International bestselling author Jeffrey Archer returns with his most ambitious work of epic storytelling – a multi-generational saga of fate, fortune, and redemption that began with ONLY TIME WILL TELL.

On the heels of the international bestseller ONLY TIME WILL TELL, Jeffrey Archer picks up the sweeping story of the Clifton Chronicles.

Only days before Britain declares war on Germany, Harry Clifton, hoping to escape the consequences of long-buried family secrets recently revealed, and forced to admit that his wish to marry Emma Barrington will never be fulfilled, has joined the Merchant Navy. But his ship is sunk in the Atlantic by a German U-boat, drowning almost the entire crew. An American cruise liner, the SS Kansas Star, rescues a handful of sailors, among them Harry and the third officer, an American named Tom Bradshaw. When Bradshaw dies in the night, Harry seizes on the chance to escape his tangled past and assumes his identity.

But on landing in America, he quickly learns the risks of such a scheme, when he discovers what is awaiting Bradshaw in New York. Without any way of proving his true identity, Harry Clifton is now chained to a past that might be far worse than the one he had hoped to escape.

These twelve stories feature people under pressure: how do they react when there is an opportunity to seize, a crucial problem to solve, a danger to avoid? Each tale has its twist, each its diversion — a red herring to uncover, while the last one provides a choice of endings.

Ład serca uważany jest za pierwszy polski utwór nawiązujący do rozwijającego się w Europie nurtu humanizmu katolickiego i porównywany do powieści Georges’a Bernanosa i François Mauriaca. Akcja powieści rozgrywa się w ciągu jednej nocy w białoruskiej wiosce, w której splatają się losy kilkorga osób, stających przed odwiecznym wyborem pomiędzy dobrem a złem. Główny bohater, rozdarty wewnętrznie katolicki ksiądz, szukający drogi do ładu serca, stara się zachować wierność swojemu powołaniu, mimo własnych wątpliwości, otaczającego go zła, ludzkich słabości i zbrodni popełnianych w jego parafii.

Wydaje się że narracja powieści bardziej eksponuje zło, które nieubłaganie musi zwyciężyć… Bohater, choć czasami jest bezsilny i niepojmujący działań Opatrzności, za wszelką cenę próbuje jednak ocalić swoją wiarę: Panie! Daj mi siłę, pozwól, bym był od siebie mocniejszy i żebym ponad siebie wyrósł, pozwól memu sercu przejrzeć Twój ład…

Historia de una maestra es un relato en el que la protagonista rememora con serena lucidez la historia de su vida. Entregada a una profesión que la lleva de pueblo en pueblo, en condiciones casi siempre miserables, Gabriela vive su historia personal sobre el telón de fondo de un periodo decisivo en la historia de España: desde los años veinte hasta el comienzo de la guerra civil.

El advenimiento de la República, con sus promesas de grandes cambios y su exaltación del papel de los maestros en la transformación de la sociedad española, la lucha contra la ignorancia y el caciquismo, la revolución de Octubre vivida en un pueblo minero, la violencia y el brutal desgarramiento familiar, la nostalgia recurrente de la única aventura de su vida, su primera escuela en Guinea… todo ello va conformando la vida de una mujer testigo y protagonista de unos hechos que explican en gran parte los sucesos que vinieron después.

El sueño individual y colectivo, la lucha y las renuncias de los que entregaron su vida para conseguir despertar a un pueblo adormecido transcurren por las páginas de esta excelente novela, que se convierte así en un homenaje a unos personajes olvidadas y sin embargo clave en la historia de España: los maestros de la República.

Gabriela y Juana, madre e hija, viven los años de la guerra civil en una ciudad castellana cuyo ambiente les resulta incómodo y asfixiante. Gabriela se ha quedado viuda, su marido ha sido fusilado por sus ideas republicanas y subsiste dando clases en la escuela privada, ya que no tiene acceso a la pública debido a sus ideas políticas, hasta que decide aceptar la proposición de matrimonio que le hace Octavio, un misterioso millonario mexicano que se llevará a madre e hija a su hacienda de Puebla. Allí, lejos del núcleo de exiliados españoles, va transcurriendo la vida de ambas mujeres. Sobre un fondo de sucesos históricos, evocados a la luz nostálgica de la memoria y del desgarro del exilio, asistimos a la intensa relación de Gabriela y Juana, al amor de la hija por su madre, oscilante entre la dependencia y la rebeldía. Juana evoluciona hacia un mundo de deseos y proyectos que choca con la hermética personalidad de la madre, austera y enlutada, marcada por la mística del deber y un puritanismo laico de raíces castellanas. Juana, que rechaza por instinto el pesimismo vital de las mujeres de negro que han habitado su vida, después de varios años de exilio decide regresar al Madrid de la posguerra y se integra a una universidad que ensaya sus primeros conatos de rebeldía

Autodidacta de poderosa imaginación. Juan José Arreola ha ejercido los más disímiles oficios: vendedor ambulante, periodista, maestro y sobre todo charlista de palabra deslumbrante y ademanes categóricos. Inquietador profesional de vidas y sensibilidades, buena parte de la |oven narrativa mexicana le debe enseñanzas definitivas. Su primer libro. Varia invención, lo situó como uno de los mejores cuentistas actuales. Confabularlo le da sitio aparte en nuestras letras. Su evolución literaria podría resumirse así: la ingenuidad que deviene sapiencia; la alusión que se convierte en elusión, el plano vertical que se trueca plano oblicuo. El tema del amor es capital en su obra: va del idealismo adolescente a una visión aterradora y caricaturesca de la mujer, cifra y símbolo de la enajenación, del dolor y de la muerte. Autor de textos redondos por lo que toca a los personajes, la estructura y el estilo, me parece el más perfecto, porque los lastres que venía padeciendo la literatura mexicana desaparecen en él sin dejar huella,

Emanuel Carballo

Los cuentos que componen Confabularlo rebasan cualquier intento de descripción: fábulas, poemas en prosa, crónicas, simples y llanas narraciones y divertimentos que trascienden, amén de por su profundidad y poesía, por su enorme maestría en el manejo del lenguaje. Clásico ya por la contundencia de su obra, Juan José Arreola nos da en Confabularlo una pequeña muestra de su gran talento literario.

Una de las grandes obras de Arreola. Sale a la luz pública en 1963. Con matices plenarios desdibuja la retórica significación de Zapotlán.

La feria es una novela que no se ajusta a los modelos formales e imperantes en los tiempos de su aparición (1963), si bien ya se hablaba de que la modernidad había llegado a la novelística mexicana gracias a obras como Al filo del agua, de Agustín Yáñez, y Pedro Páramo, de Juan Rulfo.

Juan José Arreola se desentiende del orden lógico de la novela tradicional (inicio-clímax-desenlace) y en vez de eso ofrece una serie de cuadros y viñetas con aparente falta de composición para contar una historia, asimismo, imprecisa según los cánones. ¿Qué cuenta Arreola en La feria? Muchas cosas y ninguna en especial, o mejor, da cuenta de hechos y situaciones, de personajes y voces que, al aglutinarse, dan cuerpo a la vida de una población, Zapotlán el Grande.

En La feria se ve la constante preocupación que ha templado a las sociedades latinoamericanas, la disyuntiva tradición-modernidad, como una constante que ha inquietado a los gobiernos y a los grupos de élites en la lucha por el poder para presentar un proyecto de nación.

A day like any other for security chief Tracy Waterhouse, until she makes a purchase she hadn't bargained for. One moment of madness is all it takes for Tracy 's humdrum world to be turned upside down, the tedium of everyday life replaced by fear and danger at every turn.

Witnesses to Tracy 's Faustian exchange in the Merrion Centre in Leeds are Tilly, an elderly actress teetering on the brink of her own disaster, and Jackson Brodie, who has returned to his home county in search of someone else's roots. All three characters learn that the past is never history and that no good deed goes unpunished.

Kate Atkinson dovetails and counterpoints her plots with Dickensian brilliance in a tale peopled with unlikely heroes and villains. Started Early, Took My Dog is freighted with wit, wisdom and a fierce moral intelligence. It confirms Kate Atkinson’s position as one of the great writers of our time.

In Googled, esteemed media writer and critic Ken Auletta uses the story of Google’s rise to explore the inner workings of the company and the future of the media at large. Although Google has often been secretive, this book is based on the most extensive cooperation ever granted a journalist, including access to closed-door meetings and interviews with founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, CEO Eric Schmidt, and some 150 present and former employees.

Inside the Google campus, Auletta finds a culture driven by brilliant engineers in which even the most basic ways of doing things are questioned. His reporting shines light on how Google has been so hugely successful-and why it could slip. On one hand, Auletta reveals how the company has innovated, from Gmail, Google Maps, and Google Earth to YouTube, search, and other seminal programs. On the other, he charts its conflicts: the tension between massive growth and its mandate of “Don’t be evil”; the limitations of a belief that mathematical algorithms always provide correct answers; and the collisions of Google engineers who want more data with citizens worried about privacy.

More than a comprehensive study of media’s most powerful digital company, Googled is also a lesson in new media truths. Pairing Auletta’s unmatched analysis with vivid details and rich anecdotes, it shows how the Google wave grew, how it threatens to drown media institutions once considered impregnable-and where it is now taking us all.

Guardian Riley Jenson always seems to face the worst villains. And this time's no different. For it's no ordinary sorceress who can raise the dead to do her killing. But that's exactly what Riley expects to find at the end of a trail of female corpses used – and discarded – in a bizarre ritual of evil. With pressure mounting to catch the fiend, the last thing Riley needs is the heat of the upcoming full moon bringing her werewolf hormones to a boil – or the reappearance of a sexy bounty hunter, the rogue wolf Kye Murphy. Riley has threatened Murphy with arrest if he doesn't back off the investigation, but it's Riley who feels handcuffed by Kye's lupine charm. Torn between her vamp and wolf natures, between her love for Quinn and her attraction to Kye, Riley knows she's courting danger and indulging the deadliest desires. For her hunt through the supernatural underworld will bring her face-to-face with what lurks in a darkness where even monsters fear to tread.

The scene is England 50 years after its conquest by the Soviets. The plot is to turn the occupying government upside down.

A handsome and highly sexed young Russian cavalry officer, Alexander Petrovsky, joins the plot and learns to his regret that politics and playmates don't mix.

"Funny, cynical, captivating-Amis makes an implausible situation almost believable, then lets his characters worry their way out." (B-O-T Editorial Review Board)

En los años que precedieron a la conquista de América estalló la persecución de los judíos en españa, que culminó con su expulsión en masa. Esta novela narra la historia de Francisco Maldonado da Silva y sus peripecias frente al fanatismo inquisitorial, la hipocresía y la despótica corrupción del Nuevo Mundo. Una novela que también habla elocuaentemente de nuestro tiempo y del derecho a la libertad de conciencia.

This splendid volume of short fiction testifies to Margaret Atwood’s startlingly original voice, full of a rare intensity and exceptional intelligence. Each of the fourteen stories shimmers with feelings, each illuminates the interior landscape of a woman’s mind. Here men and women still miscommunicate, still remain separate in different rooms, different houses, or even different worlds. With brilliant flashes of fantasy, humor, and unexpected violence, the stories reveal the complexities of human relationships and bring to life characters who touch us deeply, evoking terror and laughter, compassion and recognition—and dramatically demonstrate why Margaret Atwood is one on the most important writers in English today.

Margaret Atwood, una de los novelistas más prestigiosos de la narrativa mundial de hoy en día, plasma en El Año del Diluvio, su última novela, una visión postapocalíptica del mundo tras una catástrofe global. Como en su novela anterior, Oryx y Crake (algunos de cuyos personajes reaparecen en la presente obra), Atwood describe el horror de un mundo en el que la humanidad, en aras del progreso científico y tecnológico, no sólo altera el medio ambiente sino que se autodestruye. Siempre crítica con los problemas del mundo actual, la autora describe, en esta novela de anticipación especulativa, la catástrofe planetaria resultante del descontrolado abuso de las industrias farmacéuticas y de los poderes políticos y económicos que desoyen los alegatos de las ciencias ecológicas. Narrada desde el punto de vista de dos mujeres, la joven Ren y Toby, El año del Diluvio cuenta la epopeya de quienes sobreviven al desastre y, libres de la decadencia moral en que la lucha de sectas y religiones había sumido a la humanidad, emprenden una nueva vida.

En el estado de Gilead las criadas forman un estrato social pensado para conservar la especie. Las mujeres fértiles que integran esta clase, y que destacan por el hábito rojo con que se cubren hasta las manos, desempeñan una función esencial: dar a luz a los futuros ciudadanos de Gilead. Sin embargo, en un mundo antiutópico asolado por las guerras nucleares, gobernado por un código extremadamente severo y puritano, que castiga con la pena de muerte a quien se aparta del sistema y en el cual la mayoría de la población es estéril, engendrar no resulta fácil. Existe siempre el temor al fracaso y la amenaza de la confinación en la isla de seres inservibles más allá de las alambradas que rodean a la ciudad y del alto muro donde cuelgan, para que sirva de ejemplo, los cadáveres de los disidentes.

As the story opens, the narrator, who calls himself Snowman, is sleeping in a tree, wearing a dirty old bedsheet, mourning the loss of his beautiful and beloved Oryx and his best friend Crake, and slowly starving to death. In a world in which science-based corporations have recently taken mankind on an uncontrolled genetic-engineering ride, he now searches for supplies in a wasteland. Insects proliferate and pigoons and wolvogs ravage the Pleeblands, where ordinary people once lived, and the Compounds that sheltered the extraordinary. As he tries to piece together what has taken place, the narrative shifts to decades earlier. How did everything fall apart so quickly? Why is Snowman left with nothing but his bizarre memories—alone except for the more-than-perfect, green-eyed Children of Crake, who think of him as a kind of monster? He explores the answers to these questions in the double journey he takes—into his own past and back to Crake’s high-tech bubble dome, where the Paradice Project unfolded and the world came to grief.

Ever since her engagement, the strangest thing has been happening to Marian McAlpin: she can't eat. First meat. Then eggs, vegetables, cake, pumpkin seeds-everything! Worse yet, she has the crazy feeling that she's being eaten. Marian ought to feel consumed with passion. But really she just feels…consumed. A brilliant and powerful work rich in irony and metaphor, The Edible Woman is an unforgettable materpiece by a true master of contemporary literary fiction.

Reviewed by Kathleen A. Cameron, Justice Studies, Social Sciences Department, Pittsburg State University. Email: kcameron [at] pittstate.edu. Imagine a society where a sign in red paint reads, “We warn against not wearing a headscarf and wearing makeup. Those who do not abide by this will be punished. God is our witness, we have notified you.” Imagine a society where women are tortured and killed for disobeying this law – a society where religious beliefs, the political structure, and female sexual identity are so intertwined as to justify and require the control of women’s freedom, the sexual victimization of women, and the torture and murder of women who do not comply. Imagine a society where a woman is accused by religious police of being a witch and is sentenced to death by beheading. Margaret Atwood imagines this society in her futuristic, dystopian novel, THE HANDMAID’S TALE. While the excerpt above is a non-fictional description of present-day Iraq and Saudi Arabia, Atwood’s vision of a fictional theocratic regime that reduces the value of women to reproductive commodities is a disturbingly accurate account of the status of women in the Middle East and other parts of the world, and is in many ways reflected in political, legal, and cultural doctrines, ideologies, and practices in the U.S. Numerous reviews of this most profound and telling work by Atwood have been written since its publication in 1986. Written in a similar vein to Huxley’s BRAVE NEW WORLD (1932), Orwell’s 1984 (1949), and Burgess’ A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (1962), but with the mysogynistic focus of Piercy’s WOMAN ON THE EDGE OF TIME (1976), it is one of the two most popular Atwood works for use in university classrooms (along with Atwood’s SURFACING (1972)). Rich with symbolism and textured with irony, it relies on a feminist methodology of the narrative, the primary way individuals make sense of experience. As such, it provides an ideal source for generating dialogue, teaching, and learning in courses that have typically included courses in the humanities and social sciences. This review illustrates the use of this work in a course on Women, Crime and Justice, and includes a student paper excerpt in the brief summary of THE HANDMAID’S TALE that follows. The student contributor to the summary below writes, “I am finding The Handmaid’s Tale to be a heart-breaking, yet inspiring novel… I could not stop reading.” Adaptations include a film, an opera, and an unabridged audio book. The story is set in the futuristic United States of America in the fictional town of Gilead, a puritanical society in which dress codes are used as a way to subjugate women. The tale opens with the narrator, Offred (Of-Fred) remembering a time when she was held against her will in an old gymnasium, [*299] known as the Red Center. Women here are trained to become Handmaids, surrogate mothers for powerful military families, who are ordered to wear red dresses with white veils to signify their importance to the cause (having the Commanders’ children). Gilead is a theocracy run by Christian extremists in which women are not allowed to hold jobs, read, or use money. The chief function of women is to bear children since the decline in the birth rate. Women of lower status, the “econowives” wear striped dresses to signify that their husbands are not yet Commanders. Throughout the novel, Offred narrates from remembering past times to the present. She is a Handmaid who lives in a Commander’s house but she remembers a time when she was married to a man named Luke and they had a child together. Offred has no idea what happened to either her child or Luke, but she recalls that her child was taken from her because she was deemed “unfit.” In the new world of Gilead (once the United States), the Constitution has been suspended and a Christian theocracy has replaced a democratic government. To address the declining birth rate caused by pollution and chemical poisoning, the government has created Handmaids who are placed in the households of Commanders whose wives can no longer bear children. Handmaids are under constant surveillance, subject to strict rules and regulations, and suffer extreme punishment or death if they defy the Gileadean regime. While words such as “engaging,” “well-structured,” and “suspenseful” have been used to describe the work, THE HANDMAID’S TALE offers a myriad of themes for pedagogy much more profound than its value as a compelling read and its use in discussions of literature and creative writing. More specifically, the work lends itself to an examination of the politics of female sexuality as inextricably linked to female criminality. As the tale unravels, the boundaries between Atwood’s fictional characters of Gilead and the historical oppression and subjugation of women in the U.S. and the world become increasingly blurred. Students are given the opportunity to uncover ways in which political ideologies have given rise to structures of power that connect the personal to the political. The practices and beliefs in the fictional Republic of Gilead can be used to expose the roots of a non-fictional political campaign to control women that can be seen as early as the 15th century in Europe, when control of women’s reproductive issues and control over women’s bodies fueled a theocratic movement against women as the Roman Catholic church defined their healing practices as the crime of “witchcraft” and led to beliefs that female sexuality was the downfall of man. This theme of woman as the “sexual temptress” is brought to light once again in the current political regime in Saudi Arabia. In today’s news, where a Saudi woman has been sentenced to death for the crime of witchcraft, the color red has been banned as testament that, in the words of one Atwood reviewer, “dehumanization of women is not just a custom but actually the law.” In THE HANDMAID’S TALE, we see the symbolism of the color red. As one student explains, “Red is a scandalous, racy color, defining the Handmaids as such. Everything associated with the [*300] Handmaids is red.” The novel’s protagonist, Offred, states, “Everything except the wings around my face is red: the color of blood, which defines us.” (Atwood, p. 8) Atwood uses the symbology of color to represent social status (Commanders dress in black and drive black cars) for characters as well as the political structure of the society (“ Red Center ”). The seamless blend of political power, ideological structures, and criminal justice practices is artistically woven into the tapestry of Atwood’s social commentary on the oppression of women. Throughout the novel’s fabric, we find threads of the objectification of women in the control of female sexuality; the value of women defined by reproduction; the victim/criminal continuum and the politics of female victimization and female criminality; the female criminality link to structural dislocation; and the feminist methodology of personal voice, experience, and the power of the narrative. Any crime can result in an execution and a public hanging on “The Wall,” but just being female is suspect enough. Atwood resists painting a picture of Offred as a victim; on the contrary, Offred is intelligent, courageous, and defiant in the face of her life under siege. Ironically, when it is more common for survivors of sexual crimes and political torture to remain silent, it is Offred’s narrative that empowers the reader to champion her eventual uprising against the family and government that hold her captive. While rape survivors and other women who are victims of crimes of power often find it difficult to talk about their experiences and resist naming them, it is precisely her narrative and the naming of her world that carries Offred to rise above the Giladean regime. The political identity that has been inflicted upon her is ultimately unable to destroy her personal identity and she emerges as a heroine rather than a Handmaid. As a pedagogical palette, THE HANDMAID’S TALE is rich in possibilities for analyzing the intersection between crimes against women, crimes by women, and the politics of female sexuality. In this tenth anniversary year of “The Vagina Monologues” and the V-Day movement to end violence against women, we read news accounts daily such as those described in the opening statements of this review -- Iraqi women being tortured and killed for contradicting the requirements of Islam demanding that women cover their heads and Saudi women being executed by political regimes in the name of religion. As a feminist pedagogy and methodology, the power of giving voice to women and naming personal experience is the power of THE HANDMAID’S TALE.

In Homer’s account in , Penelope—wife of Odysseus and cousin of the beautiful Helen of Troy—is portrayed as the quintessential faithful wife, her story a salutary lesson through the ages. Left alone for twenty years when Odysseus goes off to fight in the Trojan war after the abduction of Helen, Penelope manages, in the face of scandalous rumours, to maintain the kingdom of Ithaca, bring up her wayward son, and keep over a hundred suitors at bay, simultaneously. When Odysseus finally comes home after enduring hardships, overcoming monsters and sleeping with goddesses, he kills her suitors and—curiously—twelve of her maids.

In a splendid contemporary twist to the ancient story, Margaret Atwood has chosen to give the telling of it to Penelope and to her twelve hanged Maids, asking: ‘What led to the hanging of the maids, and what was Penelope really up to?’ In Atwood’s dazzling, playful retelling, the story becomes as wise and compassionate as it is haunting, and as wildly entertaining as it is disturbing

With wit and verve, drawing on the storytelling and poetic talent for which she herself is renowned, she gives Penelope new life and reality—and sets out to provide an answer to an ancient mystery.

WINNER OF THE 2000 BOOKER PRIZE

Even Zenia’s name is enough to provoke the old sense of outrage, of humiliation and confused pain. The truth is that at certain times—early mornings, the middle of the night—she finds it hard to believe that Zenia is really dead.’ Zenia is beautiful, smart and greedy; by turns manipulative and vulnerable, needy and ruthless; a man’s dream and a woman’s nightmare. She is also dead. Just to make absolutely sure Tony, Roz and Charis are there for the funeral. But five years on, as the three women share a sisterly lunch, the impossible happens: ‘with waves of ill will flowing out of her like cosmic radiation’, Zenia is back ...

This is the wise, unsettling, drastic story of three women whose lives share a common wound: Zenia, a woman they first met as university students in the sixties. Zenia is smart and beautiful, by turns manipulative, vulnerable—and irresistible. She has entered into their separate lives to ensnare their sympathy, betray their trust, and exploit their weaknesses. Now Zenia, thought dead, has suddenly reappeared. In this richly layered narrative, Atwood skilfully evokes the decades of the past as she retraces three women’s lives, until we are back in the present—where it’s yet to be discovered whether Zenia’s ‘pure, free-wheeling malevolence’ can still wreak havoc. reports from the farthest reaches of the sex wars and is one of Margaret Atwood’s most intricate and subversive novels yet.

Exploring the paradox of female villainy, this tale of three fascinating women is another peerless display of literary virtuosity by the supremely gifted author of and . Roz, Charis and Tony all share a wound, and her name is Zenia. Beautiful, smart and hungry, by turns manipulative and vulnerable, needy and ruthless, Zenia is the turbulent center of her own neverending saga. She entered their lives in the sixties, when they were in college. Over the three decades since, she has damaged each of them badly, ensnaring their sympathy, betraying their trust, and treating their men as loot. Then Zenia dies, or at any rate the three women—with much relief -- attend her funeral. But as begins, Roz, Charis and Tony have come together at a trendy restaraunt for their monthly lunch when in walks the seemingly resurrected Zenia...

 In this consistently entertaining and profound new novel, Margaret Atwood reports from the farthest reaches of the war between the sexes with her characteristic well-crafted prose, rich and devious humor, and compassion.