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Transworld Publishers
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«Following the National Theatre's success with plays based on novels by well-loved children's writers like Philip Pulman («His Dark Materials»), Jamila Gavin («Coram Boy») and Michael Morpurgo («War Horse»), the National now stages Mark Ravenhill's exhilarating adaptation of Terry Pratchett's witty and challenging adventure story in a major Christmas production for 2009. Its a parallel world, 1860. Two teenagers thrown together by a tsunami that has destroyed Mau's village and left Daphne shipwrecked on his South Pacific island, thousands of miles from home. One wears next to nothing, the other a long white dress; neither speaks the other's language; somehow they must learn to survive. As starving refugees gather, Daphne delivers a baby, milks a pig, brews beer and does battle with a mutineer. Mau fights cannibal Raiders, discovers the world is round and questions the reality of his tribe's fiercely patriarchal gods. Together they come of age, overseen by a foul-mouthed parrot, as they discard old doctrine to forge a new Nation.» |
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«Coco Barrington was born into a legendary Hollywood family, her last name loaded with expectations. Her mother is a mega-bestselling author who writes under the name of Florence Flowers and her sister, Jane, is one of Hollywood's top producers. They're not your typical family, by any means... Jane has lived with her partner, Liz, for 10 years; Florence, widowed but still radiant, has just begun a secret romance with a man twenty-four years her junior. And Coco, a law school dropout and family black sheep, works as a dog walker, having fled life in the spotlight for the artsy Northern California beach town of Bolinas. But when Coco reluctantly agrees to house-sit in Jane's luxurious home, she soon discovers how much things can change in just a matter of days... It turns out Jane's house comes complete with an unexpected houseguest: Leslie Baxter, a dashing but down-to-earth British actor who's fleeing a psycho ex-girlfriend. Their worlds couldn't be more different. The attraction couldn't be more immediate. Suddenly Coco is seeing things differently: Leslie is not just a celebrity, he's a single dad to an adorable six-year-old girl. Her mother is not just a self-centered walking advertisement for cosmetic surgery, she's a woman in love, with vulnerability and new insight. And Jane and Liz are about to take the bravest plunge of all — into parenthood. With wit and intelligence, Danielle Steel's new novel explores love in all its guises, taking us into the lives of three unusual, but wonderfully real couples. Funny, sexy and wise, «One Day at a Time» is at once moving, thought provoking, and utterly impossible to put down.» |
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Further episodes in the life of Deric Longden and the Longden household. At least two new characters join the feline cast led by the ever-popular Thermal. The thread running through the book is the interesting experience of watching Lost for Words turn into a television drama, but attached to the thread are the usual wonderful collection of Longden observations of life at home and (not too far) abroad. As usual work suffers constant interruptions from Thermal and Co, but somehow the research gets done. Did you know that Huddersfield has the country's biggest per capita consumption of crinkle-cut chips? And why does two-thirds of all the Benedictine produced get drunk in Bradford? |
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Winter, 1916. In St Petersburg, snow is falling in a country on the brink of revolution. Beautiful and headstrong, Sashenka Zeitlin is just sixteen. As her mother parties with Rasputin and her dissolute friends, Sashenka slips into the frozen night to play her role in a dangerous game of conspiracy and seduction. Twenty years on, Sashenka has a powerful husband and two children. Around her people are disappearing but her own family is safe. But she's about to embark on a forbidden love affair which will have devastating consequences. Sashenka's story lies hidden for half a century, until a young historian goes deep into Stalin's private archives and uncovers a heart-breaking story of passion and betrayal, savage cruelty and unexpected heroism — and one woman forced to make an unbearable choice. |
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Gabriel Blackstone has an unusual talent. A computer hacker by trade, he is also able to enter the minds of others. But he uses his gift only reluctantly — until he is contacted by an ex-lover who begs him to find her step-son, last seen months earlier in the company of two sisters. And so Gabriel visits Monk House, a place where time seems to stand still, and where the rooms are dominated by the coded symbol of a cross and circle. As winter closes in, Gabriel becomes increasingly bewitched by the house, and by its owners, the beautiful and mysterious Monk sisters. But even as he falls in love, he knows that one of them is a deadly killer. But which one? And what is the secret they are so determined to protect? |
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Seven Troop is Andy McNab's account of the time he served in the company of a remarkable group of men — from the day, freshly-badged as a member of the SAS Regiment, he joined them in the Malayan jungle, to the day, ten years later, that he handed in his sand-coloured beret and started a new life. |
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Merry Gentry is not your average private investigator. Half human, half faerie, she's caught in a struggle that threatens not only her life, but the lives of those she desires and holds dear. Her very existence and her rightful place on the throne of Faerie have long depended on her ability to produce an heir — and now, after many failed attempts, the services of her royal guards have found her pregnant... It is a triumphant moment, but revelation follows revelation: for Merry carries two babies, and she knows they have more than one father... And of course, there are those of her own flesh and blood who want Merry dead, but she is a fighter and wields a wild magic. And this is her world, where the magical and the mortal intertwine, where folklore, fantasy and erotically charged adventure collide... |
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On 12th June 1812, Napoleon's Grande Armee forded the River Niemen and crossed the Rubicon — its invasion of Russia had begun. Charged with delaying the enemy's inexorable march on Moscow, a group of Russian officers summon the help of the oprichniki, a band of mercenaries from the outermost fringes of Christian Europe. As rumours of a plague travelling west from the Black Sea reach the Russians, the Oprichniki — twelve in number — arrive. Preferring to work alone, and at night, they prove brutally, shockingly effective against the French. But one amongst the Russians, Captain Aleksei Ivanovich Danilov, is unnerved by the mercenaries' ruthlessness... and as he comes to understand the true, horrific nature of these strangers, he wonders at the nightmare they've unleashed in their midst... |
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Lara has always had an overactive imagination. Now she wonders if she is losing her mind. Normal twenty-something girls just don't get visited by ghosts! But inexplicably, the spirit of Lara's great aunt Sadie — in the form of a bold, demanding Charleston-dancing girl — has appeared to make one last request: Lara must track down a missing necklace Sadie simply can't rest without. Lara's got enough problems of her own. Her start-up company is floundering, her best friend and business partner has run off to Goa, and she's just been dumped by the love of her life. But as Lara spends time with Sadie, life becomes more glamorous and their treasure hunt turns into something intriguing and romantic. Could Sadie's ghost be the answer to Lara's problems and can two girls from different times end up learning something special from each other? |
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Football has come to the ancient city of Ankh-Morpork — not the old fashioned, grubby pushing and shoving, but the new, fast football with pointy hats for goalposts and balls that go gloing when you drop them. And now, the wizards of Unseen University must win a football match, without using magic, so they're in the mood for trying everything else. The prospect of the Big Match draws in a street urchin with a wonderful talent for kicking a tin can, a maker of jolly good pies, a dim but beautiful young woman, who might just turn out to be the greatest fashion model there has ever been, and the mysterious Mr Nutt and no one knows anything much about Mr Nutt, not even Mr Nutt, which worries him, too. As the match approaches, four lives are entangled and changed for ever. Because the thing about football — the important thing about football — is that it is not just about football. Here we go! Here we go! Here we go! |
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Following his hugely popular account of the previous 2000 years, John O'Farrell now comes bang up to date with a hilarious modern history asking 'How the hell did we end up here?'. An Utterly Exasperated History of Modern Britain informs, elucidates and laughs at all the bizarre events, ridiculous characters and stupid decisions that have shaped Britain's story since 1945; leaving the Twenty-First Century reader feeling fantastically smug for having the benefit of hindsight. |
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How does it feel to live and work in the world's most beautiful and luxurious tropical island resort, surrounded by white sandy beaches and aquamarine seas? And how does it feel to be in the lap of luxury when you're thousands of miles from anywhere else? This work takes you behind the scenes at a five-star tropical island resort. |
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Ruby Lennox was conceived grudgingly by Bunty and born while her father, George, was in the Dog and Hare in Doncaster telling a woman in an emerald dress and a D-cup that he wasn't married. Bunty had never wanted to marry George, but here she was, stuck in a flat above the pet shop in an ancient street beneath York Minster. |
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Three women, smart and successful, working in the fast and furious world of magazines, meet for cocktails and gossip once a month. Roxanne: glamorous, self-confident, with a secret lover u and hoping that one day he will leave his wife and marry her. Maggie: capable and high-achieving, until she finds the one thing she can't cope with u motherhood. Candice: honest, decent, or so she believes u until a ghost from her past turns up, and almost ruins her life. A chance encounter in the cocktail bar sets in train an extraordinary set of events which upsets all their lives and almost destroys their friendship... |
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It is bitter mid-winter on the Swedish island of Oland, and Katrine and Joakim Westin have moved with their children to the boarded-up manor house at Eel Point. But their remote idyll is soon shattered when Katrine is found drowned off the rocks nearby. And the old house begins to exert a strange hold over him. |
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Jack Reacher is adrift in the heat of a Texan summer, hoping to hitch a ride. Carmen is the beautiful, young, rich woman who picks him up. Carmen and her little girl are in trouble. At Carmen's ranch in Echo County, the group encounter hostility, Can Reacher rescue this lady in distress. |
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Throughout 1990s, Deric Longden has shared his life with Aileen Armitage and four cats: Thermal, Tigger, Frink and shabby old Arthur. And the cats have found that sharing a life with Aileen can be a painful business. She hardly trips over them, but they are always in danger of being mistaken for a cardigan, or locked away in the cellar. |
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«Charles Darwin's masterpiece, «On the Origin of Species», shook society to its core on publication in 1859. This title takes on creationists, including followers of 'Intelligent Design' and all those who question the fact of evolution through natural selection.» |
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Late at night, in a New York cafe, Jack Reacher orders coffee in a cup made of foam, not china. So he can move on at a moment's notice. He owns nothing, carries less. He has never met a woman who said no or a case he couldn't solve. But now Reacher faces a new case so disturbing that the truth eludes him. He has to sweat the details and work the clues. Doing it the hard way, until what started on a busy New York street explodes three thousand miles away, in the sleepy English countryside. With Reacher striding alone in the shadows, armed and dangerous. |
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Once it had been the great forest of Lythe — a vast and impenetrable thicket of green with a mystery in the very heart of the trees. And here, in the beginning, lived the Fairfaxes, grandly, at Fairfax Manor. Now the Fairfaxes have dwindled and are hardly any family at all. |
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