Thursday, 10 January 2019
Wednesday, 9 January 2019
Tuesday, 8 January 2019
The Cuckoo's Calling (Cormoran Strike Series) by Robert Galbraith
Paperback: The Cuckoo's Calling is a 2013 crime fiction novel by J K Rowling, published under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith.
A brilliant mystery in a classic vein: Detective Cormoran Strike investigates a supermodel's suicide.
After losing his leg to a land mine in Afghanistan, Cormoran Strike is barely scraping by as a private investigator. Strike is down to one client, and creditors are calling. He has also just broken up with his longtime girlfriend and is living in his office.
Then John Bristow walks through his door with an amazing story: His sister, the legendary supermodel Lula Landry, known to her friends as the Cuckoo, famously fell to her death a few months earlier. The police ruled it a suicide, but John refuses to believe that.
The case plunges Strike into the world of multimillionaire beauties, rock-star boyfriends, and desperate designers, and it introduces him to every variety of pleasure, enticement, seduction, and delusion known to man.
You may think you know detectives, but you've never met one quite like Strike. You may think you know about the wealthy and famous, but you've never seen them under an investigation like this.
About the author: Robert Galbraith’s Cormoran Strike series is classic contemporary crime fiction from a master story-teller, rich in plot, characterisation and detail. Galbraith’s debut into crime fiction garnered acclaim amongst critics and crime fans alike.
The first three novels The Cuckoo’s Calling (2013), The Silkworm (2014) and Career of Evil (2015) all topped the national and international bestseller lists and have been adapted for television, produced by Brontë Film and Television. The fourth in the series, Lethal White (2018), is out now.
Robert Galbraith is a pseudonym of J K Rowling, bestselling author of the Harry Potter series and The Casual Vacancy, a novel for adults. After Harry Potter, the author chose crime fiction for her next books, a genre she has always loved as a reader. She wanted to write a contemporary whodunit, with a credible back story.
J K Rowling’s original intention for writing as Robert Galbraith was for the books to be judged on their own merit, and to establish Galbraith as a well-regarded name in crime in its own right.
Now Robert Galbraith’s true identity is widely known, J K Rowling continues to write the crime series under the Galbraith pseudonym to keep the distinction from her other writing and so people will know what to expect from a Cormoran Strike novel.
Monday, 7 January 2019
Sweet Bean Paste by Durian Sukegawa
Paperback: Sentaro has failed. He has a criminal record, drinks too much, and his dream of becoming a writer is just a distant memory. With only the blossoming of the cherry trees to mark the passing of time, he spends his days in a tiny confectionery shop selling dorayaki, a type of pancake filled with sweet bean paste.
But everything is about to change.
Into his life comes Tokue, an elderly woman with disfigured hands and a troubled past. Tokue makes the best sweet bean paste Sentaro has ever tasted. She begins to teach him her craft, but as their friendship flourishes, social pressures become impossible to escape and Tokue's dark secret is revealed, with devastating consequences.
Sweet Bean Paste (2017) is a moving novel about the burden of the past and the redemptive power of friendship. It is also a charming tale of friendship, love, the genius of simplicity and loneliness in contemporary Japan.
Sweet Bean Paste is the winner of Le Prix des Lecteurs du Livre de Poche 2017. Translated from the Japanese for the first time by Alison Watts, Durian Sukegawa's beautiful prose "teaches us that no existence is devoid of meaning, and that even the humblest of beings has a valuable contribution to make to the world in which we live."
About the author: Durian Sukegawa studied oriental philosophy at Waseda University, before going on to work as a reporter in Berlin and Cambodia in the early 1990s. He has written a number of books and essays, TV programmes and films. He lives in Tokyo.
About the translator: Alison Watts is a freelance translator, translating literature from Japanese into English. She lives in Ibaraki, Japan.
Rating: 5/5
Saturday, 5 January 2019
The Vintage Caper (Sam Levitt Series) by Peter Mayle
Paperback: Set in Hollywood, Paris, Bordeaux, and Marseille, Peter Mayle’s newest and most delightful debut novel in the Sam Levitt series is filled with culinary delights, sumptuous wines, and colourful characters. It is also a lot of fun.
The story begins high above Los Angeles, at the extravagant home and equally impressive wine cellar of entertainment lawyer Danny Roth. Unfortunately, after inviting the Los Angeles Times to write an extensive profile extolling the liquid treasures of his collection, Roth finds himself the victim of a world-class wine heist.
Enter Sam Levitt, former corporate lawyer, cultivated crime expert, and wine connoisseur. Called in by Roth’s insurance company, which is now saddled with a multimillion-dollar claim, Sam follows his leads to Bordeaux and its magnificent vineyards, and to Provence to meet an eccentric billionaire collector who might possibly have an interest in the stolen wines.
Along the way, bien sûr, he is joined by a beautiful and erudite French colleague, and together they navigate many a château, pausing frequently to enjoy the countryside’s abundant pleasures.
The unraveling of the ingenious crime is threaded through with Mayle’s seductive rendering of France’s sensory delights - from a fine Lynch-Bages and Léoville Barton to the bouillabaisse of Marseille and the young lamb of Bordeaux. Even the most sophisticated of oenophiles will learn a thing or two from this vintage work by a beloved author.
The Vintage Caper (2009) is the first book in the evocative, feel-good, and witty, lawyer and wine connoisseur Sam Levitt, series.
About the author: Peter Mayle (born 14 June 1939, in Brighton) was a British author famous for his series of books detailing life in Provence, France. He spent fifteen years in advertising before leaving the business in 1975 to write educational books, including a series on sex education for children and young people. In 1989, A Year in Provence, was published and became an international bestseller. His books have been translated into more than twenty languages, and he was a contributing writer to magazines and newspapers.
Indeed, his seventh book, A Year in Provence, chronicles a year in the life of a British expatriate who settled in the village of Ménerbes. His book, A Good Year, was the basis for the eponymous 2006 film directed by Ridley Scott and starring actor Russell Crowe. Peter Mayle died in Provence, France on 18 January 2018.
Rating: 5/5
Friday, 4 January 2019
Britt-Marie Was Here by Fredrik Backman
Paperback: Britt-Marie cannot stand mess. A disorganized cutlery drawer ranks high on her list of unforgivable sins.
She is not one to judge others - no matter how ill-mannered, unkempt, or morally suspect they might be. It’s just that sometimes people interpret her helpful suggestions as criticisms, which is certainly not her intention. But hidden inside the socially awkward, fussy busybody is a woman who has more imagination, bigger dreams, and a warmer heart that anyone around her realizes.
When Britt-Marie walks out on her cheating husband and has to fend for herself in the miserable backwater town of Borg - of which the kindest thing one can say is that it has a road going through it, she finds work as the caretaker of a soon-to-be demolished recreation center.
The fastidious Britt-Marie soon finds herself being drawn into the daily doings of her fellow citizens, an odd assortment of miscreants, drunkards, layabouts. Most alarming of all, she is given the impossible task of leading the supremely untalented children’s soccer team to victory. In this small town of misfits, can Britt-Marie find a place where she truly belongs?
Britt-Marie Was Here (2016) is "a brilliant mix of belly-laughs, profound insight and captivating events delivered with Backman's pitch-perfect dialogue and an unparalleled understanding of human nature."
The book is translated from the Swedish by Henning Koch.
About the author: Fredrik Backman is the No 1 New York Times bestselling author of A Man Called Ove (a major motion picture starring Tom Hanks), My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry, Britt-Marie Was Here, Beartown, Us Against You, as well as two novellas, And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer and The Deal of a Lifetime. His books are published in more than forty countries. He lives in Stockholm, Sweden, with his wife and two children.
www.fredrikbackman.com
@Backmanland
Rating: 5/5
Thursday, 3 January 2019
Wednesday, 2 January 2019
The Audacity Of Hope: Thoughts On Reclaiming The American Dream by Barack Obama
Hardback: In this bestselling book, Obama discusses the importance of empathy in politics, his hopes for a different America with different policies, and how the ideals of its democracy can be renewed.
With intimacy and self-deprecating humour, Obama describes his experiences as a politician, about balancing his family life and his public vocation. His search for consensus and his respect for the democratic process inform every sentence of The Audacity of Hope (2006).
Before he became the 44th President of the United States of America, Barack Obama has written a book of transforming power that will inspire people the world over.
About the author: Barack Obama was the 44th President of the United States of America. He was the first African-American to be elected President of the United States and was the first to be nominated for President by a major US political party. He was the junior US Senator from Illinois from 2005 until he resigned on 16 November 16 2008, following his election to the Presidency.
Barack Obama is the son of Barack Obama Sr and Ann Dunham. He graduated from Columbia University in 1983, then moved to Chicago in 1985 to work for a church-based group seeking to improve living conditions in poor neighbourhoods plagued with crime and high unemployment. In 1991, Obama graduated from Harvard Law School where he was the first African American president of the Harvard Law Review. In addition to his work as a community organizer, Obama practiced as a civil rights attorney before serving three terms in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004. He also taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004.
During his eight years in the Illinois State Senate, Obama worked with both Democrats and Republicans to help working families get ahead by creating programs like the state Earned Income Tax Credit, which in three years provided over $100 million in tax cuts to families across the state. Obama also pushed through an expansion of early childhood education, and after a number of inmates on death row were found innocent, Senator Obama enlisted the support of law enforcement officials to draft legislation requiring the videotaping of interrogations and confessions in all capital cases.
As a member of the Democratic minority in the 109th Congress, he helped create legislation to control conventional weapons and to promote greater public accountability in the use of federal funds. He also made official trips to Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. During the 110th Congress, he helped create legislation regarding lobbying and electoral fraud, climate change, nuclear terrorism, and care for returned US military personnel.
President Obama is especially proud of being a husband and father of two daughters, Malia and Sasha. President Obama and his wife, Michelle, married in 1992 and live in Washington DC.
Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata
Paperback: Keiko Furukura had always been considered a strange child, and her parents always worried how she would get on in the real world, so when she takes on a job in a convenience store while at university, they are delighted for her.
For her part, in the convenience store she finds a predictable world mandated by the store manual, which dictates how the workers should act and what they should say, and she copies her coworkers’ style of dress and speech patterns so that she can play the part of a normal person.
However, eighteen years later, at age 36, she is still in the same job, has never had a boyfriend, and has only few friends. She feels comfortable in her life, but is aware that she is not living up to society’s expectations and causing her family to worry about her. When a similarly alienated but cynical and bitter young man comes to work in the store, he will upset Keiko’s contented stasis - but will it be for the better?
Sayaka Murata brilliantly captures the atmosphere of the familiar convenience store that is so much part of life in Japan. With some laugh-out-loud moments prompted by the disconnect between Keiko’s thoughts and those of the people around her, she provides a sharp look at Japanese society and the pressure to conform, as well as penetrating insights into the female mind.
Convenience Store Woman is a fresh, charming portrait of an unforgettable heroine that recalls Banana Yoshimoto, Han Kang, and Amélie. A best-seller in Japan, and the winner of the prestigious Akutagawa Prize and Foyles Fiction Book Of The Year 2018, Convenience Store Woman (2018) marks the English-language debut of a writer who has been hailed as the most exciting voice of her generation.
The book is translated from the Japanese by Ginny Tapley Takemori. Ginny has translated Ryu Murakami, Miyuki Miyabe and Kyotaro Nishimura, among others.
About the author: Sayaka Murata (in Japanese, 村田 沙耶香) is one of the most exciting up-and-coming writers in Japan today. She herself still works part time in a convenience store, which gave her the inspiration to write Convenience Store Woman (Conbini Ningen). She debuted in 2003 with Junyu (Breastfeeding), which won the Gunzo Prize for new writers. In 2009 she won the Noma Prize for New Writers with Gin iro no uta (Silver Song), and in 2013 the Mishima Yukio Prize for Shiro-oro no machi no, sono hone no taion no (Of Bones, of Body Heat, of Whitening City). Convenience Store Woman won the 2016 Akutagawa Award. Murata has two short stories published in English (both translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori): Lover on the Breeze (2011) and A Clean Marriage (2014). In 2016, Vogue Japan named her one of their Women Of the Year.
Rating: 5/5
Tuesday, 1 January 2019
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