Not every mistake deserves a consequence. Sometimes the only thing it deserves is forgiveness. The Voss family is anything but normal. They live in a repurposed church, newly baptized Dollar Voss. The once cancer-stricken mother lives in the basement, the father is married to the mother's former nurse, the little half-brother isn't allowed to do or eat anything fun, and the eldest siblings are irritatingly perfect. Then, there's Merit. Merit Voss collects trophies she hasn't earned and secrets her family forces her to keep. While browsing the local antiques shop for her next trophy, she finds Sagan. His wit and unapologetic idealism disarm and spark renewed life into her-until she discovers that he's completely unavailable. Merit retreats deeper into herself, watching her family from the sidelines, when she learns a secret that no trophy in the world can fix. Fed up with the lies, Merit decides to shatter the happy family illusion that she's never been a part of before leaving them behind for good. When her escape plan fails, Merit is forced to deal with the staggering consequences of telling the truth and losing the one boy she loves. Poignant and powerful, Without Merit explores the layers of lies that tie a family together and the power of love and truth.

Four famous siblings throw an epic party to celebrate the end of the summer. But over the course of twenty-four hours, the family drama that ensues will change their lives will change forever.

Malibu: August 1983. It?s the day of Nina Riva?s annual end-of-summer party, and anticipation is at a fever pitch. Everyone wants to be around the famous Rivas: Nina, the talented surfer and supermodel; brothers Jay and Hud, one a championship surfer, the other a renowned photographer; and their adored baby sister, Kit. Together the siblings are a source of fascination in Malibu and the world over?especially as the offspring of the legendary singer Mick Riva.

The only person not looking forward to the party of the year is Nina herself, who never wanted to be the center of attention, and who has also just been very publicly abandoned by her pro tennis player husband. Oh, and maybe Hud?because it is long past time for him to confess something to the brother from whom he?s been inseparable since birth.

Jay, on the other hand, is counting the minutes until nightfall, when the girl he can?t stop thinking about promised she?ll be there.

And Kit has a couple secrets of her own?including a guest she invited without consulting anyone.

By midnight the party will be completely out of control. By morning, the Riva mansion will have gone up in flames. But before that first spark in the early hours before dawn, the alcohol will flow, the music will play, and the loves and secrets that shaped this family?s generations will all come rising to the surface.

Malibu Rising is a story about one unforgettable night in the life of a family: the night they each have to choose what they will keep from the people who made them . . . and what they will leave behind.
 

Somewhere out beyond the edge of the universe there is a library that contains an infinite number of books, each one the story of another reality. One tells the story of your life as it is, along with another book for the other life you could have lived if you had made a different choice at any point in your life. While we all wonder how our lives might have been, what if you had the chance to go to the library and see for yourself? Would any of these other lives truly be better? In The Midnight Library, Matt Haig's enchanting blockbuster novel, Nora Seed finds herself faced with this decision. Faced with the possibility of changing her life for a new one, following a different career, undoing old breakups, realizing her dreams of becoming a glaciologist; she must search within herself as she travels through the Midnight Library to decide what is truly fulfilling in life, and what makes it worth living in the first place.

 A modern, sophisticated suspense novel from National Book Award finalist, and Printz Award honoree E. Lockhart. Don't miss the eagerly anticipated prequel, Family of Liars.

A beautiful and distinguished family.
A private island.
A brilliant, damaged girl; a passionate, political boy.
A group of four friends?the Liars?whose friendship turns destructive.
A revolution. An accident. A secret.
Lies upon lies.
True love.
The truth.

Read it.
And if anyone asks you how it ends, just LIE.
 

When Elizabeth Bennet first meets eligible bachelor Fitzwilliam Darcy, she thinks him arrogant and conceited; he is indifferent to her good looks and lively mind. When she later discovers that Darcy has involved himself in troubled relationship between his friend Bingley and her beloved sister Jane, she is determined to dislike him more than ever.

Love... it means too much to me, far more than you can understand. At its simplest, Anna Karenina is a love story. It is a portrait of a beautiful and intelligent woman whose passionate love for a handsome officer sweeps aside all other ties - to her marriage and to the network of relationships and moral values that bind the society around her. The love affair of Anna and Vronsky is played out alongside the developing romance of Kitty and Levin, and in the character of Levin, closely based on Tolstoy himself, the search for happiness takes on a deeper philosophical significance. One of the greatest novels ever written, Anna Karenina combines penetrating psychological insight with an encyclopedic depiction of Russian life in the 1870s. The novel takes us from high society St Petersburg to the threshing fields on Levin's estate, with unforgettable scenes at a Moscow ballroom, the skating rink, a race course, a railway station. It creates an intricate labyrinth of connections that is profoundly satisfying, and deeply moving. Rosamund Bartlett's translation conveys Tolstoy's precision of meaning and emotional accuracy in an English version that is highly readable and stylistically faithful. Like her acclaimed biography of Tolstoy, it is vivid, nuanced, and compelling.

Dispatched to the influential Japanese port of Dejima in 1799, ambitious clerk Jacob de Zoet resolves to earn enough money to deserve his wealthy fiancâee, an effort that is challenged by his relationship with the midwife daughter of a samurai.

One boy, one boat, one tiger . . . After the tragic sinking of a cargo ship, a solitary lifeboat remains bobbing on the wild, blue Pacific. The only survivors from the wreck are a sixteen-year-old boy named Pi, a hyena, a zebra (with a broken leg), a female orang-utan - and a 450-pound Royal Bengal tiger. The scene is set for one of the most extraordinary and best-loved works of fiction in recent years.

Tess of the d'Urbervilles is a novel about a poor young woman named Tess Durbeyfield whose father sends her to work for the rich Stoke-d'Urberville family, to whom he mistakenly believes they are related.

Alec Stoke-d'Urberville rapes Tess. She returns home, where she gives birth to a child who soon dies.Tess becomes a milkmaid at the Talbothays Dairy, where she falls in love with Angel Clare, a young intellectual she met years before. On their wedding night, Angel learns about Tess's past and abandons her.Angel leaves for Brazil, then returns to find that Tess has killed Alec. Tess is arrested and hanged.

His great book ... masterly in its prescience and its lucidity' ANITA DESAI A compelling portrait of a society in the grip of imperialism, A Passage to India depicts the fate of individuals caught in the great political and cultural conflicts of their age. It begins when Adela and her elderly companion Mrs Moore arrive in the Indian town of Chandrapore, and feel trapped by its insular and prejudiced British community. Determined to explore the 'real India', they seek the guidance of the charming and mercurial Dr Aziz. But a mysterious incident occurs while they are exploring the Marabar caves, and the well-respected doctor soon finds himself at the centre of a scandal.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is Jonathan Safran Foer's heartrending New York novelIn a vase in a closet, a couple of years after his father died in 9/11, nine-year-old Oskar discovers a key . . .The key belonged to his father, he's sure of that. But which of New York's 162 million locks does it open?So begins a quest that takes Oskar - inventor, letter-writer and amateur detective - across New York's five boroughs and into the jumbled lives of friends, relatives and complete strangers. He gets heavy boots, he gives himself little bruises and he inches ever nearer to the heart of a family mystery that stretches back fifty years. But will it take him any closer to, or even further from, his lost father?

With a new introduction from Margaret Atwoodl believe in the resistance as I believe there can be no light without shadow; or rather, no shadow unless there is also light. Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead, a religious totalitarian state in what was formerly known the United States. She is placed in the household of the Commander, Fred Waterford - her assigned name, Offred, means of Fred. She has only one function: to breed. If Offred refuses to enter into sexual servitude to repopulate a devastated world, she will be hanged. Yet even a repressive state cannot eradicate hope and desire. As she recalls her pre-revolution life in flashbacks, Offred must navigate through the terrifying landscape of torture and persecution in the present day, and between two men upon which her future hangs. Masterfully conceived and executed, this haunting vision of the future places Margaret Atwood at the forefront of dystopian fiction. As relevant Today as it was when Atwood wrote it. . . no television event has hit such a nerve . . .

van Italië. Broeder William Baskerville, een geleerde franciscaner monnik uit Engeland, komt als speciaal gezant van de keizer met een delicate diplomatieke opdracht naar Italië. Hij moet een ontmoeting organiseren tussen de van ketterij verdachte franciscanen en afgevaardigden van de paus. Al spoedig ontwikkelt zijn verblijf in de abdij zich echter tot een tijd vol apocalyptische verschrikkingen: zeven dagen en nachten zijn William en zijn metgezel Adson getuige van de wonderbaarlijkste en voor een abdij hoogst zonderlinge gebeurtenissen. Er worden zeven geheimzinnige misdaden gepleegd, die de muren van de ontoegankelijke, labyrintvormige bibliotheek met bloed besmeuren. Angstige geruchten gaan door de abdij; niet alleen de abt heeft iets te verbergen, overal worden sporen uitgewist. William, een voormalig inquisiteur, wordt door de onderzoekskoorts bevangen. De ontmaskering van de moordenaar gaat hem veel meer in beslag nemen dan de strijd tussen de keizer en de paus. Hij verzamelt aanwijzingen en ontcijfert manuscripten in geheimtaal. Steeds dieper dringt hij door tot de geheimen van de abdij. Het valt niet mee deze roman te benoemen. Is het een middeleeuwse kroniek, een detective, een ideologische sleutelroman of een allegorie?

Annie Proulx's highly acclaimed, international bestseller and Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. Quoyle is a hapless, hopeless hack journalist living and working in New York. When his no-good wife is killed in a spectacular road accident, Quoyle heads for the land of his forefathers - the remotest corner of far-flung Newfoundland. With 'the aunt' and his delinquent daughters - Bunny and Sunshine - in tow, Quoyle finds himself part of an unfolding, exhilarating Atlantic drama. 'The Shipping News' is an irresistible comedy of human life and possibility.

One of Britain’s most popular novels, George Orwell’s dystopian tale 1984 is set in a society terrorised by a totalitarian ideology propagated by the Party. ‘It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. ’Winston Smith works for the Ministry of Truth in London, chief city of Airstrip One. Big Brother stares out from every poster, the Thought Police uncover every act of betrayal. When Winston finds love with Julia, he discovers that life does not have to be dull and deadening, and awakens to new possibilities. Despite the police helicopters that hover and circle overhead, Winston and Julia begin to question the Party; they are drawn towards conspiracy. Yet Big Brother will not tolerate dissent – even in the mind. For those with original thoughts they invented Room 101. . . Nineteen Eighty-Four is George Orwell’s terrifying vision of a totalitarian future in which everything and everyone is slave to a tyrannical regime. the novel also coined many new words and phrases which regular appear in popular culture, such as ‘Big Brother’, ‘thoughtcrime’, ‘doublethink’ and ‘Newspeak’. ‘More relevant to Today that almost any other book that you can think of’ Jo Brand‘Right up there among my favourite books…I read it again and again’ Margaret AtwoodGeorge Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair) was an accomplished social, political and literary commentator and essayist known for his non-fiction works the Road to Wigan Pier and Homage to Catalonia. His most famous novels, Animal Farm and 1984 have influenced a generation of twentieth century political satirists and dystopian novelists. This edition of Orwell’s seminal novel is introduced by Professor Peter Davidson. Renegade street artist turned art professional, Shepard Fairey, has brought his iconic art to the cover of this literary masterpiece. Only one other of Orwell’s books, Animal Farm, has been re-jacketed with Fairey’s artwork. Impressive as they are potent, get ready to turn a few heads as these classics are eyed up with envy.

Born a Parsi in Bombay, sent to university and medical school in Vienna, Dr Farrokh Daruwalla is a Canadian citizen - a 59-year-old orthopaedic surgeon, living in Toronto. Once, twenty years ago, Dr Daruwalla was the examining physician of two murder victims in Goa. Now, two decades later, the doctor will be reacquainted with the murderer...

Homage to Catalonia remains one of the most famous accounts of the Spanish Civil War. With characteristic scrutiny, Orwell questions the actions and motives of all sides whilst retaining his firm beliefs in human courage and the need for radical social change. Part of the Macmillan Collector's Library; a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition is introduced by Helen Graham, a leading historian on the Spanish Civil War. When George Orwell arrived in Spain in 1936, he signed up to fight with the Republican army against Fascism. Homage to Catalonia is his bracing personal account of his experiences in the Spanish Civil War. From the front line he describes, with brutal honesty, the frustrations and inefficiencies of battle; he is caught up in vicious street fighting in Barcelona and must flee for his life when Republican factions turn on each other.

Solar vertelt het verhaal van Nobelprijswinnaar Michael Beard, een natuurkundige. Hij heeft een manier gevonden om de opwarming van de aarde tegen te gaan, maar Beard ligt zo vaak onder vuur in de media door zijn controversiële uitspraken over vrouwen (hij is inmiddels voor de vijfde keer getrouwd) dat er weinig aandacht is voor zijn ideeën over klimaatverandering. Door een krankzinnig ongeval ziet Beard zijn kans schoon zich te ontdoen van echtelijke moeilijkheden, zijn carrière nieuw leven in te blazen en de wereld een milieuramp te besparen. Ian McEwan ondernam in 2005 een expeditie naar de Noordpool met wetenschappers en kunstenaars die de inspiratie vormde voor Solar. Ondanks het serieuze onderwerp is deze satirische roman van Ian McEwan uitermate geestig van toon.

The perfect edition for any Orwell enthusiasts' collection, discover Orwell's personal account of life on the streets beautifully reimagined by renowned street artist Shepard Fairey To be poor and destitute in 1920s Paris and London was to experience life at its lowest ebb. George Orwell, penniless and with nowhere to go, found himself experiencing just this as he wandered the streets of both capitals in search of a job. By day, he tramped the streets, often passing time with 'screevers' or street artists, drunks and other hobos. At night, he stood in line for a bed in a 'spike' or doss house, where a cup of sugary tea, a hunk of stale bread and a blanket were the only sustenance and comfort on offer. First published in 1933, Down and Out in Paris and London is George Orwell's haunting account of the streets and those who have no choice but to live on them. 'A man who looked at his world with wonder and wrote down exactly what he saw, in admirable prose' John Mortimer COMPLETE THE TRIO WITH SHEPARD FAIREY'S NEW-LOOK 1984 AND ANIMAL FARM.

Animal Farm, by George Orwell - author of 1984, one of Britains most popular novels - is a brilliant political satire and a powerful and affecting story of revolutions and idealism, power and corruption. All animals are equal. But some animals are more equal than others. Mr Jones of Manor Farm is so lazy and drunken that one day he forgets to feed his livestock. the ensuing rebellion under the leadership of the pigs Napoleon and SnowAllleads to the animals taking over the farm. Vowing to eliminate the terrible inequities of the farmyard, the renamed Animal Farm is organised to benefit all who walk on four legs. But as time passes, the ideals of the rebellion are corrupted, then forgotten. And something new and unexpected emerges. . . Animal Farm - the history of a revolution that went wrong - is George Orwells brilliant satire on the corrupting influence of power. Remains our great satire of the darker face of modern history Malcolm Bradbury Animal Farm has seen off all the opposition. Its as valid as Today as it was fifty years ago Ralph Steadman George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair) was an accomplished social, political and literary commentator and essayist known for his non-fiction works the Road to Wigan Pier and Homage to Catalonia. His most famous novels, Animal Farm and 1984 have influenced a generation of twentieth century political satirists and dystopian novelists. Animal Farm received the W. H. Smith and Penguin Books Great Reads of the century award in 1995; this edition of Orwells seminal novella is introduced by Professor Peter Davidson.

Mede ter gelegenheid van Amsterdam Wereldboekenstad verschijnt op 23 april 2008, in fraaie gebonden editie, Amsterdam van Ian McEwan. Op een kille februariochtend in Londen ontmoeten twee oude vrienden elkaar bij de crematie van Molly Lane; het zijn de vooraanstaande componist Clive Linley en Vernon Halliday, hoofdredacteur van een kwaliteitskrant. Beide mannen hebben ooit een relatie met Molly gehad. Naar aanleiding van haar schokkende dood sluiten de twee een verbond dat hun vriendschap tot het uiterste zal beproeven.

Muziek speelt altijd een belangrijke rol in de boeken van Nick Hornby. In 31 songs beschrijft hij op een zeer herkenbare manier zijn favoriete popliedjes en de enorme invloed die deze muziek op zijn leven en werk had en heeft. Aan de hand van de werken van onder andere Bruce Springsteen, Patti Smith, Van Morrison en Nelly Furtado geeft Hornby niet alleen zijn persoonlijke mening over popmuziek maar schetst hij ook de achtergronden van zijn succesvolle romans als High fidelity en Een jongen (About a Boy).

One of the greatest achievements in comedy. A work of staggering genius' - David Walliams An international phenomenon and pop-culture classic, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has been a radio show, TV series, novel, stage play, comic book and film. Following the galactic (mis)adventures of Arthur Dent, Hitchhiker's in its various incarnations has captured the imaginations of curious minds around the world . . . It's an ordinary Thursday lunchtime for Arthur Dent until his house gets demolished. The Earth follows shortly afterwards to make way for a new hyperspace express route, and his best friend has just announced that he's an alien. At this moment, they're hurtling through space with nothing but their towels and an innocuous-looking book inscribed, in large friendly letters, with the words: DON'T PANIC. The weekend has only just begun . . . This 42nd Anniversary Edition includes exclusive bonus material from the Douglas Adams archives, and an introduction by former Doctor Who showrunner, Russell T Davies. Continue Arthur Dent's intergalactic adventures in the rest of the trilogy with five parts: The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Life, the Universe and Everything, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish, and Mostly Harmless.

 For disgraced TV presenter Martin Sharp the answer's pretty simple: he has, in his own words, 'pissed his life away'. And on New Year's Eve he's going to end it all . . . but not, as it happens, alone. Because first single-mum Maureen, then eighteen-year-old Jess and lastly American rock-god JJ turn up and crash Martin's private party. They've stolen his idea - but brought their own reasons. Yet it's hard to jump when you've got an audience queuing impatiently behind you. A few heated words and some slices if cold pizza later and these four strangers are suddenly allies. But is their unlikely friendship a good enough reason to carry on living? Shortlisted for the 2005 Whitbread Award and the Commonwealth Writers Prize, A Long Way Down is a darkly hilarious and moving novel by bestselling author Nick Hornby.

ollowing the smash-hit sci-fi comedy The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe is the second part in Douglas Adams' multi-media phenomenon and cult classic series. This edition includes exclusive bonus material from the Douglas Adams archives, and an introduction by Monty Python star, Terry Jones. If you've done six impossible things this morning, why not round it off with breakfast at Milliways, the Restaurant at the end of the Universe? Which is exactly what Arthur Dent and the crew of the Heart of Gold plan to do. There's just the small matter of escaping the Vogons, avoiding being taken to the most totally evil world in the Galaxy and teaching a space ship how to make a proper cup of tea. And did anyone actually make a reservation? Follow Arthur Dent's galactic (mis)adventures in the rest of the trilogy with five parts: Life, the Universe and Everything, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish, and Mostly Harmless.