Irresistible Forces
ISBN : 9780552145053
For fourteen years, Steve and Meredith Whitman have sustained a marriage of passion and friendship, despite the demands of two all-consuming careers. Meredith is a top investment baker, Steve a gifted physician - the only thing missing in their life is children. Steve longs for them. But Meredith keeps putting off motherhood, and now she has been offered an extraordinary job opportunity in San Francisco, there thousand miles away. Steve urges her to accept, saying that he 's more than happy to uproot himself and will join her as soon as he can fond a new job himself. Perhaps in California, he hopes, they can begin a family at last. Neither Steve or Meredith had reckoned on a prolonged separation, but Steve's job keeps him on New York for months longer than planned. Weekends together fall prey to their hectic schedules. Alone in San Francisco, Meredith is spending long hours at the office with her boss, charismatic entrepreneur Callan Dow. Steve is working late shifts at the hospital, grabbing an occasional dinner with a new female colleague. Almost unnoticed, Steve and Meredith have begun living separate lives, and irresistible forces to tear their lives and hearts apart. With unerring insight, Danielle Steel explores what happens when lives fit together like delicately balanced puzzles are shifted, changer and drift apart. Who survives, and if love survives, is at the core of Irresistible Forces.
SONG OF SOLOMON
ISBN : 9780099768418
This is the story of Macon "Milkman" Dead, heir to the richest black family in a Midwestern town, as he makes a voyage of rediscovery, travelling southwards geographically and inwards spiritually. Through the enlightenment of one man, the novel recapitulates the history of slavery and liberation.
Sputnik Sweetheart
ISBN : 9780099448471
Twenty-two-year-old Sumire is in love with a woman seventeen years her senior. But whereas Miu is glamorous and successful, Sumir is an aspiring writer who dresses in oversized second-hand coat and heavy boots like a character in a Kerouac novel. Surprised that she might, after all, be a lesbian, Sumir spends hours on the phone talking to her best friend K about the big questions in life: what is sexual desire and should she ever tell Miu how she feels about her. Frustrated in his own love for Sumire, K consoles himself by having an affair with the mother of one of his pupils. Then a desperate Miu calls from a small Greek island and asks for his help, and he discovers that something very strange has happened to Sumire.
MIRACLE
ISBN : 9780552149921
It is New Year's Eve when the storm of the century hits northern California. For Quinn Thompson, what happens in the storm's wake will bring down a barrier he has built around himself since his wife's death. For neighbor Maggie Dartman, it will spark friendship at a time when she needs it most. Then, something extraordinary begins to happen.
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde - And Other Tales of Terror
ISBN : 9780141439730
Published as a shilling shocker, Robert Louis Stevenson's dark psychological fantasy gave birth to the idea of the split personality. The story of respectable Dr Jekyll's strange association with damnable young man' Edward Hyde; the hunt through fog-bound London for a killer; and the final revelation of Hyde's true identity is a chilling exploration of humanity's basest capacity for evil. The other stories in this volume also testify to Stevenson's inventiveness within the Gothic tradition: Olalla, a tale of vampirism and tainted family blood, and The Body Snatcher, a gruesome fictionalisation of the exploits of the notorious Burke and Hare. This edition contains a critical introduction by Robert Mighall, which discusses class, criminality and the significance of the story's London setting. It also includes an essay on the scientific contexts of the novel and the development of the idea of the Jekyll and Hyde personality.
Lolita
ISBN : 9780241951644
'Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of my tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.' Humbert Humbert is a middle-aged, frustrated college professor. In love with his landlady's twelve-year-old daughter Lolita, he'll do anything to possess her. Unable and unwilling to stop himself, he is prepared to commit any crime to get what he wants. 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?
The Great Gatsby
ISBN : 9780141182636
In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald brilliantly captures both the disillusion of post-war America and the moral failure of a society obsessed with wealth and status. But he does more than render the essence of a particular time and place, for in chronicling Gatsby's tragic pursuit of his dream, Fitzgerald re-creates the universal conflict between illusion and reality.
Architect's apprentice, the
ISBN : 9780241970942
'There were six of us: the master, the apprentices and the white elephant. We built everything together...' Sixteenth century Istanbul: a stowaway arrives in the city bearing an extraordinary gift for the Sultan. The boy is utterly alone in a foreign land, with no worldly possessions to his name except Chota, a rare and valuable white elephant destined for the palace menagerie. So begins an epic adventure that will see young Jahan rise from lowly origins to the highest ranks of the Sultan's court. Along the way he will meet deceitful courtiers and false friends, gypsies, animal tamers, and the beautiful, mischievous Princess Mihrimah. He will journey on Chota's back to the furthest corners of the Sultan's kingdom and back again.
