SERPENT΄S TAIL

(P/B) BEFORE NIGHT FALLS
Reinaldo Arenas was born to a poverty-stricken family in rural Cuba. By the time of his death in New York four decades later, he had become one of Cuba's most important poets, an outspoken critic of Castro's regime and one of the leading gay voices of the twentieth century. In Before Night Falls, Arenas tells of his odyssey from young rebel fighting for the Revolution, through his suppression as a writer, his disillusionment with Castro, his imprisonment and torture, to his eventual exile from Cuba to New York, where in 1987 he was diagno...
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(P/B) KING SUCKERMAN
Wilton Cooper is at a drive-in movie when he notices the ugly white boy walk into the projection booth. Seconds later a gun goes off, perfectly timed to coincide with the movie's noisy climax. When the boy struts coolly out, blood sprayed on the front of his cheap print shirt, Cooper knows he's found his partner. King Suckerman weaves the blaxploitation films, the drug deals, the soul music and the racial tensions that defined the 70's into a story of natural-born killers and two men who risk everything to bring them down. This is the seco...
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(H/B) WASHINGTON BLACK
When two English brothers take the helm of a Barbados sugar plantation, Washington Black - an eleven year-old field slave - finds himself selected as personal servant to one of these men. The eccentric Christopher 'Titch' Wilde is a naturalist, explorer, scientist, inventor and abolitionist, whose single-minded pursuit of the perfect aerial machine mystifies all around him. Titch's idealistic plans are soon shattered and Washington finds himself in mortal danger. They escape the island together, but then then Titch disappears and Washingto...
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(P/B) THEY SHOOT HORSES, DON'T THEY?
The Depression of the 1930s led people to desperate measures to survive. The marathon dance craze, which flourished at that time seemed a simple way for people to earn extra money dancing the hours away for cash, for weeks at a time. But the underside of that craze was filled with a competition and violence unknown to most ballrooms. A lurid tale of dancing and desperation: Horace McCoy's classic American novel captures the dark side of the 1930s....
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(P/B) THE DRESSMAKER
Tilly Dunnage left her hometown of Dungatar in rural Australia under a black cloud of accusation. Years later Tilly, now a couturier for the Paris fashion houses, returns home to make amends with her mentally unstable mother. Mid-century Dungatar is a small town, and small towns have long memories. At first she wins over the suspicious locals with her extraordinary dressmaking skills. But when the eccentric townsfolk turn on Tilly for a second time, she decides to teach them a lesson and exact long-overdue revenge...Packed with memorable c...
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JOHANNES CLIMACUS
When Kierkegaard died at the age of forty-two, the papers found in his desk included Johannes Climacus, probably written in the winter of 1842-43. The book is a novel, as well as a work of philosophy, which tells the tale of what happens to the young Johannes Climacus as he decides to become a philosopher. At first in awe of the great thinkers, especially Hegel he sets out to follow their philosophical example by exploring the maxim 'Everything must be doubted'. The more he examines this idea, however, the more he realises how deluded his ...
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(P/B) AFRICAN PSYCHO
Gregoire Nakobomayo, a petty criminal, has decided to kill his girlfriend Germaine. He's planned the crime for some time, but still, the act of murder requires a bit of psychological and logistical preparation. Luckily, he has a mentor to call on, the far more accomplished serial killer Angoualima. The fact that Angoualima is dead doesn't prevent Gregoire from holding lengthy conversations with him. Little by little, Gregoire interweaves Angoualima's life and criminal exploits with his own. Continuing with the plan despite a string of botc...
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(P/B) THE LIGHTS OF POINTE-NOIRE
Alain Mabanckou left Congo in 1989, at the age of twenty-two, not to return until a quarter of a century later. When at last he comes home to Pointe-Noire, a bustling port town on Congo's south-eastern coast, he finds a country that in some ways has changed beyond recognition: the cinema where, as a child, Mabanckou gorged on glamorous American culture has become a Pentecostal temple, and his secondary school has been re-named in honour of a previously despised colonial ruler. But many things remain unchanged, not least the swirling mythol...
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(P/B) THE SWEET FOREVER
It's 1986 and Washington DC is being torn apart by the cocaine trade. The Mayor is too busy chasing coke and hookers to care, and the police force is manned by corrupt rednecks like Richard'King'Tutt. Down in the neighborhoods, black children are shooting each other over nickel bags and the outside world just doesn't care. The only man prepared to do anything about it is Marcus Clay whose new record store - Real Right Records - is in the heart of the ghetto. Business is okay. What isn't okay is that his wife has thrown him out and his best...
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(P/B) THE SECRET LIVES OF BABA SEGI'S WIVES
To the dismay of her ambitious mother, Bolanle marries into a polygamous family, where she is the fourth wife of a rich, rotund patriarch, Baba Segi. She is a graduate and therefore a great prize, but even graduates must produce children and her husband's persistent bellyache is a sign that things are not as they should be. Bolanle is too educated for the 'white garment conmen' Baba Segi would usually go to for fertility advice, so he takes her to hospital to discover the cause of her barrenness. Weaving the voices of Baba Segi and his fou...
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(P/B) SHOEDOG
Constantine is a drifter with a lot of miles behind him, a lot more ahead and plenty of jobs in between that never showed up on anyone's books. Back in his home town, he hitches a ride on a bright spring morning with a little man named Polk. There's one stop Polk needs to make, and it changes Constantine's life forever. Like the kind of cars they don't make anymore and the kind of songs they don't sing,Shoedog has the style, rhythm and muscle of a classic. (From the publisher)...
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(P/B) BROKEN GLASS
The history of Credit Gone West, a squalid Congolese bar, is related by one of its most loyal customers, Broken Glass, who has been commissioned by its owner to set down an account of the characters who frequent it. Broken Glass himself is a disgraced alcoholic school teacher with a love of French language and literature which he has largely failed to communicate to his pupils but which he displays in the pages of his notebook. The notebook is also a farewell to the bar and to his fellow drinkers. After writing the final words, Broken Glas...
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(P/B) DEVIL IN A BLUE DRESS
Los Angeles, 1948: Easy Rawlins is a war veteran just fired from his job. Drinking in a friend's bar, he wonders how to meet his mortgage when a white man in a linen suit walks in, offering good money if Easy will locate Miss Daphne Monet, a blonde beauty with a reputation. In the sleazy, fearful city, Easy must rely on his instincts, not just to solve the case, but to save his life. (From the publisher)...
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(P/B) THE MAN IN MY BASEMENT
Charles Blakey is a young black man whose life is slowly crumbling. His parents are dead, he can't find a job, he drinks too much, and his friends have begun to desert him. Worst of all, he's fallen behind on the mortgage payments for the beautiful home that's belonged to his family for generations. When a stranger - a white man - offers him $50,000 in cash to rent out his basement for the summer, Charles needs the money too badly to say no. He knows that the stranger must want something more than a basement view. Sure enough, he has a ver...
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(P/B) THE SILENT CRY
Two brothers, Takashi and Mitsu, return from Tokyo to the village of their childhood. Selling their family home leads them to an inescapable confrontation with their family history. Their attempt to escape the influence of the city ends in failure as they realize that its tentacles extend to everything in the countryside, including their own relationship. In 1994, Kenzaburo Oe was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Singling out The Silent Cry, the Nobel Committee stated that 'his poetic force creates an imagined world, where life and ...
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(P/B) THE BIG BLOWDOWN
Washington DC, 1946. For two local young men, Pete Karras and Joey Recevo, the easiest way to find work after the war is by providing a little muscle for a local boss who runs a protection racket with the Mafia. The trouble with Pete Karras is that he is just too soft on his fellow immigrants, and the last thing the boss wants is for his mob to get soft. The boys have to teach Karras a painful lesson that he won't forget. Three years later Pete and Joey meet up once more and a final confrontation puts the meaning of friendship and honour t...
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(P/B) BOY A
A is for Apple. A bad apple. Jack has spent most of his life in juvenile institutions, to be released with a new name, new job, new life. At 24, he is utterly innocent of the world, yet guilty of a monstrous childhood crime. To his new friends, he is a good guy with occasional flashes of unexpected violence. To his new girlfriend, he is strangely inexperienced and unreachable. To his case worker, he's a victim of the system and of media-driven hysteria. And to himself, Jack is on permanent trial: can he really start from scratch, forget th...
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(P/B) WOMEN AS LOVERS
The setting is an idyllic Alpine village where a woman's underwear factory nestles in the woods. Two factory workers, Brigitte and Paula, dream and talk about finding happiness, a comfortable home and a good man. They realize that their quest will be as hard as work at the factory. Brigitte subordinates her feelings and goes for for Heinz, a young, plump, up-and-coming businessman. With Paula, feelings and dreams become confused. She gets pregnant by Erich, the forestry worker. He's handsome, so they marry. Brigitte gets it right. Paula ge...
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(P/B) OUR WORD IS OUR WEAPON

GHOST OF CHANCE