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Pompeii

Harris Robert, 2004

A sweltering week in late August. Where better to enjoy the last days of summer than on the beautiful Bay of Naples? But even as Rome's richest citizens relax in their villas around Pompeii and Herculaneum, there are ominous warnings that something is going wrong. Wells and springs are failing, a man has disappeared, and now the greatest aqueduct in the world — the mighty Aqua Augusta — has suddenly ceased to flow...Through the eyes of four characters — a young engineer, an adolescent girl, a corrupt millionaire and an elderly scientist — Robert Harris brilliantly recreates a luxurious world on the brink of destruction. Подробнее

Porno

Irvine Welsh, 2008

Ten years on from Trainspotting, Simon 'Sick Boy' Williamson is back in Edinburgh after a long spell in London. Having failed spectacularly as a hustler, pimp, husband, father and businessman, Sick Boy taps into an opportunity, which to him represents one last throw of the dice. However, to realize his dream of directing and producing a pornographic movie, Sick Boy must team up with old pal and fellow exile Mark Renton and a motley crew that includes the city's favourite ex-aerated-water-salesman, 'Juice' Terry Lawson. In the world of Porno, however, nothing is straightforward, as Sick Boy and Renton find out that they have unresolved issues to address, concerning the increasingly unhinged Frank Begbie, the troubled, drug-addled Spud, but, most of all, with each other. Подробнее

Putin's Russia

Anna Politkovskaya, 2004

Former KGB spy Vladimir Putin, named Prime Minister of Russia in 1999 and, one year later, President, has been something of a media darling in the West, having successfully marketed himself as an enlightened leader with both feet planted firmly on the Eastern borders of Europe. Anti-establishment journalist and human-rights activist Anna Politkovskaya disagrees strenuously with this point of view. In her new book, she trains her steely gaze on, as she puts at, Putin «without the rapture». From her privileged vantage-point at the heart of Russian current affairs, Politkovskaya reports from behind the scenes, dismantling both Putin the man and Putin the brand name, arguing that he is a power-hungry product of his own history in the security forces and so unable to prevent himself from stifling dissent and other civil liberties at every turn. After centuries of living under tyrants, Politkovskaya argues, this is not what contemporary Russians want. The book is, however, not simply a biography or an analysis of Putin's presidency. Politkovskaya's writing is known for its humanity and its passion, and her focus is on individual human beings and their stories. As she puts it, «my book is jottings made on the margins of life in Russia. For the time being, I cannot analyse that existence. I'm just living and noting what I see». So her readers are treated to expos-s of mafia dealings and scandals in the provinces, of corruption in the military and the judiciary, of the decline of the dissident intelligentsia and concomitant rise of street traders, and of the truth behind the Moscow theatre siege. Other shocking stories fill out an intimate portrait of nascent civil institutions being subverted under the unquestioning eyes of the West. Подробнее

Q

Luther Blissett, 2004

Set in Reformation Europe, Q begins with Luther's nailing of his 95 theses on the door of the cathedral church in Wittenberg and traces the adventures and conflicts of two central characters, an Anabaptist, a member of the most radical of the Protestant sects, the anarchists of the Reformation, and a Catholic spy and informer, as they travel across Germany, Italy and the Netherlands. The four young writers who shelter behind the pseudonym Luther Blissett have created a world of intrigue, violence and intense political and religious passion. Far from the traditional historical novel, Q is the stuff of which cults are made. Подробнее

The Quiet American

Graham Greene, 2007

Into the intrigue and violence of Indo-China comes Pyle, a young idealistic American sent to promote democracy through a mysterious 'Third Force'. As his naive optimism starts to cause bloodshed, his friend Fowler, a cynical foreign correspondent, finds it hard to stand aside and watch. But even as he intervenes he wonders why: for the sake of politics, or for love? Подробнее

Reading Between The Lines

Linda Taylor, 2003

When she chucked in her safe job to read English at Oxford, Julia Cole didn't give a thought to the future. But now she's thirty, newly graduated and it's pay-back time — at least as far as the bank is concerned. With a cat providing her only male company, Blind Date her only Saturday night engagement and her last relationship further in the past than a pay cheque, she can't help wondering if she's missing the point. Until the tall, handsome Rob strides into the class she teaches. And then his alarming brother Leo, a barrister with a penchant for cross-examining, strides into her friend Maggie's party and puts Julia in the stand. Suddenly, Julia's life is hotting up. But is she taking both brothers at face value? And is she overlooking the obvious? Perhaps Julia should try reading between the lines... Подробнее

Red Dragon

Harris Thomas, 1993

Sexual hunger; demonic violence; sinister logic — the lethal components of a deadly formula driving a psychopath in the grip of an unimaginable delusion; a boastful killer who sends the police tormenting notes; a tortured, torturing monster who finds ultimate pleasure in viciously murdering happy families, and calls himself... The Red Dragon. Special agent Will Graham has been assigned to similar cases before, cases where he was able to see and feel WITH the madmen, anticipate their moves and, most terrifying of all, be vulnerable to their horrifying brutality. Now Graham is reluctantly lured out of retirement, to find an opening to the evil mind of the Red Dragon. Red Dragon is quite probably the most suspenseful, utterly compelling thriller ever Подробнее

Red Dust

Ma Jian, 2006

'My painter friends think I am a die-hard conservative, my writer friends think I am a man of loose morals. In Jushlin Temple I am a quiet disciple, in the Propaganda Department I am a decadent youth. Women call me a cynical artist, the police call me a hooligan. Well, they can think what they like. I only have 20,000 days left to live'. In 1983, Ma Jian turned 30 and was overwhelmed by the desire to escape the confines of his life in Beijing. All around him, China was changing. Deng Xiaoping was introducing economic reform but clamping down on 'Spiritual Pollution'; and young people were rebelling. With his long hair, denim jeans and artistic friends, Ma Jian was under surveillance from his work unit and the police. His ex-wife was seeking custody of their daughter; his girlfriend was sleeping with another man; and he could no longer find the inspiration to write or paint. One day he bought a train ticket to the westernmost border of China and set off in search of himself. Ma Jian's journey would last three years and take him to deserts and overpopulated cities, from scenes of barbarity to havens of tranquillity and beauty. The result is an utterly unique book: an insight into the teeming contradictions of China that only a man who was both an insider and an outsider in his own country could have written. Подробнее

Ripley Under Ground

Patricia Highsmith, 1999

Tom Ripley is a man who wants money, success, the good life — and is willing to kill for it. To avoid charges of forgery, the Buckmaster Gallery must produce the British painter, Derwatt. But he is dead. Tom Ripley is called in to work miracles, and will stop at nothing to protect himself. Подробнее

Ripley's Game

Patricia Highsmith, 1999

Tom Ripley detests murder — unless it is absolutely necessary. If possible he prefers someone else to do the dirty work; in this case, a victim of a fatal disease, with no criminal record, who will murder for a reward, in order to provide for his young widow and child. Подробнее

Rising Sun

Michael Crichton, 1995

On the 45th floor of the Matsumoto Tower in LA, the headquarters of the Japanese Electronics Corporation, celebrities from the film and music world mix with the captains of industry and politics. On the 46th floor, the dead body of a young woman is discovered. By the author of «Jurassic Park». Подробнее

A Russian Diary

Anna Politkovskaya, 2007

A devastating account of contemporary Russia by a great and brave writer. A Russian Diary is the book that Anna Politkovskaya had recently completed when she was murdered in a contract killing in Moscow. It covers the period from the Russian elections of December 2003 to the tragic aftermath of the Beslan school siege in late 2005. The book is an unflinching record of the plight of millions of Russians and a pitiless report on the cynicism and corruption of Vladimir Putin's presidency. She interviews people whose lives have been devastated by Putin's policies, including the mothers of children who died in the Beslan siege, those of Russian soldiers maimed in Chechnya then abandoned by the State, and of «disappeared» young men and women. Elsewhere she meets traumatized and dangerous veterans of the Chechen wars, and a notorious Chechen warlord in his fortified lair. Putin is re-elected as President in farcically undemocratic circumstances and yet Western leaders, reliant on Russia's oil and gas reserves, continue to pay him homage. Politkovskaya offers a chilling account of his dismantling of the democratic reforms made in the 1990s. She also criticizes the inability of liberals and democrats to provide a united, effective opposition and a population slow to protest against government legislative outrages. A Russian Diary is clear-sighted, passionate and marked with the humanity that made Anna Politkovskaya known to many as «Russia's lost moral conscience» and a heroine to readers throughout the world. Подробнее

Russian Disco

Wladimir Kaminer, 2002

Greeks living in Germany who speak Italian because they run a pizzeria; Katka, whose mescalin cactus enables her to separate body and mind, with the result that they check in a psychiatric clinic together; Klaus who tries to broaden his vocabulary with the help of a radio programme, Russian for Children, and promptly ends up in jail on his first visit to Moscow; contract killers on the trams; bodies in the basement; lunatics on the road: welcome to the wonderfully absurd world of Wladimir Kaminer. Kaminer moved from Moscow to Berlin ten years ago in a lucky wave of emigration, hoping for a better life and an apartment of his own. But, he found much more: a country adrift in the extraordinary flux of reunification and a city that was casting a spell on artists, drifters, losers and hopeless idealists. Of his encounters with these people, Kaminer makes unforgettable tales of compassion and humour. And in relating the singulary offbeat encounters of his own life, he manages to capture something universal about our disjointed times. Подробнее

Russka

Edward Rutherfurd, 2008

In this vast and gorgeous tapestry of a novel, serf and master, Cossack and tsar, priest and Jew are brought together in a family saga which unrolls through centuries of history to reveal that most impenetrable and mysterious of lands...Russia. Through the life of a little town east of Moscow in the Russian heartland, Edward Rutherfurd creates a sweeping family saga from the baffling contradictions of Russia's culture and her people — bleak yet exotic, brutal but romantic, land of ritual yet riddled with superstitious fears. From Russia's dawn and the cruel Tartar invasions to Ivan the Terrible and the wild Cossacks, from Peter, Catherine and the days of 'War and Peace' to the drama of the Revolution and the extraordinary events of today — here is Russia's story in a spellbinding novel...history recreated with breathtaking detail and passion. Подробнее

The Satanic Verses

Salman Rushdie, 1998

No book in modern times has matched the uproar sparked by Salman Rushdie's «The Satanic Verses», which earned its author a death sentence. Furor aside, it is a marvelously erudite study of good and evil, a feast of language served up by a writer at the height of his powers, and a rollicking comic fable. The book begins with two Indians, Gibreel Farishta («for fifteen years the biggest star in the history of the Indian movies») and Saladin Chamcha, a Bombay expatriate returning from his first visit to his homeland in 15 years, plummeting from the sky after the explosion of their jetliner, and proceeds through a series of metamorphoses, dreams and revelations. Rushdie's powers of invention are astonishing in this Whitbread Prize winner. Подробнее

Saturday

Ian McEwan, 2006

Saturday, February 15, 2003. Henry Perowne is a contented man — a successful neurosurgeon, the devoted husband of Rosalind and proud father of two grown-up children. Unusually, he wakes before dawn, drawn to the window of his bedroom and filled with a growing unease. What troubles him as he looks out at the night sky is the state of the world — the impending war against Iraq, a gathering pessimism since 9/11, and a fear that his city and his happy family life are under threat. Later, Perowne makes his way to his weekly squash game through London streets filled with hundreds of thousands of anti-war protestors. A minor car accident brings him into a confrontation with Baxter, a fidgety, aggressive, young man, on the edge of violence. To Perowne's professional eye, there appears to be something profoundly wrong with him. Towards the end of a day rich in incident and filled with Perowne's celebrations of life's pleasures, his family gathers for a reunion. But with the sudden appearance of Baxter, Perowne's earlier fears seem about to be realised. Подробнее

Scavenger Hunt

Robert Ferrigno, 2004

Death stalks the city of angels...Jimmy Gage, a reporter for «SLAP» magazine, stumbles on an explosive story while interviewing Garrett Walsh, an Oscar-winning Hollywood director who has just finished serving time for the murder of a teenage actress. Walsh swears he's not guilty and tells Gage he's written a movie about what really happened — «The Most Dangerous Screenplay in Hollywood». Gage is sceptical, but when Walsh turns up dead — and the screenplay missing — he goes to work to find out the truth. Подробнее

The Science Of Discworld

Terry Pratchett, 2002

When a wizardly experiment goes adrift, the wizards of Unseen University find themselves with a pocket universe on their hands: Roundworld, where neither magic nor common sense seems to stand a chance against logic. The Universe, of course, is our own. And Roundworld is Earth. As the wizards watch their accidental creation grow, we follow the story of our universe from the primal singularity of the Big Bang to the Internet and beyond. Through this original Terry Pratchett story (with intervening chapters from Cohen and Stewart) we discover how puny and insignificant individual lives are against a cosmic backdrop of creation and disaster. Yet, paradoxically, we see how the richness of a universe based on rules, has led to a complex world and at least one species that tried to get a grip of what was going on. Подробнее

The Science Of Discworld II

Terry Pratchett, 2003

The acclaimed Science of Discworld centred around an original Pratchett story about the Wizards of Discworld. In it they accidentally witnessed the creation and evolution of our universe, a plot which was interleaved with a Cohen & Stewart non-fiction narrative about Big Science. In The Science of Discworld II our authors join forces again to see just what happens when the wizards meddle with history in a battle against the elves for the future of humanity on Earth. London is replaced by a dozy Neanderthal village. The Renaissance is given a push. The role of fat women in art is developed. And one very famous playwright gets born and writes The Play. Weaving together a fast-paced Discworld novelette with cutting-edge scientific commentary on the evolution and development of the human mind, culture, language, art, and science, this is a book in which 'the hard science is as gripping as the fiction'. Подробнее

Darwin's Watch: Science of Discworld III

Terry Pratchett, 2006

Roundworld is in trouble again, and this time it looks fatal. Having created it in the first place, the wizards of Unseen University feel vaguely responsible for its safety. They know the creatures who lived there escaped the impending Big Freeze by inventing the space elevator — they even intervened to rid the planet of a plague of elves, who attempted to divert humanity onto a different time track. But now it's all gone wrong — Victorian England has stagnated and the pace of progress would embarrass a limping snail. Unless something drastic is done, there won't be time for anyone to invent spaceflight and the human race will be turned into ice-pops. Why, though, did history come adrift? Was it Sir Arthur Nightingale's dismal book about natural selection? Or was it the devastating response by an obscure country vicar called Charles Darwin, whose bestselling «Theology of Species» made it impossible to refute the divine design of living creatures? Either way, it's no easy task to change history, as the wizards discover to their cost. Can the God of Evolution come to humanity's aid and ensure Darwin writes a very different book? And who stopped him writing it in the first place? Подробнее

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