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万本电子书0元读

An Advancement of Learning (Dalziel & Pascoe, Book 2)
An Advancement of Learning (Dalziel & Pascoe, Book 2)
Reginald Hill
¥59.35
All is not well at Holm Coultram College. All is not well at Holm Coultram College: lecturers having affairs with students, witches’ sabbaths, a body buried under a statue. Detective Superintendent Dalziel, despite his cynical view of academics, doesn’t feel murder fits in here – let alone a rash of killings. But when he and DS Pascoe are sent to investigate a disinterred corpse at Holm Coultram College, that’s exactly what they find…
Exit Lines (Dalziel & Pascoe, Book 8)
Exit Lines (Dalziel & Pascoe, Book 8)
Reginald Hill
¥56.11
Another excellent Dalziel and Pascoe story from the master of the British crime novel Three old men die on a stormy November night: one by deliberate violence, one in a road accident and one by an unknown cause. Inspector Pascoe is called in to investigate the first death, but when the dying words of the accident victim suggest that a drunken Superintendent Dalziel had been behind the wheel, the integrity of the entire Mid-Yorkshire constabulary is called into question. Helped by the bright but wayward DC Seymour, hindered by ‘Maggie’s Moron’, the half-witted Constable Hector, Peter Pascoe enters the twilight and vulnerable world of the senior citizen – to discover that the beckoning darkness at the end of the tunnel holds few comforts.
On Beulah Height (Dalziel & Pascoe, Book 15)
On Beulah Height (Dalziel & Pascoe, Book 15)
Reginald Hill
¥59.35
‘Hill is an instinctive and complete novelist who is blessed with a spontaneous storytelling gift’ Frances Fyfield, Mail on Sunday Fifteen years ago they moved everyone out of Dendale. They needed a new reservoir and an old community seemed a cheap price to pay. But four inhabitants of the valley could not be moved, for nobody knew where they were: three little girls who had gone missing, and the prime suspect in their disappearance, Benny Lightfoot. This was Andy Dalziel’s worst case and now he looks set to relive it. Another child goes missing in the next valley, and old fears arise as someone sprays the deadly message on Danby bridge: BENNY’S BACK!
Leonardo and the Death Machine
Leonardo and the Death Machine
Robert J. Harris
¥45.22
Adventure thriller set in Renaissance Italy starring Leonardo da Vinci as a young apprentice who witnesses a murder and becomes involved in a plot to take over the city. LEONARDO AND THE DEATH MACHINE is first and foremost a thriller, set against the background of Renaissance Italy. However, the Leonardo of the title is in fact Leonardo da Vinci. This is a totally fictional adventure, but it COULD have happened. When we first meet Leonardo we find him apprenticed to a successful artist in Florence. But although he yearns to be a great artist himself, he's rather disillusioned with his apprenticeship, which has made him more of an errand boy than an art student. Then, when an impromptu street football match ends in an arm injury for his friend Sandro (whom history will know as Botticelli), Leonardo leaps at the opportunity to help out the unfortunate painter who has been commissioned to paint a portrait for the rich Medici family. Little does our young hero know that soon he will be dragged into murder and intrigue, and will be fleeing for his life!
A Time of War
A Time of War
Katharine Kerr
¥80.25
Book seven of the celebrated Deverry series, an epic fantasy rooted in Celtic mythology that intricately interweaves human and elven history over several hundred years. Book seven of the celebrated Deverry series, an epic fantasy rooted in Celtic mythology that intricately interweaves human and elven history over several hundred years.
The Fire Dragon
The Fire Dragon
Katharine Kerr
¥44.73
Book eleven of the celebrated Deverry series, an epic fantasy rooted in Celtic mythology that intricately interweaves human and elven history over several hundred years. The Fire Dragon tells two separate stories: one set in the “present” of 1117, and one set in the past, the era of the Civil Wars. In the present, Raena’s trouble-making in Cerr Cawnen leads to terrible death and destruction but may ultimately succeed in offering the final working-out of Rhodry’s Wyrd. In the past, Nevyn and Lilli attempt to solve the riddle of the curse tablet, but the price will be high. In this, the eleventh volume in the Deverry cycle and third of the Dragon Mage series, storylines begun in Dawnspell: The Bristling Wood, A Time of Exile and The Black Raven – both the ‘present’ of 1117 and the past – will reach their triumphant and spellbinding conclusion. But there will be more Deverry books to unravel the situation that climaxes The Fire Dragon…
Velocity
Velocity
Dean Koontz
¥56.11
The international bestseller Dean Koontz delivers a masterclass of storytelling suspense in this thriller. What would you do if a serial killer forced you to choose who he murders next? On the windscreen of his SUV, Billy finds the first note. It gives him a choice. If he takes the note to the police, an elderly woman will be killed. If he doesn’t approach the police, a schoolteacher will die. He thinks it’s a hoax. The schoolteacher is killed. Further notes taunt Billy’s conscience, forcing him to decide who lives and who dies. He must think the unthinkable, fast, in an accelerating nightmare. More communications from the killer follow with ever tighter deadlines. Each is more personal, more confrontational than the last until he is isolated, with no one to rely on but himself. Finally, he must risk everything to save the helpless, clueless victims…
Bombs on Aunt Dainty
Bombs on Aunt Dainty
Judith Kerr
¥34.14
Partly autobiographical, this is the second title in Judith Kerr’s internationally acclaimed trilogy of books following the life of Anna through war-torn Germany, to London during the Blitz and her return to Berlin to discover the past… It is hard enough being a teenager in London during the Blitz, finding yourself in love and wondering every night whether you will survive the bombs. But it is even harder for Anna, who is still officially classified as an “enemy alien”. Those bombs are coming from Germany – the country that was once her own. If Hitler invades, can she and her beloved refugee family possibly survive? This was previously published as The Other Way Round.
The Lover’s Dictionary: A Love Story in 185 Definitions
The Lover’s Dictionary: A Love Story in 185 Definitions
David Levithan
¥66.22
How does one talk about love? We are all beginners when it comes to love, from those tentative first dates to learning how to live with, or without, someone. But how does one describe love? How does one chart its delights and pleasures, its depths and desolations? Do we even have the right words to describe something that can be both utterly mundane and completely transcendent, pulling us out of our everyday lives and making us feel a part of something greater than ourselves? David Levithan's The Lover's Dictionary starts where we all once started – with the alphabet. Constructing the story of a relationship as a dictionary, Levithan explores the intimacies and workings of love through his nameless narrator, to paint a moving portrait of love through everyday words. Cleverly using the confines of language to provide an intimate window into the great events and quotidian trifles of being part of a couple, Levithan gives us an indelible and deeply moving portrait of love in our time.
The Kingdom by the Sea (Collins Modern Classics)
The Kingdom by the Sea (Collins Modern Classics)
Robert Westall
¥51.50
Guaradian award winning novel about courage, friendship and war. Reissued into the Essential Modern Classic list. When a bomb during an air raid destroys Harry's home and kills his family, he knows that he is all alone in the world and has only himself to rely on. Anxious that he will be sent to live with his fussy Cousin Elsie he goes on the run across the war-battered land of North East England, his only friend in his journey a stray dog that he meets on the beach. Will Harry ever find a place to call home again, or will he be on the run forever?
Ironcrown Moon: Part Two of the Boreal Moon Tale
Ironcrown Moon: Part Two of the Boreal Moon Tale
Julian May
¥59.15
The continuation of a powerful new fantasy adventure filled with dark magic and deadly intrigue, from the worldwide bestselling author of the SAGA OF THE PLIOCENE EXILE. King Conrig Ironcrown now rules the entire island of High Blenholme. But the peace he achieved after ruthlessly uniting its four quarrelling kingdoms into a Sovereignty is about to be challenged by enemies both mortal and supernatural. Rumours abound that his vengeful first wife, Maudrayne, believed to have committed suicide when she discovered his infidelity, is in fact still alive and about to reveal a secret that could cost Conrig his throne. A more tangible threat is posed by the ambitious sorcerer Beynor, and his crony, Conrig's traitorous former alchymist Kilian, who have stolen a trove of currently inactive moonstones capable of drawing tremendous power from the mysterious supernatural Beaconfolk. After initiating a civil war, the pair hope to utilize this power to vanquish Conrig's fatally divided realm and rule it themselves. The King's unlikely champion is his royal intelligencer, Deveron, a young man secretly possessed of magical talents. But Deveron is torn between his loyalty to the iron-willed king and his own conscience. The resulting clash involves not only human beings, but also the ancient races who inhabited High Blenholme before them – and who now intend to take back their lost homeland.
Jimmy Coates: Target
Jimmy Coates: Target
Joe Craig
¥31.49
Jimmy’s back in the electrifying sequel to Jimmy Coates: Killer. Stand back for this high-speed adventure, packed with surprises, danger and escape against the odds. “Jimmy's fingers were slipping. Smeared with blood, he had hardly any grip. He had to hold on. Mitchell chopped his hand down hard into Jimmy's shoulder, cutting off the nerves to his fingers. Staring up into Mitchell's ice-cold eyes, Jimmy fell into the shredder.” Jimmy Coates is still on the run – and this time NJ7 are pulling no punches. They’re out for blood, and even though Jimmy has gone into hiding in France, they still track him down. Jimmy might think that life could hold no further surprises for him – but he’s very, very wrong.
Anita and Me
Anita and Me
Meera Syal
¥66.22
Nine-year-old Meena can’t wait to grow up and break free from her parents. But, as the daughter of the only Punjabi family in the mining village of Tollington, her struggle for independence is different from most. Meena wants fishfingers and chips, not chapati and dhal; she wants an English Christmas, not the usual interminable Punjabi festivities – but more than anything, she wants to roam the backyards of working-class Tollington with feisty Anita Rutter and her gang. Blonde, cool, aloof, outrageous and sassy, Anita is everything Meena thinks she wants to be. Meena wheedles her way into Anita’s life, but the arrival of a baby brother, teenage hormones, impending entrance exams for the posh grammar school and a motorcycling rebel without a future threaten to turn Anita’s salad days sour. Anita and Me paints a comic, poignant, compassionate and colourful portrait of village life in the era of flares, power cuts, glam rock, decimalisation and Ted Heath. It is a unique vision of a British childhood in the Seventies, a childhood caught between two cultures, each on the brink of change.
Ben, in the World
Ben, in the World
Doris Lessing
¥68.67
From Doris Lessing, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, the sequel to one of her most celebrated novels, ‘The Fifth Child’. ‘The Fifth Child’, Doris Lessing’s 1988 novel, made a powerful impact on publication. Its account of idyllic marital and parental bliss shattered by the arrival of the feral fifth child of the Lovatts made for unnerving and compulsive reading. That child, Ben, is the central character of this sequel, which picks up the fable at the end of his childhood and takes our primal, misunderstood, maladjusted teenager out into the world. He meets mostly with mockery, fear and incomprehension, but with just enough kindness and openness to keep him afloat as his adventures take him from London to the south of France and on to South America in his restless quest for community, companionship and peace. Lessing employs a plain, unadorned prose fit for fables; again, we have a childlike perspective at the heart of the book; again, the world in all its malevolence and misapprehension swirls around at the edge, while, occasionally, a strong character steps forward to try to set a good example.
Disguise
Disguise
Hugo Hamilton
¥66.22
Hugo Hamilton, the internationally acclaimed author of ‘The Speckled People’ and ‘Sailor in the Wardrobe’, turns his hand back to fiction with a compelling drama tracing Berlin's central historical importance throughout the twentieth century. 1945. At the end of the second world war in Berlin, a young mother loses her two-year-old boy in the bombings. She flees to the south, where her father finds a young foundling of the same age among the refugee trains to replace the boy. He makes her promise never to tell anyone, including her husband – still fighting on the Russian front – that the boy is not her own. Nobody will know the difference. 2008. Gregor Liedmann is a Jewish man now in his sixties. He's an old rocker who ran away from home, a trumpet player, a revolutionary stone-thrower left over from the 1968 generation. On a single day spent gathering fruit in an orchard outside Berlin with family and friends, Gregor looks back over his life, sifting through fact and memory in order to establish the truth. What happened on that journey south in the final days of the war? Why did his grandfather Emil disappear, and why did the Gestapo torture uncle Max? Here, in the calmness of the orchard, along with his ex-wife Mara and son Daniel, Gregor tries to unlock the secret of his past. In his first novel since the best-selling memoir ‘The Speckled People’, Hugo Hamilton has created a truly compelling story of lost identity, and a remarkable reflection on the ambiguity of belonging.
TV Stars! (The Sleepover Club)
TV Stars! (The Sleepover Club)
Fiona Cummings
¥27.27
The hugely popular Sleepover Club series is back with a gorgeous new look. Meet Frankie, Kenny, Fliss, Rosie and Lyndz – five best friends who just want to have fun! Fliss persuades the rest of her pals to come along for moral support when she goes to audition for a TV commercial, and the girls are really excited to go along. Maybe Fliss could become a TV star! But when all five girls decide to try out for the same commercial, Fliss is not happy at all, and rivalry threatens to ruin their friendship. Could this be the end for the Sleepover Club? As well as a great story this book has tips for fun things to do at your own sleepover party for you and your friends. Pack up your sleepover kit and join in the fun!
The Mentor
The Mentor
Steve Jackson
¥51.50
Spying, lying and dying. Fans of ‘Spooks’ will be swept away by Steve Jackson’s explosive debut novel. They say lightning never strikes twice. They are wrong. London has been bombed for the second time in 2 years, but this time the enemy is a lot closer to home. Paul Aston, a young MI6 Agent, is sent to investigate. But nothing could have prepared him for the scenes of horror and devastation that he sees. Images that will stay with him for the rest of his life. The government blames MI6, MI6 blames the government, but the truth behind what the media are calling 18/8 is more chilling than anyone could have imagined. Slowly, Aston tears away the layers of corruption, betrayal and murder to reveal the real culprit. Someone who knows every trick in the book, because he’s played every trick in the book. Someone who has a deep seething hatred of MI6 and will stop at nothing until his vengeance is satisfied. He is The Mentor.
Trick or Treat (The Sleepover Club)
Trick or Treat (The Sleepover Club)
Jana Hunter
¥27.27
The hugely popular Sleepover Club series is back with a gorgeous new look. Meet Frankie, Kenny, Fliss, Rosie and Lyndz - five best friends who just want to have fun! It's Halloween and the Sleepover Club girls have organised a special spooky sleepover at Kenny's house. Then her horrible big sister Molly goes and ruins everything. But Molly had better watch out as the girls are determined to get their own back. And their plan involves a geeky boy and a witchy little love potion... As well as a great story this book has tips for fun things to do at your own sleepover party for you and your friends. Pack up your sleepover kit and join in the fun!
Cocaine Nights
Cocaine Nights
J. G. Ballard,James Lever
¥57.09
‘Snort up “Cocaine Nights”. It’s disorientating, deranging and knocks the work of other avant-garde writers into a hatted cock’ Will Self Five people die in an unexplained house fire in the Spanish resort of Estrella de Mar, an exclusive enclave for the rich, retired British, centred on the thriving Club Nautico. The club manager, Frank Prentice, pleads guilty to charges of murder – yet not even the police believe him. When his Charles arrives to unravel the truth, he gradually discovers that behind the resort’s civilized fa?ade flourishes a secret world of crime, drugs and illicit sex. At once an engrossing mystery and a novel of ideas, ‘Cocaine Nights’ is a stunningly original work, a vision of a society coming to terms with a life of almost unlimited leisure. This edition is part of a new commemorative series of Ballard’s works, featuring introductions from a number of his admirers (including Neil Gaiman, Zadie Smith, John Lanchester and Martin Amis) and brand-new cover designs.
The Verruca Bazooka (GUNK Aliens, Book 1)
The Verruca Bazooka (GUNK Aliens, Book 1)
Jonny Moon
¥27.27
Aliens are coming… to get up your nose! A long time ago, on a planet really, really far away, a bunch of slimy aliens discovered the secret to clean, renewable energy – snot! That was when the Galactic Union of Nasty Killer Aliens (G.U.N.K.) was born. Its mission: to find human life and drain its snot. Rockets were sent to the four corners of the known universe, each carrying representatives from the major alien races. Three of them were never heard from again. But one of them landed on a planet quite simply full of humans. This one. Now all that stands between earth and alien invasion is a hero named Jack. Problem is, he’s not even out of primary school yet…
The Devil and Miss Prym
The Devil and Miss Prym
Paulo Coelho
¥66.22
A novel from Paulo Coelho, author of The Alchemist. A stranger arrives in the small mountain village. He carries with him a backpack containing a notebook and eleven gold bars. Burying these in the vicinity, the stranger strikes up a curious friendship with a young woman from the village – Miss Prym. His mission is to discover whether human beings are essentially good or evil. In this stunning novel, Paulo Coelho’s unusual protagonist sets the town a moral challenge from which they may never recover. A fascinating meditation on the human soul, The Devil and Miss Prym illuminates the reality of good and evil within us all, and our uniquely human capacity to choose between them.