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Random House, Inc.
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«In this, the second of Tom Sharpe's chronicles about Henry Wilt, our hero is no longer the victim of his own uncontrolled fantasies. As Head of a reconstituted Liberal Studies Department, he has assumed power without authority at the Fenland College of Arts and Technology and the fantasies he now confronts are those of political bigots and reactionary bureaucrats — in addition to his wife's enthusiasm for every Organic Alternative under the compost heap and the insistence of his quadruplets on looking at every problem with a foreign student and the hostility of medical services unwilling to attend to his most urgent needs. But it is only when Wilt becomes the unintentional participant in a terrorist siege that he is forced to find an answer to the problems of power, which have corrupted greater men than he. With a mental ingenuity born of his innate cowardice, Wilt fights for those liberal values which are threatened by the sophisticated methods of police anti-terrorist agents. In the confusion that follows, Wilt resumes his dialogue with the unflagging Inspector Flint and is himself subjected to the indignity of a psycho-political profile. Bitingly funny and brilliantly written, «The Wilt Alternative» exposes the farcical anomalies, which have become the social norma of our time.» |
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Wilt is still teaching at the Fenland Tech, attempting to drill English into plasterers, dozing through tedious committee meetings and occasionally getting mildly plastered in 'The Pig in a Poke' with one of his few bearable colleagues. But the even tenor of his days is rudely interrupted when the shadow of drug dealing flickers across the Tech. Suddenly Wilt becomes the target of suspicion. His colleagues believe him to be responsible for triggering a departmental inquiry, and his old adversary Inspector Flint, knowing that he's guilty of something, sees a chance to settle a number of scores. What his wife thinks is...well, what all wives think. But what none of them have reckoned with is Wilt's talent for making new enemies. What starts with an accusation of voyeurism in the staff lavatory (of the wrong gender to boot) leads, more or less directly, to a massive confrontation at a nearby US airbase with the forces of law and order on both sides and Wilt in his usual place — in the middle. |
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On the verandah of a great New Orleans house, now faded, a mute and fragile woman sits rocking. And the witching hour begins...Demonstrating once again her gift for spellbinding storytelling and the creation of legend, Anne Rice makes real for us a great dynasty of witches — a family given to poetry and incest, to murder and philosophy, a family that over the ages is itself haunted by a powerful, dangerous, and seductive being. A hypnotic novel of witchcraft and the occult across four centuries, The Witching Hour could only have been written by the spellbinding bestselling author of The Vampire Chronicles. |
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Vasily Grossman's masterpiece Life and Fate is rated by many as the greatest Russian novel of the twentieth century. Among its admirers is Antony Beevor, the bestselling author of Stalingrad and Berlin. A Writer at War is based on the notebooks in which Grossman gathered his raw material. It depicts as never before the crushing conditions on the Eastern Front and the lives and deaths of infantrymen, tank drivers, pilots, snipers and civilians alike. Deemed unfit for service when the Germans invaded in 1941, Grossman became a special correspondent for Red Star, the Red Army newspaper. Remarkably, he spent three of the following four years at the front observing with a writer's eye the most pitiless fighting ever known. Grossman witnessed almost all the major events on the Eastern Front: the appalling defeats and desperate retreats of 1941, the defence of Moscow and fighting in the Ukraine. In August 1942 he was posted to Stalingrad where he remained during four months of brutal street-fighting. He was present at the battle of Kursk, the largest tank engagement in history, and, as the Red Army advanced, he reached Berdichev where his worst fears for his mother and other relations were confirmed. A Jew himself, he undertook the faithful recording of Holocaust atrocities as their extent dawned. His supremely powerful report 'The Hell of Treblinka' was used in evidence at the Nuremberg tribunal. A Writer at War offers the one outstanding eye-witness account of the war on the Eastern Front and perhaps the best descriptions ever of what Grossman called 'the ruthless truth of war'. |
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Pushkin was the first Russian writer of European stature, and he is among the very few artists — such as Homer and Shakespeare — to have shaped the consciousness and history of an entire nation and its language, thereby affecting the world at large. Eugene Onegin is not merely the greatest poem in the Russian language by its most influential poet: it is a global culture, social and political icon of the highest order. The historical power of this work — a novel in verse — is made all the more extraordinary by the simplicity of its subject. Eugene Onegin is a story of disappointed love. Tatyana falls for the handsome Eugene to whom she daringly makes advances. He cooly rejects her, then flirts with her sister, Olga. When challenged by Olga's fiance, Lensky kills him in a duel, seemingly indifferrent to the grief he causes. (Ironically, Puskhin himself was to be killed in similar circumstances in 1937, some seven years after he completed the work). Onegin leaves the district. When he returns four years later, Tatyana has married another man and it is her turn to reject his advances. But it turns out that Onegin's hauteur is affected: he has always loved her passionately. She loves him too and both reflect painfully on what might have been. |
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«The devil with his retinue, a poet incarcerated in a mental institution for speaking the truth, and a recreation of the story of Pontius Pilate, constitute the elements out of which Mikhail Bulgakov wove «The Master and Margarita».» |
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«From her appearance in a small magazine in 1906 to her death in 1965, Anna Akhmatova was a dominant presence in Russian literary life. But this friend of Pasternak and Mandelstam was a poet in a country where poetry was literally a matter of life and death, as she found when Mandelstam and her own husband, Gumilyev, were executed, and her son imprisoned for many years in the Gulag. Akhmatova's first collection, «Evening», appeared in 1912. «Rosary» (1914) made her a household name. After the Revolution she went in and out of favour with the authorities, who sometimes allowed her to publish, sometimes banned her work. She is now most celebrated in the West for «Poem Without A Hero and Requiem», a sequence mourning the victims of Stalin's Terror which was only published (and then outside Russia) in 1963.» |
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«Primarily known as a dramatist, Chekhov also wrote short stories. This selection of his work includes «The Swedish Match», «Easter Eve», «Mire», «On the Road», «Verotchka», «Volodya», «The Kiss», «Sleepy» and «The Steppe».» |
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Deutschland heute: ein Netzwerk hochrangiger Politiker, führender Konzernchefs und toleranter Justizbehörden, die den Rechtsstaat aushöhlen, die Gemeinsinn durch Egoismus und Gesetze durch die Macht des Kapitals ersetzen. Wer wen erpresst, wer die Drahtzieher sind und warum die Justiz nicht ermittelt – dieses Buch enthüllt Gaunerkartelle, Korruptionsaffären und Verstrickungen von Ministern, Topmanagern und Staatsanwälten. |
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Wer Wladimir Kaminers Geschichten kennt, kennt auch seine Familie: seine Frau Olga, seine beiden Kinder und natürlich seine Eltern. Egal ob Erziehungsfragen, sexuelle Aufklärungsarbeit, deutscher Behördendschungel, sportliche Extravaganzen, Mysterien des Religionsunterrichts, Urlaubskatastrophen oder die Invasion der Playmobilfiguren – das Leben mit seiner Familie stellt Wladimir Kaminer unablässig vor neue Herausforderungen und beschert ihm immer wieder äußerst kuriose Erfahrungen. Und wer könnte hinreißender von ihnen erzählen als er selbst? |
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Es muss nicht immer Kaviar sein – für Russen schon gar nicht. Das wahre Symbol für Luxus und feine Lebensart ist in Russland die Ananas. Dieses Beispiel zeigt: Kulinarisch ist die ehemalige Sowjetunion hierzulande unbekanntes Terrain. Dank Wladimir Kaminer ist damit nun Schluss. Er führt durch Töpfe und Teller der alten Sowjetrepubliken, bringt dem Laien nebenbei Länder und Leute näher und natürlich die aufregendste Cuisine der Welt! Unterstützt wird er dabei von seiner Frau Olga, die besten Rezepte aus ihrer Sammlung beisteuert … Unvergessliche Begegnungen mit der sowjetischen Küche und ausgefallene Rezepte – ein Hochgenuss! |
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«In a crowded courtroom in Mississippi, a jury returns a shocking verdict against a chemical company accused of dumping toxic waste into a small town’s water supply, causing the worst “cancer cluster” in history. The company appeals to the Mississippi Supreme Court, whose nine justices will one day either approve the verdict or reverse it. Who are the nine? How will they vote? Can one be replaced before the case is ultimately decided? The chemical company is owned by a Wall Street predator named Carl Trudeau, and Mr. Trudeau is convinced the Court is not friendly enough. With judicial elections looming, he decides to try to purchase himself a seat on the Court. The cost is a few million dollars, a drop in the bucket for a billionaire like Mr. Trudeau. Through an intricate web of conspiracy and deceit, his political operatives recruit a young, unsuspecting candidate. They finance him, manipulate him, market him, and mould him into a potential Supreme Court justice.Their Supreme Court justice. «The Appeal» is a powerful, timely, and shocking story of political and legal intrigue, a story that will leave readers unable to think about the electoral process or judicial system in quite the same way ever again.» |
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«In a crowded courtroom in Mississippi, a jury returns a shocking verdict against a chemical company accused of dumping toxic waste into a small town’s water supply, causing the worst “cancer cluster” in history. The company appeals to the Mississippi Supreme Court, whose nine justices will one day either approve the verdict or reverse it. Who are the nine? How will they vote? Can one be replaced before the case is ultimately decided? The chemical company is owned by a Wall Street predator named Carl Trudeau, and Mr. Trudeau is convinced the Court is not friendly enough. With judicial elections looming, he decides to try to purchase himself a seat on the Court. The cost is a few million dollars, a drop in the bucket for a billionaire like Mr. Trudeau. Through an intricate web of conspiracy and deceit, his political operatives recruit a young, unsuspecting candidate. They finance him, manipulate him, market him, and mould him into a potential Supreme Court justice.Their Supreme Court justice. «The Appeal» is a powerful, timely, and shocking story of political and legal intrigue, a story that will leave readers unable to think about the electoral process or judicial system in quite the same way ever again.» |
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Bertie Wooster has been overdoing metropolitan life a bit, and the doctor orders fresh air in the depths of the country. But after moving with Jeeves to his cottage at Maiden Eggesford, Bertie soon finds himself surrounded by aunts – not only his redoubtable Aunt Dahlia but an aunt of Jeeves’s too. Add a hyper-sensitive racehorse, a very important cat and a decidedly bossy fiancée – and all the ingredients are present for a plot in which aunts can exert their terrible authority. But Jeeves, of course, can cope with everything – even aunts, and even the country. |
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The ivied walls of Blandings Castle have seldom glowed as sunnily as in these wonderful stories — but there are snakes in the rolling parkland ready to nip Clarence, the absent-minded Ninth Earl of Emsworth, when he least expects it. For a start the Empress of Blandings, in the running for her first prize in the Fat Pigs Class at the Shropshire Agricultural Show, is off her food - and can only be coaxed back to the trough by a call in her own language. Then there is the feud with Head Gardener McAllister, aided by Clarence’s sister, the terrifying Lady Constance, and the horrible prospect of the summer fête — twin problems solved by the arrival of a delightfully rebellious little girl from London. But first of all there is the vexed matter of the custody of the pumpkin. Skipping an ocean and a continent, Wodehouse also treats us to some unputdownable stories of excess from the monstrous Golden Age of Hollywood. |
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These marvellous stories introduce us to Jeeves, whose first ever duty is to cure Bertie’s raging hangover (‘If you would drink this, sir… it is a little preparation of my own invention. It is the Worcester Sauce that gives it its colour. The raw egg makes it nutritious. The red pepper gives it its bite. Gentlemen have told me they have found it extremely invigorating after a late evening.’) And from that moment, one of the funniest, sharpest and most touching partnerships in English literature never looks back… |
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Victor Mancini has devised a complicated scam to pay for his mother's hospital care: pretend to be choking on a piece of food in a restaurant and the person who 'saves you' will feel responsible for you for the rest of their lives. Multiply that a couple of hundred times and you generate a healthy flow of cheques, week in, week out. Victor also works at a theme park with a motley group of losers, cruises sex addiction groups for action, and visits his mother, whose Alzheimer's disease now hides what may be the startling truth about his parentage. |
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The Oldest Member knows everything that has ever happened on the golf course – and a great deal more besides. Take the story of Cuthbert, for instance. He’s helplessly in love with Adeline, but what use are his holes in one when she’s in thrall to Culture and prefers rising young writers to winners of the French Open? But enter a Great Russian Novelist with a strange passion, and Cuthbert’s prospects are transformed. Then look at what happens to young Mitchell Holmes, who misses short putts because of the uproar of the butterflies in the adjoining meadows. His career seems on the skids – but can golf redeem it? The kindly but shrewd gaze of the Oldest Member picks out some of the funniest stories Wodehouse ever wrote. |
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The Gulf War is imminent and there’s something mighty strange going on in the Agriculture Department of East Iowa University. When an Arab student turns up drunk – and dead – in the lake, redneck Deputy County Sheriff Clyde Banks gets a feeling he’s on to something big. It’s a suspicion shared by low-ranking CIA agent Betsy Vandeventer. But before two great minds yell conspiracy theory, in steps top US policy-maker James Millikan. Here’s a man well used to dictating the Middle East’s future – from a comfortable seat at a top Paris restaurant. While shenanigans in the Midwest might not be exactly his style, there’s a technique that serves America well in all matters of national security. It’s called the ‘Cobweb’, and it backfires every time... |
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