ABACUS

(P/B) HOLLYWOOD
Continuing what has been dubbed his 'revenge on two hundred years of American history', Gore Vidal locates this novel in Washington. But this is 1917, and Hollywood is now competing with America's capital as the nation's power-base, just as it fights for centre-stage in this book. Caroline Sanford, erstwhile newspaper magnate, launches herself into the West Coast land of celluloid dreams and becomes, overnight, an international star. Not for nothing, on the dawn of World War One, is Caroline making films like the Huns from Hell. She is a g...
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(P/B) THE DYING WISH
Ervine James is in incredibly good spirits - his Private Investigation business is going well, he has partially restored his tenuous link with his family, and his best friend of old and new partner Carmen Sinclair has proved to be more of an asset, both emotionally and financially, than he ever could have dreamed. But when a beautiful Asian woman appears outside the office next to his, a mysteriously secretive company rents the space for a few months before suddenly disappearing without trace, followed by arrival of police detectives inves...
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(P/B) THE SANTALAND DIARIES
Santaland Diaries collects six of David Sedaris's most profound Christmas stories into one slender volume perfect for use as a last-minute coaster or ice-scraper. This drinking man's companion can be enjoyed by the warmth of a raging fire, the glow of a brilliantly decorated tree, or even in the back seat of a police car. It should be read with your eyes, felt with your heart, and heard only when spoken to. It should, in short, behave much like a book. And oh, what a book it is! (From the publisher)...
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(P/B) LENI
Leni Riefenstahl is one of the most fascinating and controversial personalities of the twentieth century. Best known as 'Hitler's filmmaker', Riefenstahl made two documentaries, OLYMPIA and TRIUMPH OF THE WILL, acknowledged to be among the greatest films ever made. But they are insidious glorifications of the Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich. Drawing on new primary sources - recordings of Riefenstahl herself, interviews with her colleagues and intimate friends - Steven Bach puts the lie to her lifelong portrayal of herself as an apolitical...
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(P/B) CANAL DREAMS
Hisako Onoda, world-famous cellist, refuses to fly. And so she travels to Europe as a passenger on a tanker bound through the Panama Canal. But Panama is a country whose politics are as volatile as the local freedom fighters. When Hisako's ship is captured, it is not long before the atmosphere is as flammable as an oxy-acetylene torch, and the tension as sharp as the spike on the cello... (From the publisher) "Currents of dark wit swirl through Banks" writing, enriching its buoyancy... and, like Graham Greene, he can readily open the rea...
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(P/B) LIPSTICK JUNGLE

(P/B) TRADING UP
A sharply observed, keenly funny, wildly entertaining latter-day comedy of manners from the ultimate insider, the author of SEX AND THE CITY and FOUR BLONDES. Classic Candace Bushnell: wickedly funny social satire at its most sassy and entertaining. When Janey Wilcox makes it big as a Victoria's Secret model, she finally gets the celebrity status she has always craved. Suddenly the car of her dreams is hers, and even better, so is that house in New York's exclusive Hamptons. No longer will she have to choose her boyfriends according to who...
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(P/B) FOUR BLONDES
FOUR BLONDES charts the romantic intrigues, liaisons, betrayals and victories of four modern women: a beautiful B-list model finagles rent-free summerhouses in the Hamptons from her lovers until she discovers she can get a man but can't get what she wants; a high-powered magazine columnist's floundering marriage to a literary journalist is thrown into crisis when her husband's career fails to live up to her expectations; a 'Cinderella' records her descent into paranoia in her journal as she realises she wants anybody's life except her own;...
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(P/B) ONE FIFTH AVENUE
One Fifth Avenue, the Art Deco beauty towering over Manhattan's hippest neighbourhood, is a one-of-a-kind address, the sort of building you have to earn your way into - one way or another. For the women in Candace Bushnell's stellar new novel, One Fifth Avenue is at the heart of the lives they've carefully established, or hope to establish. There is Schiffer Diamond, a forty-something actress busily proving that women of style are truly ageless. There is spoiled, self-assured Lola, who is determined to launch herself into society and the a...
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(P/B) DEAD AIR
Iain Banks' daring new novel opens in a loft apartment in the East End, in a former factory due to be knocked down in a few days. Ken Nott is a devoutly contrarian vaguely left wing radio shock-jock living in London. After a wedding breakfast people start dropping fruits from a balcony on to a deserted carpark ten storeys below, then they start dropping other things; an old TV that doesn't work, a blown loudspeaker, beanbags, other unwanted furniture...Then they get carried away and start dropping things that are still working, while wreck...
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(P/B) THE CASTLE IN THE FOREST
A bold and darkly funny novel about the family and early life of Adolf Hitler. Who was Adolf Hitler? It's a question writers have been trying to answer for more than sixty years. But after thousands of biographies, histories, novels, and films, many fundamental questions remain: How do we explain Hitler's hatred? Where did it come from? Could it happen again? Norman Mailer sets out to respond to these and other crucial aspects of Hitler's personality in his compulsively readable new novel. Spanning three generations, and a hundred years of...
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(P/B) SEX AND THE CITY
Wildly funny, unexpectedly poignant, wickedly observant, SEX AND THE CITY blazes a glorious, drunken cocktail trail through New York, as Candace Bushnell, columnist and social critic par excellence, trips on her Manolo Blahnik kitten heels from the Baby Doll Lounge to the Bowery Bar. An Armistead Maupin for the real world, she has the gift of assembling a huge and irresistible cast of freaks and wonders, while remaining faithful to her hard core of friends and fans: those glamorous, rebellious, crazy single women, too close to forty, who a...
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(P/B) THAT USED TO BE US
America has a huge problem. It faces four major challenges, on which its future depends, and it is failing to meet them. In What's Wrong with America?, Thomas L. Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum analyze those challenges - globalization, the revolution in information technology, the nation's chronic deficits, and its pattern of energy consumption - and spell out what needs to be done now to rediscover America's power and prowess. They explain how the end of the cold war blinded the nation to the need to address these issues seriously. They ...
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(P/B) THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THE SON
For 2,000 years, the brief ministry of a young Nazarene preacher has remained the largest single determinant of Western civilisation's triumphs and disasters. In THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THE SON, Norman Mailer gives the protagonist of one of the greatest tragedies of all time a chance to tell the story of his life in his own words. 'Is God speaking to me?' Jesus asks, 'or am I hearing voices? If the voices are from God, why has he chosen me as His son? and if they are not from God, then who gave me the power to perform these miracles?' This...
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(P/B) TOUGH GUYS DON'T DANCE
Tim Madden, an unsuccessful writer with a penchant for nicotine, alcohol and blondes with money, struggles towards consciousness twenty-four days and nights after his wide has left him. He has a bad case of alcohol amnesia, a fresh and throbbing tattoo and a car drenched in blood. Just to make his hangover complete, Provincetown's Chief of Police would like a quiet word. So begins Madden's disquieting journey into the dark recesses of America's psyche. TOUGH GUYS DON'T DANCE is Norman Mailer at his tough, raw and uncompromising best. And M...
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(P/B) THE ART OF MURDER
In 2006, the art world has moved far beyond sheep in formaldehyde and the most avant-garde movement is to use living people as artwork. Undergoing weeks of preparation to become 'canvases', the models are required to stay in their pose for ten to twelve hours a day and, as art pieces, they are also for sale. After being exhibited, the 'canvases' can be bought and taken to the purchaser's home, where they are rented for weeks or months. Many beautiful young men and women long to become a 'canvas' - knowing they are a masterpeice and worth m...
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(P/B) THE DEER PARK
Desert D'Or is the fashionable Californian resort where Hollywood's elite converge when they need a break. It is an incestuous hothouse of a town - a haven for manipulators, film stars, lovers, pimps, producers, whores, gamblers, scriptwriters and cheats. Into this nightmare world of depravity arrives Sergius O'Shaughnessy, recently discharged from the Air Force, traumatised by his war experiences and trying to write the Great American Novel. But O'Shaughnessy's burning ambition begins to lose its edge; lured by greed and ruled by weakness...
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(P/B) 45
At the age of 45, Bill Drummond is less concerned with setting the record straight as making sure it revolves at the correct speed. Whether he's recording 'Justified and Ancient' with Tammy Wynette; contemplating the dull lunacy of the Turner prize; resisting the urge to paint landscapes; or glorying in the crapness of rock comebacks; he is consistently amusing and thought-provoking, and draws us into his world with the seductive enthusiasm of a born storyteller. An artist with a singular approach to his work, Bill Drummond has paused to t...
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(P/B) CITRUS COUNTY
When teenage Shelby Register moves to Citrus County, Florida, with her single father and little sister, she's expecting surfers instead of rednecks, but she decides to make the best of it. Things become complicated when Toby, a neglected, loveless boy living with his abusive uncle, becomes her twisted love interest. Toby finds trouble far more elaborate than ordinary delinquency when he enacts a strange, cruel plot on the Register clan. Then Toby realizes that he can't reverse the effects of his 'prank', and his and Shelby's fates hurtle ...
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(P/B) A SONG OF STONE
The war is ending, perhaps ended. For the castle and its occupants the troubles are just beginning. Armed gangs roam a lawless land where each farm and house supports a column of dark smoke. Taking to the roads with the other refugees, anonymous in their raggedness, seems safer than remaining in the ancient keep. However, the lieutenant of an outlaw band has other ideas and the castle becomes the focus for a dangerous game of desire, deceit and death. Iain Banks' masterly novel reveals his unique ability to combine gripping narrative with ...
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