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Random House, Inc.
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Aleksandr Orlov has in the last year become one of the most loved figures in British culture and his catchphrase — Simples! — can be heard from the playground to the office. Written in his inimitable voice (as dictated to his sidekick Sergei), his autobiography will offer the same humour as his TV ads, giving us the full story of his ancestor's Journey of Courageousness from the Kalahari to Russia, the low-down on his life as entrepreneur and founder of comparethemeerkat.com and his love of grubs and cravats. 'My name is Aleksandr Orlov. I live and make work in Moscow. I have a success business. I have a mansion decorate with many fine things. I have a naturally majestic posture. But I would have none of these things if it were not for my family. This book is dedicated to them. I also wish to inspire next generation of young businesskats. I am hope that this book will show what can come of courage, hard work and a good fur-care regime. I am also hope that with royalties I will be able to re-marble roof on Orlov family mansion'. |
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Black Dogs is built around a brilliant short story, a memerically slow-motion encounter with two terrifying dogs by an English couple who are honeymooning just after the war in a French mountain village. |
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This is the story of John Self, consumer extraordinaire. Rolling around New York and London, he makes deals, spends wildly and does reckless movie-world business, all the while grabbing everything he can to sate his massive appetites: alcohol, tobacco, pills, pornography, a mountain of junk food and more. Ceaselessly inventive and thrillingly savage, this is a tale of life lived without restraint; of money, the terrible things it can do and the disasters it can precipitate. |
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Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird. This is a lawyer's advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of this story — a black man charged with raping a white girl in the Deep South of the 1930s. |
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Saturday, February 15, 2003. Henry Perowne is a contented man — a successful neurosurgeon, the devoted husband of Rosalind and proud father of two grown-up children. Unusually, he wakes before dawn, drawn to the window of his bedroom and filled with a growing unease. What troubles him as he looks out at the night sky is the state of the world — the impending war against Iraq, a gathering pessimism since 9/11, and a fear that his city and his happy family life are under threat. Later, Perowne makes his way to his weekly squash game through London streets filled with hundreds of thousands of anti-war protestors. A minor car accident brings him into a confrontation with Baxter, a fidgety, aggressive, young man, on the edge of violence. To Perowne's professional eye, there appears to be something profoundly wrong with him. Towards the end of a day rich in incident and filled with Perowne's celebrations of life's pleasures, his family gathers for a reunion. But with the sudden appearance of Baxter, Perowne's earlier fears seem about to be realised. |
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Generalisations about language and culture are at best amusing and meaningless, but is there anything sensible left to be said about the relation between language, culture and thought? Does language reflect the culture of a society? Is our mother-tongue a lens through which we perceive the world? Can different languages lead their speakers to different thoughts? In Through the Language Glass, acclaimed author Guy Deutscher will convince you that, contrary to the fashionable academic consensus of today, the answer to all these questions is — yes. On an odyssey that takes us from Homer to Darwin, from scientists to savages, from the corridors of Yale to the rivers of the Amazon, from how to name the rainbow to why Russian water — a 'she' — become a 'he' once you have dipped a tea bag into her, this book explores some of the most fascinating and controversial questions about language, culture and the human mind. |
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Uncle Fred is one of the hottest earls that ever donned a coronet. Or as he crisply said, 'There are no limits, literally none, to what I can achieve in the springtime.' Even so, his gifts are stretched to the limit when he is urged by Lord Emsworth to save his prize pig, the Empress of Blandings, from the enforced slimming cure of the haughty Duke of Dunstable. Pongo Twistleton knows his debonair but wild uncle shouldn't really be allowed at large — especially when disguised as a brain surgeon. He fears the worst. And his fears are amply justified. |
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If you were a Londoner visiting Cornwall would you know how to recognise a grammersow? If you were from the West Country and took a trip up to Scotland, would you be bewildered if someone described you as crabbit? And what if you left your native Belfast for Liverpool, would you understand if someone called you a woollyback? How to Talk Like a Local is an entertaining guide that gathers together and explains hundreds of words that you would never find in an ordinary dictionary. From dardledumdue, which means day-dreamer in East Anglia, through forkin robbins, the Yorkshire term for earwigs, to clemt, a Lancashire word that means hungry, it covers the enormously rich variety of regional words that pepper the English language. Not only does it pick out unique and unusal local words, it also draws together the dozens of terms from all over the country that mean the same thing, such as knee-knabbed, crab-ankled and hurked-up for knock-kneed, and obzocky, butters and maftin for ugly. In addition, it digs down to uncover the origins of these words, tracing their routes in to the language. Many terms meaning left-handed, for example, are related to the Kerr family of Ferniehirst Castle in Scotland, who preferred left-handed warriors. And many seemingly new coinages have been around for centuries, such as chav, which derives from a Romany word meaning child, or scouse, which probably comes from lapskaus, a Norwegian word for a sailors' stew. If you're intrigued by these colourful words and phrases, if you're interested in how English is really spoken, or if you want to discover how our language has evolved over the years, How to Talk Like a Local will prove irresistible — and enlightening — reading. |
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Charles Frieth, pre-eminent composer, conductor and prodigious womaniser, is preparing for a performance of one of his early works, and the world premiere of Demonic Aubade. Obstinate and myopic, he is oblivious to the growing turmoil around him; his wife's poor health and dissatisfaction; the exhausted efforts of his secretary; and, the disquieting diligence of his housekeeper, Maria. As the first performance draws near, the maestro is suddenly awoken to the chaos, and as Charles struggles to regain control of his life, a terrible tragedy begins to unfold. For You is a beautifully wrought and compelling libretto — It is Ian McEwan at his very best. |
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An international bestseller and French publishing sensation Consolation is a dazzling, heartbreaking tale of one man, two remarkable women and an unforgettable transvestite. Charles Balanda is forty-seven; a successful architect, he is constantly on the move. But from the moment he hears about the death of the woman he once loved — Anouk, the tragically big-hearted mother of a childhood friend — his life begins to unravel until, one day, he finds himself on a Paris pavement covered in blood. But fate brings him one final chance to be happy in Kate, an enchanting young woman, herself damaged but fearless and in love with life. The resulting story is a triumphant, spellbinding and ultimately consoling novel about the power of a second chance. |
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After a lifetime's struggle with alcohol, critical neglect and depression, in 1840 the nature poet John Clare is incarcerated. The asylum, in London's Epping Forest, is run on the reformist principles of occupational therapy. At the same time, the young Alfred Tennyson, moves nearby and became entangled in the life of the asylum. This historically accurate, intensely lyrical novel, describes the asylum's closed world and Nature's paradise outside the walls: Clare's dream of home, of redemption, of escape. |
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A murderer is on the loose on the streets of New York City: nicknamed the Doomsday Killer, he's claimed six victims in just two weeks, and the city is terrified. Even worse, the police are mystified: the victims have nothing in common, defying all profiling, and all that connects them is that each received a sick postcard in the mail before they died — a postcard that announced their date of death. In desperation, the FBI assigns the case to maverick agent Will Piper, once the most accomplished serial killing expert in the bureau's history, now on a dissolute spiral to retirement.Battling his own demons, Will is soon drawn back into a world he both loves and hates, determined to catch the killer whatever it takes. But his search takes him in a direction he could never have predicted, uncovering a shocking secret that has been closely guarded for centuries. A secret that once lay buried in an underground library beneath an 8th Century monastery, but which has now been unearthed — with deadly consequences. A select few defend the secret of the library with their lives — and as Will closes in on the truth, they are determined to stop him, at any cost. |
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Ever since Whit and Wisty Allgood were cruelly torn from their home and family in the middle of the night, the soldiers of a brutal totalitarian government have relentlessly tried to capture and execute them for 'collusion, conspiracy, and experimentation with the dark and foul arts'. But this supremely skilled witch and wizard have instead boldly spearheaded the fight against the wicked regime of the New Order and its systematic destruction of music, art, books, and imagination. The villainous leader of the New Order is just a breath away from the ability to control the forces of nature and to manipulate his citizens on the most profound level imaginable — through their minds. There is only one more thing he needs to triumph in his evil quest: the Gifts of Whit and Wisty Allgood. And he will stop at nothing to seize them. |
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When Travis Boyette, a convicted felon, walks into a church in small-town Missouri, he carries with him a terrible secret. Nearly a decade earlier Nicole Yarber, a high school senior with her whole life ahead of her, vanished. For two weeks, her home town stood still as thousands of volunteers combed the alleys and fields and ditches and abandoned buildings. But the search was futile. Nicole's body was never found. Now Donte Drumm, the young black athlete arrested for Nicole's murder, sits on death row. His execution date is set for less than a week's time — and Robbie Flak, the lawyer who's been fighting to prove Donte's innocence for nine years, has spent every penny he ever had trying to get justice for his client. But now he's out of options — unless Travis Boyette's confession can put things right in time. The clock is ticking... |
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Meet the Womens Murder Club: four friends who are always on each other's case: Detective Lindsay Boxer. Detective in the San Fransisco Police Department. While she tries to keep her head in terrifying cases at work, she battles with her heart over the men in her life. Claire Washburn. A medical examiner faced with gruesome evidence and the daunting challenge of her new family. Yuki Castellano. A top district attorney always assigned to the toughtest cases, desperate to make her mark but struggling with grief over her late mother. Cindy Thomas. An up and coming journalist eager to get her front page splash but never at the cost of her friends. Together their crime-solving knows no bounds. |
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Everyone has heard of the Beaufort twins, but few have ever seen them... On the eve of their 21st birthday, at one of the most lavish parties society has ever seen, Octavia and Flora Beaufort are launched into the world. For Octavia, it is one of the most thrilling nights of her life, an evening glittering with the promise of her future. But Flora shrinks from the limelight, fearful of what lies beyond the walls of her over-protective aunt's house. As Octavia is swept into a whirlwind of lavish spending and fashionable society, she grasps eagerly at whatever she wants: clothes, houses, men... even a department store. But Flora yearns for security — and when she is rescued from harm by a kind stranger, she seems to have found the love and protection she craves. Prey to all kinds of dangers, the twins soon realise that without each other, they run the risk of losing everything. But is it already too late...? |
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Eduardo Saverin and Mark Zuckerberg — an awkward maths prodigy and a painfully shy computer genius — were never going to fit in at elite, polished Harvard. Yet that all changed when master-hacker Mark crashed the university's entire computer system by creating a rateable database of female students. Narrowly escaping expulsion, the two misfits refocused the site into something less controversial — 'The Facebook' — and watched as it spread like a wildfire across campuses around the country, along with their popularity. Yet amidst the dizzying levels of cash and glamour, as silicon valley, venture capitalists and reams of girls beckoned, the first cracks in their friendship started to appear, and what began as a simple argument spiralled into an out-and-out war. The great irony is that Facebook succeeded by bringing people together — but its very success tore two best friends apart. |
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A collection of the finest and funniest words from the finest funniest writer the past century ever knew. Published for the millennium and to mark the 25th anniversary of his death, this is the first major selection of the whole of P.G. Wodehouse's work to have been published for a generation, and it includes a generous selection of previously unpublished work. We all know Jeeves and Wooster, but what is the best Jeeves story? What is your favourite story to feature Lord Emsworth and his unique pig, the Empress Blandings? And how many readers of Wodehouse know the best of Ukridge, the Oldest Member, the Hollwood stories? This bumper anthology of stories, novel-extracts, working drafts, articles, letters and poems gives a fresh angle on the twentieth century's greatest humorist. There are favourites aplenty, but this selection provides the best overall celebration of side-splitting humour and sheer good nature available in the pages of any book. The anthology has been compiled with enthusiastic support from the various P.G. Wodehouse societies around the world. |
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The year is 1970, and the youth of Europe are in the ecstatic throes of the sexual revolution. Though dedicated to the cause they have yet to realize this disturbing truth: that between the death of one social order and the birth of another, there exists a state of terrifying purgatory--or, as Alexander Herzen put it, a pregnant widow. Twenty years old and on vacation from college, Keith and an assortment of his peers are spending the long, hot summer in a castle in Italy. The tragicomedy of manners that ensues will have an indelible effect on all its participants, and we witness, too, how it shapes Keith's subsequent love life for decades. Bitingly funny, full of wit and pathos, The Pregnant Widow is a trenchant portrait of young lives being carried away on a sea of change. |
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