Black Swan strana 4 z 9

A chance encounter: When Sarah meets dark, brooding Alex, she grasps his offer of a new life miles away from her own. They've both recently escaped broken relationships, and need to start again. Why not do it together? A perfect life: But when Sarah gets to the tiny village of Burrington Stoke, something doesn't add up. Alex's beautiful wife Genevieve was charming, talented, and adored by all who knew her. And apparently, she and Alex had a successful marriage complete with a gorgeous son, Jamie. Why would Genevieve walk out on her perfect life? And why has no one heard from her since she did so? A web of lies: Genevieve's family and all her friends think that Alex knows more about her disappearance than he's letting on. But Sarah's fallen in love with him and just knows he couldn't have anything to hide. Or could he?

Magic takes many forms. The ancient Egyptians explained the night by suggesting that the goddess Nut swallowed the sun. The Vikings believed a rainbow was the gods' bridge to earth. These are magical, extraordinary tales. But there is another kind of magic, and it lies in the exhilaration of discovering the real answers to these questions. It is the magic of reality - science. Packed with inspiring explanations of space, time and evolution, laced with humour and clever thought experiments, The Magic of Reality explores a stunningly wide range of natural phenomena. What is stuff made of? How old is the universe? What causes tsunamis? Who was the first man, or woman? This is a page-turning, inspirational detective story that not only mines all the sciences for its clues but primes the reader to think like a scientist too. Richard Dawkins elucidates the wonders of the natural world to all ages with his inimitable clarity and exuberance in a text that will enlighten and inform for generations to come.

If you are accompanied by a dog you can talk to anyone, and anyone can talk to you - about anything'. And they do. Edward Stourton's walks with, Kudu, his dog, become an opportunity for wonderfully unlikely encounters, and reflecting on the world from the dog-walker's perspective proves remarkably illuminating. Ed and Kudu's small trips to the park offer up big insights into romantic attachment, honour and heroism, guilt and depression, our sense of duty, beauty and the hard facts of life's pecking order. "Diary of a Dog-Walker" is witty, wise and will be utterly irresistible to any man or woman with a dog.

Five past midnight, three years after the End of the World, and, as usual, there was nothing to be seen or heard in the catacombs - except, of course , for the rats and (if you believed in them) the ghosts of the dead. Runelight is set in a world coming back to life, but it is also a world in conflict. For Maddy, born with the mark of magic on her hand, the return of the old gods and the overthrow of the brutal Order who suppressed them is a time of excitement. But for Maggie, raised as part of the Order, it is a time of chaos and desolation, as her family and values are wiped out. Like the two girls, the new world remains divided - the old regime has gone but with nothing to take its place, anarchy is beginning to spread. Joanne Harris draws us back into the richly imagined world first introduced in Runemarks - a world not unlike our own, had it been shaped by the Vikings instead of the Romans. But if its inhabitants, including Maddy and Maggie, can't solve their differences soon, they will destroy their world altogether.

I was doing my best to get out the door. And then the phone rang. I almost let it go. New York, September 11th, 2001 Russell Ammiano is rushing to work when he gets a phone call that saves his life. As the city he loves is hit by unimaginable tragedy, Russell must turn his back and hurry home to Kansas. Kansas, September 14th 2001 Ben Ammiano is mentally disabled, and a creature of habit. Any change to his routine sends him into a spin. But now his estranged brother has reappeared, and Ben's simple, ordered world has turned upside down. In a story as heartbreaking as it is uplifting, two brothers must bury their pasts and learn from each other, if they are to survive.

Meet Lucy, Tina and Natalie, twenty-something friends who are all negotiating the risky business of being grown-up. Lucy knows exactly what she wants: her marriage to be a success, her children to be perfect, and to be the ultimate home-maker. Tina knows what she wants too: her journalism career to take off and to see her name as a byline in a national newspaper ...and the illicit affair she's started leaves her free enough to follow her dreams. Natalie just wants to be happy - happy with the boyfriend she's dated since college, happy with the job she's drifted into, happy with a life she thinks is enough - but is it really? Ten years later, all three women have the lives they thought they wanted. But somehow, reality isn't quite as neat and clean-cut as their dreams...

Viola hasn't had much luck with men. Her first husband, Marco, companion of her youth and father of her only child, left her when he realised he was gay. Her second, Rhys, ended his high-octane, fame-filled life by driving his Porsche into a wall. No wonder her family always believes she needs Looking After, and her friends think she really shouldn't be allowed out on her own...Which is why, at the age of thirty-five, she finds herself shamefully back at home, living with Mum. Viola knows she has to take charge; she needs to get a life, and fast. With a stroppy teenage daughter, a demanding mother, and siblings who want to control her life for her, where is she going to turn?

How do the French manage to raise well-behaved children and have a life! Who hasn't noticed how well-behaved French children are - compared to our own? How come French babies sleep through the night? Why do French children happily eat what is put in front of them? How can French mums chat to their friends while their children play quietly? Why are French mums more likely to be seen in skinny jeans than tracksuit bottoms? Pamela Druckerman, who lives in Paris with three young children, has had years of observing her French friends and neighbours, and with wit and style, has written a memoir that is ideally placed to teach us the basics of parenting a la francaise.

It isn't often you receive a letter from the dead. When Vianne Rocher receives a letter from beyond the grave, she has no choice but to follow the wind that blows her back to Lansquenet, the village in south-west France where, eight years ago, she opened up a chocolate shop. But Vianne is completely unprepared for what she finds there. Women veiled in black, the scent of spices and peppermint tea, and there, on the bank of the river Tannes, facing the square little tower of the church of Saint-Jerome like a piece on a chessboard - slender, bone-white and crowned with a silver crescent moon - a minaret. Nor is it only the incomers from North Africa that have brought big changes to the community. Father Reynaud, Vianne's erstwhile adversary, is now disgraced and under threat. Could it be that Vianne is the only one who can save him?

When Harold Fry nips out one morning to post a letter, leaving his wife hoovering upstairs, he has no idea that he is about to walk from one end of the country to the other. He has no hiking boots or map, let alone a compass, waterproof or mobile phone. All he knows is that he must keep walking. To save someone else's life.

The soldiers are coming home - after six months in Afghanistan. Surely being reunited with their wives and girlfriends and families will be heaven, after the hell they have been through. When Dan Riley returns to his adored wife, Alexa, and their children, his Army life still comes first. Alexa thought she was prepared to help him, and the whole family, to make the transition to normal life again - but no-one had told her how lonely and near impossible the task would be. Does marrying a soldier always have to mean that you are not marrying a man, but a regiment?

A compelling novel of desire, secrecy, and sexual identity, "In One Person" is a story of unfulfilled love - tormented, funny, and affecting - and an impassioned embrace of our sexual differences. Billy, the bisexual narrator and main character, tells the tragicomic story (lasting more than half a century) of his life as a 'sexual suspect', a phrase first used by John Irving in 1978 - in his landmark novel of 'terminal cases', "The World According to Garp". His most political novel since "The Cider House Rules" and "A Prayer for Owen Meany", John Irving's "In One Person" is a poignant tribute to Billy's friends and lovers - a theatrical cast of characters who defy category and convention. Not least, "In One Person" is an intimate and unforgettable portrait of the solitariness of a bisexual man who is dedicated to making himself 'worthwhile'.

Erwin Schrodinger was an Austrian physicist famous for his contribution to quantum physics. He won the Nobel Prize in 1933 and is best known for his thought experiment of a cat in a box, both alive and dead at the same time, which revealed the seemingly paradoxical nature of quantum mechanics. Schrodinger was working at one of the most fertile and creative moments in the whole history of science. By the time he started university in 1906, Einstein had already published his revolutionary papers on relativity. Now the baton of scientific progress was being passed to a new generation: Werner Heisenberg, Paul Dirac, Niels Bohr, and of course, Schrodinger himself. In this riveting biography John Gribbin takes us into the heart of the quantum revolution. He tells the story of Schrodinger's surprisingly colourful life (he arrived for a position at Oxford University with both his wife and mistress). And with his trademark accessible style and popular touch, he explains the fascinating world of quantum mechanics, which underpins all of modern science.

I've lost it. :( The only thing in the world I wasn't supposed to lose. My engagement ring. It's been in Magnus' family for three generations. And now, the very same day his parents are coming, I've lost it. The very same day. Do not hyperventilate, Poppy. Stay positive!! :) A couple of glasses of bubbly with the girls and Poppy's life has gone into meltdown. Not only has she lost her engagement ring, but in the panic that followed, she's lost her phone too. When she spots an abandoned phone in a bin it seems it was meant to be...Finders Keepers! Except the phone's owner, elusive businessman Sam Roxton, doesn't agree. He wants his phone back, and doesn't appreciate Poppy reading all his messages and wading into his personal life. Can things get any more tangled?

This book is about my own personal favourite puzzles and conundrums in science, all of which have famously been referred to as paradoxes, but which turn out not to be paradoxes at all when considered carefully and viewed from the right angle. A true paradox is a statement that leads to a circular and self-contradictory argument, or one that describes a logically impossible situation. Our subject is 'perceived paradoxes' - questions or thought-experiments that on first encounter seem impossible to answer, but which science has been able to solve. Our tour of these mind-expanding puzzles will take us through some of the greatest hits of science - from Einstein's theories about space and time, to the latest ideas of how the quantum world works. Some of our paradoxes may be familiar, such as Schrodinger's famous cat, which is seemingly alive and dead at the same time; or the Grandfather Paradox - if you travelled back in time and killed your grandfather you would not have been born and would not therefore have killed your grandfather. Other paradoxes will be new to you, but no less bizarre and fascinating. We will ask such questions as: how does the fact that it gets dark at night prove the Universe must have started with a big bang? Where are all the aliens? And why does the length of a piece of string vary depending on how fast it is moving? In resolving our paradoxes we will have to travel to the furthest reaches of the Universe and explore the very essence of space and time. Hold on tight.

Born a Parsi in Bombay and educated in Vienna, Dr Farrokh Daruwalla is a Canadian citizen, an orthopedic surgeon, living in Toronto. Periodically, he returns to India. Once 20 years ago, Dr Darwalla was the examining physician of two murder victims in Goa