Five-year old Matilda longs for her parents to be good and loving and understanding, but they are none of these things. They are perfectly horrid to her. Matilda invents a game of punishing them each time they treat her badly and she soon discovers she has supernatural powers.
First published in 1953, this is Bradbury's prophetic dystopian vision of a weird but too distant future where happiness is allocated on a four-walled TV screen, where individuals, eccentrics and scholars are outcasts of society and where books are burnt by a special task-force.
HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics. 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 captivating Sunday Times and New York Times number one bestseller by the Orange Prize-winning author of The Song of Achilles ; 'spellbinding . a thrilling tour de force of the imagination' ( Mail on Sunday ) 'Fabulous' Daily Telegraph 'Blisteringly modern' The Times 'Bold and sensuously written' Daily Mail 'An airy delight' Observer God. Mortal. Daughter. Monster. Saviour. Outcast. Lover. Destroyer. Creator. Mother. Witch.
Scorned, rejected and at last exiled from her father's house for her dark gifts, Circe arrives on the remote island of Aiaia with nothing but her wits and magic to help her. But there is danger for a solitary woman in the world, and Circe's independence and strange powers draw the wrath of men and gods alike. To protect what she holds dear, Circe must decide whether she belongs with the deities she is born from, or the mortals she has come to love.
Complicated and wounded, gifted and passionate, Madeline Miller's captivating Circe steps out of myth and into the present as a heroine for our time, and all times.
The English language has no specific word for the parent that has lost a child. There exist words for orphan, widow and widower, but there is no word that captures and conveys this tragic type of loss.
It has been eleven years since Diane Foley''s son, the American journalist James Foley, was kidnapped in northern Syria, and nearly ten since that day in August 2014 when she would learn that he had been murdered by ISIS in a public beheading that would ricochet in video around the world. A whole decade. Time rushes past. And yet, for Diane, that moment is unending.
In American Mother, legendary author Colum McCann tells Diane''s story as she recalls the months of his captivity, the efforts made to bring him home and the days following his death, in which Diane came face to face with one of the men responsible for her son''s kidnapping and torture. A testament to the power of radical empathy and moral courage, American Mother takes us inside one woman''s extraordinary journey to find connection in a world torn asunder, and to fight for others as a way to keep her son''s memory alive.>
To his customers and neighbours on 125th street, Carney is an upstanding salesman of reasonably-priced furniture, making a life for himself and his family. Few people know he descends from a line of uptown hoods and crooks, and that his façade of normalcy
The French Riviera: home to the Beautiful People. And none are more beautiful than Cecile, a precocious seventeen-year-old, and her father Raymond, a vivacious libertine. Charming, decadent and irresponsible, the golden-skinned duo are dedicated to a life of free love, fast cars and hedonistic pleasures.
Humbert Humbert is a middle-aged, fastidious college professor. He also likes little girls. And none more so than Lolita, who he'll do anything to possess. Is he in love or insane? A silver-tongued poet or a pervert? A tortured soul or a monster?! Or is he all of these?
From the author of the multimillion-copy bestseller Normal People, an exquisitely moving story about grief, love and family.
Aside from the fact that they are brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common.
Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties - successful, competent and apparently unassailable. But in the wake of their father''s death, he''s medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women - his enduring first love Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke.
Ivan is a twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself as socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother. Now, in the early weeks of his bereavement, Ivan meets Margaret, an older woman emerging from her own turbulent past, and their lives become rapidly and intensely intertwined.
For two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude - a period of desire, despair and possibility - a chance to find out how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking.
''A dazzlingly shapeshifting novel . . . equally good at action scenes and in-depth psychology'' The Sunday Times ''A thriller with a surprisingly heartfelt and redemptive ending, Billy Summers is a compelling and engrossing read'' Sunday Express From legendary storyteller and No. 1 bestseller Stephen King, whose ''restless imagination is a power that cannot be contained'' ( The New York Times Book Review ), comes a thrilling new novel about a good guy in a bad job. Billy Summers is a man in a room with a gun. He''s a killer for hire and the best in the business. But he''ll do the job only if the target is a truly bad guy. And now Billy wants out. But first there is one last hit. Billy is among the best snipers in the world, a decorated Iraq war vet, a Houdini when it comes to vanishing after the job is done. So what could possibly go wrong? How about everything. This spectacular can''t-put-it-down novel is part war story, part love letter to small town America and the people who live there, and it features one of the most compelling and surprising duos in King fiction, who set out to avenge the crimes of an extraordinarily evil man. It''s about love, luck, fate, and a complex hero with one last shot at redemption. You won''t put this story down, and you won''t forget Billy.
The best-selling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Road returns with the second of a two-volume masterpiece: Stella Maris is an intimate portrait of grief and longing, as a young woman in a psychiatric facility seeks to understand her own existence.
TELEGRAPH BOOKS OF THE YEAR and OBSERVER BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2014br>br>Limonov is not a fictional character, but he could have been. He''s lived a hundred lives. He was a hoodlum in Ukraine, an idol of the Soviet underground, punk-poet and valet to a billionaire in Manhattan, fashion writer in Paris, lost soldier in the Balkans, and now, in the chaos after the fall of communism a charismatic party leader of a gang of political desperados. Limonov sees himself as a hero, but he is also a bastard. Carrere suspends judgment. Carrere decided to write about Limonov because he thought "that his life, romantic and reckless, tells us something, not just about Limonov or Russia, but the story of all of us after the end of World War II.">
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER LA TIMES BOOK PRIZE FINALIST NBCC JOHN LEONARD PRIZE FINALIST ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES'S MOST NOTABLE BOOKS OF 2017 ONE OF THE WASHINGTON POSTS MOST NOTABLE BOOKS OF 2017 ONE OF NPRS GREAT READS OF 2017 A USA TODAY BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR AN AMAZON.COM BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR A BUSINESS INSIDER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR "Impossible to put down." -- NPR "A novel that readers will gulp down, gasping. -- The Washington Post "The word 'masterpiece' has been cheapened by too many blurbs, but My Absolute Darling absolutely is one." --Stephen King A brilliant and immersive, all-consuming read about one fourteen-year-old girl's heart-stopping fight for her own soul. Turtle Alveston is a survivor. At fourteen, she roams the woods along the northern California coast. The creeks, tide pools, and rocky islands are her haunts and her hiding grounds, and she is known to wander for miles. But while her physical world is expansive, her personal one is small and treacherous: Turtle has grown up isolated since the death of her mother, in the thrall of her tortured and charismatic father, Martin. Her social existence is confined to the middle school (where she fends off the interest of anyone, student or teacher, who might penetrate her shell) and to her life with her father. Then Turtle meets Jacob, a high-school boy who tells jokes, lives in a big clean house, and looks at Turtle as if she is the sunrise. And for the first time, the larger world begins to come into focus: her life with Martin is neither safe nor sustainable. Motivated by her first experience with real friendship and a teenage crush, Turtle starts to imagine escape, using the very survival skills her father devoted himself to teaching her. What follows is a harrowing story of bravery and redemption. With Turtle's escalating acts of physical and emotional courage, the reader watches, heart in throat, as this teenage girl struggles to become her own hero--and in the process, becomes ours as well. Shot through with striking language in a fierce natural setting, My Absolute Darling is an urgently told, profoundly moving read that marks the debut of an extraordinary new writer.
Longlisted for the Booker Prize The Sunday Times Bestseller Trust is a sweeping, unpredicatable novel about power, wealth and truth, told by four unique, interlocking voices and set against the backdrop of turbulent 1920s New York. Perfect for fans of Succession.
Can one person change the course of history?
A Wall Street tycoon takes a young woman as his wife. Together they rise to the top in an age of excess and speculation. But now a novelist is threatening to reveal the secrets behind their marriage, and this wealthy man''s story - of greed, love and betrayal - is about to slip from his grasp.
Composed of four competing versions of this deliciously deceptive tale, Trust by Hernan Diaz brings us on a quest for truth while confronting the lies that often live buried in the human heart.
''One of the great puzzle-box novels, it''s the cleverest of conceits, wrapped up in a page-turner'' - Telegraph ''Genius'' - Lauren Groff, author of Matrix
THE NUMBER ONE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER WINNER OF THE COSTA NOVEL AWARD 2018 WINNER OF THE AN POST IRISH BOOK AWARDS NOVEL OF THE YEAR WINNER OF THE SPECSAVERS NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS INTERNATIONAL AUTHOR OF THE YEAR SHORTLISTED FOR THE IRISH NOVEL OF THE YEAR AWARD 2019 LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2018 LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2019 LONGLISTED FOR THE RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE 2019 Connell and Marianne grow up in the same small town in the west of Ireland, but the similarities end there. In school, Connell is popular and well-liked, while Marianne is a loner. But when the two strike up a conversation - awkward but electrifying - something life-changing begins. Normal People is a story of mutual fascination, friendship and love. It takes us from that first conversation to the years beyond, in the company of two people who try to stay apart but find they can't.
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER CHOSEN AS A BOOK OF 2020 BY THE SUNDAY TIMES , OBSERVER , GUARDIAN , i PAPER , FINANCIAL TIMES , NEW STATESMAN , SCOTSMAN , IRISH TIMES , BBC.COM, WATERSTONES.COM 'You have to read Apeirogon ' Sunday Times 'Nothing like any book you've ever read' MICHAEL CUNNINGHAM 'An essential hymn to peace and forgiveness' independent.co.uk The novel of a lifetime about two men and their daughters: divided by conflict, yet united in grief.
Rami Elhanan and Bassam Aramin live near one another - yet they exist worlds apart. Rami is Israeli. Bassam is Palestinian. Rami's license plate is yellow. Bassam's license plate is green. It takes Rami fifteen minutes to drive to the West Bank. The same journey for Bassam takes an hour and a half.
Both men have lost their daughters. Rami's thirteen-year-old girl Smadar was killed by a suicide bomber while out shopping with her friends. Bassam's ten-year-old daughter Abir was shot and killed by a member of the border police outside her school. There was a candy bracelet in her pocket she hadn't had time to eat yet.
The men become the best of friends.
In this epic novel - named for a shape with a countably infinite number of sides - Colum McCann crosses centuries and continents, stitching time, art, history, nature and politics into a tapestry of friendship, love, loss and belonging. Musical, muscular, delicate and soaring, Apeirogon is the novel for our times.
'A quite extraordinary novel. Colum McCann has found the form and voice to tell the most complex of stories, with an unexpected friendship between two men at its powerfully beating heart' KAMILA SHAMSIE
Davier Cercas nacio en Ibahernando, Càceres, en 1962. Su obra, traducida a màs de treinta lenguas, consta de las siguientes novelas : El mévil, El inquilino, El vientre de la ballena, Soldados de Salamina, La velocidad de la luz, Anatomia de un instante, Las leyes de la frontera, El impostor y El monarca de las sombras, casi todas reconocidas con prestigiosos premios nacionales e internacionales. También ha publicado libros miscelàneos -Una buena temporada, Relatos reales, La verdad de Agamenén y Formas de ocultarse- y ensayos -La obra literaria de Gonzalo Suarez y El punto ciego-.
Ha recibido, ademàs, varios premios de ensayo y periodismo, y diversos reconocimientos al conjunto de su carrera, como el Prix Ulysse, en Francia, o el Premio Salone Internazionale del Libro di Torino, el Premio FriulAdria, el Premio "Città di Vigevano", o el Premio Sicilia, todos ellos en Italia.
Enniscorthy, sud-est de l'Irlande, années 1950. Comme de nombreux jeunes de sa génération, Eilis Lacey, diplôme de comptabilité en poche, ne parvient pas à trouver du travail. Par l'entremise d'un prêtre, sa soeur Rose obtient pour elle un emploi aux États-Unis. En poussant sa jeune soeur à partir, Rose se sacrifie : elle sera seule désormais pour s'occuper de leur mère veuve et aura peu de chance de se marier. Terrorisée à l'idée de quitter le cocon familial, mais contrainte de se plier à la décision de Rose, Eilis quitte l'Irlande. À Brooklyn, elle loue une chambre dans une pension de famille irlandaise.
Au début, le mal du pays la submerge, la laissant triste et solitaire. Puis, peu à peu, elle s'attache à la nouveauté de son existence. Dans ce rythme entre monotonie rassurante et nouveautés excitantes, Eilis trouve une sorte de liberté assez proche du bonheur. Et quand Tony, un Italien tendre, sérieux et très amoureux, entre dans sa vie, elle est convaincue que son avenir est tout tracé : elle deviendra américaine. Mais un drame familial l'oblige à retraverser l'Atlantique pour un séjour de quelques semaines en Irlande. Un nouvel avenir l'attend dans la bourgade de son enfance : un homme prêt à l'épouser, un travail. Deux pays, deux emplois, deux amours. Les possibilités inconciliables déferlent sur Eilis, lui infligeant cette petite mort que suppose l'impératif des choix.
''A page-turner ... nothing less than magical'' Observer ''An extraordinary slice of suburban noir'' Daily Mail From one of America''s most renowned storytellers comes a novel about love and deceit, and lust and redemption, against a background of child abductions in the affluent suburbs of Detroit.
In the waning days of the turbulent 1970s, in the wake of unsolved killings that have shocked Detroit, the lives of several residents are drawn together, with tragic consequences. There is Hannah, wife of a prominent local businessman, who has begun an affair with a darkly charismatic stranger whose identity remains elusive; Mikey, a canny street hustler who finds himself on an unexpected mission to rectify injustice; and the serial killer known as Babysitter, an enigmatic and terrifying figure at the periphery of elite Detroit. As Babysitter continues his rampage of killings, these individuals intersect with one another in startling and unexpected ways.
Suspenseful, brilliantly orchestrated and engrossing, Babysitter is a starkly narrated exploration of the riskiness of pursuing alternate lives, calling into question how far we are willing to go to protect those whom we cherish most. In its scathing indictment of corrupt politics, unexamined racism, and the enabling of sexual predation in America, Babysitter is a thrilling work of contemporary fiction.
''Simply the most consistently inventive, brilliant, curious and creative writer going, as far as I''m concerned'' Gillian Flynn, author of Gone Girl ''Joyce Carol Oates is a writer who always takes your breath away'' Mail on Sunday ''A writer of extraordinary strengths'' Guardian
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.
