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Jack Campbell

Nieustraszony

Zaginiona flota

Flota Sojuszu, ścigana przez przeważające siły Syndykatu, przemierza wrogie systemy gwiezdne. Dowodzi nią legendarny John „Black Jack” Geary, heros z zamrażarki, bohater wracający między żywych po 100 latach hibernacji. Załogi jego okrętów nie ustają w wysiłkach, by wrócić do macierzystych portów i dostarczyć tam klucz do zwycięstwa, czyli klucz do wrogiego hipernetu. Geary — świadom, że Syndycy chcą wciągnąć jego flotę w zasadzkę — musi działać z zaskoczenia. Stąd pozornie szalony plan ataku na system Sancere. Argumenty „za” są solidne: z Sancere flota Sojuszu ma do wyboru wiele dróg powrotu i ominięcia pułapek, a udany atak na stocznie wroga solidne nadszarpnie kondycję wojenną Syndykatu. „Przeciw” są zmęczeni nieustannym pogotowiem bojowym marynarze i oficerowie Sojuszu. Nie wierzą w sens zapuszczania się na terytorium wroga. Narasta bunt, który coraz poważniej zagraża pozycji Geary’ego.<

Jack Campbell

Odważny

Zaginiona flota

Beznadziejna wojna pomiędzy Sojuszem a Światami Syndykatu trwa już od stu lat. Losy tego konfliktu odmienić miało odnalezienie kapitana Johna „Black Jacka” Geary’ego. Czy legendarny dowódca, wybudzony po dziesięcioleciach hibernacji, zdoła ocalić flotę Sojuszu przed bezlitosnym wrogiem? Po serii krwawych starć Sojusz utracił większość zapasów i znaczną część sprawności bojowej. Geary, pomimo dręczących go niepokojów, musi zatrzymać się w systemie Baldura, aby zdobyć potrzebne surowce w tamtejszych kopalniach. Jaki będzie jego następny ruch? Syndycy zaczynają rozgryzać strategię komodora i uciekająca flota z każdym skokiem traci przewagę nad wrogiem. W miarę zagłębiania się w raporty wywiadu Geary odkrywa kolejną prawdę: w tej wojnie nie chodzi tylko o starcie dwóch systemów wartości. Na planszy znajduje się także trzeci — kto wie — czy nie znacznie niebezpieczniejszy gracz, którego celem jest unicestwienie rodzaju ludzkiego…<

Jack Campbell

Bezlitosny

Zaginiona flota

<p>John „Black Jack” Geary. Legenda. Najwyższa karta, którą flota Sojuszu może wystawić w śmiertelnej grze o przetrwanie. Poprowadził swoje okręty przez przestrzeń Syndykatu wygrywając w bitwach i wymykając się gigantycznej nagonce. Wiedza, którą współcześni oficerowie zatracili w dziesiątkach lat brutalnej, kosmicznej rzezi, dała mu przewagę.</p><p>Ale „Black Jack” jest już zmęczony. Stawka rośnie. Pojawia się lęk przed błędem i zagładą w chwili, gdy flota jest już niemal u celu. Okrętom brakuje paliwa, amunicji i żywności – coraz trudniej jest walczyć.</p><p>Kurs na Heradao, więzienny system Syndykatu! Stawką jest życie 2 tysięcy towarzyszy broni. O ile jeszcze żyją.</p><p>Pancerniki, krążowniki liniowe, ciężkie, lekkie, niszczyciele — kolejno, dywizjonami, wchodzą w Nadprzestrzeń. Prosto w paszczę lwa. Stało się…</p><p>Do domu jest już tak blisko. I tak daleko.</p><

The Angels Command

Brian Jacques - Flying Dutchman 02

Fisher- Catherine

The Hidden Coronet #3

Cate Culpepper

A Question of Ghosts

Becca Healy always believed she understood the shameful circumstances of her mother’s death — until the night her mother’s spirit whispers a simple message out of the static of a radio: “Not true.” Becca turns to the terse Dr. Joanne Call, an expert in Electronic Voice Phenomenon — ghost voices — to unravel the mystery of this decades-old tragedy. Joanne can coax messages out of the silence of the grave, but coping with this feisty, emotional Healy person might be completely beyond her. Together, Becca and Jo must tackle childhood grief, a serial killer, Xena withdrawal, and a growing attraction between the two most mismatched women in Seattle.<

Greg Cox

Godzilla: The Official Movie Novelization

<p>The official novelization of the much-anticipated brand-new  movie — a rebirth for the major international franchise! Gareth Edwards'  will be released on May 16, 2014!</p><p>An epic rebirth of Toho's iconic  this spectacular adventure pits the world's most famous monster against malevolent creatures who, bolstered by humanity's scientific arrogance, threaten our very existence</p><

Jim Crace

Being Dead

<p>Lying in the sand dunes of Baritone Bay are the bodies of a middle-aged couple. Celice and Joseph, in their mid-50s and married for more than 30 years, are returning to the seacoast where they met as students. Instead, they are battered to death by a thief with a chunk of granite. Their corpses lie undiscovered and rotting for a week, prey to sand crabs, flies, and gulls. Yet there remains something touching about the scene, with Joseph's hand curving lightly around his wife's leg, "quietly resting; flesh on flesh; dead, but not departed yet."</p><p>""Their bodies had expired, but anyone could tell-just look at them-that Joseph and Celice were still devoted. For while his hand was touching her, curved round her shin, the couple seemed to have achieved that peace the world denies, a period of grace, defying even murder. Anyone who found them there, so wickedly disfigured, would nevertheless be bound to see that something of their love had survived the death of cells. The corpses were surrendered to the weather and the earth, but they were still a man and wife, quietly resting; flesh on flesh; dead, but not departed yet.""</p><p>From that moment forward, "Being Dead" becomes less about murder and more about death. Alternating chapters move back in time from the murder in hourly and two-hourly increments. As the narrative moves backward, we see Celice and Joseph make the small decisions about their day that will lead them inexorably towards their own deaths. In other chapters the narrative moves forward. Celice and Joseph are on vacation and nobody misses them until they do not return. Thus, it is six days before their bodies are found. Crace describes in minute detail their gradual return to the land with the help of crabs, birds, and the numerous insects that attack the body and gently and not so gently prepare it for the dust-to-dust phase of death.</p><

Jean Carrière

L’épervier de Maheux

Jim Crace

Arcadia

<p>Victor, an eighty-year-old multimillionaire, surveys his empire from the remoteness of his cloud-capped penthouse. Expensively insulated from the outside world, he nonetheless finds that memories of his impoverished childhood will not be kept so easily at bay. Focusing on the one area of vitality and chaos that remains in the streets below him, he formulates a plan to leave a mark on the city — one as indelible and disruptive as the mark the city left on him.</p><p>'A deeply satisfying read, in which each well-turned phrase resounds in every finely tuned sentence' "Mail on Sunday"</p><p>'Presents his heavily politicised vision at its most ambitious and also at its most Ballard-like' "Irish Times"</p><p>'One of the most beautifully written books in years' " Sunday Telegraph"</p><

Jacqueline Carey

Kushiel’s Dart

Kushiel's Legacy

<p>The land of Terre d’Ange is a place of unsurpassing beauty and grace. It is said that angels found the land and saw it was good… and the ensuing race that rose from the seed of angels and men live by one simple rule: Love as thou wilt.</p><p>Phèdre nó Delaunay is a young woman who was born with a scarlet mote in her left eye. Sold into indentured servitude as a child, her bond is purchased by Anafiel Delaunay, a nobleman with very a special mission…and the first one to recognize who and what she is: one pricked by Kushiel’s Dart, chosen to forever experience pain and pleasure as one.</p><p>Phèdre is trained equally in the courtly arts and the talents of the bedchamber, but, above all, the ability to observe, remember, and analyze. Almost as talented a spy as she is courtesan, Phèdre stumbles upon a plot that threatens the very foundations of her homeland. Treachery sets her on her path; love and honor goad her further. And in the doing, it will take her to the edge of despair…and beyond. Hateful friend, loving enemy, beloved assassin; they can all wear the same glittering mask in this world, and Phèdre will get but one chance to save all that she holds dear.</p><p>Set in a world of cunning poets, deadly courtiers, heroic traitors, and a truly Machiavellian villainess, this is a novel of grandeur, luxuriance, sacrifice, betrayal, and deeply laid conspiracies. Not since Dune has there been an epic on the scale of Kushiel’s Dart-a massive tale about the violent death of an old age, and the birth of a new.</p><

David B Coe

Spell Blind

Case files of Justis Fearsson

Andrea Canobbio

Three Light-Years

<p>Cecilia and Claudio are doctors at the same hospital. They eat lunch together, sharing conversation and confidences. Each is recovering from a relationship that has ended but is not yet over: she is a vulnerable young woman with a complicated family situation and two small children; he continues to live in the same building with his senile mother and his ex-wife and her new family. Though they are drawn together magnetically, life has taught them to treat that attraction with suspicion.</p><p>But a chance encounter with Cecilia’s sister, Silvia, shifts the precarious balance of the relationship between the two doctors. Claudio begins to see the difficulties inherent in his approach toward life — his weary “Why not?” rather than indicating a hunger for life and experiences, is simply a default setting; saying no would require an energy and focus he lacks. And just when Cecilia comes to the realization that she loves Claudio and is ready to commit to a genuine relationship, fate steps in once again.</p><p>In lucid, melancholy prose, supplely rendered into English by Anne Milano Appel, Andrea Canobbio sketches a fable of love poisoned by indecision and ambivalence in Three Light-Years, laying bare the dangers of playing it safe when it comes to matters of the heart.</p><

Steven Campbell

Hard Luck Hank: Prince of Suck

Hard Luck Hank

<p>An increasingly crippled Hank struggles to keep the various factions of Belvaille in check after the collapse of the Colmarian Confederation. </p><p>Hank, as Supreme Kommilaire and Secretary of City, has several hundred police to try and maintain order among the millions of inhabitants on the space station while simultaneously preparing for Belvaille’s first ever election. </p><p>He thinks it is an impossible task. Every year the city, and even the galaxy, falls further into chaos as he himself succumbs to the debilitating effects of his mutation. </p><p>With economic turmoil everywhere, a dirty election in the works, and the galaxy’s foremost assassin hunting him, Hank has to decide if he can save Belvaille. Or if it’s even worth saving. </p><p>NOTE: Sequel to and </p><

Roberto Calasso

Ardor

<p>In this revelatory volume, Roberto Calasso, whom has called “a literary institution,” explores the ancient texts known as the Vedas. Little is known about the Vedic people who lived more than three thousand years ago in northern India: they left behind almost no objects, images, or ruins. They created no empires. Even the hallucinogenic plant the , which appears at the center of some of their rituals, has not been identified with any certainty. Only a “Parthenon of words” remains: verses and formulations suggesting a daring understanding of life.</p><p>“If the Vedic people had been asked why they did not build cities,” writes Calasso, “they could have replied: we did not seek power, but rapture.” This is the ardor of the Vedic world, a burning intensity that is always present, both in the mind and in the cosmos.</p><p>With his signature erudition and profound sense of the past, Calasso explores the enigmatic web of ritual and myth that defines the Vedas. Often at odds with modern thought, these texts illuminate the nature of consciousness more than today’s neuroscientists have been able to do. Following the “hundred paths” of the , an impressive exegesis of Vedic ritual, indicates that it may be possible to reach what is closest by passing through that which is most remote, as “the whole of Vedic India was an attempt to .”</p><

Leslie Charteris

The Saint on the Spanish Main

Saint

The Saint is a traditionalist — he knows what a good pirate story needs. Gold, hidden treasure, smugglers, dastardly villains and damsels in distress. From Bimini to Nassau, via Jamaica and Haiti, the Saint travels the Caribbean — interrupting his holidays to settle disputes, solve murders, overthrow governments, and hunt for treasure. Wherever he lands, you can be sure that the Ungodly will get what's coming to them.<

Leslie Charteris

The Saint Around the World

Saint

Bermuda, England, France, the Middle East, Malaya and Vancouver are stopping places for adventures to catch up with the Saint. They include a missing bridegroom, a lady and a gentleman Bluebeard, murder in a nudist colony, dowsing for oil for a Sheik, and putting a dent into dope smuggling. The trademarks of impudence and extravagant odds make this a lightfingered collection.<

Robert Coover

John's Wife

A satirical fable of small-town America centers on a builder's wife and the erotic power she exerts over her neighbors, transforming before their eyes and changing forever their notions of right and wrong.<

Orly Castel-Bloom

Textile

<p>A wealthy Israeli family is at a precipice in their lives in this nuanced, contemporary novel. As Amanda Gruber, the matriarch of the family, undergoes an invasive cosmetic procedure, Lirit, her rebellious daughter, takes over operations at the family's pajama factory. Her brother Dael serves in the Israeli army as a sniper, while Irad, their neglectful father, a genius scientist, travels to the United States to conduct research on flak jackets. Each family member is pulled in conflicting directions, forced to examine their contentious relationships to one another. With surprising humor, "Textile" details the gradual disintegration of a family strained by distance and the corrosive effects of consumerism and militarism.</p><p>Orly Castel-Bloom is considered a leading voice in Hebrew literature today. Her postmodern classic "Dolly City" has been included in UNESCO's Collection of Representative Works, and was nominated in 2007 as one of the ten most important books since the creation of the state of Israel. She has received the Tel Aviv Foundation Award, the Alterman Prize for Innovation, the Prime Minister's Prize three times (1994, 2001, 2011), the Newman Prize, the French WIZO Prize for "Human Parts," and the Leah Goldberg Prize. Her books have been translated into eleven languages.</p><

J M Coetzee

The Childhood of Jesus

<p>After crossing oceans, a man and a boy arrive in a new land. Here they are each assigned a name and an age, and held in a camp in the desert while they learn Spanish, the language of their new country. As Simón and David they make their way to the relocation centre in the city of Novilla, where officialdom treats them politely but not necessarily helpfully.</p><p>Simón finds a job in a grain wharf. The work is unfamiliar and backbreaking, but he soon warms to his stevedore comrades, who during breaks conduct philosophical dialogues on the dignity of labour, and generally take him to their hearts.</p><p>Now he must set about his task of locating the boy’s mother. Though like everyone else who arrives in this new country he seems to be washed clean of all traces of memory, he is convinced he will know her when he sees her. And indeed, while walking with the boy in the countryside Simón catches sight of a woman he is certain is the mother, and persuades her to assume the role.</p><p>David's new mother comes to realise that he is an exceptional child, a bright, dreamy boy with highly unusual ideas about the world. But the school authorities detect a rebellious streak in him and insist he be sent to a special school far away. His mother refuses to yield him up, and it is Simón who must drive the car as the trio flees across the mountains.</p><p>THE CHILDHOOD OF JESUS is a profound, beautiful and continually surprising novel from a very great writer.</p><

F Marion Crawford

Via Crucis

A romance of the times of St. Bernard and of Queen Eleanor, both of whom figure in the story, the hero's fortune being interwoven with those of the gay young queen. The book brings out the enormous contrasts of the Middle Ages, the splendor of the great French and German barons with the abject misery of the poor of that age, besides being a vivid representation of a picturesque period.<

Mark Changizi

Harnessed: How Language and Music Mimicked Nature and Transformed Ape to Man

Leslie Charteris

Vendetta for the Saint

Saint

<p>So the Saint pledged himself to a vendetta which took him to Sicily, a land particularly suited to that ancient bloody custom.</p><p>From then on, except for an interlude with a luscious Italian pasta named Gina, it was all-out, heel-stomping war, with the Robin Hood of Modern Crime pitted against the arch-evil, centuries-old traditions of the Mafia!</p><

Lewis Carroll

Alicja w Krainie Czarów

Edward Crichton

To Crown a Caesar

Praetorian

Robert Conroy

1882: Custer in Chains

Francis Carsac

Les robinsons du cosmos

<p>Depuis le « Robinson Crusoé » de Daniel De Foe qui marqua la naissance du thème, l’histoire de Robinson s’est hissée à la hauteur d’un mythe occidental fondamental. Comme tout mythe, il repose avant tout sur une structure obligatoire. Pour raconter l’histoire de Robinson, quatre « moments » sont indispensables: le naufrage, l’installation, la découverte de « naturels », le sauvetage final. En dehors de ces quatre « passages » nécessaires de l’œuvre, tout peut changer. En variant le décor ou les personnages, on obtient autant de reduplications valables du mythe. Ainsi rien n’oblige Robinson à être solitaire. En envoyant tout un village sur cette île de l’espace qu’est la planète Tellus, Carsac était dans le droit fil du mythe. Mais son œuvre reste proche de celles de Jules Verne ou de Rosny aîné: son Robinson qui se trouve, dès le départ, doté d’un village entier, n’aura aucun mal à se reconstituer une civilisation. Une voiture blindée, un cuirassé ou un champ d’exploitation de pétrole, ne semblent pas lui poser problème. On est ici à l’apogée de la robinsonade triomphante que rien ne limite. Et ce ne sont pas ces étranges Vendredis, sous la forme de centaures extraterrestres, qui sauront nous contredire ! Car l’intérêt primordial de ce roman tient aussi, sans doute, en ceci: il représente l’apothéose d’un mythe. </p><

Andrew Crumey

The Secret Knowledge

<p>A lost musical masterpiece is at the heart of this gripping intellectual mystery by award-winning writer Andrew Crumey.</p><p>In 1913 composer Pierre Klauer envisages marriage to his sweetheart and fame for his new work, The Secret Knowledge. Then tragedy strikes. A century later, concert pianist David Conroy hopes the rediscovered score might revive his own flagging career.</p><p>Music, history, politics and philosophy become intertwined in a multi-layered story that spans a century. Revolutionary agitators, Holocaust refugees and sixties’ student protesters are counterpointed with artists and entrepreneurs in our own age of austerity. All play their part in revealing the shocking truth that Conroy must finally face — the real meaning of The Secret Knowledge.</p><p>A novel for readers who like intellectual game-playing and having their imagination stretched.</p><

John Casey

Spartina

<p>A classic tale of a man, a boat, and a storm, is the lyrical and compassionate story of Dick Pierce, a commercial fisherman along the shores of Rhode Island's Narragansett Bay. A kind, sensitive, family man, he is also prone to irascible outbursts against the people he must work for, now that he can no longer make his living from the sea.</p><p>Pierce's one great passion, a fifty-foot fishing boat called , lies unfinished in his back yard. Determined to get the funds he needs to buy her engine, he finds himself taking a foolish, dangerous risk. But his real test comes when he must weather a storm at sea in order to keep his dream alive. Moving and poetic, is a masterly story of one man's ongoing struggle to find his place in the world</p><

John Casey

Compass Rose

<p>It’s been more than two decades since won the National Book Award and was acclaimed by critics as being “possibly the best American novel. . since ” (), but in this extraordinary follow-up novel barely any time has passed in the magical landscape of salt ponds and marshes in John Casey’s fictional Rhode Island estuary.</p><p>Elsie Buttrick, prodigal daughter of the smart set who are gradually taking over the coastline of Sawtooth Point, has just given birth to Rose, a child conceived during a passionate affair with Dick Pierce — a fisherman and the love of Elsie’s life, who also happens to live practically next door with his wife, May, and their children. A beautiful but guarded woman who feels more at ease wading through the marshes than lounging on the porches of the fashionable resort her sister and brother-in-law own, Elsie was never one to do as she was told. She is wary of the discomfort her presence poses among some members of her gossipy, insular community, yet it is Rose, the unofficially adopted daughter and little sister of half the town, who magnetically steers everyone in her orbit toward unexpected — and unbreakable — relationships. As we see Rose grow from a child to a plucky adolescent with a flair for theatrics both onstage and at home during verbal boxing matches with her mother, to a poised and prepossessing teenager, she becomes the unwitting emotional tether between Elsie and everyone else. “Face it, Mom,” Rose says, “we live in a tiny ecosystem.” And indeed, like the rugged, untouched marshes that surround these characters, theirs is an ecosystem that has come by its beauty honestly, through rhythms and moods that have shaped and reshaped their lives.</p><p>With an uncanny ability to plunge confidently and unwaveringly into the thoughts and desires of women — mothers, daughters, wives, lovers — John Casey astonishes us again with the power of a family saga.</p><

Brock Clarke

The Happiest People in the World

<p>Take the format of a spy thriller, shape it around real-life incidents involving international terrorism, leaven it with dark, dry humor, toss in a love rectangle, give everybody a gun, and let everything play out in the outer reaches of upstate New York — there you have an idea of Brock Clarke’s new novel, </p><p>Who are “the happiest people in the world”? Theoretically, it’s all the people who live in Denmark, the country that gave the world Hans Christian Andersen fairy tales and the open-face sandwich. But Denmark is also where some political cartoonists got into very unhappy trouble when they attempted to depict Muhammad in their drawings, which prompted protests, arson, and even assassination attempts.</p><p>Imagine, then, that one of those cartoonists, given protection through the CIA, is relocated to a small town in upstate New York where he is given a job as a high school guidance counselor. Once there, he manages to fall in love with the wife of the high school principal, who himself is trying to get over the effects of a misguided love affair with the very CIA agent who sent the cartoonist to him. Imagine also that virtually every other person in this tiny town is a CIA operative.</p><p>The result is a darkly funny tale of paranoia and the all-American obsession with security and the conspiracies that threaten it, written in a tone that is simultaneously filled with wonder and anger in almost equal parts.</p><

Amy Chua

Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother

<p>This is a story about a mother, two daughters, and two dogs. It’s also about Mozart and Mendelssohn, the piano and the violin, and how we made it to Carnegie Hall.</p><p>This was to be a story of how Chinese parents are better at raising kids than Western ones.</p><p>But instead, it’s about a bitter clash of cultures, a fleeting taste of glory, and how I was humbled by a thirteen-year-old.</p><

Arthur C Clarke

Naufragés de la Lune

S.O.S. Lune

Brock Clarke

An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England

<p>A lot of remarkable things have happened in the life of Sam Pulsifer, the hapless hero of this incendiary novel, beginning with the ten years he spent in prison for accidentally burning down Emily Dickinson's house and unwittingly killing two people. emerging at age twenty-eight, he creates a new life and identity as a husband and father. But when the homes of other famous New England writers suddenly go up in smoke, he must prove his innocence by uncovering the identity of this literary-minded arsonist.</p><p>In the league of such contemporary classics as and is an utterly original story about truth and honesty, life and the imagination.</p><

Brock Clarke

Exley

<p>For young Miller Le Ray, life has become a search. A search for his dad, who may or may not have joined the army and gone to Iraq. A search for a notorious (and, unfortunately, deceased) writer, Frederick Exley, author of the “fictional memoir” , who may hold the key to bringing Miller’s father back. But most of all, his is a search for truth. As Miller says, “Sometimes you have to tell the truth about some of the stuff you’ve done so that people will believe you when you tell them the truth about other stuff you haven’t done.”</p><p>In as in his previous bestselling novel, , Brock Clarke takes his reader into a world that is both familiar and disorienting, thought-provoking and thoroughly entertaining. Told by Miller and Dr. Pahnee, both unreliable narrators, it becomes an exploration of the difference between what we believe to be real and what is in fact real.</p><

Rachel Cusk

Aftermath: On Marriage and Separation

In the winter of 2009, Rachel Cusk's marriage of ten years came to an end. In the months that followed, life as she had known it came apart, 'like a jigsaw dismantled into a heap of broken-edged pieces'. 'Aftermath' chronicles this perilous journey as the author redefines herself as a single woman.<

Rachel Cusk

The Last Supper: A Summer in Italy

<p>Casting off a northern winter and an orderly life, a family decides to sell everything and go to Italy to search for art and its meanings, for freedom from routine, for a different path into the future. The award-winning writer Rachel Cusk describes a three-month journey around the Italy of Raphael and rented villas, of the Piero della Francesca trail and the tourist furnace of Amalfi, of soccer and the simple glories of pasta and gelato.</p><p>With her husband and two children, Cusk uncovers the mystery of a foreign language, the perils and pleasures of unbelonging, and the startling thrill of discovery — at once historic and intimate. Both sharp and humane in its exploration of the desire to travel and to escape, of art and its inspirations, of beauty and ugliness, and of the challenge of balancing domestic life with creativity, is an astonishing memoir.</p><

Rachel Cusk

The Country Life

<p>Stella Benson answers a classified ad for an , arriving in a tiny Sussex village that's home to a family that is slightly larger than life. Her hopes for the Maddens may be high, but her station among them is low and remote. It soon becomes clear that Stella falls short of even the meager specifications her new role requires, most visibly in the area of "aptitude for the country life." But what drove her to leave her home, job, and life in London in the first place? Why has she severed all ties with her parents? Why is she so reluctant to discuss her past? And who, exactly, is Edward?</p><

Rachel Cusk

The Bradshaw Variations

<p>Since quitting work to look after his eight-year-old daughter, Alexa, Thomas Bradshaw has found solace and grace in his daily piano study. His pursuit of a more artistic way of life shocks and irritates his parents and in-laws. Why has he swapped roles with Tonie Swann, his intense, intellectual wife, who has accepted a demanding full-time job? How can this be good for Alexa?</p><p>Tonie is increasingly seduced away from domestic life by the harder, headier world of work, where long-forgotten memories of ambition are awakened. She soon finds herself outside their tight family circle, alive to previously unimaginable possibilities. Over the course of a year full of crisis and revelation, we follow the fortunes of Tonie, Thomas, and his brothers and their families: Howard, the successful, indulgent brother, and his gregarious wife, Claudia; and Leo, lacking in confidence and propped up by Susie, his sharp-tongued, heavy-drinking wife. At the head of the family, the aging Bradshaw parents descend on their children to question and undermine them.</p><

Rachel Cusk

Saving Agnes

<p>Agnes Day is mildly discontent. As a child, she never wanted to be an Agnes — she wanted to be a pleasing Grace. Alas, she remained the terminally middle class, hopelessly romantic Agnes. Now she's living with her two best friends in London and working at a trade magazine. Life and love seem to go on without her. Not only does she not know how to get back into the game, she isn't even sure what the game is. But she gives a good performance — until she learns that her roommates and her boyfriend are keeping secrets from her, and that her boss is quitting and leaving her in charge. In great despair, she decides to make it her business to set things straight. is a perceptive, fresh, and honest novel that has delighted readers and critics on both sides of the Atlantic.</p><

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