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Random House, Inc.
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Still Life with Bread Crumbs begins with an imagined gunshot and ends with a new tin roof. Between the two is a wry and knowing portrait of Rebecca Winter, a photographer whose work made her an unlikely heroine for many women. Her career is now descendent, her bank balance shaky, and she has fled the city for the middle of nowhere. There she discovers, in a tree stand with a roofer named Jim Bates, that what she sees through a camera lens is not all there is to life. Brilliantly written, powerfully observed, Still Life with Bread Crumbs is a deeply moving and often very funny story of unexpected love, and a stunningly crafted journey into the life of a woman, her heart, her mind, her days, as she discovers that life is a story with many levels, a story that is longer and more exciting than she ever imagined. |
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When Queenie Hennessy discovers that Harold Fry is walking the length of England to save her, and all she has to do is wait, she is shocked. Her note to him had explained she was dying from cancer. How can she wait? A new volunteer at the hospice suggests that Queenie should write a second letter; only this time she must tell Harold the truth. Composing this letter, the volunteer promises, will ensure Queenie hangs on. It will also atone for the secrets of the past. As the volunteer points out, It isn't Harold who is saving you. It is you, saving Harold Fry. This is that letter. A letter that was never sent. Told in simple, emotionally-honest prose, with a mischievous bite, this is a novella about a woman who falls in love but chooses not to claim it. It is about friendship and kindness as well as the small victories that pass unrecorded. It is about the truth and the significance — the gentle heroism — of a life lived alone. Queenie thought her first letter would be the end of the story. She was wrong. It was just the beginning... |
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This is a brand new very funny Christmas novel, from the bestselling author of No-One Ever Has Sex on a Tuesday and Single Woman Seeks Revenge. There comes a time in every woman's life when the only answer is to marry George Clooney. For Michelle, that time is now. Slogging her guts out in a chicken factory whilst single-handedly bringing up a teenager who hates her is far from the life that 36-year-old Michelle had planned. But marrying the most eligible man on the planet by Christmas could change all that, couldn't it? Sometimes your only option is to dream the impossible — because you never know where it might take you... This is a fun, completely fantastical novel featuring George Clooney, and has not been authorised or endorsed by the wondrous man himself. |
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My name is Raphael Ignatius Phoenix and I am a hundred years old — or will be in ten days' time, in the early hours of January 1st, 2000, when I kill myself. Raphael Ignatius Phoenix has had enough. Born at the beginning of the 20th century, he is determined to take his own life as the old millennium ends and the new one begins. But before he ends it all, he wants to get his affairs in order and put the record straight, and that includes making sense of his own long life — a life that spanned the century. He decides to write it all down and, eschewing the more usual method of pen and paper, begins to record his story on the walls of the isolated castle that is his final home. Beginning with a fateful first adventure with Emily, the childhood friend who would become his constant companion, Raphael remembers the multitude of experiences, the myriad encounters and, of course, the ten murders he committed along the way... And so begins one man's wholly unorthodox account of the twentieth century — or certainly his own riotous, often outrageous, somewhat unreliable and undoubtedly singular interpretation of it. |
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Somebody! I half-sob and then, more quietly, Please. The words seem absorbed by the afternoon heat, lost amongst the trees. In their aftermath, the silence descends again. I know then that I'm not going anywhere... Sean is on the run. We don't know why and we don't know from whom, but we do know he's abandoned his battered, blood-stained car in the middle of an isolated, lonely part of rural France at the height of a sweltering summer. Desperate to avoid the police, he takes to the parched fields and country lanes only to be caught in the vicious jaws of a trap. Near unconscious from pain and loss of blood, he is freed and taken in by two women — daughters of the owner of a rundown local farm with its ramshackle barn, blighted vineyard and the brooding lake. And it's then that Sean's problems really start... Superbly written, Stone Bruises is a classic nail-shredder of a thriller that holds you from the beginning. The narrative slowly, inexorably tightens its grip as the story unfurls and will keep you guessing until the unnerving and shocking final twist... |
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Forever after, there were for them only two sorts of men: the men who were on the Line, and the rest of humanity, who were not. In the despair of a Japanese POW camp on the Burma Death Railway, surgeon Dorrigo Evans is haunted by his love affair with his uncle's young wife two years earlier. Struggling to save the men under his command from starvation, from cholera, from beatings, he receives a letter that will change his life forever. Hailed as a masterpiece, Richard Flanagan's epic novel tells the unforgettable story of one man's reckoning with the truth. |
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«In the «USA Today» bestselling Needlecraft Mysteries, Betsy Devonshire, owner of the Crewel World needlework shop, knows how to untangle even the most knotty of mysteries. But a soggy murder case might have Betsy in over her head... Even though running Crewel World keeps Betsy plenty busy, a little extra cash on the side doesn't hurt. So when the local senior complex, Watered Silk, asks her to teach a class on the tricky punch needle technique, Betsy jumps at the opportunity to win over some new customers. Unfortunately, the business that Betsy drums up is not of the needlework variety. A young woman is found floating in Watered Silk's therapy pool, and Betsy's sleuthing skills are immediately called upon to figure out who drowned her. But the list of suspects is more twisted than any Betsy has encountered before. The young woman had three lovers — each with a motive for the murder. It's up to Betsy to sort out the snarl of romantic entanglements and find a killer, or the wrong man is bound to get pinned for a crime he didn't commit...» |
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Two deaths, ten years apart, give Flavia de Luce the distraction she needs at a time when her family are more remote and dysfunctional than usual. Especially when a bizarre series of deadly events is casting a long shadow over everyone at Buckshaw. For Flavia, a gruesome crime to solve is only one of the mysteries confronting her, as she begins to unravel the shocking revelations surrounding the mysterious disappearance of her mother. And as she starts putting the clues together, she discovers an extraordinary tale of espionage and betrayal that may also be the key to her own destiny. |
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In this new epic of imagination, time travel, and adventure, Diana Gabaldon continues the riveting story begun in Outlander. Jamie Fraser is an eighteenth-century Highlander, an ex-Jacobite traitor, and a reluctant rebel in the American Revolution. His wife, Claire Randall Fraser, is a surgeon — from the twentieth century. What she knows of the future compels him to fight. What she doesn't know may kill them both. With one foot in America and one foot in Scotland, Jamie and Claire's adventure spans the Revolution, from sea battles to printshops, as their paths cross with historical figures from Benjamin Franklin to Benedict Arnold. Meanwhile, in the relative safety of the twentieth century, their daughter, Brianna, and her husband experience the unfolding drama of the Revolutionary War through Claire's letters. But the letters can't warn them of the threat that's rising out of the past to overshadow their family. Diana Gabaldon's sweeping Outlander saga reaches new heights in An Echo in the Bone. |
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The new Discworld novel, the 40th in the series, sees the Disc's first train come steaming into town. Change is afoot in Ankh-Morpork. Discworld's first steam engine has arrived, and once again Moist von Lipwig finds himself with a new and challenging job. |
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Set in Joyce's native Ireland, the story follows life of a young man Stephen and his transformation from child to artist. In five chapters, we are taken through Stephen's early childhood in Ireland and confinement at boarding school, his dalliances with theatre and hiring prostitutes, his retreat from sensory excess into religious devotion, his retreat from religious devotion into aesthetic, ascetic excess, and, ultimately, his retreat from Ireland and fellowship in favour of destiny. |
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The fully authorised chilling sequel to Susan Hill's bestselling ghost-story, The Woman in Black, released in 2012 as a film featuring Daniel Radcliffe. This is the book the follow-up film starring Jeremy Irvine (War Horse) and Phoebe Fox is based on. Autumn 1940, World War Two. Bombs are raining down, destroying the cities of Britain. The evacuations begin, and soon children are being taken to the country for safety. Teacher Eve Parkins is in charge of one such group. The children are scared and Eve does her best to calm them, but the truth is that she too is haunted by a personal tragedy she cannot put behind her. Their destination is Eel Marsh House. Desolate and forlorn, it is situated on a causeway and is sinking into the treacherous tidal marshes that surround it. Far from home and with no alternative, Eve and the children move in. But soon it becomes apparent that there is someone else in the house with them, someone Eve can't see but who is far more deadly than any number of German bombs... The Woman in Black. |
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The first book in the 100 million copy bestselling trilogy, soon to be a major movie starring Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson, directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson. Romantic, liberating and totally addictive, Fifty Shades of Grey is a novel that will obsess you, possess you, and stay with you for ever. When literature student Anastasia Steele interviews successful entrepreneur Christian Grey, she finds him very attractive and deeply intimidating. Convinced that their meeting went badly, she tries to put him out of her mind — until he turns up at the store where she works part-time, and invites her out. Unworldly and innocent, Ana is shocked to find she wants this man. And, when he warns her to keep her distance, it only makes her want him more. But Christian is tormented by inner demons, and consumed by the need to control. As they embark on a passionate love affair, Ana discovers more about her own desires, as well as the dark secrets Christian keeps hidden away from public view... |
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Written during the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Moscow famine that followed, these poems are suffused with Tsvetaeva's irony and humor, which undoubtedly accounted for her success in not only reaching the end of the plague year alive, but making it the most productive of her career. We meet a drummer boy idolizing Napoleon, an irrepressibly mischievous grandmother who refuses to apologize to God on Judgment Day, and an androgynous (and luminous) Joan of Arc. Represented on a graph, Tsvetaeva's work would exhibit a curve — or rather, a straight line — rising at almost a right angle because of her constant effort to raise the pitch a note higher, an idea higher... She always carried everything she has to say to its conceivable and expressible end. In both her poetry and her prose, nothing remains hanging or leaves a feeling of ambivalence. Tsvetaeva is the unique case in which the paramount spiritual experience of an epoch (for us, the sense of ambivalence, of contradictoriness in the nature of human existence) served not as the object of expression but as its means, by which it was transformed into the material of art. Joseph Brodsky While your eyes follow me into the grave, write up the whole caboodle on my cross! Her days began with songs, ended in tears, but when she died, she split her sides with laugher! |
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When two dead bodies are found inside a wrecked car on the Golden Gate Bridge, Detective Lindsay Boxer doubts that it will be anything as simple as a traffic accident. The scene is more gruesome than anything she has seen before. It definitely wasn't the crash that killed these people. While Lindsay starts to piece this case together, she gets a call she wasn't expecting. Sightings of her ex-colleague-turned-ruthless-killer Mackie Morales have been reported. Wanted for three murders, Mackie has been in hiding since she escaped from custody. But now she's ready to return to San Francisco and pay a visit to some old friends. |
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A visually stunning and comprehensive guide to the hit BBC series, Sherlock: Chronicles tells the full story of the show as you've never seen it before. Packed with exclusive unseen material, including all-new interviews with the cast and crew, this is Sherlock from the ground up: from story and script development to casting, sets, costumes, props, music and more. Each episode of the spectacular three series is remembered by those who made it, from the show's dazzling debut in A Study in Pink to this year's breathtaking finale, The Science of Deduction. Featuring over 500 images of concept artwork, photographs, costume and set designs, and more, Chronicles is the ultimate celebration for Sherlock fans everywhere. |
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Perched on the back of a sunlit chair was something about 9 inches tall and shaped rather like a plump toy penguin with a nose-job. It appeared to be wearing a one-piece knitted jumpsuit of pale grey fluff with brown stitching, complete with an attached balaclava helmet. From the face-hole of the fuzzy balaclava, two big, shiny black eyes gazed up at me trustfully. Kweep, it said quietly. When author Martin Windrow met the tawny owlet that he christened Mumble, it was love at first sight. Raising her from a fledgling, through adolescence and into her prime years, Windrow recorded every detail of their time living together (secretly) in a south London tower block, and later in a Sussex village. This is the touching, intriguing and eccentric story of their 15-year relationship, complete with photographs and illustrations of the beautiful Mumble. Along the way, we are given fascinating insight into the ornithology of owls — from their evolution and biology to their breeding habits and hunting tactics. The Owl Who Liked Sitting on Caesar is a witty, quirky and utterly charming account of the companionship between one man and his owl. |
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The celebrated Dutch journalist follows John Steinbeck around America, 50 years on from the journey (in 1960) that became Travels With Charley. Steinbeck, great chronicler of the ordinary American working man, at 57 and with his great novels published, felt at odds with 'this monster of a land', and set out to reacquaint himself with his home country at a time of huge change and boundless opportunity. Mak, with a European's eye, follows his route, searching for what has changed and what remains of Steinbeck's world, half a century on. Mak is at once a sharp-eyed journalist and hugely imaginative historian — in a conversational, elegant style, he sets out to define America in the early twenty-first century, retelling the stories of ordinary people he meets — fisherman, farmers, teachers — as he did in In Europe. |
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From the celebrated author of The Secret Life of Bees, a magnificent novel about two unforgettable American women Writing at the height of her narrative and imaginative gifts, Sue Monk Kidd presents a masterpiece of hope, daring, the quest for freedom, and the desire to have a voice in the world. Hetty Handful Grimke, an urban slave in early nineteenth century Charleston, yearns for life beyond the suffocating walls that enclose her within the wealthy Grimke household. The Grimke’s daughter, Sarah, has known from an early age she is meant to do something large in the world, but she is hemmed in by the limits imposed on women. Kidd’s sweeping novel is set in motion on Sarah’s eleventh birthday, when she is given ownership of ten year old Handful, who is to be her handmaid. We follow their remarkable journeys over the next thirty five years, as both strive for a life of their own, dramatically shaping each other’s destinies and forming a complex relationship marked by guilt, defiance, estrangement and the uneasy ways of love. As the stories build to a riveting climax, Handful will endure loss and sorrow, finding courage and a sense of self in the process. Sarah will experience crushed hopes, betrayal, unrequited love, and ostracism before leaving Charleston to find her place alongside her fearless younger sister, Angelina, as one of the early pioneers in the abolition and women’s rights movements. Inspired by the historical figure of Sarah Grimke, Kidd goes beyond the record to flesh out the rich interior lives of all of her characters, both real and invented, including Handful’s cunning mother, Charlotte, who courts danger in her search for something better. This exquisitely written novel is a triumph of storytelling that looks with unswerving eyes at a devastating wound in American history, through women whose struggles for liberation, empowerment, and expression will leave no reader unmoved. |
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In this brilliantly perceptive novel, a middle aged professor living in California, is alienated from his students by differences in age and nationality, and from the rest of society by his homosexuality. Isherwood explores the depths of the human soul and its ability to triumph over loneliness, alienation and loss. |
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