Devil’s peak
En Anglais – From rising South African thriller writer Deon Meyer, a gripping suspense novel about revenge, forgiveness, and the race to catch a trained killer. A young woman makes a terrible confession to a priest. An honorable man takes his own revenge for an unspeakable tragedy. An aging inspector tries to get himself sober while taking on the most difficult case of his career. From this beginning, Deon Meyer weaves a story of astonishing complexity and suspense, as Inspector Benny Griessel faces off against a dangerous vigilante who has everything on his side, including public sympathy. A gruesome abuse case has hit the newsstands, and one man has taken it upon himself to stand up for the children of Cape Town. When the accused is found stabbed through the heart by spear, it’s only the beginning of a string of bloody murders – and of a dangerous dilemma for detective Griessel. The detective is always just one step behind as someone slays the city’s killers. But the paths of Griessel and the avenger collide when a young prostitute lures them both into a dangerous plan – and the two find themselves with a heart-stopping problem that no system of justice could ever make right.
Reading in the Dark
En Anglais – Hugely acclaimed in Great Britain, where it was awarded the Guardian Fiction Prize and short-listed for the Booker, Seamus Deane’s first novel is a mesmerizing story of childhood set against the violence of Northern Ireland in the 1940s and 1950s. The boy narrator grows up haunted by a truth he both wants and does not want to discover. The matter: a deadly betrayal, unspoken and unspeakable, born of political enmity. As the boy listens through the silence that surrounds him, the truth spreads like a stain until it engulfs him and his family. And as he listens, and watches, the world of legend–the stone fort of Grianan, home of the warrior Fianna; the Field of the Disappeared, over which no gulls fly–reveals its transfixing reality. Meanwhile the real world of adulthood unfolds its secrets like a collection of folktales: the dead sister walking again; the lost uncle, Eddie, present on every page; the family house « as cunning and articulate as a labyrinth, closely designed, with someone sobbing at the heart of it. » Seamus Deane has created a luminous tale about how childhood fear turns into fantasy and fantasy turns into fact. Breathtakingly sad but vibrant and unforgettable, Reading in the Dark is one of the finest books about growing up–in Ireland or anywhere–that has ever been written.
Falling Angels
En Anglais – In her New York Times bestselling follow-up, Tracy Chevalier once again paints a distant age with a rich and provocative palette of characters. Told through a variety of shifting perspectives- wives and husbands, friends and lovers, masters and their servants, and a gravedigger’s son-Falling Angels follows the fortunes of two families in the emerging years of the twentieth century.
Suzanne’s Diary for Nicholas
En Anglais – Beautifully captures the joys of a new family as it builds to an overwhelmingly moving climax. This is an unforgettable love story, at once heartbreaking and full of hope. James Patterson has written a love story!–a powerfully moving and suspenseful novel about families, loss, new love, and hope. Katie Wilkinson has found her perfect man at last. He’s a writer, a house painter, an original thinker–everything she’s imagined she wanted in a partner. But one day, without explanation, he disappears from her life, leaving behind only a diary for her to read. This diary is a love letter written by a new mother named Suzanne for her baby son, Nicholas. In it she pours out her heart about how she and the boy’s father met, about her hopes for marriage and family, and about the unparalleled joy that having a baby has brought into her life. As Katie reads this touching document, it becomes clear that the lover who has just left her is the husband and father in this young family. She reads on, filled with terror and hope, as she struggles to understand what has happened–and whether her new love has a prayer of surviving. Written with James Patterson’s perfect pitch for emotion and suspense, Suzanne’s Diary for Nicholas captures beautifully the joys of a new family as it builds to an overwhelmingly moving climax. This is an unforgettable love story, at once heartbreaking and full of hope.
Little Brother
En Anglais – A state-of-the-art computerized killing machine bids to destroy world peace. Ed Howard discovers that he is confronting the world’s most effective mercenary force, the East German Stasi, with the team he led into and out of Iraq, augmented by a female Korean agent.
The song dog, a Kramer and Zondi Mystery
En Anglais – A unique mystery series that focuses not only on fascinating crimes, but also on the evils of apartheid in South Africa. When Lieutenant Tromp Kramer joins forces with brilliant Bantu Detective Sergeant Mickey Zondi to investigate an accidental murder, they are confronted by the mysterious and legendary Song Dog.
Swimming to Catalina
En Anglais – Stone Barrington thought he’d heard the last of former girlfriend Arrington after she left him to marry Vance Calder, Hollywood’s hottest star. The last thing Stone expected was a desperate call from Calder. Arrington has vanished, and her new fiancé wants Stone to come to LA and find her. In a town where the sharks drive Bentleys and no one can be trusted, Stone soon discovers he’s drowning in a sea of empty clues that takes him from Bel Air to Malibu to Rodeo Drive. Running out of time and leads, he needs to keep his head above water and find Arrington fast, or end up swimming with the fishes himself.
The choir
In the rustic town of Aldminster, a crisis looms. Funds are short and the cathedral is in need of major repair. Some hope to finance the work by abolishing the costly boy’s choir-while others are aghast at the idea. Drawn into the fray is Sally Ashworth, the lonely mother of a ten-year-old chorister. She is anchored only by her unexpected love for the brilliant choirmaster-and by her young son, whose melodic voice may be the only thing that can unite a divided community.
Marrying the Mistress
The court official leaned closer. / . »What’s gone past, » he said, « is not just an advocate, any old lady advocate. What’s gone past is his Honour’s totty. » … And what’s going past is the life of Guy Stockdale, a 62-year-old judge, who has been married forever, has two sons–Simon and Alan–and three grandchildren. For the past seven years, he’s also had a mistress. Merrion Palmer is intelligent, attractive, and half Guy’s age, which also makes her younger than both Simon and Alan. Her dad died when she was a toddler and she’s well aware that Guy is something of a father substitute. For years the role of mistress has suited her, but, suddenly, this style of relationship isn’t enough for either of them. They’ve both had enough of sneaking around and avoiding people, so Guy has momentously made up his mind to leave his wife, Laura, and marry Merrion….Marrying the Mistress dives into the shock waves that buffet the Stockdale family after Guy leaves Laura. The novel addresses the question of how his sons are going to cope, the explosive opinions of his forthright daughter-in-law Carrie and what his teenage grandchildren make of it all. Can any of them avoid taking sides? Should they? And what about the abandoned wife, Laura, a woman apparently so long-sufferingly self-sacrificing she makes Mother Teresa look selfish?
Fame by chance
All over the world there are places that became famous forever by chance—battles briefly waged, scenes of triumph and disaster, sites of murder and intrigue, centers of influential creativity, and noted mythical places from books and film. How and why did; Angora, Tabasco, Duffel, and Fray Bentos give us products good and bad; Kohima’s tennis court save India; Storyville’s 269 brothels helped it to create jazz; Botany Bay never saw any British convicts; Tay Bridge was a disaster avoided by Marx and Engels; « OK » stands for a farmhouse; Ferrari chose the « Prancing Horse of Maranello »; Kyoto was saved from Hiroshoma’s terrible fate; The British built the Great Hedge of India; With 432 pages beautifully illustrated and carefully researched, Fame By Chance covers 380 of these places with new insights and facts that are amusing, surprising, and sometimes controversial.
Empire of silver
… « Terrific. Simply. This is my all time fav book series. Easily. (well, maybe the Boxcar Children was close). Conn Iggulden continues to write great historical fiction with this Khan series. Is it all historically correct? I don’t know. Is it geographically correct? I don’t know. Is it a great story filled with great characters? Definitely. I was super excited when I saw this book at our library and it was one of those books you read slowly because you don’t want to finish. Surely there is another book coming about Kublai Khan, the grandson of Ghengis. Highly recommend not only for people who like historical fiction but also for those who like great story lines. » …
When the eagle hunts
After a series of bloody battles, Camulodunum (modern-day Colchester) has fallen to the invading Roman army. The Emperor has returned to Rome, leaving the fearless Centurion Macro and his young Optio, Cato, to rest and regroup, along with the rest of the Second Legion. As their leader General Plautius plans the next phase of their campaign, word arrives that the ship carrying his family to join him was wrecked in a storm off the south coast. His wife and children have fallen into the hands of a dark sect of Druids, who now demand the return of those of their brotherhood taken prisoner by the Romans. Unless their demands are met within one month, Plautius’s family will be burned alive. Will Cato and Macro discover where the Druids are hiding their hostages? And can they find some way to rescue them before time runs out?
For 150 years, the Aga Khans–all lineal descendants of Mohammed–have been the spiritual leaders of the Ismailis, a sect of the Shia Muslims, found primarily in East Africa. This first in-depth biography of the Aga Khans takes a mesmerizing look at a colorful dynasty that is still a recognizable force in world affairs and in the development of the Third World.
Cheers my arse !
Ricky Tomlinson, author and entertainer, has worked in pubs and clubs up and down the country and seen more than his fair share of last orders. CHEERS . . . MY ARSE! is his hilarious collection of classic tales from the heart of publand. Featuring riotous stories that celebrate our best-loved hell raisers – Richard Harris, Peter O’Toole, Oliver Reed and Richard Burton, to name a few – and the escapades of modern-day drinking heroes (like the Gallagher brothers and Johnny Vegas), this is the perfect book for anyone who’s ever had one too many . . .
Lady Chatterley’s lover
Lawrence’s frank portrayal of an extramarital affair and the explicit sexual explorations of the central characters caused this controversial book, now considered a masterpiece, to be banned as pornography until 1960.
The messengers
Nick Bunick was confronted by angels. It will change your life forever… Prominent and successful Portland, Oregon, businessman Nick Bunick never considered himself a particularly religious person. But he knew in his heart that he had experienced something extraordinary in a past life. Anxious to share it, but convinced that his story would seem unbelievable to most people, he kept it to himself. Then, two years ago, angels intervened. Nick came to understand that angels were prevailing upon him to tell his story — a story that began 2,000 years ago when he lived as Paul the Apostle, and walked alongside Jesus. An inspiring chronicle of the angelic visitations that led Nick to finally share his memories, The Messengers also illuminates the events of his life as Paul. Rich with the wisdom and awe borne of Nick’s incredible encounter with Jesus, this magnificent book truly signals a return to the Age of Miracles.
Sacred hunger
Winner of the 1992 Booker Prize for Fiction. Sacred Hunger is a stunning and engrossing exploration of power, domination, and greed. Filled with the « sacred hunger » to expand its empire and its profits, England entered full into the slave trade and spread the trade throughout its colonies. In this Booker Prize-winning work, Barry Unsworth follows the failing fortunes of William Kemp, a merchant pinning his last chance to a slave ship; his son who needs a fortune because he is in love with an upper-class woman; and his nephew who sails on the ship as its doctor because he has lost all he has loved. The voyage meets its demise when disease spreads among the slaves and the captain’s drastic response provokes a mutiny. Joining together, the sailors and the slaves set up a secret, utopian society in the wilderness of Florida, only to await the vengeance of the single-minded, young Kemp.
Burning Man
En Anglais – Peter Hale is a young attorney with a lot to prove. Crossing his father, one of Portland’s most powerful lawyers, was a costly mistake. Now, cut loose from his job and from his inheritance, Peter’s landed in the public defender’s office of a small Oregon town — and in the middle of a high-profile case that could make or break his career. His mentally retarded client, accused of the savage murder of a college coed, faces the death penalty. And Peter faces a choice — between the pursuit of headlines and the pursuit of truth, between the compulsion to save himself and the courage to save his client — in a devastating trial by fire.
Culture and Society – 1780-1950
En Anglais – Acknowledged as perhaps the masterpiece of materialist criticism in the English language, this omnibus ranges over British literary history from George Eliot to George Orwell to inquire about the complex ways economic reality shapes the imagination.
En Anglais – A wonderful, immersive tale about Cortes’s conquest of the Mexican Empire. Bernal Diaz, the narrator of the tale, was one of Cortes’s soldiers. As the story progressed, I became his confidant, travelling companion, and friend. Rarely have I found a story as exciting, bewildering, and interesting as this. I loved it. I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in the history of Mexico, its people, or Hernan Cortes.
The horse’s mouth
En Anglais – The Horse’s Mouth, the third and most celebrated volume of Joyce Cary’s First Trilogy, is perhaps the finest novel ever written about an artist. Its painter hero, the charming and larcenous Gulley Jimson, has an insatiable genius for creation and a no less remarkable appetite for destruction. Is he a great artist? a has-been? or an exhausted, drunken ne’er-do-well? He is without doubt a visionary, and as he criss-crosses London in search of money and inspiration the world as seen though his eyes appears with a newly outrageous and terrible beauty.
One night in winter
En Anglais – Inspired by a true story, prize-winning historian and acclaimed novelist Simon Sebag Montefiore explores the consequences of forbidden love in this heartbreaking epic of marriage, childhood, danger, and betrayal that unfolds in Stalin’s Moscow during the bleak days after World War II. … As Moscow celebrates the motherland’s glorious victory over the Nazis, shots ring out on the crowded streets. On a nearby bridge, a teenage boy and girl—dressed in traditional nineteenth-century costumes—lie dead. But this is no ordinary tragedy, because these are no ordinary teenagers. As the son and daughter of high-ranking Soviet officials, they attend the most elite school in Moscow. Was it an accident, or murder? Is it a conspiracy against Stalin, or one of his own terrifying intrigues? On Stalin’s instructions, a ruthless investigation begins into what becomes known as the Children’s Case. Youth across the city are arrested and forced to testify against their friends and their parents. As families are ripped apart, all kinds of secrets come spilling out. Trapped at the center of this witch-hunt are two pairs of illicit lovers, who learn that matters of the heart exact a terrible price. By turns a darkly sophisticated political thriller, a rich historical saga, and a deeply human love story, Montefiore’s masterful novel powerfully portrays the terror and drama of Stalin’s Russia.
A Man in Full
En Anglais – The setting is Atlanta, Georgia — a racially mixed, late-century boomtown full of fresh wealth and wily politicians. The protagonist is Charles Croker, once a college football star, now a late-middle-aged Atlanta conglomerate king whose outsize ego has at last hit up against reality. Charlie has a 29,000 acre quail-shooting plantation, a young and demanding second wife, and a half-empty office complex with a staggering load of debt. Meanwhile, Conrad Hensley, idealistic young father of two, is laid off from his job at the Croker Global Foods warehouse near Oakland and finds himself spiraling into the lower depths of the American legal system. And back in Atlanta, when star Georgia Tech running back Fareek “the Canon” Fanon, a homegrown product of the city’s slums, is accused of date-raping the daughter of a pillar of the white establishment, upscale black lawyer Roger White II is asked to represent Fanon and help keep the city’s delicate racial balance from blowing sky-high. Networks of illegal Asian immigrants crisscrossing the continent, daily life behind bars, shady real estate syndicates — Wolfe shows us contemporary America with all the verve, wit, and insight that have made him our most admired novelist. Charlie Croker’s deliverance from his tribulations provides an unforgettable denouement to the most widely awaited, hilarious and telling novel America has seen in ages — Tom Wolfe’s most outstanding achievement to date.
Mama Mia !
En anglais – It was no country for young men. Or women … Unemployment, emigration and do-it-yourself hair colour kits were once again a fact of life. Taxes were on the up, the IMF were on the way and there was a cash for gold outlet in Foxrock Village … But the signs for recovery were good – for me, at least. I was the chief executive of one of the few businesses turning a profit in this town, a shredding company helping to dispose of the Celtic Tiger’s dirty little secrets. And I was getting plenty of love action – as the boy-toy of an attractive sixty-year-old woman who was totally rolling in it. I never imagined myself ending up as a gigolo. But, as the saying goes, where there’s a will, there’s a way-hey-hey! With presents galore, sex on demand and a hot meal on the table every night, life was storting to look up again. All I had to do to aovid focking it up was to keep my chinos buttoned. And, well, you can probably guess how that went.
Ghost Light
En Anglais – Dublin 1907, a city of whispered rumours. A young actress begins an affair with a damaged older man, the leading playwright at the theatre where she works. Rebellious and flirtatious, Molly Allgood is a girl of the inner city tenements, dreaming of stardom in America. She has dozens of admirers but in the backstage of her life there is a secret.
Small Island
En Anglais – Hortense Joseph arrives in London from Jamaica in 1948 with her life in her suitcase, her heart broken, her resolve intact. Her husband, Gilbert Joseph, returns from the war expecting to be received as a hero, but finds his status as a black man in Britain to be second class. His white landlady, Queenie, raised as a farmer’s daughter, befriends Gilbert, and later Hortense, with innocence and courage, until the unexpected arrival of her husband, Bernard, who returns from combat with issues of his own to resolve … Told in these four voices, Small Island is a courageous novel of tender emotion and sparkling wit, of crossings taken and passages lost, of shattering compassion and of reckless optimism in the face of insurmountable barriers—in short, an encapsulation of the immigrant’s life.
True Tales of American life
En Anglais – Chosen by Paul Auster out of the four thousand stories submitted to his radio programme on National Public Radio, these 180 stories provide a wonderful portrait of America in the twentieth century. The requirement for selection was that each of the stories should be true, and each of the writers should not have been previously published. The collection that has emerged provides a richly varied and authentic voice for the American people, whose lives, loves, griefs, regrets, joys and sense of humour are vividly and honestly recounted throughout, and adeptly organised by Auster into themed sections. The section composed of war stories stretches as far back as the Civil War, still the defining moment in American history; while the sequence of ‘Meditations’ conclude the volume with a true and abiding sense of transcendence … The resultant anthology is both an enduring hymn to the strange everyday of contemporary American life and a masterclass in the art of storytelling.
En Anglais – In this powerful new biography, Aengus Finucane: In the Heart of Concern, the result of over 80 interviews and extensive travel, Deirdre Purcell explores the life and work of Concern founder Father Aengus Finucane. She charts the work he did to build Concern into the global charity and vital player in relief efforts around the world that it is today. A charismatic humanitarian visionary, he travelled the world to go to the aid of the poorest of the poor, whilst helping to turn the small charity into an international phenomenon. In many ways the most humane of priests, Aengus sought to address its root causes. The charitable work of Concern, under his leadership and influence, was not limited to responding with aid to emergencies as they arose; it also involved development, creating meaningful, long-lasting and positive change.
Gomorrah, Italy’s other Mafia
En Anglais – A groundbreaking major bestseller in Italy, Gomorrah is Roberto Saviano’s gripping nonfiction account of the decline of Naples under the rule of the Camorra, an organized crime network with a large international reach and stakes in construction, high fashion, illicit drugs, and toxic-waste disposal. Known by insiders as « the System, » the Camorra affects cities and villages along the Neapolitan coast, and is the deciding factor in why Campania, for instance, has the highest murder rate in all of Europe and whycancer levels there have skyrocketed in recent years . Saviano tells of huge cargoes of Chinese goods that are shipped to Naples and then quickly distributed unchecked across Europe. He investigates the Camorra’s control of thousands of Chinese factories contracted to manufacture fashion goods, legally and illegally, for distribution around the world, and relates the chilling details of how the abusive handling of toxic waste is causing devastating pollution not only for Naples but also China and Somalia. In pursuit of his subject, Saviano worked as an assistant at a Chinese textile manufacturer, a waiter at a Camorra wedding, and on a construction site. A native of the region, he recalls seeing his first murder at the age of fourteen, and how his own father, a doctor, suffered a brutal beating for trying to aid an eighteen-year-old victim who had been left for dead in the street .. Gomorrah is a bold and important work of investigative writing that holds global significance, one heroic young man’s impassioned story of a place under the rule of a murderous organization.
The life and death of Lord Erroll
En Anglais – The true story of the life and mysterious murder of the most talked-about and glamorous member of Kenya’s notorious Happy Valley set. Since Josslyn Hay, 22nd Earl of Erroll, was discovered dead in his car with a bullet through his head just outside Nairobi in 1941, speculation has not ceased as to the culprit and motive for his murder. The authorities seemed satisfied with the highly sensationalized trial of the only suspect, Jock Broughton, the cuckolded husband of Erroll’s last lover, Diana. A not-guilty verdict was returned after a baffling display of confusing evidence and clumsy police work. Trzebinski, who has lived in Kenya for 30 years, was not satisfied with the conflicting gossip on the case, none of whose evidence adds up, including that of the celebrated « White Mischief » by James Fox. In this evocation of a glamorous, decadent and sinister life, Trzebinski uses her biographer’s skill to unlock the mystique surrounding the man, and the mystery enveloping his death. Her investigations lead her to astonishing conclusions about the true motive for his murder and a conspiracy of confusion that finds its source in Whitehall’s War Office.
The money-changers
En Anglais – The « New York Times » Number One bestseller from 1976 is back in this great new package. As the day begins at First Mercantile American Bank, so do the high-stake risks, the public scandals, and the private affairs. It is the inside world where secret million-dollar deals are made, manipulated, and sweetened with sex by the men and women who play to win.
Collected Stories
En Anglais – Following the historic publication of Norton’s The Complete Works of Isaac Babel in the fall of 2001, The Collected Stories of Isaac Babel appears as the most authoritative and complete edition of his fiction ever published in paperback. Babel was best known for his mastery of the short story form—in which he ranks alongside Kafka and Hemingway—but his career was tragically cut short when he was murdered by Stalin’s secret police. Edited by his daughter Nathalie Babel and translated by award-winner Peter Constantine, this paperback edition includes the stunning Red Cavalry Stories; The Odessa Tales, featuring the legendary gangster Benya Krik; and the tragic later stories, including « Guy de Maupassant. » This will be the standard edition of Babel’s stories for years to come.
Teacher man
En Anglais – Nearly a decade ago Frank McCourt became an unlikely star when, at the age of sixty-six, he burst onto the literary scene with Angela’s Ashes, the Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir of his childhood in Limerick, Ireland. Then came ‘Tis, his glorious account of his early years in New York. Now, here at last, is McCourt’s long-awaited book about how his thirty-year teaching career shaped his second act as a writer. Teacher Man is also an urgent tribute to teachers everywhere. In bold and spirited prose featuring his irreverent wit and heartbreaking honesty, McCourt records the trials, triumphs and surprises he faces in public high schools around New York City. His methods anything but conventional, McCourt creates a lasting impact on his students through imaginative assignments (he instructs one class to write « An Excuse Note from Adam or Eve to God »), singalongs (featuring recipe ingredients as lyrics), and field trips (imagine taking twenty-nine rowdy girls to a movie in Times Square!). McCourt struggles to find his way in the classroom and spends his evenings drinking with writers and dreaming of one day putting his own story to paper. Teacher Man shows McCourt developing his unparalleled ability to tell a great story as, five days a week, five periods per day, he works to gain the attention and respect of unruly, hormonally charged or indifferent adolescents. McCourt’s rocky marriage, his failed attempt to get a Ph.D. at Trinity College, Dublin, and his repeated firings due to his propensity to talk back to his superiors ironically lead him to New York’s most prestigious school, Stuyvesant High School, where he finally finds a place and a voice. « Doggedness, » he says, is « not as glamorous as ambition or talent or intellect or charm, but still the one thing that got me through the days and nights. »
The shipping news
En Anglais When Quoyle’s two-timing wife meets her just deserts, he retreats with his two daughters to his ancestral home on the starkly beautiful Newfoundland coast, where a rich cast of local characters and family members all play a part in Quoyle’s struggle to reclaim his life. As Quoyle confronts his private demons–and the unpredictable forces of nature and society–he begins to see the possibility of love without pain or misery. A vigorous, darkly comic, and at times magical portrait of the contemporary North American family, The Shipping News shows why Annie Proulx is recognized as one of the most gifted and original writers in America today.
Funeral in Berlin
En Anglais – FUNERAL IN BERLIN is a spellbinding tale of espionage and its counter in which double and triple crosses are common. Berlin with its infamous wall symbolized the Cold War as did no other place. It was like theatre, but is war for real. « Len Deighton has always been fascinated with the Cold War in a way that could be called scholarly…one always feels that the intricacies of espionage and of the Soviet Union’s spy apparatus rest on serious research. And he writes with effortless mastery. » (The Wall Street Journal). « A most impressive book, a chronicle of our times, in which the tension, more like a chronic ache than a stab of pain, never lets go. » (The London Evening Standard)
The Guts
En Anglais – The man who invented the Commitments back in the eighties is now forty-seven, with a loving wife, four kids … and bowel cancer. He isn’t dying, he thinks, but he might be. Jimmy still loves his music, and he still loves to hustle – his new thing is finding old bands and then finding the people who loved them enough to pay money for their resurrected singles and albums. On his path through Dublin he meets two of the Commitments – Outspan, whose own illness is probably terminal, and Imelda Quirk, still as gorgeous as ever. He is reunited with his long-lost brother and learns to play the trumpet… This warm, funny novel is about friendship and family, about facing death and opting for life. It climaxes in one of the great passages in Roddy Doyle’s fiction: four middle-aged men at Ireland’s hottest rock festival watching Jimmy’s son Marvin’s band Moanin’ At Midnight pretending to be Bulgarian and playing a song called ‘I’m Going to Hell’ that apparently hasn’t been heard since 1932…
The human factor
En Anglais – A leak is traced to a small sub-section of SIS, sparking off the inevitable security checks, tensions and suspicions. The sort of atmosphere where mistakes could be made? For Maurice Castle it is the end of the line anyway and time for him to retire with his African wife, Sarah. The Human Factor is Greene’s most extensive attempt to incorporate into fiction what he had learned of espionage when recruited by MI6 during World War II . . . What it offers is a veteran excursion into Greene’s imaginative world . . . Sometimes seen as a brooding prober into the dark recesses of the soul where sins and scruples alike fester, he is equally at home in sending a narrative careering along at break-neck pace . . . Raising the demarcation line between ‘serious’ fiction and fast-plotted entertainment, Greene ensures that components of both jostle energizingly together in his pages.” –from the Introduction by Peter Kemp —
The man within
En Anglais – Graham Greene’s first published novel tells the story of Andrews, a young man who has betrayed his fellow smugglers and fears their vengeance. Fleeing from them, with no hope of pity or salvation, he takes refuge in the house of a young woman, also alone in the world. Elizabeth persuades him to give evidence against his accomplices in court, but neither she nor Andrews is aware that to both criminals and authority, treachery is as great a crime as smuggling. The first step in a brilliant career, The Man Within offers a foretaste of Green’s recurring themes of religion, the individual’s struggles against cynicism, and the indifferent forces of a hostile world. This Penguin Classics edition features an introduction by Jonathan Yardley.
The rabbi
En Anglais – Michael Kind was a rabbi, but he was also a man. A man who couldn’t help that his heart led him to Leslie, a beautiful minister’s daughter. Defying parents and teachers, they dare to love one another and build a life together, in this sweeping drama of love and identity, compassion and crueltly, and a complicated world that will not accept their decisions …. « A rewarding reading experience. » LOS ANGELES TIMES
The alienist
En Anglais – When The Alienist was first published in 1994, it was a major phenomenon, spending six months on the New York Times bestseller list, receiving critical acclaim, and selling millions of copies. This modern classic continues to be a touchstone of historical suspense fiction for readers everywhere. The year is 1896. The city is New York. Newspaper reporter John Schuyler Moore is summoned by his friend Dr. Laszlo Kreizler—a psychologist, or “alienist”—to view the horribly mutilated body of an adolescent boy abandoned on the unfinished Williamsburg Bridge. From there the two embark on a revolutionary effort in criminology: creating a psychological profile of the perpetrator based on the details of his crimes. Their dangerous quest takes them into the tortured past and twisted mind of a murderer who will kill again before their hunt is over. Fast-paced and riveting, infused with historical detail, The Alienist conjures up Gilded Age New York, with its tenements and mansions, corrupt cops and flamboyant gangsters, shining opera houses and seamy gin mills. It is an age in which questioning society’s belief that all killers are born, not made, could have unexpected and fatal consequences.
My mercedes is bigger than yours
En Anglais – Onuma returns to his village after 15 years. He makes a big hit, especially with the girls, in a Jaguar the colour of gold. His fall begins when the car plunges into a ravine. By that time the money he earned by wheeler-dealing and PR work in Lagos had been used up. The only way to replenish his money supply seems to be through working for the candidates on both sides in the run-up to a general election. He gets beaten up by thugs supporting one of the candidates, and is left driving away in the Mercedes belonging to the cousin he has just shot. NkemNwankwo has turned the witand good humour of Danda to satirical ends.
The secret world of the Irish Male
En Anglais – – The author of Desperadoes and Cowboys and Indians directs his acid humour upon contemporary Irish life at home and abroad. The result is a headlong, love-struck, end-of-millenium, coast-to-coast tour of the frustrations, contraditions and giddying glories of being Irish in the 1990s.
The smell of apples
En Anglais – – Set in the bitter twilight of apartheid in South Africa in the 1970s, The Smell of Apples is a haunting story narrated by eleven-year-old Marnus Erasmus, who records the social turmoil and racial oppression that are destroying his own land. Using his family as a microcosm of the corroding society at large, Marnus tells a troubling tale of a childhood corrupted, of unexpected sexual defilements, and of an innocence gone astray.
Aztec and Maya Myths
En Anglais – The myths of the Aztec and Maya derive from a shared Mesoamerican cultural tradition. This is very much a living tradition, and many of the motifs and gods mentioned in early sources are still evoked in the lore of contemporary Mexico and Guatemala. Professor Taube discusses the different sources for Aztec and Maya myths. The Aztec empire began less than 200 years before the Spanish conquest, and our knowledge of their mythology derives primarily from native colonial documents and manuscripts commissioned by the Spanish. The Maya mythology is far older, and our knowledge of it comes mainly from native manuscripts of the Classic period, over 600 years before the Spanish conquest. Drawing on these sources as well as nineteenth- and twentieth-century excavations and research, including the interpretation of the codices and the decipherment of Maya hieroglyphic writing, the author discusses, among other things, the Popol Vuh myths of the Maya, the flood myth of Northern Yucatan, and the Aztec creation myths.
Angela’s ashes, a memoir of a childhood
En Anglais – « When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood. » So begins the Pulitzer Prize winning memoir of Frank McCourt, born in Depression-era Brooklyn to recent Irish immigrants and raised in the slums of Limerick, Ireland. Frank’s mother, Angela, has no money to feed the children since Frank’s father, Malachy, rarely works, and when he does he drinks his wages. Yet Malachy– exasperating, irresponsible and beguiling– does nurture in Frank an appetite for the one thing he can provide: a story. Frank lives for his father’s tales of Cuchulain, who saved Ireland, and of the Angel on the Seventh Step, who brings his mother babies ….
Lucrezia Borgia
En Anglais – Hundreds of years after her death, Lucrezia Borgia remains one of the most enigmatic and notorious women of history, accused of incest, of poisoning her rivals, and even of murdering her own father. Born into scandal, she was the daughter of the treacherous Cardinal Roderigo Borgia, who would later be crowned Pope Alexander VI. When her father ascended the papal throne, young Lucrezia’s life changed forever. From then on, Lucrezia would be unable to escape the political ambitions of her father and her brother, the bloodthirsty Cesare Borgia. In an era when the Vatican was as decadent and violent as any royal court, Lucrezia was its crown princess. Famed for her beauty, she was a valuable pawn in the marriage game, and Alexander VI would use her to create one alliance after another. When her kindly first husband no longer suited the Pope’s needs, Lucrezia’s virginity was restored by papal decree (her new maidenhood was declared “miraculous”), and she was married off again, this time to a man she truly loved, Alfonso, Prince of Naples. But her joy was short-lived. Alfonso loathed her brother and refused to participate in the Pope’s imperial schemes, which threatened to tear apart the Vatican’s political alliances–and Lucrezia’s happy marriage. In this unforgettable debut, John Faunce perfectly captures the rotten decadence of the Borgias’ papal court and the inner steel of Lucrezia Borgia, one of history’s great survivors.
The bridges of Madison county
En Anglais – The story of Robert Kincaid, the photographer and free spirit searching for the covered bridges of Madison County, and Francesca Johnson, the farm wife waiting for the fulfillment of a girlhood dream, THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY gives voice to the longings of men and women everywhere-and shows us what it is to love and be loved so intensely that life is never the same again.
The new italians
En Anglais – Italy has seduced generations with its sunshine, landscapes, art treasures and the warmth and vitality of its people, devoted to style, sensuality and the pleasures of life. The reality is less rosy. Italy is as exasperating as it is enchanting. Appalling public services, a rotten political class, the creeping tentacles of the Mafia, the all-forgiving Mother Church and infinitely indulgent ‘mamma’ have long prevented Italians facing up to their collective failings. In ‘The New Italians’, journalist Charles Richards paints a compelling group portrait of the country and people, spanning football to Freemansonry, kickbacks to kidnappings. He concludes that however much things change, the Italians will remain essentially the same, and pull through with their customary ‘brio’.