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Random House, Inc.
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With the ink still wet on his diploma, the twenty-five-year-old Dr Mikhail Bulgakov was flung into the depths of rural Russia which, in 1916-17, was still largely unaffected by such novelties as the motor car, the telephone or electric light. How his alter-ego copes (or fails to cope) with the new and often appalling responsibilities of a lone doctor in a vast country practice — on the eve of Revolution — is described in Bulgakov's delightful blend of candid realism and imaginative exuberance. |
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No one has a better perspective on life on both sides of the channel than Julian Barnes. In these exquisitely crafted stories spanning several centuries, he takes as his universal theme the British in France; from the last days of a reclusive English composer, the beef consuming 'navvies' labouring on the Paris-Rouen railway to a lonely woman mourning the death of her brother on the battlefields of the Somme. Clever, wise, reflective and imaginative, these stories are permeated with understanding of what it has meant for generations from these islands to cross the Channel. |
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When Detective Alex Cross is called to investigate a massacre-style murder scene, he is shocked to find that one of the victims is an old friend. Angry, grieving, and more determined than ever, Cross begins the hunt for the perpetrators of this vicious crime. He is drawn into a dangerous underworld right in the heart of Washington DC that leads him on a life-threatening journey to the Niger Delta, where heroin dealing, slave trading and corruption are rife. At the centre of this terrifying world, Cross finds the Tiger the psychopathic leader of a fearsome gang of killers who are not what they seem. As Cross tracks the elusive Tiger through Africa, he must battle against conspiracy and untold violence. Alex Cross is in a heart-stopping chase that takes him across a vast and uncompromising landscape and finds him not only hunting for a horrific killer, but also fighting for his own survival. |
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The five, irreverent, satirical and imaginative stories contained in Diaboliad caused an uproar upon the book's first publication in 1925. Full of invention, they display Bulgakov's breathtaking stylistic range, moving at dizzying speed from grotesque satire to science fiction, from the plainest realism to the most madcap fantasy. Diaboliad is a wonderful introduction to literature's most uncategorisable and subversive genius. |
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This third novel in the trilogy that began with The Football Factory looks at notions of what it means to be English abroad. King explores stereotypes of language and nationalism, as he writes about sex and violence abroad, under the Union Jack. |
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Richard Attenborough and Diana Hawkins have been friends and colleagues for nearly 50 years. They have now teamed up to write this frank and funny account of their unlikely partnership and his extraordinary life. Together, laughing and squabbling, they have travelled the world, meeting people and making films. Among the eclectic cast of characters who appear in this two-handed memoir are Steve McQueen, Mother Teresa, Charlie Chaplin, Robert Mugabe, Edward G Robinson, Ronald Reagan, David Lean, Margaret Thatcher, John Mills, Steven Spielberg, Noel Coward, Indira Gandhi, Gordon Brown and Nelson Mandela. Prompted by his adventures in the movie business, Attenborough reflects on the highs and lows of a long life, both in and out of the public gaze. He writes revealingly of his passion for football and politics, of his avuncular relationship with Princess Diana and finally about the tsunami tragedy which engulfed his family in December 2004. |
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Eric Clapton is far more than a rock star. Like Dylan and McCartney he is an icon and a living legend. He has sold tens of millions of records, played sell-out concerts all over the world and been central to the significant musical developments of his era. His guitar playing has seen him hailed as 'God'. Now for the first time, Eric tells the story of his personal and professional journeys in this pungent, witty and painfully honest autobiography. These are the memoirs of a survivor, someone who has reached the pinnacle of success, who has had it all, but whose demons have never left him. Eric tells his story as it is, hiding nothing, with a directness and searing honesty that will make this book one of the most compelling memoirs of our time. |
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'We are a family', Alexander told his children. 'And the loyalty of the family must come before everything and everyone else. We must learn from each other, protect each other, and be bound first and foremost to each other. For if we honor that commitment, we will never be vanquished — but if we falter in that loyalty, we will all be condemned'. In a tale of brutality and betrayal that crowns Mario Puzo's remarkable career, he brings us the story of the greatest crime family in Italian history — the Borgias. |
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Fatherland is set in an alternative world where Hitler has won the Second World War. It is April 1964 and one week before Hitler's 75th birthday. Xavier March, a detective of the Kriminalpolizei, is called out to investigate the discovery of a dead body in a lake near Berlin's most prestigious suburb. As March discovers the identity of the body, he uncovers signs of a conspiracy that could go to the very top of the German Reich. And, with the Gestapo just one step behind, March, together with an American journalist, is caught up in a race to discover and reveal the truth — a truth that has already killed, a truth that could topple governments, a truth that will change history. |
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Flaubert's Parrot is a massive lumber room of detail about the great man: in it we learn an enormous amount about his life, family, lovers, thought processes, health and obsessions. But the voice that tells us all of this is gradually revealed to be itself in the grip of an obsession. The voice is that Geoffrey Braithwaite, a retired doctor with a nagging need to rationalize his wife's suicide and a more obscure compulsion to anatomize the processes of human identity. |
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John Grisham takes you into the heart of America's Deep South with a collection of stories connected by the life and crimes of Ford County: a place of harsh beauty where broken dreams and final wishes converge. From a hard-drinking, downtrodden divorce lawyer looking for paydirt, to a manipulative death row inmate with one last plea, Ford County features a vivid cast of attorneys, crooks, hustlers, and convicts. Through their stories he paints a unique picture of lives lived and lost in Mississippi. Completely gripping, frequently moving and always entertaining, Ford County brims with the same page-turning quality and heart-stopping drama of his previous bestsellers. |
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Three and a half years ago former Grant County medical examiner Sara Linton moved to Atlanta hoping to leave her tragic past behind her. Now working as a doctor in Atlanta's Grady Hospital she is starting to piece her life together. But when a severely wounded young woman is brought in to the emergency room, she finds herself drawn back into a world of violence and terror. The woman has been hit by a car but, naked and brutalised, it's clear that she has been the prey of a twisted mind. When Special Agent Will Trent of the Criminal Investigation Team returns to the scene of the accident, he stumbles on a torture chamber buried deep beneath the earth. And this hidden house of horror reveals a ghastly truth — Sara's patient is just the first victim of a sick, sadistic killer. Wrestling the case away from the local police chief, Will and his partner Faith Mitchell find themselves at the centre of a grisly murder hunt. And Sara, Will and Faith — each with their own wounds and their own secrets — are all that stand between a madman and his next crime... |
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Jennifer Hunter is an expert on men. She can tell if they're single, married or lying...She runs a company which specialises in conducting fidelity inspections for those who suspect their loved ones are capable of infidelity. Boyfriend behaving badly? Suspect your husband woof straying? Then Jennifer can supply the ultimate test. Some might call it entrapment but to Jennifer it's business pure and simple. And business is booming. But every success brings inevitable backlash and with each new challenge, Jen finds it harder and harder to stay in 'retirement', despite the promises she has made to her new boyfriend, Jamie to leave the actual 'seductions' to her employees. Unfortunately, Jamie is one of the few men that Jennifer's never been able to 'read'. But after seeing so many men fail the fidelity tests, can Jennifer let herself believe in one good man? |
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Haunted is a novel made up of stories: twenty-three of them to be precise. Twenty-two of the most horrifying, hilarious, mind-blowing, stomach-churning tales you'll ever encounter — sometimes all at once. They are told by the people who have all answered the ad headlined 'Artists Retreat: Abandon your life for three months'. They are led to believe that here they will leave behind all the distractions of 'real life' that are keeping them from creating the masterpiece that is in them. But 'here' turns out to be a cavernous and ornate old theatre where they are utterly isolated from the outside world — and where heat and power and, most importantly, food are in increasingly short supply. And the more desperate the circumstances become, the more desperate the stories they tell — and the more devious their machinations become to make themselves the hero of the inevitable play/movie/non-fiction blockbuster that will certainly be made from their plight. Haunted is at one level a satire of reality television. It draws from a great literary tradition — The Canterbury Tales, The Decameron, the English storytellers in the Villa Diodati who produced, among other works, Frankenstein — to tell an utterly contemporary tale of people desperate that their story be told at any cost. Appallingly entertaining, Haunted is Chuck Palahniuk at his finest — which means his most extreme and his most provocative. |
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Following on from his bestselling study of violence, THE FOOTBALL FACTORY, John King considers Britain's other obsession-sex. Formed in the chemical mists of New year's Eve, The Sex Division sees the once-sacred act of procreation at its most material, as five men devise system based on the sexual act. In this lagerosoaked league, the most that women can offer man is 4 points-unless, that is, she leaves her handbag unattended...From its base in the asset-stripped, emotionally castrated 90s, HEADHUNTERS shows the dreams of The Sex Division members breaking through the heavy media cloud of anorexic pin-ups and paedophile fashion. A missing brother, prophetic visions, a love affair, and tit-for-tat confrontation draw the characters out into the open-revealing the men behind the machismo, their need for mutual respect, and their recognition of the hidden or suppressed affinities. |
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This title is presented with a new introduction by Andrey Kurkov. A rich, successful Moscow professor befriends a stray dog and attempts a scientific first by transplanting into it the testicles and pituitary gland of a recently deceased man. A distinctly worryingly human animal is now on the loose, and the professor's hitherto respectable life becomes a nightmare beyond endurance. An absurd and superbly comic story, this classic novel can also be read as a fierce parable of the Russian Revolution. |
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A Jeeves and Wooster collection. A classic collection of stories featuring some of the funniest episodes in the life of Bertie Wooster, gentleman, and Jeeves, his gentleman's gentleman — in which Bertie's terrifying Aunt Agatha stalks the pages, seeking whom she may devour, while Bertie's friend Bingo Little falls in love with seven different girls in succession (including the bestselling romantic novelist Rosie M. Banks). And Bertie, with Jeeves's help, hopes to evade the clutches of the terrifying Honoria Glossop...At its heart is one of Wodehouse's most delicious stories, 'The Great Sermon Handicap.' |
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«Once a successful surgeon, Frederick Welin now lives in self-imposed exile on an island in the Swedish archipelago. Nearly twelve years have passed since he was disgraced for attempting to cover up a tragic mishap on the operating table. One morning in the depths of winter, he sees a hunched figure struggling towards him across the ice. His past is about to catch up with him. The figure approaching in the freezing cold is Harriet, the only woman he has ever loved, the woman he abandoned in order to go and study in America forty years earlier. She has sought him out in the hope that he will honour a promise made many years ago. Now in the late stages of a terminal illness, she wants to visit a small lake in northern Sweden, a place Welin's father took him once as a boy. He upholds his pledge and drives her to this beautiful pool hidden deep in the forest. On the journey through the desolate snow-covered landscape, Welin reflects on his impoverished childhood and the woman he later left behind. However, once there Welin discovers that Harriet has left the biggest surprise until last. «Italian Shoes» is as compelling as it is disturbing. Through his anti-hero Welin, Mankell tackles ageing and death with sensitivity and acuity, and as with the critically acclaimed Depths, delivers a moving tour-de-force on the frailty of mankind.» |
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In Talking it Over Gillian and Stuart were married until Oliver — witty, feckless Oliver — stole Gillian away. In Love, Etc Julian Barnes revisits the three of them, using the same intimate technique of allowing the characters to speak directly to the reader, to whisper their secrets, to argue for their version of the truth. Darker and deeper than its predecessor, Love, Etc is a compelling exploration of contemporary love and its betrayals. |
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After killing a man in the line of duty, Inspector Kurt Wallander finds himself spiralling into an alcohol-fuelled depression. He has just decided to leave the police when an old friend approaches him for help investigating his father's suspicious death. Kurt doesn't want to know. But then his friend is found shot dead. Against his better judgment, he returns to work to head what may now have become a double murder case. But while Wallander is on the trail of the killer, somebody is on the trail of Wallander, and closing in fast. |
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