On a bitter winters day in 1916 deep below the streets of New York a group of men is working in one of the huge pressurized tunnels that will make up the subway system. Suddenly a tiny hole appears in the roof of the tunnel & the air rushes in sucking the men up through the bed of the Hudson to be suspended on a spume of water high above the river. Almost 90 years later Treefrog a homeless man stumbles through the same corridor under the twirling flakes of snow to his makeshift home under the city. A love story in three generations this is also about hope & despair & survival. ...

These sumptuous new hardback editions mark the 70th anniversary of Fitzgeralds death. Increasingly disillusioned by the rejection slips that studded the walls of his room & his on/off engagement to Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald began his third revision of the novel that was to become This Side of Paradise". It is the story of a young mans painful sexual & intellectual awakening that echoes Fitzgeralds own career it is also a portrait of the lost generation that followed straight on from the First World War grown up to find all Gods dead all wars fought all faiths in man shaken & wanting money & success more than anything else." ...

Amory Blaine intent on rebelling against his staid Midwestern upbringing longs to acquire the patina of Eastern sophistication. In his quest for sexual & intellectual enlightenment he progresses through a series of relationships until he is cast out into the real world. ...

This Side of Paradise tells the story of Amory Blaine the only child of wealthy parents whose journey from adolescence to adulthood follows him from prep school through to Princeton University where his literary talents flourish in contrast to his academic failure. A sequence of love affairs with beautiful young women are fatally damaged by the collapse of his family's fortune & the novel ends with him poised to face the challenge of making his own way in the world. Composed in an unconventional narrative mode the novel is a rich fusion of satiric & romance idioms & found a captivated audience on its publication in 1920. It made Fitzgerald rich & famous overnight. The Beautiful & Damned is a bleaker version of the corrosive power of wealth & its privileges one of Fitzgerald's abiding subjects. Anthony Patch is heir to a huge fortune whose marriage to the beautiful & indolent Gloria is increasingly shadowed by Anthony's fall into alcoholism. Though he wins a lawsuit to gain his inheritance of millions of dollars it is a pyrrhic victory for he is now a physically & morally broken man. ...

Rugby League football in an industrial northern city circa 1960 is a life of grime mud sweat intrigue & naked ambition. In This Sporting Life David Storey recounts the fortunes of gladiator hero Arthur Machin from the day of his inclusion in the local team to the match when he begins to feel age creeping up on him. Through Arthur we are taken into his raw often brutal world of players backers Saturday crowds bloody noses & broken teeth landladies & communal baths. ...

These loosely connected hypnotic stories about memory & desire from Giller Prize winner Johanna Skibsrud introduces us to an astonishing array of characters who time & again find themselves face to face with what they didnt know at the exact point of intersection between impossibility & desire. A young maid at a hotel in France encounters a man who asks to paint her portrait only later discovering that he is someone other than who we think he is. A divorced father who fears estrangement from his thirteen-year-old daughter allows her to take the wheel of his car realising too late that hes made a grave mistake. Taking readers from South Dakota to Paris to Japan into art galleries foreign apartments farms & beach hotels This Will Be Difficult to Explain" is a masterful & perceptive series of tales from one of fictions brightest new voices." ...

Over 150 of the worlds leading scientists & thinkers offer their choice of the ideas strategies & arguments that will help all of us understand our world & its future better.

Includes:: contributions from: Richard Dawkins Stephen Pinker Daniel Dennett Clay Shirky Daniel Goleman Sam Harris Lee Smolin Matt Ridley Mark Henderson David Rowan Sir Martin Rees Craig Venter Brian Eno Jaron Lanier & David Brooks...among others. With his organisation Edge.org the literary agent & all-purpose intellectual impresario John Brockman has brought together the most influential thinkers of our age. Every year he sets them a question this year that question was: What Scientific Concept Would Improve Everybodys Cognitive Toolkit? Their answers are collected in this book & explore philosophy psychology economics & other disciplines
- & all share one aim: to provide the most reliable ways of gaining knowledge about anything whether it be human behaviour corporate behaviour the fate of the planet or the future of the universe.


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Its been a year since a meteor collided with the moon catastrophically altering the Earths climate. For Miranda Evans life as she knew it no longer exists. Her friends & neighbours are dead the landscape is frozen & food is increasingly scarce. Mirand & her family are on the edge. & then a small party of surviors arrives on their doorstep threatening to stretch supplies to dangerous limits. Alex Morales is amongst them & he & Mirada must put aside their differences in order to fight for food
- with all of the odds against them...
...

Stories about ordinary people going about ordinary lives will always be fascinating when told by a writer blessed with extraordinary talent insight & compassion. This Year It Will Be Different brings us the magic & spirit of Christmas in fifteen stories filled with Maeve Binchys trademark wit charm & sheer storytelling genius. Instead of nostalgia Binchy evokes contemporary life; instead of Christmas homilies she offers truth; & instead of sugarplums she brings us the nourishment of holidays that precipitate change growth & new beginnings. The stories in This Year It Will Be Different powerfully evoke many lives during the one holiday of the year when feelings cannot be easily hidden: step-families grappling with exes; long-married couples faced with in-law problems; a wandering husband choosing between the other woman & his wife; a child caught in the grown-up tug-of-war. The time of year may be magical imbued with personal meaning but the situations are universal & Maeve Binchy makes us care about them all. ...

Filled with Maeve Binchys trademark wit & true storytelling genius THIS YEAR IT WILL BE DIFFERENT powerfully evokes the lives of wives husbands children friends & lovers. There are step-families grappling with exes; long-married couples faced with in-law problems; a wandering husband choosing between the other woman & his wife; a child caught up in a grown-up tug-of-war... Warm witty & with a deep understanding of what makes us tick THIS YEAR IT WILL BE DIFFERENT superbly demonstrates why Maeve Binchys stories have become world-beaters. ...