FOURTH ESTATE

(P/B) Butter
The cult Japanese bestseller about a female gourmet cook and serial killer and the journalist intent on cracking her case, inspired by a true story, and translated by Polly Barton. There are two things that I can simply not tolerate: feminists and margarine. Gourmet cook Manako Kajii sits in Tokyo Detention Centre convicted of the serial murders of lonely businessmen, who she is said to have seduced with her delicious home cooking. The case has captured the nation's imagination but Kajii refuses to speak with the press. That is, until jour...
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(P/B) DREAM COUNT
Chiamaka is a Nigerian travel writer living in America. Alone in the midst of the pandemic, she recalls her past lovers and grapples with her choices and regrets. Zikora, her best friend, is a lawyer who has been successful at everything until - betrayed and brokenhearted - she must turn to the person she thought she needed least. Omelogor, Chiamaka's bold, outspoken cousin, is a financial powerhouse in Nigeria who begins to question how well she knows herself. And Kadiatou, Chiamaka's housekeeper, is proudly raising her daughter in Americ...
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(P/B) HALF OF A YELLOW SUN
Winner of the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction 2007, this is a heartbreaking, exquisitely written literary masterpiece Ugwu, a boy from a poor village, works as a houseboy for a university professor. Olanna, a young woman, has abandoned her life of privilege in Lagos to live with her charismatic new lover, the professor. And Richard, a shy English writer, is in thrall to Olanna's enigmatic twin sister. As the horrific Biafran War engulfs them, they are thrown together and pulled apart in ways they had never imagined. Chimamanda Ngozi Adi...
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(P/B) WE SHOULD ALL BE FEMINISTS
What does feminism mean today? In this personal, eloquently argued essay - adapted from her much-admired TEDx talk of the same name - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie offers readers a unique definition of feminism for the twenty-first century, one rooted in inclusion and awareness. Drawing extensively on her own experiences and her deep understanding of the often masked realities of sexual politics, here is one remarkable author's exploration of what it means to be a woman now - an of-the-moment rallying cry for why we should all be feminists. (Fr...
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(P/B) CLEOPATRA AND FRANKENSTEIN
New York is slipping from Cleo's grasp. Sure, she's at a different party every other night, but she barely knows anyone. Her student visa is running out, and she doesn't even have money for cigarettes. But then she meets Frank. Twenty years older, Frank's life is full of all the success and excess that Cleo's lacks. He offers her the chance to be happy, the freedom to paint, and the opportunity to apply for a green card. She offers him a life imbued with beauty and art―and, hopefully, a reason to cut back on his drinking. He is everything ...
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(P/B) ESSENTIAL BUKOWSKI
Here is Bukowski eating walnuts and scratching his back, rolling a cigarette while listening to Brahms, showering with Linda in the mid-afternoon. Here is Bukowski knowing that the secret is beyond him, that people who never go crazy live truly horrible lives, that there's a bluebird in his heart that wants to get out. Here is Bukowski at his most hilarious and heart-breaking, his most raw and profound; here is Bukowski at his best. The definitive collection from a writer whose transgressive legacy and raw, funny, acutely observant writing...
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(P/B) CROSSROADS
It's 23 December 1971, and the Hildebrandts are at a crossroads. Fifteen-year-old Perry has resolved to be a better person and quit dealing drugs to seventh graders. His sister Becky, the once straight-laced high school social queen, has veered into counterculture, while at college, Clem is wrestling with a decision that might tear his family apart. As their parents - Russ, a suburban pastor, and Marion, his restless wife - tug against the bonds of a joyless marriage, Crossroads finds a family, and a nation, struggling to do the right thin...
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(P/B) The Persians
A stunning debut novel following five women from three generations of a once illustrious Iranian family as their lives are turned upside down. Meet the women of the Valiat family. In Iran, they were somebodies. In America, they're nobodies. First there is Elizabeth, the regal matriarch with the famously large nose, who remained in Tehran despite the revolution. She is kept company by Niaz, her young, Islamic-law-breaking granddaughter. In America, Elizabeth's two daughters have built new lives for themselves. There's Shirin, a flamboyantly...
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(P/B) AMERICANAH
From the award-winning author of 'Half of a Yellow Sun,' a powerful story of love, race and identity. As teenagers in Lagos, Ifemelu and Obinze fall in love. Their Nigeria is under military dictatorship, and people are fleeing the country if they can. The self-assured Ifemelu departs for America. There she suffers defeats and triumphs, finds and loses relationships, all the while feeling the weight of something she never thought of back home: race. Obinze had hoped to join her, but post-9/11 America will not let him in, and he plunges into...
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(P/B) Butter
There are two things that I can simply not tolerate: feminists and margarine. Gourmet cook Manako Kajii sits in Tokyo Detention Centre convicted of the serial murders of lonely businessmen, who she is said to have seduced with her delicious home cooking. The case has captured the nation's imagination but Kajii refuses to speak with the press, entertaining no visitors. That is, until journalist Rika Machida writes a letter asking for her recipe for beef stew and Kajii can't resist writing back. Rika, the only woman in her news office, works...
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(P/B) THE VIRGIN SUICIDES
Previously adapted into a critically acclaimed film by Sofia Coppola starring Kirsten Dunst, this is the story of the five Lisbon sisters - beautiful, eccentric, and obsessively watched by the entire neighbourhood. The boys that once loved them from afar are now grown men, determined to understand a tragedy that has always defied explanation. For still, the question remains - why did all five of the Lisbon girls take their own lives? This hypnotic and unforgettable novel treats adolescent love and death with haunting sensitivity and dark h...
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(P/B) BRING UP THE BODIES
With this historic win for 'Bring Up the Bodies', Hilary Mantel becomes the first British author and the first woman to be awarded two Man Booker Prizes (her first was for 'Wolf Hall' in 2009). By 1535 Thomas Cromwell is Chief Minister to Henry VIII, his fortunes having risen with those of Anne Boleyn, the king's new wife. But Anne has failed to give the king an heir, and Cromwell watches as Henry falls for plain Jane Seymour. Cromwell must find a solution that will satisfy Henry, safeguard the nation and secure his own career. But neither...
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(P/B) Butcher
From one of our most accomplished storytellers, an extraordinary and arresting novel about a women's asylum in the nineteenth century, and a terrifying doctor who wants to change the world. In this harrowing story based on authentic historical documents, we follow the career of Dr. Silas Weir, "Father of Gyno-Psychiatry," as he ascends from professional anonymity to national renown. Humiliated by a procedure gone terribly wrong, Weir is forced to take a position at the New Jersey Asylum for Female Lunatics, where he reigns. There, he is al...
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(P/B) THE PLOTTERS
A dark, funny, deliciously different literary thriller about a jaded hitman, set in the criminal underworld of Seoul. Plotters are just pawns like us. A request comes in and they draw up the plans. There's someone above them who tells them what to do. And above that person is another plotter telling them what to do. You think that if you go up there with a knife and stab the person at the very top, that'll fix everything. But no-one's there. It's just an empty chair. Reseng was raised by cantankerous Old Raccoon in the Library of Dogs. To ...
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(P/B) THE THING AROUND YOUR NECK
From the Orange Prize-winning author of 'Half of a Yellow Sun' come twelve dazzling stories that turn a penetrating eye on the ties that bind men and women, parents and children, Nigeria and the West. In 'A Private Experience', a medical student hides from a violent riot with a poor Muslim woman whose dignity and faith force her to confront the realities and fears she's been pushing away. In 'Tomorrow Is Too Far', a woman unlocks the devastating secret that surrounds her brother's death. The young mother at the centre of 'Imitation' finds ...
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(P/B) FRESH COMPLAINT
AN OBSERVER BOOK OF THE YEAR AN EVENING STANDARD BOOK OF THE YEAR The first-ever collection of short stories from Jeffrey Eugenides, the bestselling author of Middlesex, The Virgin Suicides and The Marriage Plot, explores characters in the midst of personal and national emergencies. Kendall has failed as a poet, and now embezzlement seems like his next-best career option. Rebecca has failed to find customers for her mouse figurines, now the bailiffs are coming for her husband. Diane has failed to meet the one', but is thrilled to have foun...
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(P/B) Blue Sisters
The Blue sisters have always been exceptional - and exceptionally different. Avery, a strait-laced lawyer living in London, is the typical eldest daughter, though she's hiding a secret that could undo her perfect life forever. Bonnie was a boxer but, following a devastating defeat, she's been working as a bouncer in LA - until a reckless act one night threatens to drive her out of the city. And Lucky, the rebellious youngest, is a model in Paris whose hard-partying ways are finally catching up with her. Then there was Nicky, the beloved fo...
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(P/B) The Diving-Bell and the Butterfly
One of the most remarkable memoirs ever written. The diary of Jean-Dominique Bauby who, with his left eyelid (the only surviving muscle after a massive stroke) dictated a remarkable book about his experiences locked inside his body. A masterpiece and a bestseller in France. In December 1995, Jean-Dominique Bauby, editor-in-chief of French Elle and the father of two young children, suffered a massive stroke and found himself paralysed and speechless. But his mind remained as active and alert as it had ever been. Using his only functioning m...
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(H/B) The Scapegoat
As King James I's favourite, Buckingham was also his confidant, gatekeeper, right-hand man and lover. When Charles I succeeded his father, he was similarly enthralled and made Buckingham his best friend and mentor. A dazzling figure on horseback and a skilful player of the political game, Buckingham rapidly transformed the influence his beauty gave him into immense wealth and power. He became one of the most flamboyant and enigmatic Englishmen at the heart of seventeenth-century royal and political life. With a novelist's touch, Lucy Hughe...
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(P/B) SLOUCHING TOWARDS BETHLEHEM
Joan Didion's savage masterpiece, which, since first publication in 1968, has been acknowledged as an unparalleled report on the state of America during the upheaval of the Sixties Revolution. We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget the loves and the betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were In her non-fiction work, Joan Didion not only describes the subject at hand - her younger self loving and leaving New York, the murderous housewife, the little girl trailing...
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