Random House Inc.

Umberto Eco, 2000

How we know that a cat is a cat is a nice philosophical poser, and has been since the time of Plato. Why we should all agree on calling the animal a cat is equally interesting, yet it throws up the problem that lies at the heart of all modern philosophy: how much do our perceptions of things depend on our cognitive ability, and how much on our linguistic resources? Where, and how, do these two questions meet? Having decided against a systematic treatment of his subject, Umberto Eco undertakes a series of idiosyncratic and typically brilliant explorations, starting from the perceived data of common sense, from which flow an abundance of 'stories' or fables, often with animals as protagonists, to expound a clear critique of Kant, Heidegger and Peirce. And, as a beast designed specifically to throw spanners in the works of cognitive theory, the duckbilled platypus naturally takes centre stage. Подробнее

The Kennedys

Matthew Smith, 2006

»The Kennedys» uncovers the truth behind the greatest conspiracy story of the twentieth century: the devastating plot against America's first family. Mind-boggling in its implications, the conspiracy aimed at changing the direction of American politics but went much further, altering the political direction of the whole world. In the view of the conspirators, John F. Kennedy should never have become president. His plans to put the needs of the people before those of big business were intolerable. There were fears that he had a socialist streak which might well be identifiable as communist. From the moment he took office, he was on his way out. It was only a question of time. This is a story of hatred, revenge and murder that was covered up by stark fear for many years. It is a tale of intrigue, unholy alliances and unimaginable callousness. Revealing the amalgamation of two potent forces dedicated to ridding the White House of the Kennedys, the question demanding to be asked is: who really ruled the United States? To many across the world, the answer may be frightening. «The Kennedys» is an unbelievably dramatic, dynamic and awesomely gripping work that will shock and enlighten many. Подробнее

Killing Hitler

Roger Moorhouse, 2007

Most people have heard of the Stauffenberg Plot — the attempt to kill Hitler launched by the German Resistance Movement on 20 July 1944. But it is not widely known that this was only one of a long series of similar attacks. «Killing Hitler» is an account of the surprisingly numerous attempts on the life of Adolf Hitler. The Germans, Soviets, Poles and British all made plans to kill the Fuhrer. Lone gunmen, disaffected German officers and the Polish Underground, the Soviet NKVD and the British Special Operations Executive were all involved. Their methods varied from bombing, poisoning or using a sniper, to infiltrating the SS, or even sending Rudolf Hess back to Germany under hypnosis. Many of the plans did not make it beyond the drawing board, some were carried out. All of them failed. Alongside the dramatic and largely unknown stories of Hitler's numerous assassins, this book presents a fascinating investigation of a number of broader issues, such as the complex motives of the German Resistance, the curious squeamishness of the British, and the effectiveness of the Nazi security apparatus. Drawing on memoirs and original archival sources in Poland, Germany, Russia and Britain, «Killing Hitler» offers a unique perspective on the history of the Third Reich. Hitler's would-be assassins ranged from simple craftsmen to high-ranking soldiers, from the apolitical to the ideologically obsessed, and from enemy agents to his closest associates. Few of these men and women are known to history. This is their story. It is the story of their plans, their motives and their failures. But it is also an account of the remarkable survival of a tyrant. Подробнее

King Matt The First

Janusz Korczak, 2005

This moving fable follows the adventures of Matt who becomes king when just a child and decides to reform his country according to his own priorities. Ignoring his grown-up ministers, he decrees that children should be given chocolate every day and builds the best zoo in the world. He fights in battles, braves the jungle, and crosses the desert, but perhaps the most life-altering thing of all is that the lonely boy king finds true friends. This timeless book shows us not only what children's literature can be, but what children can be. Подробнее

L: A. Confidential

James Ellroy, 2005

This work is set during Christmas of 1951. Los Angeles is a city where the police are as corrupt as the criminals. Six prisoners are beaten senseless in their cells by cops crazed on alcohol. For the three L. A. P. D. detectives involved, it will expose the guilty secrets on which they have built their corrupt and violent careers. Подробнее

The Lambs Of London

Peter Ackroyd, 2008

Mary Lamb is confined by the restrictions of domesticity: her father is losing his mind, her mother watchful and hostile. The great solace of her life is her brother Charles, an aspiring writer. It is no surprise when Mary falls for the bookseller's son, antiquarian William Ireland, from whom Charles has purchased a book. But this is no ordinary book — it once belonged to William Shakespeare himself. And William Ireland with his green eyes and his red hair, is no ordinary young man...The Lambs of London brilliantly creates an urban world of scholars and entrepreneurs, a world in which a clever son will stop at nothing to impress his showman father, and no one knows quite what to believe. Ingenious and vividly alive, The Lambs of London is a poignant, gripping novel of betrayal and deceit. Подробнее

The Last Don

Mario Puzo, 1997

This novel tells the story of the last great Mafia family, and its head, Don Domenico, describing his attempt to leave the world of crime and consolidate the family's power in Las Vegas and Hollywood. Подробнее

Le Bal

Irene Nemirovsky, 2007

»Le Bal» depicts the life of the Kampfs who, having recently gone up in the world thanks to luck with the stock decide to throw a ball in order to launch themselves into society. Their daughter Antoinette, who has just turned fourteen, dreams of attending. But Madame Kampf is resolved not to present her daughter, already so grown up, to her admirers. Instead, Antoinette is forced to sleep in the laundry room, as her bedroom is used as coatroom. In an unpremeditated fury of revolt and despair, Antoinette takes her revenge. It is swift and it is horrible. A cruel, funny and tender examination of class differences, of the dynamic between mother and daughter, «Le Bal» is ultimately dedicated to the torments of childhood. «Snow in Autumn» pays homage to Mirovsky's beloved Chekhov and chronicles the life of a devoted servant following her masters as they flee Revolutionary Moscow and emigrate to a life of hardship in Paris. Подробнее

Leonardo's Swans

Karen Essex, 2007

Sisters. Rivals. And the love of one man. Isabella and Beatrice d'Este are as different as night and day. Wordly and ambitious, Isabella's beauty and intellect are legendary across the courts of Europe, while her younger sister, a tomboy, prefers horses and the hunt. When Isabella is betrothed to the Marquis of Mantua, all her ambitions seem to come true — until Beatrice marries Ludovico, the powerful Duke of Milan. Suddenly, Isabella finds herself drawn to her sister's husband, a man as charismatic as he is dangerous. Once close, the sisters are now fierce rivals, for Ludovico's affections but also for the larger prize, to be immortalized by Milan's court painter, Leonardo da Vinci. Da Vinci's glittering genius is at its zenith, with such masterpieces as «The Last Supper» and the «Mona Lisa», but he constantly struggles not to let his noble patrons' incessant demands compromise his own artistic vision. Meanwhile, the black clouds of war are looming on the horizon. As Ludovico's gamble for power in Western Europe begins to fall apart, the sisters must choose — between passion and family, loyalty and survival. Подробнее

Life And Fate

Vasily Grossman, 2006

This sweeping account of the siege of Stalingrad aims to give as panoramic a view of Soviet society during World War II as Tolstoy did of Russian life in the epoch of the Napoleonic Wars. Completed in 1960 and then confiscated by the KGB, it remained unpublished at the author's death in 1964; it was smuggled into the West in 1980. Grossman offers a bitter, compelling vision of a totalitarian regime where the spirit of freedom that arose among those under fire was feared by the state at least as much as were the Nazis. His huge cast of characters includes an old Bolshevik now under arrest, a physicist pressured to make his scientific discoveries conform to «socialist reality» and a Jewish doctor en route to the gas chambers in occupied Russia. Ironically, just as Stalingrad is liberated from the Germans, many of the characters find themselves bound in new slavery to the Soviet government. Yet Grossman suggests that the spirit of freedom can never be completely crushed. His lengthy, absorbing novel, which rejected the compromises of a lifetime and earned its author denunciation and disgrace testifies eloquently to that spirit. Подробнее

The Long Tail

Chris Anderson, 2007

What happens when there is almost unlimited choice? When everything becomes available to everyone? And when the combined value of the millions of items that only sell in small quantities equals or even exceeds the value of a handful of best-sellers? In this ground-breaking book, Chris Anderson shows that the future of business does not lie in hits — the high-volume end of a traditional demand curve — but in what used to be regarded as misses — the endlessly long tail of that same curve. As our world is transformed by the Internet and the near infinite choice it offers consumers, so traditional business models are being overturned and new truths revealed about what consumers want and how they want to get it. Chris Anderson first explored the Long Tail in an article in «Wired» magazine that has become one of the most influential business essays of our time. Now, in this eagerly anticipated book, he takes a closer look at the new economics of the Internet age, showing where business is going and exploring the huge opportunities that exist: for new producers, new e-tailers, and new tastemakers. He demonstrates how long tail economics apply to industries ranging from the toy business to advertising to kitchen appliances. He sets down the rules for operating in a long tail economy. And he provides a glimpse of a future that's already here. Подробнее

The Lost Heart Of Asia

Colin Thubron, 2007

Thubron travelled throughout Central Asia in the wake of the break-up of the Soviet Union and documented the widespread social upheaval in a region reeling from political change. An inspirational writer, intrepid traveller and insightful observer, Thubron's «The Lost Heart of Asia» is an outstanding guide to the history, people and culture of a vast region resonating with history and politics. Подробнее

Lost Temple

Tom Harper, 2007

For three thousand years, the world's most dangerous treasure has been lost. Now the code that reveals its hiding place is about to be broken...Sam Grant is a disgraced ex-SOE soldier and an adventurer by trade. But he has a secret: six years ago, a dying archaeologist entrusted him with his life's work — transcripts of mysterious writing found in a hidden cave on Crete. Deciphered, it could lead to one of the greatest prizes in history. But the treasure is as dangerous as it is valuable. The CIA wants it; so does the KGB. Helped by a brilliant Oxford professor, and a beautiful Greek archaeologist with her own secrets to hide, Grant is plunged into a labyrinth of ancient cults, forgotten mysteries and lost civilizations. But time is running out. The secrets of the distant past may hold the key to the newest threats of the modern world... Подробнее

The Lost World (film tie-in)

Michael Crichton, 1997

It is now six years since the disaster at Jurassic Park; six years since the extraordinary dream of science and imagination came to a crashing end — the dinosaurs destroyed, the park dismantled, the island indefinitely closed to the public. There are rumours that something survived. Подробнее

Love Lessons

Jacqueline Wilson, 2006

Fourteen-year-old Prue and her sister Grace have been educated at home by their controlling, super-strict father all their lives. They know they are different to 'normal' girls but their attempts to find out what being an ordinary teenager are like — buying nice clothes instead of wearing Mum's odd hand-made garments, reading teenage magazines etc — are greeted with fury by their Dad. But when Dad has a stroke and ends up in hospital, unable to move or speak, Prue suddenly discovers what it's like to have a little freedom. Unable to cope with their education and a sick husband, the girls' mother sends them to the local comprehensive and they experience school life for the first time. Prue had never thought it would be so bitchy and that she'd find it so hard to fit in. The only person she can talk to is her kindly, young, handsome Art teacher, Rax. She and Rax bond over art lessons, and soon he asks to babysit for his young children while he and his wife have a night out on a Friday. This becomes a regular 'date' and Prue can't wait for the ten minutes they have along together as he drives her home. As her feelings for Rax develop, she begins to realise that perhaps he feels the same way about her. But he can't act upon them, can he? This title presents an absorbing portrait of a forbidden relationship for teenage readers from the mega bestselling Jacqueline Wilson. Подробнее

Lullaby

Chuck Palahniuk, 2003

Carl Streator is a reporter investigating Sudden Infant Death Syndrome for a soft-news feature. After responding to several calls with paramedics, he notices that all the dead children were read the same poem from the same library book the night before they died. It's a 'culling song' — an ancient African spell for euthanizing sick or old people. Researching it, he meets a woman who killed her own child with it accidentally. He himself accidentally killed his own wife and child with the same poem twenty years earlier. Together, the man and the woman must find and destroy all copies of this book, and try not to kill every rude sonofabitch that gets in their way. Lullaby is a comedy/drama/tragedy. In that order. It may also be Chuck Palahniuk's best book yet. Подробнее

Mad Madge

Katie Whitaker, 2004

Mad Madge designed her own clothes and her coach was black with silver decoration. As John Evelyn wrote, gentlemen visitors were 'much pleased by the extraordinary fanciful habit, garb and discourse of the Duchess'. Born into an East Anglian royalist family in 1623, young Margaret Lucas went into Court service, accompanying the Queen, Henrietta Maria, to Oxford during the Civil War and sharing her hair-raising escape to France in 1644. In Paris, she met and married William Cavendish, Marquis of Newcastle, a great horseman. They lived together in exile for 10 years, as part of the migr-royalist circle that included aristocrats and the intellectual giants of the day, such as Descartes and Hobbes. Margaret had always loved poetry and philosophy — and now she became a writer. Plays, short fiction, fantasies, 'science fiction' and verse, orations, letters, essays, an autobiography and a biography, six philosophical treatises and one utopia — She made her mark as one of the most determined and prolific of female writers in an age when less than one per cent of published work was by women and society was shocked that she dared to publish under her own name. Подробнее

The Magdalene Cipher

Jim Hougan, 2006

This is a stunning international thriller of psychology and conspiracy, espionage and prophecy, history and suspense. After someone he has under surveillance is slaughtered — literally — CIA agent Jack Dunphy is ordered to leave London immediately and return to the US, where he is dumped into a tedious desk job that seems calculated to make him quit. Determined to learn why, Dunphy uses all his CIA tradecraft on the agency that has turned against him — and discovers the fragments of a story that seems too wild to be true, providing him with evidence of a conspiracy that goes back to the time of Christ, a conspiracy so vast and deep and old that the CIA itself is but a cover for it. Embroiled in a plot far more elaborate than he ever could have imagined, with players too powerful and consequences too deadly, Dunphy must uncover the shocking truth — or die trying... Подробнее

A Maggot

John Fowles, 1996

»A Maggot» is not a historical novel in the normal sense. It began as a quirk or obsession (a 'maggot' in the archaic sense of the word) which found its setting in the second wave of Protestant Dissent in England. It took shape as a mystery — a compelling investigation of unaccountable motives and deeds — which led through beguiling paths to a starling vision at its centre. Подробнее

The Magus

John Fowles, 2004

On a remote Greek Island, Nicholas Urfe finds himself embroiled in the deceptions of a master trickster. As reality and illusion intertwine, Urfe is caught up in the darkest of psychological games...John Fowles expertly unfolds a tale that is lush with over-powering imagery in a spellbinding exploration of the complexities of the human mind. By turns disturbing, thrilling and seductive, The Magus is a cerebral feast. Подробнее

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