English books
DAVID BILSBOROUGH – A FIRE IN THE NORTH
This second volume picks up the ongoing story in a tunnel leading out of enchanted mountain realm of Eotunlandt. Fighting their way through subterranean dangers, Nibulus and his diminished retinue of ‘questers’ finally reach the open again, only to discover that their rivals the Thieves have mysteriously disappeared.
Meanwhile, Gapp and a sinisterly altered Methuselech continue towards Wrythe, the last settlement. They find the population strangely degenerated, under the influence of a local leader, in fact the evil being Scathur who has been hiding there for five hundred years, awaiting his moment of vengeance. Scathur recognises that inside Methuselech is the outcast soul of a rival necromancer, Mauglad, so imprisons them both till they manage to flee for their lives.
The rest of the original questers also turn up for a scary sojourn in Wrythe, before heading on to Melhus island with Scathur’s deathly henchmen in pursuit. During strange dreams, the wanderer Bolldhe learns he must use a strange sword he has found to kill the evil demigod Drauglir, once and for all. They all venture into Melhus (the Underworld), contesting with the hosts of the dead sent against them. There ensues a colossal battle, with thrills and spills and monumental destruction, before the questers achieve an unexpected victory –and most of them will return to Nordwas sadder but wiser.
DAVID EDDINGS – Guardians Of The West
BOOK 1 OF THE MALLOREON, the worldwide bestselling fantasy series by one of the godfathers of the tradition. Discover the epic stories that inspired generations of fantasy writers - from Raymond Feist's The Riftwar Cycle to George R. R. Martin's A Game of Thrones.
Evil doesn't disappear. It just changes form...
The evil God Torak is slain, and Garion, the long-awaited King of Riva, hopes for peace. And for a while he gets his wish.
But then a darker prophecy is revealed, and new and more insidious forces gather. As danger mounts from all quarters, and his son is kidnapped, Garion has no choice but to follow his fate, wherever it might lead...
DAVID HEWSON – THE KILLING III
A FAMILY IN TURMOIL. A COUNTRY IN CRISIS. ALL DEBTS MUST BE SETTLED
Sarah Lund is contacted by old flame Mathias Borch from National Intelligence. Borch fears that what first appeared to be a random killing at the docks is the beginning of an assassination attempt on Prime Minister Troels Hartmann. The murder draws attention towards the shipping and oil giant, Zeeland, run by billionaire Robert Zeuthen.
When Zeuthen’s 9-year-old daughter, Emilie, is kidnapped the investigation takes on a different dimension as it soon becomes clear that her disappearance is linked to the murder of a young girl in Jutland some years earlier. Hartmann is in the middle of an election campaign, made all the more turbulent because of the mounting financial crisis. He needs Zeeland’s backing. Lund needs to make sense of the clues left by Emilie’s perpetrator before it’s too late. And can she finally face the demons that have long haunted her?
Lund’s last case is now adapted from screen to page in the final instalment of The Killing trilogy. This is an adaptation — not a novelisation. So if you’ve seen The Killing III on TV expect plenty of surprises, included a changed cast and an entirely different ending.
DAVID IGNATIUS – A FIRING OFFENSE
When rising-star reporter Eric Truell accepts information from a maverick CIA agent, he becomes enmeshed in an international trade war in which even his own newspaper may be an unsuspecting participant. When Eric's sources tell him there is a spy inside the newsroom, he is tempted to cross a dangerous professional line and risk his career—possibly even his life—to find the truth.
DAVID NICHOLLS – US
Douglas Petersen may be mild-mannered, but behind his reserve lies a sense of humor that, against all odds, seduces beautiful Connie into a second date and eventually into marriage. Now, almost three decades after their relationship first blossomed in London, they live more or less happily in the suburbs with their moody seventeen-year-old son, Albie; then Connie tells him she thinks she wants a divorce.
The timing couldn’t be worse. Hoping to encourage her son’s artistic interests, Connie has planned a month-long tour of European capitals, a chance to experience the world’s greatest works of art as a family, and she can’t bring herself to cancel. And maybe going ahead with the original plan is for the best anyway. Douglas is privately convinced that this landmark trip will rekindle the romance in the marriage and might even help him bond with Albie.
Narrated from Douglas’s endearingly honest, slyly witty, and at times achingly optimistic point of view, Us is the story of a man trying to rescue his relationship with the woman he loves and learning how to get closer to a son who’s always felt like a stranger.
DAVID WEST – CHASING DRAGONS
"The art of fighting without fighting."- Bruce Lee on his martial arts style in "Enter the Dragon". Written for both interested filmgoers and established aficionados, "Chasing Dragons" is the essential introduction and guide to the martial arts cinemas of Japan, Hong Kong and Hollywood. "Chasing Dragons" explores over fifty key films, their texts, fighting techniques, stars and directors - set in the distinct cultures producing and forming them. "Chasing Dragons" examines the Japanese masters of the samurai film like Kurosawa Akira and Kobayashi Masaki; encounters Zatoichi and the lethal swordsmen of the screen, and the superstars of Hong Kong, from Kwan Tak Hing through 'Little Dragon' Bruce Lee and Sammo Hung, to Jackie Chan and Jet Li. It traces Hollywood's martial arts cinema, including exploitation ninja movies and box-office blockbusters like "The Matrix" and "Kill Bill". All this and much more in this fresh and informative companion to a remarkable cinema.
DAVID WINGROVE – THE MIDDLE KINGDOM ( CHUNG KUO )
The year is 2196. The great Empire of Ice, Chung Kuo, has finally been shaken after more than a century of peace enforced by brutal tyranny. The Minister of the Edict—an official responsible for licensing all technology that could lead to Change—has been assassinated. The seven ruling T’ang struggle to maintain Stasis, even as their mile-high, continent-spanning cities descend into chaos. Amid the chaos, the rebels responsible for the assassination seize the opportunity to effect Change. But the assassination was orchestrated by those far closer to the ruling power, and this betrayal—the first of many—will lead them all into the world-shattering War of Two Directions.
DBC PIERRE – BREAKFAST WITH THE BORGIAS
Hell is other people. ' a chilling, page-turning hammer novella by the booker-prize-winning author of vernon god little. The setting: a faded, lonely guesthouse on the essex coast. Outside, it's dark, and very foggy. Inside there's no phone or internet reception, no connection with the outside world. Enter ariel panek, a promising young academic en route from the usa to an important convention in amsterdam. With his plane grounded by fog at stanstead, he has been booked in for the night at the guesthouse. Discombobulated and jetlagged, he falls in with a family who appear to be commemorating an event. But this is no ordinary celebration. And this is no ordinary family. As evening becomes night, panek realises that he has become caught in an insidious web of other people's secrets and lies, a sartrian hell from which for him there may be no escape.
Deception Point – Dan Brown
The bestselling novel. When a new NASA satellite detects evidence of an astonishingly rare object buried deep in the Arctic ice, the floundering space agency proclaims a much-needed victory...a victory that has profound implications for U.S. space policy and the impending presidential election. With the Oval Office in the balance, the President dispatches White House Intelligence analyst Rachel Sexton to the Arctic to verify the authenticity of the find. Accompanied by a ...
Don’t Tempt Me – Sylvia Day
Sometimes Temptation. . .
A hardened mercenary as adept in bed as in battle, Simon Quinn can have any woman he wants, but he prefers those who know the rules of the game. That way it's easier to leave them behind. . .
Can't Be Avoided
But Lysette Rousseau is one female he can't figure out. Beautiful, sensual, seductive, she should be the perfect match for Simon, yet something about her ties him in knots. Bold and manipulative one time, sweetly innocent the next, she is an enigma bound to bring trouble. . .impossible to resist.
Praise for Sylvia Day and her novels
DONNA LEON – A SEA OF TROUBLES
Commissario Brunetti finds himself adrift in his tenth investigation?
Dona Leon has amased devoted fans around the world for her atmospheric and intelligent Commissario Brunetti series. A Sea of Troubles offers a rare glimpse into the scrupulous Commissario?s personal life. When Brunetti investigates the murder of two local fishermen on the island of Pellestrina, the small community closes ranks, forcing him to accept Signorina Elettra?s offer to visit her relatives there to search for clues. Though loyal to his beloved wife, Paola, he must admit that less-than-platonic emotions underlie his concern for his boss?s beautiful secretary. Suspenseful, provocative, and deeply unsettling, A Sea of Troubles is an explosive and irresistible addition to Leon?s marvelous series.
E.L. JAMES – FIFTY SHADES DARKER
A special edition of E L James’s #1 New York Times bestselling novel, Fifty Shades Darker, that includes her own photos and caption commentary from the making of the film―and an excerpt from her forthcoming book, Fifty Shades Darker, As Told by Christian Grey.
Daunted by the dark secrets of the tormented young entrepreneur, Christian Grey, Anastasia Steele has broken off their relationship. But desire for Grey still dominates her every waking thought, and when he proposes a new arrangement, she cannot resist.
They rekindle their searing, sensual affair, and soon Ana is learning more about the harrowing past of her damaged, driven and demanding Fifty Shades than she ever thought possible.
But while Christian wrestles with his inner demons, Ana must make the most important decision of her life.
A decision she can only make on her own ...
EDEN MAGUIRE – PHOENIX BOOK 4
Darina is in denial. Even after all she's been through, the Beautiful Dead can't be real. They must be a figment of her grief-stricken imagination. But visions of Phoenix and Hunter prove otherwise and soon she's drawn back to Foxton, to the barn, to Phoenix - where they have, what may just be, their final reunion. It's the moment they've been dreading - time to solve Phoenix's mystery. Everything has been building to this but Darina knows that revealing the true circumstances of Phoenix's death will lead to their final parting. With this impossible mixture of emotions, Darina begins to unscramble the facts, but she's up against mounting obstacles: the distraction of Hunter's personal mystery, Phoenix's returning father, threats of gang violence and conspiracies to blur and block the truth. With time pressure mounting and the risk of Phoenix being sent back into unending limbo, Darina puts herself in danger, and so the mystery of the Beautiful Dead builds into a heart-breaking climax ...
EDITH TEMPLETON – GORDON
The original Fifty Shades of Grey, Edith Templeton's novel Gordon has been banned, pirated and published under various names for almost fifty years.
Post-war London. Louisa, a smartly dressed young woman in the midst of a divorce, meets a charismatic man in a pub, and within an hour has been sexually conquered by him on a garden bench. Thus begins her baffling but magnetic love affair with Richard Gordon.
Gordon, a psychiatrist, keeps Louisa in his thrall with his almost omniscient ability to see through her, and she is equally gripped by the unexpected pleasure of complete submission. Subjecting herself to repeated humiliations at his hands, but quite unable and unwilling to free herself from his control, Louisa and Gordon sink further and further into the depths - both psychologically and sexually.
An extraordinary novel of psycho-sexual entanglement that was banned for indecency in England in 1966, in Gordon, Edith Templeton captures one of the most unusual and disturbing love stories ever written.
'Templeton's characters are not passive or self-doubting. Their pleasure in sexual submission is a mark of their toughness: they can take what their men give them' The New York Times
'Sexual perversion, masochistic dependency, obsession and suicide' Telegraph
'An unsettling tale of sexual obsession' The New Yorker
'It is unlikely that any young woman will write a book as good, as honest, as provocative as Gordon' Telegraph
'Superbly written and unsettling' Beryl Bainbridge
Edith Templeton was born in Prague in 1916 and spent much of her childhood in a castle in the Bohemian countryside. Her short stories began to appear in The New Yorker in the 1950s and caused a major stir because of their sexual explicitness (these stories are available in one volume entitled The Darts of Cupid as a Penguin ebook). Gordon first appeared in 1966 under the pseudonym Louise Walbrook and was subsequently banned in England and Germany; it was then pirated around the world, appearing under various titles. In 2001, Edith Templeton agreed to publish the novel, with its original title, under her own name. She died in 2006.
ELENA FERRANTE – THE STORY OF THE LOST CHILD
"Nothing quite like this has ever been published before," proclaimed The Guardian about the Neapolitan novels in 2014. Against the backdrop of a Naples that is as seductive as it is perilous and a world undergoing epochal change, Elena Ferrante tells the story of a lifelong friendship between two women with unmatched honesty and brilliance.
The Story of the Lost Child is the concluding volume in the dazzling saga of two women — the brilliant, bookish Elena, and the fiery, uncontainable Lila. Both are now adults, with husbands, lovers, aging parents, and children. Their friendship has been the gravitational center of their lives. Both women fought to escape the neighborhood in which they grew up — a prison of conformity, violence, and inviolable taboos. Elena married, moved to Florence, started a family, and published several well-received books. In this final novel she has returned to Naples, drawn back as if responding to the city's obscure magnetism. Lila, on the other hand, could never free herself from the city of her birth. She has become a successful entrepreneur, but her success draws her into closer proximity with the nepotism, chauvinism, and criminal violence that infect the neighborhood. Proximity to the world she has always rejected only brings her role as its unacknowledged leader into relief. For Lila is unstoppable, unmanageable, unforgettable.
The four volumes in this series constitute a long remarkable story that readers will return to again and again, and each return will bring with it new revelations.