Mythos
ISBN : 9781405934138
No one loves and quarrels, desires and deceives as boldly or brilliantly as Greek gods and goddesses. In Stephen Fry's vivid retelling we gaze in wonder as wise Athena is born from the cracking open of the great head of Zeus, and follow doomed Persephone into the dark and lonely realm of the Underworld. We shiver when Pandora opens her jar of evil torments and watch with joy as the legendary love affair between Eros and Psyche unfolds. Mythos captures these extraordinary myths for our modern age — in all their dazzling and deeply human relevance.
Heroes
ISBN : 9781405940368
Join Jason aboard the Argo as he seeks the Golden Fleece, and see Atalanta outrun all men, before being tricked with golden apples. Soldier through Heracles' twelve labours, shiver in terror under the stone-cold gaze of Medusa and witness wily Oedipus solve the riddle of the Sphinx. From white-knuckle chases to twisting labyrinths, impossible puzzles to blood-curdling monsters, Heroes is filled with dramatic, funny, tragic and timeless tales of what we mortal men and women are truly capable of — at our heroic best.
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 ?
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.
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.
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
This Blinding Absence of Light
ISBN : 9780141022826
In 1971 disaffected student Salim took part in a failed coup to oust King Hassan II of Morocco. With sixty others he was incarcerated in a secret prison complex in the Moroccan desert ; they were to remain there for nearly twenty years. In starkly eloquent, beautiful prose, Tahar Ben Jelloun relates the prisoners' experiences as they struggle to survive. The son of a witty, feckless courtier who disowns him, Salim tells stories to keep sane - from the suras of his beloved Koran to the plot of A Streetcar Named Desire. Even in the darkest, most terrible conditions, sympathy, insight, the human quest for meaning and understanding never desert Salim. The resulting novel is a wrenching yet exquisite celebration of the human spirit and its determination to survive.
Seize the Day
ISBN : 9780141184852
Fading charmer Tommy Wilhelm has reached his day of reckoning and is scared. In his forties, lie still retains a boyish impetuousness that has brought him to the brink of chaos : he is separated from his wife and children, at odds with his vain, successful father, failed in his acting career (a Hollywood agent once placed him as "the type that loses the girl") and in a financial mess. In the course of one climactic day lie reviews his past mistakes and spiritual malaise, until a mysterious, philosophizing con man grants him a glorious, illuminating moment of truth and understanding, and offers him one last hope... "Saul Bellow is one of the grants of the twentieth-century novel. Read Seize the Day and see why" Irish Times
The Testaments
ISBN : 9781784708214
The Republic of Gilead is beginning to rot from within. At this crucial moment, two girls with radically different experiences of the regime AiIlk come face to face with the legendary, ruthless Aunt Lydia. But how far will each go for what she believes ?
Jemima J
ISBN : 9780140276909
Treated like a slave by her thin and bitchy flatmates, lorded over at the Kilburn Herald by the beautiful Geraldine (less talented, but better paid), her only consolation is food. What with that and her passion for her charming, sexy colleague Ben, she knows her life needs changing. But can Jemima reinvent herself? Should she? A brilliantly funny, honest novel from the author of Straight Talking, about ugly ducklings and swans, about attraction, addiction and the meaning of true love.
Miss Benson's Beetle
ISBN : 9780552779487
It is 1950. In a devastating moment of clarity, Margery Benson abandons her dead-end job and advertises for an assistant to accompany her on an expedition. She is going to travel to the other side of the world to search for a beetle that may or may not exist. Enid Pretty, in her unlikely pink travel suit, is not the companion Margery had in mind. And yet together they will be drawn into an adventure that will exceed every expectation. They will risk everything, break all the rules, and, at the top of a red mountain, discover their best selves.
