Stop What You're
Doing and Read This!
Recommended Reads with 25% Discount
Snowdrops.
That's what the Russians call them - the bodies that float up into
the light in the thaw. Drunks, most of them, and homeless people who
just give up and lie down into the whiteness, and murder victims
hidden in the drifts by their killers. Nick has a confession.
When he worked as a high-flying British lawyer in Moscow, he was
seduced by Masha, an enigmatic woman who led him through her city:
the electric nightclubs and intimate dachas, the human kindnesses
and state-wide corruption. Yet as Nick fell for Masha, he found that
he fell away from himself; he knew that she was dangerous, but life
in Russia was addictive, and it was too easy to bury secrets - and
corpses - in the winter snows...
Shortlisted for CWA Gold Dagger for Fiction 2011 and Man Booker
Prize for Fiction 2011 and Galaxy National Book Awards: Galaxy New
Writer of the Year 2011
RRP£7.99 CCCUP £5.99
The
Etymologicon springs from Mark Forsyth's Inky Fool blog on the
strange connections between words.
It's an occasionally ribald, frequently witty and unerringly erudite
guided tour of the secret labyrinth that lurks beneath the English
language, taking in monks and monkeys, film buffs and buffaloes, and
explaining precisely what the Rolling Stones have to do with
gardening.
The surprise Christmas bestseller, now a BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE
WEEK, read by Hugh Dennis.
'This year's must-have stocking filler - the angel on the top of the
tree, the satsuma in the sock, the threepenny bit in the plum
pudding, the essential addition to the library in the smallest room
is Mark Forsyth's The Etymologicon.' Ian Sansom, Guardian
RRP 12.99 CCCUP £9.74
In
any 24 hours there might be sleeping, eating, kids, parents,
friends, lovers, work, school, travel, deadlines, emails, phone
calls, Facebook, Twitter, the news, the TV, Playstation, music,
movies, sport, responsibilities, passions, desires, dreams.
Why should you stop what you're doing and read a book? People have
always needed stories.
We need literature - novels, poetry - because we need to make sense
of our lives, test our depths, understand our joys and discover what
humans are capable of.
In any 24 hours there are so many demands on your time and attention
- make books one of them. This title includes essays by Carmen
Callil, Tim Parks, Nicholas Carr, Michael Rosen, Jane Davis, Zadie
Smith, Mark Haddon, Jeanette Winterson, Blake Morrison, Dr Maryanne
Wolf & Dr Mirit Barzillai
RRP £4.99 CCCUP £3.74
Shortlisted
for the Man Booker Prize 2011 Shortlisted for the Guardian First
Book Award 2011 Eleven-year-old Harrison Opoku, the second best
runner in Year 7, races through his new life in England with his
personalised trainers - the Adidas stripes drawn on with marker pen
- blissfully unaware of the very real threat around him.
Newly-arrived from Ghana with his mother and older sister Lydia,
Harri absorbs the many strange elements of city life, from the
bewildering array of Haribo sweets, to the frightening, fascinating
gang of older boys from his school. But his life is changed forever
when one of his friends is murdered.
As the victim's nearly new football boots hang in tribute on
railings behind fluorescent tape and a police appeal draws only
silence, Harri decides to act, unwittingly endangering the fragile
web his mother has spun around her family to keep them safe.
RRP £7.99 CCCUP £5.99
A
year of bones, of grave-dirt, relentless work. Of mummified corpses
and chanting priests. A year of rape, suicide, sudden death. Of
friendship too. Of desire. Of love...A year unlike any other he has
lived. Deep in the heart of Paris, its oldest cemetery is, by 1785,
overflowing, tainting the very breath of those who live nearby. Into
their midst comes Jean-Baptiste Baratte, a young, provincial
engineer charged by the king with demolishing it. At first Baratte
sees this as a chance to clear the burden of history, a fitting task
for a modern man of reason. But before long, he begins to suspect
that the destruction of the cemetery might be a prelude to his own.
RRP £8.99 CCCUP £6.74
264
wood and ivory carvings, none of them larger than a matchbox: potter
Edmund de Waal was entranced when he first encountered the
collection in the Tokyo apartment of his great uncle Iggie.
Later, when Edmund inherited the 'netsuke', they unlocked a story
far larger than he could ever have imagined.
Winner of Galaxy National Book Awards: National Book Tokens
New Writer of the Year 2010 and Costa Biography Award 2010 and
Ondaatje Prize 2011 and Independent Booksellers' Book of the Year
Award: Adults' Book of the Year 2011.
RRP £8.99 CCCUP £6.74
This
is an utterly compelling and often unbelievable adventure into the
world of madness. Jon Ronson meets everybody from a Broadmoor inmate
who swears he faked a mental disorder to get a lighter sentence but
is now stuck there to the influential psychologist who developed the
industry standard Psychopath Test and who is convinced that many
important CEOs and politicians are in fact psychopaths. Combining
Jon's trademark humour, charm and investigative incision, The
Psychopath Test is a deeply honest book unearthing dangerous truths
and asking serious questions about how we define normality in a
world where we are increasingly judged by our maddest edges
Jon Ronson is an award-winning writer and documentary maker. He is
the author of three bestsellers: Them: Adventures with Extremists,
The Men Who Stare at Goats and The Psychopath Test, and two
collections, Out of the Ordinary: True Tales of Everyday Craziness
and What I Do: More True Tales. He lives in London.
RRP £8.99 CCCUP £6.74
