English books
CRAIG DAVIDSON – RUST AND BONE
Rust and Bone conjures a savage world of prizefighters, gamblers and sex addicts; dogs fight to the death and bare-knuckled men fight for survival on the most extreme margins.
And yet these gritty stories are tempered by gentleness, the quiet understanding in the most intimate relationships. A whale trainer’s accident, a boy’s life endangered – where human vulnerability is so close to the surface, the humanity of these characters heralds redemption and hope.
CRAIG DAVIDSON – RUST AND BONE
In steel-tipped prose, Craig Davidson conjures a savage world populated by prizefighters, gamblers, sex addicts, and a disappearing magician. Dogs fight to the death, and in desperate arenas men with broken hands slug it out in bouts that have less to do with sport than with survival. Yet the hostility of Davidson's fictional universe is tempered by the humanity he invests in his characters, by his subtle awareness of their motivation, and by his eye for telling detail. Endorsed by Bret Easton Ellis and by Chuck Palahniuk, Rust and Bone explores violence, masculinity and life on the most extreme of margins. Craig Davidson is a young author who already displays the sure-footedness of a seasoned pro, and the best of these tightly balled, arrestingly visceral explorations of machismo's dark recesses uncoil with concussive power' The Times 'Davidson writes with precision and power that's hard to ignore ...an excellent collection' Independent on Sunday Now, here's a writer who knows how to unsettle. This collection reaches in to the darkest places and is not afraid' Herald 'This salty collection more than whets the appetite for Davidson's novel due next year' Guardian
CYCLING BRITAIN
DALE BROWN AND JIM DEFELICE – RETRIBUTION
In the Nevada desert, the high-tech future of warfare is being conceived and constructed at a top-secret military facility. America’s best defense, they keep the nightmare at bay with astonishing technology.
But now the terror is aimed directly at the heart of Dreamland.
The Dreamland team has used stealth, raw nerve, and technology to defuse nightmares all across the globe. But now the darkness is racing toward America at blinding speed. With more than two dozen nuclear devices unaccounted for, the global masters of terror have set a catastrophe in motion: a surprise attack more deadly than Pearl Harbor and 9/11 combined.
If the nation is to survive, Lieutenant Colonel Tecumseh “Dog” Bastian and his crew will have to reach deep into their cutting-edge arsenal. And they’ll have to do it short-handed—because two of Dreamland’s best and bravest have been lost at sea . . .
DALE BROWN AND JIM DEFELICE – REVOLUTION
In a volatile world, America's worst nightmares canbecome real--anywhere, anytime, and with no warning.
But there is one potent defense: a top-secret military facility in the Nevada desert where the high-tech future of warfare is being conceived and constructed.
Masters of astonishing military technology that enables them to deploy almost instantaneously to any part of the Earth, the Dreamland team must now stop a dangerous revolution in the making in Eastern Europe--where a mysterious group of insurgents has blown up an essential pipeline, thereby disrupting Europe's gas supply. With NATO and the EU paralyzed by the crisis, it falls to Dreamland's best and brightest to keep the world from the brink of another Cold War.
But the secret hand of an old enemy is pulling the strings from the shadows, hoping to reap the rewards of chaos. And the devastating results could erupt with intense, white-hot fury.
DAN SMITH – BIG GAME
13-year-old Oskari is sent into the cold wilderness on an ancient test of manhood. He must survive armed only with a bow and arrow. But instead, he stumbles upon an escape pod from a burning airliner: Air Force One. Terrorists have shot down the President of the United States.
The boy hunter and the world’s most powerful man are suddenly the hunted, in a race against a deadly enemy.
Dance Dance Dance – Haruki Murakami
This wildly propulsive novel by the acclaimed author of A Wild Sheep Chase focuses on a man searching for a former lover who vanished mysteriously from a seedy hotel. But each new clue to Kiki's whereabouts leads him deeper into a labryrinth of physical violence and metaphysical dread. "A world-class writer".--Washington Post Book World
DANIEL CLAY – BROKEN
Skunk Cunningham is a normal little girl, who nags her dad about smoking and always thrashes him on the X-box. She’s being bullied by the Oswald girls who live next-door. And she has a crush on Mike, the au pair’s boyfriend, who also happens to be her new teacher at school.
But then one day Skunk watches Bob Oswald beat friendless teenager Rick Buckley to a bloody pulp, and life on Drummond Square is never the same again.
Now a major film – winner of ‘Best British Independent Film’ and ‘Best Supporting Actor’ for Rory Kinnear at the British Independent Film Awards 2012 – Broken is Skunk’s attempt to withstand a world intent on breaking all she holds precious, as her neighbourhood struggles to rebound from this brutal act of cruelty.
DANIEL H. WILSON – ROBOGENESIS
It’s been three years since the global uprising of the world's robots, three long years in which ordinary people waged a guerilla war that saved humankind from the brink of annihilation. But a horrific new enemy has emerged, and the resistance is called to fight once again. And in a world where humanity and technology are pushed to the breaking point, their one hope may reside with their former enemy—Archos R-14.
DANIEL KEHLMANN – F: A NOVEL
It's the summer before the financial crisis. Martin Friedland, a Catholic priest without faith, overweight because he's always hungry, meets his half-brother Eric for dinner. The heavily indebted financial advisor, teetering on the brink of prison, has unsettling visions, but he shares them with no one. Shadowy men, even two children, warn him of something, but are these warnings really meant for him, or perhaps for his twin brother Ivan, the art connoisseur and aesthete who looks exactly like him? And so the disaster unfolds.
Daniel Kehlmann tells the story of three brothers who—each in their own way—are swindlers, hypocrites, and forgers. They've settled into their lives, but suddenly an abyss opens up. A moment of inattention, a coincidence, a wrong step, and what seemed like a ghostly nightmare becomes reality.
A novel about lies and truth, about family, forgery and the power of fiction: a virtuoso work of art – multifaceted, mysterious and bold.
DANIEL POLANSKY – SHE WHO WAITS
The third novel in the brilliant dark fantasy Low Town series
Low Town: the worst ghetto in the worst city in the Thirteen Lands. Good only for depravity and death. And Warden, long ago a respected agent in the formidable Black House, is now the most depraved Low Town denizen of them all. As a younger man, Warden carried out more than his fair share of terrible deeds, and never as many as when he worked for the Black House. But Warden's growing older, and the vultures are circling. Low Town is changing, faster than even he can control, and Warden knows that if he doesn't get out soon, he may never get out at all. But Warden must finally reckon with his terrible past if he can ever hope to escape it. A hospital full of lunatics, a conspiracy against the corrupt new king, and a ghetto full of thieves and murderers stand between him and his slim hope for the future. And behind them all waits the one person whose betrayal Warden never expected. The one person who left him, broken and bitter, to become the man he is today. The one woman he ever loved. She who waits behind all things.
DANIEL POLANSKY – TOMORROW THE KILLING
Dark, violent, and shot through with corruption, TOMORROW, THE KILLING is a fantastic successor to THE STRAIGHT RAZOR CURE, one of the most heralded fantasy debuts of recent times.
Once he was a hero of the Great War, and then a member of the dreaded Black House. Now he is the criminal linchpin of Low Town. His name is Warden. He thought he had left the war behind him, but a summons from up above brings the past sharply, uncomfortably, back into focus. General Montgomery's daughter is missing somewhere in Low Town, searching for clues about her brother's murder. The general wants her found, before the stinking streets can lay claim to her, too.
TOMORROW, THE KILLING was chosen as one of the best novels of 2012 by Forbidden Planet, Fantasy Faction, The Founding Fields and A Fantastical Librarian.
DARREN SHAN – CIRQUE DU FREAK
In the tradition of Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes, and Stephen King's Salem's Lot, the nightmare continues for the new vampire's assistant in the popular Saga of Darren Shan.
Darren Shan was just an ordinary schoolboy until his visit to the Cirque Du Freak. Now, as he struggles with his new life as a Vampire's Assistant, he tries desperately to resist the one temptation that sickens him, the one thing that can keep him alive. But destiny is calling. The Wolf Man is waiting.
DARREN SHAN – CIRQUE DU FREAK (TUNNELS OF BLOOD)
Book 3 in a compelling series about a boy who visits a mysterious freak show that leads him on a journey into a dark world of vampires.
Darren Shan, the Vampire's Assistant, gets a taste of the city when he leaves the Cirque Du Freak with Evra and Mr. Crepsley. When corpses, drained of blood, are discovered, Darren and Evra are compelled to confront a foul creature of the night who may prove to be the end of them all...
DAVID ANTHONY DURHAM – OTHER LANDS
“David Anthony Durham has serious chops. I can’t wait to read whatever he writes next."
—George R. R. Martin
David Anthony Durham’s gripping Acacia Trilogy continues with an epic novel where loyalties are tested, new worlds are discovered, and battle lines are being drawn.
A few years have passed since Queen Corinn has usurped control of the Known World—and she now rules with an iron fist. With plans to expand her empire, she sends her brother, Dariel, on an exploratory mission across the sea to The Other Lands. There, he discovers an alliance of tribes that have no interest in being ruled by Queen Corinn and the Akarans. In fact, Dariel’s arrival ignites a firestorm that once more exposes The Known World to a massive invasion, one unlike anything they have yet faced . . .
