Laurent Binet lives and works in France. His first novel, HHhH, was an international bestseller which won the prestigious Prix Goncourt du premier roman, among other prizes. The 7th Function of Language won the Prix de la FNAC and Prix Interallie. Civilisations is a bestseller that has won the Grand Prix de l''Academie francaise.>
The international bestselling classic from the author of Animal Farm . Winston Smith rewrites history. It''s his job. Hidden away in the Record Department of the sprawling Ministry of Truth, he helps the Party, and the omnipresent Big Brother, control the people of Oceania. Winston knows what a good citizen of Oceania must do: show his devotion for Big Brother and the Party; abstain from all vices; and, most importantly, possess no critical thoughts of their own. The new notebook he''s begun to write in is definitely against the rules - in fact, the Thought Police could arrest him simply for having it. Yet, as Winston begins to write his own history, a seed of rebellion begins to grow in his heart - one that could have devastating consequences. In George Orwell''s final and most well-known novel, he explores a dystopian future in which a totalitarian government controls the actions, thoughts and even emotions of its citizens, exercising power through control of language and history. Its lasting popularity is testament to Orwell''s powerful prose, and is a passionate political warning for today
The international Number One bestseller from the author of The Song of Achilles, shortlisted for the Women''s Prize for Fiction Woman. Witch. Myth. Mortal. Outcast. Lover. Destroyer. Survivor. CIRCE.
In the house of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is born. Circe is a strange child - not powerful and terrible, like her father, nor gorgeous and mercenary like her mother. Scorned and rejected, Circe grows up in the shadows, at home in neither the world of gods or mortals. But Circe has a dark power of her own: witchcraft. When her gift threatens the gods, she is banished to the island of Aiaia where she hones her occult craft, casting spells, gathering strange herbs and taming wild beasts. Yet a woman who stands alone will never be left in peace for long - and among her island''s guests is an unexpected visitor: the mortal Odysseus, for whom Circe will risk everything.
So Circe sets forth her tale, a vivid, mesmerizing epic of family rivalry, love and loss - the defiant, inextinguishable song of woman burning hot and bright through the darkness of a man''s world.
CHOSEN AS A BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE GUARDIAN, TELEGRAPH, SUNDAY TELEGRAPH, I PAPER, SUNDAY EXPRESS, IRISH TIMES, TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT, AMAZON, AUDIBLE, BUZZFEED, REFINERY 29, WASHINGTON POST, BOSTON GLOBE, SEATTLE TIMES, TIME MAGAZINE, NEWSWEEK, PEOPLE, ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY, KIRKUS, PUBLISHERS WEEKLY AND GOODREADS
SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILEY''S WOMEN''S PRIZE FOR FICTION ''A delicious, important novel'' The Times ''Alert, alive and gripping'' Independent ''Some novels tell a great story and others make you change the way you look at the world. Americanah does both.'' Guardian As teenagers in a Lagos secondary school, Ifemelu and Obinze fall in love. Their Nigeria is under military dictatorship, and people are fleeing the country if they can. Ifemelu-beautiful, self-assured-departs for America to study. She suffers defeats and triumphs, finds and loses relationships and friendships, all the while feeling the weight of something she never thought of back home: race. Obinze-the quiet, thoughtful son of a professor-had hoped to join her, but post-9/11 America will not let him in, and he plunges into a dangerous, undocumented life in London.
Thirteen years later, Obinze is a wealthy man in a newly democratic Nigeria, while Ifemelu has achieved success as a writer of an eye-opening blog about race in America. But when Ifemelu returns to Nigeria, and she and Obinze reignite their shared passion-for their homeland and for each other-they will face the toughest decisions of their lives.
Fearless, gripping, spanning three continents and numerous lives, Americanah is a richly told story of love and expectation set in today''s globalized world.
One of the best known and most controversial examples of twentieth century literature. Read here in its entirety by Jeremy Irons, who starred in the 1997 film adaptation directed by Adrian Lyne.
''One of the greatest American novels of this or any other time'' - Guardian GOD. TRUTH. EXISTENCE.
Stella Maris is the story of a mathematician, twenty years old, admitted to the hospital with forty thousand dollars in a plastic bag and one request: She does not want to talk about her brother.
A literary puzzle about money, power, and intimacy, TRUST is a novel that challenges the myths shrouding wealth, and the fictions that often pass for history. Even through the roar and effervescence of the 1920s, everyone in New York has heard of Benjamin and Helen Rask. He is a legendary Wall Street tycoon; she is the daughter of eccentric aristocrats. Together, they have risen to the very top of a world of seemingly endless wealth-all as a decade of excess and speculation draws to an end. But at what cost have they acquired their immense fortune? This is the mystery at the center of Bonds , a successful 1938 novel that all of New York seems to have read. But it isn''t the only version of this story of privilege and deceit. Hernan Diaz''s TRUST brilliantly puts this narrative into conversation with other accounts-and in tension with the perspective of one woman bent on disentangling fact from fiction. The result is a novel that becomes more exhilarating with each new revelation. Provocative and propulsive, TRUST engages the reader in a quest for the truth while confronting the reality-warping gravitational pull of capital and the ease with which power can manipulate facts.
Emmanuel Carrere , novelist, filmmaker, journalist, and biographer, is the award-winning internationally renowned author of The Adversary (a Sunday Times bestseller and New York Times Notable Book, translated into twenty-three languages), Lives Other Than My Own , My Life as a Russian Novel , Class Trip , Limonov (winner of the 2011 Prix Renaudot), The Mustache and, most recently, The Kingdom .>
''Heartbreak, wistfulness, cracking dialogue . . . This is Toibin at his best'' - The Times
''A masterful novel full of longing and regret . . . Intensely moving and yet full of restraint'' - Douglas Stuart, author of Shuggie Bain
OPRAH''S BOOK CLUB PICK
AS HEARD ON BBC RADIO 4
Long Island is Colm Toibin''s masterpiece: an exquisite, exhilarating novel that asks whether it is possible to truly return to the past and renew the great love that seemed gone forever. The sequel to Colm Toibin''s prize-winning, bestselling novel Brooklyn.
A man with an Irish accent knocks on Eilis Fiorello''s door on Long Island and in that moment everything changes. Eilis and Tony have built a secure, happy life here since leaving Brooklyn - perhaps a little stifled by the in-laws so close, but twenty years married and with two children looking towards a good future.
And yet this stranger will reveal something that will make Eilis question the life she has created. For the first time in years she suddenly feels very far from home and the revelation will see her turn towards Ireland once again. Back to her mother. Back to the town and the people she had chosen to leave behind. Did she make the wrong choice marrying Tony all those years ago? Is it too late now to take a different path?
*Long Island was an instant Sunday Times bestseller w/c 27/5/24
For over a quarter of a century readers have been joining Elmer the patchwork elephant on his exciting adventures. Now Elmer's classic first story is available in this lovely board book edition. With its sturdy pages for little fingers, this gift is the perfect introduction to the world of Elmer.
On March 3, 1947 Archibald Isaac Ferguson is born. From that single beginning, his life will take four simultaneous and independent fictional paths. Four boys who are the same boy, will go on to lead four parallel and entirely different lives. Fergusons story rushes on across twentieth-century America. A sweeping story of birthright and possibility, of love and the fullness of life itself.
An unforgettable historical debut set in Second World War Brussels: exploring love, resistance and courage in all their forms
1939. Art student Charlotte Sauvin and her father wake up in their apartment at 33 Place Brugmann to discover that their closest neighbours and friends - the Raphael family on the fourth floor, and Russian seamstress Masha on the fifth - have vanished overnight without a word.
While the Raphaels and Masha are flung on their own adventures across the continent - from occupied Paris to Blitz London, where they reinvent themselves as refugees, nurses, soldiers, heroes - Charlotte and the rest of her neighbours at Place Brugmann have their own choices to make in a city cast under the deep shadow of occupation.
Over the course of the war, every member of this accidental community will discover that they are not the person they believed themselves to be. And when tested, each will confront the truth about what, and who, matters to them the most.
Uplifting, sweeping and full of unforgettable characters, 33 Place Brugmann is a novel about beauty, family, friendship and home: and how the courage to resist can be found in the most surprising places.
Half German, half Russian, Hel was raised by a Japanese general and survived Hiroshima to become a mystic, a master of the senses, and the most deadly assassin in the world. Nicholai has left his past behind him to live a life of isolation in a remote mountain fortress, determined to attain a state of effortless perfection known as shibumi. Then Hannah Stern arrives at his door. Hannah needs protection from a sinister organization known as the Mother Company. But, as Hel knows all too well, they are not easy to escape. And now they're coming after him too. The battle lines are drawn: ruthless power and corruption on one side, and on the other...shibumi.
Told in a simple mythical style, the story of Siddhartha is an inspirational classic by Hermann Hesse, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. Part of the Macmillan Collector's Library, a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket-sized classics with gold-foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition is translated from German by Hilda Rosner with an introduction by John Peacock.Siddhartha, the son of a wealthy Brahmin, is unable to find peace within his own religion and community so sets off on his travels through India in search of enlightenment. First he spends time with a group of ascetics called Samanas. For a while he embraces their doctrine and rejects all worldly goods. When he hears about a man called Gotama the Buddha he leaves the Samanas. However Buddhist teaching disappoints him and he realizes that self-discovery must come from his own experiences. He rejects the spiritual life, takes a lover and becomes a rich merchant. But after some years, dissatisfied with materialism, he takes off again in search of the spiritual peace he longs for.
The legendary American artist offers a never-before-seen glimpse of her remarkable relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe in the epochal days of New York City and the Chelsea Hotel in the late sixties and seventies. An honest and moving story of youth and friendship, Smith brings the same unique, lyrical quality to Just Kids as she has to the rest of her formidable body of work--from her influential 1975 album Horses to her visual art and poetry. Patti Smith would evolve as a poet and performer, and Robert Mapplethorpe would direct his highly provocative style toward photography. Bound in innocence and enthusiasm, they traversed the city from Coney Island to 42nd Street, and eventually to the celebrated round table of Max's Kansas City, where the Andy Warhol contingent held court. In 1969, the pair set up camp at the Hotel Chelsea and soon entered a community of the famous and infamous--the influential artists of the day and the colorful fringe. It was a time of heightened awareness, when the worlds of poetry, rock and roll, art, and sexual politics were colliding and exploding. In this milieu, two kids made a pact to take care of each other. Scrappy, romantic, committed to create, and fueled by their mutual dreams and drives, they would prod and provide for one another during the hungry years. A true fable, Just Kids is a portrait of two young artists' ascent, a prelude to fame.
Patrick Bateman is twenty-six and works on Wall Street; he is handsome, sophisticated, charming and intelligent. He is also a psychopath. Taking us to a head-on collision with America's greatest dream - and its worst nightmare - this work is a black comedy about a world we all recognize but do not wish to confront.
Few literary masterpieces cast quite as awesome a shadow as Herman Melville''s Moby Dick. Captain Ahab''s quest for the white whale is a timeless epic - a thrilling tale of vengeance and obsession, and a searing parable about humanity lost in a universe of moral ambiguity.
Inspired by true events, Moby Dick is a work of astonishing psychological depth. It is perhaps the greatest sea story ever told and one of the great classics of literature.
''Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell''s heart I stab at thee; for hate''s sake I spit my last breath at thee...''
Terrible events occur at an isolated hotel in the off season, when a small boy with psychic powers struggles to hold his own against the forces of evil that are driving his father insane.
Emma Bovary yearns for a life of luxury and passion of the kind she reads about in romantic novels. But life with her country doctor husband in the provinces is unutterably boring, and she embarks on love affairs to realize her fantasies. This new translation by Margaret Mauldon perfectly captures Flaubert's distinctive style.
'Illusory, frightening, and deeply moving, The Fisherman is a modern horror epic. And it's simply a must read'
Paul Tremblay
In upstate New York, within the woods, Dutchman's Creek flows out of the Ashokan Reservoir. Steep-banked and fast-moving, it offers the promise of fine fishing, and of something more, a possibility too fantastic to be true.
When Abe and Dan, two widowers who have found solace in each other's company and a shared passion for fishing, hear rumours of the Creek and what might be found there, the remedy to both their losses, they dismiss them. Soon, though, the men find themselves drawn into a tale as deep and old as the Reservoir.
It's a tale of dark pacts, of long-buried secrets, and of a mysterious figure known as the Fisherman. It will bring Abe and Dan face to face with all that they have lost, and with the price they must pay to regain it.
'An epic, yet intimate, horror novel. Langan channels M. R. James, Robert E. Howard and Norman Maclean. What you get is A River Runs Through It... straight to hell'
Laird Barron
More praise for The Fisherman:
'Reading this, your mouth fills with worms. Just let them wriggle and crawl as they will, though-don't swallow. John Langan is fishing for your sleep, for your soul. I fear he's already got mine'
Stephen Graham Jones
'What starts as a slow, melancholy tale gains momentum and drops you head first into a churning nightmare from which you might escape, but you'll never forget, and the memory of what you saw will change you forever'
Richard Kadrey
'The Fisherman is a treasure, the kind of book you just want to snuggle up and shiver through. I can't say enough good things about the confidence, the patience, the satisfying cumulative power of this book. It was a pleasure to read from the first page to the last' Victor LaValle
'Stories within stories, folk tales becoming modern legends, all spinning into a fisherman's tale about the one he wishes had gotten away. Langan's latest is at turns epic and personal, dense yet compulsively readable, frightening but endearing'
Adam Cesare
Sethe, an escaped slave living in post-Civil War Ohio with her daughter and mother-in-law, is haunted persistently by the ghost of the dead baby girl whom she sacrificed, in a new edition of the Nobel Laureate's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. Reader's Guide available.
