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Picador
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Bristling with inspired observations and wild anecdotes, this collection offers unique insight into the voice and mind of the inimitable Hunter S. Thompson, as recorded over the decades in the pages of Playboy, the Paris Review, Esquire, in various lectures, and in television appearances, many in print for the first time. Fearless and unsparing, the interviews detail some of the most storied episodes of Thompson's life: his savage beating at the hands of the Hell's Angels, his talking football with Nixon on the 1972 Campaign Trail ('the only time in twenty years of listening to the treacherous bastard that I knew he wasn't lying'); his razor-sharp insight into the Bush-Cheney administration, his unlikely run for Sheriff of Aspen, and his successful public battle, during the last years of his life, to free an innocent woman from prison. In addition, Hunter Thompson's passionate tirades about journalism, culture, drugs, guns, and the law showcase his singular voice at its fiercest. Complete with an exclusive introduction by author, journalist, and cultural critic Christopher Hitchens, Ancient Gonzo Wisdom genuinely embraces the brilliance of Hunter S. Thompson — his life, his voice, and his legacy — to provide an enduring portrait of the great gonzo journalist. 'Four years after his death, the rapid-fire wit and venom of Thompson's writing is undiminished. Ancient Gonzo Wisdom features classic HST interviews' — GQ. |
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Four men once close to Jack Dodds, a London butcher, meet to carry out his peculiar last wish: to have his ashes scattered into the sea. For reasons best known to herself, Jack's widow, Amy, declines to join them. |
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Pat Peoples has a theory that his life is actually a movie produced by God, and that his God-given mission in life is to become emotionally literate, whereupon God will ensure a happy ending — which, for Pat, means the return of his estranged wife Nikki. When Pat goes to live with his parents, however, everything seems changed. |
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It is autumn, 1541. Following the uncovering of a plot against his throne in Yorkshire, King Henry VIII has set out on a spectacular Progress to the North to overawe his rebellious subjects there. Accompanied by a thousand soldiers, and his fifth wife Catherine Howard, the King is to attend an extravagant submission of the local gentry at York. |
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«This is Volume One of the «Border Trilogy». 'A uniquely brilliant book... told in language as subtly beautiful as its desert setting. One of the most important pieces of American writing of our time' — Stephen Amidon, «Sunday Times». John Grady Cole is the last bewildered survivor of long generations of Texas ranchers. Finding himself cut off from the only life he has ever wanted, he sets out for Mexico with his friend Lacey Rawlins. Befriending a third boy on the way, they find a country beyond their imagining: barren and beautiful, rugged yet cruelly civilized; a place where dreams are paid for in blood. «All the Pretty Horses» is an acknowledged masterpiece and a grand love story: a novel about childhood passing, along with innocence and a vanished American age. Steeped in the wisdom that comes only from loss, it is a magnificent parable of responsibility, revenge and survival. 'A darkly shining work... executed with consummate skill and much subtlety — the effect is magnificent' — John Banville, «Observer». 'An exhilarating, exceptional novel' — «Spectator». 'In a single stride it takes McCarthy to the forefront of contemporary American fiction. All the Pretty Horses is indisputably a masterpiece' — «Financial Times».» |
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John Grady Cole and Billy Parham, two cowboys of the old school, are poised on the edge of a world about to change forever. Their journeys across the border into Mexico, each an adventure fraught with fear and pain, mark a passage into adulthood and eventual salvation. |
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Lester Ballard, a violent, solitary and introverted young backwoodsman dispossessed on his ancestral land, is released from jail and allowed to haunt the hill country of East Tennessee, preying on the population with his strange lusts. |
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A lost child: On the eve of the First World War, a little girl is found abandoned on a ship to Australia. A mysterious woman called the Authoress had promised to look after her — but has disappeared without a trace. A terrible secret: On the night of her twenty-first birthday, Nell Andrews learns a secret that will change her life forever. Decades later, she embarks upon a search for the truth that leads her to the windswept Cornish coast and the strange and beautiful Blackhurst Manor, once owned by the aristocratic Mountrachet family. A mysterious inheritance: On Nell's death, her granddaughter, Cassandra, comes into an unexpected inheritance. Cliff Cottage and its forgotten garden are notorious amongst the Cornish locals for the secrets they hold — secrets about the doomed Mountrachet family and their ward Eliza Makepeace, a writer of dark Victorian fairytales. It is here that Cassandra will finally uncover the truth about the family, and solve the century-old mystery of a little girl lost. |
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Summer 1924: On the eve of a glittering Society party, by the lake of a grand English country house, a young poet takes his life. The only witnesses, sisters Hannah and Emmeline Hartford, will never speak to each other again. Winter 1999: Grace Bradley, 98, one-time housemaid of Riverton Manor, is visited by a young director making a film about the poet's suicide. Ghosts awaken and memories, long-consigned to the dark reaches of Grace's mind, begin to sneak back through the cracks. A shocking secret threatens to emerge; something history has forgotten but Grace never could. A thrilling mystery and a compelling love story, The House at Riverton will appeal to readers of Ian McEwan's Atonement, L.P. Hartley's The Go-Between, and lovers of the film Gosford Park. |
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An academic sits alone in his college room thinking about the people he has lost. Powerful memories crowd in on him — childhood days in Paris; his exuberant, glamorous mother; his mysterious father; and the brash young American who becomes his step-father. Mingled with this emerges a tender portrait of his relationship with his actress wife. Ever After is a poignant elegy to lost faith and lost hope. It is also a powerful affirmation of love. 'Once in a precious while you read a novel which, every few chapters, makes you shiver with self-recognition. Ever After is such a novel' — Daily Mail. 'Swift is set apart by his acute observation and thrilling exactness of description... Exceptional' — The Times. |
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«Featuring several mass-murdering authors, two fraternal writers at the head of a football-hooligan ring and a poet who crafts his lines in the air with sky writing, «Nazi Literature in the Americas» details the lives of a rich cast of characters from one of the most extraordinarily fecund imaginations in world literature. Written with acerbic wit and virtuosic flair, this encyclopaediccavlacade of fictional pan-American authors is the terrifyingly humorous and remarkably inventive masterpiece which made Bolano famous throughout the Spanish-speaking world. 'One of the most exhilarating, intense and dangerous voices to emerge from South America... «Nazi Literature in the Americas» is a parade of delusional, mediocre, vicious and pitiable poetasters, a scabrous parlour game that reveals much about literature, power and complicity. Very funny indeed' — «Scotland on Sunday». 'The triumphant posthumous entrance of Roberto Bolano into the English-language literary firmament has been one of the sensations of the decade' — «Sunday Times». 'The best and weirdest kind of literary game... This artful alternate history of modern literature, stitched together from loose ends, half-told stories and deft episodes of pastiche, is a strangely profound place to get lost' — «Financial Times».» |
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'Point Omega is a treat: the most satisfying and least cryptic of DeLillo's late novels' — Sunday Telegraph. Richard Elster, a retired secret war adviser, has retreated to a forlorn house in a desert, 'somewhere south of nowhere'. But his planned isolation is interrupted when he is joined by a young filmmaker intent on documenting his experience in a one-take film. The two men sit on the deck, drinking and talking. Weeks go by. And then Elster's daughter Jessie visits. When a devastating event follows, all the men's talk, the accumulated meaning of conversation and isolation, is thrown into question. Written in hypnotic prose, this substantial novel is both a metaphysical meditation and a deeply unsettling mystery, from which one thing emerges: loss, fierce and incomprehensible. 'Another formidable construction by a very distinctive writer' — Evening Standard. 'A pared, intense anti-parable... so rigorous and so precise' — Observer. 'Impossible to forget' — Sunday Times. |
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Dissects what Proust had to say about friendship. This title looks at paying attention, taking your time, being alive and includes the author's commentary. |
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Taking in Aristotle, Wittgenstein, history, religion, and Groucho Marx, the author charts the progress of a love affair from the first kiss to argument and reconciliation, from intimacy and tenderness to the onset of anxiety and heartbreak. He attempts to define the age-old dilemmas of the heart. |
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Night falls. In a lonely valley called the Sink, four people prepare for a quiet evening. Then in his orchard, Murray Jaccob sees a moving shadow. Acorss the swamp, his neighbour Ronnie watches her lover leave and feels her baby roll inside her. And on the verandah of the Stubbses' house, a small dog is torn screaming from its leash by something unseen. Nothing will ever be the same again. Winton delivers a truely spine-tingling thriller. |
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