Vintage Books strana 27 z 69

In a tour-de-force that is a modern masterpiece about the quest for love and family, Booker Prize-winning, internationally bestselling author Salman Rushdie has created a dazzling Don Quixote for the modern age. Inspired by the Cervantes classic, Sam DuChamp, mediocre writer of spy thrillers, creates Quichotte, a courtly, addled salesman obsessed with television, who falls in impossible love with the TV star Salman R. Together with his (imaginary) son Sancho, Quichotte sets off on a picaresque quest across America to prove worthy of her hand, gallantly braving the tragicomic perils of an age where 'Anything-Can-Happen'. Meanwhile his creator, in a midlife crisis, has equally urgent challenges of his own. Just as Cervantes wrote Don Quixote to satirise the culture of his time, Rushdie takes the reader on a wild ride through a country on the verge of moral and spiritual collapse, with the kind of storytelling magic that is the hallmark of his work. The fully realised lives of DuChamp and Quichotte intertwine in a profoundly human quest for love and a wickedly entertaining portrait of an age in which fact is so often indiscernible from fiction.

A motherless girl grows up in isolated luxury, hidden from the world by her wealthy father. She believes their life together is normal - but as time passes, she has a growing sense that something between them is very wrong. She cannot escape, so she seeks solace in her books. Her favourite tales are those that conjure ancient worlds - of angry gods and heroic mortals, one of whom will some day come to her rescue. Soon, she will forget where the page ends and her mind begins.

When Rowan comes across the advert, it seems too good to be true: a live-in nanny position, with an extremely generous salary. What she doesn't know is that she's stepping into a nightmare – one that will end with her in a cell awaiting trial for murder. She knows she's made mistakes. But she's not guilty – at least not of murder. Which means someone else is...

In this classic text, Jane Jacobs set out to produce an attack on current city planning and rebuilding and to introduce new principles by which these should be governed. The result is one of the most stimulating books on cities ever written. Throughout the post-war period, planners temperamentally unsympathetic to cities have been let loose on our urban environment. Inspired by the ideals of the Garden City or Le Corbusier's Radiant City, they have dreamt up ambitious projects based on self-contained neighbourhoods, super-blocks, rigid 'scientific' plans and endless acres of grass. Yet they seldom stop to look at what actually works on the ground. The real vitality of cities, argues Jacobs, lies in their diversity, architectural variety, teeming street life and human scale. It is only when we appreciate such fundamental realities that we can hope to create cities that are safe, interesting and economically viable, as well as places that people want to live in.

"Hope Jahren is the voice that science has been waiting for." --Nature "A superb account of the deadly struggle between humanity and what may prove the only life-bearing planet within ten light years, written in a brilliantly sardonic and conversational style." --E. O. Wilson "Hope Jahren asks the central question of our time: how can we learn to live on a finite planet? The Story of More is thoughtful, informative, and--above all--essential." --Elizabeth Kolbert, author of The Sixth Extinction Hope Jahren is an award-winning scientist, a brilliant writer, a passionate teacher, and one of the seven billion people with whom we share this earth. In The Story of More, she illuminates the link between human habits and our imperiled planet. In concise, highly readable chapters, she takes us through the science behind the key inventions--from electric power to large-scale farming to automobiles--that, even as they help us, release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere like never before. She explains the current and projected consequences of global warming--from superstorms to rising sea levels--and the actions that we all can take to fight back. At once an explainer on the mechanisms of global change and a lively, personal narrative given to us in Jahren's inimitable voice, The Story of More is the essential pocket primer on climate change that will leave an indelible impact on everyone who reads it.

Julio Cortazar's crazed masterpiece, the forbearer of the Latin Boom in the 1960s 'Cortazar's masterpiece. This is the first great novel of Spanish America... A powerful anti-novel but, like deeply understood moments in life itself, rich with many kinds of potential meanings and intimations' Times Literary Supplement Dazed by the disappearance of his muse, Argentinian writer Horatio Oliveira wanders the bridges of Paris, the sounds of jazz and the talk of literature, life and art echoing around him. But a chance encounter with a literary idol and his new work - a novel that can be read in random order - sends Horatio's mind into further confusion. As a return to Buenos Aires beckons, Horatio's friend and fellow artist, Traveler, awaits his arrival with dread -the lives of these two young writers now ready to play out in an inexhaustible game of indeterminacy.

A collection of masterful short stories in Julio Cortazar's sophistocated, powerful and gripping style. 'Julio Cortázar is truly a sorcerer and the best of him is here, in these hilariously fraught and almost eerily affecting stories' Kevin Barry A grieving family home becomes the site of a terrifying invasion. A frustrated love triangle, brought together by a plundered Aztec idol, spills over into brutality. A lodger's inability to stop vomiting bunny rabbits inspires a personal confession. As dream melds into reality, and reality melts into nightmare, one constant remains throughout these thirty-five stories: the singular brilliance of Julio Cortazar's imagination. WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY KEVIN BARRY 'Anyone who doesn't read Cortázar is doomed' Pablo Neruda

HARRY HOLE IS ABOUT TO FACE HIS DARKEST CASE YET. Harry is in a bad place: Rakel has left him, he's working cold cases and notorious murderer Svein Finne is back on the streets. THE FIRST KILLER HARRY PUT BEHIND BARS IS OUT TO GET HIM. Harry is responsible for the many years Finne spent in prison but now he's free and ready to pick up where he left off. A MAN LIKE HARRY BETTER WATCH HIS BACK. When Harry wakes up with blood on his hands, and no memory of what he did the night before, he knows everything is only going to get worse...

A man like Harry had better watch his back... Following the dramatic conclusion of number one bestseller THE THIRST, KNIFE sees Harry Hole waking up with a ferocious hangover, his hands and clothes covered in blood. Not only is Harry about to come face to face with an old, deadly foe, but with his darkest personal challenge yet. The twelfth instalment in Jo Nesbo's internationally bestselling crime fiction series.

When a thirty-something portrait painter is abandoned by his wife, he holes up in the mountain home of a famous artist. The days drift by, spent painting, listening to music and drinking whiskey in the evenings. But then he discovers a strange painting in the attic and unintentionally begins a strange journey of self-discovery that involves a mysterious ringing bell, a precocious thirteen-year-old girl, a Nazi assassination attempt and a haunted underworld. A stunning work of imagination, Killing Commendatore is a surreal tale of love and loneliness, war and art.

Enter the surreal and enchanting world of Haruki Murakami. Toru Okada's cat has disappeared. His wife is growing more distant every day. Then there are the increasingly explicit telephone calls he has recently been receiving. As this compelling story unfolds, the tidy suburban realities of Okada's vague and blameless life, spent cooking, reading, listening to jazz and opera and drinking beer at the kitchen table, are turned inside out. He embarks on a bizarre journey, guided by a succession of characters, each with a tale to tell.

Unearth the enchanting origins of fantasy fiction with a collection of tales as vast as the tallest tower and as mysterious as the dark depths of the forest. Fantasy stories have always been with us. They illuminate the odd and the uncanny, the wondrous and the fantastic: all the things we know are lurking just out of sight—on the other side of the looking-glass, beyond the music of the impossibly haunting violin, through the twisted trees of the ancient woods. Other worlds, talking animals, fairies, goblins, demons, tricksters, and mystics: these are the elements that populate a rich literary tradition that spans the globe. A work composed both of careful scholarship and fantastic fun, The Big Book of Classic Fantasy is essential reading for anyone who’s never forgotten the stories that first inspired feelings of astonishment and wonder. INCLUDING: *Stories by pillars of the genre like the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, Mary Shelley, Christina Rossetti, L. Frank Baum, Robert E. Howard, and J. R. R. Tolkien *Fantastical offerings from literary giants including Edith Wharton, Leo Tolstoy, Willa Cather, Zora Neale Hurston, Vladimir Nabokov, Hermann Hesse, and W.E.B. Du Bois *Rare treasures from Asian, Eastern European, Scandinavian, and Native American traditions *New translations, including fourteen stories never before in English PLUS: *Beautifully Bizarre Creatures! *Strange New Worlds Just Beyond the Garden Path! *Fairy Folk and Their Dark Mischief! *Seriously Be Careful—Do Not Trust Those Fairies!

First published in 1990, a blistering novel about a love triangle in New York during the AIDS crisis It was the beginning of the end of the world but not everyone noticed right away. It is the late 1980s. Kate, an ambitious artist, lives in Manhattan with her husband Peter. She's having an affair with Molly, a younger lesbian who works part-time in a movie theater. At one of many funerals during an unbearably hot summer, Molly becomes involved with a guerrilla activist group fighting for people with AIDS. But Kate is more cautious, and Peter is bewildered by the changes he's seeing in his city and, most crucially, in his wife. Soon the trio learn how tragedy warps even the closest relationships, and that anger - and its absence - can make the difference between life and death.

Two women a week are killed by a spouse or partner. Every seven minutes a woman is raped. Now is the time for change. `Fascinating and chilling' Caroline Criado Perez, bestselling author of Invisible Women Helena Kennedy, one of our most eminent lawyers and defenders of human rights, examines the pressing new evidence that women are being discriminated against when it comes to the law. From the shocking lack of female judges to the scandal of female prisons and the double discrimination experienced by BAME women, Kennedy shows with force and fury that change for women must start at the heart of what makes society just.

An exploration of the invisible connections sustaining the entire natural world from the bestselling author of The Hidden Life of Trees Did you know that trees can influence the rotation of the earth? Or that wolves can alter the course of a river? Or that earthworms control wild boar populations? The natural world is a web of intricate connections, many of which go unnoticed by humans. But it is these connections that maintain nature's finely balanced equilibrium. Drawing on the latest scientific discoveries and decades of experience as a forester, Peter Wohlleben shows us how different animals, plants, rivers, rocks and weather systems cooperate, and what's at stake when these delicate systems are unbalanced.

Greer Kadetsky is a shy college student when she meets the person who will change her life. Faith Frank, an influential and glamorous figure from the women's movement, inhabits a very different world to Greer's. But after a chance encounter Faith singles Greer out and invites her into her life, leading her down a thrilling path as it winds towards and away from her meant-to-be love story with high school sweetheart Cory and the future she had always imagined. Expansive and wise, compassionate and witty, The Female Persuasion is about the spark we all believe is flickering inside us, waiting to be seen and fanned by the right person at the right time.