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Книги издательства «Random House, Inc.»
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«By the author of «The Name of the Rose», these essays, written over the last 20 years and culled from newspapers and magazines, explore the rag-bag of modern consciousness. Eco considers a wide range of topics, from «Superman» and «Casablanca», Federico Fellini and Michelangelo Antonioni, Jim Jones and mass suicide, and Woody Allen, to holography and waxworks, pop festivals and football, and not least the social and personal implications of tight jeans.» |
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«Why are we more likely to fall in love when we feel in danger? Why would an experienced pilot disregard his training and the rules of the aviation industry, leading to the deadliest airline crash in history? Why do we find it near-impossible to re-evaluate our first impressions of a person or situation, even when the evidence shows we were wrong? Discover the answers in «Sway». We all believe we are rational beings, yet the truth is that we’re much more prone to irrational behaviour than we realise or like to admit. In this compelling book, Ori and Rom Brafman reveal why. Looking at irrational behaviour in fields as diverse as medicine, archaeology and the legal system, they chart the psychological undercurrents that influence even our most basic decisions. In doing so they draw on the latest research in social psychology and behavioural economics to reveal the irresistible forces that sway us all. «Sway» is a fascinating insight into the way we all behave and will change the way you view the world.» |
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Most anti-smoking campaigns inadvertently encourage people to smoke. The scent of melons helps sell electronic products. Subliminal advertising may have been banned, but it's being used all the time. Product placement in films rarely works. Many multi-million pound advertising campaigns are a complete waste of time. These are just a few of the findings of Martin Lindstrom's groundbreaking study of what really makes consumers tick. Convinced that there is a gulf between what we believe influences us and what actually does, he set up a highly ambitious research project that employed the very latest in brain-scanning technology and called on the services of some 2000 volunteers. Buyology shares the fruits of this research, revealing for the first time what actually goes on inside our heads when we see an advertisement, hear a marketing slogan, taste two rival brands of drink, or watch a programme sponsored by a major company. The conclusions are both startling and groundbreaking, showing the extent to which we deceive ourselves when we think we are making considered decisions, and revealing factors as varied as childhood memories and religious belief that come together to influence our decisions and shape our tastes. |
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Jason and his sister have just moved to Malibu — to a town full of beautiful rich kids whose lives revolve around money, fashion, cars and parties. But these teens hide a dark — and dangerous secret... Bloodlust Jason gets swept along by the excitement of his new crowd and is flattered to be included — and also very flattered by the apparent interest of the stunning Sienna. But when he finds out the truth behind his new friends, Jason has to decide if he can accept the status quo. Everyone else seems to be able to — and it might just mean he could get closer to Sienna... Initiation Something happens to take Jason's mind of the gorgeouse Sienna when he realises that there's something weird going on in De Vere Heights. Could his Aunt Megan be involved somehow? And when his old friend Tyler turns up too, and starts to mess with the wrong people, Jason starts to understand that they're all playing with something much more dangerous than it first seemed... |
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Jason and his sister have just moved to Malibu — to a town full of beautiful rich kids whose lives revolve around money, fashion, cars and parties. But these teens hide a dark — and dangerous secret... Ritual Jason takes his sister to a New Age fair — and they visit a psychic. Jason is given a warning of great danger — and sure enough, he is soon after attacked by a mysterious assailant. When he wakes up in hospital he discovers that he's been shot with a crossbow. Who would use such a weapon — possibly some kind of vampire hunter? Could Sienna be the one who's really in danger? Initiation Jason's new-found happiness with Sienna is under threat when her parents find out. They don’t believe a human-vampire relationship can work and forbid Sienna from seeing Jason. Jason’s vampire aunt Bianca has a suggestion that might solve the problem — for ever... Jason has to make a decision that could change his life completely. There are exciting new possibilities right at his fingertips, but what hidden dangers lurk beneath the glamorous surface? |
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«Charles Strickland, a conventional stockbroker, abandons his wife and children for Paris and Tahiti, to live his life as a painter. Whilst his betrayal of family, duty and honour gives him the freedom to achieve greatness, his decision leads to an obsession which carries severe implications. Inspired by the life of Paul Gauguin, «The Moon and Sixpence» is at once a satiric caricature of Edwardian conventions and a vivid portrayal of the mentality of a genius.» |
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«The Last Watch» is the stunning sequel to the Night Watch trilogy, following the fortunes of the Others. Indistinguishable from normal people but possessed of supernatural powers and capable of entering the Twilight, a shadowy world that exists in parallel to our own, each Other owes allegiance either to the Dark, or to the Light...While on holiday in Scotland, visiting 'The Dungeons of Edinburgh', a young Russian tourist is murdered. As the police grapple with the fact that the cause of the young man's death was a massive loss of blood, the Watches are immediately aware that there is a renegade vampire on the loose. Anton — the hero of the Night Watch trilogy — is detailed to this seemingly mundane investigation, but begins to realise that there is much more to the story than a wildcat vampire and a single murder, and discovers that a team of unlicensed Others are hunting for a fabled magical treasure, hidden in the sixth level of the Twilight by Merlin himself.» |
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Kyle McAvoy is one of the outstanding legal students of his generation: he’s good-looking, has a brilliant mind and a glittering future ahead of him. But he has a secret from his past, a secret that threatens to destroy his fledgling career, and possibly his entire life. One night that secret catches up with him in the form of some bad men in a dark alley – they have a deeply compromising video of the incident that haunts him. The men make it clear to Kyle that he no longer owns his own future – that he mist do as they tell him or the video will be made public knowledge, with all the unpleasant consequences. What price do they demand for Kyle’s secret? Strangely, it is for Kyle to do exactly what any ambitious young lawyer would want to do: take a job in New York as an associate at the largest law firm in the world, a job that is incredibly well paid and, with mammoth hours and outrageous billing, could lead to partnership and a fortune. However, Kyle won’t be working for the company, but against it – passing on the secrets of the firm’s biggest trial to date, a dispute between two defence contractors worth billions of dollars to the victor. Now Kyle is caught between the criminal forces manipulating him, and the FBI who would love to unmask the conspiracy. Will his intellect, cunning and bravery be enough to extricate him from an impossible delemma? |
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«Martin Amis first wrote about September 11 a week later in a piece for «The Guardian beginning», ‘It was the advent of the second plane, sharking in low over the Statue of Liberty: that was the defining moment’. And he has kept returning to September 11, in essays and reviews, and in two remarkable short stories, 'In the Palce of the End' and 'The Last Days of Muhammad Atta'. All are collected here, together with an expanded account of his travels with Tony Blair in 2007 — to Belfast, to Washington, and to Baghdad and Basra. 'We are arriving at an axiom in long-term thinking about international terrorism', he writes: 'the real danger lies, not in what it inflicts, but in what it provokes. Thus by far the gravest consequence of September 11, to date, is Iraq ... Meanwhile, September 11 continues, it goes on, with all its mystery, its instability, and its terrible dynamism'.» |
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Seize this wonderful chance to embark on a Wodehousian voyage on the luxurious liner S.S. Atlantic – in the company of Monty Bodkin, whose passion for Gertrude Butterwick knows no bounds (except those set by the wild-at-heart Hollywood starlet Lotus Blossom and her pet alligator). Also aboard are a movie mogul, the centre-forward for the All-England ladies hockey team and the two Tennyson brothers (one of whom has been mistaken for the late poet laureate and given a fat movie contract…). Also a chatty steward, and a mouse doll in which all manner of things can be hidden. This is Wodehouse afloat – a voyage of pure delight. |
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'It was at Oxford that I first met Bysshe. We arrived at our college on the same day; confusing to a mere foreigner, it is called University College. I had seen him from my window and had been struck by his auburn locks'. The long-haired poet — 'Mad Shelley' — and the serious-minded student from Switzerland spark each other's animated interest in the new philosophy of science which is over-turning long-cherished beliefs. Perhaps there is no God. In which case, where is the divine spark, the soul? Can it be found in the human brain? the heart? the eyes? Victor Frankenstein begins his anatomy experiments in a barn in the secluded village of Headington, near Oxford. The coroner's office in Clarendon Street provides corpses — but they have often died of violence and drowning: they are damaged and putrifying. Victor moves his coils and jars and electrical fluids to a deserted pottery manufactury in Limehouse. And, from Limehouse, makes contact with the Doomesday Men — the resurrectionists. He pays better than any hospital for the bodies of the very recently dead. Even so, perfect specimens are hard to come by ... until that Thames-side dawn when Victor, waiting, wrapped in his greatcoat, on his wooden jetty, hears the splashing of oars and sees in the half-light that slung into the stern of the approaching boat is the corpse of a handsome young man, one hand trailing in the water.... |
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«In her new novel, perennial bestseller Anne Rice fuses her two uniquely seductive strains of narrative — her Vampire legend and her lore of the Mayfair witches — to give us a world of classic deep-south luxury and ancestral secrets. Welcome to Blackwood Farm: soaring white columns, spacious drawing rooms, bright, sun-drenched gardens, and a dark strip of the dense Sugar Devil Swamp. This is the world of Quinn Blackwood, a brilliant young man haunted since birth by a mysterious doppelgänger, “Goblin”, a spirit from a dream world that Quinn can’t escape and that prevents him from belonging anywhere. When Quinn is made a Vampire, losing all that is rightfully his and gaining an unwanted immortality, his doppelgänger becomes even more vampiric and terrifying than Quinn himself. As the novel moves backwards and forwards in time, from Quinn’s boyhood on Blackwood Farm to present day New Orleans, from ancient Athens to 19th-century Naples, Quinn seeks out the legendary Vampire Lestat in the hope of freeing himself from the spectre that draws him inexorably back to Sugar Devil Swamp and the explosive secrets it holds. A story of youth and promise, of loss and the search for love, of secrets and destiny, «lackwood Farm»is Anne Rice at her mesmerizing best.» |
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It’s World War II and the A-bomb is here to stay. The only question: Who’s going to drop it first? The Battle of Midway takes on a whole new dimension with the sudden appearance of a U.S.-led naval task force from the twenty-first century, the result of a botched military experiment. State-of-the-art warships are scattered across the Pacific, armed to the teeth with the latest instruments of mass destruction. Nuclear warheads, rocket-propelled grenades, AK-47s, computer-guided missiles – all bets are off as the major powers of 1942 scramble to be the first to wield the weapons of tomorrow against their enemies. The whole world now knows of the Allied victory in 1945, and the collapse of communism decades later. But that was the first time around. With the benefit of their newly acquired knowledge, Stalin and Hitler rapidly change strategies. A Russian-German ceasefire leaves the Führer free to bring the full weight of his vaunted Nazi war machine down on England, while in the Pacific, Japan launches an invasion of Australia, and Admiral Yamamoto schemes to seize an even greater prize... Hawaii. Even in the United States the newcomers from the future are greeted with a combination of enthusiasm and fear. Suspicion leads to hatred and erupts into violence. Suddenly it’s a whole new war, with high-tech, high-stakes international manipulations from Tokyo to D.C. to the Kremlin. As the world trembles on the brink of annihilation, Churchill, Stalin, Roosevelt, Hitler, and Tojo confront extreme choices and a future rife with possibilities–all of them apocalyptic. |
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With his groundbreaking New York Times bestseller The Sword of Shannara and its acclaimed sequels, Terry Brooks brought a new audience to epic fantasy. Then he gave the genre a darkly compelling contemporary twist in his trilogy of the Word and the Void. Last year, in Armageddon’s Children, Brooks undertook the stunning chronicle that united two unique worlds. Now that story of clashing forces of darkness and light, of Shannara’s beginnings and the human race’s possible end, marches forward into an unforgettable second volume full of mystery, magic, and momentous events. Across the ruined landscape that is America–hopelessly poisoned, plague-ridden, burned, and besieged by demon armies bent on exterminating all mortal life – two pilgrims have been summoned to serve the embattled cause of good. Logan Tom has journeyed to desolate Seattle to protect a ragged band of street urchins and the being known as “the gypsy morph”, who is both mortal and magical, and destined to save mankind unless he is destroyed. Likewise, Angel Perez has her own quest, one that will take her from the wreckage of Los Angeles to a distant, secret place untouched by the horrors of the nationwide blight–a place where the race of Elves has dwelled since before man existed. But close behind these lone Knights of the Word swarm the ravening forces of the Void. As the menacing thunder of war drums heralds the arrival of the demons and their brutal minions in Seattle, the young survivors who call themselves the Ghosts are forced to brave the dangerous world of gangs, mutants, and worse to escape the invasion. And Logan Tom must infiltrate a refugee compound to rescue Hawk, the leader of the street urchins, who has yet to learn the truth about who and what he is. Meanwhile, Angel Perez has joined an equally urgent mission: to find the Ellcrys, a fabled talisman crucial to protecting the Elven realm against an influx of unspeakable evil from the dread dimension known as the Forbidding. But Angel and her Elf allies must beware–for a demon spy, with a monstrous creature at its command, walks among them. As the legions of darkness draw the noose tighter, and the time of confrontation draws near, those chosen to defend the soul of the world must draw their battle lines and prepare to fight with, and for, their lives. If they fail, humanity falls. |
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In the days when powerful witches used their magic to shield humanity from demons, their allies and guardians were a group of men gifted with preternatural abilities of their own – the witch guardians. But when a band of witches traded their humanity for demonic power, the ancient bond was broken, and the guardians became the hunters. Darcy MacAlister knows nothing of demons or magic. But this beautiful young woman is about to discover the truth about her past... and her future. For she is a witch – not just any witch, but the key to breaking the curse that has plagued witches and the men who hunt them. For if a hunter kills an innocent witch by mistake, the price is no less than a piece of his soul. Axel Locke, gorgeous leader of the Wing Slayer Hunters, has sworn never to shed the blood of the earth witches who have resisted the temptation of demonic power. But when his sister is cursed by a demon witch, he discovers that Darcy MacAlister may hold the cure – if she can master her newfound powers in time. When the chase begins and Axel and Darcy come face-to-face, this hunter must weigh his soul against his honor – and against his heart. |
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Great Britain. July 1951. Three years ago, Russia went dark. Nothing got in. Nothing got out. The world assumed it was political strife. But it was the Chimera: voracious extraterrestrial invaders. And in December 1949, they burst across the Russian border and poured into Europe. The luckiest humans died. The less fortunate succumbed to an alien virus–and changed. Within a year, most of Europe had fallen. Only Great Britain, after struggling desperately, had kept the conquerors at bay. But as the Chimera were repelled, they were evolving. Building. Planning. America. November 1952. The Chimera have crossed the Atlantic. Their lightning strikes on American borders are devastating. Cities are lost. Small towns overrun. Citizens transformed into monstrosities. Enter Lieutenant Nathan Hale, U.S. Ranger. A veteran of the Chimeran conflict, he is uniquely immune to the alien virus. And when regular troops can’t stem the Chimeran onslaught, Hale and his special-operations team meet the menace head-on. But while they battle the relentless Chimera, deadly power games rage in the White House. And when Hale discovers a far-reaching conspiracy, one with deadly consequences for the human race, his allegiance to country and mankind is stretched to the breaking point. |
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When the three witches — now old, remarried and widowed — decide to go back to Eastwick to spend a summer together, many things have changed. Darryl Van Horne is gone. Their husbands and lovers have gone. The lithe and supple bodies with which they wrecked marriages and wreaked havoc many years before have gone. |
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A condensed, board book version of the classic bestseller, perfect for babies and toddlers. Introduces the youngest readers to the wonderful world of Seussian word play. |
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In 1957, Dr. Seuss published the very first Beginner Book, The Cat in the Hat, and made a major impact on the world of education, proving that learning to read can indeed be fun. Now, for the first time, children can hear their favorite Beginner Books on compact disc. |
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