TELEPHONE: 0207 474 2474
74165 THE FAMILY by Kay Brellend
The historical novelist who has written 16 novels including The Street here tells a hard-hitting tale. Tilly and the rest of the Keiver clan are knuckling down to life in one of the most villainous streets in London, but their world is rocked to its core when someone they thought was dead, Jimmy Wild, small-time crook and big-time bully, turns up like the
proverbial bad penny. Jimmy brings his beautiful stepdaughter Faye, and his downtrodden wife Edie to live on the street, and while they do their best to scratch out a living, Jimmy barely lifts a finger to help. For his sons, Robert and Steven, it was hard enough coming to terms with the death of their mother, and now their good-for-nothing father has come crawling back. If there is one thing you can bet on, Jimmy Wild hasn’t returned to start playing happy families. Set in 1927 and includes some strong but authentic language. 370pp in paperback. £6.99 NOW £3
74167 FEVER HILL by Michelle Paver
Set in Jamaica 1903 this stand-alone novel is part of the Eden trilogy from Corgi Books. Sophie Munroe, clever, passionate and incapable of fitting in, returns to her childhood home of Eden, the hauntingly beautiful plantation where she grew up and which is nearly bankrupt. Her own inheritance, the old house at Fever Hill, is slipping into ruin.
Her sister Madeleine is hiding something, but what? What could be so wrong that she cannot tell Sophie? There seems to be nowhere to turn - even her childhood hero Ben Kelly is avoiding her, for Ben has troubles of his own as he struggles to forget an appalling childhood in the London slums. Soon Sophie finds herself facing not just a clash of loyalties but the savage prejudices of a colonial society. Ultimately both she and Ben must confront the ghosts of their own pasts. Plenty of period detail we recommend this author if you have not come across her before. The patois is easily understandable! 445pp in paperback. £6.99 NOW £3
56203 BULLDOG DRUMMOND by Sapper Bulldog Drummond was the original daredevil adventurer and could easily have been the father of James Bond. In the first four novels of the series, ‘Bulldog Drummond’, ‘The Black Gang’, ‘The Third Round’, ‘The Final Count’, all of which are contained within this volume, Hugh Drummond finds himself pitting his wits again Carl Peterson, a criminal genius with an insatiable passion for power and world domination. His chameleon appearances are one of the joys of these thrilling tales. 768pp. Paperback. ONLY £3
71982 ACROSS THE BLOOD-RED SKIES by Robert Radcliffe
Spring 1917 and the average survival time of a WWI Reconnaissance pilot is 18 hours. After weeks in the thick of it, George Duckwell, reluctant novice-hero of the Royal Flying Corps is living on borrowed time, watching in horror as a succession of comrades are shut down, burned, maimed and killed. Somehow he survives. Struggling to make sense of the conflict, George forms an awkward friendship with William ‘Mac’ MacBride, an enigmatic Canadian ace, waging his own private war against the legendary Red Baron, Manfred von Richthofen. 326pp in paperback. £7.99 NOW £2.50
72001 ROOM by Emma Donoghue Its Jack’s birthday and he is excited about turning five. He lives with his Ma in Room which has a locked door and a skylight and measures 11 feet by 11 feet. He loves watching TV, and the cartoon characters he calls friends, but he knows that nothing he sees on screen is truly real - only him, Ma and the things in Room. Until the day Ma admits there is a world outside. Potent, entirely original here is a moving portrayal of how love can be born, nurtured and survived even in the darkest of places. 401pp in paperback. £7.99 NOW £2
72061 QUEST OF HONOUR by Sam Barone The city of Sumer, ruled by a brutal murderer and his vicious, power-hungry sister, is poised to give birth to the mightiest empire in history. No one stands a chance as it brings a bloody war to all those who get in its way, determined to crush and enslave those on its borders. The little city state of Akkad must prepare its fledgling nation to fight for its very survival. Its warriors are a courageous brotherhood, but this is not a battle of villages or of roving warrior bands - it is a battle for Empire and a fight to the death. 618 thumping pages. £7.99 NOW £2.50
72113 CASEBOOK OF VICTOR
FRANKENSTEIN by Peter Ackroyd Victor Frankenstein begins his anatomy experiments in a barn in the secluded village of Headington near Oxford. The coroner’s office provides the corpses he needs, but they have often died by violent means and are damaged and putrefying. So he moved his coils and jars and electrical fluids to a deserted pottery manufactory in Limehouse. From Limehouse he makes contact with the Doomesday Men, the resurrectionists. 408pp in paperback. £7.99 NOW £2.50
72114 BOHEMIAN GIRL by Kenneth Cameron Denton, a writer with a reputation for involving himself in murder cases, receives a note from a young woman, Mary, saying she is in terrible danger and needs his help. The letter is months old and was discovered hidden behind a painting. But who is Mary? The search for answers leads Denton into the shadowy world of London’s artistic society and before he learns the shocking truth about Mary, he must endure another hazardous journey into a dark and deadly obsession. Set in 1901. 310pp in paperback. £7.99 NOW £3.50
73131 KINGFISHERS CATCH
FIRE by Rumer Godden Sophie, an English ingénue with two children, arrives in Himalayan Kashmir to set up home in a tumbledown cottage surrounded by fields of flowers and herbs. Settling down to live quietly, frugally and peacefully with her new neighbours, she is unaware of the turmoil her arrival provokes as the villagers compete fiercely for her patronage.
Sophie’s cook makes a drastic bid to secure his position, and the unwanted consequences are catastrophic. Each strand of the taut narrative is woven with precision and each character given his due. 302pp, paperback. £9.99 NOW £4
72263 THE PRINCE AND THE PILGRIM: A
Tale of Arthurian Britain by Lady Mary Stewart
Alexander, nephew of the murderous King March of Cornwall, seeks to avenge his father and sets out on a journey to Camelot in quest of justice. But events do not proceed according to plan, particularly when the young prince’s path leads him to the Dark Tower of the temptress and sorceress, Morgan le Fay. She persuades Alexander to attempt a theft of the Holy Grail. Is Alice, in possession of a mysterious silver cup, holding the Grail itself? The two seekers must meet. 343pp in paperback with fairly large print. £7.99 NOW £3.75
72290 CONSEQUENCES by Penelope Lively London 1935. A chance meeting in St James’s Park sparks a love affair that reverberates through three generations of women and the devastation of World War Two to the social revolutions of the 1960s and a journey of self-discovery at the end of an era. By chronicling the choices and consequences that comprise a family’s history, acclaimed author Penelope Lively has produced an often beautiful novel of astute observation and a profoundly moving reaffirmation of the force of connection between generations. 258pp in paperback. $15 NOW £6
72946 MIDSUMMER MEETING by Elvi Rhodes
It was an unexpected legacy which brought Petra to the close village community of Mindon. An imposing stone house in the middle of the village, left to her by an old friend of her mother’s, promises a very different way of life from her lonely and unsettled one in Yorkshire. She was immediately made welcome by the local residents, in particular by members of the village Amateur Dramatic Society. Petra to her surprise and pleasure was put in charge of the scenery. Rivalries, squabbles, love affairs and seething resentments all threatened to scupper the production. But Petra has a mystery from the past that has begun to haunt her. 399pp, paperback. £5.99 NOW £2.50
72383 A PAINTED HOUSE
by John Grisham September 1952. The cotton is almost ready in the fields of Arkansas. The harvest will soon begin. Luke Chandler is a seven year old who lives with his family in a small, unpainted house on rented land. In the next six weeks, the family and a hired band of hill people and Mexicans must bring in the cotton that is their livelihood and the guarantee of their survival on the land. Soon heat, rain, fatigue, a killing and the unravelling of a family secret threaten to destroy the family’s hopes and transport Luke abruptly from innocence to experience. Regarded as Grisham’s best work. 366pp. Paperback. £7.99 NOW £3
72939 A VILLAGE FEUD by Rebecca Shaw
With the Rector Peter Harris and his family back from Africa, the villagers of Turnham Malpas heave huge sighs of relief and everything seems to be back to normal. But Peter has other ideas and returns to Africa to fulfil a promise. The family he leaves behind is a very troubled one - the twins Beth and Alex are still disturbed by their traumatic experiences in Africa, and Caroline is finding it hard to deal with the fact that they will not share their feelings with her. Will Peter’s return restore harmony before things get out of hand? 289pp in paperback.
£6.99 NOW £3.50
72940 LOVE IN THE COUNTRY by Rebecca Shaw
When Seb moves to Barleybridge, the last thing on his mind is romance. Keen to settle into his new job he embraces the working life of a country vet and is soon dealing with an assortment of cases. Meanwhile, Australian vet Scott has a new baby to care for. Practice owners Mungo and Miriam organise a posh dinner party where a surprise announcement delights everyone, and there is controversy and divided opinion about a potential new client. Seb’s expertise with animals and their owners means he is welcomed into the village and relationships bloom, especially with upper class Jilly. 274pp in paperback. £6.99 NOW £3.50
72941 TALK OF THE VILLAGE by Rebecca Shaw
The village of Turnham Malpas is bedevilled by talk. In the Royal Oak, the usual banter has turned to bitter wrangling as Caroline causes controversy over an ancient country tradition. And what about Peter, her husband and the rector? Are rumours about him and pushy newcomer Venetia true? Even the older inhabitants are not exempt from gossip, as the Baxter sisters’ eccentric lifestyle is the subject of cruel speculation. Peter must put aside his own problems and unite the village before there is more superstition, madness and tragedy. 263pp in paperback. £6.99 NOW £3.50
73170 REBECCA SHAW: Set of Three by Rebecca Shaw
Buy all three paperbacks and make further savings. £20.97 NOW £9.50
72680 WELL OF LOST PLOTS by Jasper Fforde
Fiction’s strong-arm woman Thursday Next takes a vacation in the Well of Lost Plots, assuming a minor role in Caversham Heights, a dreary crime thriller set in Reading. Once down the well, Thursday finds herself apprenticed to Miss Havisham, who is conducting a rage counselling session with the characters of Wuthering Heights. The arrival of Heathcliff throws the group into disarray as he sneeringly parades his 77 triumphs in the Most Troubled Romantic Hero Awards. 375pp. $24.95 NOW £2
71369 MISS PURDY’S CLASS by Annie Murray Set in New Year of 1936. Gwen Purdy aged 21 leaves her home to become a school teacher in a poor area of Birmingham. At school, she faces a class of 52 children, some of whose homes are among Birmingham’s very poorest. One of the teachers, the elderly Lily Drysdale proves an inspiration, and Gwen begins to understand the appalling hardships endured by the children. Joey Phillips, eight years old and man of the house, looks after his dying mother and lives in fear of being sent to the orphanage. When he disappears one day to a life on the streets, Gwen is haunted by his absence. 553pp, paperback.
£6.99 NOW £2.50
72943 CHORAL SOCIETY by Prue Leith Friendship, sex, shopping, singing - even love - life doesn’t end at 50. That’s what these three women who meet when they join a choir firmly believe, but that is about all they have in common. Lucy, a widowed food journalist, is obeying her bossy daughter who prescribes singing to help her get over her grief. Joanna, the single and successful business woman is tackling her inability to sing a note and much-divorced Rebecca is unashamedly looking for another mate. The three women decide to combine their talents to transform a run-down hotel on the Cornish coast. Conflict is bound to result. 376pp, paperback.
£7.99 NOW £3
72955 WINDS OF FORTUNE by E. V. Thompson
Thomasina Varcoe is not a typical Cornish girl. Her job as a servant girl would be a good one for 1812 were it not for the unwanted interests of the obnoxious Sir Charles Hearle. Falsely accused of theft, Thomasina flees to her sweetheart, highwayman Jeffrey, and in partnership they steal for real, terrorising the highways of the south-west. But when Jeffrey is caught and sentenced to death, Thomasina decides to follow the life of her seafaring father and joins the ship Melanie Jane as ‘Tom’, a secret she shares only with the captain. It leads her into renewed conflict with the lecherous Sir Charles. 568pp, paperback. £7.99 NOW £3
72356 SAINTS AND SINNERS by Edna O’Brien
With her inimitable gift for grasping people’s contradictions and desires, here she introduces us to a new cast of restless, searching people, who whether in the Irish countryside, London or New York, remind us of our own humanity. The 11 short stories include those titled Shovel Kings, Inner Cowboy, My Two Mothers and Old Wounds. With characters like an Irishman in North London recalling digging the streets for the apocryphal gold, now an outsider in England and Ireland. 16 page reading group guide, 242pp in paperback. $13.99 NOW £4
72983 FIESTA: The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
Paris in the 1920s - Pernod, parties and ex-patriot Americans, loose-living on money from home. Jake is wildly in love with Brett Ashley, aristocratic and irresistibly beautiful, but with an abandoned, sensuous nature that she cannot change. When the couple drifts to Spain to the dazzle of the fiesta and the heady atmosphere of the bull fight, their affair is strained by new passions, new jealousies and Jake must finally learn that he will never possess the woman he loves. Visually magnificent, this is a disquieting read, 216pp in paperback.
£7.99 NOW £3.50
73014 ONE DAY by David Nicholls This is a charming story which stays in your heart forever as it captures college days perfectly. Emma and Dexter meet on the night of their graduation on 15th July 1988. Tomorrow they must go their separate ways, so where will they be on this one day next year? And the year after that? And every year that follows? A really clever literary device, their lives move on as do their emotions and responses to each other as the reader slips back to their own 20s and early days of discovery, sex, opinions of oneself, and your lovers and friends. Covers twenty years and the same two people. 437pp, paperback.
£7.99 NOW £3 73048 36 ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE
OF GOD: A Work of Fiction by Rebecca Goldstein
This novel tells of psychologist Cass Seltzer, whose book “The Variety of Religious Illusion” becomes a surprise runaway bestseller. An uncompromising atheist, sudden celebrity has turned his life upside down and brought out the ghosts of his past in their droves. The book explores the variety of human religious experience in a tale of obsession, consuming love and divine genius. It is like taking a crash-course in post-theological debate. An appendix lists all 36 Arguments, together with their associated logic and the flaws therein! 400pp paperback. £7.99 NOW £3.50
73084 IF THE DEAD RISE NOT by Philip Kerr
A richly satisfying mystery, this is a Bernie Gunther novel by the author of Field Gray and The Berlin Noir Trilogy. Set in 1934, Bernie Gunther, now a hotel detective, finds himself caught between warring factions of the Nazi apparatus as Hitler and Avery Brundage, the head of the US Olympic Committee, connive to soft- pedal Nazi anti-Semitism before the 1936 Olympiad. 1954 - Batista, aided by the CIA, has just seized power.
Fiction 13
ALEXANDER MCCALL SMITH Isabel Dalhousie Novels
72645 CHARMING QUIRKS OF OTHERS: An Isabel Dalhousie Novel
by Alexander McCall Smith Our inquisitive heroine has been asked to help in a rather tricky situation. A successor is being sought for the headmaster of a local boys’ school. The board has three final candidates but has received an anonymous letter alleging that one of them has a
very serious skeleton in the closet and could Isabel discreetly look into it? What she discovers about herself and Jamie, the father of her young son, turns out to be equally revealing. 256pp. $24.95 NOW £4.50
73102 RIGHT ATTITUDE TO RAIN
by Alexander McCall Smith Bruised in love by her faithless Irish husband, Isabel Dalhousie is a connoisseur of intimate moral issues. As a philosopher, she spends a great deal of her time considering the lives of those around her. There is her housekeeper Grace, whose future she must secure, her niece Cat,
who is embarking on a dubious new relationship and then there is Jamie, Cat’s ex-boyfriend, a handsome young musician with whom Isabel is falling helplessly in love. 277pp. $21.95 NOW £4
73152 UNCOMMON APPEAL OF CLOUDS: An
Isabel Dalhousie Novel by Alexander McCall Smith A masterpiece painting has been stolen from the collection of Duncan Munrowe, an old- fashioned philanthropist and a very wealthy man. As a philosopher, mother, employer and editor of the Review of Applied Ethics, Isabel feels it is up
to her to solve what is potentially a dangerous puzzle. As she enters into ransom negotiations, a case where heroes and villains should be clearly defined turns murky, the list of those who desire the painting - or the money - lengthens, and hasty judgements must be avoided. 246 pages. £17.99 NOW £6
74326 ALEXANDER MCCALL SMITH: Set of
Three by Alexander McCall Smith Set includes Right Attitude to Rain, Uncommon Appeal of Clouds and Charming Quirks of Others. Buy all three and save even more. ONLY £10
Castro is in prison and the American Mafia is gaining a stranglehold on Cuba’s exploding gaming and prostitution industries. Bernie discovers that he cannot truly outrun his past when he collides with an old lover, and a vicious killer, from his Berlin days. 347pp in paperback. Remainder mark. $15 NOW £4
73011 NOTES OF A DIRTY OLD MAN by Charles Bukowski
By the cult author of The Post Office (1971) and Women (1978), the filthy dirty Bukowski either wrote as himself or his alter-ego Henry Chinaski. This collection of his columns for an underground LA newspaper optimises his style of gritty realism. He delves into America’s lowlife to eulogise life’s losers and anti-heroes. Packed with women, violence, gambling and booze, his semi- autobiographical stories veer between hilarity and despair as he extols the inherent beauty and futility of life. 200 page paperback. £8.99 NOW £3
73031 TALES OF ORDINARY MADNESS by Charles Bukowski
A companion to Notes of a Dirty Old Man code 73011 here again the bestselling author of The Post Office from 1971 regales us with his filthy tales which will make your teeth rattle. They are tales of ordinary madness in which Bukowski ingeniously mixes high and low culture, from prostitutes and the philosophy of Kant to despair and classical music to create his modern dystopia. Inspired by D. H. Lawrence, John Fante and Hemingway, these are angry yet tender, humorous and haunting portrayals of life in the underbelly of America. Being a down-and-out has never been so well recorded. 231pp in paperback. Adults only. £8.99 NOW £3.50
73033 THE TIME TRAVELER’S WIFE by Audrey Niffenegger
A big, reckless and utterly convincing novel, wonky, sexy and incredible. It is the extraordinary love story of Clare and Henry who meet when Clare was six and Henry was 36, and were married when Clare was 22 and Henry 30. Impossible but true, because Henry suffers with a rare condition where his genetic clock periodically resets and he finds himself pulled suddenly into his past or future. The couple’s struggle to lead normal lives is both intensely moving and entirely unforgettable. 520pp in paperback. £8.99 NOW £3
73136 NIGHT FALLS ON THE CITY by Sarah Gainham
The novel opens at the Burgtheater in Vienna in March 1938, on the eve of the Anschluss between Hitler’s Germany and Austria. From the first lines, we are plunged into the ancient city on the brink of Occupation. By the time the novel closes in May 1945 with the
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36