26a
ISBN : 9780099479048
Identical twins Georgia and Bessi live in the loft of 26 Waifer Avenue. It is a place of beanbags, nectarines and secrets, and visitors must always knock before entering. Down below there is not such harmony. Their Nigerian mother puts cayenne pepper on her Yorkshire pudding and ahs mysterious ways of dealing with homesickness; their father angrily roams the streets of Neasden, prey to the demons of his Derbyshire upbringing. Forced to create their own identities, the Hunter children build a separate universe. Older sister Bel discovers sex, high heels and organic hairdressing, the twins prepare for a flapjack empire, and baby sister Kemy learns to moonwalk for Michael Jackson. It is when reality comes knocking that the fantasies of childhood start to give way. How will Georgia and Bessi cope in a world of them will be stronger?
Emma
ISBN : 9780099511168
Emma is young, rich and independent. She has decided not to get married and instead spends her time organising her acquaintances' love affairs. Her plans for the matrimonial success of her new friend Harriet, however, lead her into complications that ultimately test her own detachment from the world of romance.
The World According to Garp
ISBN : 9780552776783
This is the life and times of T. S. Garp, the bastard son of Jenny Fields - a feminist leader ahead of her times. It is also the life and death of a famous mother and her almost-famous son; theirs is a world of sexual extremes - even of sexual assassinations. It is a novel rich with 'lunacy and sorrow'; yet the dark, violent events of the story do not undermine a comedy both ribald and robust. It provides almost cheerful, even hilarious evidence of its famous last line: "In the world according to Garp, we are all terminal cases."
Atonement
ISBN : 9780099429791
On the hottest day of the summer of 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Talfis sees her sister Cecilia strip off her clothes and plunge into the fountain in the garden of their country house. Watching her too is Robbie Turner who, like Cecilia, has recently come down from Cambridge. By the end of that day, the lives of all three will have been changed for ever, as Briony commits a crime for which she will spend the rest of her life trying to atone.
Lone Eagle
ISBN : 9780552148511
The phone call came on a snowy December afternoon. Kate was certain it was Joe, her soulmate since they'd met thirty-four years before - but what she got was the one call she had never wanted. It took her mind back to the moment when she and Joe first met, when she was just seventeen and he was young, powerful, dazzling and different from any man she'd ever known Christmas, 1940, and Kate is making her début in New York society. Joe, the brilliant protege of Charles Lindbergh, seems just out of Kate's reach. As the months pass, they meet again, and although Kate goes off to study at Radcliffe and Joe skyrockets to fame in modem aviation, he is always drawn back to her, as a moth to a flame. When the war is over Kate wants a marriage and family - while Joe wants the world. Unwilling to wait any longer, Kate moves on with her life. But when a chance encounter brings them together again, the time has come to make a choice, one that will have profound consequences for the rest of their lives. A novel of extraordinary grace and compassion from a master storyteller.
THE CIDER HOUSE RULES
ISBN : 9780552992046
Set among the apple orchards of rural Maine, it is a peverse world in which Homer Wells' odyssey begins. As the oldest unadopted offspring at St Cloud's orphanage, he learns about the skills which, one way or another, help young and not-so-young women, from Wilbur Larch, the orphanage's founder -- a man of rare compassion and an addiction to ether.
The Sense of an Ending
ISBN : 9780099570332
Tony Webster and his dique first met Adrian Finn at school. Sex-hungry and book-hungry, they would navigate the girl-less sixth form together, trading in affectations, in-jokes, rumour and wit. Maybe Adrian was a little more serious than the others, certainly more intelligent, but they all swore to stay friends for life. Now Tony is retired. He's had a career and a single marriage, a calm divorce. He's certainly never tried to hurt anybody. Memory, though, is imperfect. It can always throw up surprises, as a lawyer's letter is about to prove.
PERSUASION
ISBN : 9780099511175
General & literary fiction/Classic fictionNew edition of 3 of Austen's classic novels, with stylish and attractive jackets. 'Jane Austen is the pinnacle to which all other authors aspire' J.K. Rowling