English books
Christobel Kent – A Fine and Private Place
As Sandro gets to grips with the dispiriting realities of life as a private detective, touting for business among old contacts and following errant teenagers, an old case comes back to haunt him...
Once the subject of a routine investigation back in Sandro's police-officer days, Loni Meadows - the glamorous, charming and ruthless director of an artistic Trust based in a castle in the hills outside Florence - is found dead in circumstances Sandro cannot convince himself are accidental. However inconvenient his suspicions might be, both to Sandro - whose marriage appears to be disintegrating - and to Meadows's erstwhile employers at the Trust, he presses ahead with the case. And as Sandro attempts to uncover the truth of Loni Meadows's violent and lonely death, he finds himself drawn into the lives of the castle's highly strung community and the closed world they inhabit in the Casentino's isolated hills.
CHUCK HOGAN – THE NIGHT ETERNAL
The nail-biting vampire thriller from the world-famous director of Pan’s Labyrinth and Hellboy.
The night belongs to them, and it will be a night eternal…
After the blasts, it was all over. Nuclear Winter has settled upon the earth. Except for one hour of sunlight a day, the whole world is plunged into darkness. It is a near-perfect environment for vampires. They have won. It is their time.
Almost every single man, woman and child has been enslaved in vast camps across the globe. Like animals, they are farmed, harvested for the sick pleasure of the Master Race.
Almost, but not all. Somewhere out there, hiding for their lives, is a desperate network of free humans, continuing the seemingly hopeless resistance. Everyday people, with no other options – among them Dr Ephraim Goodweather, his son Zack, the veteran exterminator Vasily, and former gangbanger Gus.
To be free, they need a miracle, they need divine intervention. But Salvation can be a twisted game – one in which they may be played like pawns in a battle of Good and Evil. And at what cost…?
CHUCK KLOSTERMAN – KILLING YOURSELF TO LIVE
Building on the national bestselling success of Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs , preeminent pop culture writer Chuck Klosterman unleashes his best book yet—the story of his cross-country tour of sites where rock stars have died and his search for love, excitement, and the meaning of death.
For 6,557 miles, Chuck Klosterman thought about dying. He drove a rental car from New York to Rhode Island to Georgia to Mississippi to Iowa to Minneapolis to Fargo to Seattle, and he chased death and rock ‘n’ roll all the way. Within the span of twenty-one days, Chuck had three relationships end—one by choice, one by chance, and one by exhaustion. He snorted cocaine in a graveyard. He walked a half-mile through a bean field. A man in Dickinson, North Dakota, explained to him why we have fewer windmills than we used to. He listened to the KISS solo albums and the Rod Stewart box set. At one point, poisonous snakes became involved. The road is hard. From the Chelsea Hotel to the swampland where Lynyrd Skynyrd’s plane went down to the site where Kurt Cobain blew his head off, Chuck explored every brand of rock star demise. He wanted to know why the greatest career move any musician can make is to stop breathing...and what this means for the rest of us.
CLAIRE KENDAL – THE BOOK OF YOU
COLIN DEXTER – THE REMORSEFUL DAY
' Where does this all leave us, sir?' 'Things are moving fast.' 'We're getting near the end, you mean?' 'We were always near the end.' The murder of Yvonne Harrison had left Thames Valley CID baffled. A year after the dreadful crime they are still no nearer to making an arrest. But one man has yet to tackle the case -- and it is just the sort of puzzle at which Chief Inspector Morse excels. So why is he adamant that he will not lead the re-investigation, despite the entreaties of Chief Superintendent Strange and dark hints of some new evidence? And why, if he refuses to take on the case officially, does he seem to be carrying out his own private enquiries? For Sergeant Lewis this is yet another example of the unsettling behaviour his chief has been displaying of late ...
Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki – Haruki Murakami
An instant #1 New York Times Bestseller,Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimageis the remarkable story of a young man haunted by a great loss; of dreams and nightmares that have unintended consequences for the world around us; and of a journey into the past that is necessary to mend the present. Here Haruki Murakami—one of the most revered voices in literature today—gives us a story of love, friendship, and heartbreak for the ages.
CONNIE WILLIS – TO SAY NOTHING OF THE DOG
Connie Willis' Hugo and Nebula Award-winning Doomsday Book uses time travel for a serious look at how people connect with each other. In this Hugo-winning companion to that novel, she offers a completely different kind of time travel adventure: a delightful romantic comedy that pays hilarious homage to Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat.
When too many jumps back to 1940 leave 21st century Oxford history student Ned Henry exhausted, a relaxing trip to Victorian England seems the perfect solution. But complexities like recalcitrant rowboats, missing cats, and love at first sight make Ned's holiday anything but restful - to say nothing of the way hideous pieces of Victorian art can jeopardize the entire course of history.
CORA CARMACK – LOSING IT
Love. Romance. Sex. There’s a first time for everything...
As far as Bliss Edwards can tell, she’s the last virgin standing, certainly amongst her friends. And she’s determined to deal with the ‘problem’ as quickly and simply as possible.
But her plan for a no-strings one night stand turns out to be anything but simple. Especially when she arrives for her first class and recognises her hot new British professor.
She'd left him naked in her bed just 8 hours earlier...
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.
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 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 – 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...
