|
|
Books purchased on this website are accessed via an outside warehouse. We do not necessarily have these books in stock in our store. Please do not buy online, expecting you can then pick your books up from our store.
If you are wanting to visit us, please ring first to see if we stock the items or subjects you are interested in.
|
|
New Release Fiction |  The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell
With its brilliant, frightening, furious, apocalyptic vision, The Kindly Ones is a literary tour de force, winner of the Prix Goncourt and other prizes and already an explosive bestseller across Europe, selling over 1 million copies. This Faustian story with a terrifying twist is the fictional memoir of Dr Max Aue, a former SS intelligence officer, who has reinvented himself as a family man and owner of a lace factory in post-war France. Max is an intellectual steeped in philosophy, literature, and classical music. He is also a cold-blooded assassin and the consummate bureaucrat, who speaks out now not in self-justification but to set the record straight. He looks back at his life with cool-eyed precision: from a disrupted childhood and a turning point in his student days, to his role as observer and then participant in Nazi atrocities on the Eastern Front, from Poland to the Caucasus he is present at the siege of Stalingrad, at the death camps, and finally caught up in the rout of the Nazis and the nightmarish fall of Berlin. Although Max is a totally imagined character, his world is peopled by real historical figures such as Eichmann, Himmler, G??ring, Speer, Heydrich, H??ss, and Hitler himself.
Massive in scope, terrifying in subject matter, and shocking in its protagonist, Littella??s masterpiece is intense, hallucinatory, and terrifyingly compelling. Described by Le Figaro as a??a monument of contemporary literaturea??, this transgressive and controversial work of literature has been compared to classics of world literature, including War and Peace. A huge novel about the seductive enormity of evil, about the ineffable horror of war, about mana??s inhumanity and the malevolence of the Furies, this is a book that every thinking person should read and to which no one can be indifferent.
|  The China Garden by Kristina Olsson
When a newborn baby is found abandoned in a backyard, this dramatic event pierces the lives of three very different women. Laura has returned home for her mother's funeral after years in exile, only to discover her upbringing was based on a lie. Elderly Cress, who is the moral compass of the community, conceals her own vices, while young Abby walks the streets, her bruises wrapped in baggy clothes. But it is gentle Kieran, an unlikely guardian, who knows their secrets and watches over them. As their lives collide, what is buried can no longer remain hidden.
|  Death on the Ice by Robert Ryan
The story of one of the greatest epic journeys of all time. January 18, 1912: Captain Robert Falcon Scott's expedition reaches the South Pole. Just a few weeks later, trapped in one of the worst blizzards Antarctica has ever known, Scott and his four companions perish in subzero temperatures. How did the icy conditions overwhelm Scott, Captain Oates and their party on the fateful return journey? Both experienced explorers, neither Scott or Oates were prepared for the disappointment of losing their polar race against Norwegian Roald Amundsen. Nor could they have known that the accretion of a few small mistakes would ultimately cost them their lives. The story of Scott and Oates, their incredible journey and their tragic final days, combines ambition, national pride and the kind of bravery and dignity most men can only dream of. It is one of the most captivating and endlessly fascinating tales from the Golden Age of Exploration.
|  Tea Time for the Traditionally Built by Alexander McCall Smith
It is a troublesome fact on which even Mma Ramotswe and her assistant Mma Makutsi agree: there are things that men know and ladies do not, and vice versa. It is unfortunate, for example, when Mma Ramotswe's newest client is the big-shot owner of the ailing Kalahari Swoopers, that one thing lady detectives know very little about is football. And when the glamorous Violet Sephotho sets her sights on Mma Makutsi's unsuspecting fiance, it becomes exasperatingly clear that some men do not know how to recognise a ruthless Jezebel even when she is bouncing up and down on the best bed in the Double Comfort Furniture Shop. In her attempt to foster understanding between the sexes and find the traitor on Mr Football's team, Mma Ramotswe ventures into new territory, drinks tea in unfamiliar kitchens and learns to trust in the observational powers of small boys. And, as wise and warm-hearted as his heroine, Alexander McCall Smith reminds us that we must dig deep to uncover the goodness of the human heart.
|  Bridge of Sand by Janet Burroway
Dana, the widow of a US senator, buries her husband the morning of September 11, only miles from the Washington plane crash. After months of not knowing what to do, she sells her house and heads south in an effort to pick up the lost strands of her youth. Finding that her grandmother's house is now gone, replaced by a shopping mall, she phones an old acquaintance from her school days. Cassius Huston is black, separated from his jealous wife, and devoted to his three-year-old daughter. Much to their surprise, Cassius and Dana fall in love. But when Dana is threatened by Cassius's family, she flees to the coast, where she finally finds herself, and her life, in a place and culture she could never have anticipated. Set amid the blur of September 11, this wise novel of love, race, territory and self-discovery explores those issues that challenge us all.
|  The Crossroads by Niccolo Ammaniti
Cristiano is sixteen. Home life is far from perfect, and when his drink-sozzled father and two reprobate friends come up with a plan to rob a bank, Cristiano sees the chance of a better life. But as a tremendous storm brews that night, the perfect crime will have shocking consequences for all involved. And Cristiano must put childhood behind him once and for all. The utterly absorbing novel has pace, plot twists and glorious characters. An epic drama of innocence and delusion, The Crossroads is Ammaniti's most engaging novel yet.
|
New Release Non-Fiction |  Embracing the Wide Sky by Daniel Tammet
Owner of the most remarkable mind on the planet, (according to the US's Entertainment Weekly) Daniel Tammet captivated readers and won worldwide critical acclaim with the 2006 Sunday Times bestselling memoir, Born On A Blue Day, and its vivid depiction of a life with autistic savant syndrome. In his fascinating new book, he writes with characteristic clarity and personal awareness as he sheds light on the mysteries of savants' incredible mental abilities, and our own. Tammet explains that the differences between savant and non-savant minds have been exaggerated his astonishing capacities in memory, math and language are neither due to a cerebral supercomputer nor any genetic quirk, but are rather the results of a highly rich and complex associative form of thinking and imagination. Autistic thought, he argues, is an extreme variation of a kind that we all do, from daydreaming to the use of puns and metaphors. Embracing the Wide Sky combines meticulous scientific research with Tammet's detailed descriptions of how his mind works to demonstrate the immense potential within us all.
He explains how our natural intuitions can help us to learn a foreign language, why his memories are like symphonies, and what numbers and giraffes have in common. We also discover why there is more to intelligence than IQ, how optical illusions fool our brains, and why too much information can make you dumb. Many readers will be particularly intrigued by Tammet's original ideas concerning the genesis of genius and exceptional creativity. He illustrates his arguments with examples as diverse as the private languages of twins, the compositions of poets with autism, and the breakthroughs, and breakdowns, of some of history's greatest minds. Embracing the Wide Sky is a unique and brilliantly imaginative portrait of how we think, learn, remember and create, brimming with personal insights and anecdotes, and explanations of the most up-to-date, mind-bending discoveries from fields ranging ...
|  The Inheritance by David E. Sanger
During his seven years covering the White House for the New York Times, Chief Washington Correspondent David E. Sanger has had extraordinary and unrivaled access to presidents, world leaders and secretaries of state. Here, in The Inheritance, he gathers together all the evidence he has uncovered, both on and off the record, to offer us an insider's look at the many complex and oftentimes terrifying challenges that Obama now faces. Uncovering in fascinating detail the inner workings of the US military and intelligence communities, and describing the huge cost of the decision to invest so much of America, and Britain's, future on what once seemed like an easy mission in Iraq, Sanger talk us through the world this visionary new president now faces - a war gone bad in Afghanistan, a power-hungry Iran on the brink of nuclear weapons, an unstable alliance with Pakistan, a rising China and a worsening worldwide economic crisis.
Mapping the political landscape that Obama will inherit, this book examines the international arenas that will remain the focus of the entire western world throughout the years to come, and gives us a fascinating behind-the-scenes glimpse into the Situation Room of the presidency. If you want to understand the world today in all its complexity, there's only one book for you: The Inheritance by David E. Sanger.
|  Angels and Ages by Adam Gopnik
On February 12th, 1809, two men were born an ocean apart: Abraham Lincoln in a one-room Kentucky log cabin Charles Darwin on an English country estate. Each would see his life's work transform mankind's understanding of itself. In this bicentennial twin portrait, Adam Gopnik shows how these two giants, who never met, changed the way we think about the very nature of existence, and that their great achievements proceeded from the same source: argument from reason. The revolutions they effected shaped the world we live in, while the intellectual heritage and method that informed their parallel lives has profound implications for our present age. Filled with little-known stories and unfamiliar characters, Angels and Ages reveals these men in a new, shared light, and provides a fascinating insight into the origins of our modern vision and liberal values.
|  The Next 100 Years by George Friedman
Friedman offers a lucid, highly readable forecast of the changes we can expect around the world during the 21st century. He explains where and why future wars will erupt (and how they will be fought), which nations will gain and lose economic and political power, and how new technologies and cultural trends will alter the way we live in the new century. Drawing on history and geopolitical patterns dating back hundreds of years, he shows that we are now, for the first time in half a millennium, at the dawn of a new era - with changes in store including: the US-Jihadist war will conclude, to be replaced by a second full-blown cold war with Russia China will undergo a major extended internal crisis, and Mexico will emerge as an important world power a new global war will unfold toward the middle of the century between the US and an unexpected coalition from Eastern Europe, Eurasia and the Far East but armies will be much smaller and wars will be less deadly technology will focus on space - both for major military uses and for a dramatic new energy resource that will have radical environmental implications.
|  The Life You Can Save by Peter Singer
'What if I told you that you can save a life, even many lives? Do you have a bottle of water or a can of soda on the table beside you as you read this book? If you are paying for something to drink when safe drinking water comes out of the tap, you have money to spend on things you don't really need. Around the world, a billion people struggle to live each day on less than you paid for that drink. Because they can't afford even the most basic health care for their families, their children may die from simple, easily treatable diseases like diarrhoea. You can help them.' The Life You Can Save is the book that Peter Singer has wanted to write for thirty years. It is his argument about how we should respond to hunger and poverty. We live in a unique moment in history where the rich can genuinely help the poor to escape relentless poverty. But this will only happen if the rich care enough to make some small personal sacrifices.
|
|
What's up in the world of books?
|
|
Books in the Movies
Books make great material for film-makers.
See
the movie, then read the book!
Award Winners
Nominated and winning books of all the major
literary awards.
|
|
Farrells Events
Staff Favourites
Younger Readers
The Nest
The Museum of Mary Child
The Terrible Plop
Guantanamo Boy
Theodork
The Wrong Book
|
