Современная проза на английском языке [Q-S]

In this world, perfection is everything.
It begins as a way to make things fairer. An education system that will benefit everyone. It's all in the name of progress.
This is what Elena Fairchild believes. As a teacher in one of the government's elite schools for children with high 'Q' scores, she witnesses the advantages first-hand.
But when Elena's own daughter scores lower than expected, she is taken away. Elena follows her to her new home. A government institute.
What she finds there makes Elena question everything. Because this world is about perfection - and that comes at a terrible price.

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An exclusive short story for World Book Day from one of our bestselling authors. This brilliant comic thriller will have you on the edge of your seat.
Albert Rossi has many qualities. He's a man who can spot polyester at a hundred paces. He's the person you'd have on speed dial were you to find yourself at the centre of a tailoring emergency. He has an excellent working knowledge of Bonnie Tyler's back catalogue. These skills are essential to a Gentleman's Outfitter from Eastcote. They are not necessarily on the job description for recruiting an assassin.
When Albert hits an unsuspecting pedestrian whilst listening to 'Total Eclipse of the Heart' in his Nissan Micra he is amazed to escape the inevitable knock on the door from the police. Instead he receives a mysterious phone call from a man who sounds surprisingly like Stephen Hawking telling him that his money will be left in the 'usual' place. At that very moment, Albert Rossi decides to change careers.
Albert Rossi's life is about to get a whole lot more interesting

Серия: Quick Reads

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So this is happiness, she thought. Or this, at least, is what adds up to happiness. The prospect of never running after men and camels any more, of being Miri without shame or hesitation, of letting drop her headscarf for a change so that nothing intervened between her and the sky.

Five travellers venture into the Judean wilderness in search of redemption. Instead, amidst the barren rocks, they are met by a dangerous man, Musa, and fall under his dark influence. As the unforgiving days and bitter nights erode their resolve, it becomes clear that one among them will go further than the rest: a fervent, solitary figure, he denies the temptations of his neighbours, and, ultimately, the needs of his own body.

Quarantine, Jim Crace's provocative retelling of Jesus' forty day fast in the desert, won the Whitbread novel of the year and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Moving and fascinating in equal measure, this is a classic that tampers with tradition, a stunningly realised novel from one of the great writers of our time.

Серия: Picador Classic

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Lay on the couch for a brief nap. Woke up an hour later, the witch trials book I'm reading stuck to one side of my face. Pretending not to be menopausal is exhausting.

When fifty-year-old Agatha Doyle starts keeping a diary, it records only the ways she doesn't know who she is any more. Her glorious empty nest is full of people. And her head is full of brain fog. All it takes to tip her over the edge is a pair of red velvet heels and a man who won't stop talking.

Standing up for herself, Agatha unwittingly becomes a heroine for midlife women everywhere.

But with a distant husband, and an even more distant sex life, can she also become the heroine of her own life?

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What if being Royal was a crime?

The UK has come over all republican. The Royal Family exiled to an Exclusion Zone with the other villains and spongers. And to cap it all, the Queen has threatened to abdicate.

Yet Prince Charles is more interested in root vegetables than reigning ... unless his wife Camilla can be Queen in a newly restored monarchy.

But when a scoundrel who claims to be the couple's secret love-child offers to take the crown off their hands, the stage is set for a right Royal show down.

And the question for Camilla (and rest of the country) will be: Queen of the vegetable patch or Queen of England?

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This is an Intermediate Level story in a series of ELT readers comprising a wide range of titles - some original and some simplified - from modern and classic novels, and designed to appeal to all age-groups, tastes and cultures.

Серия: Macmillan Readers

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Katherine Parr is thirty-one years old and already twice widowed. She's in love with a man she can't have, and about to wed a man no one would want - for her husband-to-be is none other than Henry "УТЛ, who has already beheaded two wives, cast aside two more, and watched one die in childbirth. What will become of Katherine once she's wearing Henry Tudor's ring and becomes Queen of England? They say that the sharpest blades are sheathed in the softest pouches. Only time will tell what she is really made of...

Серия: The Tudor Trilogy

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Queenie is a twenty-five-year-old Black woman living in south London, straddling Jamaican and British culture whilst slotting neatly into neither. She works at a national newspaper where she's constantly forced to compare herself to her white, middle-class peers, and beg to write about Black Lives Matter. After a messy break up from her long-term white boyfriend, Queenie finds herself seeking comfort in all the wrong places.
As Queenie veers from one regrettable decision to another, she finds herself wondering, What are you doing? Why are you doing it? Who do you want to be? - the questions that every woman today must face in a world that keeps trying to provide the answers for them.
A darkly comic and bitingly subversive take on life, love, race and family, Queenie will have you nodding in recognition, crying in solidarity and rooting for this unforgettable character every step of the way. A disarmingly honest, boldly political and truly inclusive tale that will speak to anyone who has gone looking for love and acceptance and found something very different in its place.

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Tilly was a bright, outgoing little girl who liked playing with ghosts and matches. She loved fizzy drinks, swear words, fish fingers and Catholic churches, but most of all she loved living in Brighton in Queenie Malone's magnificent Paradise Hotel with its endearing and loving family of misfits - staff and guests alike. But Tilly's childhood was shattered when her mother sent her away from the only home she'd ever loved to boarding school with little explanation and no warning.

Many years later, Tilda has grown into an independent woman still damaged by her mother's unaccountable cruelty. Wary of people, her only friend is her dog, Eli. But when her mother dies, Tilda goes back to Brighton and with the help of her beloved Queenie sets about unravelling the mystery of her exile from The Paradise Hotel, only to discover that her mother was not the woman she thought she knew at all ...

Mothers and daughters ... their story can be complicated ... but it can also turn out to have a happy ending.

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#1 New York Times bestselling author Maeve Binchy tells the story of a generation and a city through the history of a Dublin restaurant in this "warm-hearted" (Boston Herald) enthralling novel.
Ella Brady wants to film a documentary about Quentins that will capture the spirit of Dublin from the 1970s to the present day. After all, the restaurant saw the people of a city become more confident in everything from their lifestyles to the food that they chose to eat. And Quentins has a thousand stories to tell. But as Ella uncovers more of what has gone on at Quentins, she begins to wonder whether some secrets should be kept that way...
"Quentins is not just any Dublin restaurant; it's a place where wedding proposals, business deals, family ties, and friendships are forged (and sometimes broken)."-The Seattle Times

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Booker Prize-winning, internationally bestselling author Salman Rushdie has created a dazzling Don Quixote for the modern age.

Inspired by the Cervantes classic, Sam DuChamp, mediocre writer of spy thrillers, creates Quichotte, a courtly, addled salesman obsessed with television, who falls in impossible love with the TV star Salman R. Together with his (imaginary) son Sancho, Quichotte sets off on a picaresque quest across America to prove worthy of her hand, gallantly braving the tragicomic perils of an age where 'Anything-Can-Happen'. Meanwhile his creator, in a midlife crisis, has equally urgent challenges of his own.

Just as Cervantes wrote Don Quixote to satirise the culture of his time, Rushdie takes the reader on a wild ride through a country on the verge of moral and spiritual collapse, with the kind of storytelling magic that is the hallmark of his work. The fully realised lives of DuChamp and Quichotte intertwine in a profoundly human quest for love and a wickedly entertaining portrait of an age in which fact is so often indiscernible from fiction.

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The internationally acclaimed author of The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, and Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury is a magician at the height of his powers, displaying his sorcerer's skill with twenty-one remarkable stories that run the gamut from total reality to light fantastic, from high noon to long after midnight. A true master tells all, revealing the strange secret of growing young and mad; opening a Witch Door that links two intolerant centuries; joining an ancient couple in their wild assassination games; celebrating life and dreams in the unique voice that has favored him across six decades and has enchanted millions of readers the world over.

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Wildly funny and unceasingly surprising, Quicksand is both a satirical masterpiece and an unforgettable story of fate, family and friendship.

Aldo Benjamin may be the unluckiest soul in human history, but that isn t going to stop his friend Liam writing about him. For what more could an aspiring novelist want from his muse than a thousand get-rich-quick schemes, a life-long love affair, an eloquently named brothel, the most sexually confusing evening imaginable and a brief conversation with God?

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Did you know that : there are 700 ways of committing a foul in Quidditch? The game first began to evolve on Queerditch Marsh? What Bumphing is? That Puddlemere United is oldest team in the Britain and Ireland league? (founded 1163) All this information and much more could be yours once you have read this book: this is all you could ever need to know about the history, the rules - and the breaking of the rules - of the noble wizarding sport of Quidditch.

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When a shameless rugby legend and a distinguished grey lady get together sparks are bound to fly.

And when that legend is South Dublin's favourite socialite, Ross O'Carroll-Kelly, and the grey lady is the Irish Times, the result is, well, legendary. From locked-in in Donnybrook to locked-down in Killiney, Ross and the old gal have been through a lot. Now, you can enjoy the very best of his efforts to keep her entertained . . .

- His adventures with the Mount Anville Moms WhatsApp group
- His daughter Honor's infamous production of South Side Story
- His father's court battles with Denis O'Brien
- His wife Sorcha's efforts to force her banana bread on the neighbours
- His son Ronan's attempt to make it as a Mixed Martial Arts fighter

From the sheer joy of taking his feral triplets to their first Ireland v. England match, to the sheer misery of Kiely's pub (his spiritual home) closing down, to the pants-shitting tension of taking Honor to Electric Picnic - they're all here!

And this new edition includes all new material from 2021 - lest we forget!

As the Grey Lady herself would no doubt say: 'That was some ride, Ross!'

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An exploration of race from one of the twentieth century's primary chroniclers of the African American experience.
Is who we are really only skin deep? In this searing, remonstrative book, Toni Morrison unravels race through the stories of those debased and dehumanised because of it. A young black girl longing for the blue eyes of white baby dolls spirals into inferiority and confusion. A friendship falls apart over a disputed memory. An ex-slave is haunted by a lonely, rebukeful ghost, bent on bringing their past home. Strange and unexpected, yet always stirring, Morrison's writing on race sinks us deep into the heart and mind of our troubled humanity.
Includes selections from the books Song of Solomon, The Bluest Eye, Beloved by Toni Morrison

Серия: Vintage Minis

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Melissa Marr's New York Times bestselling Wicked Lovely series continues with the fourth - and penultimate - installment in the darkly seductive story about the collision of the mortal and faery worlds
The events of FRAGILE ETERNITY have left the faery world off-balance, its key players fighting to maintain control over their world - and its secrets
Devlin lives in a world where everything is beautiful, ordered and cruel. As a prominent member of the High Court and half-brother to Sorcha, the High Queen, he's one of the most powerful faeries of the old guard.
Ani lives in a world where every line is blurred. Half human, half faery, half in the dedadence of the Dark Court and half out of it, her life of dive bars, tattoos and street fights couldn't be farther from the clean lines of the High Court.
But you can't choose where your heart will take you, and when Devlin and Ani meet, two extremes of the faery world collide - with passion, violence and heat; for better - and for worse

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James Patterson's BookShots. Short, fast-paced, high-impact entertainment. He's worth millions, but he's worthless without her. It's been a month since her traumatic break-up with Derick, and Siobhan now lives in Detroit, where she can support herself and her painting career. But suddenly Derick's back after flying halfway across America for her. And though Siobhan's body comes alive at his touch, she doesn't know if she can trust him again...

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Beautiful Jennifer Parker, having risen from disaster to become a glamorously successful defense attorney, becomes the victim of two powerful men who, inspired by Jennifer, are determined to destroy one another.

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Jennifer Parker is a brilliant, lovely attorney on her way up. But less than twenty-four hours after joining the district attorney's office in Manhattan, Jennifer finds her career threatened by a Mafia prince. Michael Moretti is a compelling, charismatic crime lord who seeks to expand his domain. He will let no one stand in his way... no matter her beauty or ambition.
Thus begins this mesmerizing tale of two relentless players struggling for absolute power in the greatest city in the world. And in their dangerous battle is a love more destructive than hate.

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In an old Australian story, the Rainbow Serpent opened her eyes and looked at the young Earth. There were no animals or birds, no rivers or trees. Then a Man and a Woman came, and the Rainbow Serpent was their teacher. But what did she teach them? And did they listen?

Серия: Pearson English Active Readers

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This deeply personal work, follows the changing fortunes of the Mau-Tempo family poor, landless peasants not unlike the author s own grandparents. Saramago charts the lives of the family in Alentjo, southern Portugal, as national and international events rumble on in the background the coming of the republic in Portugal, the First and Second World Wars, and an attempt on the dictator Salazar's life. Yet, nothing seriously impinges on the farm labourers' lives until the first stirrings of communism.

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To the consternation of the patrician, Lord Vetinari, a new invention has arrived in Ankh-Morpork - a great clanging monster of a machine that harnesses the power of all of the elements: earth, air, fire and water. This being Ankh-Morpork, it's soon drawing astonished crowds, some of whom caught the zeitgeist early and arrive armed with notepads and very sensible rainwear.
Moist von Lipwig is not a man who enjoys hard work - as master of the Post Office, the Mint and the Royal Bank his input is, of course, vital . . . but largely dependent on words, which are fortunately not very heavy and don't always need greasing. However, he does enjoy being alive, which makes a new job offer from Vetinari hard to refuse . . .
Steam is rising over Discworld, driven by Mister Simnel, the man wi' t'flat cap and sliding rule who has an interesting arrangement with the sine and cosine. Moist will have to grapple with gallons of grease, goblins, a fat controller with a history of throwing employees down the stairs and some very angry dwarfs if he's going to stop it all going off the rails . . .

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Rant is the oral history of one Buster 'Rant' Casey, in which an assortment of friends, enemies, detractors, lovers and relations have their say on the man who may or may not be the most efficient serial killer of our time. Rant is a darkly glittering anti-hero whose recreational drug of choice is rabies, and whose own personal Viagra is the venom of a black widow spider. He soon leaves his half-feral hometown for the big city, where he becomes the leader of an urban demolition derby called Party Crashing. On designated nights, the Party Crashers chase each other in cars in the hope of a collision, and all the while Rant, the 'superspreader', transmits his lethal disease...

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Mae Fanning seizes on a job at a tiny, exclusive Boston antiques shop as the fresh start she desperately needs. It opens a window to new world, one peopled with rare and rich characters. But the day that enigmatic socialite Diana van der Laar walks in, Mae s hidden past returns.

As a moth to a flame, Mae is unable to resist Diana s heady, seductive glamour and glittering life. Yet, like the rare objects in the shop, very little is what it appears Diana included.

Moving from Jazz-Age New York to Boston in the grip of the Great Depression, Rare Objects is a rich and gripping story of what it means to reach for a braver, bolder life.

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Some cases never leave you. For John Rebus, forty years may have passed, but the death of beautiful, promiscuous Maria Turquand still preys on his mind. Murdered in her hotel room on the night a famous rock star and his entourage were staying there, Maria's killer has never been found. Meanwhile, the dark heart of Edinburgh remains up for grabs. A young pretender, Darryl Christie, may have staked his claim, but a vicious attack leaves him weakened and vulnerable, and an inquiry into a major money laundering scheme threatens his position. Has old-time crime boss Big Ger Cafferty really given up the ghost, or is he biding his time until Edinburgh is once more ripe for the picking? In a tale of twisted power, deep-rooted corruption and bitter rivalries, Rather Be the Devil showcases Rankin and Rebus at their unstoppable best.

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When Billy Twillig, a genius adolescent, wins the first Nobel Prize ever to be given in mathematics, he is recruited to live and work in the company of thirty Nobel laureates in obscurity underground. There, away from the rest of the world, this panel of estranged, demented and lovable scientists work together on a secret scientific project: deciphering a mysterious transmission received from outer space, from just near Ratner's Star.

Written in Don DeLillo's characteristically mesmerizing prose, Ratner's Star is a brilliantly observed, funny and deeply thought-provoking novel which explores the mysterious, mind-blowing, mathematical world of the future.

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Irvine Welsh, 'poet laureate of the chemical generation', exposes the seamy underbelly of rave's utopian dream. Lloyd, our permanently pilled-up protagonist, pushes his weekends to breaking point and beyond in this frazzled trip through Scottish clubland. He experiences the vertiginous uppers and downers of the Second Summer of Love, dabbles in a spot of disc jockeying and closes in, gradually, on some kind of redemption
Selected from Irvine Welsh's novel Ecstasy.

Серия: Vintage Minis

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A year full of wonderfully funny poems.
The READ ME brand has been a publishing sensation, selling tens of thousands of copies and continuing to sell strongly for half a decade. This brand-new collection features a funny poem for every day of the year, from rhymes that will raise a gentle smile to verse that will make you laugh your socks off. This book is packed with gems new and old from poets such as Charles Causley, Roger McGough, Lewis Caroll, Paul Cookson and Wendy Cope.
Chosen by Gaby Morgan.

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A collection of short stories celebrating Charlotte Bronte, published in the year of her bicentenary and stemming from the now immortal words from her great work Jane Eyre.

The twenty-one stories in Reader, I Married Him - one of the most celebrated lines in fiction - are inspired by Jane Eyre and shaped by its perennially fascinating themes of love, compromise and self-determination.

A bohemian wedding party takes an unexpected turn for the bride and her daughter; a family trip to a Texan waterpark prompts a life-changing decision; Grace Poole defends Bertha Mason and calls the general opinion of Jane Eyre into question. Mr Rochester reveals a long-kept secret in "Reader, She Married Me", and "The Mirror" boldly imagines Jane's married life after the novel ends. A new mother encounters an old lover after her daily swim and inexplicably lies to him, and a fitness instructor teaches teenage boys how to handle a pit bull terrier by telling them Jane Eyre's story.

Edited by Tracy Chevalier, this collection brings together some of the finest and most creative voices in fiction today, to celebrate and salute the strength and lasting relevance of Charlotte Bronte's game-changing novel and its beloved narrator.

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Philip Roth's writing career spans a remarkable five decades, a period that has seen him rise to become one of the greatest chroniclers of post-war American life. Collected here are some of the finest interviews, essays and articles discussing his own fiction and the range of controversies that it sparked, including his long interview with the Paris Review. Here too are Roth's writings on American fiction, Milan Kundera, baseball, and his deep admiration for Franz Kafka. Coursing through each of these pieces is the Sheer Playfulness and Deadly Seriousness that have defined Roth's writing for half a century.

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This is the story of a haunted Irish childhood.

The setting is Derry in the Northern Ireland of the 40s and 50s, fraught with political hatred, family secrets and lethal intrigue. As a young boy tries to make sense of life, poverty and violence shift and obscure the facts; meanwhile his night-time reading of Irish legends weaves enchantment through reality. Claustrophobic but lyrically charged, breathtakingly sad but vibrant and unforgettable, this is one of the finest books about growing up - in Ireland or anywhere - that has ever been written.

Серия: Irish Classics

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NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE DIRECTED BY STEVEN SPIELBERG
A world at stake. A quest for the ultimate prize. Are you ready?
In the year 2045, reality is an ugly place. The only time Wade Watts really feels alive is when he's jacked into the OASIS, a vast virtual world where most of humanity spends their days.
When the eccentric creator of the OASIS dies, he leaves behind a series of fiendish puzzles, based on his obsession with the pop culture of decades past. Whoever is first to solve them will inherit his vast fortune - and control of the OASIS itself.
Then Wade cracks the first clue. Suddenly he's beset by rivals who'll kill to take this prize. The race is on - and the only way to survive is to win.
'Wildly original and stuffed with irresistible nostalgia, Ready Player One is a spectacularly genre-busting, ambitious, and charming debut' Independent
'Part intergalactic scavenger hunt, part romance, and all heart' CNN
'Ernest Cline's novel deserves to be a modern classic' SciFiNow
'Gorgeously geeky, superbly entertaining, this really is a spectacularly successful debut' Daily Mail
This book has been published with two different covers and may be delivered with either cover. Please rest assured that regardless of the cover, the content of the book is the same.

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In the year 2045, reality is an ugly place. The only time teenage Wade Watts really feels alive is when he's jacked into the virtual utopia known as the OASIS. Wade's devoted his life to studying the puzzles hidden within this world's digital confines-puzzles that are based on their creator's obsession with the pop culture of decades past and that promise massive power and fortune to whoever can unlock them.
But when Wade stumbles upon the first clue, he finds himself beset by players willing to kill to take this ultimate prize. The race is on, and if Wade's going to survive, he'll have to win-and confront the real world he's always been so desperate to escape.

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They say there are only two things you can count on. But that was before Death started pondering the existential. Of course, the last thing anyone needs is a squeamish Grim Reaper and soon his Discworld bosses have sent him off with best wishes anda well-earned gold watch. Now Deathis having the time of his life, findinggreener pastures where he can put hisscythe to a whole new use.But like every cutback in an importantpublic service, Death's demise soon leads to chaos and unrest-literally, for those whose time was supposed to be up, like Windle Poons. The oldest geezer in the entire faculty of Unseen University-home of magic, wizardry, and big dinners-Windle was looking forward to a wonderful afterlife, not this boring been-there-done-that routine. To get the fresh start he deserves, Windle and the rest of Ankh-Morpork's undead and underemployed set off to find Death and save the world for the living(and everybody else, of course).

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A heartwarming and uplifting debut about the power of friendship, facing your fears, and finding the courage to step into the rest of your life

Pearl Winter hasn't been outside in forty-three years.

Since she arrived in Dartmoor as a teenager, her isolated cottage has been her whole world. A place of safety. But now Pearl is utterly alone - except for the postman, the local crows, and her memories of the summer when her life turned upside down.

Connor Matthews feels like a stranger in his own home.

Since his mother's death he's been adrift - from the life that's been mapped out for him, and from his dad's new girlfriend, who is busy painting him out of the family, one wall at a time.

But when Connor takes a summer job as Pearl's gardener, their unexpected friendship opens the door to a fresh start for them both. If they can just take the first step . . .

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Pearl Winter hasn't been outside in forty-three years.

Since she arrived on Dartmoor as a girl, an isolated family cottage has been her whole world. A place of safety. But now fifty-nine-year-old Pearl is utterly alone - except for the postman, the local crows, and memories of the summer of 1976.

Teenager Connor Matthews feels like a stranger in his own home.

Since his mother's death he's been adrift from his remaining family, troubled by the reality of moving on, and unable to see a future ahead. But when Connor begins a summer job as Pearl's gardener, an unexpected friendship opens the door to a fresh start for them both. If only Pearl and Connor can take the first steps . . .

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Teenager Lizzie Vogel has a new job as a dental assistant. This is not as glamorous as it sounds.

At least it means mostly getting away from her alcoholic, nymphomaniacal, novel-writing mother. But, if Lizzie thinks being independent means sex with her boyfriend (he prefers bird-watching), strict boundaries (her boss keeps using her loo) or self-respect (surely only actual athletes get fungal foot infections?) she's still got a lot more growing up to do.

From the bestselling author of Love, Nina comes a brilliantly funny and heartbreaking story of growing up and finding the independence you might not actually want . . .

Серия: The Lizzie Vogel Series

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On the twentieth anniversary of the death of Rebecca, the hauntingly beautiful first wife of Maxim de Winter, family friend Colonel Julyan receives an anonymous parcel. It contains a black notebook with two handwritten words on the title page - Rebecca's Tale - and two pictures: a photograph of Rebecca as a young child and a postcard of Manderley. Rebecca once asked Julyan to ensure she was buried in the churchyard facing the sea: if she ended up in the de Winter crypt, she warned, she'd come back to haunt him. Now, it seems, she has finally kept her promise. Julyan's conscience has never been clear over the official version of Rebecca's death. Was Rebecca the manipulative, promiscuous femme fatale her husband claimed? Or the gothic heroine of tragic proportions that others had suggested? The official story, the 'truth', has only had Maxim's version of events to consider. But all that is about to change

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Born into a world seething with treachery and suspicion, Eleanor Goodricke grows up on the Somerset Levels just after the English Civil Wars, heiress to her late mother's estates and daughter of a Puritan soldier who fears for his brilliant daughter with her dangerous passion for natural history - and for butterflies in particular.
Her reckless courage will take her to places where no woman of her day ever dared to go. Her fearless ambition will give her a place in history for all time. But it is her passionate heart which will lead her into a consuming love - and mortal peril.

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Discover the brilliant, hilarious and unlikely story of a woman's life rebuilt, from the bestselling author of the Adrian Mole series and The Woman who Went to Bed for a Year
'There are two things that you should know about me immediately: the first is that I am beautiful, the second is that yesterday I killed a man. Both things were accidents '
When Midlands housewife Coventry Dakin kills her next-door neighbour, in a wild attempt to stop him from strangling his wife, she goes on the run.
Finding herself alone and friendless in London, she tries to lose herself in the city's maze of streets.
There, she meets a bewildering cast of eccentric characters.
From Professor Willoughby D'Eresby and his perpetually naked wife Letitia, to Dodo, a care-in the-community inhabitant of Cardboard City, they all contrive to change Coventry in ways she could never have foreseen

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Twyla and Roberta have known each other since they were eight years old, when they were thrown together as roommates in a girls' shelter. Inseparable then, they lose touch as they grow older, only to meet again later at a diner, a grocery store and then at a protest. The two women are seemingly at opposite ends of every problem but, despite their conflict, the deep bond their shared experience has forged between them is undeniable.

Recitatif keeps Twyla's and Roberta's races ambiguous throughout the story. We know that one is white and one is black, but which is which? And who is right about the race of the woman the girls tormented at the orphanage?

This story is a masterful exploration of what keeps us together and what keeps us apart, of race and the relationships that shape our lives. Now with a new introduction by Zadie Smith, it is as radically compelling and relevant today as it was when first written nearly forty years ago.

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The hawk was everything I wanted to be: solitary, self-possessed, free from grief, and numb to the hurts of human life.
How do we carry on when someone close to us dies? Is it simply a case of putting one foot in front of the other in a bleak new world or do we need something more? Reeling with grief after the sudden death of her father, Helen Macdonald found herself turning to the wild for comfort. With breathtaking honesty and insight, she recounts her months spent taming a goshawk and how, finally, this strange kinship led her to the first tentative steps to recovery.

Серия: Vintage Minis

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American pilot Major Ellie has crashed his plane in the middle of a desert. Lucky for him there's room for him at the very refugee camp he was supposed to bomb.

Teenage Momo doesn't see it that way: the camp is a trap, not a refuge. His brother's missing, his parents are in a rage, and an aid worker won't stop trying to interview him for her book on the Teenage Muslim Mind.

Savage, irreverent and deliciously dark, Red Birds is a masterful unravelling of intertwined fates in a forgotten war-scape and a brilliant satire about satire about the absurdity of war and the impossibility of peace.

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Red Bones is the third book in Ann Cleeves' Shetland series - filmed as the major BBC1 drama starring Douglas Henshall, Shetland.
When an elderly woman is shot in what appears to be a tragic accident, Shetland detective Jimmy Perez is called to investigate the mystery.
The sparse landscape and the emptiness of the sea have bred a fierce and secretive people. As Jimmy looks to the islanders for answers, he finds instead two feuding families whose envy, greed and bitterness have lasted generations.
Then there's another murder and, as the spring weather shrouds the island in claustrophobic mists, Jimmy must dig up old secrets to stop a new killer from striking again . . .

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Sometimes the dead won't stay buried...
Red Bones is the third book in Ann Cleeves' Shetland series - which is now the major BBC1 drama starring Douglas Henshall, SHETLAND.
When an elderly woman is shot in what appears to be a tragic accident, Shetland detective Jimmy Perez is called to investigate the mystery.
The sparse landscape and the emptiness of the sea have bred a fierce and secretive people. As Jimmy looks to the islanders for answers, he finds instead two feuding families whose envy, greed and bitterness have lasted generations.
Then there's another murder and, as the spring weather shrouds the island in claustrophobic mists, Jimmy must dig up old secrets to stop a new killer from striking again . . .
Also available in the Shetland series are Raven Black, Red Bones, Blue Lightning and Dead Water. Ann Cleeves' Vera Stanhope series (ITV television drama VERA) contains five titles, of which The Glass Room is the most recent.

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This is a work of fiction. Keep telling yourself that.
America has changed. For women, it has changed for the worse.

Ro, a single high-school teacher, is desperate to become a mother. But with IVF now illegal along with abortion and other reproductive rights parenthood looks increasingly unlikely for her. Her best friend Susan is trapped in a failing marriage with two children, her star student Mattie is unwillingly pregnant and Gin, an outcast offering other women natural remedies, has become the centre of a modern-day witch-hunt.

With warmth, wit and ferocious inventiveness, Red Clocks shows us an all-too plausible near-future: like The Handmaid s Tale, it is a call to arms, set to become a modern classic.

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The enchanting story of a very remarkable dog from the author of the bestselling Captain Corelli's Mandolin.

In early 1998 I went to Perth in Western Australia in order to attend the literature festival, and part of the arrangement was that I should go to Karratha to do their first ever literary dinner. Karratha is a mining town a long way further north. The landscape is extraordinary, being composed of vast heaps of dark red earth and rock poking out of the never-ending bush.

I imagine that Mars must have a similar feel to it. I went exploring and discovered the bronze statue to Red Dog outside the town of Dampier. I felt straight away that I had to find out more about this splendid dog. A few months later I returned to Western Australia and spent two glorious weeks driving around collecting Red Dog stories and visiting the places that he knew, writing up the text as I went along. I hope my cat never finds out that I have written a story to celebrate the life of a dog. Louis de Bernieres.

If you love Australia it will have you aching for the scent of gums and sight of the Southern Cross, while if you love dogs it is sure to make you highly indulgent towards the one you love Observer

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'From now on when you see something, you're seeing it because I want you to see it.
When you think of something, it'll be because I want you to think about it '

And with those words, the obsession begins.

A writer has left his family in Brooklyn for a three month residency at the Deuter Centre in Berlin, hoping for undisturbed days devoted to artistic absorption.

When nothing goes according to plan, he finds himself holed up in his room watching Blue Lives, a violent cop show with a bleak and merciless worldview. One night at a party he meets Anton, the charismatic creator of the show, and strikes up a conversation.

It is a conversation that leads him on a journey into the heart of moral darkness. A conversation thatthreatens to destroy everything he holds most dear, including his own mind.

Red Pill is a novel about the alt-right, online culture, creativity, sanity and history. It tells the story of the 21st century through the prism of the centuries that preceded it, showing how the darkest chapters of our past haunt our present. More than anything, though, this is a novel about love and how it can endure in a world where everything else seems to have lost all meaning.

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When young Jack Ryan joins the CIA as an analyst he is thrust into a world of political intrigue and conspiracy. Stationed in England, he quickly finds himself debriefing a Soviet defector with an extraordinary story to tell: senior Russian officials are plotting to assassinate Pope John Paul II. The CIA novice must forget his inexperience and rely on all his wits to бfirstly discover the details of the plot - and then prevent its execution. For it is not just the Pope's life that is at stake, but also the stability of the Western world ...

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Russia, 1940. Fifteen-year-old Misha's life is about to transform when his father is offered a job in Stalin's inner circle. They move into a luxurious apartment in the Kremlin, but doubts about the glorious new Russia quickly surface. Misha realises that the secret police can do whatever they like. His own mother is arrested and sent to prison, but Misha and his father daren't complain. Then as German troops advance on Moscow, the atmosphere in the Kremlin ignites. Misha and a friend find themselves at the heart of a battle against the mighty state in this powerful evocation of one of the most turbulent places and periods of the 20th century, told by a master storyteller.

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Imprisoned in the Gulags for a crime he did not commit, Benya Golden joins a penal battalion made up of Cossacks and convicts to fight the Nazis.
He enrols in the Russian cavalry, and on a hot summer day in July 1942, he and his band of brothers are sent on a desperate mission behind enemy lines.
Switching between Benya's war in the grasslands of Southern Russia, and Stalin's plans in the Kremlin, between Benya's intense affair with an Italian nurse and a romance between Stalin's daughter and a journalist also on the Eastern Front, this is a sweeping story of passion, bravery and human survival where personal betrayal is a constant companion, and death just a heartbeat away.

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Spanning three generations, this novel of family and myth is told through a series of flashbacks that depict events of staggering horror set against a landscape of gemlike beauty as the Chinese battle both the Japanese invaders and each other in the turbulent 1930s.

As the novel opens, a group of villagers, led by Commander Yu, the narrator's grandfather, prepare to attack the advancing Japanese. Yu sends his 14-year-old son back home to get food for his men; but as Yu's wife returns through the sorghum fields with the food, the Japanese start firing and she is killed.

Her death becomes the thread that links the past to the present and the narrator moves back and forth recording the war's progress, the fighting between the Chinese warlords and his family's history.

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Special Investigator Arkady Renko returns in his third engrossing mystery
Sometimes Arkady had the feeling that while he had been away God had lifted Moscow and turned it upside down . . .
The night outside was still white. Arkady wasn't sleepy or hungry. He felt like the perfect new Soviet man, designed for a land with no food or drink. He got up and left the office. Enough.
It began with the unmourned death of Rosen, one of Moscow's new breed of black marketeers; seemingly a clear-cut case of murder.
Although Renko has been recently reinstated at the Moscow Prosecutor's office, the case begins to slip from his grasp. But his determination never to let go leads him to Munich and Berlin - back into the life of Irina, a woman he though he had lost forever . . .
'Wonderfully entertaining . . . Red Square is streets ahead of most thrillers that claim to deal with the real world' Independent
'The best thriller to appear in several years . . . extraordinary' Time
'Dense with observation and atmosphere . . . Smith's best book yet' Cosmopolitan

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From the author of acclaimed historical thriller Black Sun comes the claustrophobically tense, page-turner set during the Cuban Missile Crisis and based on a terrifying true story. . .

'This is Robert Harris storytelling territory and is told with equal panache and authenticity. There could be no higher praise.' Daily Mail

One the least known but most terrifying moments in modern history - when the fate of the world lay with a lone, nervous Soviet naval officer one hundred meters under the Caribbean sea - lies at the heart of this breathtaking new Cold War thriller from the author of the acclaimed Black Sun.

The year is 1962, and KGB Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vasin is searching for ghosts: for evidence of the long-rumoured existence of an American spy embedded at the highest echelons of Soviet power. But it's while on this wild goose chase, a high-stakes espionage race against a rival State agency, that Vasin first hears whispers of an ominous top-secret undertaking: Operation Anadyr.

As tensions flare between Nikita Khrushchev and President Kennedy over Russian missiles hidden in Cuba, four Soviet submarines - each carrying tactical ballistic missiles armed with thermonuclear warheads - are ordered to make a covert run at the U.S. blockade in the Caribbean . . .

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When Russian president Maxim Krupin discovers that he has inoperable brain cancer, he's determined to cling to power. His first task is to kill or imprison any of his countrymen who can threaten him. Soon, though, his illness becomes serious enough to require a more dramatic diversion - war with the West.
Upon learning of Krupin's condition, CIA director Irene Kennedy understands that the US is facing an opponent who has nothing to lose. The only way to avoid a confrontation that could leave millions dead is to send Mitch Rapp to Russia under impossibly dangerous orders. With the Kremlin's entire security apparatus hunting him, he must find and kill a man many have deemed the most powerful in the world.
Success means averting a war that could consume all of Europe. But if his mission is discovered, Rapp will plunge Russia and America into a conflict that neither will survive.

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Two women, one man: code red for revenge...A brand new book specially written for Quick Reads Maggie is married with two grown-up children. Her 25-year-old marriage to Phil has lost its sparkle. Carla is widowed. She understands life is short so she lives it to the full. But is her new romance all that it seems? When the two women meet in the beauty salon, they soon find they have more in common than the colour of their nails. The discovery that they are sharing the same man is shocking. How will Phil be taught a lesson or two he won't forget?

Серия: Quick Reads

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Redemption is the fifth heart-pounding Memory Man thriller from number one international bestseller David Baldacci.
FBI consultant Amos Decker returns to the scene of a family tragedy, and is confronted by more than just painful memories.
A felon on a mission.
When Decker returns to Burlington, Ohio, he is tracked down by his first homicide arrest, Meryl Hawkins, a man who still maintains his innocence.
A rookie's mistake.
With Hawkins recently released from his life sentence, Decker finds himself questioning what had once seemed watertight evidence. Is the real killer still out there?
A murderer at large.
As the body count rises in a new crime spree, Decker and his former partner Mary Lancaster dig deeper and reopen the old case - and old wounds.
Back in his home town and plagued by the ghosts of his past, Amos Decker is compelled to discover the confronting truth in the fifth Memory Man thriller of David Baldacci's number one bestselling series.

Серия: Amos Decker series

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A perfect love story for imperfect people.
Micah Mortimer measures out his days running errands for work, maintaining an impeccable cleaning regime and going for runs (7:15, every morning). He is in a long-term relationship with his woman friend Cassia, but they live apart. His carefully calibrated life is regular, steady, balanced.
But then the order of things starts to tilt. Cassia is threatened with eviction, and when a teenager shows up at Micah's door claiming to be his son, he is confronted with another surprise he seems poorly equipped to handle.
Can Micah, a man to whom those around him always seem just out of reach, find a way back to his perfectly imperfect love story?

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The sensual saga of Eva and Gideon continues in the hotly anticipated follow-up to Bared to You
Gideon Cross. As beautiful and flawless on the outside as he was damaged and tormented on the inside. He was a bright, scorching flame that singed me with the darkest of pleasures. I couldn't stay away. I didn't want to. He was my addiction . . . my every desire . . . mine.
My past was as violent as his, and I was just as broken. We'd never work. It was too hard, too painful . . . except when it was perfect. Those moments when the driving hunger and desperate love were the most exquisite insanity.
We were bound by our need. And our passion would take us beyond our limits to the sweetest, sharpest edge of obsession . . .

Серия: Modern and contemporary Fiction

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The personal, funny and poignant tale of a young refugee, from acclaimed storyteller Benjamin Zephaniah

Acclaimed performance poet and novelist Benjamin Zephaniah's honest, wry and poignant story of a young refugee left in London is of even more power and pertinence today than when it was first published.

Life is not safe for Alem. His father is Ethopian, his mother Eritrean. Their countries are at war, and Alem is welcome in neither place.

So Alem is excited to spend a holiday in London with his father until he wakes up to find him gone. What seems like a betrayal is in fact an act of love, but now Alem is alone in a strange country, and he must forge his own path...

Brilliantly written and with a real ear for dialogue, fans of Angie Thomas and Malorie Blackman will love Benjamin Zephaniah's novels for young adult readers.

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When Klara appears in Paris, two months after the end of the war and years after her disappearance into Auschwitz, her best friend and sister-in-law, Angelika, is elated, if apprehensive. Initially, her fears seem well founded - Klara won't eat, nor will she acknowledge the daughter she has left behind. Gradually, Klara reveals with cold anger and pitiless lucidity, the full extent of what she experienced in Auschwitz as she struggles to readapt to normal life.

Not since Sophie's Choice has a novelist succeeded in conveying - with truth, dignity, power and intelligence - the inhumanity of the death camps and the scars suffered by those who survived them. Refusal is a compelling, elegant and often heart-breaking glimpse into life beyond the horror.

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A Highland scandal

Lady Jenna must marry if she is to claim her lands. Only there is a complete lack of eligible suitors in the Highlands! But then Niall Gilvry is assigned to watch over Jenna, and there s no denying she finds this handsome Scot most distracting! Niall knows Jenna is too fine a lady for the likes of him. With danger lurking, Niall stays close. But it would be just oh, so easy to pull her into his arms

Disgraced Lady Charity West lives in the dark world of the city's seedy underbelly. She's used and abused, yearning for freedom, and her distrust of men runs deep until she meets Highland rogue Logan Gilvry. Whisky runner Logan lives outside the law and is used to looking danger in the eye. But Charity may just prove to be his most dangerous challenge yet

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Hilarious, shocking and hugely entertaining, Reheated Cabbage has all the classic Irvine Welsh ingredients

In Reheated Cabbage you can enjoy Christmas dinner with Begbie and discover how aliens addicted to Embassy Regal have Midlothian under surveillance. You will meet a husband who values a televised Hibs v Hearts game more than his wife's life and see two guys fighting over a beautiful girl agree - after a few pills and pints of lager - that their friendship is actually more important. And you will be delighted to welcome back 'Juice' Terry Lawson, and to watch what happens when he meets his old nemesis under the strobe-lights of a Miami Beach nightclub.

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A must-read thriller from Dean Koontz - the worldwide bestseller of over 400 million copies. RELENTLESS is a pulse-pounding, page-turning race to the finish. It looked like just a bad review. But perhaps it was a death threat
Being a writer is a dangerous business. When Cubby Greenwich receives a scathing review for his latest bestseller by the feared and therefore revered critic Shearman Waxx, he is determined to take no notice of it.
But Fate carries him right into Waxx's path. What began as an innocent and unexpected encounter is about to trigger an inferno of violence. For Shearman Waxx is not merely a ferocious literary enemy, but a ruthless sociopath, and now he is intent on destroying Cubby and everything he holds dear: his home, his wife, his young son, and every hope he had in the world.
The terror has only just begun, and it will be relentless

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There is always the danger of reading too much into a book. That is a danger that I dont believe exists with The Remains of the Day, one of the most beautifully written contemporary novels. The Remains of the Day is the story of Stevens, an English butler in post-World War II England. In beautiful understatement, Ishiguro explores the themes of the novel: What is the meaning of professionalism in todays society? How much should one sacrifice in order to remain true to his own personal ethics? Ishiguro weaves quiet comedy and tragedy in this deceptively simple tale, but always preserves a strong undercurrent of psychological motivation and tension. In beautiful, crystal clear prose, he tells the tale of one mans interpretation of his place in society. The fading class system also serves as a metaphor for the fading glory of the insular world of postwar England. If yourre looking for a John Grisham breakneck plot, skip this book. If you want literature at its finest, you cant do better than this.

Серия: Fiction - Crime

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After Tova Sullivan's husband died, she began working the night cleaner shift at the Sowell Bay Aquarium. Ever since her eighteen-year-old son, Erik, mysteriously vanished on a boat over thirty years ago keeping busy has helped her cope. One night she meets Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus living at the aquarium who sees everything, but wouldn't dream of lifting one of his eight arms for his human captors - until he forms a remarkable friendship with Tova.
Ever the detective, Marcellus deduces what happened the night Tova's son disappeared. And now Marcellus must use every trick his old body can muster to unearth the truth for her before it's too late...
Shelby Van Pelt's debut novel is a reminder that sometimes taking a hard look at the past can help uncover a future that once felt impossible.

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After Tova Sullivan's husband died, she began working the night cleaner shift at the Sowell Bay Aquarium. Ever since her eighteen-year-old son, Erik, mysteriously vanished on a boat over thirty years ago keeping busy has helped her cope. One night she meets Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus living at the aquarium who sees everything, but wouldn't dream of lifting one of his eight arms for his human captors - until he forms a remarkable friendship with Tova.

Ever the detective, Marcellus deduces what happened the night Tova's son disappeared. And now Marcellus must use every trick his old body can muster to unearth the truth for her before it's too late...

Shelby Van Pelt's debut novel is a reminder that sometimes taking a hard look at the past can help uncover a future that once felt impossible.

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After Tova Sullivan's husband died, she began working the night cleaner shift at the Sowell Bay Aquarium. Ever since her eighteen-year-old son, Erik, mysteriously vanished on a boat over thirty years ago keeping busy has helped her cope. One night she meets Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus living at the aquarium who sees everything, but wouldn't dream of lifting one of his eight arms for his human captors - until he forms a remarkable friendship with Tova.

Ever the detective, Marcellus deduces what happened the night Tova's son disappeared. And now Marcellus must use every trick his old body can muster to unearth the truth for her before it's too late...

Shelby Van Pelt's debut novel is a reminder that sometimes taking a hard look at the past can help uncover a future that once felt impossible.

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Lexi wakes up in a hospital bed after a car accident, thinking it's 2004 and she's a twenty-five-year-old with crooked teeth and a disastrous love life. But, to her disbelief, she learns it's actually 2007 - she's twenty-eight, her teeth are straight, she's the boss of her department - and she's married! To a good-looking millionaire! How on earth did she land the dream life?!
She can't believe her luck - especially when she sees her stunning new home. She's sure she'll have a fantastic marriage once she gets to know her husband again. He's drawn up a "marriage manual", which should help.
But as she learns more about her new self, chinks start to appear in the perfect life. All her old friends hate her. A rival is after her job. Then a dishevelled, sexy guy turns up ... and lands a new bombshell.

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Chinatown, New York. After a chance encounter with an old friend, Simon Hanlon, an Irish architect, experiences a seizure, his first in almost thirty years. Soon, they come to him daily.

As he awaits a brain operation, Simon turns his mind back to his childhood on a farm near the Irish border. At fifteen, he was present when an IRA bomb exploded at the Remembrance Sunday parade in Enniskillen. It was in the following weeks that his seizures first began. Now, he is compelled to seek out the bomber from the remnants of his past, and to ask himself the question: why do we harm one another?

Remembrance Sunday is a moving and unforgettable novel about love, empathy and the ways in which history imprints itself upon our hearts and minds.

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Filip Kobal, an Austrian teenager, is on the trail of his missing older brother Gregor, who he never knew. All he has is two of Gregor's books: a school copy book, and a dictionary in which certain words have been marked. As he enters Slovenia on his journey, Filip discovers something else entirely: the transformative power of language to describe the world, and the unnerving joy of being an outsider in a strange land.

Серия: Penguin Modern Classics

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An internationally bestselling debut novel: an energetically told, funny and moving book about how strangers become family.

Reproduction tells a crooked love story which takes strange, winding paths shaped by community, family and fleeting interactions that leave an inedible imprint.

Felicia, a nineteen-year-old West Indian student, and Edgar, an impetuous heir of a wealthy German family, meet when their ailing mothers are assigned the same hospital room. An odd-couple relationship blooms between Edgar and Felicia, ripe with miscommunications and reprisals for perceived and real offences that have some unexpected results.

Fast-forward, their son Armistice is a teenager fixated on a variety of get-rich-quick schemes that are as comic as they are indicative of the immigrant son's fear of falling through the cracks. When Edgar re-enters Felicia's life at a typically inopportune moment, the book's exhilarating final act is set in the motion and Reproduction is revealed.

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As Colombia's famed political cartoonist, Javier Mallarino, strolls through downtown Bogota before a public celebration of his career in the grand Teatro Colon, he contemplates the start of his professional life; how he set down his oils and took up a pen to begin drawing caricatures for a living. But the celebration has far-reaching consequences: as he leaves the theatre a figure from his past, now a young woman, emerges from the crowd and forces Mallarino to confront an incident that took place in his home half a lifetime ago, calling into question his reputation and the value of his life's work.

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Harry Goldfarb, heroin addict and son of lonely widow Sara, cares only about enjoying the good life with girlfriend Marion and best friend Tyrone C Love, and making the most of all the hash, poppers and dope they can get. Sara Goldfarb sits at home with the TV, dreaming of the life she could have and struggling with her own addictions - food and diet pills. But these four will pay a terrible price for the pleasures they believe they are entitled to. A passionate, heart-breaking tale of the crushing weight of hope and expectation, Requiem for a Dream is a dark modern-day fable of New York.

Серия: Penguin Modern Classics

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