ABACUS

(P/B) THE DEVOTION OF SUSPECT X
Yasuko lives a quiet life, working in a Tokyo bento shop, a good mother to her only child. But when her ex-husband appears at her door without warning one day, her comfortable world is shattered. When Detective Kusanagi of the Tokyo Police tries to piece together the events of that day, he finds himself confronted by the most puzzling, mysterious circumstances he has ever investigated. Nothing quite makes sense, and it will take a genius to understand the genius behind this particular crime... One of the biggest-selling Japanese thrillers ...
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(P/B) THE CITY AND THE PILLAR
Jim Willard, former high-school athlete and clean-cut boy-next-door-, is haunted by the memory of a romanctic adolescent encounter with his friend Bob Ford. As Jim pursues his first love, in awe of the very same masculinity he possesses himself, his progresss through the secret gay world of 1940's America unveils surreptitious Hollywood affairs, the hidden life of the military in the Second World War and the underworld bar culture of New York City. With the publication of his daring thrid novel The City and the Pillar in 1948, Gore Vidal s...
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(P/B) WHEN YOU ARE ENGULFED IN FLAMES
David Sedaris’s remarkable ability to uncover the hilarious absurdity teeming just below the surface of everyday life is elevated to wilder and more entertaining heights than ever in this new book of stories. Sedaris proceeds from bizarre conundrums of daily life - the etiquette of having a lozenge fall from your mouth into the lap of a fellow passenger or how to soundproof your windows with LP covers against neurotic songbirds - to the most deeply resonant human truths. Taking in the parasitic worm that once lived in his mother-in-law’s l...
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(P/B) THE AGE OF CAPITAL
The first and best, 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 global triumph of capitalism is the major theme of history in the decades after 1848. It was the triumph of a society which believed that economic growth rests on competitive private enterprise, on success in buying everything in the cheapest market (including labour) and selling it in the dearest. An eco...
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(P/B) THE BEST OF ME
In these pages, Sedaris explores falling in love and staying together, recognizing his own aging not in the mirror but in the faces of his siblings, losing one parent and coming to terms - at long last - with the other. Taken together, the stories in The Best of Me reveal the wonder and delight Sedaris takes in the surprises life brings him...(From the publisher)...
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(P/B) OBLIVION
A recognised master of form and a brilliant recorder of human behaviour, David Foster Wallace has been hailed as 'the most significant writer of his generation' (TLS). Each new book confirms and extends his genius, and this new short story collection is no exception. In the stories that make up OBLIVION, David Foster Wallace conjoins the rawest, most naked humanity with the infinite convolutions of self-consciousness - a combination that is dazzlingly, uniquely his. (From the publisher)...
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(P/B) NAKED
A riotous collection of memoirs which explores the absurd hilarity of modern life and creates a wickedly incisive portrait of an all-too-familiar world. It takes Sedaris from his humiliating bout with obsessive behaviour in 'A Plague of Tics' to the title story, where he is finally forced to face his naked self in the company of lunatics. At this soulful and moving moment, he brushes cigarette ashes from his pubic hair and wonders what it all means. This remarkable journey into his own life follows a path of self-effacement and a lifelong ...
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(P/B) A SUPPOSEDLY FUN THING I'LL NEVER DO AGAIN
A collection of insightful and uproariously funny non-fiction by the bestselling author of INFINITE JEST - one of the most acclaimed and adventurous writers of our time. A SUPPOSEDLY FUN THING... brings together Wallace's musings on a wide range of topics, from his early days as a nationally ranked tennis player to his trip on a commercial cruiseliner. In each of these essays, Wallace's observations are as keen as they are funny. Filled with hilarious details and invigorating analyses, these essays brilliantly expose the fault line in Amer...
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(P/B) VIVA LA REVOLUCION
Viva La Revolucion is Hobsbawm's magisterial work on Latin America, the fruit of forty years' writing about the continent. Eric Hobsbawm (1917-2012) wrote that Latin America was the only region of the world outside Europe which he felt he knew well and where he felt entirely at home. He claimed this was because it was the only part of the Third World whose two principal languages, Spanish and Portuguese, were within his reach. But he was also, of course, attracted by the potential for social revolution in Latin America. After the triumph o...
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(P/B) COSMOS
- The story of cosmic evolution, science and civilisation - Spacecraft missions to nearby planets - The Library of ancient Alexandria - The human brain - Egyptian hieroglyphics - The origin of life - The death of the sun - The evolution of galaxies - The origins of matter, suns and worlds. The story of fifteen billion years of cosmic evolution transforming matter and life into consciousness, of how science and civilisation grew up together, and of the forces and individuals who helped shape modern science. A story told with Carl Sagan's re...
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(P/B) THE AGE OF EMPIRE
The splendid finale to Eric Hobsbawm's study of the nineteenth century, THE AGE OF EMPIRE covers the area of Western Imperialism and examines the forces that swept the world to the outbreak of World War One- and shaped modern society....
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(P/B) THE AGE OF EXTREMES
THE AGE OF EXTREMES is eminent historian Eric Hobsbawm's personal vision of the twentieth century. Remarkable in its scope, and breathtaking in its depth of knowledge, this immensely rewarding book reviews the uniquely destructive and creative nature of the troubled twentieth century and makes challenging predicitions for the future. (From the publisher)...
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(P/B) THE WASP FACTORY
Frank, no ordinary sixteen-year-old, lives with his father outsIde a remote Scottish village. Their life is, to say the least, unconventional. Frank's mother abandoned them years ago: his elder brother Eric is confined to a psychiatric hospital; and his father measures out his eccentricities on an imperial scale. Frank has turned to strange acts of violence to vent his frustrations. In the bizarre daily rituals there is some solace. But when news comes of Eric's escape from the hospital Frank has to prepare the ground for his brother's ine...
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(P/B) THE GOLDFINCH
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 a...
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(P/B) CREATION
Son of a Persian prince and a Creek sorceress, grandson of the prophet Zoroaster, friend of Xerxes the Great King, ambassador to the courts of India, China and Greece, Cyrus Spitama is also the narrator of "Creation" and probably the greatest namedropper who ever lived. There were a lot of names to drop in the fifth century BC. Pericles, Thucydides, Sophocles, Confucius, Pythagoras and even Buddha walk on and off stage as the great and ancient empires reach their apex. And Cyrus, ever eager for knowledge and greatly given to gossip, learns...
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(P/B) INFINITE JEST
Somewhere in the not-so-distant future the residents of Ennet House, a Boston halfway house for recovering addicts, and students at the nearby Enfield Tennis Academy are ensnared in the search for the master copy of INFINITE JEST, a movie said to be so dangerously entertaining its viewers become entranced and expire in a state of catatonic bliss... (From the publisher)...
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(P/B) ME TALK PRETTY ONE DAY
Anyone that has read NAKED and BARREL FEVER, or heard David Sedaris speaking live or on the radio will tell you that a new collection from him is cause for jubilation. His recent move to Paris from New York inspired these hilarious new pieces, including 'Me Talk Pretty One Day', about his attempts to learn French from a sadistic teacher who declares that 'every day spent with you is like having a caesarean section'. His family is another inspiration. 'You Can't Kill the Rooster' is a portrait of his brother, who talks incessant hip-hop sla...
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(P/B) THE WISDOM OF CROWDS
In this landmark work, NEW YORKER columnist James Surowiecki explores a seemingly counter-intuitive idea that has profound implications. Decisions taken by a large group, even if the individuals within the group aren't smart, are always better than decisions made by small numbers of 'experts'. This seemingly simply notion has endless and major ramifications for how businesses operate, how knowledge is advanced, how economies are (or should be) organised and how nation-states fare. With great erudition, Surowiecki ranges across the discipli...
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(P/B) THE BROOM OF THE SYSTEM
The mysterious disappearance of her great- grandmother and twenty-five other elderly inmates from a Shaker Heights nursing home has left Lenore Stonecipher Beadsman emotionally stranded on the edge of the Great Ohio Desert. But that is simply one problem of many for the hapless switchboard operator, seriously compounded by her ongoing affair with boss Rick Vigorous; the TV stardom of her talking cockatiel, Vlad the Impaler; and other minor catastrophes that threaten to elevate Lenore's search for love and self-detemination to new heights o...
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(P/B) LESS
The Pulitzer prize-winning novel about a failed writer trying to escape his problems by traveling abroad. 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, Germa...
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