Современная проза на английском языке [U-Z]

A modern retelling of Steinbeck's classic Of Mice and Men, this landmark work from DD Armstrong is a poignant look at intimacy, friendship, and masculinity.

Best friends Kyle and Sideeq are beginning their first year of college in West London. Sideeq, a talented aspiring artist, spends his time perfecting his artwork and hanging out with his friends while having to learn how to process the harrowing events of his past. Kyle's ambitions are to become a rapper and a successful businessman. Though the deep bond of friendship formed between Kyle and Sideeq puts them on a path to achieve their dreams, college soon brings with it serious teenage social politics and a bully that terrorizes their friend group.

As they navigate new friendships and love interests, will the two boys continue to fortify each other and help each other succeed? Or will the newfound stressors in their lives pull them apart forever?

Серия: Twenty in 2020

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ABOUT THE ULTIMATE HITCHHIKER S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY
In one complete volume, here are the five classic novels from Douglas Adams s beloved Hitchhiker series.

Now celebrating the pivotal 42nd anniversary of The Hitchhiker s Guide to the Galaxy, soon to be a Hulu original series!

The Hitchhiker s Guide to the Galaxy (Nominated as one of America s best-loved novels by PBS s The Great American Read)
Seconds before the Earth is demolished for a galactic freeway, Arthur Dent is saved by Ford Prefect, a researcher for the revised Guide. Together they stick out their thumbs to the stars and begin a wild journey through time and space.

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
The moment before annihilation at the hands of warmongers is a curious time to crave tea. It could only happen to the cosmically displaced Arthur Dent and his comrades as they hurtle across the galaxy in a desperate search for a place to eat.

Life, the Universe and Everything
The unhappy inhabitants of planet Krikkit are sick of looking at the night sky so they plan to destroy it. The universe, that is. Now only five individuals can avert Armageddon: mild-mannered Arthur Dent and his stalwart crew.

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
Back on Earth, Arthur Dent is ready to believe that the past eight years were all just a figment of his stressed-out imagination. But a gift-wrapped fishbowl with a cryptic inscription thrusts him back to reality. So to speak.

Mostly Harmless
Just when Arthur Dent makes the terrible mistake of starting to enjoy life, all hell breaks loose. Can he save the Earth from total obliteration? Can he save the Guide from a hostile alien takeover? Can he save his daughter from herself?

Includes the bonus story Young Zaphod Plays It Safe

With droll wit, a keen eye for detail and heavy doses of insight . . . Adams makes us laugh until we cry. San Diego Union-Tribune

Lively, sharply satirical, brilliantly written . . . ranks with the best set pieces in Mark Twain. The Atlantic

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At the heart of this novel lies the fictional village of Ulverton. It is the fixed point in a book that spans three hundred years. Different voices tell the story of Ulverton: one of Cromwell's soldiers staggers home to find his wife remarried and promptly disappears, an eighteenth century farmer carries on an affair with a maid under his wife's nose, a mother writes letters to her imprisoned son, a 1980s real estate company discover a soldier's skeleton, dated to the time of Cromwell...

Told through diaries, sermons, letters, drunken pub conversations and film scripts, this is a masterful novel that reconstructs the unrecorded history of England.

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Shortlisted for The Man Booker Prize 2012.
For half a century Audrey Death has been in a state of semi-consciousness. Severed from the world of the living after falling victim to Encephalitis lethargica, she has languished in Friern Barnet Mental Hospital. Then, in 1971, maverick psychiatrist Dr Zack Busner arrives. Audrey's experiences of a bygone Edwardian London: her socialist lover, her involvement with the Suffragists, and her work in a munitions factory during the First World War, alternate with Dr Busner's attempts to bring her back to life with a new and powerful drug. His investigations lead to revelations that are both shocking and tragic, and which will return to haunt him decades later.

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Beginning in America, and spilling back over memories and generations to India, Unaccustomed Earth explores the heart of family life and the immigrant experience. Eight luminous stories - longer and richer than any Jhumpa Lahiri has yet written - take us from America to Europe, India and Thailand as they follow new lives forged in the wake of loss.

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'Impressive' The Times
'Funny and pitch perfect' Sunday Express
'I blink, bubble and boggle in amazed admiration' Stephen Fry
'These stories are a hit' Financial Times
A small-town newspaper columnist with old-fashioned views of the modern world. A World War II veteran grappling with his emotional and physical scars. A second-rate actor plunged into sudden stardom and a whirlwind press junket. Four friends travelling to the moon in a rocket ship built in the backyard. These are just some of the stories that Tom Hanks captures with great affection, humour and insight - the human condition in all its foibles.

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A collection of seventeen wonderful short stories which show that two-time Oscar winner Tom Hanks is as talented a writer as he is an actor.
A hectic, funny sexual affair between two best friends. A World War II veteran dealing with his emotional and physical scars. A second-rate actor plunged into sudden stardom and a whirlwind press junket. A small-town newspaper columnist with old-fashioned views of the modern world. A woman adjusting to life in a new neighbourhood after her divorce. Four friends going to the moon and back in a rocket ship constructed in the backyard. A teenage surfer stumbling into his father's secret life.
These are just some of the people and situations that Tom Hanks explores in his first work of fiction, a collection of stories that dissects, with great affection, humour and insight, the human condition and all its foibles. The stories are linked by one thing: in each of them, a typewriter plays a part, sometimes minor, sometimes central. To many, typewriters represent a level of craftsmanship, beauty and individuality that is harder and harder to find in the modern world. In his stories, Mr Hanks gracefully reaches that typewriter-worthy level.
Known for his honesty and sensitivity as an actor, Mr Hanks brings both those characteristics to his writing. By turns whimsical, moving and occasionally melancholy, Uncommon Type is a book that will delight as well as surprise his millions of fans. It also establishes him as a welcome and wonderful new voice in contemporary fiction, a voice that perceptively delves beneath the surface of friendships, families, love and normal, everyday behaviour.

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No two women could have been more different. No two women could have been closer

Flora and Rose are identical twins who do not know of each other's existence. Rose has been raised by her frivolous mother with the glossy international jet set. Flora has spend her childhoold in the beauty and quiet of her father's Cornish cottage. And then, by chance, they meet.

The encounter seems heaven-sent to Rose, who longs to escape from a man she no longer desires. Flora can free her and, in taking her sister's place, her uneventful life is changed forever. She finds drama and danger - and glimpses a happiness beyond her wildest dreams.

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Jack and Toni, childhood schoolmates living in the Solomon Islands, set out on a routine boat trip to a neighboring island. Things go awry when they discover, due to an oversight by Toni, that they do not have enough fuel to make the journey and are stranded at sea. Optimistic at first that they will soon be rescued, they slowly begin to realize, as the first day draws to an end, that they are in serious jeopardy with no end but their own demise in sight.

Based on a true story as the days lengthen at sea, we are gifted with a vision of the beauty of the Solomon Islands and the environmental debt they are owed by the world after decades of overfishing, logging and now rising sea levels due to global warming.

At the heart, this is a crucial and important novel on climate change, culture and human relations.

Серия: Twenty in 2020

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Davinsky Labour Camp, Siberia, 1933: Sofia Morozova knows she has to escape. Only two things have sustained her through the bitter cold, aching hunger and hard labour: the prospect of one day walking free; and the stories told by her friend Anna, beguiling tales of a charmed upbringing in Petrograd - and of Anna's fervent love for a passionate revolutionary, Vasily. So when Anna falls gravely ill, Sofia makes a promise to escape the camp and find Vasily: to chase the memory that has for so long spun hope in both their hearts. But Sofia knows that times have changed. Russia, gripped by the iron fist of Communism, is no longer the country of her friend's childhood. Her perilous search takes her from industrial factories to remote villages, where she discovers a web of secrecy and lies, but also bonds of courage and loyalty - and an overwhelming love that threatens her promise to Anna.

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Demi desperately needs her luck to change. On the sleeper train down to Cornwall, she can't help wondering why everything always goes wrong for her. Having missed out on her dream job, and left with nowhere to stay following her boyfriend's betrayal, pitching up at her grandfather's cottage is her only option.

Victoria thinks she's finally got what she wanted: Boscawen, the gorgeous Cornish estate her family owned for generations should now rightfully be hers, following her husband's sudden death. After years of a loveless marriage and many secret affairs of her own, Victoria thinks new widowhood will suit her very well indeed . . .

But both women are in for a surprise. Surrounded by orchards, gardens and the sea, Boscawen is about to play an unexpected role in both their lives. Can two such different women find a way forward when luck changes both their lives so drastically?

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Bea lives under a bridge. She watches people but they don't look at her. Then, one day, a policeman stops and talks to her. Bea doesn't like talking and she doesn't remember much. But he is looking for a little girl, and there was a child in Bea's old life. Can she remember now?

Серия: Pearson English Active Readers

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Tibor Fischer's hilarious first novel follows the adventures of two young Hungarian basketball players through the turbulent years between the end of World War II and the revolution of 1956. In this spirited indictment of totalitarianism, the two improbable heroes, Pataki and Gyuri, travel the length and breadth of Hungary in an epic quest for food, lodging, and female companionship.

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The stunning, emotional literary debut from Sunday Times-bestselling author, journalist and broadcaster Alexandra Heminsley sees two half-sisters who have never met before battling to survive a year on a remote, dangerous but beautiful Norwegian island.

Find escape with the beautiful, moving literary debut from Sunday Times-bestselling author Alexandra Heminsley, a stunning story of sisterhood and wilderness.

Clara Seymour is trying to find her feet in London, living away from home for the first time. Brought up by her domineering mother, treasuring time any time with her adoring father, Clara's world is brought to a standstill when her dad abruptly dies.

Then, a mystery comes to light in a letter from him.

I am sure you are aware that before I met your mother I had a previous marriage. But what we never discussed is that we had a daughter.

So begins a journey of discovery that takes Clara to remote Norway and a landscape as brutal as it is bewitching, a voyage fraught with personal and emotional danger to reveal who her father really was - and find the sister she's never met.

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With an introduction by David Mitchell Isserley spends most of her time driving. But why is she so interested in picking up hitchhikers? And why are they always male, well-built and alone? An utterly unpredictable and macabre mystery, Under the Skin is a genre-defying masterpiece.

Серия: The Canons

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Underbelly
[n.] singular

The soft underside or abdomen of a mammal.
An area vulnerable to attack.
A dark, hidden part of society.

Lo and Dylan are living parallel lives, worlds apart.

Lo is the ultimate middle-class mother, all perfectly polished Instagram posts and armchair activism.

Dylan is just about surviving on a zero-hours telemarketing job from her flat, trying to keep food on the table.

But when they meet at the school gates, they are catapulted into each other's homes and lives - with devastating consequences . . .

Explosive, sharply humorous and unflinchingly honest, Underbelly slices through the filtered surface of modern women's lives to expose the dark truth beneath.

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Praised by Barack Obama and an Oprah Book Club Pick, The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead won the National Book Award 2016 and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2017.
Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. All the slaves lead a hellish existence, but Cora has it worse than most; she is an outcast even among her fellow Africans and she is approaching womanhood, where it is clear even greater pain awaits. When Caesar, a slave recently arrived from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they take the perilous decision to escape to the North.
In Whitehead's razor-sharp imagining of the antebellum South, the Underground Railroad has assumed a physical form: a dilapidated box car pulled along subterranean tracks by a steam locomotive, picking up fugitives wherever it can. Cora and Caesar's first stop is South Carolina, in a city that initially seems like a haven. But its placid surface masks an infernal scheme designed for its unknowing black inhabitants. And even worse: Ridgeway, the relentless slave catcher sent to find Cora, is close on their heels. Forced to flee again, Cora embarks on a harrowing flight, state by state, seeking true freedom.
At each stop on her journey, Cora encounters a different world. As Whitehead brilliantly recreates the unique terrors for black people in the pre-Civil War era, his narrative seamlessly weaves the saga of America, from the brutal importation of Africans to the unfulfilled promises of the present day. The Underground Railroad is at once the story of one woman's ferocious will to escape the horrors of bondage and a shatteringly powerful meditation on history.

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Lucien (Lucy) Minor is the resident odd duck in the bucolic hamlet of Bury. Friendless and loveless, young and aimless, he is a compulsive liar and a melancholy weakling. When Lucy accepts employment assisting the majordomo of the remote, forbidding castle of the Baron Von Aux he meets thieves, madmen, aristocrats, and a puppy. He also meets Klara, a delicate beauty who is, unfortunately, already involved with an exceptionally handsome partisan soldier. Thus begins a tale of polite theft, bitter heartbreak, domestic mystery and cold-blooded murder in which every aspect of human behaviour is laid bare for our hero to observe. Lucy must stay safe, and protect his puppy, because someone or something is roaming the corridors of the castle late at night.

Undermajordomo Minor is a triumphant ink-black comedy of manners by the Man Booker shortlisted author of The Sisters Brothers. It is an adventure story, and a mystery, and a searing portrayal of rural Alpine bad behaviour with a brandy tart, but above all it is a love story. And Lucy must be careful, for love is a violent thing.

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How can you say goodbye to the love of your life? In Undying Michel Faber honours the memory of his wife, who died after a six-year battle with cancer. Bright, tragic and candid, these poems are an exceptional chronicle of what it means to find the love of your life. And what it is like to have to say goodbye. All I can do, in what remains of my brief time, is mention, to whoever cares to listen, that a woman once existed, who was kind and beautiful and brave, and I will not forget how the world was altered, beyond recognition, when we met.

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Cecilia Banks has a great deal on her plate. But when her son Ian turns up on her doorstep with the unexpected consequence of a brief fling, she feels she has no choice but to take the baby into her life. Cephas's arrival is the latest of many challenges Cecilia has to face. There is the matter of her cancer, for a start, an illness shared with her novelist friend Helen. Then there is Helen herself, whose observations of Cecilia's family life reveal a somewhat ambivalent attitude to motherhood. Meanwhile Tim, Cecilia's husband, is taking self-effacement to extremes, and Ian, unless he gets on with it, will throw away his best chance at happiness.

Cecilia, however, does not have to manage alone. In a convent in Hastings sits Sister Diana Clegg who holds the ties that bind everyone not only to each other, but to strangers as yet unmet. As events unfold, and as the truth about Cephas is revealed, we are invited to look closely at madness, guilt, mortal dread and the gift of resilience. No one will remain unchanged.

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From secret attraction to forever

Jessica is undeniably attracted to her delicious new neighbour, Dylan. But he's also her best friend's brother! Overcoming their complicated situation seems impossible, but could the answer to their problems be just next door?

Elena Ricci has always had a crush on Earl Luca DiSalvo. With his dark and stormy eyes, his protective nature, and his royal bearing, who wouldn't? But she believed they were destined to only ever be friends, until one magical evening in Paris that has dramatic consequences!

From the moment she sees Dr Xavier O'Donnell, midwife Brighde Campbell knows how the night will end. In the gorgeous obstetrician's arms, she can forget the closely kept reason she avoids commitment - but then she discovers she's pregnant Can Xavier convince Brighde that no matter what the future holds, they'll face it together?

Серия: Harlequin

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Can you ever let go of your past?

Cat knows she should be more grateful for her partner James. As a young woman struggling to care for her alcoholic mother, he whisked her away from her council estate home and offered her a taste of middle-class comfort.

But twenty years later, the escape he offered has begun to feel stifling and Cat wishes she had made more of her life. She had a place to study at university after finishing sixth form, but her mother was too unwell for Cat to take it. Could she go back now?

At a university open day, Cat finds herself standing before her boyfriend of teenage years, Daniel, now a lecturer. As the spark that drew them together returns, Cat hopes that he can in some way help her reconnect with the drive and optimism of her younger self. Or is she simply hurtling back towards a past that can only hurt her further?

Will Cat stop hurting those she loves and let go of her demons to become the person she always hoped to be? Or is it too late?

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Vivid, bawdy and bitter' (The Times), Pat Barker's first novel shows the women of Union Street, young and old, meeting the harsh challeges of poverty and survival in a precarious world. There's Kelly, at eleven, neglected and independent, dealing with a squalid rape; Dinah, knocking on sixty and still on the game; Joanne, not yet twenty, not yet married, and already pregnant; Old Alice, welcoming her impending death; Muriel helplessly watching the decline of her stoical husband. And linking them all, watching over them all, mother to half the street, is fiery, indomitable Iris.

Серия: Virago Modern Classics

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Dazzling novel from Carol Shields, author of The Stone Diaries , winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and Larry s Party , winner of the Orange Prize.

Reta Winters has a loving family, good friends, and growing success as a writer of light fiction. Then her eldest daughter suddenly withdraws from the world, abandoning university to sit on a street corner, wearing a sign that reads only Goodness . As Reta seeks the causes of her daughter s retreat, her enquiry turns into an unflinching, often very funny meditation on society and where we find meaning and hope. Unless is a dazzling and daring novel from the undisputed master of extraordinary fictions about so-called ordinary lives.

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It was a source of entertainment at Maple Street Cemetery. Both funny and sad, the kind of story we like best.

Natural-born healer Emma Starling once had big plans for her life, but she's lost her way. A medical school dropout, she's come back to small-town Everton, New Hampshire, to care for her father, who is dying from a mysterious brain disease. Clive Starling has been hallucinating small animals, as well as having visions of the ghost of a long-dead naturalist, Ernest Harold Baynes, once known for letting wild animals live in his house. This ghost has been giving Clive some ideas on how to spend his final days.

Emma arrives home knowing she must face her dad's illness, her mom's judgment, and her younger brother's recent stint in rehab, but she's unprepared to find that her former best friend from high school is missing, with no one bothering to look for her. The police say they don't spend much time looking for drug addicts. Emma's dad is the only one convinced the young woman might still be alive, and Emma is hopeful he could be right. Someone should look for her, at least. Emma isn't really trying to be a hero, but somehow she and her father bring about just the kind of miracle the town needs.

Set against the backdrop of a small town in the throes of a very real opioid crisis, Unlikely Animals is a tragicomic novel about familial expectations, imperfect friendships, and the possibility of resurrecting that which had been thought irrevocably lost.

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A man finds a bald patch on the back of his head that looks curiously like a face, then discovers he s splitting in two. A bored student suggests digging a tunnel into the foundations of the art school. An elderly man is healed by hundreds of tiny people working on repairs inside his own head.
Unlikely Stories, Mostly is Alasdair Gray s first collection of short stories. Gloriously illustrated, darkly funny, and steeped in myth and fable, they capture Gray s singular imagination.

Серия: The Canons

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Superintendent Adam Dalgliesh has been looking forward to a quiet holiday at his aunt s cottage on Monksmere Head, one of the furthest-flung spots on the remote Suffolk coast. With nothing to do other than enjoy long windswept walks, tea in front of a crackling wood fire and hot-buttered toast, Dalgliesh is relishing the thought of a well-earned break. However, all hope of peace is soon shattered by murder. The mutilated body of a local crime writer, Maurice Seaton, floats ashore in a dinghy, dragging Adam Dalgliesh into a new and macabre investigation.

Серия: Fiction - Crime

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Unnatural Creatures is a collection of short stories about the fantastical things that exist only in our minds-collected and introduced by beloved New York Times bestselling author Neil Gaiman. The sixteen stories gathered by Gaiman, winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards, range from the whimsical to the terrifying. The magical creatures range from werewolves to sunbirds to beings never before classified. E. Nesbit, Diana Wynne Jones, Gahan Wilson, and other literary luminaries contribute to the anthology. Sales of Unnatural Creatures benefit 826DC, a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting students in their creative and expository writing, and to helping teachers inspire their students to write.

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He is a renowned Swedish filmmaker and has a plan for everything. She is his daughter, by the actress he directed and once loved. Each summer of her childhood, the daughter visits the father at his remote Faro island home on the edge of the Baltic Sea.

Now that she's grown up - a writer, with children of her own - and he's in his eighties, they envision writing a book together, about old age, language, memory and loss. She will ask the questions. He will answer them. The tape recorder will record.

But it's winter now and old age has caught up with him in ways neither could have foreseen. And when the father is gone, only memories, images and words -- both remembered and recorded - remain. And from these the daughter begins to write her own story, in the pages which become this book.

Heart-breaking and spell-binding, Unquiet is a seamless blend of fiction and memoir in pursuit of elemental truths about how we live, love, lose and age.

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Football has come to the ancient city of Ankh-Morpork. And now the wizards of Unseen University must win a football match, without using magic, so they're in the mood for trying everything else.
The prospect of the Big Match draws in a street urchin with a wonderful talent for kicking a tin can, a maker of jolly good pies, a dim but beautiful young woman, who might just turn out to be the greatest fashion model there has ever been, and the mysterious Mr Nutt (and no one knows anything much about Mr Nutt, not even Mr Nutt, which worries him, too). As the match approaches, four lives are entangled and changed for ever.
Because the thing about football - the important thing about football - is that it is not just about football.
Here we go! Here we go! Here we go!

Серия: Discworld

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Meet Willa Knox, a woman who stands braced against a world which seems to hold little mercy for her and her family or their old, crumbling house, falling down around them. Willa s two grown-up children, a new-born grandchild, and her ailing father-in-law have all moved in at a time when life seems at its most precarious. But when Willa discovers that a pioneering female scientist lived on the same street in the 1800s, could this historical connection be enough to save their home from ruin? And can Willa, despite the odds, keep her family together?

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Meet Cordelia Gray: twenty-two, tough, intelligent and now sole inheritor of the Pryde Detective Agency. Her first assignment finds her hired by Sir Ronald Callender to investigate the death of his son Mark, a young Cambridge student found hanged in mysterious circumstances. Cordelia is required to delve into the hidden secrets of the Callender family and soon realizes it is not a case of suicide, and that the truth is entirely more sinister. PD James is the bestselling author of Death Comes To Pemberley, Children of Men and The Murder Room. Her first Cordelia Gray novel An Unsuitable Job For a Woman is a brilliant work of crime fiction packed with secrets and suspense. This novel has been adapted for television twice, the second adaptation in 1997 starred Helen Baxendale as Cordelia Gray.

Серия: Fiction - Crime

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Finding it hard to meet Mr Right? Perhaps you should try looking for Mr Wrong instead
After eleven years of coupled-up domesticity, Rory Carmichael is single for the first time in her adult life. Even she would admit that her ex-boyfriend Martin wasn't the most exciting man in the world - let's face it, his idea of a rocking night was one spent updating his Excel spreadsheets - but Rory could rely on him and, having watched her mother rack up four turbulent marriages, that's what matters. But when she discovers that her supposedly reliable Mr Right is a distinctly unreliable cheater, she's forced to consider the possibility that everything she knows about relationships is wrong.
In an effort to reinvigorate both her love life and her lacklustre career at posh magazine Country House, she sets herself a mission to date as many unsuitable men as possible. Toyboys. Sugar daddies. Fauxmosexuals. Maybe the bad boys she's never dated can show her what she's been missing in life. But if Mr Right can turn out to be so wrong, maybe one of her Mr Wrongs will turn out to be just right . . .

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'According to his mother, Jack Burns was an actor before he was an actor, but Jack's most vivid memories of childhood were those moments when he felt compelled to hold his mother's hand. He wasn't acting then.'

Jack Burns' mother, Alice, is a tattoo artist in search of the boy's father, a virtuoso organist named William who has fled America to Europe. To fund her journey, she plies her trade in the seaports of the Baltic coast. But her four-year-old son's errant father can't be found, and soon even Jack's memories of that perplexing time are called into question. It is only when he becomes a Hollywood actor in later life that what he has experienced in the past comes into telling play in his present...

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Will a tropical escape lead to a perfect romance?

It was meant to be the holiday of a lifetime for Samantha: the launch of her travel blog, her best friend s wedding and hopefully her own marriage proposal. Until she finds herself on her way to Tobago single.

Disillusioned with his corporate job on Wall Street, Roman is starting afresh in Tobago. He doesn t need a distraction, especially a free-spirited travel blogger. But something about Samantha intrigues him.

As romance blossoms, Roman and Samantha must learn to risk their hearts. But when secrets are revealed, their new relationship is put in jeopardy. Now Samantha and Roman must decide what they really want. They came to Tobago to find themselves, but could finding each other be what they needed all along?

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Unto Death contains two beautiful short novels linked by death and destruction.

Crusade is set in 1096 - a year of sinister omens. Count Guillaume of Touron sets out on a crusade to Jerusalem and on the way he serves his God by killing any Jews he meets. But will the Count find the peace of mind he seeks when he faces the terrible realities of war in the Holy Land?

In Late Love Oz portrays an elderly professor living alone in Tel Aviv, a man neither loving nor loved. His last mission is to expose the plight of his fellow Russian Jews and alert the people of Israel to the conspiracy that threatens them. But nobody wants to listen...

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As a favour to his wealthy father-in-law, the Count Falier, Commissario Guido Brunetti agrees to investigate the seemingly innocent wish of the Count's best friend, the elderly and childless Gonzalo, to adopt a younger man as his son. Under Italian inheritance laws, this man would become the sole heir to Gonzalo's substantial fortune, something which Gonzalo's friends, including the Count, find appalling. For his part, Brunetti wonders why they're so intent on meddling in the old man's business.
Not long after Brunetti meets with Gonzalo, the elderly man unexpectedly passes away from natural causes. Old and frail, Gonzalo's death goes unquestioned, and a few of his oldest friends gather in Venice to plan the memorial service.
But when Berta, a striking woman and one of Gonzalo's closest confidantes, is strangled in her hotel room, Brunetti is drawn into long-buried secrets from Gonzalo's past. What did Berta know? And who would go to such lengths to ensure it would remain hidden?
Once again, Donna Leon brilliantly follows the twists and turns of the human condition, set against the ebb and flow of Venetian life.

Серия: A Commissario Brunetti Mystery

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Finishing her last shift at Seoul's only audio theatre for the blind, Kim Ayami heads into the night with her former boss, searching for a missing friend. The following day, she looks after a visiting poet, a man who is not as he seems. Unfolding over a night and a day in the sweltering summer heat, their world's order gives way to chaos, the edges of reality start to fray, and the past intrudes on the present in increasingly disorientating ways.

Untold Night and Day is a hallucinatory feat of storytelling from one of the most radical voices in contemporary Korean literature.

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A chance encounter while holidaying in Central America leads an American couple, the Slades, to befriend the charming, handsome Grove Soto and his young Cuban mistress. But as the Slades' trip becomes prolonged and they grow increasingly dependent on their new acquaintances, an undercurrent of cruelty begins to disturb the comfort and niceties to which they are accustomed. Up Above the World shows Paul Bowles to be a master of the tension and horror of rising viciousness.

Серия: Penguin Modern Classics

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The sparks are flying...Being held hostage by a demon lord is getting considerably chilly, especially when May Northcott's heart still burns for Gabriel Tauhou, the flaming-hot leader of the silver dragons. Destined to be together and yet pulled apart...will there ever be a way to overcome what separates them without disaster? Thankfully Gabriel has a plan to rescue his beloved mate. But it's risky - and would also force May to become a pawn in a very dangerous game involving hell, fire and all of humanity, just in order to secure her freedom. She insists she'd do anything to be with Gabriel. But if the deal falls through and things get too hot, will she be able to withstand the blaze? Or will her life go up in smoke?

Серия: Silver dragons

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Published in 1963 Up the Junction won the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize, was adapted into a film and was the inspiration for the song of the same name.

The girls - Rube, Lily and Sylvie - work at McCrindle's sweet factory during the week and on Saturday they go up the Junction in their clattering stilettos, think about new frocks on H.P., drink tea in the cafe, and talk about their boyfriends. In these uninhibited, spirited vignettes of young women's lives in the shabby parts of South London in the sixties, money is scarce and enjoyment to be grabbed while it can.

Серия: Virago Modern Classics

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Ryan Bingham's job as a Career Transition Counselor-he fires people-has kept him airborne for years. Although he has come to despise his line of work, he has come to love the culture of what he calls "Airworld, " finding contentment within pressurized cabins, anonymous hotel rooms, and a wardrobe of wrinkle-free slacks. With a letter of resignation sitting on his boss's desk, and the hope of a job with a mysterious consulting firm, Ryan Bingham is agonizingly close to his ultimate goal, his Holy Grail: one million frequent flier miles. But before he achieves this long-desired freedom, conditions begin to deteriorate.
With perception, wit, and wisdom, Up in the Air combines brilliant social observation with an acute sense of the psychic costs of our rootless existence, and confirms Walter Kirn as one of the most savvy chroniclers of American life.

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Upstate is a funny, moving family drama from one of the world s most influential literary critics.

Alan Querry, a successful property developer from the north of England, has two daughters: Vanessa, a philosopher who lives and teaches in Saratoga Springs, NY, and Helen, a record company executive based in London. The sisters never quite recovered from their parents bitter divorce and the early death of their mother, with Vanessa particularly affected, and plagued by bouts of depression since her teenage years.

When she suffers a new crisis, Alan and Helen travel to Saratoga Springs. Over the course of six wintry days in upstate New York, the Querry family begins to struggle with the questions that animate this profound and searching novel: Why do some people find living so much harder than others?

Rich in subtle human insight, and vivid with a sense of place, Upstate is a perceptive, intensely poignant novel.

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Douglas Petersen understands his wife's need to 'rediscover herself' now that their son is leaving home.

He just thought they'd be doing their rediscovering together.

So when Connie announces that she will be leaving, too, he resolves to make their last family holiday into the trip of a lifetime: one that will draw the three of them closer, and win the respect of his son. One that will make Connie fall in love with him all over again.

The hotels are booked, the tickets bought, the itinerary planned and printed.

What could possibly go wrong?

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David Nicholls brings to bear all the wit and intelligence that graced ONE DAY in this brilliant, bittersweet novel about love and family, husbands and wives, parents and children. Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2014. Douglas Petersen understands his wife's need to 'rediscover herself' now that their son is leaving home. He just thought they'd be doing their rediscovering together. So when Connie announces that she will be leaving, too, he resolves to make their last family holiday into the trip of a lifetime: one that will draw the three of them closer, and win the respect of his son. One that will make Connie fall in love with him all over again. The hotels are booked, the tickets bought, the itinerary planned and printed. What could possibly go wrong?

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Can a broken town survive a second tragedy? The follow-up to the international bestseller Beartown
Can a broken town survive a second tragedy?By the time the last goal is scored, someone in Beartown will be dead . . .
Us Against You is the story of two towns, two teams and what it means to believe in something bigger than yourself. It's about how people come together - sometimes in anger, often in sorrow, but also through love. And how, when we stand together, we can bring a town back to life.

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Locked in a cabin, on a ship bound for Leningrad, Lev Termen types a letter to Clara, his 'one true love'. He recalls his early years as a scientist, inventing the musical theremin and other electric marvels, and the Kremlin's dream that these creations could help infiltrate capitalism itself. Instead, Manhattan infiltrated Termen - he fell in love with the city's jazz clubs and speakeasies, and with Clara, a beautiful young violinist. When Termen's spy games fall apart, he returns to find the Motherland not quite as he left it. Exiled to a Siberian gulag, with nothing but his wits to keep him alive, Termen is drawn ever deeper into the labyrinth of Stalin's Russia. Only his feelings for Clara, passing through the ether like the theremin's song, seem to show a way out.

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Utopia Avenue might be the most curious British band you've never heard of.

Emerging from London's psychedelic scene in 1967, folksinger Elf Holloway, blues bassist Dean Moss, guitar virtuoso Jasper de Zoet and jazz drummer Griff Griffin together created a unique sound, with lyrics that captured their turbulent times. The band produced only two albums in two years, yet their musical legacy lives on.

This is the story of Utopia Avenue's brief, blazing journey from Soho clubs and draughty ballrooms to the promised land of America, just when the Summer of Love was receding into something much darker - a multi-faceted tale of dreams, drugs, love, sexuality, madness and grief; of stardom's wobbly ladder and fame's Faustian pact; and of the collision between youthful idealism and jaded reality as the Sixties drew to a close.

Above all, this bewitching novel celebrates the power of music to connect across divides, define an era and thrill the soul.

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Utopia Avenue might be the most curious British band you've never heard of.

Emerging from London's psychedelic scene in 1967, folksinger Elf Holloway, blues bassist Dean Moss, guitar virtuoso Jasper de Zoet and jazz drummer Griff Griffin together created a unique sound, with lyrics that captured their turbulent times. The band produced only two albums in two years, yet their musical legacy lives on.

This is the story of Utopia Avenue's brief, blazing journey from Soho clubs and draughty ballrooms to the promised land of America, just when the Summer of Love was receding into something much darker - a multi-faceted tale of dreams, drugs, love, sexuality, madness and grief; of stardom's wobbly ladder and fame's Faustian pact; and of the collision between youthful idealism and jaded reality as the Sixties drew to a close.

Above all, this bewitching novel celebrates the power of music to connect across divides, define an era and thrill the soul.

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The first novel from the great, incomparable Thomas Pynchon.

The quest for V. sweeps us through sixty years and a panorama of Alexandria, Paris, Malta, Florence, Africa and New York. But who, where or what is V.? Bawdy, sometimes sad and frequently hilarious, V. as become a modern classic.

Серия: Vintage Classics

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Silence can be deafening.
Jean McClellan spends her time in almost complete silence, limited to just one hundred words a day. Any more, and a thousand volts of electricity will course through her veins.
Now the new government is in power, everything has changed. But only if you're a woman.
Almost overnight, bank accounts are frozen, passports are taken away and seventy million women lose their jobs. Even more terrifyingly, young girls are no longer taught to read or write.
For herself, her daughter, and for every woman silenced, Jean will reclaim her voice. This is only the beginning
[100 WORD LIMIT REACHED]

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From the Man Booker Prize-winning author of 'Wolf Hall', a savagely funny tale that revisits the characters from the much-loved 'Every Day is Mother's Day'.
Muriel Axon is about to re-enter the lives of Colin Sidney, hapless husband, father and schoolmaster, and Isabel Field, failed social worker and practising neurotic.
It is ten years since her last tangle with them, but for Muriel this is not time enough. There are still scores to be settled, truths to be faced and rather a lot of vengeance to be wreaked.

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A top ten New York Times bestseller. With the haunting emotional power of American Dirt and the atmospheric suspense of Where the Crawdads Sing: a compulsive debut novel that explores the aftershock of a brutal crime on the women of a small Texas oil town.

Mercy is hard in a place like this. I wished him dead before I ever saw his face

In a place like Odessa, Texas choosing who to trust can be a dangerous game.

Mary Rose Whitehead isn't looking for trouble - but when it shows up at her front door, she finds she can't turn away.

Corinne Shepherd, newly widowed, wants nothing more than to mind her own business, and for everyone else to mind theirs. But when the town she has spent years rebelling against closes ranks she realises she is going to have to take a side.

Gloria Ramirez, fourteen years old and out of her depth, survives the brutality of one man only to face the indifference and prejudices of many.

When justice is as slippery as oil, and kindness becomes a hazardous act, sometimes courage is all we have to keep us alive.

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An awkward teen with a terrible haircut has a reversal of fortune when he finds artefacts from the future lining a seagulls nest.

In a godforsaken barn, Presidents Eisenhower, John Adams and Rutherford B. Hayes are bemused to find themselves reincarnated as horses.

Clyde and Magreb he a traditional capes-and-coffins vampire, she the more progressive variety settle in an Italian lemon grove in the hope that its ripe fruit will keep their thirst for blood at bay.

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Andrew Hopkins lovingly raised his daughter Delia on his own, allowing her to believe that they lost Delia s mother in a car accident twenty-seven years ago.

But as Delia is preparing herself for the next chapter in her life, a policeman knocks on the door and reveals a terrible secret: that Andrew kidnapped his four-year-old daughter and led Delia s mother to believe she was dead.

As he sits behind bars, there is no doubt in anyone s mind that Andrew is guilty. But does that mean that what he did wasn t right?

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Stephanie Harker is travelling through security at O'Hare airport with five-year-old Jimmy. But in a moment, everything changes. In disbelief, Stephanie watches as a uniformed agent leads her boy away - and she's stuck the other side of the gates, hysterical with worry.
The authorities, unaware of Jimmy's existence, just see a woman behaving erratically; Stephanie is wrestled to the ground and blasted with a taser gun. By the time she can tell them what has happened, Jimmy is long gone.
But as Stephanie tells her story to the FBI, it becomes clear that everything is not as it seems. There are many potential suspects for this abduction. With time rapidly running out, how can Stephanie get him back?
A breathtakingly rich and gripping psychological thriller, The Vanishing Point is Val McDermid's most accomplished standalone novel to date, a work of haunting brilliance.

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Lentils, free love, radical politics and family truths . . . Various Pets Alive and Dead is the wonderfully funny fourth novel from Marina Lewycka, author of the bestselling A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian.

For twenty years Doro and Marcus lived in a commune, convinced lentils and free love would change the world. They didn't. What they did do was give their children a terror of radicalism, dirt, cooking rotas and poverty. Their daughter Clara wants nothing less conformist than her own, clean bathroom. Their son Serge hides the awkward fact that he's a banker earning loadsamoney. So when Doro and Marcus spring a surprise on their kids - just as the world is rocked in ways they always wished for - the family is forced to confront some thorny truths about themselves...

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Peter Ackroyd at his most magical and magisterial - a glittering, evocative, fascinating, story-filled portrait of Venice: ultimate city.

In this magnificent vision of Venice, Peter Ackroyd turns his unparalleled skill at evoking place from London and the River Thames, to Italy and the city of myth, mystery and beauty. He leads us through the history of the city, from the first refugees arriving in the mists of the lagoon in the fourth century to the rise of a great mercantile state and a trading empire, the wars against Napoleon and the tourist invasions of today. There are wars and sieges, scandals and seductions, fountains playing in deserted squares and crowds thronging the markets. And there is a dark undertone too, of shadowy corners and dead ends, prisons and punishment.

We could have no better guide to this most exceptional of cities - reading Ackroyd's Venice is, in itself, a glorious journey and the perfect holiday.

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The sublime city of Venice has long offered inspiration to the world's storytellers. This anthology gathers an array of dazzling stories with Venetian settings, including Daphne Du Maurier's haunting 'Don't Look Now', Anthony Trollope's wartime romance 'The Last Austrian Who Left Venice' and Vernon Lee's spine-chilling 'A Wicked Voice', together with scenes from Proust's In Search of Lost Time and from The Wings of the Dove, Henry James's tale of passion and betrayal in a Venetian palazzo. The Venetian adventurer and diarist Giacomo Casanova describes his escape from the Doge's prison in his amazing Memoirs, and there are enthralling contributions from Camillo Boito, Baron Corvo and Jeannette Winterson.In its multi-faceted portrait of La Serenissima, Venice Stories showcases a line-up of literary classics worthy of the magnificent city they celebrate.

Jonathan Keates has written extensively about Italy. He has also published acclaimed biographies of Handel, Purcell and Stendhal, and his fiction includes the short story collection Allegro Postillions (winner of both the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Hawthornden Prize) and the novel The Strangers' Gallery set in 19th-century Italy. He is Chairman of the Venice in Peril Fund and for thirty-nine years taught English at the City of London School.

Серия: Everyman`s Library Pocket Classics

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Meet fifteen-year-old Vernon Gregory Little. Desperate times call for the most unlikely of heroes.

'Startling... explosive and extravagantly satisfying.' Guardian

'Dangerous, smart, ridiculous and very funny.' New York Times

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Veronika has everything she could wish for - young and pretty, with plenty of attractive boyfriends, a steady job, a loving family. Yet Veronika is not happy and one winter's morning she takes an overdose of sleeping pills, only to wake up some time later in the local hospital. There she is told that although she is alive, her heart is now irreparably damaged and she only has a few days to live.
This story follows her through these intense days as she starts to question all her ideas about life. Soon she comes to realise that every second of existence is a choice we all make between living and dying. This is a moving and uplifting song to life, one that reminds us that every moment in our lives is special and precious.

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Veronika has everything she could wish for - young and pretty, with plenty of attractive boyfriends, a steady job, a loving family. Yet Veronika is not happy and one winter's morning she takes an overdose of sleeping pills, only to wake up some time later in the local hospital. There she is told that her heart is now irreparably damaged and she has only a few days to live...
Through these intense days Veronika comes to realize that every second of existence is a choice we all make between living and dying. This is a moving and uplifting song to life, one that reminds us that every moment in our lives is special and precious.

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What could possibly connect Stendhal's unrequited love, a series of murders by a clandestine organisation, the Great Fire of London, a story by Kafka and a closed-down pizzeria in Verona? Part fiction, part travelogue, the narrator of Sebald s compelling masterpiece pursues his solitary, eccentric course from England to Italy and beyond, succumbing to the vertiginous unreliability of memory itself.

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The fast-paced adventure from the bestselling author Wilbur Smith
Love. Loss. Revenge.
When Hector Cross's life is overturned, he immediately recognizes the ruthless hand of an enemy he has faced many times before. A terrorist group has re-emerged - like a deadly scorpion from beneath its rock.
Determined to fight back, Hector draws together a team of his most loyal friends from his former life in Cross Bow Security, a company originally contracted to protect his beloved wife, Hazel Bannock, and her company, the Bannock Oil Corp. Together, they travel to the remotest parts of the Middle East, to hunt down those who pursue him and his loved ones.
For Hazel and Hector have a child, a precious daughter, who he will go to the ends of the earth to protect. And brutal figures from the Bannock family's past - thought long-gone - are returning, with an agenda so sinister that Hector realizes he is facing a new breed of enemy. One whose shifting attack and dark secrets take Hector to the heart of Africa and to a series of crimes so shocking they demand revenge.

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Millions of people travel on London's tube every day, yet we usually give our fellow passengers only a cursory glance. But each one of these nameless passengers has their own story to tell.
At Notting Hill, the mysterious secretary, harbouring her secrets, travels to work; at Highburyand Islington, Adam has a sudden change of heart; and at Holborn, a disastrous reunion is about to take place...
With her characteristic mix of compassionate humour and biting realism, this vintage collection of stories is Maeve Binchy at her very best.

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Mona and Wolfie have lived on Victoria Park for over fifty years. Now, on the eve of their sixty-fifth wedding anniversary, they must decide how to navigate Mona's declining health. Bookended by the touching exploration of their love, Victoria Park follows the disparate lives of twelve people over the course of a single year. Told from their multiple perspectives in episodes which capture feelings of alienation and connection, the lingering memory of an acid attack in the park sends ripples of unease through the community. By the end of the novel, their carefully interwoven tales create a rich tapestry of resilience, love and loss.

With sharply observed insight into contemporary urban life, and characters we take to our hearts, Gemma Reeves has written a moving, uplifting debut which reflects those universal experiences that connect us all.

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A killer behind bars is still killing . . .
Dead bodies are piling up for Detective Sergeant Jessica Daniel.
Usually when a serial killer is on the loose, the pressure would be building to find the perpetrator but the victims are all hardened criminals themselves.
The national media can't believe their luck with an apparent vigilante on the streets, while Jessica's new boss seems grateful someone else is doing their job for them.
But things aren't so straightforward when forensics matches blood from the apparent killer to a man already behind bars.

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In her first book Village School Miss Read gave a picture of the small but detailed world of a typical primary school in a remote country area, a world peopled by the children themselves, Miss Clare the venerable infants teacher, glum Mrs Pringle the cleaner, the vicar and other inhabitants of Fairacre. In Village Diary Miss Read describes the people of Fairacre with the same exactitude, sense of comedy and sharp observation.

In addition to those characters familiar to readers of Village School there are newcomers, including dictatorial Amy, an old college friend, Mr Mawne, whom the village sees as a possible husband for the unwilling Miss Read and the earnest new infants teacher. Overshadowing everything, there is the mammoth country pageant in which Fairacre is so sharply and painfully divided...

Серия: Fairacre

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Things are heating up in the village of Turnham Malpas. Now comfortably settled in the Big House, Johnny and Alice Templeton are over the moon at the arrival of their second son. But Johnny's roguish younger brother, Chris, is visiting from Brazil and causing trouble in the village.

For Ford and Mercedes Barclay, returning to the village after all these years is a big step. Will they be welcomed or shunned? And will Ford be able to convince people he's a changed man?

Meanwhile, poor Fran Charter-Plackett has some important decisions to make about her future. With all her siblings having flown the nest, the pressure is on to decide what to do with her life. And when her parents discover Fran's shocking secret, things really start to get messy...

Серия: Turnham Malpas

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For the locals of Turnham Malpas the rural peace is disrupted when a famous actor comes to stay to recuperate from illness. Before long he is bored by village life and when he meets Caroline, the rector's wife, he is instantly attracted to her. He agrees to direct and star in a play with the villagers as his supporting cast and Caroline as his leading lady...

Before long, the villagers' lives are turned upside down: a marriage is wrecked, a proud man humbled and two people are brought closer together as gossip, scandal and jealousy mount...

Серия: Turnham Malpas

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You can't escape your past. At least that's what the residents of Turnham Malpas would say

While clearing out the rectory's loft, Reverend Peter Harris makes an unsettling discovery and a dark secret is exposed that soon sets tongues wagging in the village.

Having received a letter from the sons she hasn't heard from in 15 years, local gossip Greta Jones is delighted at the prospect of seeing them after all this time - despite her husband's misgivings. And Craddock Fitch's unruly grandchildren, newly arrived in the village, are causing not a little trouble for the townsfolk.

Meanwhile Fran Charter-Plackett has a difficult decision to make. Her parents would like to see her settled with kind and reliable Alex Harris. But when Chris Templeton, the man whom Fran once lost her heart to, returns to the village, it seems he is all set to steal her affections once more. Is Chris really a changed man? And will Fran finally go with her heart or her head?

Серия: Turnham Malpas

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Fairacre is a village of cottages, a church and the school - and at the heart of the school, its head mistress, Miss Read.

Through her discerning eye, we meet the villagers of Fairacre and see their trials and tribulations, from the irascible school cleaner Mrs Pringle, to the young school children, with their scraped knees, hopeful faces and inevitable mischief.

Miss Read takes us through the school year, beginning with the Christmas term, when the bitterly cold weather challenges the school's ancient heating system, right through to the hot summer day when school is over for another year.

Full of Miss Read's unique, acerbic wit and wry observations, Village School is an intriguing glimpse into a forgotten world and has become a true classic.

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The village school is to get a new head, and the inhabitants of Turnham Malpas await her arrival with curiosity. At first sight, Kate Pascoe seems ideal. She's young, pretty and obviously loves her job. But when she introduces meditation classes for her ten-year-olds, and even tree-hugging, the villagers begin to think again.

Then a strange malaise afflicts the whole village: lights are seen in Sykes Wood at night; a dog long dead appears to come to life, and a sudden shocking death plunges the village into a state of superstitious dread. And always at the eye of the storm is Kate Pascoe...

Серия: Turnham Malpas

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The fourth installment of the hilarious Ragley-on-the-Forest village school series

It's 1980: recession and unemployment have hit Britain, a royal wedding is on the way, and the whole country is wondering Who Shot JR?

As Jack returns for his fourth year at Ragley-on-the Forest School, there's a definite chill in the air. Village schools are being closed down all over the place - will his be one of them?As school life continues - Vera, the school secretary, has to grapple with a new-fangled electric typewriter, Ruby celebrates ten years as the school cleaner, and the village panto throws up some unusual problems - Jack wonders what the future holds...

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Owen Mackenzie's life story abounds with sin and seduction, domesticity and debauchery. His marriage to his college sweetheart is quickly followed by his first betrayal and he embarks upon a series of affairs. His pursuit of happiness, in a succession of small towns from Pennsylvania to Massachusetts, brings him to the edge of chaos, from which he is saved by a rescue that carries its own fatal price.

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