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The Sunflower Forest
The Sunflower Forest
Torey Hayden
¥45.62
Bestselling author Torey Hayden’s novel poignantly tells of a daughter’s attempt to grow up in the shadow of her mother’s haunted past. Warm, melancholy and evocatively rendered this book captures the essence of a family touched by sadness. A haunting tale of a family who can't escape the consequences of their mother's tormented childhood. Hayden, a master storyteller, again turns her talent to fiction in this novel that combines a psychological thriller with a nuanced family drama. Lesley’s Hungarian mother Mara – charming, childlike, lovable – is traumatized by her adolescent Holocaust experiences. Though her American husband and daughters try to live a normal life, Mara holds them thrall to her moods and quirks. Lesley struggles to understand, but dealing with Mara is a severe strain which sets her apart from her peers. But when Mara’s psychosis results in tragedy, Lesley goes to Wales in search of her mother’s remembered joy.
Madness: A Bipolar Life (Text Only)
Madness: A Bipolar Life (Text Only)
Marya Hornbacher
¥72.30
A searing, unflinching and deeply moving account of Marya Hornbacher’s personal experience of living with bipolar disorder. From the age of six, Marya Hornbacher knew that something was terribly wrong with her, manifesting itself in anorexia and bulimia which she documented in her bestselling memoir ‘Wasted’. But it was only eighteen years later that she learned the true underlying reason for her distress: bipolar disorder. In this new, equally raw and frank account, Marya Hornbacher tells the story of her ongoing battle with this most pervasive and devastating of mental illnesses; how, as she puts it, ‘it crept over me like a vine, sending out tentative shoots in my childhood, taking deeper root in my adolescence, growing stronger in my early adulthood, eventually covering my body and face until I was unrecognizable, trapped, immobilized’. She recounts the soaring highs and obliterating lows of her condition; the savage moodswings and impossible strains it placed on her relationships; the physical danger it has occasionally put her in; the endless cycle of illness and recovery. She also tackles the paradoxical aspects of bipolar disorder – how it has been the drive behind some of her most creative work – and the reality of a life lived in limbo, ‘caught between the world of the mad and the world of the sane’. Yet for all the torment it documents, this is a book about survival, about living day to day with bipolar disorder – the constant round of therapy and medication – and managing it. As well as her own highly personal story, the book includes interviews with family, spouses and friends of sufferers, the people who help their loved ones carry on. Visceral and inspiring, lyrical and sometimes even funny, ‘Madness’ will take its place alongside other classics of the genre such as ‘An Unquiet Mind’ and ‘Girl, Interrupted’.
Tell Me Everything
Tell Me Everything
Sarah Salway
¥27.17
Discover a novelist that Neil Gaiman describes as ‘an astonishingly smart writer’. When a chance meeting with a stranger leads to an offer of a room in exchange for telling her stories, Molly jumps at the chance. Slowly she builds a new, eccentric family around herself: Tim, her secretive boyfriend, who just might be a spy; Miranda, the lovelorn hairstylist; Liz, the lusty librarian; Mr. Roberts, landlord and listener; and his French wife, Mrs. Roberts. Much to Molly's surprise, she finds the stories she tells now are her key to creating a completely different life. Suddenly, her future is full of endless possibilities. The trouble is, Molly's not the only one telling tales. And the truth is always stranger than fiction. Sarah Salway's witty, finely-tuned and poignant story of many stories is a uniquely entrancing chronicle.
Last Night at Chateau Marmont
Last Night at Chateau Marmont
Lauren Weisberger
¥35.22
A novel from the million copy bestselling author of The Devil Wears Prada. Heartbreak, headlines and Hermes – welcome to Brooke's new world… Brooke and Julian live a happy life in New York – she's the breadwinner working two jobs and he's the struggling musician husband. Then Julian is discovered by a Sony exec and becomes an overnight success – and their life changes for ever. Soon they are moving in exclusive circles, dining at the glitziest restaurants, attending the most outrageous parties in town and jetting off to the trendiest hotspots in LA. But Julian's new-found fame means that Brooke must face the savage attentions of the ruthless paparazzi. And when a scandalous picture hits the front pages, Brooke's world is turned upside down. Can her marriage survive the events of that fateful night at Chateau Marmont? It's time for Brooke to decide if she's going to sink or swim…
Illumination
Illumination
Matthew Plampin
¥66.22
A powerful story of revolution, love and intense rivalry set in 1870 during the four-month siege of Paris. 1870. All over Paris the lights are going out. The Prussians are encircling the city and Europe’s capital of decadent pleasure and luxury is becoming a prison, its citizens caught between defiance and despair. Desperate times lie ahead as the worst winter for decades sets in and starvation looms. One man seems to shine like a beacon in the shadows. Jean-Jacques Allix promises to be the leader the people need, to save the city itself. Painter Hannah Pardy, his young English lover, believes in him utterly; taking up arms for his cause, she is drawn into the heart of the battle for Paris. But as the darkness and panic spreads it is harder and harder to see things as they really are, and Hannah struggles to separate love from self-interest and revolutionaries from traitors. Faced with impossible decisions, Hannah must confront the devastating reality of her beloved Paris to establish what truly matters to her – and what she will do to protect it.
Will & Tom
Will & Tom
Matthew Plampin
¥66.22
Will & Tom is a glimpse into the life of the infamous artist JMW Turner as a young man during a week spent at Harewood House fighting for a commission against his childhood friend and rival Tom Girtin. 1797, West Yorkshire. When rising artist Will Turner arrives at Harewood House in high summer, his intention is to sketch the house and grounds, receive his commission and return to London, where he has started attracting serious attention at the Royal Academy. But things at the grand house are not quite as he expects. The atmosphere is strange, both above and below stairs, and Will’s treatment by his hosts is surprisingly offhand. Most perplexing of all, however, is the appearance of another painter – his childhood friend and now rival, Tom Girtin. While Tom is welcomed into the aristocratic circle, Will finds few allies. As it becomes harder to ignore the whispers of scandal , Will witnesses something that will threaten both his commission and his friendship. Alive with intrigue, artistic rivalry, Will & Tom offers a glimpse into the early life of Britain’s greatest painter, J M W Turner, through the story of a complicated, vibrant friendship, and how it is tested by the dark dynamic of art and power.
Sixteen Shades of Crazy
Sixteen Shades of Crazy
Rachel Trezise
¥58.86
‘Went out, got pissed. Same shit, different day.' Aberalaw, a tiny South Wales valley village where nobody ever arrives and nobody ever leaves. The new police chief has declared war on recreational drugs, resulting in an eighteen-month drought. The party-loving wives and girlfriends of local punk band, The Boobs, are getting desperate, both for drugs and thrills: Ellie, factory girl with dreams of a better life in New York; Rhiannon, hairdresser with a taste for violence and designer clothes and Si?n, unappreciated, obsessive compulsive mother of three. Into their lives, enter the languid dark stranger, Johnny: Englishman, drug dealer and shameless seducer. In the space of just a few months, three women's lives will be changed forever. Prize-winning writer, Rachel Trezise, dissects the morals and mores of a small Welsh village community with a scalpel-sharp pen and an incisive wit.
A Book of Common Prayer
A Book of Common Prayer
Joan Didion
¥66.22
An engrossing novel about political and personal life in Central America, from the award-winning author of The Year of Magical Thinking. Set in the ruined Central American nation of Boca Grande, A Book of Common Prayer is the story of two American women and their conflicting experiences of wealth, politics and personal history. We follow the intriguing life of Grace Strasser-Mendana – an American expatriate and member of one of Boca Grande’s most influential families – alongside the story of Charlotte Douglas, whose daughter Medin has run off with a group of Marxist radicals. What follows is an exploration of the women’s ability to make sense of the behaviour that surrounds them, as their worlds are made hazy by the atmosphere of evil and innocence that envelops their strained and entangled lives.
The Diamond Throne (The Elenium Trilogy, Book 1)
The Diamond Throne (The Elenium Trilogy, Book 1)
David Eddings
¥54.74
Book One of the classic ELENIUM series. After a long exile, Pandion Knight Sparhawk returns to his native land to find his young queen grievously ill. Ehlana has been poisoned and will die unless a cure can be found within a year. The life force of twelve of her sworn knights is all that sustains her; but one knight will be lost within the passing of each month if the antidote isn’t found. To save his queen, his comrades, and the stability of the kingdom, Sparhawk begins the search for the cure, only to discover a greater and more pervasive evil than he could ever have imagined.
Hot Pursuit
Hot Pursuit
Gemma Fox
¥56.11
Maggie’s about to have the holiday romance of a lifetime. Perfect for fans of Jill Mansell and Carole Matthews. Maggie Morgan has been longing to find Mr Right all her life but even she didn't expect him to be delivered to her door, giftwrapped in a skimpy towel, one sunny summer morning. Sexy Nick Lucas seems almost too good to be true – and maybe he is. Arriving out of nowhere, he seems to have no past, no family, no history: things just don't add up. As Nick's past starts to catch up with him, Maggie becomes embroiled in an exciting cat-and-mouse chase across the country. Temperatures rise and passion sizzles but although Maggie has the hots for Nick, can she take the heat?
The Perfume Collector
The Perfume Collector
Kathleen Tessaro
¥72.30
A secret history of scent, memory and desire from the Sunday Times bestselling author of ELEGANCE and THE DEBUTANTE. One letter will turn newly-married Grace Munroe’s life upside down: ‘Our firm is handling the estate of the deceased Mrs Eva D’Orsey and it is our duty to inform you that you are named as the chief beneficiary in her will. We request your presence at our offices at your earliest convenience, so that we may go through the details of your inheritance.’ There is only one problem. Grace has never heard of Eva D’Orsey. So begins a journey which leads Grace through the streets of Paris and into the seductive world of perfumers and their muses. An abandoned perfume shop on the Left Bank will lead her to unravel the heartbreaking story of her mysterious benefactor, an extraordinary woman who bewitched high society in 1920s New York and Paris.
The Runaway Woman
The Runaway Woman
Josephine Cox
¥45.81
No-one thought she had the courage… Those looking in from the outside think Lucy Lovejoy’s life is like any other, but at the centre of her family there is a big empty hole where all the love and warmth should be. Over the years, her children have watched while their father chipped away at Lucy’s self-confidence. Now the children are following their own paths, and Lucy has never felt more alone. When tragedy strikes at the heart of the family, it’s a wake-up call for Lucy. Everyone has taken a little piece of her, and she isn’t sure who she is anymore. So when Lucy faces a betrayal from those she loves deepest, she knows that it’s time to make a choice. Is she brave enough to find herself again?
Three Letters
Three Letters
Josephine Cox
¥57.09
The brand new dramatic novel about the power of a father’s love, a little boy’s journey,and the desperate search for a place to call home, from Number 1 best-selling author Josephine Cox. Eight-year-old Casey’s mother Ruth is a cruel woman, with a weakness for other women’s husbands. Casey’s father is gentle and hard-working and, though Tom Denton has long suspected his wife of having sordid affairs, he has chosen to turn a blind eye to keep the peace. But then, out of the blue, Tom’s world is cruelly shattered when he receives two bits of devastating news. Because of this, Tom realises that from now on their lives must change, forever. Tom is made to fight for his son, determined to keep him safe. But, when fate takes a hand, life can be unbearably cruel, and Casey is made to remember his father’s prophetic words… ‘It’s done. The dice is thrown, and nobody wins.’ But, unbeknown to Casey, there are three letters penned by his father, that may just change his destiny forever.
The Herbalist: Nicholas Culpeper and the Fight for Medical Freedom
The Herbalist: Nicholas Culpeper and the Fight for Medical Freedom
Benjamin Woolley
¥72.40
From the bestselling author of ‘The Queen’s Conjuror’, comes the story of Nicholas Culpeper – legendary rebel, radical, Puritan, and author of the great ‘Herbal’. This is a powerful history of medicine’s first freedom fighter set in London during Britain’s age of revolution. In the mid-17th century, England was visited by the four horsemen of the apocalypse: a civil war which saw levels of slaughter not matched until the Somme, famine in a succession of failed harvests that reduced peasants to 'anatomies', epidemics to rival the Black Death in their enormity, and infant mortality rates that left childless even women who had borne eight or nine children. In the midst of these terrible times came Nicholas Culpeper’s ‘Herbal’ – one of the most popular and enduring books ever published. Culpeper was a virtual outcast from birth. Rebelling against a tyrannical grandfather and the prospect of a life in the church, he abandoned his university education after a doomed attempt at elopement. Disinherited, he went to London, where he was to find his vocation in instigating revolution. London's medical regime was then in the grip of the College of Physicians, a powerful body personified in the ‘immortal’ William Harvey, anatomist, royal physician and discoverer of the circulation of the blood. Working in the underground world of religious sects, secret printing presses and unlicensed apothecary shops, Culpeper challenged this stronghold at the time it was reaching the very pinnacle of its power – and in the process helped spark the revolution that toppled a monarchy. In a spellbinding narrative of impulse, romance and heroism, Benjamin Woolley vividly recreates these momentous struggles and the roots of today's hopes and fears about the power of medical science, professional institutions and government. ‘The Herbalist’ tells the story of a medical rebel who took on the authorities and paid the price.
Spellbound: Book 2 of the Spellwright Trilogy (The Spellwright Trilogy, Book 2)
Spellbound: Book 2 of the Spellwright Trilogy (The Spellwright Trilogy, Book 2)
Blake Charlton
¥59.15
SPELLBOUND is the second book in acclaimed debut author Blake Charlton’s exciting and original trilogy, following on from SPELLWRIGHT. Francesca DeVega is a successful healer in the city of Avel, wielding magical text to close wounds and disspell curses, but her life is thrown into chaos when a dead patient suddenly sits up and tells her to run. Now Francesca is in the middle of a game she doesn’t understand, one that ties her to the notorious rogue wizard, Nicodemus Weal, and brings her face to face with demons, demigods, and a man she thought she’d never see again. It has been ten years since Nicodemus Weal escaped the Starhaven Academy, where he was considered disabled and useless, where he battled the demon who stole his birthright and killed his friends. Unable to use the magical languages of his own people, Nico has honed his skills in the dark language of the kobolds, readying himself for his next encounter with the demon. But there are complications: his mentor suffers from an incurable curse, his half-sister’s agents are hunting him, and he’s still not sure what part Francesca DeVega will play. He certainly doesn’t know what to make of Francesca herself…. Introducing new twists to the unique magical system of Spellwright and uncovering more sinister dangers, Spellbound is sure to please Blake Charlton’s fans and earn him new ones.
Scott of the Antarctic: A Life of Courage and Tragedy in the Extreme South
Scott of the Antarctic: A Life of Courage and Tragedy in the Extreme South
David Crane
¥76.91
David Crane has given us a magisterial portrait of one of Britain’s greatest heroes and explorers, acclaimed as the ‘masterpiece’ on the subject. Reissued for the 100th anniversary of Scott’s doomed expedition. ‘It seems a pity, but I do not think I can write more…For God’s sake look after our people.’ These were the final words written in Scott’s diary on 29 March 1912, as he lay dying of exhaustion, starvation and extreme cold, in his tent on his return journey from the South Pole. Since then he has been the subject of many books. Yet in all the pages that have been written about him, the personality behind the legend has been forgotten or distorted beyond all recognition. David Crane’s magisterial biography redresses this completely. By reassessing Scott’s life and his substantial scientific achievements, Crane is able to provide a fresh and exciting perspective on both the Discovery expedition of 1901-4 and the Terra Nova expedition of 1910-12. The courage and tragedy of Scott’s last journey are only one part of the process, for the scientific enquiry that led up to it transformed the whole nature and ambition of Antarctic exploration. Written with the full support of Scott’s surviving relatives, and with access to the voluminous diaries and records of key participants, this definitive biography sets out to reconcile the very private struggles of the man with the very public life of extremes that he led.
Hallowe’en Party (Poirot)
Hallowe’en Party (Poirot)
Agatha Christie
¥61.51
A teenage murder witness is drowned in a tub of apples… At a Hallowe’en party, Joyce – a hostile thirteen-year-old – boasts that she once witnessed a murder. When no-one believes her, she storms off home. But within hours her body is found, still in the house, drowned in an apple-bobbing tub. That night, Hercule Poirot is called in to find the ‘evil presence’. But first he must establish whether he is looking for a murderer or a double-murderer…
Parker Pyne Investigates
Parker Pyne Investigates
Agatha Christie
¥58.47
A collection of short stories featuring the ‘heart specialist’, Parker Pyne. Mrs Packington felt alone, helpless and utterly forlorn. But her life changed when she stumbled upon an advertisement in The Times which read: ‘ARE YOU HAPPY? IF NOT, CONSULT MR PARKER PYNE’. Equally adept at putting together the pieces of a marriage or the fragments of a murder mystery, Mr Parker Pyne was possibly the world’s most unconventional private eye – and certainly its most charming.
March
March
Geraldine Brooks
¥68.47
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and Richard and Judy pick. From the author of the acclaimed ‘Year of Wonders’ and ‘People of the Book’, a historical novel and love story set during a time of catastrophe on the front lines of the American Civil War. Set during the American Civil War, ‘March’ tells the story of John March, known to us as the father away from his family of girls in ‘Little Women’, Louisa May Alcott’s classic American novel. In Brooks’s telling, March emerges as an abolitionist and idealistic chaplain on the front lines of a war that tests his faith in himself and in the Union cause when he learns that his side, too, is capable of barbarism and racism. As he recovers from a near-fatal illness in a Washington hospital, he must reassemble the shards of his shattered mind and body, and find a way to reconnect with a wife and daughters who have no idea of the ordeals he has been through. As Alcott drew on her real-life sisters in shaping the characters of her little women, so Brooks turned to the journals and letters of Bronson Alcott, Louisa May’s father, an idealistic educator, animal rights exponent and abolitionist who was a friend and confidante of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. The story spans the vibrant intellectual world of Concord and the sensuous antebellum South, through to the first year of the Civil War as the North reels under a series of unexpected defeats. Like her bestselling ‘Year of Wonders’, ‘March’ follows an unconventional love story. It explores the passions between a man and a woman, the tenderness of parent and child, and the life-changing power of an ardently held belief.
Julian Corkle is a Filthy Liar
Julian Corkle is a Filthy Liar
D. J. Connell
¥58.86
The funniest debut novel since Tom Sharpe’s Riotous Assembly, only it’s set in Tasmania! Julian Corkle's got small-screenability. His mother tells him he'll be a star one day. 'Twinkle, twinkle,' she says, giving his hair a ruffle. Not everyone shares Julian's dreams of stardom. Television is too much like hairdressing for his father's tastes. A Tasmanian man wants a son for sporting purposes. 'Boys don't like dolls,' he tells Julian, 'They like Dinky Toys.' Not this boy, thinks Julian, who knows better than to tell the truth. Besides, the family already has a sporting hero, Julian's sister Carmel aka 'The Locomotive'. Julian likes his sister, but knows better than to tangle with her bowling arm. It's the same one she uses for punching. Julian Corkle is a Filthy Liar is the ultimate feel-good novel, a book that will have the reader laughing out loud on the back of a bus as it follows Julian's bumpy journey through adolescence, fibbing his way through school and a series of dead-end jobs, to find his ultimate calling as creator of 'The Hog'. It's as if Crocodile Dundee has crashed Muriel's wedding and run off into the desert with Priscilla.
The Marrowbone Marble Company
The Marrowbone Marble Company
Glenn Taylor
¥72.30
A powerful novel of love and war, righteousness and redemption, and the triumph of the human spirit. From the author of the critically-acclaimed The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart comes this sweeping novel of love and war, power and oppression, faith and deception, over the course of three defining American decades. At the end of the Pacific War, where he has witnessed terrible things, Loyal Ledford is a lost man, disconnected from the present yet divorced from his dissolute, violent past. His life is set on a new course when he meets his cousins, Dimple and Wimpy, the Bonecutter brothers. Their land, mysterious, elemental Marrowbone Cut, calls to him and it is there, with help from an unlikely bunch, that the Marrowbone Marble Company is slowly forged. Over the next two decades, the factory grounds become a vanguard of the civil rights movement and the war on poverty, a home for those intent on change. Inevitably, such a home invites trouble, and Ledford must fight for his family. Told in clear and powerful prose in the tradition of Cormac McCarthy and John Irving, The Marrowbone Marble Company recounts the transformative journey of a man and his community, taking a harrowing look at the issues of race and class throughout the tumultuous 1950s and '60s. With this, his second novel, Glenn Taylor joins the ranks of the Great American Novelist.