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Arkadij Strugackij

Obydleny ostrov

Na planetě Sarakš přistane průzkumné kosmické plavidlo ze Země. Jeho posádku tvoří jediný muž, mladík jménem Maxim Kammerer. Povoláním je progresor, tedy člověk, který zkoumá vývoj jednotlivých objevených civilizací a pokud je to možné, snaží se do tohoto vývoje citlivě zasáhnout tak, aby se ona civilizace vyhnula katastrofám, jakými museli ve svých dějinách projít Pozemšťané. Jeho loď je však okamžitě po přistání zničena a on se ocitá sám na světě, který je ovládán celoplanetárním šílenstvím. Bratři Strugačtí se zkrátka také v Obydleném ostrově zabývají svou oblíbenou myšlenkou oprávněnosti vývozu revoluce či třeba jen intelektuální zkušenosti. A tak je Maxim na konci románu překvapen, že jeho počínání na Sarakši ani zdaleka nebylo tak správné a v pořádku, jak si po celou dobu sám představoval.<

Bernhard Schlink

El lector

<p>Michael Berg tiene quince años. Un día, regresando a s casa del colegio, empieza a encontrarse mal y una mujer acude en su ayuda. La mujer se llama Hanna y tiene treinta y seis años. Unas semanas después, el muchacho, agradecido, le lleva a su casa un ramo de flores. Este será el principio de una relación erótica en la que, antes de amarse, ella siempre le pide a Michael que le lea en voz alta fragmentos de Schiller, Goethe, tolstoi, Dickens… El ritual se repite durante varios meses, hasta que un día Hanna desaparece sin dejar rastro.</p><p>Siete años después Michael, estudiante de Derecho, acude al juicio contra cinco mujeres acusadas de criminales de guerra nazis y de ser las responsables de la muerte de varias personas en el campo de concentración del que eran guardianas. Una de las acusadas era Hanna. Y Michael se debate entre los gratos recuerdos y la sed de justicia, trata de comprender que llevó a Hanna a cometer esas atrocidades, trata de descubrir a la mujer que amó.</p><p>Bernhard Schlink ha escrito una deslumbrante novela sobre el amor, el horror y la piedad, sobre las heridas abiertas de la historia, sobre una generación de alemanes perseguida por un pasado que no vivieron directamente, pero cuyas sombras se ciernen sobre ellos.</p><p>`Una historia inolvidable sobre el amor, el honor y la compasión` (Neal Ascherdson, The Bookseller)</p><p>`Nadie ni nada es inocente para el ánimo del narrador en los dédalos verbales del infierno` (Robert Saladrigas, La Vanguardia)</p><p>`Un relato sobrio y conmovedor acerca de la seducción y el peso de la culpa…Irreprochable maestría` (Marcos Giralt Torrente, El País)</p><

Simon Tolkien

Orders from Berlin

Inspector Trave

Bernhard Schlink

The Reader

<p>“Arresting, philosophically elegant, morally complex… Mr. Schlink tells this story with marvelous directness and simplicity, his writing stripped bare of any of the standard gimmicks of dramatization.” – The New York Times</p><p>“The best novel I read this year… an unforgettable short tale about love, horror and mercy.”</p><p>– Neil Ascherson, Independent on Sunday Books of the Year</p><p>“Breathtaking… a novel that sucks you in with its power, so that once you start to read, you cannot put it down. Truly exciting.” – Focus Munich</p><p>“One of the most successful, one of the richest, one of the most overwhelming novels I have read for a very long time… entirely new and profoundly original.” – Jorge Semprun, Le Journal du Dimanche</p><p>“Superb.” – Le Monde</p><p>***</p><p>Originally published in Switzerland, and gracefully translated into English by Carol Brown Janeway, The Reader is a brief tale about sex, love, reading, and shame in postwar Germany. Michael Berg is 15 when he begins a long, obsessive affair with Hanna, an enigmatic older woman. He never learns very much about her, and when she disappears one day, he expects never to see her again. But, to his horror, he does. Hanna is a defendant in a trial related to Germany 's Nazi past, and it soon becomes clear that she is guilty of an unspeakable crime. As Michael follows the trial, he struggles with an overwhelming question: What should his generation do with its knowledge of the Holocaust? "We should not believe we can comprehend the incomprehensible, we may not compare the incomparable… Should we only fall silent in revulsion, shame, and guilt? To what purpose?"</p><p>The Reader, which won the Boston Book Review's Fisk Fiction Prize, wrestles with many more demons in its few, remarkably lucid pages. What does it mean to love those people-parents, grandparents, even lovers-who committed the worst atrocities the world has ever known? And is any atonement possible through literature? Schlink's prose is clean and pared down, stripped of unnecessary imagery, dialogue, and excess in any form. What remains is an austerely beautiful narrative of the attempt to breach the gap between Germany 's pre- and postwar generations, between the guilty and the innocent, and between words and silence.</p><

Christopher Tyerman

God's War: A New History of the Crusades

<p>From 1096 to 1500, European Christians fought to recreate the Middle East, Muslim Spain, and the pagan Baltic in the image of their God. The Crusades are perhaps both the most familiar and most misunderstood phenomena of the medieval world, and here Christopher Tyerman seeks to recreate, from the ground up, the centuries of violence committed as an act of religious devotion.</p><p>The result is a stunning reinterpretation of the Crusades, revealed as both bloody political acts and a manifestation of a growing Christian communal identity. Tyerman uncovers a system of belief bound by aggression, paranoia, and wishful thinking, and a culture founded on war as an expression of worship, social discipline, and Christian charity.</p><p>This astonishing historical narrative is imbued with figures that have become legends--Saladin, Richard the Lionheart, Philip Augustus. But Tyerman also delves beyond these leaders to examine the thousands and thousands of Christian men--from Knights Templars to mercenaries to peasants--who, in the name of their Savior, abandoned their homes to conquer distant and alien lands, as well as the countless people who defended their soil and eventually turned these invaders back. With bold analysis, Tyerman explicates the contradictory mix of genuine piety, military ferocity, and plain greed that motivated generations of Crusaders. He also offers unique insight into the maturation of a militant Christianity that defined Europe's identity and that has forever influenced the cyclical antagonisms between the Christian and Muslim worlds.</p><p>Drawing on all of the most recent scholarship, and told with great verve and authority,is the definitive account of a fascinating and horrifying story that continues to haunt our contemporary world.</p><p>From Publishers Weekly</p><p>This is likely to replace Steven Runciman's 50-year-old as the standard work. Tyerman (), lecturer in medieval history at Oxford University, demolishes our simplistic misconceptions about that series of ferocious campaigns in the Middle East, Muslim Spain and the pagan Baltic between 1096 and 1500. Abjuring sentimentality and avoiding clichés about a rapacious West and an innocent East, Tyerman focuses on the crusades' very human paradoxes: "the inspirational idealism; utopianism armed with myopia; the elaborate, sincere intolerance; the diversity and complexity of motive and performance." The reader marvels at the crusaders' inextinguishable devotion to Christ even while shuddering at their delight in massacring those who did not share that devotion. In the end, Tyerman says, what killed crusading was neither a lack of soldierly enthusiasm nor its failure to retain control of Jerusalem, but the loss of Church control over civil societies at home and secular authorities who felt that religion was not sufficient cause for war and that diplomacy was a more rational method of deciding international relations.is that very rare thing: a readable and vivid history written with the support of a formidable scholarly background, and it deserves to reach a wide audience. 16 color illus.</p><p>Review</p><p>Christopher Tyerman has crafted a superb book whose majestic architecture compares with Runciman's classic study of the Crusades…He is an entertaining as well as reliable guide to the bizarre centuries-long episode in which Western Christianity willfully ignored its Master's principles of love and forgiveness.</p><p>--Diarmaid MacCulloch, author of </p><p>This is a magisterial work. In , the Crusades are not just emblematic episodes in a troubled history of Europe's encounter with Islam. Tyerman shows that they are, with all their contradictions—tragedy and tomfoolery, idealism and cynicism, piety and savagery—fundamentally and inescapably human.</p><p>--Paul M. Cobb, Associate Professor of Islamic History, Fellow of the Medieval Institute, University of Notre Dame</p><p>Tyerman's wonderful book is contemporary medieval history-writing at the top of its game. It is also the finest history of the Crusades that anyone has ever written, fully informed by its predecessors and by the excellent scholarship of the past half century. Trenchantly written on the grand scale and full of vivid detail, clear argument, and sharp judgment,shows how the entire apparatus of crusade became tightly woven into European institutional and social life and consciousness, offering a highly original perspective on all of early European history and on European relations with non-Europeans. It shows no patience with ignorant mythologizing, modern condescension, or cultural instrumentalism.. In short, it constitutes a crusade history for the twenty-first century—and just in time.</p><p>--Edward M. Peters, Henry Charles Lea Professor of History, University of Pennsylvania</p><p>At a time when interest in the Middle East and the Crusades has reached a new height, Christopher Tyerman has made a significant contribution to the ever-growing shelves of books devoted to this subject. Tyerman's well-written book focuses heavily on the development of ideas about holy war from antiquity onward and on the crusade to the East from the eleventh to the sixteenth century. It is based on a careful reading of both primary and secondary sources and will prove an important resource for a broad audience of scholars, students, and general readers. The comparison with Runciman's history leaps out from the pages of this large volume and the temptation to address it will no doubt seduce others, but this volume is Tyerman through and through.</p><p>--James M. Powell, Professor Emeritus of Medieval History, Syracuse University</p><p>This is likely to replace Steven Runciman's 50-year-old as the standard work. Tyerman, lecturer in medieval history at Oxford University, demolishes our simplistic misconceptions about that series of ferocious campaigns in the Middle East, Muslim Spain and the pagan Baltic between 1096 and 1500...is that very rare thing: a readable and vivid history written with the support of a formidable scholarly background, and it deserves to reach a wide audience. </p><p>Challenging traditional conceptions of the Crusades, e.g., the failure to retain Jerusalem, Tyerman believes that it was the weakening of papal power and the rise of secular governments in Europe that finally doomed the crusading impulse. This is a marvelously conceived, written, and supported book.</p><p>--Robert J. Andrews </p><

Bernhard Schlink

La justicia de Selb

Un grupo industrial farmacéutico ha encargado al detective privado Gerhard Selb, de 68 años, que busque a un pirata informático que pone en jaque el sistema informático de la empresa que dirige su cuñado. A lo largo de la resolución del caso deberá enfrentarse a su propio pasado como joven y resuelto fiscal nazi, y encontrar una solución particular para esclarecer dos asesinatos cuya herramienta ingenua había sido.<

Arkadij Strugackij

Miliardu let pred koncem sveta

Bernhard Schlink

Self’s Murder

<p>Gerhard Self, the dour, seventy-something sleuth, is back in a new chapter in the wonderful series of mysteries by the bestselling author of The Reader.</p><p>When Gerhard Self happens upon one of the most intriguing cases of his career, he can't resist. From the start, the job is an unusual one: Herr Welker, partial owner of the German bank Weller and Welker desperately wants to write a history of his bank, but he has one problem – a silent partner, whose name does not appear anywhere in the bank's records. Welker wants Self to track this silent partner down. Shortly after he takes the job, Self is accosted by a man who frantically hands him a suitcase full of money and speeds off in a car, only to crash into a tree, dying instantly. Perplexed, but more determined than ever, Self follows the money. Soon he finds himself traveling to eastern Germany – shortly after the fall of communism – battling Nazi youth, and closing in on a money laundering ring with connections to the Russian mafia.</p><

Daniel Twardowski

Fluch des Südens

<p>Der amerikanische Privatdetektiv John Gowers ist schon viel herumgekommen, als ihn eine Mörderjagd 1867 bis ans Ende der Welt führt – von Australien bis ins abenteuerliche Neuseeland. Dort gerät er in die blutigen Wirren der letzten Maorikriege, ausgetragen zwischen den neuseeländischen Ureinwohnern und den europäischen Siedlern. Doch weder der deutsche Söldnerführer von Tempsky noch seine Kontrahenten Titokowaru und Te Kooti Arikirangi können den »Investigator« von der unerbittlichen Verfolgung seines Ziels abbringen.</p><p>Ein Gefangenenaufstand, den der Amerikaner unterstützt, erinnert ihn an ein düsteres Kapitel der Vergangenheit, und er führt in eine zehn Jahre vergangene, noch dunklere Zeit – in der John Gowers als junger Mississippilotse nicht nur die Liebe, sondern auch den Tod kennenlernte …</p><p>Daniel Twardowski alias Christoph Becker, geboren 1962, studierte Literatur-und Medienwissenschaften. Nach diversen Tätigkeiten, unter anderem als Universitätsdozent und Aktfotograf, lebt der Autor heute als freier Schriftsteller in Marburg. 2003 erhielt er den Förderpreis zum Literaturpreis Ruhrgebiet, 2005 das DaimlerChrysler-Stipendium der Casa di Goethe in Rom, 2006 den Oberhausener Literaturpreis und 2007 den Deutschen Kurzkrimipreis für »Nachtzug«.</p><

Alexander Mccall Smith

Tea Time for the Traditionally Built People

<p>The tenth installment of this universally beloved and best-selling series finds Precious Ramotswe in personal need of her own formidable detection talents.</p><p>Mma Ramotswe's ever-ready tiny white van has recently developed a rather disturbing noise. Of course, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni-her estimable husband and one of Botswana 's most talented mechanics-'"is the man to turn to for help. But Precious suspects he might simply condemn the van and replace it with something more modern. And as usual, her suspicions are well-founded: without telling her, he sells the van and saddles his wife with a new, characterless vehicle… a situation that must be remedied. And so she sets out to find the van, unaware, for the moment, that it has already been stolen from the man who bought it, making recovery a more complicated process than she had expected.</p><p>In the meantime, all is not going smoothly for Mma Makutsi in her engagement to Mr Phuti Radiphuti (to make matters worse, Violet Sephotho, who could not have gotten more than fifty percent on her typing final at the Botswana Secretarial School, is involved). And finally, the proprietor of a local football team has enlisted the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency to help explain its dreadful losing streak: surely someone must be fixing the games, it can't just be a case of unskilled players.</p><p>And as we know, there are few mysteries that can't be solved and fewer problems that can't be fixed when Precious Ramotswe puts her mind to it.</p><

Daniel Twardowski

Tod auf der Northumberland

<p>New York, 1865. Privatdetektiv John Gowers hat Caroline, die verschwundene Tochter seines Auftraggebers Senator Gordon F. Blandon, ausfindig gemacht: allerdings als Prostituierte. Als Gowers sein Honorar bei Senator Blandon einfordert, weigert sich dieser, dem Detektiv zu glauben – und ihn zu bezahlen. Daraufhin verkauft Gowers sein Beweisfoto einer großen Zeitung und hat in Blandon nun einen mächtigen Feind. Gowers ist klar, dass er die Stadt besser verlassen sollte.</p><p>Da kommt ihm der Auftrag der jungen Britin Emmeline Thompson gerade recht. Ihr Vater Samuel hat sich angeblich während einer Passage auf dem britischen Segelschiff erhängt: Er befand sich auf dem Weg zu seinem neuen Posten als Gouverneur von St. Helena, als er eines Morgens am Mast des Schiffes baumelte. Emmeline glaubt jedoch nicht an einen Selbstmord. Gowers nutzt die gute Gelegenheit, New York zu verlassen, und nimmt den Auftrag gerne an. Als Emmelines Bruder Daniel getarnt, schifft er sich auf der mit nach St. Helena ein. Gowers hat kaum mit seinen Nachforschungen begonnen, da geschehen zwei weitere brutale Morde …</p><p>Daniel Twardowski, geboren 1962, studierte Literatur-und Medienwissenschaft und lebt als freier Schriftsteller in Marburg. 2003 erhielt er den Förderpreis zum Literaturpreis Ruhrgebiet, 2005 das DaimlerChrysler-Stipendium der Casa di Goethe in Rom, 2006 den Oberhausener Literaturpreis und 2007 den Deutschen Kurzkrimipreis für »Nachtzug«. Daniel Twardowski wird durch die vertreten.</p><

D Turner

Turning up the heat

Readerotica

Arkadi Strugatski

Que dificil es ser Dios

Arkadi Strugatski

Decidamente tal vez

Arkadij Strugacki

Hotel U mrtveho alpinisty

<p>Autoři si zaspekulovali nad tím, co všechno by se mohlo stát, kdyby obyvatelé jiné, technicky vyspělejší planety vyslali na Zem své pozorovatele, kteří by se vzhledem i chováním připodobnili standardu našich splečenských vrstev. Díky zlomyslné náhodě první kontakt navážou se členy zločineckého gangu, který začne plně využívat jejich schopností. Naštěstí brzy prohlédnu, ale když se snaží vymknout z područí bandy, jsou pronásledováni a posledním útočištěm před odletem na vlastní planetu se jim stane hotel U mrtvého alpinisty, vysoko v horách, v uzavřeném údolí, navíc v posledních dnech odříznutém od okolného světa lavinovým závalem.</p><p>Zde tedy začíná vlastní zápletka, do níž je vtaženo i několik náhodných hostů hotelu, především detektiv Glebski, který zde chtěl strávit dva týdny zaslouženého odpočinku a zatím se stává ústřední postavou děje, v němž se proplétají dvě tajemné historie, jedna humorná a neškodná, druhá dramatičtější a tragická, v němž si téměř každý na něco s něčím hraje, kde jedni jsou zaskakováni činností druhých, logika lidí se kříží s logikou mimozemšťanů — a s touto spoustou záhad, tajemství a nedorozumění se marně potýká se svou profesionální rutinou náš nešťastný hrdina.</p><

Brad Taylor

Enemy of Mine

Pike Logan

Mariah Stewart

Cold Truth

<p>TRUTH HAS DEADLY CONSEQUENCES</p><p>Twenty-six years ago, even before a series of brutal murders rocked the idyllic town of Bowers Inlet, Cassie Burke lost her parents, her sister, and nearly her own life to a transient befriended by her father. Back then, Cassie was a scared kid-now she's a homicide cop. Back then, the suspect was caught and convicted-he died in prison. But now the killing has started again. And all signs indicate that the Bayside Strangler has come back for more.</p><p>With too many victims and too few suspects, Cassie has her hands full investigating the case, while working through the old trauma it has brought to the surface. Luckily, FBI agent Rick Cisco is dispatched to lend support. Together, Cassie and Rick must uncover the link between the dark past and the dangerous present to bring this small town's long nightmare to an end. If they fail, an elusive fiend will slip back into the shadows… to watch and wait-and kill another day.</p><p>In matters of crime, there are many versions of the truth.</p><

Ğabdulla Tuqay

Şüräle

"Şüräle" poeması - Ğabdulla Tuqaynıñ 1907 yılda yazılğan, bik populár äkiät-poeması. Ul Şüräle turındağı tatar xalıq riwayätenä nigezlängän.<

Richard Stevenson

Death Vows

<p>As "Death Vows" opens, Strachey, a hard-boiled detective in Albany, N.Y., is enlisted to investigate the mysterious Barry Fields, who may or may not be a violent con man and gold digger, preparing to marry an older man named Bill Moore just over the Massachusetts state line in the Berkshires. (If, in fact, those are their real names. Which they're not.) The investigation gets complicated when someone kills Strachey's client, sleazy busybody Jim Sturdivant. (Yes, that's technically his real name, but it hides more than it reveals about his past.)</p><p>There's only one couple in "Death Vows" whose connection is honest, public and lacking ulterior motives: Strachey and his partner, Timothy Callahan. He serves as Strachey's sounding board, support system and confidant. He doesn't let Strachey get away with anything, matching him quip for quip, same as any good partner. But since they live in New York, they can't get married. If that changes, Stevenson will surely write about it, with the snappiest wedding vows you've ever heard.</p><

Carnell- Thom

No Flesh Shall Be Spared

Set in a near future where society has dealt with the global outbreak of the Living Dead, a new highly lucrative international sport, zombie pit fighting, emerges. NO FLESH SHALL BE SPARED is the story of Cleese, his recruitment and rise to supremacy in this violent world where every match could be his last. The Dead will fall. Friends will die. The question that arises is that of Cleese's fate in the ensuing mayhem.<

Ryan C Thomas

The Summer I Died

Marcus Sakey

The Blade Itself

Danny Carter thought he was safe in his new life until his old one came looking for him. In the working-class Irish neighborhood of Chicago where he grew up, you were only as strong as the reputation you built. Danny and his best friend Evan built theirs robbing pawn shops and liquor stores, living the reckless lives that their blue-collar parents had strived so hard to avoid for them.<

S J-A Turney

Conspiracy of Eagles

Marius mules

Charles Stross

The Hidden Family

The Merchant Princes

In the tradition of Roger Zelazny’s classic Amber novels, the second volume of Charles Stross’s thrill-a-minute saga of multiple worlds. Miriam, a hip tech journalist from Boston, discovered her alternate world relatives in , and with them an elite identity she didn’t know was hers. Now, in order to avoid a slippery slope down to an unmarked grave, Miriam, known as Lady Helge to the Family, starts applying modern business practices and scientific knowledge to a trade dominated by mercantilists — with unexpected consequences for three different timelines, including the quasi-Victorian one exploited by the hidden family. Charles Stross is one of the big new SF writers of the 21st century, and the saga of The Merchant Princes is his most ambitious work yet.<

S J-A Turney

Dark Empress

A tales of the Empire

Ser

Глава 1

Mariah Stewart

Acts of Mercy

<p>Former FBI agent Sam Delvecchio brings the keen skills of a profiler to his new position as a Mercy Street Foundation operative-and not a moment too soon. His first assignment, the cold-case murder of a local soup kitchen volunteer, has all the telltale signs of a serial killer's work. That grim suspicion is confirmed when FBI agent Fiona Summers shares the details of two other killings with eerie similarities to Sam's case: The bodies in all three cases have been carefully posed. And when a fourth victim is discovered, the two investigators realize they're pursuing the same twisted quarry.</p><p>Local parish priest Kevin Burch, Mercy Street founder Robert Magellan's cousin, recognizes the posings for what they are: The killer is staging the church's seven Acts of Mercy ('Feed the hungry, clothe the naked…') with the bodies of his victims. But as Sam and Fiona race to prevent the final three murders, taunting messages from their target lead to the most chilling realization of all.</p><

Dustin Thomason

Virus

<p>Dezember 2012. In den USA breitet sich rasend schnell eine gefährliche Epidemie aus, ganz L.A. steht bereits unter Quarantäne. Genetiker Dr. Gabriel Stanton und Maya-Forscherin Chel Manu suchen unter Hochdruck nach einer Möglichkeit, die tödliche Krankheit aufzuhalten. Sie glauben, dass ihnen ein alter Maya-Codex weiterhelfen kann. Ein Codex, der aus einem Tempel in Guatemala entwendet und in die USA gebracht wurde - von dem Mann, der später als Erster erkrankte. Was hat es mit diesem Werk auf sich? Haben die alten Maya es mit einem tödlichen Fluch belegt, der die gesamte Menschheit ausrotten wird?</p><p>Für die Originalausgabe:</p><p>Copyright © 2012 by Dustin Thomason</p><p>Titel der amerikanischen Originalausgabe:</p><p>»12.21«</p><

Rob Thurman

Slashback

Cal and Nico

Shan Sa

The Girl Who Played Go

<p>“Explosive… Poignant and shattering… While [the] climax is inevitable and the stories lead directly toward it, a reader is still shocked and horrified when it occurs.” -The Boston Globe</p><p>“Shan Sa creates a sense of foreboding that binds the parallel tales of her protagonists. Her measured prose amplifies the isolation amid turmoil that each character seems to inhabit.” – San Francisco Chronicle</p><p>“Dreamy… powerful… This unlikely love story… is beautiful, shocking, and sad.” – Entertainment Weekly</p><p>“Compelling… Emotionally charged chapters evoke the stop-and-start rhythms of adolescence… Sa handles the intersection of the personal and the political quite deftly.” – The Washington Post Book World</p><p>“What makes Sa’s novel so satisfying is the deceptive simplicity of her narrative strategy.” – San Jose Mercury News</p><p>“An awesome read… Shan Sa describes the story so well that you almost forget you’ve never visited the places in her book… This book is truly for every reader.” -The Decatur Daily</p><p>“Entrancing… [With] an ending that you won’t predict.” – Austin American-Statesman</p><p>“It has the sweep of war and the intimacy of a love story… Shan Sa is a phenomenon.” – The Observer (London)</p><p>“Spellbinding… Sa’s language is graceful and trancelike: her fights are a whirling choreography of flying limbs and snow, her emotions richly yet precisely expressed.” – The Times (London)</p><p>“One is struck by the economy of the tale, its speed, and the brutality of its calculations. There is never an excess word or a superfluous phrase: each paragraph counts… Fine literary work.” – Le Figaro Magazine (France)</p><p>“An astonishing book… Ends up taking one’s breath away… Goes straight to our hearts.” – Le Point (France)</p><p>“Gripping… A wrenching love story… [The protagonists’] shared sense of immediacy and the transience of life is what in the final analysis makes this novel so strong, so intelligent, so moving… You’ll have to look far and wide to find a better new novel on an East Asian subject than this finely crafted story, satisfying as it is on so many different levels.” – The Taipei Times</p><p>***</p><p>In a remote Manchurian town in the 1930s, a sixteen-year-old girl is more concerned with intimations of her own womanhood than the escalating hostilities between her countrymen and their Japanese occupiers. While still a schoolgirl in braids, she takes her first lover, a dissident student. The more she understands of adult life, however, the more disdainful she is of its deceptions, and the more she loses herself in her one true passion: the ancient game of go.</p><p>Incredibly for a teenager-and a girl at that-she dominates the games in her town. No opponent interests her until she is challenged by a stranger, who reveals himself to us as a Japanese soldier in disguise. They begin a game and continue it for days, rarely speaking but deeply moved by each other's strategies. As the clash of their peoples becomes ever more desperate and inescapable, and as each one's untold life begins to veer wildly off course, the girl and the soldier are absorbed by only one thing-the progress of their game, each move of which brings them closer to their shocking fate.</p><p>In The Girl Who Played Go, Shan Sa has distilled the piercing emotions of adolescence into an engrossing, austerely beautiful story of love, cruelty and loss of innocence.</p><

Cheryl Kaye Tardif

Submerged

<p>After a tragic car accident claims the lives of his wife, Jane, and son, Ryan, Marcus Taylor is immersed in grief. But his family isn’t the only thing he has lost. An addiction to painkillers has taken away his career as a paramedic. Working as a 911 operator is now the closest he gets to redemption—until he gets a call from a woman trapped in a car.</p><p>Rebecca Kingston yearns for a quiet weekend getaway, so she can think about her impending divorce from her abusive husband. When a mysterious truck runs her off the road, she is pinned behind the steering wheel, unable to help her two children in the back seat. Her only lifeline is a cell phone with a quickly depleting battery and a stranger’s calm voice on the other end telling her everything will be all right.</p><

Danielle Steel

Southern Lights

Danielle Steel sweeps us from the gritty chaos of Manhattan's criminal court system to the the cool gentility of the Deep South in her powerful novel – at once a chilling story of crime and punishment and a behind-closed-doors look into the heart of a family. Steel nimbly creates two complete and vivid worlds as a mother and daughter begin separate lives – one in corporate Manhattan, fighting to put a serial killer behind bars; the other in sultry Charleston, reconnecting with the father she's barely known.<

Cheryl Kaye Tardif

Children of the Fog

<p>Sadie O’Connell is a bestselling author and a proud mother. But her life is about to spiral out of control. After her six-year-old son Sam is kidnapped by a serial abductor, she nearly goes insane. But it isn’t just the fear and grief that is ripping her apart. It’s the guilt. Sadie is the only person who knows what the kidnapper looks like. And she can’t tell a soul. For if she does, her son will be sent back to her in “little bloody pieces”.</p><p>When Sadie’s unfaithful husband stumbles across her drawing of the kidnapper, he sets into play a series of horrific events that sends her hurtling over the edge. Sadie’s descent into alcoholism leads to strange apparitions and a face-to-face encounter with the monster who abducted her son—a man known only as… The Fog.</p><

Alice Sebold

The Lovely Bones

<p>The Bram Stoker Awards</p><p>My name was Salmon, like the fish, first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973. My murderer was a man from our neighborhood. My mother liked his border flowers, and my father talked to him once about fertilizer'</p><p>This is Susie Salmon, speaking to us from heaven. It looks a lot like her school playground, with the good kind of swing sets. There are counsellors to help newcomers to adjust, and friends to room with. Everything she wants appears as soon as she thinks of it – except the thing she wants most: to be back with the people she loved on earth.</p><p>From heaven, Susie watches. She sees her happy suburban family implode after her death, as each member tries to come to terms with the terrible loss. Over the years, her friends and siblings grow up, fall in love, do all the things she never had the chance to do herself. But life is not quite finished with Susie yet.</p><p>The Lovely Bones is a luminous and astonishing novel about life and death, forgiveness and vengeance, memory and forgetting. It is, above all, a novel which finds light in the darkest of places, and shows how even when that light seems to be utterly extinguished, it is still there, waiting to be rekindled.</p><

Alice Sebold

Desde Mi Cielo

<p>A Susie Salmon (sí, igual que el pez) la mataron. Fue violada, asesinada y luego descuartizada en un campo de trigo cuando volvía del colegio una helada tarde de invierno.</p><p>A sus 14 años, era una joven como tantas, que soñaba con ir a la universidad, conocer chicos, vestirse a la moda y ser actriz o fotógrafa. Pero ahora ya no está para contarnos sus planes, sus ansias de futuro… o tal vez sí.</p><p>Desde la atalaya de su cielo, en el que ahora habita eternamente, Susie observa la vida en la Tierra de aquellos a quienes dejó.</p><p>Desde ese cielo donde ahora puede concretar todos sus sueños de adolescente, Susie también relata de forma minuciosa la brutal preparación y ejecución de su asesinato, cometido por un conocido, un vecino del lugar, y descubrir que no es la única chica que ha hecho `desaparecer` dicho individuo.</p><p>Una narración fría y distante de un acto perverso, en las que Susie intercala sus ingenuas y curiosas experiencias en su cielo. La realidad más atroz y perturbadora, junto con la fantasía de un mundo donde el muerto puede al fin realizar todos sus deseos. Excepto uno: volver a la Tierra junto a los suyos.</p><p>A Susie sólo le queda dedicarse a observar, cuidar e intentar de alguna forma, intervenir en la vida de aquellos a quienes dejó atrás: su obstinado padre, que no descansará hasta saber lo que realmente le ocurrió, su madre, que termina aislada de todo y de todos, sus hermanos, que lucharán por sobrevivir al vacío dejado por ella y reconstruir sus vidas, sus amigos, inmersos en la lucha diaria por seguir sin su presencia, e incluso en el chico que estaba enamorado de ella y que no logra olvidarla. Desde su cielo, Susie debe aprender también a resignarse, dejar vivir a los vivos y continuar su derrotero.</p><p>Queramos verlo o no, el Mal forma parte de nuestra vida cotidiana, y esta novela desgarradora</p><

Alice Sebold

Lucky

<p>A non fiction book</p><p>Enormously visceral, emotionally gripping, and imbued with the belief that justice is possible even after the most horrific of crimes, Alice Sebold's compelling memoir of her rape at the age of eighteen is a story that takes hold of you and won't let go.</p><p>Sebold fulfills a promise that she made to herself in the very tunnel where she was raped: someday she would write a book about her experience. With Lucky she delivers on that promise with mordant wit and an eye for life's absurdities, as she describes what she was like both as a young girl before the rape and how that rape changed but did not sink the woman she later became.</p><p>It is Alice's indomitable spirit that we come to know in these pages. The same young woman who sets her sights on becoming an Ethel Merman-style diva one day (despite her braces, bad complexion, and extra weight) encounters what is still thought of today as the crime from which no woman can ever really recover. In an account that is at once heartrending and hilarious, we see Alice's spirit prevail as she struggles to have a normal college experience in the aftermath of this harrowing, life-changing event.</p><p>No less gripping is the almost unbelievable role that coincidence plays in the unfolding of Sebold's narrative. Her case, placed in the inactive file, is miraculously opened again six months later when she sees her rapist on the street. This begins the long road to what dominates these pages: the struggle for triumph and understanding – in the courtroom and outside in the world.</p><p>Lucky is, quite simply, a real-life thriller. In its literary style and narrative tension we never lose sight of why this life story is worth reading. At the end we are left standing in the wake of devastating violence, and, like the writer, we have come to know what it means to survive.</p><

Paul Thurrott

Windows 8 Secrets

<p>Microsoft is introducing a major new release of its Windows operating system, Windows 8, and what better way for you to learn all the ins and outs than from two internationally recognized Windows experts and Microsoft insiders, authors Paul Thurrott and Rafael Rivera? They cut through the hype to get at useful information you’ll not find anywhere else, including what role this new OS plays in a mobile and tablet world.</p><p>Regardless of your level of knowledge, you’ll discover little-known facts about how things work, what’s new and different, and how you can modify Windows 8 to meet what you need.</p><p>Windows RT offers both advantages and disadvantages compared to Windows 8, and which you choose will depend on your needs. The biggest issue with Windows RT, of course, is the lack of desktop application compatibility: Though it comes with most Windows 8 desktop utilities and a version of Microsoft Office, Windows RT is not compatible with any third party or Microsoft desktop Windows applications that are already included. That said, Windows RT should offer much better battery life and amazingly thin and light form factors when compared to similar PCs and devices designed around a traditional PC microprocessor.</p><p>Generally speaking, you will actually see better results with an upgrade with this version of Windows, which is different than our experience with previous versions. To be safe, backup everything first, perform the upgrade, and if it doesn’t go well, you can always do a clean install afterwards.</p><p>One thing to watch during an upgrade, however, is Internet Explorer: If you have configured a different browser as your default browser in Windows 7 and then upgrade to Windows 8, you will actually lose the ability to run the Metro-style version of Internet Explorer 10. You can fix this by configuring IE as your default browser after the fact.</p><p>Yes. But in real world usage, you won’t notice much of a difference in usage. That said, Windows 8 boots, resumes from sleep, and performs other power management functions much, much faster than does Windows 7. You can also use Push Button Reset to refresh or reset a Windows 8 PC in just minutes.</p><p>For the most part, yes. Microsoft claims that if it works with Windows 7, it should work with Windows 8. And in our experience, that has definitely been the case. Even the now-ancient game “Halo: Combat Evolved,” from 2003 installs and runs just fine. That said, you may need to uninstall some applications if you’re upgrading from Windows 7 to Windows 8, and then reinstall them after the fact. And of course there will always be some exceptions.</p><p>If you remember just one keyboard shortcut, it should be WINKEY + C, which enables the Charms and access to several key system functions, including Search, Share, Start, Devices, and Settings. Some other useful keyboard shortcuts include WINKEY + D (to navigate directly to the desktop), WINKEY + I (for Settings), and WINKEY + L for lock. And let’s not forget our favorite keyboard combination: WINKEY + X, which displays a power user menu of sorts containing lots of useful shortcuts.</p><p>In their introduction, the authors of this book say that “with Windows 8, suddenly, everything is different.” And they are right—with a completely new interface presenting users with a completely new experience, Windows 8 and its device-based cousin Windows RT are arguably the biggest change in Windows ever. But bestselling authors Paul Thurrott and Rafael Rivera have you covered with Windows 8 Secrets, a completely new, written-from-scratch guide to the ins and outs of this new Windows experience. Covering topics both large and small, ranging from how the new immersive experiences and familiar Windows desktop interface coexist to the subtle differences in interacting with Windows 8 via touch, keyboard, or mouse, this book digs in to reveal helpful and advanced insight in all major Windows areas: application management, data backup and security, networking, and much more.</p><p>The Insider’s Guide to:</p><p>The Secrets series reveals:</p><

Bruce Sterling

The Caryatids

Books of Big Ideas often polarize reviewers, and Bruce Sterling’s latest novel is no exception. Either the best SF book of this or any other year (Cory Doctorow) or “a mess of a book about the mess of the world” (John Clute), The Caryatids, at the very least, illustrates Sterling's ability to raise voices (in praise or protest) 30 years after he laid the groundwork for the cyberpunk movement, without which contemporary SF would be a much rockier—and much less diverse—landscape. Sterling’s complex, controversial vision of our future invites comparison to Neal Stephenson (, ) and William Gibson (). Love him or hate him, Bruce Sterling always has something important to say, and The Caryatids is worth a look.<

Alice Sebold

The Almost Moon

<p>A woman steps over the line into the unthinkable in this brilliant, powerful, and unforgettable new novel by the author of The Lovely Bones and Lucky.</p><p>For years Helen Knightly has given her life to others: to her haunted mother, to her enigmatic father, to her husband and now grown children. When she finally crosses a terrible boundary, her life comes rushing in at her in a way she never could have imagined. Unfolding over the next twenty-four hours, this searing, fast-paced novel explores the complex ties between mothers and daughters, wives and lovers, the meaning of devotion, and the line between love and hate. It is a challenging, moving, gripping story, written with the fluidity and strength of voice that only Alice Sebold can bring to the page.</p><

Mark Twain

A Dog's Tale

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