Softcover original, UK First Edition, First Printing, Signed by author to the title page.
It is the 1980s, and Kate Meaney is a serious-minded and curious young girl - who spends her time with her toy monkey acting out the role of a junior detective. She notes goings-on at the Green Oaks shopping centre and in her street, particularly the newsagent's where she is friends with the owner's son Adrian. When she disappears, Adrian falls under suspicion and is hounded by the press. It's 2004 and thirty-something Lisa is at work in a cut-price record store, tearing her hair out at customers' bizarre requests and the even more bizarre behaviour of her colleagues. While at home, the futility of her relationship is slowly becoming apparent. Over shared fishpaste sandwiches, she strikes up a friendship with security guard Kurt - and, following CCTV glimpses of Kate, they become entranced by the lost little girl and her connections with the strange history of Green Oaks itself
Long listed for the Man Booker Prize 2007
Long listed for the Guardian First Book Award 2007.
Winner of the Costa First Novel Award 2007.
The Welsh Girl - Peter HO DAVIES
Published by UK Sceptre 3 May 2007
Special Price £9.99
ISBN 0340938250
Signed by Author
First EditionFirst Printing
Hardcover, UK First Edition, First Printing, Signed by author on a "The Welsh Girl" special bookplate adhered to the title page.
In 1944, a German Jewish refugee is sent to Wales to interview Rudolf Hess; in Snowdonia, a seventeen-year-old girl, the daughter of a fiercely nationalistic shepherd, dreams of the bright lights of an English city; and in a nearby POW camp, a German soldier struggles to reconcile his surrender with his sense of honour. As their lives intersect, all three will come to question where they belong and where their loyalties lie. Peter Ho Davies's thought-provoking and profoundly moving first novel traces a perilous wartime romance as it explores the bonds of love and duty that hold us to family, country, and ultimately our fellow man. Vividly rooted in history and landscape, THE WELSH GIRL reminds us anew of the pervasive presence of the past, and the startling intimacy of the foreign.
Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2007.
The Reluctant Fundamentalist - Mohsin HAMID
Published by UK Hamish Hamilton 1 March 2007
Price£24.99
ISBN 0241143659
Signed by Author
First EditionFirst Printing
At a cafe table in Lahore, a Pakistani man begins the tale that has led to his fateful meeting with an uneasy American stranger ...Changez is living an immigrant's dream of America. He thrives on the energy of New York, his work at an elite firm, and his budding relationship. For a time, it seems that nothing will stand in the way of his meteoric rise to success. But in the wake of September 11, Changez finds his relationship crumbling and his exalted status overturned. Allegiances are subsequently unearthed, proving themselves more fundamental than money, power and maybe even love.
Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2007.
The Gift of Rain - Tan TWAN ENG
Published by UK Myrmidon 8 March 2007
Special Price £12.00
ISBN 1905802048
First EditionFirst Printing
**UNSIGNED** Hardcover UK First Edition, First Printing.
This work is set in Penang, 1939. Sixteen-year-old Philip Hutton is a loner. Half English, half Chinese and feeling neither, he discovers a sense of belonging in an unexpected friendship with Hayato Endo, a Japanese diplomat. Philip shows his new friend around his adored island of Penang, and in return Endo trains him in the art and discipline of aikido. But such knowledge comes at a terrible price. The enigmatic Endo is bound by disciplines of his own and when the Japanese invade Malaya, threatening to destroy Philip's family and everything he loves, he realises that his trusted sensei - to whom he owes absolute loyalty - has been harbouring a devastating secret. Philip must risk everything in an attempt to save those he has placed in mortal danger and discover who and what he really is. With masterful and gorgeous narrative, replete with exotic and captivating images, sounds and aromas - of rain swept beaches, magical mountain temples, pungent spice warehouses, opulent colonial ballrooms and fetid and forbidding rainforests - Tan Twan Eng weaves a haunting and unforgettable story of betrayal, barbaric cruelty, steadfast courage and enduring love.
Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2007.
Self Help - Edward DOCX
Published by UK Picador 6 July 2007
Special Price £18.00
ISBN 0330438352
Signed by Author
First EditionFirst Printing
Hardcover, UK First Edition, First Printing, Signed by author to the title page.
He was relieved to be again among the Russians. Nothing to do with his head, or even his heart, but in his soul ...Set between London and St. Petersburg, "Self Help" is the absorbing story of a family - half-English, half-Russian - with many secrets and a dark, disturbed history. Masha Glover returns home from exile, where she dies suddenly and alone. Her twins, Gabriel and Isabella, must come together and confront the contorted legacy of the past in the shape of their estranged, malevolent father, Nicholas, and the pitiless stranger, Arkady Artamenkov. "Self Help" is a beautifully written novel, alive with feeling, intelligence and dark humour, and always directly engaged with the modern world. In addressing the most elemental of contradictions - human nature and nurture; honesty and deception; what it means to live with integrity when so much is so easily discredited - it emerges as that rarest of discoveries: a truly gripping story.
Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2007.
Mister Pip - Lloyd JONES
Published by UK John Murray 14 June 2007
Special Price £29.99
ISBN 0719564565
First EditionFirst Printing
Hardcover, UK First Edition, First Printing, Signed, First Line Quoted and Located ("Bath Festival") by author to the title page. Book comes with a Bath Literature Festival brochure.
'You cannot pretend to read a book. Your eyes will give you away. So will your breathing. A person entranced by a book simply forgets to breathe. The house can catch alight and a reader deep in a book will not look up until the wallpaper is in flames.' It is Bougainville in 1991 - a small village on a lush tropical island in the South Pacific. Eighty-six days have passed since Matilda's last day of school as, quietly, war is encroaching from the other end of the island. When the villagers' safe, predictable lives come to a halt, Bougainville's children are surprised to find the island's only white man, a recluse, re-opening the school. Pop Eye, aka Mr Watts, explains he will introduce the children to Mr Dickens. Matilda and the others think a foreigner is coming to the island and prepare a list of much needed items. They are shocked to discover their acquaintance with Mr Dickens will be through Mr Watts' inspiring reading of "Great Expectations". But on an island at war, the power of fiction has dangerous consequences. Imagination and beliefs are challenged by guns. "Mister Pip" is an unforgettable tale of survival by story; a dazzling piece of writing that lives long in the mind after the last page is finished.
Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2007.
Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2007.
Gifted - Nikita LALWANI
Published by UK Viking 28 June 2007
Special Price £9.99
ISBN 0670917079
Signed by Author
First EditionFirst Printing
Hardcover, UK First Edition, First Printing, Signed by author to the title page.
Debut novel: Numbers have filled Rumi Vasi's world since she first learned to count. But it was on a trip to India at the age of 8 that her mathematical powers acquired their almost supernatural significance. When she returned home to Cardiff her destiny was sealed: she was now, and would forever be, the town's 'maths prodigy'. At 14 Rumi is firmly set on the path of a gifted child, speeding headlong towards Oxford University. As her father sees it, discipline is everything if the family has any hope of making its mark on its adoptive country. However, as Rumi gets older and the family's stark isolation intensifies, numbers start to lose their magic for the young teenager: she abandons the rigid timetable of her afternoons to seek out friendship and replaces equations with rampant spice abuse. As her longing for love and her parents' will to succeed deepen so too does the rift between generations. Gifted captures brilliantly the battle to come of age in an emotional and comic hinterland, where histories, arithmetic and cumin seeds all play a part. In a voice that is by turns very funny and fiercely acute Nikita Lalwani brings vividly to life a young family's search for recognition and how that search can break a family apart. A story of high aspirations and deep desires, and of the sometime loneliness of childhood, Gifted is a dazzling debut.
Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2007.
Animal's People - Indra SINHA
Published by UK Simon & Schuster 5 March 2007
Price£19.99
ISBN 0743259203
Signed by Author
First EditionFirst Printing
Softcover original, UK First Edition, First Printing, Signed by author to the title page.
'I used to be human once. So I'm told. I don't remember it myself, but people who knew me when I was small say I walked on two feet just like a human being...' Ever since he can remember, Animal has gone on all fours, the catastrophic result of what happened on That Night when, thanks to an American chemical company, the Apocalypse visited his slum. Now not quite twenty, he leads a hand-to-mouth existence with his dog Jara and a crazy old nun called Ma Franci, and spends his nights fantasising about Nisha, the daughter of a local musician, and wondering what it must be like to get laid. When a young American doctor, Elli Barber, comes to town to open a free clinic for the still suffering townsfolk - only to find herself struggling to convince them that she isn't there to do the dirty work of the 'Kampani' - Animal plunges into a web of intrigues, scams and plots with the unabashed aim of turning events to his own advantage. Compellingly honest, entertaining and entirely without self-pity, Animal's account lights our way into his dark world with flashes of pure joy - from the very first page all the way to the story's explosive ending. ANIMAL'S PEOPLE is a stunningly humane work of storytelling that takes us right to the heart of contemporary India.