"In 1986 Pakistan's greatest poet was found brutally murdered, beaten to death by government thugs. Two years later his lover, fearless activist Samina Akram, disappeared. Her daughter, Aasmani has always assumed her mother simply abandoned her — since she had left so many times before, following the Poet into exile." But now, working at Pakistan's first independent TV station, Aasmani runs into an old friend of her mother's who hands her a letter written — recently — in the Poet and Samina's secret code. As more letters arrive, Aasmani becomes certain that will lead her to Samina. Despite menacing signs, the disbelief of her family, and the worries of her new lover, Aasmani decodes the letters and searches for their source. But if she manages to locate it, will she find what she's looking for?

Džons Grišams BrokerisAmerikas Savienoto Valstu prezidents Arturs Morgans pēdējās neveiksmīgās prezidentūras dienās izskata par sevišķi smagiem nodarījumiem notiesāto noziedznieku apžēlošanas lūgumus. Viņu vidū ir Džoels Bekmens, bijušais Baltā nama lobijs, kas nebrīvē aizvadījis sešus gadus.Tomēr Bekmena apžēlošana nav ASV valdības labās gribas apliecinājums. Sis vīrs ticis notiesāts par nelikumīgas izsoles organizēšanu un mēģinājumu pārdot slepenu satelītsistēmu. CIP izseko bijušo ieslodzīto, lai uzzinātu, kādēļ ir izveidota tik varena un sarežģīta izlūkošanas aparatūra un kam Bekmens grasījies to pārdot - Krievijai, Ķīnai, Izraēlai vai Saūda Arābijai. ASV varenie uzskata, ka šīs satelītsistēmas tīkotāji vēlēsies atriebties bijušajām brokerim, tiklīdz viņš būs iznācis no cietuma... Ilgi nav jāgaida - pavisam drīz Džoels Bekmens tiek ierauts notikumu virpulī, kur viena cilvēka dzīvībai vairs nav nozīmes, kur uz spēles tiek likta vairāku nāciju drošība un neiedomājama vara.Džons Grišams reiz bijis politiķis un advokāts, pēc pievēršanās rakstniecībai radījis daudzus spriedzes pilnus romānus, kurus iemīļojuši arī latviešu lasītāji. Starp slavenākajiem viņa darbiem minami tādi bestselleri kā “Likumu pasaules valdnieks”, “Iesācējs", “Pavēstē” u. c. Pēc Dž. Grišama darbu motīviem uzņemtas arī visā pasaulē populāras filmas, no kurām noteikti jāpiemin “Firma”, “Pelikāna lieta” un “Iesācējs”. Zvaigzne ABC. SIA, 2009John GrishamTHE BROKERNo angļu valodas tulkojis Allens PempersMākslinieks Arnis ZariņšNoskanējis grāmatu un  failu izveidojis Imants Ločmelis imantslochmelis@inbox.lvRedaktore Zigrīda Dūda Apgāds Zvaigzne ABC. SIA, 2009K. Valdemāra ielā 6, Rīgā, LV-1010. Red. nr. TL-2301. A/s «Poligrāfists», K. Valdemāra ielā 6, Rīgā, LV-1010.© Tulkojums latviešu valodā. Apgāds Zvaigzne ABC ISBN 978-9934-0-0180-2

It is Enniscorthy in the southeast of Ireland in the early 1950s. Eilis Lacey is one among many of her generation who cannot find work at home. Thus when a job is offered in America, it is clear to everyone that she must go. Leaving her family and country, Eilis heads for unfamiliar Brooklyn, and to a crowded boarding house where the landlady's intense scrutiny and the small jealousies of her fellow residents only deepen her isolation.Slowly, however, the pain of parting is buried beneath the rhythms of her new life – until she begins to realize that she has found a sort of happiness. As she falls in love, news comes from home that forces her back to Enniscorthy, not to the constrictions of her old life, but to new possibilities which conflict deeply with the life she has left behind in Brooklyn.In the quiet character of Eilis Lacey, Colm Tóibín has created one of fiction's most memorable heroines and in Brooklyn, a luminous novel of devastating power. Tóibín demonstrates once again his astonishing range and that he is a true master of nuanced prose, emotional depth, and narrative virtuosity.

Nathan Glass ha sobrevivido a un cáncer de pulmón y a un divorcio después de treinta y tres años de matrimonio, y ha vuelto a Brooklyn, el lugar donde nació y pasó su infancia. Quiere vivir allí lo que le queda de su `ridícula vida`. Hasta que enfermó era un próspero vendedor de seguros, ahora que ya no tiene que ganarse la vida, piensa escribir El libro de las locuras de los hombres. Contará todo lo que pasa a su alrededor, todo lo que le ocurre y lo que se le ocurre, y hasta algunas de las historias caprichosas, disparatadas, verdaderas locuras de personas que recuerda. Comienza a frecuentar el bar del barrio, el muy austeriano Cosmic Diner, y está casi enamorado de la camarera, la casada e inalcanzable Marina. Y va también a la librería de segunda mano de Harry Brightman, un homosexual culto y contradictorio, que no es ni remotamente quien dice ser.

Published when Wallace was just twenty-four years old, The Broom of the System stunned critics and marked the emergence of an extraordinary new talent. At the center of this outlandishly funny, fiercely intelligent novel is the bewitching heroine, Lenore Stonecipher Beadsman. The year is 1990 and the place is a slightly altered Cleveland, Ohio. Lenore’s great-grandmother has disappeared with twenty-five other inmates of the Shaker Heights Nursing Home. Her beau, and boss, Rick Vigorous, is insanely jealous, and her cockatiel, Vlad the Impaler, has suddenly started spouting a mixture of psycho-babble, Auden, and the King James Bible. Ingenious and entertaining, this debut from one of the most innovative writers of his generation brilliantly explores the paradoxes of language, storytelling, and reality.

A bestseller in China, recently short-listed for the Man Asian Literary Prize, and a winner of France’s Prix Courrier International, Brothers is an epic and wildly unhinged black comedy of modern Chinese society running amok.Here is China as we’ve never seen it, in a sweeping, Rabelaisian panorama of forty years of rough-and-rumble Chinese history that has already scandalized millions of readers in the author’s homeland. Yu Hua, award-winning author of To Live, gives us a surreal tale of two brothers riding the dizzying roller coaster of life in a newly capitalist world. As comically mismatched teenagers, Baldy Li, a sex-obsessed ne’er-do-well, and Song Gang, his bookish, sensitive stepbrother, vow that they will always be brothers-a bond they will struggle to maintain over the years as they weather the ups and downs of rivalry in love and making and losing millions in the new China. Their tribulations play out across a richly populated backdrop that is every bit as vibrant: the rapidly-changing village of Liu Town, full of such lively characters as the self-important Poet Zhao, the craven dentist Yanker Yu, the virginal town beauty (turned madam) Lin Hong, and the simpering vendor Popsicle Wang.With sly and biting humor, combined with an insightful and compassionate eye for the lives of ordinary people, Yu Hua shows how the madness of the Cultural Revolution has transformed into the equally rabid madness of extreme materialism. Both tragic and absurd by turns, Brothers is a monumental spectacle and a fascinating vision of an extraordinary place and time.

Tennyson:Don’t get me started on the Bruiser. He was voted “Most Likely to Get the Death Penalty” by the entire school. He’s the kid no one knows, no one talks to, and everyone hears disturbing rumors about. So why is my sister, Brontë, dating him? One of these days she’s going to take in the wrong stray dog, and it’s not going to end well. Brontë:My brother has no right to talk about Brewster that way—no right to threaten him. There’s a reason why Brewster can’t have friends—why he can’t care about too many people. Because when he cares about you, things start to happen. Impossible things that can’t be explained. I know, because they’re happening to me. Award-winning author Neal Shusterman has crafted a chilling and unforgettable novel about the power of unconditional friendship, the complex gear workings of a family, and the sacrifices we endure for the people we love.

Bruno, dying, obsessed with spiders and preoccupied with death and reconciliation, lies at the centre of an intricate spider's web of relationships and passions. Including creepy Nigel the nurse and his besotted twin Will, fighter of duels.

Felix is a quitter, with a poor track record behind him. Until the day the opportunity presents itself to make half a million dollars tax-free — by nurturing 390 acres of cannabis in the lonely hills of northern California.

Evan Hunter’s magnificent new novel is the story of a desperate journey of discovery-through a man’s past, through the byways of a great city, through the infinitely more complex labyrinths of the human psyche.

Its nameless protagonist wakes at sunrise in Central Park in New York City, faced with a terrifying riddle: Who am I? Completely without memory, as naked of self-knowledge as a newly born child, he ventures out into the city in search of self, tentatively at first, then with increasing boldness, finally with a headlong fierce compulsion to find and face whatever truth it is that has stripped him of his past.

As he approaches the explosive climax of his quest, the scenes shift in a kaleidoscopic succession of encounters and adventures, fragments of the intermingled past and present: Greenwich Village and the haunting echo from his past awakened by the girl who takes him in; Chinatown and the wild spree with a sailor on shore leave; the Italian all-night wedding feast; the scavenger hunt with the glossy rich woman on an emotional bender; Harlem and the incredibly tense high-stake crap game; the door slammed in his face... and, at the last twirl of the kaleidoscope, the final electrifying revelation.

With a little work I could take care of Barrow’s boat — or his wife...

Bulibasha is the title given to the King of the Gypsies, and on the East Coast of New Zealand two patriarchs fight to be proclaimed the king. Tamihana is the leader of the great Mahana family of shearers and sportsmen and women. Rupeni Poata is his arch enemy. The two families clash constantly, in sport, in cultural contests and, finally, in the Golden Fleece competition to find the greatest shearing gang in New Zealand. Caught in the middle of this struggle is the teenager Simeon, grandson of the patriarch and of his grandmother Ramona, struggling with his own feelings and loyalties as the battles rage on many levels.This award-winning novel is being reissued to tie in with the release of Mahana, the stunning film adaptation of the novel.

An allegory of the struggle between good and evil, in which Eliot Nailles, a chemist, meets Paul Hammer, who is not the ordinary citizen he seems to be. "We're the Hammers," The stranger said to the priest. Nailles did not think this funny, anticipating the fact that almost everyone else in the neighborhood would. How many hundreds or perhaps thousands cocktail parties would they have to live through, side by side: Hammer and Nailles." Hammer is the illegitimate son of a kleptomaniac, and he plans to awaken the suburban world – by burning Eliot's son Tony in a church.

A depiction of South Africa today, this novel is more revealing than a thousand news dispatches as it tells the story of a young woman cast in the role of a young revolutionary, trying to uphold a heritage handed on by martyred parents while carving out a sense of self.

A brilliant literary debut, inspired by a true story: the final days of a young woman accused of murder in Iceland in 1829.Set against Iceland's stark landscape, Hannah Kent brings to vivid life the story of Agnes, who, charged with the brutal murder of her former master, is sent to an isolated farm to await execution.Horrified at the prospect of housing a convicted murderer, the family at first avoids Agnes. Only Tóti, a priest Agnes has mysteriously chosen to be her spiritual guardian, seeks to understand her. But as Agnes's death looms, the farmer's wife and their daughters learn there is another side to the sensational story they've heard.Riveting and rich with lyricism, BURIAL RITES evokes a dramatic existence in a distant time and place, and asks the question, how can one woman hope to endure when her life depends upon the stories told by others?

From the award-winning author of Darkmans comes a comic epistolary novel of startling originality and wit.Reading other people’s letters is always a guilty pleasure. But for two West Yorkshire policemen — contemplating a cache of 26 undelivered missives, retrieved from a back alley behind the hairdresser's in Skipton — it's also a job of work. The quaint moorside village of Burley Cross has been plunged into turmoil by the theft of the contents of its postbox, and when PC Roger Topping takes over the case, which his higher-ranking schoolmate Sergeant Laurence Everill has so far failed to crack, his expectations of success are not high.Yet Topping's investigation into the curtain-twitching lives of Jeremy Baverstock, Baxter Thorndyke, the Jonty Weiss-Quinns, Mrs Tirza Parry (widow), and a splendid array of other weird and wonderful characters, will not only uncover the dark underbelly of his scenic beat, but also the fundamental strengths of his own character.The denizens of Burley Cross inhabit a world where everyone’s secrets are worn on their sleeves, pettiness becomes epic, little is writ large. From complaints about dog shit to passive-aggressive fanmail, from biblical amateur dramatics to an Auction of Promises that goes staggeringly, horribly wrong, Nicola Barker’s epistolary novel is a work of immense comic range. It is also unlike anything she has written before. Brazenly mischievous and irresistibly readable, Burley Cross Postbox Theft is a Cranford for today, albeit with a decent dose of Tamiflu, some dodgy sex-therapy and a whiff of cheap-smelling vodka.

It's spring break, and the pretty little liars are trading in Rosewood for a cruise vacation. They want nothing more than to sail into the tropical sunset and leave their troubles behind for one blissful week. But where Emily, Aria, Spencer, and Hanna go, A goes, too. From scuba diving to tanning on the upper deck, A is there, soaking up all their new secrets.Emily is smooching a stowaway. Aria's treasure-hunting partner is a little too interested in her booty. Spencer's going overboard trying to land a new boy. And a blast--or rather, a crash--from Hanna's past could mean rough waters ahead for everyone.The liars better tighten their life jackets. A perfect storm is brewing, and if they aren't careful, A will bury them at sea. . . .

A darkly comic debut novel about advertising, truth, single malt, Scottish hospitality — or lack thereof — and George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.Ray Welter, who was until recently a highflying advertising executive in Chicago, has left the world of newspeak behind. He decamps to the isolated Scottish Isle of Jura in order to spend a few months in the cottage where George Orwell wrote most of his seminal novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four. Ray is miserable, and quite prepared to make his troubles go away with the help of copious quantities of excellent scotch.But a few of the local islanders take a decidedly shallow view of a foreigner coming to visit in order to sort himself out, and Ray quickly finds himself having to deal with not only his own issues but also a community whose eccentricities are at times amusing and at others downright dangerous. Also, the locals believe — or claim to believe — that there’s a werewolf about, and against his better judgment, Ray’s misadventures build to the night of a traditional, boozy werewolf hunt on the Isle of Jura on the summer solstice.

“It begins with a child. .” So opens Jane Mendelsohn’s powerful, riveting new novel. A classic family tale colliding with the twenty-first century, Burning Down the House tells the story of two girls. Neva, from the mountains of Russia, was sold into the sex trade at the age of ten; Poppy is the adopted daughter of Steve, the patriarch of a successful New York real estate clan, the Zanes. She is his sister’s orphaned child. One of these young women will unwittingly help bring down this grand household with the inexorability of Greek tragedy, and the other will summon everything she’s learned and all her strength to try to save its members from themselves.In cinematic, dazzlingly described scenes, we enter the lavish universe of the Zane family, from a wedding in an English manor house to the trans-global world of luxury hotels and restaurants — from New York to Rome, Istanbul to Laos. As we meet them all — Steve’s second wife, his children from his first marriage, the twins from the second, their friends and household staff — we enter with visceral immediacy an emotional world filled with a dynamic family’s loves, jealousies, and yearnings. In lush, exact prose, Mendelsohn transforms their private stories into a panoramic drama about a family’s struggles to face the challenges of internal rivalry, a tragic love, and a shifting empire. Set against the backdrop of financial crisis, globalization, and human trafficking, the novel finds inextricable connections between the personal and the political.Dramatic, compassionate, and psychologically complex, Burning Down the House is both wrenching and unputdownable, an unforgettable portrayal of a single family caught up in the earthquake that is our contemporary world.