''Lehane is the master of complex human characters thrust into suspenseful, page-turning situations'' Gillian Flynn ''One of the great diabolical thriller kings'' New York Times The acclaimed New York Times bestselling writer returns with a masterpiece to rival Mystic River - an all-consuming tale of revenge, family love, festering hate, and insidious power, set against one of the most tumultuous episodes in Boston''s history.
In the summer of 1974 a heatwave blankets Boston and Mary Pat Fennessey is trying to stay one step ahead of the bill collectors. Mary Pat has lived her entire life in the housing projects of ''Southie'', the Irish American enclave that stubbornly adheres to old tradition and stands proudly apart.
One night Mary Pat''s teenage daughter Jules stays out late and doesn''t come home. That same evening, a young Black man is found dead, struck by a subway train under mysterious circumstances.
The two events seem unconnected. But Mary Pat, propelled by a desperate search for her missing daughter, begins turning over stones best left untouched - asking questions that bother Marty Butler, chieftain of the Irish mob, and the men who work for him, men who don''t take kindly to any threat to their business.
Set against the hot, tumultuous months when the city''s desegregation of its public schools exploded in violence, Small Mercies is a superb thriller, a brutal depiction of criminality and power, and an unflinching portrait of the dark heart of American racism. It is a mesmerising and wrenching work that only Dennis Lehane could write.
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2014 Aged thirteen, Theo Decker, son of a devoted mother and a reckless, largely absent father, survives an accident that otherwise tears his life apart. Alone and rudderless in New York, he is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. He is tormented by an unbearable longing for his mother, and down the years clings to the thing that most reminds him of her: a small, strangely captivating painting that ultimately draws him into the criminal underworld. As he grows up, Theo learns to glide between the drawing rooms of the rich and the dusty antiques store where he works. He is alienated and in love - and his talisman, the painting, places him at the centre of a narrowing, ever more dangerous circle.
The Goldfinch is a haunted odyssey through present-day America and a drama of enthralling power. Combining unforgettably vivid characters and thrilling suspense, it is a beautiful, addictive triumph - a sweeping story of loss and obsession, of survival and self-invention, of the deepest mysteries of love, identity and fate.
Ben had always known he would be a photographer, until life got in the way. Now a junior partner in a Wall Street firm, he feels trapped until he discovers his wife has been having an affair and a flash of anger leads him into a nightmare. Is this his chance to assume a new identity?
Originally published as The Collected Works of A. J. Fikry."Who the hell are you?" A.J. asks the baby.
For no apparent reason, she stops crying and smiles at him. "Maya," she answers.
That was easy, A.J. thinks. "How old are you?" he asks.
Maya holds up two fingers.
"You're two?" Maya smiles again and holds up her arms to him." A.J. Fikry, the grumpy owner of Island Books, is going through a hard time: his bookshop is failing, he has lost his beloved wife, and a prized rare first edition has been stolen. But one day A.J. finds two-year-old Maya sitting on the bookshop floor, with a note attached to her asking the owner to look after her. His life - and Maya's - is changed forever.
Lydia is dead. But they don't know this yet. After sixteen-year-old Lydia goes missing and her body turns up in the lake, the police rule it as a suicide. But Lydia's family are determined to search for clues to find out what really happened.
Wayward daughters. Missing husbands. Philandering partners. If you've got a problem, and no one else can help you, then pay a visit to Precious Ramotswe, Botswana's only female private detective. Her methods may not be conventional, but she's got warmth, wit and canny intuition on her side.
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION 2018 ' You will sob little tears of joy ' Nell Zink ' I recommend it with my whole heart ' Ann Patchett ' I adore this book ' Armistead Maupin ' Charming, languid and incredibly funny, I absolutely adored Arthur' Jenny Colgan ' Marvellously, endearingly, unexpectedly funny ' Gary Shteyngart ' Bedazzling, bewitching and be-wonderful ' New York Times Book Review ' A fast and rocketing read . . . a wonderful, wonderful book! ' Karen Joy Fowler ' Hilarious, and wise, and abundantly funny ' Adam Haslett WHO SAYS YOU CAN'T RUN AWAY FROM YOUR PROBLEMS? Arthur Less is a failed novelist about to turn fifty. A wedding invitation arrives in the post: it is from an ex-boyfriend of nine years who is engaged to someone else. Arthur can't say yes - it would be too awkward; he can't say no - it would look like defeat. So, he begins to accept the invitations on his desk to half-baked literary events around the world. From France to India, Germany to Japan, Arthur almost falls in love, almost falls to his death, and puts miles between him and the plight he refuses to face. Less is a novel about mishaps, misunderstandings and the depths of the human heart.
'One of the most brilliant first novels I have come across' Telegraph 'One of the top 100 novels of the century' Independent 'Brilliant...irresistible...compelling' New York Times 'Macabre, bizarre, and impossible to put down' Financial Times ' Read it if you dare' Daily Express The Wasp Factory is a bizarre, imaginative, disturbing, and darkly comic look into the mind of a child psychopath - one of the most infamous of contemporary Scottish novels. 'Two years after I killed Blyth I murdered my young brother Paul, for quite different reasons than I'd disposed of Blyth, and then a year after that I did for my young cousin Esmerelda, more or less on a whim. That's my score to date. Three. I haven't killed anybody for years, and don't intend to ever again. It was just a stage I was going through.' Enter - if you can bear it - the extraordinary private world of Frank, just sixteen, and unconventional, to say the least.
'Complex, tense, compelling' Lee Child 'Hitchcockian... with characteristically twisty action and crackling dialogue ' Guardian Best Crime & Thriller Books of 2017 On a Tuesday in May, in her thirty-fifth year, Rachel shot her husband dead. He stumbled backward with an odd look of confirmation on his face, as if some part of him had always known she'd do it. Rachel's husband adores her. When she hit rock bottom, he was there with her every step of the way as she slowly regained her confidence, and her sanity. But his mysterious behaviour forces her to probe for the truth about her beloved husband. How can she feel certain that she ever knew him? And was she right to ever trust him? Bringing together Dennis Lehane's trademark insightful and emphathetic characterisation, razor-sharp dialogue, stunning atmosphere and breakneck twists and turns, Since We Fell is a true masterpiece that will keep you in suspense until the very end.
Two works of autobiography. "If This is a Man" tells of Levi's experiences as a victim of the Holocaust, from his arrest by the Fascists in 1943 to the liberation of Auschwitz by the Russians. "The Truce" is the story of his eight-month journey back to Italy after he was liberated.
It all starts on the one-hundredth birthday of Allan Karlsson. Sitting quietly in his room in an old people's home, he is waiting for the party he-never-wanted-anyway to begin. The mayor is going to be there. The press is going to be there. But, as it turns out, Allan is not...Slowly but surely Allan climbs out of his bedroom window, into the flowerbed (in his slippers) and makes his getaway. And so begins his picaresque and unlikely journey involving criminals, several murders, a suitcase full of cash, and incompetent police. As his escapades unfold, we learn something of Allan's earlier life in which - remarkably - he helped to make the atom bomb, became friends with American presidents, Russian tyrants, and Chinese leaders, and was a participant behind the scenes in many key events of the twentieth century. Already a huge bestseller across Europe, The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared is a fun, feel-good book for all ages.
'A brilliant blending of crime, mystery, and American history. Terrific entertainment' Stephen King on Darktown Lightning Men follows the multi-award-nominated, highly acclaimed crime debut Darktown into a city on the brink of huge and violent change - and full of secrets. Atlanta, 1950. Crime divides, the fight unites. Officer Denny Rakestraw and 'Negro Officers' Lucius Boggs and Tommy Smith face the Klan, gangs and family warfare in a rapidly changing Atlanta. Black families - including Smith's sister and brother-in-law - are moving into Rake's formerly all-white neighbourhood, leading his brother-in-law, a proud Klansman, to launch a scheme to 'save' their streets. When those efforts leave a man dead, Rake is forced to choose between loyalty to family or the law. Meanwhile, Boggs has outraged his preacher father by courting a domestic, whose dangerous ex-boyfriend is then released from prison. As Boggs, Smith, and their all-black precinct contend with violent drug dealers fighting for turf in new territory, their personal dramas draw them closer to the fires that threaten to consume Atlanta once again. Praise for Thomas Mullen 'Magnificent and shocking' Sunday Times 'Written with a ferocious passion that'll knock the wind out of you' New York Times
A major treatment of the crucial years 1848-1875 - a penetrating analysis of the rise of capitalism throught the world. In the 1860s a new word entered the economic and political vocabulary of the world: "capitalism"; the triumph of a society which believed in competitive private enterprise.
'' With The Survivors , Jane Harper proves she''s unquestionably the real deal'' Val McDermid ''Without doubt one of the finest crime writers at work today... Phenomenal'' Chris Whitaker, author of We Begin At The End Kieran Elliott''s life changed forever on a single day when a reckless mistake led to devastating consequences. The guilt that haunts him still resurfaces during a visit with his young family to the small coastal town he once called home. Kieran''s parents are struggling in a community which is bound, for better or worse, to the sea that is both a lifeline and a threat. Between them all is his absent brother Finn. When a body is discovered on the beach, long-held secrets threaten to emerge in the murder investigation that follows. A sunken wreck, a missing girl, and questions that have never washed away... Praise for Jane Harper: ''Queen of outback noir'' Sunday Times ''Harper has a fine gift for making her readers comfortable in inhospitable territory - psychological as well as physical'' Daily Telegraph ''Powerful, intriguing and recommended . . . Harper is wonderful at evoking fear and unease'' The Times
'I loved every word' - Sarra Manning, Red '[A] blissful book - it's like basking in the warm Med' - Rachel Johnson, Mail on Sunday The Riviera Set is the story of the group of people who lived, partied, bed-hopped and politicked at the Château de l'Horizon near Cannes, over the course of forty years from the time when Coco Chanel made southern French tans fashionable in the twenties to the death of the playboy Prince Aly Khan in 1960. At the heart of this was the amazing Maxine Elliott, the daughter of a fisherman from Connecticut, who built the beautiful art deco Château and brought together the likes of Noel Coward, the Aga Khan, the Windsors and two very saucy courtesans, Doris Castlerosse and Daisy Fellowes, who set out to be dangerous distractions to Winston Churchill as he worked on his journalism and biographies during his 'wilderness years' in the thirties. After the War the story continued as the Château changed hands and Prince Aly Khan used it to entertain the Hollywood set, as well as launch his seduction of and eventual marriage to Rita Hayworth. 'Lovell dissects their lives and curates the interesting parts, bringing together the creme of high society. A sparkling group biography that brings to life a bygone era' - The Lady
The author traces the transformation brought about in every sphere of European life by the dual occurrence of the French and Industrial revolutions. The account highlights the 60 significant years when industrialism established domination over the world it was to hold for a century.
'I read it in 24 hours. It's gripping, atmospheric and ultimately deeply satisfying' Val McDermid The gripping new novel from the author of the Sunday Times top ten bestsellers, The Dry and Force of Nature . He had started to remove his clothes as logic had deserted him, and his skin was cracked. Whatever had been going through Cameron's mind when he was alive, he didn't look peaceful in death. Two brothers meet at the remote border of their vast cattle properties under the unrelenting sun of the outback. In an isolated part of Australia, they are each other's nearest neighbour, their homes hours apart. They are at the stockman's grave, a landmark so old that no one can remember who is buried there. But today, the scant shadow it casts was the last hope for their middle brother, Cameron. The Bright family's quiet existence is thrown into grief and anguish. Something had been troubling Cameron. Did he choose to walk to his death? Because if he didn't, the isolation of the outback leaves few suspects...
In his startling and singular new short story collection, David Foster Wallace nudges at the boundaries of fiction with inimitable wit and seductive intelligence. Among the stories are 'The Depressed Person', a dazzling and blackly humorous portrayal of a woman's mental state; 'Adult World', which reveals a woman's agonised consideration of her confusing sexual relationship with her husband; and 'Brief Interviews with Hideous Men', a dark, hilarious series of portraits of men whose fear of women renders them grotesque. Wallace's stories present a world where the bizarre and the banal are interwoven and where hideous men appear in many different guises. Thought-provoking and playful, this collection confirms David Foster Wallace as one of the most imaginative young writers around. Wallace delights in leftfield observation, mining the ironic, the surprising and the illuminating from every situation. His new collection will delight his growing number of fans, and provide a perfect introduction for new readers.
