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Wind Pinball Two Novels
Brief Summary
The debut short novels--nearly thirty years out of print-- by the internationally acclaimed writer, newly retranslated and in one English-language volume for the first time, with a new introduction by the author.
These first major works of fiction by Haruki Murakami center on two young men--an unnamed narrator and his friend and former roommate, the Rat. Powerful, at times surreal, stories of loneliness, obsession, and eroticism, these novellas bear all the hallmarks of Murakami's later books, giving us a fascinating insight into a great writer's beginnings, and are remarkable works of fiction in their own right.
Here too is an exclusive essay by Murakami in which he explores and explains his decision to become a writer. Prequels to the much-beloved classics A Wild Sheep Chase and Dance, these early works are essential reading for Murakami completest and contemporary fiction lovers alike.
ISBN:9780385352123
Author:Haruki Murakami
Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
Brief Summary
Kafka on the Shore is powered by two remarkable characters: a teenage boy, Kafka Tamura, who runs away from home either to escape a gruesome oedipal prophecy or to search for his long-missing mother and sister; and an aging simpleton called Nakata, who never recovered from a wartime affliction and now is drawn toward Kafka for reasons that, like the most basic activities of daily life, he cannot fathom.
As their paths converge, and the reasons for that convergence become clear, Haruki Murakami enfolds readers in a world where cats talk, fish fall from the sky, and spirits slip out of their bodies to make love or commit murder. Kafka on the Shore displays one of the world’s great storytellers at the peak of his powers.
Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of...
Brief Summary
'A narrative particle accelerator that zooms between Wild Turkey Whiskey and Bob Dylan, unicorn skulls and voracious librarians, John Coltrane and Lord Jim. Science fiction, detective story and post-modern manifesto all rolled into one rip-roaring novel, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World is the tour de force that expanded Haruki Murakami's international following.
Tracking one man's descent into the Kafkaesque underworld of contemporary Tokyo, Murakami unites East and West, tragedy and farce, compassion and detachment, slang and philosophy.'
ISBN:9780099448785
Author:Haruki Murakami
Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
Brief Summary
Toru, a quiet and preternaturally serious young college student in Tokyo, is devoted to Naoko, a beautiful and introspective young woman, but their mutual passion is marked by the tragic death of their best friend years before.
Toru begins to adapt to campus life and the loneliness and isolation he faces there, but Naoko finds the pressures and responsibilities of life unbearable. As she retreats further into her own world, Toru finds himself reaching out to others and drawn to a fiercely independent and sexually liberated young woman.
A poignant story of one college student's romantic coming-of-age, Norwegian Wood takes us to that distant place of a young man's first, hopeless, and heroic love.
The Bluest Eye
Brief Summary
The Bluest Eye is Toni Morrison's first novel, a book heralded for its richness of language and boldness of vision. Set in the author's girlhood hometown of Lorain, Ohio, it tells the story of black, eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove.
Pecola prays for her eyes to turn blue so that she will be as beautiful and beloved as all the blond, blue-eyed children in America. In the autumn of 1941, the year the marigolds in the Breedloves' garden do not bloom. Pecola's life does change- in painful, devastating ways.
What its vivid evocation of the fear and loneliness at the heart of a child's yearning, and the tragedy of its fulfillment. The Bluest Eye remains one of Tony Morrisons's most powerful, unforgettable novels- and a significant work of American fiction.
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ISBN:9780452287068
Author:Toni Morrison
Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
Navigating between the Indian traditions they've inherited and the baffling new world, the characters in Jhumpa Lahiri's elegant, touching stories seek love beyond the barriers of culture and generations.
In "A Temporary Matter," published in The New Yorker, a young Indian-American couple faces the heartbreak of a stillborn birth while their Boston neighborhood copes with a nightly blackout.
In the title story, an interpreter guides an American family through the India of their ancestors and hears an astonishing confession. Lahiri writes with deft cultural insight reminiscent of Anita Desai and a nuanced depth that recalls Mavis Gallant.
Everyman
Brief Summary
Philip Roth's new novel is a candidly intimate yet universal story of loss, regret, and stoicism. The bestselling author of The Plot Against America now turns his attention from "one family's harrowing encounter with history" (New York Times) to one man's lifelong skirmish with mortality.
The fate of Roth's everyman is traced from his first shocking confrontation with death on the idyllic beaches of his childhood summers, through the family trials and professional achievements of his vigorous adulthood, and into his old age, when he is rended by observing the deterioration of his contemporaries and stalked by his own physical woes.
The terrain of this powerful novel is the human body. Its subject is the common experience that terrifies us all.
ISBN:9780307277718
Author:Philip Roth
The Name of the Rose
Brief Summary
The year is 1327. Franciscans in a wealthy Italian abbey are suspected of heresy, and Brother William of Baskerville arrives to investigate. When his delicate mission is suddenly overshadowed by seven bizarre deaths, Brother William turns detective.
His tools are the logic of Aristotle, the theology of Aquinas, the empirical insights of Roger Bacon—all sharpened to a glistening edge by wry humor and a ferocious curiosity.
He collects evidence, deciphers secret symbols and coded manuscripts, and digs into the eerie labyrinth of the abbey, where "the most interesting things happen at night.”
ISBN:9780099466031
Author:Umberto Eco
The Wind Up Bird Chronicle
Brief Summary
Japan's most highly regarded novelist now vaults into the first ranks of international fiction writers with this heroically imaginative novel, which is at once a detective story, an account of a disintegrating marriage, and an excavation of the buried secrets of World War II.
In a Tokyo suburb a young man named Toru Okada searches for his wife's missing cat. Soon he finds himself looking for his wife as well in a netherworld that lies beneath the placid surface of Tokyo. As these searches intersect, Okada encounters a bizarre group of allies and antagonists: a psychic prostitute; a malevolent yet mediagenic politician; a cheerfully morbid sixteen-year-old-girl; and an aging war veteran who has been permanently changed by the hideous things he witnessed during Japan's forgotten campaign in Manchuria.
Gripping, prophetic, suffused with comedy and menace, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a tour de force equal in scope to the masterpieces of Mishima and Pynchon.
Three books in one volume: The Thieving Magpie, Bird as Prophet, The Bird catcher. This translation by Jay Rubin is in collaboration with the author.
ISBN:9780965341981
Author:Haruki Murakami
Elephants Can Remember
Brief Summary
Hercule Poirot is determined to solve an old husband and wife double murder that is still an open verdict! Hercule Poirot stood on the cliff-top.
Here, many years earlier, there had been a tragic accident. This was followed by the grisly discovery of two more bodies -- a husband and wife -- shot dead.
But who had killed whom? Was it a suicide pact? A crime of passion? Or cold-blooded murder? Poirot delves back into the past and discovers that 'old sin can leave long shadows'.
ISBN:9780425067826
Author:Agatha Christie
Holding Up the Universe by Jennifer N...
Everyone thinks they know Libby Strout, the girl once dubbed "America’s Fattest Teen.” But no one’s taken the time to look past her weight to get to know who she really is. Following her mom’s death, she’s been picking up the pieces in the privacy of her home, dealing with her heartbroken father and her own grief.
Now, Libby’s ready: for high school, for new friends, for love, and for every possibility life has to offer. In that moment, I know the part I want to play here at MVB High. I want to be the girl who can do anything.
Everyone thinks they know Jack Masselin, too. Yes, he’s got swagger, but he’s also mastered the impossible art of giving people what they want, of fitting in. What no one knows is that Jack has a newly acquired secret: he can’t recognize faces. Even his own brothers are strangers to him. He’s the guy who can re-engineer and rebuild anything, but he can’t understand what’s going on with the inner workings of his brain. So he tells himself to play it cool: Be charming. Be hilarious. Don’t get too close to anyone.
Until he meets Libby. When the two get tangled up in a cruel high school game—which lands them in group counseling and community service—Libby and Jack are both pissed, and then surprised. Because the more time they spend together, the less alone they feel. Because sometimes when you meet someone, it changes the world, theirs and yours.
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Ch...
Brief Summary
A mysterious island. An abandoned orphanage. A strange collection of very curious photographs. It all waits to be discovered in Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, an unforgettable novel that mixes fiction and photography in a thrilling reading experience.
As our story opens, a horrific family tragedy sets sixteen-year-old Jacob journeying to a remote island off the coast of Wales, where he discovers the crumbling ruins of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. As Jacob explores its abandoned bedrooms and hallways, it becomes clear that the children were more than just peculiar.
They may have been dangerous. They may have been quarantined on a deserted island for good reason. And somehow-impossible though it seems-they may still be alive. A spine-tingling fantasy illustrated with haunting vintage photography, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children will delight adults, teens, and anyone who relishes an adventure in the shadows.
ISBN:9781594744761
Author:Ransom Riggs
A Feast of Freud The Wittiest Writing...
Brief Summary
Clement Freud, who died suddenly in April 2009, was a man of many parts. His life embraced a variety of careers, including TV chef, gambler, owner of a night club and several racehorses, radio broadcaster, adventurer and - not least - Member of Parliament. Yet, as his son Matthew declared at his funeral, it was Freud's writing that brought us closest to the man.
In addition to several books - notably the children's book Grimble (1968), Freud on Food (1978), The Book of Hangovers (1981) and a volume of autobiography, Freud Ego (2001) - he wrote on a vast range of subjects for newspapers and magazines, including the Observer, Sun, Financial Times, Sporting Life, Daily Mail, Tatler, Guardian, New Yorker and Racing Post. A Feast of Freud presents a generous helping of Clement Freud's best and most humorous writing on a broad sweep of topics, including his consuming passions of food, sport, politics and the absurdity of the human condition, reflecting his extraordinarily varied life through the prism of his distinctive deadpan humor.
From the pen of the man who once joked of being 'out-grandfathered' by the younger Winston Churchill comes this richly stocked volume that every Freud fan, no matter in which of his many lives they encountered him, will treasure.
ISBN:9780593065402
Author:Clement Freud
The Husband’s Secret
Brief Summary
At the heart of The Husband’s Secret is a letter that’s not meant to be read
my darling Cecilia, if you’re reading this, then I’ve died...
Imagine that your husband wrote you a letter, to be opened after his death. Imagine, too, that the letter contains his deepest, darkest secret—something with the potential to destroy not just the life you built together, but the lives of others as well. Imagine, then, that you stumble across that letter while your husband is still very much alive. . . .
Cecilia Fitzpatrick has achieved it all—she’s an incredibly successful businesswoman, a pillar of her small community, and a devoted wife and mother. Her life is as orderly and spotless as her home. But that letter is about to change everything, and not just for her: Rachel and Tess barely know Cecilia—or each other—but they too are about to feel the earth-shattering repercussions of her husband’s secret.
Acclaimed author Liane Moriarty has written a gripping, thought-provoking novel about how well it is really possible to know our spouses—and, ultimately, ourselves.
ISBN:9780399159343
Author:Liane Moriarty
Bulls eye
Brief summary
Caught in the crossfire of a deadly standoff, Detective Michael Bennett must kill...or be killed.
Tensions between America and Russia are the highest they've been since the Cold War. As the countries' Presidents travel to the United Nations to iron out their differences, a fashionable husband and wife team of lethal assassins prowls the streets of Manhattan hunting their prey--a professor hiding a scandalous secret.
Their next target: the extremely popular President of the United States of America. Pulled away from his family and pressed into service, Detective Michael Bennett must trace the source of a threat that could rip the country apart--and what he finds may turn the Cold War red hot once again. With allegiances constantly in doubt and no one above suspicion, only Bennett can step into the line of fire to save the President before the deadly kill shot hits its mark.
ISBN:9781846579318
Author:James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge
The Store
Brief summary
The Store doesn't just want your money – it wants your soul.
Imagine a future of unparalleled convenience. A powerful retailer, The Store, can deliver anything to your door, anticipating the needs and desires you didn't even know you had.
Most people are fine with that, but not Jacob and Megan Brandeis. New York writers whose livelihood is on the brink of extinction, Jacob and Megan are going undercover to dig up The Store's secrets in a book that could change the entire American way of life. But after a series of unsettling discoveries, Jacob and Megan's worst fears about The Store seem like just the beginning.
Harbouring a secret that could get him killed, Jacob has to find a way to escape The Store's watchful eye and publish his expose – before the truth dies with him.
ISBN:9781786140623
Author:James Patterson and Richard DiLallo
Private Delhi
Brief summary
Santosh Wagh quit his job as head of Private India after harrowing events in Mumbai almost got him killed. But Jack Morgan, global head of the world’s finest investigation agency, needs him back. Jack is setting up a new office in Delhi, and Santosh is the only person he can trust.
Still battling his demons, Santosh accepts, and it’s not long before the agency takes on a case that could make or break them. Plastic barrels containing dissolved human remains have been found in the basement of a house in an upmarket area of South Delhi. But this isn’t just any house, this property belongs to the state government.
With the crime scene in lockdown and information suppressed by the authorities, delving too deep could make Santosh a target to be eliminated.
ISBN:9781780894447
Author:James Patterson and Ashwin Sanghi
The Enigma of Arrival
Brief Summary
The story of a writer's singular journey—from one place to another, from the British colony of Trinidad to the ancient countryside of England, and from one state of mind to another—this is perhaps Naipaul's most autobiographical work.
Yet it is also woven through with remarkable invention to make it a rich and complex novel.
ISBN:9780394757605
Author:V. S. Naipaul
Touched with Fire An Anthology of Poems
Brief Summary
A collection of literature anthologies and reference books for Key Stage 3 onwards. This anthology has two main objectives: to introduce students to a wide range of poetry in English from the last 400 years, and to provide them with guidance on how to approach poetry examinations.
The poems are divided into six collections, not by theme or by historical period, but as satisfying small anthologies of twenty-two poems each.
Clear guidance is given on what is expected in an essay for a poetry examination, and actual answers are reproduced which help the student analyze what kind of response gets good marks and why.
ISBN:9780521315371
Author:Jack Hydes
Son of Fate by John Kiriamiti
This novel is by the author of the celebrated My Life in Crime and is his first. The life of the 'Son of Fate' is a grim struggle for survival, after his release from prison.
He tries his luck at farming, and odd jobs in the city, but everything fails, and he finds himself on the wrong side of the law again. But a glimmer of hope comes when he rescues a tycoon.
