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› Find signed collectible books: 'About a Boy'
Will Lightman is a Peter Pan for the 1990s. At 36, the terminally hip North Londoner is unmarried, hyper-concerned with his coolness quotient and blithely living off his father's novelty song royalties. Will sees himself as entirely lacking in hidden depths--and he's proud of it! The only trouble is, his friends are succumbing to responsibilities and children and he's increasingly left out in the cold. How can someone brilliantly equipped for meaningless relationships ensure that he'll continue to meet beautiful Julie Christie-like women and ensure that they'll throw him over before things get too profound? A brief encounter with a single mother sets Will off on his new career, that of "serial nice guy." As far as he's concerned--and remember, concern isn't his strong suit--he's the perfect catch for the young mother on the go. After an interlude of sexual bliss, she'll realise that her child isn't ready for a man in their life and Will can ride off into the Highgate sunset, where more damsels apparently await. The only catch is that the best way to meet these women is at single-parent get-togethers. In one of Nick Hornby's many hilarious (and embarrassing) scenes, Will falls into some serious misrepresentation at SPAT ("Single Parents-- Alone Together"), passing himself off as a bereft single dad: "There was, he thought, an emotional truth here somewhere, and he could see now that his role-playing had a previously unsuspected artistic element to it. He was acting, yes, but in the noblest, most profound sense of the word."
What interferes with Will's career arc, of course, is reality--in the shape of a 12-year-old boy who is in many ways his polar opposite. For Marcus, cool isn't even a possibility, let alone an issue. For starters, he's a victim at his new school. Things at home are pretty awful, too, since his musical-therapist mother seems increasingly in need of therapy herself. All Marcus can do is cobble together information with a mixture of incomprehension, innocence, self-blame and unfettered clear sight. As fans of Fever Pitch and High Fidelity already know, Hornby's insight into laddishness magically combines the serious and the hilarious. About a Boy continues his singular examination of masculine wish-fulfilment and fear. This time, though, the author lets women and children onto the playing field, forcing his feckless hero to leap over an entirely new--and entirely welcome--set of emotional hurdles. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Animal Farm'
Since its publication in 1946, George Orwell's fable of a workers' revolution gone wrong has rivaled Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea as the Shortest Serious Novel It's OK to Write a Book Report About. (The latter is three pages longer and less fun to read.) Fueled by Orwell's intense disillusionment with Soviet Communism, Animal Farm is a nearly perfect piece of writing, both an engaging story and an allegory that actually works. When the downtrodden beasts of Manor Farm oust their drunken human master and take over management of the land, all are awash in collectivist zeal. Everyone willingly works overtime, productivity soars, and for one brief, glorious season, every belly is full. The animals' Seven Commandment credo is painted in big white letters on the barn. All animals are equal. No animal shall drink alcohol, wear clothes, sleep in a bed, or kill a fellow four-footed creature. Those that go upon four legs or wings are friends and the two-legged are, by definition, the enemy. Too soon, however, the pigs, who have styled themselves leaders by virtue of their intelligence, succumb to the temptations of privilege and power. "We pigs are brainworkers. The whole management and organisation of the farm depend on us. Day and night, we are watching over your welfare. It is for your sake that we drink that milk and eat those apples." While this swinish brotherhood sells out the revolution, cynically editing the Seven Commandments to excuse their violence and greed, the common animals are once again left hungry and exhausted, no better off than in the days when humans ran the farm. Satire Animal Farm may be, but it's a stony reader who remains unmoved when the stalwart workhorse, Boxer, having given his all to his comrades, is sold to the glue factory to buy booze for the pigs. Orwell's view of Communism is bleak indeed, but given the history of the Russian people since 1917, his pessimism has an air of prophecy. --Joyce Thompson [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Animal Farm'
Since its publication in 1946, George Orwell's fable of a workers' revolution gone wrong has rivaled Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea as the Shortest Serious Novel It's OK to Write a Book Report About. (The latter is three pages longer and less fun to read.) Fueled by Orwell's intense disillusionment with Soviet Communism, Animal Farm is a nearly perfect piece of writing, both an engaging story and an allegory that actually works. When the downtrodden beasts of Manor Farm oust their drunken human master and take over management of the land, all are awash in collectivist zeal. Everyone willingly works overtime, productivity soars, and for one brief, glorious season, every belly is full. The animals' Seven Commandment credo is painted in big white letters on the barn. All animals are equal. No animal shall drink alcohol, wear clothes, sleep in a bed, or kill a fellow four-footed creature. Those that go upon four legs or wings are friends and the two-legged are, by definition, the enemy. Too soon, however, the pigs, who have styled themselves leaders by virtue of their intelligence, succumb to the temptations of privilege and power. "We pigs are brainworkers. The whole management and organisation of the farm depend on us. Day and night, we are watching over your welfare. It is for your sake that we drink that milk and eat those apples." While this swinish brotherhood sells out the revolution, cynically editing the Seven Commandments to excuse their violence and greed, the common animals are once again left hungry and exhausted, no better off than in the days when humans ran the farm. Satire Animal Farm may be, but it's a stony reader who remains unmoved when the stalwart workhorse, Boxer, having given his all to his comrades, is sold to the glue factory to buy booze for the pigs. Orwell's view of Communism is bleak indeed, but given the history of the Russian people since 1917, his pessimism has an air of prophecy. --Joyce Thompson [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Behind the Scenes at the Museum'
"I exist!" exclaims Ruby Lennox upon her conception in 1951, setting the tone for this humorous and poignant first novel in which Ruby at once celebrates and mercilessly skewers her middle-class English family. Peppered with tales of flawed family traits passed on from previous generations, Ruby's narrative examines the lives in her disjointed clan, which revolve around the family pet shop. But beneath the antics of her philandering father, her intensely irritable mother, her overly emotional sisters, and a gaggle of eccentric relatives are darker secrets--including an odd "feeling of something long forgotten"--that will haunt Ruby for the rest of her life. Kate Atkinson earned a Whitbread Prize in 1995 for this fine first effort. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Color Purple'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Die Satanischen Verse'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'El Gran Gatsby/the Great Gatsby'
Un magnífico retrato de heroicidad en un mundo decadente.
Esta es la historia del millonario hecho a sí mismo, Jay Gatsby, a quien sólo le mueve una obsesión: recuperar un amor de juventud. Pero Daisy es hoy una muchacha que forma parte de una sociedad frívola y aburrida de sí misma, una criatura encantadora y también dañina. Un magnífico retrato de heroicidad en un mundo decadente. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby'
In 1922, F. Scott Fitzgerald announced his decision to write "something new--something extraordinary and beautiful and simple + intricately patterned." That extraordinary, beautiful, intricately patterned, and above all, simple novel became The Great Gatsby, arguably Fitzgerald's finest work and certainly the book for which he is best known. A portrait of the Jazz Age in all of its decadence and excess, Gatsby captured the spirit of the author's generation and earned itself a permanent place in American mythology. Self-made, self-invented millionaire Jay Gatsby embodies some of Fitzgerald's--and his country's--most abiding obsessions: money, ambition, greed, and the promise of new beginnings. "Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter--tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther.... And one fine morning--" Gatsby's rise to glory and eventual fall from grace becomes a kind of cautionary tale about the American Dream.
It's also a love story, of sorts, the narrative of Gatsby's quixotic passion for Daisy Buchanan. The pair meet five years before the novel begins, when Daisy is a legendary young Louisville beauty and Gatsby an impoverished officer. They fall in love, but while Gatsby serves overseas, Daisy marries the brutal, bullying, but extremely rich Tom Buchanan. After the war, Gatsby devotes himself blindly to the pursuit of wealth by whatever means--and to the pursuit of Daisy, which amounts to the same thing. "Her voice is full of money," Gatsby says admiringly, in one of the novel's more famous descriptions. His millions made, Gatsby buys a mansion across Long Island Sound from Daisy's patrician East Egg address, throws lavish parties, and waits for her to appear. When she does, events unfold with all the tragic inevitability of a Greek drama, with detached, cynical neighbor Nick Carraway acting as chorus throughout. Spare, elegantly plotted, and written in crystalline prose, The Great Gatsby is as perfectly satisfying as the best kind of poem. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'God of Small Things'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Great Gatsby'
Kathleen Parkinson places this brilliant and bitter satire on the moral failure of the jazz age firmly in the context of F. Scott Fitzgerald's life and times. She explores the intricate patterns of the novel, its chronology, locations, imagery and use of colour, and how these contribute to a seamless interplay of social comedy and symbolic landscape. She devotes a perceptive chapter to F. Scott Fitzgerald's controversial portrayal of women and goes on to discuss how the central characters, Gatsby and Nick Carraway, embody and confront the dualism inherent in the American Dream.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Great Gatsby'
An assortment of articles treating issues surrounding the Great Gatsby. Part I - From This Side of Paradise to Great Gatsby, Part II, The Great Gatsby and its world, Part III, The Great Gatsby, and Part IV, The Permanence of the Great Gatsby. Includes a bibliography. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Handmaid's Tale'
Throughout her career, Margaret Atwood has played with different literary genres in her novels--historical fiction (Alias Grace), pulp fiction (The Blind Assassin), the comedy of manners (The Robber Bride)--but no foray into genre fiction has been as successful as her turn to speculative fiction in The Handmaid's Tale. Published in 1985, it echoes Orwell's 1984 and Huxley's Brave New World, but a vibrant feminism drives Atwood's portrait of a futuristic dystopia. In the Republic of Gilead, we see a world devastated by toxic chemicals and nuclear fallout and dominated by a repressive Christian fundamentalism. The birthrate has plunged, and most women can no longer bear children. Offred is one of Gilead's Handmaids, who as official breeders are among the chosen few who can still become pregnant.
The Handmaid's Tale is an imaginatively audacious novel that is at once a page-turning psychological thriller, a moving love story, and a chilling warning about what might be waiting for us around the corner. What ultimately makes it stand out is Atwood's ability to balance a passionate political statement with finely wrought literary fiction. The Handmaid's Tale is a remarkable work by one of Canada's most inventive writers. --Jeffrey Canton [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire'
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire CD Set tells the story of Harry's fourth year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in 18 CDs. The audio book is also available in two volumes, Part 1 and Part 2, each containing 9 CDs.
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is the long-awaited, heavily hyped fourth instalment of a phenomenally successful series that has captured the imagination of millions of readers, young and old, across the globe. For J K Rowling the pressure is certainly on to continue to come up with thrilling, pacey storylines that allow her hero to mature into a young man without detracting from the magical secret that has made Harry into a superstar. In this book, the teenage Harry has a certain gawky charm that fits well with his advancing adolescence. As the story moves on, Harry too moves on to a new level of maturity that leaves the reader wondering how he will learn from his experiences, and liking him all the more as a character.
Once returned to Hogwarts after his summer holiday with the dreadful Dursleys and an extraordinary outing to the Quidditch World Cup, the 14-year-old Harry and his fellow pupils are enraptured by the promise of the Triwizard Tournament: an ancient, ritualistic tournament that brings Hogwarts together with two other schools of wizardry--Durmstrang and Beauxbatons--in heated competition. But when Harry's name is pulled from the Goblet of Fire, and he is chosen to champion Hogwarts in the tournament, the trouble really begins. Still reeling from the effects of a terrifying nightmare that has left him shaken, and with the lightning-shaped scar on his head throbbing with pain (a sure sign that the evil Voldemort, Harry's sworn enemy, is close), Harry becomes at once the most popular boy in school. Yet, despite his fame, he is totally unprepared for the furore that follows.
This is a hefty volume: 636 pages, of which probably at least 200 could have been cut without detracting from the story. The weight and complexity of the book is perhaps a hint that Rowling now has her eye sharply focused on her adult audience, and the average child-reader (particularly one who is coming to Harry Potter for the first time) may well find its girth daunting. Rowling's ironic and pointed observations on tabloid journalism and the nature of media hype is just one of the references littered through the book that will tickle the grown-ups but may well fly over the heads of her young fans.
However, after a slow start, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire really starts to sparkle halfway through with Rowling's familiar magic (and yes, there is a death--sudden and tragic--and yes, Harry does start to notice girls). The crux of this story, however, is Harry's gradual coming-of-age and his handling of the increasingly determined threats to his own life.
This book is pivotal, not just for the author for whom the heat is well and truly on, but for Harry and his readers who, by the last chapter, are left in little doubt that there is much more to come. (Ages 10 to adult) --Susan Harrison [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Harry Potter Y El Caliz De Fuego / Harry Potter And the Goblet of Fire'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Jane Austen Book Club'
Six people - five women and a man - meet once a month in California's Central Valley to discuss Jane Austen's novels. They are ordinary people, neither happy nor unhappy, but each of them is wounded in different ways, they are all mixed up about their lives and relationships. Over the six months they meet, marriages are tested, affairs begin, unsuitable arrangements become suitable - under the guiding eye of Jane Austen a couple of them even fall in love..."I was enchanted. A charming and intelligent read, with the best appendix I've come across since Mark Haddon's "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time"" - Kate Long, author of "The Bad Mother's Handbook". [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Kite Runner'
The New York Times bestseller and international classic loved by millions of readers. The unforgettable, heartbreaking story of the unlikely friendship between a wealthy boy and the son of his father's servant, The Kite Runner is a beautifully crafted novel set in a country that is in the process of being destroyed. It is about the power of reading, the price of betrayal, and the possibility of redemption; and an exploration of the power of fathers over sons-their love, their sacrifices, their lies. A sweeping story of family, love, and friendship told against the devastating backdrop of the history of Afghanistan over the last thirty years, The Kite Runner is an unusual and powerful novel that has become a beloved, one-of-a-kind classic. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'LA Senora Dalloway'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Liar'
Liar, The, by Fry, Stephen [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Lovely Bones'
On her way home from school on a snowy December day, 14-year-old Susie Salmon is lured into a cornfield and brutally raped and murdered, the latest victim of a serial killer. The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold's haunting and heartbreaking debut novel, unfolds from heaven, where "life is a perpetual yesterday" and where Susie narrates and keeps watch over her grieving family and friends, as well as her brazen killer and the sad detective working on her case.
As Sebold fashions it, everyone has his or her own version of heaven. Susie's resembles the athletic fields and landscape of a suburban high school: a heaven of her "simplest dreams", where "there were no teachers... We never had to go inside except for art class... The boys did not pinch our backsides or tell us we smelled; our textbooks were Seventeen and Glamour and Vogue".
The Lovely Bones works as an odd yet affecting coming-of-age story. Susie struggles to accept her death while still clinging to the lost world of the living, following her family's dramas over the years. Her family disintegrates in their grief: her father becomes determined to find her killer, her mother withdraws, her little brother Buckley attempts to make sense of the new hole in his family and her younger sister Lindsey moves through the milestone events of her teenage and young adult years with Susie riding spiritual shotgun. Random acts and missed opportunities run throughout the book--Susie recalls her sole kiss with a boy on earth as "like an accident--a beautiful gasoline rainbow".
Though sentimental at times, The Lovely Bones is a moving exploration of loss and mourning that ultimately puts its faith in the living and that is made even more powerful by a cast of convincing characters. Sebold orchestrates a big finish and though things tend to wrap up a little too well for everyone in the end, one can only imagine (or hope) that heaven is indeed a place filled with such happy endings. --Brad Thomas Parsons, Amazon.com [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Middlesex'
"I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974." And so begins Middlesex, the mesmerizing saga of a near-mythic Greek American family and the "roller-coaster ride of a single gene through time." The odd but utterly believable story of Cal Stephanides, and how this 41-year-old hermaphrodite was raised as Calliope, is at the tender heart of this long-awaited second novel from Jeffrey Eugenides, whose elegant and haunting 1993 debut, The Virgin Suicides, remains one of the finest first novels of recent memory.
Eugenides weaves together a kaleidoscopic narrative spanning 80 years of a stained family history, from a fateful incestuous union in a small town in early 1920s Asia Minor to Prohibition-era Detroit; from the early days of Ford Motors to the heated 1967 race riots; from the tony suburbs of Grosse Pointe and a confusing, aching adolescent love story to modern-day Berlin. Eugenides's command of the narrative is astonishing. He balances Cal/Callie's shifting voices convincingly, spinning this strange and often unsettling story with intelligence, insight, and generous amounts of humor:
Emotions, in my experience aren't covered by single words. I don't believe in "sadness," "joy," or "regret." & I'd like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic traincar constructions like, say, "the happiness that attends disaster." Or: "the disappointment of sleeping with one's fantasy." ... I'd like to have a word for "the sadness inspired by failing restaurants" as well as for "the excitement of getting a room with a minibar." I've never had the right words to describe my life, and now that I've entered my story, I need them more than ever.
When you get to the end of this splendorous book, when you suddenly realize that after hundreds of pages you have only a few more left to turn over, you'll experience a quick pang of regret knowing that your time with Cal is coming to a close, and you may even resist finishing it--putting it aside for an hour or two, or maybe overnight--just so that this wondrous, magical novel might never end. --Brad Thomas Parsons [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Monarch Great Gatsby'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Mrs Dalloway'
Zwar bemerkte sie in ihren Notizen über Ulysses, den ihr T.S.Eliot kurz nach dessen Erscheinen empfohlen hatte, lakonisch: "Ein primitives ungebildetes Buch, scheint mir", nichtsdestotrotz schien James Joyce' Meisterwerk nachhaltigen Eindruck bei ihr hinterlassen zu haben. Virginia Woolf, gerade an der Arbeit zu ihrem neuen Roman Mrs. Dalloway, übernahm seine Idee, die Geschichte an einem einzigen Tag spielen zu lassen. Nach der Zeit ihrer ersten eher traditionell-impressionistischen Romane Die Fahrt hinaus von 1915 und Nacht und Tag aus dem Jahr 1919, begann nun ihre experimentelle Phase.
Ein Junitag im Jahre 1923. Clarissa Dalloway, (sie hatte schon einen Auftritt in Die Fahrt hinaus), Gattin eines Parlamentsabgeordneten, trifft die Vorbereitungen für eine große Abendgesellschaft. Während dieser Verrichtungen ergeht sie sich in Erinnerungen, lotet ihr Leben aus und wird sich der Enge und Leere ihres Daseins schmerzlich bewußt. Mrs. Dalloways Reflexionen, wie überhaupt die inneren Monologe des Romans, bilden den eigentlichen Kern der Handlung, während die Darsteller puppengleich auf dem gesellschaftlichen Parkett agieren. Dieses fast filmisch anmutende Übereinanderschichten gleichzeitiger Ereignisse griff die Autorin in ihrem späteren Roman Die Wellen erneut auf.
Die Filmfassung von Regisseurin Marleen Gorris (Antonias Welt), mit der großartigen Vanessa Redgrave in der Titelrolle, kam im September 1997 auf den Markt. --Ravi Unger [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'Rebelion En La Granja / Animal Farm'
Esta es una fabula en la que la adjudicacion de las aflicciones y las necesidades humanas a los animales protagonistas vencio la resistencia nacional de los primeros lectores a mirar lo que no querian mirar. Lo que nos cuenta el autor ya estaba en los periodicos: la historia sobre los crimenes estalinistas en la Union Sovietica. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'When We Were Orphans'
When 9-year-old Christopher Banks's father--a British businessman involved in the opium trade--disappears from the family home in Shanghai, the boy and his friend Akira play at being detectives: "Until in the end, after the chases, fist-fights and gun-battles around the warren-like alleys of the Chinese districts, whatever our variations and elaborations, our narratives would always conclude with a magnificent ceremony held in Jessfield Park, a ceremony that would see us, one after another, step out onto a specially erected stage ... to greet the vast cheering crowds."
But Christopher's mother also disappears, and he is sent to live in England, where he grows up in the years between the world wars to become, he claims, a famous detective. His family's fate continues to haunt him, however, and he sifts through his memories to try to make sense of his loss. Finally, in the late 1930s, he returns to Shanghai to solve the most important case of his life. But as Christopher pursues his investigation, the boundaries between fact and fantasy begin to evaporate. Is the Japanese soldier he meets really Akira? Are his parents really being held in a house in the Chinese district? And who is Mr. Grayson, the British official who seems to be planning an important celebration? "My first question, sir, before anything else, is if you're happy with the choice of Jessfield Park for the ceremony? We will, you see, require substantial space."
In When We Were Orphans Kazuo Ishiguro uses the conventions of crime fiction to create a moving portrait of a troubled mind, and of a man who cannot escape the long shadows cast by childhood trauma. Sherlock Holmes needed only fragments--a muddy shoe, cigarette ash on a sleeve--to make his deductions, but all Christopher has are fading recollections of long-ago events, and for him the truth is much harder to grasp. Ishiguro writes in the first person, but from the beginning there are cracks in Christopher's carefully restrained prose, suggestions that his version of the world may not be the most reliable. Faced with such a narrator, the reader is forced to become a detective too, chasing crumbs of truth through the labyrinth of Christopher's memory.
Ishiguro has never been one for verbal pyrotechnics, but the unruffled surface of this haunting novel only adds to its emotional power. When We Were Orphans is an extraordinary feat of sustained, perfectly controlled imagination, and in Christopher Banks the author has created one of his most memorable characters. --Simon Leake [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'White Teeth: Reader's Companion'
Epic in scale and intimate in approach, White Teeth is a formidably ambitious debut. First novelist Zadie Smith takes on race, sex, class, history, and the minefield of gender politics, and such is her wit and inventiveness that these weighty subjects seem effortlessly light. She also has an impressive geographical range, guiding the reader from Jamaica to Turkey to Bangladesh and back again.
Still, the book's home base is a scrubby North London borough, where we encounter Smith's unlikely heroes: prevaricating Archie Jones and intemperate Samad Iqbal, who served together in the so-called Buggered Battalion during World War II. In the ensuing decades, both have gone forth and multiplied: Archie marries beautiful, bucktoothed Clara--who's on the run from her Jehovah's Witness mother--and fathers a daughter. Samad marries stroppy Alsana, who gives birth to twin sons. Here is multiculturalism in its most elemental form: "Children with first and last names on a direct collision course. Names that secrete within them mass exodus, cramped boats and planes, cold arrivals, medical checks."
Big questions demand boldly drawn characters. Zadie Smith's aren't heroic, just real: warm, funny, misguided, and entirely familiar. Reading their conversations is like eavesdropping. Even a simple exchange between Alsana and Clara about their pregnancies has a comical ring of truth: "A woman has to have the private things--a husband needn't be involved in body business, in a lady's... parts." And the men, of course, have their own involvement in bodily functions:
The deal was this: on January 1, 1980, like a New Year dieter who gives up cheese on the condition that he can have chocolate, Samad gave up masturbation so that he might drink. It was a deal, a business proposition, that he had made with God: Samad being the party of the first part, God being the sleeping partner. And since that day Samad had enjoyed relative spiritual peace and many a frothy Guinness with Archibald Jones; he had even developed the habit of taking his last gulp looking up at the sky like a Christian, thinking: I'm basically a good man.Not all of White Teeth is so amusingly carnal. The mixed blessings of assimilation, for example, are an ongoing torture for Samad as he watches his sons grow up. "They have both lost their way," he grumbles. "Strayed so far from what I had intended for them. No doubt they will both marry white women called Sheila and put me in an early grave." These classic immigrant fears--of dilution and disappearance--are no laughing matter. But in the end, they're exactly what gives White Teeth its lasting power and undeniable bite. --Eithne Farry [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Wicked'
This is the book that started it all! The basis for the smash hit Tony Award-winning Broadway musical, Gregory Maguire's breathtaking New York Times bestseller Wicked views the land of Oz, its inhabitants, its Wizard, and the Emerald City, through a darker and greener (not rosier) lens. Brilliantly inventive, Wicked offers us a radical new evaluation of one of the most feared and hated characters in all of literature: the much maligned Wicked Witch of the West who, as Maguire tells us, wasn't nearly as Wicked as we imagined. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Angeles Y Demonios / Angels and Demons'
El arma más poderosa creada por el hombre, una organización secreta sedienta de venganza... y apenas unas horas para evitar el desastre.
La eterna pugna entre ciencia y religión se ha convertido en una guerra muy real.
En un laboratorio de máxima seguridad, aparece asesinado un científico con un extraño símbolo grabado a fuego en su pecho. Para el profesor Robert Langdon no hay duda: los Illuminati, los hombres enfrentados a la Iglesia desde los tiempos de Galileo, han regresado. Y esta vez disponen de la más mortífera arma que ha creado la humanidad, un artefacto con el que pueden ganar la batalla final contra su eterno enemigo. Acompañado de una joven científica y un audaz capitán de la Guardia Suiza, Langdon comienza una carrera contra reloj, en una búsqueda desesperada por los rincones más secretos de El Vaticano. Necesitará todo su conocimiento para descifrar las claves ocultas que los Illuminati han dejado a través de los siglos en manuscritos y templos, y todo su coraje para vencer al despiadado asesino que siempre parece llevarle la delantera.
El autor de El Código Da Vinci nos arrastra a una espiral de acción sin pausa, un impactante thriller donde se suceden las sorpresas y se revelan algunos de los más oscuros enigmas de la historia. Fuerzas que han permanecido ocultas durante siglos y que ahora planean destruir la Iglesia... literalmente. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Angeles y Demonios / Angels and Demons: El Ilustrado / Illustrated'
Del mismo autor del Bestseller numero uno de El New York Times El Código Da Vinci FonoLibro les trae el audiolibro en español de la primer episodio de la trilogía del famoso escritor Dan Brown, Ángeles & Demonios en una magnifica producción que no podrá dejar de escuchar hasta que llegue al final. Robert Lagndom, el renombrado profesor de simbología de la universidad de Harvard es convocado a un laboratorio de alta seguridad en Suiza para analizar un símbolo grabado con fuego en el pecho de un científico asesinado. Langdom descubre lo inimaginable, una venganza sangrienta contra la iglesia por una organización secreta, que existe desde los tiempos de Galileo, Los Illuminati. Robert Langdom, en compañía de una atractiva científica, Victoria Vetra, entran en una carrera contra el tiempo para salvar al Vaticano de la más mortal arma creada por el hombre en manos de esta peligrosa organización. Juntos se embarcan en una casería para descifrar los códigos que los illuminatis han dejado a lo largo de los siglos en pergaminos, templos, catedrales, el vaticano, y el la catacumba más secreta de la tierra, la olvidada guarida de los illuminatis. Dan Brown nos adentra a una trama llena de acción y misterio que revela la verdad de la guerra entre la religión y la ciencia. Fuerzas que han permanecido ocultas durante siglos y que ahora planean destruir la Iglesia... literalmente. El Código Da Vinci esta disponible también audiolibro en versiones completa y resumida en una magnifica producción. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Cometas En El Cielo / The Kite Runner'
More editions of Cometas En El Cielo / The Kite Runner:
› Find signed collectible books: 'Desde Mi Cielo / The Lovely Bones'
From her vantage point in heaven, Susie Salmon describes how she was confronted by a murderer one December afternoon on her way home from school. Lured into an underground hiding place, she was raped and killed. But what the reader knows, her family does not. Anxiously,we keep vigil with Susie, aching for her grieving family, desperate for the killer to be found and punished. Sebold creates a heaven that's calm and comforting, a place whose residents can have whatever they enjoyed when they were alive and then some.
But Susie isn't ready to release her hold on life just yet, and she intensely watches her family and friends as they struggle to cope with a reality in which she is no longer a part. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Erase Una Vez UN Padre'
Will, 36, is the eternal bachelor, unmarried, and does not feel any necessity to procreate. His goal is to have meaningless relationships with beautiful women that will leave him before things get too intense. As part of his plan to attract single women, he decides to pass himself off as a single dad. To do this, he befriends a young boy named Marcus. But little does he know that Marcus will change his outlook on life forever.
Description in Spanish: Will Freeman, soltero de treinta y seis años, tiene dinero suficiente para vivir sin trabajar y disfruta de mucho tiempo libre. No siente ninguna necesidad de procrear, pero ha descubierto que los hijos democratizan a las mujeres hermosas y esto ha despertado su interés por las madres solteras o separadas. De modo que se apunta a un grupo de autoayuda al que sólo asisten padres -pocos- o madres separadas. Para ello, naturalmente, debe fingir que tiene un hijo. Pero poco importa, a Will se le da bien contar mentiras. Marcus no tiene padre ni amigos, sus estudios no van bien y tampoco recibe demasiada ayuda de su madre. Cuando conoce a Will, cree haber hallado en él al sustituto del padre ausente. Sin embargo, ¿ cómo puede Will, un completo inmaduro, cumplir las funciones de progenitor? La relación entre ambos personajes nunca será la de un padre con su hijo, pero sí contribuirá a que maduren y se desenvuelvan mejor. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'LA Primera Detective De Botsuana'
En Botswana nunca había habido una mujer detective... hasta el día en que Mma Ramotswe decide abrir su pequeña oficina al pie del monte Kgale, cerca del desierto de Kalahari. Le basta con unas sillas, dos mesas, un teléfono y una secretaria... además de unas tazas para invitar a los clientes a tomar un té. ¿Qué otra cosa se requiere para resolver misterios? Al fin y al cabo, ¿no se han dedicado siempre las mujeres a escuchar y a intentar solucionar los problemas de los demás frente a una taza de té?
Mma Ramotswe no es una irónica intelectual ni una aguerrida ex policía, sino una mujer alegre y rolliza, cargada de sentido común y con un firme deseo de ayudar al prójimo. En su opinión, muchas personas no saben distinguir el bien del mal, y hay que enseñarles la diferencia. Huérfana, superviviente de un matrimonio infernal y madre por sólo cinco días, esta Miss Marple africana sabe reconocer el dolor ajeno, y quiere contribuir a aliviarlo. Sus métodos son tal vez poco ortodoxos, pero también lo son sus casos, así como sus atribulados clientes.
Con sus acertadas descripciones y sus sensatos comentarios, la protagonista de esta novela nos introduce paso a paso en la realidad de un país lejano y desconocido, donde la teconología convive con las tradiciones mágicas, y donde resulta más fácil conocer las noticias de boca de las vecinas que leyendo la prensa. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Rebelion En La Granja / Animal Farm'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'LA Senora Dalloway'
Nuestra editorial se especializa en publicar libros en español. Para encontrar otros títulos busque Editorial Medí.
Contamos con mas volúmenes en español que cualquier otra editorial para el kindle y continuamos creciendo. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Propos D'UN Gamin'
Pour Marcus, douze ans, une mère divorcée, dépressive et baba cool, la vie n'est pas toujours facile. Surtout quand de surcroît cette mère végétarienne n'écoute que des tubes des années soixante-dix, vous attife de vêtements ringards et que les durs de l'école ne jurent que par le hip-hop. Quant à Will, la trentaine, branché, riche, oisif et fier collectionneur d'amours épisodiques, il a du mal à trouver sa place dans la société. Malgré leur méfiance réciproque, l'homme et l'enfant que tout oppose vont finir par se trouver et s'épauler pour affronter l'adolescence et des liens sociaux distendus. Cette rencontre paradoxale entre un mâle solitaire prototype de l'homme moderne ! et un gosse tendre et marginal est magistralement orchestrée par Nick Hornby. Une histoire de parents célibataires, d'enfants solitaires, de fringues, de foot et de musique. Après les succès de Haute fidélité et Carton jaune, l'auteur signe là son livre le plus accompli. Le ton est sarcastique et drôle, les situations d'un réalisme désarmant et les émotions sincères. C'est enfin un regard d'une grande lucidité sur les désordres amoureux de cette fin de siècle. --Stellio Paris [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Les Amants Maudits'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Harry Potter Et La Coupe De Feu / Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire'
768 pages. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Harry Potter: 4 und der Feuerkelch'
Auch der vierte Harry Potter-Band wurde von den Fans sehnsüchtig erwartet, als er am 14. Oktober 2000 auf Deutsch erschien (am 08. Juli 2000 in der englischen Originalausgabe). 800 Seiten voller Abenteuer: u. a. werden die Fragen nach dem Gewinner des Quidditch-Worldcups beantwortet, außerdem in wen Harry sich verliebt und wer derjenige von den altvertrauten Figuren ist, der das Ende von Band 4 nicht überleben wird.
Die Weltmeisterschaft im Quidditch ist nicht nur ein sportlicher Höhepunkt, sondern auch eine organisatorische Meisterleistung (wie geben Tausende von Zauberern und Zauberinnen sich den Anschein, eine ganz harmlose Versammlung von Muggels zu sein?). Und der im Titel erwähnte Feuerkelch spielt eine nicht unbedeutende Rolle dabei, dass die Zauberschule Hogwarts im Wettbewerb mit zwei anderen Schulen einen gewissen Vorteil erhält. Sie haben richtig gelesen: Zwar haben wir uns bisher kein einziges Mal gefragt, ob es noch andere Zauberschulen außer Hogwarts gibt -- mit seinem weiten Gelände, das sich zwischen den Gewächshäusern der Botanik-Lehrerin Prof. Sprout, dem See und Hagrids Hütte mit seinem Zoo an absonderlichen magischen Kreaturen erstreckt, schien es uns wie ein kleines perfektes Universum. Aber so wie Joanne K. Rowling die Schüler aus dem noblen Beauxbatons und dem abgelegenen Durmstrang beschreibt, die in Hogwarts zu Gast sind, muss man ihr einfach glauben, dass es die reine Wahrheit und irgendwie schon immer so gewesen ist, so wie wir ihr auch jede Menge Poltergeister, Hauselfen, Einhörner, Zentauren und sonstige magische Wesen glauben.
Lord Voldemort, auch bekannt als Tom Riddle, auch bekannt als das Böse in Person (wenngleich seit einigen Jahren ohne einen eigenen Körper und quasi nur als eiskalter geistiger Hauch vorhanden) hat längst nicht aufgegeben, Harry nach dem Leben zu trachten -- und langsam, ganz langsam gelingt es ihm auch mithilfe des ihm ergebenen Wormtail, neue Kräfte zu sammeln. --Heike Reher
Harry Potter und der Feuerkelch gibt es als Normalausgabe und als Ausgabe für Erwachsene. Die beiden Ausgaben unterscheiden sich in der Umschlaggestaltung, sind aber textlich identisch. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Harryz Zauberbox'
Die Box und die Bücher sind in einen guten gebrauchten Zustand. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Zähne zeigen'
Zähne zeigen, monumental im Ausmaß und intim im Ansatz, ist ein ehrgeiziger Roman. Seine Themen drehen sich um Herkunft, Religion, Geschlechterbeziehungen, Hautfarbe, gesellschaftliche Stellung und Geschichte, aber Zadie Smith ist mit einem Witz und einem Einfallsreichtum gesegnet, die diese gewichtigen Ideen mühelos leicht erscheinen lassen.
Die Handlung führt uns nach Jamaika, die Türkei, Bangladesch und Indien und bringt uns schließlich in einen schäbigen Vorort von North London, in dem die zwei merkwürdigen Helden dieses Buches zu Hause sind: Archie Jones, der es mit der Wahrheit nicht so genau nimmt, und Samad Iqbal, der im hohen Maße dem Alkohol zuspricht. Sie begegneten sich erstmals im Zweiten Weltkrieg als Mitglieder eines vom Pech verfolgten Bataillons und sind seitdem unzertrennlich. Archie heiratet die schöne Clara mit den vorstehenden Zähnen, die sich auf der Flucht vor ihrer Mutter befindet, einer Zeugin Jehovas, und mit der er eine Tochter hat, Irie. Samad heiratet die pampige Alsana, die ihm zwei stramme Jungs schenkt -- Zwillinge: "Kinder mit Vor- und Zunamen, die sich auf direktem Kollisionskurs befinden; Namen, hinter denen sich Massenexodus, überfüllte Boote und Flugzeuge, unfreundliche Ankünfte und ärztliche Untersuchungen verbergen."
Große Fragen verlangen nach kühn gezeichneten Charakteren. Zadie Smiths Helden sind nicht heroisch; sie sind einfach echt: warmherzig, komisch, fehlgeleitet und absolut vertraut. Wenn man ihre Unterhaltungen liest, kommt man sich vor, als würde man sie heimlich belauschen. In einer ganz einfachen Szene unterhalten sich Alsana und Clara im Park über ihre Schwangerschaften: "Eine Frau muss ihre privaten Dinge haben -- ein Ehemann sollte sich nicht in die körperlichen Angelegenheiten einmischen, in den Intimbereich einer Frau."
Samad ist verärgert über seine Söhne: "Sie sind beide vom Weg abgekommen; so weit weg von dem, was ich für sie geplant hatte. Es gibt wohl keinen Zweifel, dass sie beide irgendwann weiße Frauen heiraten werden, die Sheila heißen, und mich früh unter die Erde bringen." Hier spiegeln sich "die Ängste des Einwanderers -- Identitätsverlust, Auflösung" -- deutlich wider, die Samad mehr als alles andere geprägt haben.
Die Lektüre von Zähne zeigen ist eine wahre Freude. In diesem Buch wimmelt es vor Leben und Überschwänglichkeit, und doch besitzt es genug Schläue und despektierliche Seriosität, um ihm eine gewisse Bissigkeit zu geben. --Eithne Farry [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Denti Bianchi / White Teeth'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Il Dio Delle Piccole Cose'
Ammu, figlia di un alto funzionario, lascia un marito violento e torna a casa con i suoi bambini, i gemelli Estha e Rahel, maschio e femmina. Ma nellIndia meridionale dei tardi anni Sessanta, una donna divorziata come lei si ritrova priva di una posizione sociale riconosciuta, soprattutto se commette lerrore di innamorarsi di un paria. I gemelli vogliono bene a Velutha, lintoccabile che la madre può amare solo in segreto, e attraverso il loro sguardo, capace di cogliere le piccole cose e i piccoli eventi, prende forma la storia di un grande amore, in cui si riflette il tema universale dei sentimenti in conflitto con le convenzioni. Nei loro pensieri e nelle loro parole risuona la critica più radicale a ogni legge che stabilisce chi si deve amare, e come, e quanto. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Hari Butor Wa Ka's An-nar / Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire'
The Arabic Edition of the fascinating English thriller Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix [via]
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