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The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
Discovered in the attic in which she spent the last years of her life, Anne Frank's remarkable diary has since become a world classic—a powerful reminder of the horrors of war and an eloquent testament to the human spirit.
In 1942, with Nazis occupying Holland, a thirteen-year-old Jewish girl and her family fled their home in Amsterdam and went into hiding. For the next two years, until their whereabouts were betrayed to the Gestapo, they and another family lived cloistered in the "Secret Annexe" of an old office building.
Cut off from the outside world, they faced hunger, boredom, the constant cruelties of living in confined quarters, and the ever-present threat of discovery and death.
In her diary Anne Frank recorded vivid impressions of her experiences during this period. By turns thoughtful, moving, and amusing, her account offers a fascinating commentary on human courage and frailty and a compelling self-portrait of a sensitive and spirited young woman whose promise was tragically cut short.
Shadows on the Grass
Brief summary
Isak Dinesen takes up the absorbing story of her life in Kenya begun in the unforgettable Out of Africa, which she published under the name of Karen Blixen.
With warmth and humanity these four stories illuminate her love both for the African people, their dignity and traditions, and for the beauty and wildness of the landscape.
The first three were written in the 1950s and the last, 'Echoes from the Hills', was written especially for this volume in the summer of 1960 when the author was in her seventies. In all they provide a moving final chapter to her African reminiscences.
ISBN:9780140180435
Author:Isak Dinesen & Karen Blixen
Seven Gothic Tales
Brief summary
Originally published in 1934, Seven Gothic Tales, the first book by "one of the finest and most singular artists of our time" (The Atlantic), is a modern classic.
Here are seven exquisite tales combining the keen psychological insight characteristic of the modern short story with the haunting mystery of the nineteenth-century Gothic tale, in the tradition of writers such as Goethe, Hoffmann, and Poe.
ISBN:9780679736417
Author:Isak Dinesen & Karen Blixen
Africas Long Road Since Independence
Brief summary
Africa's Long Road since Independence: The Many Histories of a Continent.
'A superb book...genuinely innovative' Jack Spence OBE, King's College London
Over the last half century, sub-Saharan Africa has not had one history, but many. Histories that have intertwined, converged and diverged. They have involved a continuing process of decolonization and state-building, conflict, economic problems but also progress and the perpetual interplay of structure and agency.
This new view of those histories looks in particular at the relationship between territorial, economic, political and societal structures and human agency in the complex and sometimes confusing development of an independent Africa.
The story starts well before the granting of independence to Ghana in 1957, but the book also looks at Africa in the closing decades of the old millennium and opening ones of the new. This is a book, too, about the history of the peoples of Africa and their struggle for economic development against the global economic straitjacket into which they were strapped by colonial rule and decolonisation.
The importance of imposed or inherited structures, whether the global capitalist system, of which Africa is a subordinate part, or the artificial and often inappropriate state borders and political systems is discussed in the light of the exercise of agency by African peoples, political movements and leaders.
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ISBN:9780141984094
Author:Keith Somerville
The End of Average
Brief summary
In this ground-breaking book perfect for readers of The Power of Habit and Quiet, Harvard scientist Todd Rose shows how our one-size-fits-all world is actually one-size-fits-none.
Each of us knows we’re different. We’re a little taller or shorter than the average, our salary is a bit higher or lower than the average, and we wonder about who it is that is buying the average-priced home. All around us, we think, are the average people—with the average height, the average salary and the average house.
But the average doesn’t just influence how we see ourselves—our entire social system has been built around this average-size-fits-all model. Schools are designed for the average student. Healthcare is designed for the average patient.
Employers try to fill average job descriptions with employees on an average career trajectory. Our government implements programs and initiatives to serve the average person. For more than a century, we’ve believed that the best way to run our institutions is by focusing on the average person.
But when you actually drill down into the numbers, you find an amazing fact: no one is average—which means that our society built for everyone is actually serving no one.
In the 1950s, the American Air Force found itself with a massive problem—performance in expensive, custom-made planes was suffering terribly, with crashes peaking at seventeen in a single day. Since the state-of-the-art planes they were flying had been meticulously crafted to fit the average pilot, pilot error was assumed to be at fault.
Until, that is, the Air Force investigated just how many of their pilots were actually average. The shocking answer: out of thousands of active-duty pilots, exactly zero were average. Not one. This discovery led to simple solutions (like adjustable seats) that dramatically reduced accidents, improved performance, and expanded the pool of potential pilots. It also led to a huge change in thinking: planes didn’t need to be designed for everyone—they needed to be designed so they could adapt to suit the individual flying them.
The End of Average shows how success lies in customizing to our individual needs in all aspects of our lives, from the way we mark tests to the medical treatment we receive. Using principles from The Science of the Individual, it shows how we can break down the average to create individualized success that benefits everyone in the long run.
It's time we stopped settling for average, and in The End of Average, Todd Rose will show you how.
ISBN:9780062358363
Author:Todd Rose
Orphan X
Brief summary
"Do you need my help?" It was always the first question he asked. They called him when they had nowhere else to turn.
Raised and trained as part of a top secret programme he was sent to the worst places in the world to do the things his government denied any knowledge of.
Then he broke with the programme and disappeared. But now someone's on his tail. Someone who knows he was once known simply as Orphan X.
ISBN:9781405928892
Author:Gregg Hurwitz
Getting (More of) What You Want: How ...
Getting (More of) What You Want: How the Secrets of Economics and Psychology Can Help You Negotiate Anything, in Business and in Life.
Almost every interaction involves negotiation, yet we often miss the cues that would allow us to make the most of these exchanges.
In Getting (More of) What You Want, Margaret Neale and Thomas Lys draw on the latest advances in psychology and economics to provide new strategies for anyone shopping for a car, lobbying for a raise, or simply haggling over who takes out the trash.
Getting (More of) What You Want shows how inexperienced negotiators regularly leave significant value on the table—and reveals how you can claim it.
The Truth An Uncomfortable Book About...
Brief summary
The Truth: An Uncomfortable Book about Relationships
Neil Strauss became famous to millions around the world as the author of The Game, a funny and slyly instructive account of how he transformed himself from a scrawny, insecure nerd into the ultra-confident, ultra-successful "pickup artist” known as Style.
The book jump-started the international "seduction community,” and made Strauss a household name—revered or notorious—among single men and women alike.
But the experience of writing The Game also transformed Strauss into a man who could have what every man wants: the ability to date or have casual sex with almost every woman he met. The results were heady, to be sure.
But they also conditioned him to view the world as a kind of constant parade of women, sex, and opportunity—with intimacy and long-term commitment taking a back seat. That is, until he met the woman who forced him to choose between herself and the parade. The choice was not only difficult, it was wrenching.
It forced him deep into his past, to confront not only the moral dimensions of his pickup lifestyle, but also a wrenching mystery in his childhood that shaped the man that he became. It sent him into extremes of behavior that exposed just how conflicted his life had become. And it made him question everything he knew about himself, and about the way men and women live with and without each other.
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ISBN:9780060898762
Author:Neil Strauss
Woman of God
Brief summary
St. Peter's Square, Rome.
White smoke signals that a new Pope has been chosen.
Is it possible that the new Pope...is a woman?
The world is watching as massive crowds gather in Rome, waiting for news of a new pope, one who promises to be unlike any other in history.
It's a turning point that may change the Church forever. Some followers are ecstatic that the movement reinvigorating the Church is about to reach the Vatican, but the leading candidate has made a legion of powerful enemies who aren't afraid to kill for their cause.
Faith has never come easy for Brigid Fitzgerald. From her difficult childhood with drug-addled parents to her career as a doctor healing the wounded in Sudan to a series of trials that test her beliefs at every turn, Brigid's convictions and callings have made her the target of all those who fear that the Church has lost its way--dangerous adversaries who abhor challenges to tradition.
Locked in a deadly, high-stakes battle with forces determined to undermine everything she believes in, Brigid must convert her enemies to her cause before she loses her faith...and her life.
Spanning the globe--from the drug dens, high-powered law firms, and churches of Boston to the horrific brutality of a civil war in the Sudanese desert to the beauty, violence, and spiritual enlightenment of the Holy Land--Woman of God is an epic, thrilling tale of perseverance, love, trust and nothing less than what it means to live in a fallen world.
ISBN:9780316274029
Author:James Patterson & Maxine Paetro
Never Never
Brief summary
When Sydney police department sex crimes detective Harriet Blue is called into her boss’s office, she never imagined it would be to tell her that her brother is the prime suspect in the brutal murders of three women.
Shocked and in denial, Harry is transferred to Perth to avoid the media exposure this case will attract. Harry is sent into the outback – the never never – to investigate the disappearance of mine worker Danny Carter.
The mining town is a seedy place, full of money and immoral ways to spend it. As Harry delves deeper into the murky lives of these miners, she finds that Danny isn’t the first to go missing.
ISBN:9781780895444
Author:James Patterson & Candice Fox
The Games
Brief summary
Rio has spent years preparing to host the world during the Olympic Games--but they didn't prepare for this...
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil--home to beautiful white-sand beaches, gorgeous women, stunning natural beauty, and the world's largest Carnival celebration--knows how to throw a party.
So it's a natural choice to host the biggest spectacles in sports--the World Cup and the Olympics. To ensure that the games go off without a hitch, the organizers turn to Jack Morgan, the unflappable head of the renowned international security and consulting firm Private. But when events are this exclusive, someone's bound to get left off the guest list.
Two years after the action nearly spilled from the field to the stands during soccer's championship match, Jack is back in Rio for the Olympics. But before the cauldron is even lit, the only thing more intense than the competition is the security risks.
When prominent clients he's supposed to be protecting disappear, and bodies mysteriously start to litter the streets, Jack is drawn deep into the heart of a ruthless underworld populated by disaffected residents trying to crash the world's biggest party.
As the opening ceremonies near, with the world watching in horror, Jack must sprint to the finish line to defuse a threat that could decimate Rio and turn the games from a joyous celebration into a deadly spectacle.
ISBN:9780316407113
Author:James Patterson & Mark Sullivan
1984 by George Orwell
The year 1984 has come and gone, but George Orwell's prophetic, nightmarish vision in 1949 of the world we were becoming is timelier than ever.
1984 is still the great modern classic of "negative utopia" -a startlingly original and haunting novel that creates an imaginary world that is completely convincing, from the first sentence to the last four words.
No one can deny the novel's hold on the imaginations of whole generations, or the power of its admonitions -a power that seems to grow, not lessen, with the passage of time.
Animal Farm by George Orwell
As ferociously fresh as it was more than a half century ago, this remarkable allegory of a downtrodden society of overworked, mistreated animals, and their quest to create a paradise of progress, justice, and equality is one of the most scathing satires ever published.
As we witness the rise and bloody fall of the revolutionary animals, we begin to recognize the seeds of totalitarianism in the most idealistic organization; and in our most charismatic leaders, the souls of our cruelest oppressors.
The Spy Who Loved Castro
Brief summary
How I was recruited by the CIA to kill Fidel Castro
Few can say they’ve seen some of the most significant moments of the twentieth century unravel before their eyes. Marita Lorenz is one of them.
Born in Germany at the outbreak of WWII, Marita was incarcerated in a Nazi concentration camp as a child. In 1959, she travelled to Cuba where she met and fell in love with Fidel Castro. Yet upon fleeing to America, she was recruited by the CIA to assassinate the Fidel. Torn by love and loyalty, she failed to slip him the lethal pills.
Her life would take many more twists and turns ? including having a child with ex-dictator of Venezuela, Marcos Pérez Jiménez; testifying about the John F Kennedy assassination; and becoming a party girl for the New York Mafia, as well as a police informant.
Caught up in Cold War intrigue, espionage and conspiracy ? this is Marita’s incredible true story of a young girl, turned spy.
ISBN:9781785034534
Author:Marita Lorenz
Maestra
Brief summary
A shockingly original thriller - the launch title of Zaffre, the new fiction imprint of Bonnier Publishing Fiction
Judith Rashleigh works as an assistant in a prestigious London auction house, but her dreams of breaking into the art world have been gradually dulled by the blunt forces of snobbery and corruption.
To make ends meet she moonlights as a hostess in one of the West End's less salubrious bars - although her work there pales against her activities on nights off.
When Judith stumbles across a conspiracy at her auction house, she is fired before she can expose the fraud. In desperation, she accepts an offer from one of the bar's clients to accompany him to the French Riviera. But when an ill-advised attempt to slip him sedatives has momentous consequences, Judith finds herself fleeing for her life.
Now alone and in danger, all Judith has to rely on is her consummate ability to fake it amongst the rich and famous - and the inside track on the hugely lucrative art fraud that triggered her dismissal.
Set in the exotic palaces and yachts of Europe's seriously wealthy. With a heroine as wickedly perceptive as Amy Dunne and as dangerous as Lisbeth Salander, this marks the beginning of a sequence of novels that will have readers around the world on the edge of their seats and holding their breath.
ISBN:9780399184260
Author:L.S. Hilton
The Answer
Brief summary
How to discover what you want from life then make it happen
This ground-breaking, category-killer from internationally acclaimed authors Allan and Barbara Pease will show you that changing your life starts with asking the right questions. The Answer:
• Helps you take the first step towards change and decide what you want
• Gives you the confidence to change your job, relationship or lifestyle
• Discusses new scientific research into the brain’s ability to drive success
• Allan and Barbara also share their personal stories of overcoming the odds
When disaster struck inspirational gurus Allan and Barbara Pease’s lives, they turned to science to learn how to turn failure into ultimate success. They discovered new studies of the brain that show how you can reprogram your mindset, enabling you to see opportunities, not difficulties.
In The Answer the Peases share their experiences with honesty and humour and show you how to make your life what you want it to be.
So if you want to improve your life but need help to make the first step to change The Answer will show you how to:
• Ask the right questions of yourself
• Gain confidence to change a job, relationship or lifestyle
• Decide what you want and establish a true course in life
In The Answer you will discover that changing your life starts with asking the right questions.
ISBN:9781489214621
Author:Allan Pease & Barbara Pease
The Bone Collection
Brief summary
A collection of pulse-pounding tales featuring forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan—including the untold story of her first case!
The #1 New York Times bestselling author behind the hit Fox series Bones, Kathy Reichs is renowned for chilling suspense and fascinating forensic detail. The Bone Collection presents her trademark artistry in this collection of thrilling short fiction.
In First Bones, a prequel to Reichs’s first novel, Déjà Dead, she at last reveals the tale of how Tempe became a forensic anthropologist. In this never-before-published story, Tempe recalls the case that lured her from a promising career in academia into the grim but addictive world of criminal investigation.
(It all began with a visit from a pair of detectives—and a John Doe recovered from an arson scene in a trailer.) The collection is rounded out with three more stories that take Tempe from the low country of the Florida Everglades, where she makes a grisly discovery in the stomach of an eighteen-foot Burmese python, to the heights of Mount Everest, where a frozen corpse is unearthed. No matter where she goes, Tempe’s cases make for the most gripping reading.
ISBN:9780399593222
Author:Kathy Reichs
Gut Reactions
Brief summary
Gut Reactions: How Healthy Insides Can Improve Your Weight, Mood and Well-Being
From your weight, to how you age, to allergies and diseases - your gut controls it all.
In Gut Reactions, leading scientists Justin and Erica Sonnenberg explain how we've neglected this vital organ for far too long. As well as the consequences you might expect - a dramatic rise in food intolerances and inflammatory bowel diseases - are a whole host of other concerns, such as an increase in cancer, asthma, autism and diabetes.
We now have only 1,200 species of microbes living in our gut. We used to have many more. Why are these species becoming extinct? And how do we prevent it?
With recipes and meal plans, as well as guidance on alternatives to antibiotics and lifestyle choices, Gut Reactions will help you to interpret, understand and incorporate these new radical findings into your diet and lifestyle and will help you on your journey to a healthier gut.
ISBN:9780552171168
Author:Justin Sonnenburg & Erica Sonnenburg
The Kept Woman
Brief summary
Husbands and wives. Mothers and daughters. The past and the future.
Secrets bind them. And secrets can destroy them.
The author of the acclaimed standalone Pretty Girls returns with this long-awaited new novel in her bestselling Will Trent series—an electrifying, emotionally complex thriller that plunges the Georgia detective into the darkest depths of a case that just might destroy him.
With the discovery of a murder at an abandoned construction site, Will Trent and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation are brought in on a case that becomes much more dangerous when the dead man is identified as an ex-cop.
Studying the body, Sara Linton—the GBI’s newest medical examiner and Will’s lover—realizes that the extensive blood loss didn't belong to the corpse.
Sure enough, bloody footprints leading away from the scene indicate there is another victim—a woman—who has vanished . . . and who will die soon if she isn’t found.
Will is already compromised, because the site belongs to the city’s most popular citizen: a wealthy, powerful, and politically connected athlete protected by the world’s most expensive lawyers—a man who’s already gotten away with rape, despite Will’s exhaustive efforts to put him away.
But the worst is yet to come. Evidence soon links Will’s troubled past to the case . . . and the consequences will tear through his life with the force of a tornado, wreaking havoc for Will and everyone around him, including his colleagues, family, friends—and even the suspects he pursues.
Relentlessly suspenseful and furiously paced, peopled with conflicted, fallible characters who leap from the page, The Kept Woman is a searing novel of love, loss, and redemption.
A seamless blend of twisty police procedural and ingenious psychological thriller, it marks Karin Slaughter’s triumphant return to her most popular series, sure to please new and diehard fans alike.
ISBN:9780062430212
Author:Karin Slaughter
The Upstarts
Brief summary
The Upstarts: How Uber, Airbnb, and the Killer Companies of the New Silicon Valley Are Changing the World
A look deep inside the new Silicon Valley, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Everything Store
Ten years ago, the idea of getting into a stranger's car, or a walking into a stranger's home, would have seemed bizarre and dangerous, but today it's as common as ordering a book online.
Uber and Airbnb have ushered in a new era: redefining neighborhoods, challenging the way governments regulate business, and changing the way we travel.
In the spirit of iconic Silicon Valley renegades like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, another generation of entrepreneurs is using technology to upend convention and disrupt entire industries. These are the upstarts, idiosyncratic founders with limitless drive and an abundance of self-confidence.
Led by such visionaries as Travis Kalanick of Uber and Brian Chesky of Airbnb, they are rewriting the rules of business and often sidestepping serious ethical and legal obstacles in the process.
The Upstarts is the definitive story of two new titans of business and a dawning age of tenacity, conflict and wealth. In Brad Stone's riveting account of the most radical companies of the new Silicon Valley, we discover how it all happened and what it took to change the world.
ISBN:9780316396813
Author:Brad Stone
