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Transworld Publishers
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Sitting among the rows of tills in Supersafe supermarket in the North of England, the fortunes of a young checkout girl are on the brink of change … Linda works the tills at Safeshop. It's what everyone does. The grammar school girls get the careers; the comp girls get the two-bit college courses and the low wage jobs. But when model agent Rafe brings his disposable razors to Linda's till, he recognises the raw talent that could transform both their lives. Almost overnight, Linda becomes Crystalline, a supermodel catapulted onto the international stage. But in the blur of first class flights and flashy restaurants, will she begin to forget where Crysatline ends and Linda begins? The bittersweet story of a young checkout girl's rise to fame, this is prize-wining playwright Jim Cartwright's first novel. Bearing the hallmarks of his best-loved play, THE RISE AND FALL OF LITTLE VOICE and ROAD, this rollicking debut takes the reader on a journey from which there is no going back. |
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Englishman Paul West has just received an offer he can't refuse: two weeks in the sun, all expenses paid, with a beautiful blonde called Gloria Monday. M, as Gloria likes to be known, is down south to report on caviar trafficking but it soon becomes obvious that she s interested in something a lot more fishy than caviar. Meanwhile Paul s best friend Elodie is marrying a French aristocrat, and Paul is asked to do the catering. Cooking for the French is a risky assignment at the best of times, but Paul, who is starting to feel a bit like James Bond, assures her that nothing can go wrong. Or can it? As Paul is sexually harassed by an English hen party, picked on by French commandoes and arrested by excitable gendarmes, he realises that events are spiralling out of control. And when he discovers that M s real target is France s biggest fish of all the new President and that he s coming to Elodie s wedding, Paul knows that the merde really is about to hit the fan. |
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Grand Central station, New York. 1:23pm. What starts as a normal day on the New York City subway becomes a race against time when a commuter train is hijacked. It is packed with passengers and the ransom is one million dollars. The NYPD frantically pursue the train on the city streets, but the question remains: the subway is a closed system – surely there is no way out... But the four hijackers, led by a mercenary named Ryder, have thought about this. And once they receive their ransom money, they plan to send the train off at top speed toward the terminal station where it will crash, killing all the passengers... |
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What makes a father violent? It takes a brave man to find out... As a volunteer at St Margaret’s Hospice, eager and helpful Meryl is looking for a role in life. The arrival of Jamie, the son of a patient, may be just what she is after. He is good-looking, young and, above all, troubled. Jamie’s father has only a few days to live, but between father and son is a lifetime of misunderstanding and unhappiness. Could the most powerful legacy Jamie faces be an inability to love? With well-meaning Meryl hovering in the background, Jamie embarks on his long dark night of the soul, facing the secrets, lies and heartbreaks behind his father’s life. Meanwhile his dying father, seemingly unconscious to it all, relives his extraordinary history, from the triumphs of his life as a boxer, to the onset of a crippling illness he doesn’t understand. And in the quiet of the night, he receives strange visitors of his own…. |
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«There's a caste system even in murder. Seven years ago, Vivek 'Vicky' Rai, the playboy son of Cabinet Minister, murdered Ruby Gill at a trendy restaurant in New Delhi simply because she refused to serve him a drink. Now Vicky Rai is dead, killed at his farmhouse at a party he had thrown to celebrate his acquittal. Six guests are discovered with guns in their possession — and each one is equally likely to have pulled the trigger. Who are these six suspects? And what were they doing in the farmhouse that night? In this elaborate mystery, we join Arun Advani, India's best-known investigative journalist, as the lives of these six suspects unravel before our eyes. Ingeniously plotted, «Six Suspects» is the work of a master storyteller.» |
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A masterful epic of love, war, treason, plague, famine, witchcraft, anti-Semitism and the Inquisition 14th-century Spain, the medieval city of Barcelona is enjoying a golden age of prosperity. Its humblest inhabitants are building, stone by stone, a magnificent church to overlook their harbour. This is the Cathedral of the Sea: a church to be built for the people by the people. In its shadow, Arnau, a young serf on the run from his feudal lord, struggles to earn his freedom. After famine, plague and thwarted love, Arnau's fortunes begin to turn when King Pedro makes him a baron as a reward for his courage in battle. But he is also forced to marry Eleonor, a ward of the King whom he does not love. His newfound status excites jealousy from his friends who plot his downfall with devastating consequences. Arnau's journey from slave to nobleman is the story of a struggle between good and evil that will turn Church against State and brother against brother ... |
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Everyday magic, he called it. The transformation of base matter into the stuff of dreams. Layman’s alchemy.Jay Mackintosh is trapped by memory in the old familiar landscapes of his childhood, more enticing than the present, and to which he longs to return. A bottle of home-brewed wine left to him by a long-vanished friend seems to provide both the key to an old mystery and a doorway into another world. As the unusual properties of the strange brew take effect, Jay escapes to a derelict farmhouse in the French village of Lansquenet, where a ghost from the past waits to confront him, and the reclusive Marise – haunted, lovely and dangerous – hides a terrible secret behind her closed shutters. Between them, a mysterious chemistry. Or could it be magic? |
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«Stephen Hawking's worldwide bestseller, «A Brief History of Time», has been a landmark volume in scientific writing. Its author's engaging voice is one reason, and the compelling subjects he addresses is another: the nature of space and time, the role of God in creation, the history and future of the universe. But it is also true that in the years since its publication, readers have repeatedly told Professor Hawking of their great difficulty in understanding some of the book's most important concepts. This is the origin of and the reason for «A Briefer History of Time»: its author's wish to make its content accessible to readers — as well as to bring it up-to-date with the latest scientific observations and findings.Although this book is literally somewhat 'briefer', it actually expands on the great subjects of the original. Purely technical concepts, such as the mathematics of chaotic boundary conditions, are gone. Conversely, subjects of wide interest that were difficult to follow because they were interspersed throughout the book have now been given entire chapters of their own, including relativity, curved space, and quantum theory. This reorganization has allowed the authors to expand areas of special interest and recent progress, from the latest developments in string theory to exciting developments in the search for a complete, unified theory of all the forces of physics.Like prior editions of the book — but even more so — «A Briefer History of Time» will guide nonscientists everywhere in the ongoing search for the tantalizing secrets at the heart of time and space. Thirty-eight full-colour illustrations enhance the text and make «A Briefer History of Time» an exhilarating addition in its own right to the literature of science.» |
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Mary Panton walls up her desires in a beautiful villa high up in the hills above Florence, as she calmly contemplates her disastrous marriage. But a single act of compassion begins a nightmare of violence that shatters her serenity. She turns for help to the notorious Rowley Flint, and through him comes to realise that to deny love, with all its passions and risks, is to deny life itself. |
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«Generation Kill» is about the young men sent to fight their nation's first open-ended war since Vietnam. Despite the flurry of media images to come of the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, you have never really met any of these people, who serve as front-line troops. For whatever reason, the media simply doesn't get them. As we all know, news accounts of the last two wars focused almost exclusively on battlefield imagery of high-tech weapons wreaking astounding destruction, comply with analysis from retired army grandees and other experts, punctuated by the odd heart-warming patriotic sound-bite. The troops themselves play a role in the media's presentation of recent wars rather like extras in «The Triumph of the Will». They are everywhere yet somehow invisible. When they speak you get the sense that what they are saying has been carefully scripted.Now «Generation Kill» tells the soldiers' story in their own words. The narrative focuses on a platoon of 23 marines, many of them veterans of Afghanistan, whose elite reconnaissance unit spearheaded the blitzkrieg on Iraq. This is the story of young men that have been trained to become ruthless killers. It's about surviving death. It's about taking part in a war many questioned before it even began. Evan Wright was the only reporter with First Recon, which operated well ahead of most other forces, usually behind enemy lines. They were among the first marines sent into the fight and one of the last units still engaged on the outskirts of Iraq, even after the city centre fell. «Generation Kill» is not just a combat chronicle but an inside look at how people fighting in war actually experience it. It is both an action narrative like «Black Hawk Down» and a detailed portrait of a generation at war along the lines of «Band of Brothers». It is not a book you are going to forget in a hurry.» |
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Liz and Jonathan Chambers were in trouble. Mortgage trouble. They'd stretched themselves to busting with their new exciting project — well, Liz thought it exciting — buying and managing the Silchester Tutorial College, and now couldn't sell their old house. Here they were, stuck with two mortgages, mounting debts and a miserable adolescent daughter who hadn't wanted to move anyway. Then Marcus Witherstone came into their lives — and at first it seemed he would solve all their problems. Marcus, senior partner in Silchester's leading estate agency, was large, assured, and wore an expensive overcoat. He knew the perfect tenants from London who would rent their old house — glamorous PR girl Ginny and almost-famous Piers. Everything was going to be OK. But soon Marcus found himself involved with Liz in a way he'd never intended. Keeping his adulterous trysts secret from Anthea was uncomfortably easy — most of the time her head was firmly buried in Improve your Child's IQ. Meanwhile, as Liz was lost in blissful dreams of Marcus, Jonathan was left to run the tutorial college. Neither of them had time to notice that teenage Alice was developing a desperate passion for the tenants, Piers and Ginny. Everyone seemed to be entangled with everyone else, in the most awkward possible way. And as events closed in on him, Marcus began to realise that some deceptions are just a bit too close to home. |
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Two small towns in Colorado: Hope and Despair. Between them, nothing but twelve miles of empty road. Jack Reacher can't find a ride, so he walks. All he wants is a cup of coffee. What he gets are four redneck deputies who want to run him out of town. Mistake. They're picking on the wrong guy. Jack Reacher is a big man, and he's in shape. No job, no address, no baggage. Nothing, except bloody-minded curiosity. What is the secret the locals seem so keen to hide? A hard man is good to find. Ex-military cop Reacher is today's most addictive hero. Now he pulls on a tiny loose thread, to unravel conspiracies that expose the most shocking truths. Because, after all, Jack Reacher has nothing to lose. |
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It was New York, 1929, a city of speakeasies, swells and hoodlums at the fag end of the roaring twenties. It's a hell of a time and place for a young cop to be trying to make his way in the world. Joe Quinn's first case is one that could put his name up in lights; a banker takes a dive from a tall building onto Wall Street. All the signs point to murder. Pretty soon, the dead man has company; a group of old buddies is being eliminated, in a particularly gruesome manner. For the young detective a case that starts as an opportunity swiftly becomes a nightmare from which he cannot escape. Joe Quinn is about to discover just how tough being an honest cop in a dishonest world can be. |
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A cargo ship is apprehended by the authorities off the coast of Spain, loaded to the gunwales with enough arms and ammunition to start a war. Twenty years later, an unknown aggressor seems intent on eradicating those responsible for the treachery, one by one. The last victim was brutally tortured with a Black & Decker drill, then shot through the head. And Nick Stone — ex-SAS, tough, resourceful, ruthless, highly trained — is next on the killer's list... In his most daunting mission yet, Nick Stone must find a man who shared that past, and who may know more about the present threat than he is prepared to reveal. As the two find themselves pursued across sea and desert, they become ever more enmeshed in a deadly network of betrayal, to which Stone himself unwittingly holds the key. And in a final confrontation that echoes his worst nightmares, only he can stop the unthinkable and save the lives of those he holds most dear. |
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The little cat Deric Longden saw sitting forlornly on an upturned bucket belonged to the neighbours, but somehow when it began to rain it seemed only natural to bring him inside. Once there he slipped so easily into Deric and Aileen's lives that there was an unspoken agreement that he had found his real home. Little did he know that he had entered the Longden world, in which the unexpected (almost) always happens... Aileen being Aileen, it was probably inevitable that sooner or later the kitten would be trapped in the refrigerator. And Deric being Deric, the obvious way to thaw him back to life was to make a little coat for him out of a shrunken thermal vest. Thus the cat who came in from the cold got his name — Thermal — and joined the wonderful cast of characters in the ongoing Longden saga. |
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«Most of us grow up having always known to touch wood or cross our fingers, and what happens when a princess kisses a frog or a boy pulls a sword from a stone, yet sadly some of these things are now beginning to be forgotten. Legends, myths, fairytales: our world is made up of the stories we told ourselves about where we came from and how we got there. It is the same on Discworld, except that beings which on Earth are creatures of the imagination — like vampires, trolls, witches and, possibly, gods — are real, alive and in some cases kicking on the Disc. In «The Folklore of Discworld», Terry Pratchett teams up with leading British folklorist Jacqueline Simpson to take an irreverent yet illuminating look at the living myths and folklore that are reflected, celebrated and affectionately libelled in the uniquely imaginative universe of Discworld.» |
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Suicide bombers are easy to spot. They give out all kinds of tell-tale signs. Mostly because they're nervous. By definition they're all first-timers. Riding the subway in New York at two o'clock in the morning, Reacher knows the twelve giveaway signs to look out for. Watching one of his fellow-passengers, he becomes sharply aware: one by one, she ticks off every bulletpoint on his list. So begins the new heartstopping new thriller starring today's most admired action hero, the gallant and enigmatic loner Jack Reacher. |
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In 1954, in the cookhouse of a logging and sawmill settlement in northern New Hampshire, a twelve-year-old boy mistakes the local constable's girlfriend for a bear. Both the twelve-year-old and his father become fugitives, pursued by the constable. Their lone protector is a fiercely libertarian logger, once a river driver, who befriends them. In a story spanning five decades, Last Night in Twisted River — John Irving's twelfth novel — depicts the recent half-century in the United States as a world 'where lethal hatreds were generally permitted to run their course.' From the novel's taut opening sentence to its elegiac final chapter, what distinguishes Last Night in Twisted River is the author's unmistakable voice, the inimitable voice of an accomplished storyteller. |
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'Who died?' I said. 'Or is it a secret?' 'My mother, Vianne Rocher.' Seeking refuge and anonymity in the cobbled streets of Montmartre, Yanne and her daughters, Rosette and Annie, live peacefully, if not happily, above their little chocolate shop. Nothing unusual marks them out; no red sachets hang by the door. The wind has stopped — at least for a while. Then into their lives blows Zozie de l'Alba, the lady with the lollipop shoes, and everything begins to change... But this new friendship is not what it seems. Ruthless, devious and seductive, Zozie de l'Alba has plans of her own — plans that will shake their world to pieces. And with everything she loves at stake, Yanne must face a difficult choice; to flee, as she has done so many times before, or to confront her most dangerous enemy... Herself. |
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What is fashion? Who decides what's in and what's out? Is the catwalk really catty? And what's so super about supermodels? Based entirely on true but anonymous stories, Material Girl covers six months in a designer's life and gives you exclusive access to a world where women get paid thousands for getting dressed in the morning and where the wrong shirt length can cost you your career. Tracking the development of a collection from concept to catwalk, onto the front pages of Vogue and then to the high street, it reveals the shocking mark-ups, the fabulous extremes and the shoddy shortcuts which the fashion industry would rather you didn't know about... |
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