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A Piece of the World
A Piece of the World
Christina Baker Kline
¥66.22
‘Graceful, moving and powerful . . . a wonderful story that seems to have been waiting, all this time, for Kline to come along and tell it’ MICHAEL CHABON For decades, Christina Olson’s whole world has been a rocky, windswept point on the coast of Maine, the farmhouse her ancestors fled to from the Salem witch trials. A world she fears she will never leave. As a girl, farm life asked more of Christina than it did her family, her wasting limbs turning every task into a challenge. But the very tenacity that strengthened her may dash her chances for a life beyond her chores and extinguish her hopes for love. Years pass and Christina’s solitude is broken by the arrival of Andrew Wyeth, a young artist who is fixated on the isolated farm house. In Christina he will discover more than a kindred spirit; for him, she will become a muse like no other… From the bestselling author of ORPHAN TRAIN comes a luminous portrait of a woman of grit and grace, as heartwarming as it is gripping. A story that allows the reader to marvel at Andrew Wyeth’s iconic portrait from the other side.
The Ice: A gripping thriller for our times from the Bailey’s shortlisted author
The Ice: A gripping thriller for our times from the Bailey’s shortlisted author
Laline Paull
¥66.22
An electrifying story of friendship, power and betrayal by the bestselling, Baileys-prize shortlisted author of The Bees. It's the day after tomorrow and the Arctic sea ice has melted. While global business carves up the new frontier, cruise ships race each other to ever-rarer wildlife sightings. The passengers of the Vanir have come seeking a polar bear. What they find is even more astonishing: a dead body. It is Tom Harding, lost in an accident three years ago and now revealed by the melting ice of Midgard glacier. Tom had come to Midgard to help launch the new venture of his best friend of thirty years, Sean Cawson, a man whose business relies on discretion and powerful connections – and who was the last person to see him alive. Their friendship had been forged by a shared obsession with Arctic exploration. And although Tom's need to save the world often clashed with Sean's desire to conquer it, Sean has always believed that underneath it all, they shared the same goals. But as the inquest into Tom's death begins, the choices made by both men – in love and in life – are put on the stand. And when cracks appear in the foundations of Sean's glamorous world, he is forced to question what price he has really paid for a seat at the establishment's table. Just how deep do the lies go?
Standard Deviation: ‘The best feel-good novel around’ Daily Mail
Standard Deviation: ‘The best feel-good novel around’ Daily Mail
Katherine Heiny
¥66.22
‘I have rarely seen modern marriage reproduced so faithfully in print. It’s about love once the early romance has subsided. Hilarious’ Jojo Moyes, Woman and Home ‘Standard Deviation is a marvel’ Kate Atkinson ‘Addictive reading’ Mail on Sunday ‘A comic masterpiece’ Observer A divinely funny novel about the challenges of a good marriage, the delight and heartache of raising children, and the irresistible temptation to wonder about the path not taken. Graham Cavanaugh’s second wife, Audra, is everything his first wife was not. She considers herself privileged to live in the age of the hair towel, talks non-stop through her epidural, labour and delivery, invites the doorman to move in and the eccentric members of their son’s Origami Club to Thanksgiving. She is charming and spontaneous and fun but life with her can be exhausting. In the midst of the day-to-day difficulties and delights of marriage and raising a child with Asperger’s, his first wife, Elspeth, reenters Graham’s life. Former spouses are hard to categorize – are they friends, enemies, old flames, or just people who know you really, really well? Graham starts to wonder: How can anyone love two such different women? Did he make the right choice? Is there a right choice?
Back Room Girl: By the author of Paul Temple
Back Room Girl: By the author of Paul Temple
Francis Durbridge,Melvyn Barnes
¥66.22
Never published in paperback, and back in print for the first time since 1950, Back Room Girl was the first original novel by Francis Durbridge. Retiring to No Man’s Cove in Cornwall to write his memoirs, crime reporter Roy Benton discovers that a disused tin mine has become a research station for a secret weapons project. Karen Silvers, in charge of operations, reluctantly accepts that Benton’s experience could help her fight a sinister organisation intent on stealing their plans. Having adapted five of his Paul Temple radio serials into successful novelisations, in 1950 Francis Durbridge decided to try his hand at writing his first original novel. Back Room Girl bore all the hallmarks of the famous Paul Temple stories, an outlandish mixture of mystery, glamour and suspense, in a book that was never reprinted and so became an enigma to his many fans – until now. Includes an introduction by bibliographer Melvyn Barnes plus two rare short stories written for Christmas annuals: LIGHT-FINGERS and A PRESENT FROM PAUL TEMPLE.
The Mamur Zapt and the Camel of Destruction (Mamur Zapt, Book 7)
The Mamur Zapt and the Camel of Destruction (Mamur Zapt, Book 7)
Michael Pearce
¥66.22
In this classic mystery from the award-winning Michael Pearce, a powerful politician is murdered in Cairo in the 1900s and the Mamur Zapt is called in to investigate Cairo, 1910. The end of the boom and everyone seems to have money troubles. Then one day a civil servant dies at his desk. Was it pressure of work or something nastier? The whiff of corruption is in the air, with even Gareth Owen, the Mamur Zapt, under suspicion… Owen’s investigation takes him to the heart of a sinister organization. But will he be up to taking them on? And will he be in time to stop the Camel of Destruction running through the city?
The Fig Tree Murder (Mamur Zapt, Book 10)
The Fig Tree Murder (Mamur Zapt, Book 10)
Michael Pearce
¥66.22
From the award-winning Michael Pearce, comes a delightful murder mystery set in Egypt in 1908. A body is found on the tracks of a new electric railway and the Mamur Zapt is called in to investigate. Cairo, 1908. It’s called the Tree of the Virgin, a site of religious interest, perilously close to the construction site of the new electric railway. Sinister power groups are jostling for position, but who dumped the body of the humble villager on the track? When the Mamur Zapt begins to pick his way through the local and national power structures, he has to ask, what is the significance of the Fig Tree? Does it matter that the caravans for Mecca gather only a mile or so away? And what of the ostrich that passed in the night?
The Black Reaper: Tales of Terror by Bernard Capes (Collins Chillers)
The Black Reaper: Tales of Terror by Bernard Capes (Collins Chillers)
Bernard Capes,Hugh Lamb
¥66.22
A collection of rare horror stories that will thrill fans of classic writers such as M. R. James, Bram Stoker, Edgar Allan Poe and E. F. Benson. Bernard Capes was celebrated as one of the most prolific authors of the late Victorian period, producing dozens of short stories, articles, and more than forty novels across multiple genres, culminating in the first original crime novel published by Collins, The Skeleton Key. His greatest acclaim, however, came from penning some of the most terrifying ghost stories of the era. Yet following his death in 1918 his work all but slipped into oblivion until the 1980s, when veteran anthologist Hugh Lamb first collected Capes’s tales of terror as The Black Reaper. Every story bears the stamp of Capes’s fertile and deeply pessimistic imagination, from werewolf priests and haunted typewriters to marble hands that come to life and plague-stricken villagers haunted by a scythe-wielding ghost. Now expanded with eleven further stories, a revised introduction and a new foreword by Capes’s grandson, Ian Burns, this classic collection will thrill horror fans and restore Capes’s reputation as one of the best writers in the horror genre.
Dmitri and the One-Legged Lady (Dmitri Kameron Mystery, Book 2)
Dmitri and the One-Legged Lady (Dmitri Kameron Mystery, Book 2)
Michael Pearce
¥66.22
The second in the delightfully witty and diverting new crime series set in Tsarist Russia from the award-winning Michael Pearce. A dreamy province of Tsarist Russia in the 1980s. An ambitious young lawyer. And the One-Legged Lady, one of the most important ikons in the district, goes missing. Exactly how important she is, the sceptical Dmitri, whose task it is to track her down, will soon find out. Who has taken her and for why? The sinister Volkov, from the Tsar’s Corps of Gendarmes, suspects the theft has something to do with a wave of popular feeling at a time of famine – which means trouble for some innocent people, unless Dmitri gets there first…
Scissors, Paper, Stone
Scissors, Paper, Stone
Elizabeth Day
¥66.22
A frank and beautiful story of damage, survival and restoration from an exhilarating literary voice. As Charles Redfern lies motionless in hospital, his wife Anne and daughter Charlotte are forced to confront their relationships with him – and with each other. Anne, once beautiful and clever, has paled in the shadow of her husband's dominance. Charlotte, meanwhile, is battling with her own inner darkness and is desperate to prevent her relationship with her not-yet-divorced lover from disintegrating. As the full truth of Charles's hold over them is brought to light, both women must reconcile themselves with the choices they have made, the secrets they have kept, and the uncertain future that now lies ahead of them.
The Book of Swords: Part 2
The Book of Swords: Part 2
Gardner Dozois
¥66.22
An epic collection of fantasy tales in the grand tradition, including a never-before-published A Song of Ice and Fire story by George R.R. Martin and an introduction by Gardner Dozois. Fantasy fiction has produced some of the most unforgettable heroes ever conjured onto the page: Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian, Michael Moorcock’s Elric of Melniboné, Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. Classic characters like these made sword and sorcery a cornerstone of fantasy fiction, and an inspiration for a new generation of writers, spinning their own tales of magical adventure. Now, in The Book of Swords, acclaimed editor and bestselling author Gardner Dozois presents an anthology of sixteen original epic stories by a stellar cast of modern masters, including George R.R. Martin, Robin Hobb, Garth Nix, Ken Liu, Daniel Abraham, Scott Lynch, Cecelia Holland, Ellen Kushner, and more on journeys into the outer realms of dark enchantment and intrepid adventure, featuring a stunning assortment of fearless swordsmen and warrior women who face down danger and death at every turn with courage, cunning, and cold steel.
Nicotine
Nicotine
Nell Zink
¥66.22
From the much acclaimed author of MISLAID and THE WALLCREEPER, a fierce and audaciously funny novel of families―both the ones we’re born into and the ones we create―a story of obsession, idealism, and ownership, centered around a young woman who inherits her bohemian late father’s childhood home. “She wills her body to be equally wraithlike. Not sodden, not heavy, not dead, but filled with crackling, electric life, like a stale Marlboro on fire.” Unemployed business major, Penny, has rebelled against her family her whole life – by being the conventional one. Her mother was a member of a South American tribe; her father was a Jewish Shamanist with a psychedelic 'healing centre'. But everything changes when her father dies and Penny inherits his childhood home. Left weightless and unmoored after being the only member of her family with time for her dying father, Penny then finds his property occupied by a group of squatters, united in defence of smokers' rights – and herself unexpectedly besotted with them, particularly Rob, the hot bicycle-and-tobacco activist. Totally addictive and dangerously good, ‘Nicotine’ is a fiercely funny novel in which passion is politics and nonviolence is the opposite of surrender.
Tales of Terror by Jerome K. Jerome, Barry Pain and Robert Barr
Tales of Terror by Jerome K. Jerome, Barry Pain and Robert Barr
Jerome K. Jerome,Barry Pain
¥66.22
A collection of rare horror stories that will thrill fans of classic writers such as M. R. James, Bram Stoker, Edgar Allan Poe and E. F. Benson. Jerome K. Jerome’s reputation as a humorist, renowned for his comic novel Three Men in a Boat, has thrown into undeserved obscurity his fine efforts in the ghost story genre. Three Men in the Dark collects Jerome’s major horror stories, together with a selection from two of his friends with whom he founded the magazines The Idler and Today – the journalist Robert Barr and the humorist Barry Pain. Like Jerome, their stories of terror and the supernatural have been overlooked for many years. Edited and introduced by veteran anthologist Hugh Lamb, this new edition includes as an extra bonus the long-lost novelette, ‘The Mystery of Black Rock Creek’. Written in five parts by Jerome K. Jerome, Barry Pain, Eden Phillpotts, E. F. Benson and Bram Stoker’s brother-in-law Frank Frankfort Moore, it rounds off one of the most unusual and entertaining anthologies of the macabre of recent years.
The Transition
The Transition
Luke Kennard
¥66.22
“The sort of book that cuts you off from your family and has you walking blindly through seven lanes of traffic with your face pressed obliviously to the page.” ―James Marriott, The Times (London) Do you or your partner spend more than you earn? Have your credit card debts evolved into collection letters? Has either of you received a court summons? Has either of you considered turning to a life of a crime? You are not alone. We know. We can help. Welcome to the Transition. While taking part in the Transition, you and your partner will spend six months living under the supervision of your mentors, two successful adults of a slightly older generation. Freed from your financial responsibilities, you will be coached through the key areas of the scheme―Employment, Nutrition, Responsibility, Relationship, Finances, and Self-respect―until you are ready to be reintegrated into adult society. At the end of your six months, who knows what discoveries you’ll have made about yourself? The “friends” you no longer need. The talents you’ll have found time to nurture. The business you might have kick-started. Who knows where you’ll be?
Night of Error
Night of Error
Desmond Bagley
¥66.22
The only discernable bond in the relationship of brothers Mark and Mike Trevelyan is their fascination with the sea and its secrets. When Mike hears of his brother's death, during an expedition to a remote Pacific atoll, the circumstances are suspicious enough to force him to investigate, and when he is the victim of a series of violent attacks, his search for the truth becomes even more desperate. Mike has only two clues - a notebook in code and a lump of rock - enough to trigger off a hazardous expedition and a violent confrontation far from civilisation.
The Secret Goldfish
The Secret Goldfish
David Means
¥66.22
An extraordinary collection of short stories from an author who is set to become one of America's leading literary voices. In the tradition of Raymond Carver or Tobias Wolff, these are all-encompassing stories of the American psyche, of love and loss and of the landscape and its people. A goldfish circles in its bowl, refusing to die, becoming the silent focus of a difficult family life; a pianist loses his talents as he is forced to question the meaning of love and commitment. Through a blend of lyricism and humour, these stories of ordinary human dilemmas take flight and become mythical and universal. David Means is a rare writer who transports us to the heart of what it is to be human.
Unquiet Spirits: Whisky, Ghosts, Murder (A Sherlock Holmes Adventure)
Unquiet Spirits: Whisky, Ghosts, Murder (A Sherlock Holmes Adventure)
Bonnie MacBird
¥66.22
The new novel from the author of Art in the Blood. December 1889. Fresh from debunking a “ghostly” hound in Dartmoor, Sherlock Holmes has returned to London, only to find himself the target of a deadly vendetta. A beautiful client arrives with a tale of ghosts, kidnapping and dynamite on a whisky estate in Scotland, but brother Mycroft trumps all with an urgent assignment in the South of France. On the fabled Riviera, Holmes and Watson encounter treachery, explosions, rival French Detective Jean Vidocq… and a terrible discovery. This propels the duo northward to the snowy highlands. There, in a “haunted” castle and among the copper dinosaurs of a great whisky distillery, they and their young client face mortal danger, and Holmes realizes all three cases have blended into a single, deadly conundrum. In order to solve the mystery, the ultimate rational thinker must confront a ghost from his own past. But Sherlock Holmes does not believe in ghosts…or does he?
Coldmaker: Those who control Cold hold the power
Coldmaker: Those who control Cold hold the power
Daniel A. Cohen
¥66.22
A warmly-written crossover fantasy adventure from Daniel A. Cohen Eight hundred years ago, the Jadans angered the Crier. In punishment, the Crier took their Cold away, condemning them to a life of enslavement in a world bathed in heat. Or so the tale goes. During the day, as the Sun blazes over his head, Micah leads the life of any Jadan slave, running errands through the city of Paphos at the mercy of the petty Nobles and ruthless taskmasters. But after the evening bells have tolled and all other Jadans sleep, Micah escapes into the night in search of scraps and broken objects, which once back inside his barracks he tinkers into treasures. However, when a mysterious masked Jadan publicly threatens Noble authority, a wave of rebellion ripples through the city. With Paphos plunged into turmoil, Micah’s secret is at risk of being exposed. And another, which has been waiting hundreds of years to be found, is also on the verge of discovery… The secret of Cold.
The Twelve-Mile Straight
The Twelve-Mile Straight
Eleanor Henderson
¥66.22
‘Eleanor Henderson is in possession of an enormous talent’ Ann Patchett ‘A superb novel whose roots can be traced to Harper Lee and Carson McCullers‘ Oprah Magazine Genus Jackson was killed in Cotton County, Georgia, on a summer midnight in 1930, when the newborn twins were fast asleep. They lay head to toe in a cradle meant for one, Winnafred on one side and Wilson on the other. Only if you looked closely – and people did – could you see that the girl was pink as a piglet, and the boy was brown. In a house full of secrets, two babies – one light-skinned, the other dark – are born to Elma Jesup, a white sharecropper’s daughter. Accused of her rape, field hand Genus Jackson is lynched and dragged down the Twelve-Mile Straight, the road to the nearby town.
Death of an Effendi (Mamur Zapt, Book 12)
Death of an Effendi (Mamur Zapt, Book 12)
Michael Pearce
¥66.22
Shortlisted for the Ellis Peters Award for best historical crime novel, this is an engrossing murder mystery set in the Egypt of the 1900s, featuring the inimitable Mamur Zapt. It’s 1909, and Cairo is the murder capital of the world. But the death of an effendi is something different. Effendis – the Egyptian elite – are important. Especially if they happen to be foreign. When effendi Tvardovsky is shot in Crocodilopolis, the ancient City of the Crocodiles, Mamur Zapt – Chief of Cairo’s Secret Police – is called in to investigate. But sometimes it’s best not to ask any questions. And there are powerful people who might prefer Tvardovsky dead…
How to Fall in Love with a Man Who Lives in a Bush
How to Fall in Love with a Man Who Lives in a Bush
Emmy Abrahamson,Nichola Smalley
¥66.22
A fresh, hilarious and compulsively readable love story with the most wonderful kernel of truth to it. An uplifting and clever read for fans of Graeme Simsion and Marian Keyes. Julia is looking for Mr Right, but Ben is more Mr Right-Now-He-Could-Do-With-a-Bath.. You may think you know what kind of novel this is, but you’d be wrong. Yes, Julia is a single-girl cliché, living alone with her cat in Vienna and working in a language school. And yes, a series of disastrous dates has left her despairing of ever finding The One – until Ben sits next to her on a bench. He’s tall, dark, handsome… …and also incredibly hairy, barefoot, a bit ripe-smelling and of no fixed abode. You guessed it – they fall in love, as couples in novels do. But can Julia overlook the differences between them, abandon logic and choose with her heart? Funny, filthy (literally) and fizzing with life – and based on a true story! – this is the perfect antidote to all those books promising you that Prince Charming lives in a castle.
This Isn’t the Sort of Thing That Happens to Someone Like You
This Isn’t the Sort of Thing That Happens to Someone Like You
Jon McGregor
¥66.22
Tender, sad, funny, and riveting, this is an astonishing collection of work by one of Britain's finest contemporary writers. A man builds a tree house by a river, in anticipation of the coming flood. A sugar-beet crashes through a young woman's windscreen. A boy sets fire to a barn. These aren't the sort of things you imagine happening to someone like you. But sometimes they do. Set in the flat and threatened fenland landscape, where the sky is dominant and the sea lurks just beyond the horizon, these delicate, dangerous, and sometimes deeply funny stories tell of things buried and unearthed, of familiar places made strange, and of lives where much is hidden, much is at risk, and tender moments are hard-won.