Vintage Books strana 20 z 49

On a warm July night in 1974 six teenagers play at being cool. The friendships they make this summer will be the most important and consuming of their lives. In a teepee at summer camp they smoke pot and drink vodka & Tangs, talk of Gunter Grass and the latest cassette tapes; they also share their dreams and ambitions, still so fresh and so possible. But decades later not everyone can sustain in adulthood what had seemed so special in adolescence. Jules Jacobson, an aspiring comic actress, has resigned herself to a more practical occupation; Cathy has stopped dancing; Jonah has laid down his guitar and taken up engineering. Only Ethan's talent has endured. As their fortunes tilt precipitously over the years, some of them dealing with great struggle, others enjoying extraordinary wealth and success, friendships are put under the strain of envy and crushing disappointment. Against the backdrop of a changing America, from Nixon's resignation to Obama's new world, Wolitzer's panoramic tragicomedy asks how 'the Interestings' can be happy with being anything less than brilliant?

This is shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2013. It is the US National Book Award 5 Under 35. It is the winner of the Etisalat Prize 2014. 'To play the country-game, we have to choose a country. Everybody wants to be the USA and Britain and Canada and Australia and Switzerland and them. Nobody wants to be rags of countries like Congo, like Somalia, like Iraq, like Sudan, like Haiti and not even this one we live in - who wants to be a terrible place of hunger and things falling apart?' Darling and her friends live in a shanty called Paradise, which of course is no such thing. It isn't all bad, though. There's mischief and adventure, games of Find bin Laden, stealing guavas, singing Lady Gaga at the tops of their voices. They dream of the paradises of America, Dubai, Europe, where Madonna and Barack Obama and David Beckham live. For Darling, that dream will come true. But, like the thousands of people all over the world trying to forge new lives far from home, Darling finds this new paradise brings its own set of challenges - for her and also for those she's left behind.

On the kibbutz it's hard to know. We're all supposed to be friends but very few really are.' Ariella, unhappy in love, confides in the woman whose husband she stole. Nahum, a devoted father, can't find the words to challenge his daughter's promiscuous lover. The old idealists deplore the apathy of the young, while the young are so used to kibbutz life that they can't work out if they're impassioned or indifferent. And amid this group of people unwilling and unable to say what they mean, Martin attempts to teach Esperanto.

You put together two things that have not been put together before. And the world is changed...' Julian Barnes' new book is about ballooning, photography, love and grief; about putting two things, and two people, together, and about tearing them apart. One of the judges who awarded him the 2011 Man Booker Prize described him as 'an unparalleled magus of the heart'. This book confirms that opinion.

"Munro is still one of our most fearless explorers of the human being, as she descends, time and again, headlamp on full beam, pickaxe and butter-knife at the ready". (The Times). Spanning her last five collections and bringing together her finest work from the past fifteen years, this new selection of Alice Munro's stories infuses everyday lives with a wealth of nuance and insight. Beautifully observed and remarkably crafted, written with emotion and empathy, these stories are nothing short of perfection. It is a masterclass in the genre, from an author who deservedly lays claim to being one of the major fiction writers of our time.

It's a million times nicer to be Anne of Green Gables than Anne of nowhere in particular, isn't it?' My dislikes: Being an orphan, having red hair, being called 'carrots' by Gilbert Blythe. My likes: Living at the Green Gables with Marilla and Matthew, my bosom-friend Diana, dresses with puff sleeves. My regrets: Dying my hair green. Smashing a slate over Gilbert Blythe's head. My dream: To tame my temper. To be good (this is an uphill struggle). To grow up to have auburn hair! Includes exclusive material: In the Backstory you can find out about the real Green Gables, the plucky author and more! Vintage Children's Classics is a twenty-first century classics list aimed at 8-12 year olds and the adults in their lives. Discover timeless favourites from Peter Pan and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland to modern classics such as The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.

You might think I'd have grown out of getting myself into scrapes now that I'm half past sixteen. But between being vexed by my freckles, taunted by a brazen Jersey cow and kept on my toes by the new twins, Dora and Davy, life at Green Gables is just as eventful as ever. I do try to be a little more grown-up now that I'm a school teacher. The other day I asked the class, 'If you had three candies in one hand and two in the other, how many would you have altogether?' One of my pupil's piped up, 'A mouthful.' Could you have kept a straight face? Includes exclusive material: In 'The Backstory' you can find out about going to school in Avonlea and learn all about the real Green Gables Vintage Children's Classics is a twenty-first century classics list aimed at 8-12 year olds and the adults in their lives. You can discover timeless favourites from The Jungle Book and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland to modern classics such as The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.

A Treacherous Paradise sees Henning Mankell turn his talents for writing gripping thrillers to a world where power and powerlessness meet and passion is a dangerous commodity. Hanna Lundmark escapes the brutal poverty of rural Sweden for a job as a cook onboard a steamship headed for Australia. Jumping ship at the African port of Lourenco Marques, Hanna decides to begin her life afresh. Stumbling across what she believes to be a down-at-heel hotel, Hanna becomes embroiled in a sequence of events that lead to her inheriting the most successful brothel in town. Uncomfortable with the attitudes of the white settlers, Hanna is determined to befriend the prostitutes working for her, and change life in the town for the better, but the distrust between blacks and whites, and the shadow of colonialism, lead to tragedy and murder.

1969. A veteran secret agent. A single mission. A licence to kill. James Bond returns

The author of the international bestseller Silk now delivers a ravishing and wildly inventive novel about friendship, genius and its discontents, and the redemptive power of narrative. Somewhere in America lives a brilliant boy named Gould, an intellectual guided missile aimed at the Nobel Prize. His only companions are an imaginary giant and an imaginary mute. Improbably—and yet with impeccable logic--he falls into the care of Shatzy Shell, a young woman whose life up till that point has been equally devoid of human connection . Theirs is a relationship of stories and of stories within stories: of Gould’s evolving saga of an underdog boxer and the violent Western that Shatzy has been dictating into a tape recorder since the age of six. Out of these stories, Alessandro Baricco creates a masterpiece of metaphysical pulp fiction that recalls both Scheherazade and Italo Calvino. By turns exhilarating and deeply moving, City is irresistible.

"People never like me and I never like people," Mary thought.' When Mary Lennox is sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle everybody says she is the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen. It is true, too. Mary is pale, spoilt and quite contrary. But she is also horribly lonely. Then one day she hears about a garden in the grounds of the Manor that has been kept locked and hidden for years. And when a friendly robin helps Mary find the key, she discovers the most magical place anyone could imagine...BACKSTORY: Take our quiz, learn about the plucky author and find out about the real secret garden.

In Paris's 10th arrondissement - the Turkish district - two police officers are trying to solve the mystery of the atrocious torture and murder of three clandestine Turkish women workers. As they investigate, they discover that the 'Grey Wolves', a ruthless group of Turkish mafia members, might be responsible for these extraordinarily brutal killings. Simultaneously, Anna Heymes, who is suffering from amnesia and terrifying hallucinations, finds out that she used to be closely linked to the Grey Wolves. As her past becomes clearer, she has no choice but to face an astonishing and horrible truth.

Armed only with a counterfeit 100-Euro note, Ajatashatru the fakir, renowned conjurer and trickster, lands in Paris. His mission? To acquire a splendid new bed of nails. His destination? IKEA. And there he decides to stay, finding an obliging wardrobe in which to lay his head. Only when he emerges from his slumber does he discover that he is locked in, unable to free himself and heading for England in the back of a truck. So begins a magnificent and bizarre adventure for the intrepid fakir. Even while he flees the revenge-crazed taxi driver whom he conned on his arrival, and falls further in love with Marie Riviere, the Parisian beauty whom he tricked into lunching with him, he finds time to befriend a group of Sudanese immigrants, travel to Italy in a suitcase, write a novel on a shirt, and fly to Libya in a hot air balloon. Witty, moving, surprising and joyful, this novel reminds us that heroism abounds, and is to be found in the most unlikely of places.

It is a story like no other: an epic of endurance against destruction, of creativity in oppression, joy amidst grief, the affirmation of life against the odds. It spans the millennia and the continents - from India to Andalusia and from the bazaars of Cairo to the streets of Oxford. It is a story of a Jewish world immersed in and imprinted by the peoples among whom they have dwelled, from the Egyptians to the Greeks, from the Arabs to the Christians. Which makes the story of the Jews everyone's story, too.

Hitler's Furies is the untold story of the Holocaust. History has it that the role of women in Nazi Germany was to be the perfect Hausfrau and a loyal cheerleader for the Fuhrer. However, Lower's research reveals an altogether more sinister truth. Lower shows us the ordinary women who became perpetrators of genocide. Drawing on decades of research, she uncovers a truth that has been in the shadows - that women too were brutal killers and that, in ignoring women's culpability, we have ignored the reality of the Holocaust. "Shocking". (Sunday Times). "Compelling". (Washington Post). "Pioneering". (Literary Review). It is a national book award finalist.

William Stoner enters the University of Missouri at nineteen to study agriculture. A seminar on English literature changes his life, and he never returns to work on his father's farm. Stoner becomes a teacher. He marries the wrong woman. His life is quiet, and after his death his colleagues remember him rarely. Yet with truthfulness, compassion and intense power, this novel uncovers a story of universal value. Stoner tells of the conflicts, defeats and victories of the human race that pass unrecorded by history, and reclaims the significance of an individual life. A reading experience like no other, itself a paean to the power of literature, it is a novel to be savoured.