The Temptation of Forgiveness
ISBN : 9781787461109
Important information is leaking from inside the Venetian Questura, and Commissario Guido Brunetti is tasked with uncovering the culprit. But before Brunetti can begin his investigation, a friend of his wife's comes asking for his help, fearful that her son is using drugs. A few weeks later, the woman's husband is found unconscious at the foot of a bridge. Following various contradictory leads, Brunetti navigates his way through Venice's underworld in an attempt to understand who is responsible for the vicious attack. But as he gets closer to discovering what happened, Brunetti is faced with a difficult truth : sometimes, the best intentions lead to the darkest of consequences...
Behave - The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst
ISBN : 9780099575061
Why do human beings behave as they do ? We are capable of savage acts of violence but also spectacular feats of kindness : is one side of our nature destined to win out over the other ? Every act of human behaviour has multiple layers of causation, spiralling back seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, years, even centuries, right back to the dawn of time and the origins of our species. In the epic sweep of history, how does our biology affect the arc of war and peace, justice and persecution ? How have our brains evolved alongside our cultures ? This is the exhilarating story of human morality and the science underpinning the biggest question of all : what makes us human ?
Warlight
ISBN : 9781784708351
It is 1945, and London is still reeling from the Blitz. 14-year-old Nathaniel and his sister, Rachel, are apparently abandoned by their parents, left in the care of an enigmatic figure named The Moth. They suspect he might be a criminal, and grow both more convinced and less concerned as they get to know his eccentric crew of friends : men and women who all seem determined to protect Rachel and Nathaniel. But are they really what and who they claim to be ? A dozen years later, Nathaniel journeys through recollection, reality and imagination to uncover all he didn't know or understand in that time, to piece together a story that feels something like the truth.
Social Intelligence ; The New Science of Human Relatioships
ISBN : 9780099464921
Presents a synthesis of the findings in biology and brain science, revealing a fundamental discovery: we are designed for sociability, constantly engaged in a 'neural ballet' that connects us brain-to-brain with those around us. This work explains the surprising accuracy of first impressions, the basis of charisma and emotional power, and more.
JAZZ
ISBN : 9780099750918
BY THE NOBEL PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR OF BELOVED Joe Trace - in his fifties, door-to-door salesman of Cleopatra beauty products, erstwhile devoted husband - shoots dead his lover of three months, the impetuous, eighteen-year-old Dorcas. At the funeral, his determined, hard-working wife, Violet, who is given to stumbling into dark mental cracks, tries with a knife to disfigure the corpse. Passionate and profound, Jazz brings us back and forth in time, in a narrative assembled from the hopes, fears and realities of black urban life. Winner of the PEN/Saul Bellow award for achievement in American fiction
Home
ISBN : 9780099555940
It begins with a letter from a woman Frank has never met. A pleading letter. A letter that closed his throat. 'Come fast. She be dead if you tarry.' And that is it all it takes.
A Prayer for Owen Meany
ISBN : 9780552993692
Eleven-year-old Owen Meany, playing in a Little League baseball game in Gravesend, New Hampshire, hits a foul ball and kills his best friend's mother. Owen doesn't believe in accidents ; he believes he is God's instrument. What happens to Owen after that 1953 foul ball is both extraordinary and terrifying.
The Heart's Invisible Furies
ISBN : 9781784161002
Cast out from her West Cork village, sixteen years old and pregnant, Catherine Goggin makes her way to Dublin to start afresh. She has no choice but to believe that the nun to whom she entrusts her child will find him a better life.The baby is named Cyril by his adoptive parents, Charles and Maude Avery, a well-to-do but deeply eccentric couple who treat him more like a curiosity than a son. You're not a real Avery, they tell him. And perhaps he isn't. But through them he meets Julian Woodbead who, even from childhood, seems destined for an infinitely more glamorous and dangerous life. And so begins one man's funny and moving search to find his place in a world that seems to delight in gently tormenting him at every turn. Buffeted by circumstance and, at times, the consequences of his own questionable judgement, Cyril must navigate his emotions and desires in a search for that most elemental human need, happiness.
Transcription
ISBN : 9781784164393
In 1940, eighteen-year-old Juliet Armstrong is reluctantly recruited into the world of espionage. Sent to an obscure department of MIS tasked with monitoring the comings and goings of British Fascist sympathizers, she discovers the work to be by turns both tedious and terrifying. But after the war has ended, she presumes the events of those years have been relegated to the past for ever. Ten years later, now a producer at the BBC, Juliet is unexpectedly confronted by figures from her past. A different war is being fought now, on a different battleground, but Juliet finds herself once more under threat. A bill of reckoning is due, and she finally begins to realize that there is no action without consequence.
On Chesil Beach
ISBN : 9781784705565
It is July 1962. Edward and Florence, young innocents married that morning, arrive at a hotel on the Dorset coast. At dinner in their rooms they struggle to suppress their private fears of the wedding night ton come and, unbeknownst ti them bost, the events of the evening will haunt them for the rest of their lives.
PERSEPOLIS I AND II
ISBN : 9780099523994
Tells the story of Marjane Satrapi's life in Tehran from the ages of six to fourteen, years that saw the overthrow of the Shah's regime, the triumph of the Islamic Revolution and the devastating effects of war with Iraq. This book paints a portrait of daily life in Iran and of the contradictions between home life and public life.
Whistle in the Dark
ISBN : 9780241327654
Jen has finally got her daughter home. But why does fifteen-year-old Lana still feel lost ? When Lana goes missing for four desperate days and returns refusing to speak of what happened, Jen fears the very worst. She thinks she's failed as a mother, that her daughter is beyond reach and that she must do something — anything — to bring her back. The family return to London where everyone but Jen seems happy to carry on as normal. Jens husband Hugh thinks her obsession is getting out of hand — and their eldest daughter, Meg, is tired of Lana getting all the attention. But Jen knows Lana has changed, and can't understand why. Does the answer lie in those four missing days ? And how can Jen find out ?