! kind-of-way, not in a cool vampire kind-of-way. She's struggling to retain her humanity and Zoey doesn't have a clue how to help. But she does know that anything they discover must be kept secret. Trust has become a rare commodity. Sinister forces are at work at the House of Night, where the line between friend and enemy is becoming dangerously blurred. — Not suitable for younger readers?» |
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It seems that life is going pretty well for Zoey Redbird. She's settled in at the House of Night finishing school and is coming to terms with the vast powers the vampyre goddess, Nyx, has given her. She even has a boyfriend... or two. Best of all, Zoey finally feels she has found somewhere she belongs. Then the unthinkable happens. Human teenagers are being killed, and all the evidence points to the vampires at Zoey's school. While danger stalks the humans from Zoey's past life, she begins to realise that the very powers that made her so unique might also threaten those she loves. Then, when she needs her new friends the most, death strikes the House of Night. Zoey finds herself facing a betrayal that could break her heart and jeopardise the very fabric of her world. — Not suitable for younger readers? |
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When sixteen-year-old Zoey Redbird gets Marked as a fledgling vampire she must join the House of Night school where she will train to become an adult vampire. That is, if she makes it through the Change. But Zoe is no ordinary fledgling. She has been chosen as special by the Goddess Nyx and discovers her amazing new power to conjure the elements: earth, air, fire, water and spirit. When Zoey discovers that the leader of the Dark Daughters, the school's most elite group, is misusing her Goddess-given gifts, Zoey must look within herself to embrace her destiny — with a little help from her new vampire friends. — Not suitable for younger readers? |
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The next roller-coaster installment in the adventures of Zoey Redbird at the House of Night school for vampyres. |
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1920. The Great War has been over for two years, and it has left a very different world from the Edwardian certainties of 1914. Following the death of his wife and baby and his experiences on the Western Front, Laurence Bartram has become something of a recluse. Yet death and the aftermath of the conflict continue to cast a pall over peacetime England, and when a young woman he once knew persuades him to look into events that apparently led her brother, John Emmett, to kill himself, Laurence is forced to revisit the darkest parts of the war. As Laurence unravels the connections between Captain Emmett's suicide, a group of war poets, a bitter regimental feud and a hidden love affair, more disquieting deaths are exposed. Even at the moment Laurence begins to live again, it dawns on him that nothing is as it seems, and that even those closest to him have their secrets... |
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It begins in the realm of the Real, where matter still matters. Lededje Y'breq is one of the Intagliated, her marked body bearing witness to a family shame, her life belonging to a man whose lust for power is without limit. Prepared to risk everything for her freedom, her release, when it comes, is at a price, and to put things right she will need the help of the Culture. It begins in the realm of the Real. It begins with a murder. And it will not end until the Culture has gone to war with death itself. |
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Four Blondes charts the romantic intrigues, liaisons, betrayals and victories of four modern women: a beautiful B-list model finagles rent-free summerhouses in the Hamptons from her lovers until she discovers she can get a man but can't get what she wants; a high-powered magazine columnist's floundering marriage to a literary journalist is thrown into crisis when her husband's career fails to live up to her expectations; a 'Cinderella' records her descent into paranoia in her journal as she realizes she wants anybody's life except her own; an artist and aging 'It girl' — who fears that her time for finding a man has run out — travels to London in search of the kind of love and devotion she can't find in Manhattan...Studded with her trademark wit and stiletto-heel-sharp insight, Four Blondes is dark, true, and compulsively readable. |
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To everyone who's anyone in New York, Victory Ford, Wendy Healy and Nico O'Neilly are riding high, the beautiful faces of success in the city. Victory is the hottest new designer on the block; Wendy is president of Parador Pictures with a sure-fire hit in production and three gorgeous children; and Nico is the editor of Bonfire magazine, the city's style bible. To the outside world they've hit their prime. The trouble is, from where Victory, Wendy and Nico are standing, things don't look quite that way. Nico is fitting in guilty extra-marital sex with an underwear model, Victory's last collection bombed and Wendy's twelve-year marriage to her metrosexual househusband is in freefall. Fierce, funny and flawed, Candace Bushnell's new heroines are also irresistible, and as she follows them through the minefield of work, love and life at the top she gives us a hugely entertaining lesson on how to stay ahead and keep laughing in the toughest town on the planet. Welcome to the Lipstick Jungle. |
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The motto of the boarding school to which Tommy Bedford is dispatched is Fortune Favours the Brave. It's 1959 and the school bristles with bullies and sadistic staff. Tommy, a quirky loner, obsessed with cowboys and Indians, needs all the bravery he can summon. Salvation comes when his glamorous actress sister is swept off to Hollywood by one of his heroes, TV cowboy Ray Montane. But with the Cold War looming, the sinister side of Tinseltown seeps through and Tommy and Diane soon find themselves in jeopardy. Forty years on, Tommy has to confront his boyhood ghosts when his own son finds himself charged with murder. |
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In a red brick mansion block off the Marylebone Road, Vivien, a sensitive, bookish girl grows up sealed off from both past and present by her timid refugee parents. Then one morning a glamorous uncle appears, dressed in a mohair suit, with a diamond watch on his wrist and a girl in a leopard-skin hat on his arm. Why is Uncle Sandor so violently unwelcome in her parents' home? This is a novel about survival — both banal and heroic — and a young woman who discovers the complications, even betrayals, that inevitably accompany the fierce desire to live. Set against the backdrop of a London from the 1950s to the present day, The Clothes on Their Backs is a wise and tender novel about the clothes we choose to wear, the personalities we dress ourselves in, and about how they define us all. |
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Scarlett O'Brien is in love... with the movies. Utterly hooked on Hugh Grant, crazy about Richard Curtis, dying with lust for Johnny Depp, Scarlett spends her days with her head in the clouds and her nights with her hand in a huge tub of popcorn. Which is not exactly what her sensible, DIY-obsessed fiance David has in mind for their future. So when Scarlett has the chance to house-sit an impossibly grand mansion in Notting Hill? The setting of one of her all-time favourite movies? She jumps at the chance to live out her film fantasies one last time. It's just a shame that her new neighbour Sean is so irritating? And so irritatingly handsome, too. As a chaotic comedy of her very own erupts around Scarlett, she begins to realise there's more to life than seating plans and putting up shelves. What sort of happy ending does she really want? Will it be a case of Runaway Bride or Happily Ever After? The big white wedding looms, and Scarlett is running out of time to decide... |
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