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Kepler's Witch
Kepler's Witch
Connor, James A.
¥88.56
Set against the backdrop of the witchcraft trial of his mother, this lively biography of Johannes Kepler the Protestant Galileo' and 16th century mathematician and astronomer reveals the surprisingly spiritual nature of the quest of early modern science. In the style of Dava Sobel's Galileo's Daughter, Connor's book brings to life the tidal forces of Reformation, Counter Reformation, and social upheaval. Johannes Kepler, who discovered the three basic laws of planetary motion, was persecuted for his support of the Copernican system. After a neighbour accused his mother of witchcraft, Kepler quit his post as the Imperial mathematician to defend her. James Connor tells Kepler's story as a pilgrimage, a spiritual journey into the modern world through war and disease and terrible injustice, a journey reflected in the evolution of Kepler's geometrical model of the cosmos into a musical model, harmony into greater harmony. The leitmotif of the witch trial adds a third dimension to Kepler's biography by setting his personal life within his own times. The acts of this trial, including Kepler's letters and the accounts of the witnesses, although published in their original German dialects, had never before been translated into English. Echoing some of Dava Sobel's work for Galileo's Daughter, Connor has translated the witch trial documents into English. With a great respect for the history of these times and the life of this man, Connor's accessible story illuminates the life of Kepler, the man of science, but also Kepler, a man of uncommon faith and vision.
Stasiland
Stasiland
Funder, Anna
¥88.56
In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell; shortly afterward the two Germanys reunited, and East Germany ceased to exist. Anna Funder's bestselling Stasiland brings us extraordinary tales of real lives in the former East Germany. She meets Miriam, who tried to escape to West Berlin as a sixteen-year-old; hears the heartbreaking story of Frau Paul, who was separated from her baby by the Berlin Wall; and gets drunk with the legendary Mik Jegger of the East, once declared by the authorities to his face no longer to exist. And she meets the Stasi men themselves, still proud of their surveillance methods. Funder's powerful account of that brutal world has become a contemporary classic.
Pain, Parties, Work
Pain, Parties, Work
Winder, Elizabeth
¥88.56
I dreamed of New York, I am going there.On May 31, 1953, twenty-year-old Sylvia Plath arrived in New York City for a one-month stint at the intellectual fashion magazine Mademoiselle to be a guest editor for its prestigious annual college issue. Over the next twenty-six days, the bright, blond New England collegian lived at the Barbizon Hotel, attended Balanchine ballets, watched a game at Yankee Stadium, and danced at the West Side Tennis Club. She typed rejection letters to writers from The New Yorker and ate an entire bowl of caviar at an advertising luncheon. She stalked Dylan Thomas and fought off an aggressive diamond-wielding delegate from the United Nations. She took hot baths, had her hair done, and discovered her signature drink (vodka, no ice). Young, beautiful, and on the cusp of an advantageous career, she was supposed to be having the time of her life.Drawing on in-depth interviews with fellow guest editors whose memories infuse these pages, Elizabeth Winder reveals how these twenty-six days indelibly altered how Plath saw herself, her mother, her friendships, and her romantic relationships, and how this period shaped her emerging identity as a woman and as a writer. Pain, Parties, Work the three words Plath used to describe that time shows how Manhattan's alien atmosphere unleashed an anxiety that would stay with her for the rest of her all-too-short life.Thoughtful and illuminating, this captivating portrait invites us to see Sylvia Plath before The Bell Jar, before she became an icon a young woman with everything to live for.
Clever Girl
Clever Girl
Kessler, Lauren
¥88.56
Communists vilified her as a raging neurotic. Leftists dismissed her as a confused idealist. Her family pitied her as an exploited lover. Some said she was a traitor, a stooge, a mercenary and a grandstander. To others she was a true American heroine fearless, principled, bold and resolute. Congressional committees loved her. The FBI hailed her as an avenging angel. The Catholics embraced her. But the fact is, more than half a century after she captured the headlines as the "Red Spy Queen," Elizabeth Bentley remains a mystery.New England-born, conservatively raised, and Vassar-educated, Bentley was groomed for a quiet life, a small life, which she explored briefly in the 1920s as a teacher, instructing well-heeled young women on the beauty of Romance languages at an east coast boarding school. But in her mid-twenties, she rejected both past and future and set herself on an entirely new course. In the 1930s she embraced communism and fell in love with an undercover KGB agent who initiated her into the world of espionage. By the time America plunged into WWII, Elizabeth Bentley was directing the operations of the two largest spy rings in America. Eventually, she had eighty people in her secret apparatus, half of them employees of the federal government. Her sources were everywhere: in the departments of Treasury and Commerce, in New Deal agencies, in the top-secret OSS (the precursor to the CIA), on Congressional committees, even in the Oval Office.When she defected in 1945 and told her story first to the FBI and then at a series of public hearings and trials she was catapulted to tabloid fame as the "Red Spy Queen," ushering in, almost single-handedly, the McCarthy Era. She was the government’s star witness, the FBI’s most important informer, and the darling of the Catholic anti-Communist movement. Her disclosures and accusations put a halt to Russian spying for years and helped to set the tone of American postwar political life.But who was sheA smart, independent woman who made her choices freely, right and wrong, and had the strength of character to see them throughOr was she used and manipulated by othersClever Girl is the definitive biography of a conflicted American woman and her controversial legacy. Set against the backdrop of the political drama that defined mid-twentieth century America, it explores the spy case whose explosive domestic and foreign policy repercussions have been debated for decades but not fully revealed until now.
Waiting to Be Heard
Waiting to Be Heard
Knox, Amanda
¥88.56
In March 2015, the Supreme Court of Italy exonerated Amanda Knox, author of the New York Times bestselling memoir Waiting To Be Heard. In an afterward to this newly issued paperback edition, Amanda updates readers on her life since 2011, introduces the individuals who helped her persevere as her case continued through the Italian courts, and shares her plans for helping others who have also been wrongfully convicted. In November 2007, 20 year-old Amanda Knox had only been studying in Perugia, Italy, for a few weeks when her friend and roommate, British student Meredith Kercher, was murdered. The investigation made headlines around the world, and Amanda's arrest placed her at the center of a media firestorm. After an extremely controversial trial, she was convicted of murder in 2009. She spent four years in an Italian prison until a new court, which appointed independent experts to review the prosecution’s DNA evidence, affirmatively found her innocent in 2011. She returned home to Seattle, Washington. But just when Amanda thought her legal nightmare had ended, it began all over again. In March 2013, Italy’s highest court annulled the acquittal and sent the case to the lower courts for further proceedings. Even though no new evidence was introduced against her, Amanda was found guilty and sentenced to 28years in prison in January, 2014. This decision was overturned by the Italian Supreme Court, which exonerated her of the murder charge. In Waiting to Be Heard, Amanda speaks about what it was like to find herself imprisoned in a foreign country for a crime she did not commit, and how much she relied on the unwavering support of her family and friends, many of whom made extraordinary sacrifices on her behalf. Waiting to Be Heard is an unflinching, heartfelt coming-of-age narrative like no other—now with a new afterword, in which Amanda describes the heart-stopping final twists in her fight for freedom, and her hopes for the future.
Jason Priestley
Jason Priestley
Priestley, Jason
¥88.56
Tales told out of school Jason Priestley: A Memoir tells the honest, compelling, and often humorous details of Priestley's up-and-down life, from his childhood in Canada to his adult life as a husband and father. Priestley shares his best stories of life as a young, unknown actor and later as a star; some of his compadres were Brad Pitt, Bradley Cooper, Tiffani Amber Thiessen, and Ashley Judd, and he divulges never-before-revealed anecdotes about their early days as actors. But even with his engaging insights and terrific sense of humor, Priestley does not avoid the tough subjects. In 2000, he had a brush with the law and was briefly in jail. His longtime passion for auto racing led to a devastating injury in 2002, during a practice run at the Kentucky Speedway when he crashed his race car into a wall at nearly 190 miles an hour. (Luke Perry, who was and still is one of his best friends, rushed to his side after the crash.) Eventually Priestley made a full recovery. In Jason Priestley: A Memoir, Priestley shares the delights and difficulties of living a real life that is better than any fiction.
All Things Possible
All Things Possible
Warner, Kurt
¥88.56
NFL sensation Kurt Warner tells the incredible story of faith and perseverance that captured the hearts of millions and rocketed him from obscurity to become MVP and Super Bowl champion.
Mega Sleepover 5 (The Sleepover Club)
Mega Sleepover 5 (The Sleepover Club)
Louis Catt,Fiona Cummings
¥88.39
Join the Sleepover Club: Frankie, Kenny, Felicity, Rosie and Lyndsey, five girls who want to have fun – but who always end up in mischief! In Sleepover on Friday 13th, Kenny plans some spooky surprises – but suddenly, everything starts getting out of control… In Sleepover Girls Go Camping, it’s the Sleepover Club versus the M&Ms on a massive assault course at summer camp. And in Sleepover Girls Go Detective, Lyndz’s cat disappears. Could it be anything to do with a very suspicious-looking neighbour? Three fantastic Sleepover Club stories in one!
The Dream Room
The Dream Room
Marcel Möring
¥88.39
‘Into its 120 pages, M?ring folds a war memoir, a family psychodrama and a meditation on time and memory. It is a miracle of compression: everything is significant…one races through it, eager to discover the heart of the mystery.’ Guardian The story of a family – mother, father (ex-World War II pilot), twelve-year-old son David – who live above a toy shop in a small town on the windswept Dutch coast. On the same day that David finds himself listening to the toy shop owner complaining that he can’t sell model aeroplane kits any more because kids nowadays are too lazy to glue all the pieces together, David’s father quits his job in a fit of pique and pride. A few hours later, his mother comes home, having left her job too. So, David devises a plan – and before the day is over the whole family is at home, putting model aeroplanes together. A wonderful, perfect summer ensues, suddenly interrupted by the arrival of an unexpected visitor, his father’s old friend from the war. His arrival revives old feelings of loyalty, love and hatred – and ensures that nothing will ever return to a perfect state again. Accessible, warm, funny and wise, this novel was a massive bestseller in M?ring’s native Holland. A gem of a story, it has the fable-like appeal of a “Miss Garnet’s Angel” (but without the middle-Englandness) or of Bernard Schlink’s “The Reader” (but without the heavy moral overtone).The book is most reminiscent of J.L. Carr’s “A Month in the Country”, the Booker Prize-winning English novel set just after World War I, heavy with nostalgia, evocative, melancholy.
Falling out of Heaven
Falling out of Heaven
John Lynch
¥88.39
Hauntingly told and emotionally charged, this is an immense story of consuming addiction and the betrayal of trust. Gabriel O'Rourke seemingly has everything: a loving wife, an adoring young son, a worthwhile job. He is rooted in a community, is part of a family, has a home. Yet, gradually, his world slowly pulls apart, until Gabriel finds himself homeless and destitute, living out of rubbish skips on the street. In a psychotic haze he is admitted into a secure unit, his body addled by alcohol, his mind broken. Here, by confronting the blighting reality of his own alcoholism, Gabriel is forced finally to unearth the muddled spectre of the past: the black betrayals by those around him, his traumatic relationship with his father, and the true darkness of some obsessions. Learning to navigate a landscape pockmarked with trauma to undergo a journey of painstaking absolution and halting reconstruction, Gabriel understands that only by untangling the mistakes of the past can he hope to reclaim his future.
Told in Silence
Told in Silence
Rebecca Connell
¥88.39
New novel from exciting young author Rebecca Connell From the outside, Violet seems to lead an ordinary and uneventful existence - single, working in a shop, and living with her parents in rural Kent - but her life has already been touched by tragedy. At 21, Violet is a young widow, and the couple she lives with, Harvey and Laura Blackwood, are not her own parents but those of her late husband, Jonathan. Rocked by grief, Violet has shut herself away from the world, but she soon finds that she cannot escape reality. When Max Croft, an old friend of Jonathan's, enters her life, she is faced not only with the possibility of a new attraction, but with the knowledge that there are secrets behind her husband’s death that she has not yet uncovered, and which threaten to shake her faith in everything she knows about their past life together. Told in Silence is a spellbinding and unforgettable novel of desire, deception and the lengths that we will go to for love.
Three Girls and their Brother
Three Girls and their Brother
Theresa Rebeck
¥88.39
A stunning novel about celebrity and the price of fame from a Pulitzer-shortlisted playwright and the creator of hit series SMASH. It was the photograph in the New Yorker which started it all. They were three young, beautiful, red-haired girls, there granddaughters of a literary lion. They were News. But it was the row over the youngest's reaction to the attentions from one of Hollywood's biggest stars that made them Celebrities. The family – the three sisters, their brother, their mother, their normally absent father – are sucked into a whirlwind of agents, producers, managers, photo shoots, paparazzi, journalists, stylists, parties, shows, a maelstrom they have no idea how to control. The three girls – and their brother, an uneasy observer – experiment with life and change, and learn to survive, each of them differently. Each of them pays a different price in their relationship with each other, with their parents and in their beliefs in themselves and the civilisation around them. Three Girls and their Brother is a novel to devour. The story is compelling, sometimes cutting, sometimes touching. The characters leap widely off the page. The setting and portrait of the celebrity scene is completely convincing, busy and yet intimate. Theresa Rebeck's first novel is a triumph.
Love Bites: Marital Skirmishes in the Kitchen
Love Bites: Marital Skirmishes in the Kitchen
Christopher Hirst
¥88.39
A witty culinary exploration of both the unusual and the familiar, written by former Independent columnist, Chris Hirst. On his perilous culinary mission into the kitchen, Hirst proudly seeks to reclaim some of the greatest dishes in modern-day cuisine that we have become bizarrely indifferent to as a nation. Peppered throughout with the piquant comments and trenchant opinions of Mrs H, acting as a vocal - though not always enthusiastic - participant, Hirst’s lively instruction includes such dining delights as the quintessentially English treat of the pork pie, the history of the humble rhubarb stick and forays into the kitchen to make sticky Seville orange marmalade and grown-up biscuits including dubious amounts of absinthe. Tackling important questions such as the correct pronunciation of a certain cheesy snack (clearly Welsh rabbit not rarebit), and probing what it was exactly that fascinated our ancestors so much about blancmange (was it the inclusion of meat?), Hirst might not promise perfect results, but guarantees intriguing historical discussion about age-old culinary classics.
Mega Sleepover 2 (The Sleepover Club)
Mega Sleepover 2 (The Sleepover Club)
Rose Impey,Narinder Dhami
¥88.39
Join the Sleepover Club: Frankie, Kenny, Felicity, Rosie and Lyndsey, five girls who want to have fun – but who always end up in mischief! In The Sleepover Club at Frankie’s, the gang decides to set up Brown Owl with Dishy Dave the school caretaker. But playing Cupid isn’t as easy as they think… It’s Lyndz’s birthday in The Sleepover Club at Lyndsey’s, and the gang plan a spooky video night. Only the spooks suddenly seem for real… And in The Sleepover Club at Felicity’s, Fliss goes diet-crazy. But sleepovers and food go hand in hand, and the girls must find emergency supplies!
The Bird Woman
The Bird Woman
Kerry Hardie
¥88.39
The much anticipated second novel from prize-winning Irish poet and novelist, Kerry Hardie. 'The Bird Woman' is a moving account of two marriages, a gift that feels like a curse, and the freedom that lies on the far side of family or group identity. Ellen McKinnon, red-haired, clairvoyant, fiercely independent, finds her marriage, her health, her sanity threatened when she 'sees' the death of a man in a bomb attack before it has really occurred. Terrified by what's happening to her, she leaves her home, her tribe, her husband, to live with a man she barely knows in Southern Ireland. There she strives to live a normal life in a different culture, to be accepted by her husband's family and friends, to learn a new way of living. Though determined to suppress her 'gift' at any cost, with the birth of her children the clairvoyance changes and broadens into a power to heal. Slowly the rumours spread and the sick seek her out, yet she turns them away from her door. Her husband and her closest friend demand that she question her right to suppress her remarkable powers. Reluctantly she accepts her fate, and begins her work as a healer. But the personal cost is high, and this work begins to damage her most intimate relationships. When news of the final illness of her long-estranged mother forces her return to her native city, everything falls apart for her and she finds there's no safe ground beneath her feet.
Boyfriend in a Dress
Boyfriend in a Dress
Louise Kean
¥88.39
A novel about cross-dressing, social apathy, and seeing the best in people, a little too late. It started when I came home and found my bloody pointless stupid bastard boyfriend, Charlie, on my sofa, in my blue Lycra dress. He was having some sort of breakdown. It transpired that Charlie had been having an epiphany of sorts. The previous night, standing on his balcony, he had witnessed an attack – on a woman he'd just kicked out of his bed. Ahsen and shaken, on his way to work the next day, he had found a dead body in the train toilets and now here he was, in a dress, sobbing uncontrollably. I had been ready to dump Charlie once and for all – he was an unfaithful bastard (so was I, but not to the same extent). But he convinced me to run off with him to Devon for a week to sort his head out and I decided I owed him that much. Sizzling in the unlikely heatwave that week, everything changed between us, as we sucked on ice-creams naked on deckchairs, and hi-jacked an old people's bowling green. But despite the fact that our relationship had never been so strong and never meant so much to either of us, could we handle what was waiting for us back in London?
Polgara the Sorceress
Polgara the Sorceress
David Eddings
¥88.39
The last and most amazing volume in the legendary Belgariad series: the story of the queen of truth, love, rage and destiny, Polgara the Sorceress. The queen of truth, love, rage and destiny reveals all. Polgara the Sorceress is the crowning achievement of the great fantasy epic which began with The Belgariad and continued with The Malloreon. Once again David and Leigh Eddings display the epic imagination, humour, and storytelling power which have made this series the most popular fantasy of modern times. In the story of Polgara, a beautiful woman whose constancy and inner power have been the foundation of all the luck and love that have saved the world, the full truth of The Belgariad is revealed.
Forty Words for Sorrow
Forty Words for Sorrow
Giles Blunt
¥88.39
Dark, atmospheric and terrifying psychological serial killer thriller set in a freezing Ontario winter, guaranteed to chill readers to the bone: ‘Forty Words for Sorrow is brilliant’ Jonathan Kellerman When four teenagers go missing in the small northern town of Algonquin Bay, the extensive police investigation comes up empty. Everyone is ready to give up, except Detective John Cardinal, an all-too-human loner whose persistence only serves to get him removed from homicide. Then the mutilated body of thirteen-year-old Katie Pine is pulled out of an abandoned mineshaft. And only Cardinal is willing to consider the horrible truth: that this quiet town is home to the most vicious of killers. With the media, the provincial police and his own department questioning his every move, Cardinal follows increasingly tenuous threads towards the unthinkable. But time isn’t only running out for him: there’s also another young victim tied up in a basement wondering how and when he will die.
The Bush Agenda
The Bush Agenda
Juhasz, Antonia
¥88.33
In The Bush Agenda, Antonia Juhasz exposes a radical corporate globalization agenda that has been refined by leading members and allies of the Bush administration over decades and reached its fullest, most aggressive implementation under George W. Bush and Bush Agenda adherents plan for it to outlast him. Juhasz uncovers the history and key role of U.S. corporations in the creation of this agenda focusing on Bechtel, Lockheed Martin, Chevron, and Halliburton then presents the Iraq War as its most brutal application to date. Expertly revealing the oil timeline driving the war, Juhasz charts exactly how the administration has fundamentally transformed Iraq's economy, locked in sweeping advantages to its corporate allies, and expanded its target to the whole Middle East. The results of these same corporate globalization policies dislocation, extreme poverty, and increased violence and terrorism have been demonstrated in regions from South America to Africa to the Middle East and Asia, and in the United States.Extensively researched and now updated with a new afterword, The Bush Agenda is a brilliant, informative analysis, revealing the hard truths about where the Bush administration and its corporate allies are leading the modern world and what we can do about it.
Sons of Camelot
Sons of Camelot
Leamer, Laurence
¥88.33
One of Bobby Kennedy's first acts after JFK's assassination was to write a letter to his eldest son, reminding him of the obligations of his name. Bobby sent the letter to eleven-year-old Joe, but the message was meant for all his sons and nephews.Sons of Camelot is the compelling story of that message and how it shaped each Kennedy son and grandson in the aftermath of President John F. Kennedy's death. Based on five years of rigorous research and unprecedented cooperation from both the Kennedys and the Shrivers, Sons of Camelot examines the lives characterized by overwhelming drama -- from the most spectacular mishaps, excesses, and tragediesto the remarkable accomplishments that have led to better lives for Americans and others around the world.The third volume in Laurence Leamer's bestselling history of America's first family, Sons of Camelot chronicles the spellbinding journey of a message sent from a father to his son ... from a president to his people.
Crossed
Crossed
Galland, Nicole
¥88.33
In the year 1202, tens of thousands of crusaders gather in Venice, preparing to embark for Jerusalem to free the Holy City from Muslim rule. Among them is a lowly vagabond Briton, rescued from damnation by a pious knight who burns with zealous fire for their sacred undertaking. And so they set sail, along with dedicated companions—and with a beautiful, mysterious Arab "princess" whom the vagabond liberates from a brutish merchant. But the divine light guiding their "righteous" campaign soon darkens as the mission sinks ever deeper into catastrophe, disgrace, and moral turpitude—as Christians murder Christians in the Adriatic port city of Zara, tragic events are set in motion that will ultimately lead to the shocking and shameful fall of Constantinople. Impeccably researched and beautifully told, Nicole Galland's Crossed is a stunning tale of the disastrous Fourth Crusade—and of the hopeful, brave, and driven who were caught up in and irrevocably changed by a corrupted cause and a furious battle beyond their comprehension or control.