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Random House, Inc.
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It is six months since Jonathan Ransom foiled the attack on an Israeli jet that threatened to plunge the world into war. He has spent the last six months in hiding in South East Asia avoiding having to confront his wife's double life and the lie that was their eight-year marriage. Now Emma has initiated a reconciliation which Ransom reluctantly goes along with. They meet in London and vow to start over with no more secrets between them. But only minutes after they reunite, they bear witness to a terrible act of violence. A band of gunmen ambush a convoy of limousines carrying the U.S. Secretary of State and the Saudi Arabian Oil Minister to a secret meeting. Caught in the midst of the attack, Jonathan and Emma take matters into their own hands. When the violence subsides, the Saudi Minister has been killed, all of the terrorists are dead, and Emma is missing. Despite their actions, Jonathan and Emma fall under suspicion. Pursued by MI5, Jonathan knows that his only path to freedom lies in tracking down his wife. To do so, he must learn once and for all the truth behind her identity, and whether she has renounced her ways as a spy. Or if he, Jonathan Ransom, is the ultimate pawn in a game far beyond his imagining. |
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Vienna the year is 1903. Outside one of the cities most splendid baroque churches the decapitated body of a monk is found. Shortly after, the remains of a municipal councillor are discovered in the grounds of another church — his head also ripped from his body. It transpires that both men were rabid anti-semites and suspicions fall on Vienna's close-knit community of Hassidic Jews. In a city riven by racial tensions and extremism, the situation is potentially explosive. Detective Inspector Rheinhardt turns to his trusted friend, the young psychoanalyst Doctor Max Liebermann, for assistance. As the investigation progresses, Liebermann is drawn into the world of Jewish mysticism — a magical world dominated by the rites and secret lore of the Kabbalah. Liebermann, a man who rejects all forms of superstition, is forced to embrace his own cultural origins to understand the meaning of the murders.In the old ghetto district of Prague, he learns of folk legends concerning a great Kabbalist which will ultimately provide him with the key to the mystery. At the same time, Liebermann's life is in crisis. Political forces conspire against him, resulting in his suspension from the General Hospital — and the unobtainable object of his romantic desires has become an unhealthy obsession. |
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Holly Barrett lives a very solitary, quiet life in a small town on the coast of Massachusetts. She has a five-year-old daughter called Katy, who she accidentally conceived the night she lost her virginity to the boy she'd had a crush on for years — and who ran a mile the minute he heard about her pregnancy — and the only other people in her life are her beloved grandfather, Henry, and her best friend Anna. All that changes when she meets Jack Dane, a man she falls rapidly and passionately in love with — and whom Katy and Henry also adore. Jack proposes just a few weeks after they meet, and they're married within six weeks. For once Holly feels like the heroine of her own life story, and she's happier than she's ever been. But then dark secrets start to emerge about Jack's past: it becomes clear that he's not been entirely honest about his earlier life in England. And it's suddenly frighteningly possible that rather than marrying the man who will save her and Katy from the small life they've got trapped in, Holly may have brought a monster into all their lives. |
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Will Ferguson takes us on a wild romp across the dust bowl of West Texas. The year is 1939. The world is on the brink of war, and the American Dream is rusting out from the inside. Jack McGreary is adrift in the faded boomtown of Paradise Flats. Raised by his eccentric and increasingly erratic father, Jack has learned to live by his wits. He outsmarts the local businessmen, out-argues the local priest, and even outplays a gang of hardened carnies at a seedy fairground. And when a pair of fast-talking swindlers named Virgil and Miss Rose blow through town, Jack falls in with them. Together they go on a crime spree across the American Southwest, staging a series of elaborate and often hilarious cons. Young Jack is swept along into a world of hot jazz and cold calculating crimes of the heart, as the sexual tension between him and Miss Rose comes to a boil. Someone is being set up. Are Miss Rose and Virgil playing Jack? Or is Jack playing them? |
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June Dawson has come a long way from the rough East End background where she met, got pregnant by and eventually married charming, reckless Johnny Fuller. Now she lives in leafy Rainham, in a nice little cul-de-sac, with her ultra-respectable second husband and a lovely social life. Then her world collapses when daughter Debbie announces that she is pregnant by her low-life, drug addict boyfriend, Billy McDaid. June feels as though she is being physically sucked back into the world of villains and thugs she thought she had escaped for ever. But worse is to come. Much, much worse. The baby — doted on by his violent, feckless dad — grows into the child from hell: mean, sadistic and out of control. Suddenly the family is not just in crisis. It is in meltdown. |
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Annie Leibovitz' extraordinary career took off in San Francisco in 1970 when she first submitted a portfolio to Rolling Stone magazine. By 1973, she was the magazine's chief photographer. Since 1983, Annie Leibovitz has worked closely with Vanity Fair, who will be producing a special music issue to coincide with the book. Her subjects include Ray Charles, Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin, Al Green, Bruce Springsteen, Bryan Adams, Dolly Parton, Marvin Gaye, Chuck Berry and even Philip Glass. She has created a body of new work for the book, covering the landscape of American music — the juke joints of the Delta, Graceland, B. B. King at his hometown of Indianola in Mississippi and the Carter family in Virginia. The book is a tribute to a great culture in its widest form by the photographer who has understood more than anybody the power of the iconic image. |
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In an era when supermarket conformity rules, it is refreshing to discover that there are still wonderful, traditional varieties of fruit and veg out there waiting to be grown and tasted. What about Glaskin's Perpetual rhubarb, quick to settle in and ready to be cut in its first year? Or Alderman peas, deliciously sweet even when they reach the size of marbles? Not to mention Ashmead's Kernel apple, as devoured and praised by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall: 'exploding with champagne-sherbet juice infused with a lingering scent of orange blossom'. But Forgotten Fruits is more than a guide to these unusual varieties. It's also a fascinating work of natural and social history. Did you know, for example, that beetroot was instrumental in ending the slave trade? Or that observing gooseberries helped Charles Darwin to arrive at his theory of evolution? Or that there are over 2,000 varieties of cooking and eating apples in Britain alone? If you want to grow a bit of history in your garden, if you'd like to get a real taste of the huge variety of local produce that Britain has to offer, or even if you just want to find out a bit more about how rural life in the UK has evolved over the past centuries, Forgotten Fruits will prove irresistible — and enlightening — reading. |
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Did you know that the way you eat your food will be sending subliminal messages out about your sexual habits? Or that the way you swing, rock or slump in your office chair, or decorate your desk, could be helping your boss decide about that promotion or pay rise? We're all aware of the subtle messages of design and marketing but what about the signals you send out about yourself and your personality? The You Code is the book that answers all these questions, uncovering the hidden meaning behind the simplest of choices. Judi James, with co-writer and journalist James Moore, pulls no punches in her addictive and entertaining book which gets to the nub of who you really are, telling you more about yourself than you ever wanted to know, as well as providing an intriguing insight into the people around you. From shopping to sex, even down to the filling in your sandwich, The You Code is a must for anyone who wants to find out more about themselves and, more importantly, what everyone else thinks of them. |
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From the prestigious dormitories of Westfield and Oxford's austere college halls, to the irresistible socialite scene of present-day London, everywhere Allegra McCorquodale goes, scandal follows her. And in Allegra's shadow are her closest friends since school, the Midnight Girls. Romily de Lisle: super rich, brilliant and bored. She's as blessed as Allegra when it comes to looks, but she's a force to be reckoned with. And Imogen Heath: pretty, timid and hopelessly drawn to Allegra's reckless charm. She longs to be a part of the glitzy high-society world where her friends move with such ease. Once free of the cloistered worlds of school and university, the Midnight Girls face new and different challenges, but they are forever bonded by a terrible secret they've sworn never to break. Bitter rivalries arise as their professional lives soon cross paths. Greed, tragedy and sinister passions threaten their allegiance. Each of them stand to lose what they love most, and one of them must make the ultimate sacrifice. |
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Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg is not like other policemen. His methods appear unorthodox in the extreme: he doesn't search for clues; he ignores obvious suspects and arrests people with cast-iron alibis; he appears permanently distracted. In spite of all this his colleagues are forced to admit that he is highly successful — a born cop. When strange blue chalk circles start appearing overnight on the pavements of Paris, the press take up the story with amusement and psychiatrists trot out their theories. Adamsberg is alone in thinking this is not a game and far from amusing. He insists on being kept informed of new circles and the increasingly bizarre objects which they contain: a pigeon's foot, four cigarette lighters, a badge proclaiming 'I Love Elvis', a hat, a doll's head. Adamsberg senses the cruelty that lies behind these seemingly random occurrences. Soon a circle with decidedly less banal contents is discovered: the body of a woman with her throat savagely cut. Adamsberg knows that other murders will follow. The Chalk Circle Man is the first book featuring Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg, one of the most engaging characters in contemporary detective fiction. |
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As a child Ludo is plucked out of the shantytown where he was born and transported to a world of languid, cosseted luxury. Now twenty-seven, he works high above the sprawling metropolis of Sao Paulo for a vacuous 'communications company'. But this is not his world, and this is not a simple rags-to-riches story: Ludo's destiny moves him around like a chess piece, showing him both extremities of opulent excess and abject poverty, taking him to the brink of madness and brutality. |
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The subject of this novel is a habitual womaniser. He regards his high libido as physiologically normal; if he goes without a woman for three days, he suffers headaches. He embarks on affairs with Hollywood starlets, with mob molls and numerous female employees, despite debilitating ailments and a persistent fear of losing his beloved wife and children. And this particular philanderer must choose his partners with care and employ painstaking calculation in their seduction. He must go to extraordinary lengths to conceal his affairs from his political rivals — and with good reason. He is the 35th President of the United States, John Fitzgerald Kennedy. |
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The Russian Revolution is breaking out all around him, but Charlie Doig has a private war to fight. Even if he dies in the attempt, he's going to track down and kill Prokhor Glebov, the Bolshevik who raped and tortured his beautiful wife Elizaveta. Certain that Glebov will sooner or later turn up at Lenin's side, he and Kobi, his Mongolian henchman, make their way to St Petersburg. There, amidst the chaos of the Revolution, Charlie discovers that Glebov has been put in charge of the political re-education of the Tsar and his family in Ekaterinburg. The chase begins. There follows an adventure story of the sort they don't write any more. Having captured an armored train, Charlie and the ragtag private army he has recruited fight their way towards Siberia. Near Kazan, he hears rumors that the Tsar's gold reserves are in the city and that Glebov is also after them. He determines that he'll avenge Elizaveta and grab the gold in one swoop. James Fleming is one of modern fiction's great stylists. His prose is marvelously robust and vivid, his plot breathtaking in its pace and excitement, and his protagonist, as the Independent said of the previous Doig novel, White Blood, is 'the right kind of hero: virile, ruthless, adventurous'. |
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Meet Vish Puri, India's most private investigator. Portly, persistent and unmistakably Punjabi, he cuts a determined swathe through modern India's swindlers, cheats and murderers. In hot and dusty Delhi, where call centres and malls are changing the ancient fabric of Indian life, Puri's main work comes from screening prospective marriage partners, a job once the preserve of aunties and family priests. But when an honest public litigator is accused of murdering his maidservant, it takes all of Puri's resources to investigate. How will he trace the fate of the girl, known only as Mary, in a population of more than one billion? Who is taking pot shots at him and his prize chilli plants? And why is his widowed 'Mummy-ji' attempting to play sleuth when everyone knows Mummies are not detectives? With his team of undercover operatives — Tubelight, Flush and Facecream — Puri ingeniously combines modern techniques with principles of detection established in India more than two thousand years ago — long before 'that Johnny — come-lately' Sherlock Holmes donned his Deerstalker. The search for Mary takes him to the desert oasis of Jaipur and the remote mines of Jharkhand. From his well-heeled Gymkhana Club to the slums where the servant classes live, Puri's adventures reveal modern India in all its seething complexity. |
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Hal Treherne is a young and dedicated soldier on the brink of a brilliant career. Impatient to see action, his other deep commitment is to Clara, his beautiful 'red, white and blue girl', who sustains him as he rises through the ranks. When Hal is transferred to the Mediterranean, Clara, now his wife, and their baby daughters join him. But Cyprus is no 'sunshine posting', and the island is in the heat of the Emergency: the British are defending the colony against Cypriots — schoolboys and armed guerrillas alike — battling for enosis, union with Greece. The skirmishes are far from glorious and operations often rough and bloody. Still, in serving his country and leading his men, Hal has a taste of triumph. Clara shares his sense of duty. She must settle down, make no fuss, smile. But action changes Hal, and Clara becomes fearful — of the lethal tit-for-tat beyond the army base, and her increasingly distant husband. The atrocities Hal is drawn into take him further from Clara; a betrayal that is only part of the shocking personal crisis to come. The prizewinning and bestselling author of The Outcast returns with an emotionally powerful portrait of a marriage in extremis and a world-view in question. Sadie Jones has produced a passionate, gut-wrenching and brilliantly researched depiction of a 'small war' with devastating consequences; and in doing so, raises important questions that resonate profoundly today. |
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Jasper Jones has come to my window. I don't know why, but he has. Maybe he's in trouble. Maybe he doesn't have anywhere else to go. Late on a hot summer night at the tail end of 1965, Charlie Bucktin, a precocious and bookish boy of thirteen, is startled by an urgent knock on his window. His visitor is Jasper Jones, an outcast in the regional mining town of Corrigan. Rebellious, mixed-race and solitary, Jasper is a distant figure of danger and intrigue for Charlie. So when Jasper begs for his help, Charlie eagerly steals into the night by his side, terribly afraid but desperate to impress. Jasper takes him through town and to his secret glade in the bush, and it's here that Charlie bears witness to Jasper's horrible discovery. With his secret like a brick in his belly, Charlie is pushed and pulled by a town closing in on itself in fear and suspicion. In the simmering summer where everything changes, Charlie learns to discern the truth from the myth, and why white lies creep like a curse. |
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In a book, rich with characters and plants, this is a romantic and alluring leap into Spanish rural life with the author and his partner, a flamenco dancer, who buy a farm in a remote, steep valley and set about clearing land, planting and harvesting olives. |
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To Luca Matthews the dangers of the high mountain peaks are quite literally the air upon which he thrives. In the ruthless pursuit of his goals he would sacrifice anything — even another climber's life. His friends and family know and fear it. So when he sights a virgin peak in the Himalayas that exists on no map, no one is surprised when he becomes obsessed with being the first to scale it. Together with his climbing partner, Bill Taylor, they set off into a region of Tibet highly restricted by the Chinese. But a freak accident puts one of their team in mortal danger and it is left to a local Tibetan girl to lead them to Geltang, a monastery that has been hidden from the outside world since the Chinese Cultural Revolution, when most of the monasteries were pillaged and burned. Soon, as the Chinese secret police get wind of them, Luca and Bill find themselves embroiled in an age-old struggle, not for their lives but to protect the precious secret that Geltang hides and the legacy of Tibet itself. |
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Engineers of the Soul is the riveting story of how authors were forced to write in service of the Soviet Union's Communist ideology. Stalin first used the expression 'engineers of the soul' to refer to Soviet writers in 1932. It would become a well-known phrase and a feared concept. Together with the actual engineers, these engineers of the soul were supposed to contribute to the definitive establishment of the Communist paradise: by changing the appearance of the country with ambitious waterworks — Moscow Seaport — and by playing upon the souls of its inhabitants in books in such a way that the New Man would rise up. Combining investigative journalism with literary history, Westerman, himself once a student of hydraulic engineering, undertook two spectacular journeys: the first was to the Gulf of Kara Bogaz, now a muddy bay in the Caspian Sea but once described as a marvel of hydraulic engineering, and the second through the books — and the lives — of other Soviet writers including Maxim Gorki, Andrei Platonov and Isaak Babel. |
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Shannon Burke earned stunning reviews for his debut novel, Safelight, and now he returns with the same minimalist intensity in this arresting follow-up. Black Flies is the story of paramedic Ollie Cross and his first year on the job in mid-1990s Harlem. It is a ground's eye view of life on the streets: the shoot-outs, the bad cops, unhinged medics, and hopeless patients, the dark humour in bizarre circumstances, and one medic's fight to balance his instinct to help against the growing callousness within him that witnessing daily horrors seems to encourage. It is the story of lives that hang in the balance, and of a single job with a misdiagnosed newborn that sends Cross and his long-serving partner into a life-changing struggle between good and evil. A gripping and unforgettable novel about a young man's indelible experiences, Black Flies describes the passing of the torch from the older to the younger man, friendship in extreme conditions, deterioration, despair, and then redemption. |
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