In recent years serial killer novels and films have become something of a cliche. It's a genre which has been done to death with only a few works standing above the herd. So Hawksmoor was a very refreshing change. A novel set in London, with two threads, one in the 1800's and one in contemporary times. The novel opens in the period following the Great Fire of London, with one Nicholas Dyer, an assistant surveyor in scotland yard who eventually becomes an apprentice to Christopher Wren. He is commissioned to rebuilt the lost churches of London. In the present we are introduced to a series of characters, including a young boy and a vagrant, whose stories are painted with a lavish brush, before we meet the eponymous hero of the novel.Hawksmoor is the detective investigating a series of serial killings, located in the vicinity of a number of churches across London. It is here that the various sub plots are brought together, the story centring on Hawksmoor attempts at unravelling the mystery.All the while the story of Dyer's architectural plans and the rebuilding of London unravel simultaneously. His true character is gradually exposed, revealing unexpected connections between the two disparate storylines.The conclusion of the novel is both unexpected and uncomfortable, a brilliant conclusion to a work with a great psychological presence. Ackroyd brings the personalities of his characters to the fore, places them in a lushly drawn backdrop, and shows the story through their eyes.One of the most impressive things about the novel is the way Ackroyd treats the serial killer storyline, keeping it very much in the background, shown only through the eyes of the characters and the ensuing investigation. It never dominates the proceedings, and Ackroyd instead concentrates his energy on exploring the eighteenth century events that hold a key to the present day. It is both chilling and filled with an aura of corruption, a reinvention of history and a fresh look at the present through the eyes of history.It has been a while since I have read a novel this satisfying, an enthralling story on all levels with an ending that stays with you long after you've finished it.

The two protagonists of the title are mid-ranking policemen operating amongst London's criminal classes, but each is plagued by dreams of elsewhere and, in the case of Hawthorn, a nightlife of visceral intensity that sits at odds with his carefully-composed placid family mask but has the habit of spilling over into his working life as a policeman. Ridgway has much to say, through showing not telling, about male violence, crowd psychology, the borders between play and abuse, and the motivations of policemen and criminals. But this is no humdrum crime novel. Ridgway is writing about people whose understanding of their own situations is only partial and fuzzy, who are consumed by emotions and motivations and narratives, or the lack thereof, that they cannot master. He focuses on peripheral figures to whom things happen, and happen confusingly, and his fictional strategies reflect this focus, so that his fictions themselves have an air of incompleteness and frustration about them. It's a high-wire act for a novelist but one that commands attention and provokes the dropping of jaws.

Кадзуо Ішіґуро — британський письменник японського походження, сценарист, лауреат Букерівської премії. Його книжка «Не відпускай мене» — пронизлива історія, яка по праву входить у перелік найкращих англійських творів усіх часів. Це роман з елементами наукової фантастики та антиутопії, розповідь про пошук відповідей, любов, дружбу, пам'ять, надію і безвихідь. Кеті, головна героїня книжки; намагається зрозуміти та прийняти своє дитинство і юність у привілейованій школі-інтернаті Гейлшем та поза нею, свою інакшість від людей та обране для самої Кеті та її найближчих друзів призначення бути донором. Це довга дорога зі спогадів, відчуттів, одкровень, які поволі вибудовують для героїв нову картину світу.

«Не відпускай мене» у перекладі Софії Андрухович — перша книжка Кадзуо Ішіґуро, видана українською мовою. Оформили видання Назар Гайдучик та Оксана Йориш, роботи яких наче стоп-кадри з намальованого кіно додали тонкій емоційній напрузі тексту ще й гри світлотіней та динамічних акцентів.

Когда престарелую мать Кевина Гогарти, Милли, в очередной раз ловят на краже в магазине, его терпению приходит конец. Сам Кевин, оставшийся без работы, из последних сил поддерживает порядок в доме и заботится о четырех детях, пока жена пропадает в служебных командировках. После очередной выходки строптивую шестнадцатилетнюю Эйдин посылают в школу-интернат, но это лишь приводит к новым осложнениям. Сильвия, новая помощница Милли, и ее симпатичный племянник Шон, казалось бы, спасают ситуацию, но в итоге их появление оборачивается новым кризисом.

Lewis Sullivan, an RE teacher at a secondary school, is approaching retirement when he wonders for the first time whether he ought to have chosen a more dramatic career. He lives in a village in the Midlands, less than a mile from the house in which he grew up. He always imagined living by the sea. His grown-up daughter visits every day, bringing soup. He does not want soup. He frequents his second-favourite pub, where he can get half a shandy, a speciality sausage and a bit of company.When an old friend appears on the scene, Lewis finds his routine and comfortable life shaken up.

Fiction. HEAD IN FLAMES is an astonishing collage novel composed of chips of sensation, observation, memory, and quotation shaped into a series of narraticules told by three alternating voices, each inhabiting a different font and aesthetic / political / existential space.The first belongs to Vincent van Gogh on the day he shot himself in Auvers-sur-Oise in July 1890. The second to Theo van Gogh (Vincent's brother s great grandson) on the day he was assassinated in Amsterdam in November 2004. The third to Mohammed Bouyeri, Theo's murderer, outraged by the filmmaker's collaboration with controversial politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali on a 10-minute experimental short critiquing Muslim subjugation and abuse of women. The aggregate: a restless, haunting exploration of art's purpose, religion's increasingly dominant role as engine of politics and passion, the complexities of foreignness and assimilation, and the limits of tolerance.

Heading Inland is a funny, broody, saucy collection of stories about the kind of people you sometimes meet but might prefer to ignore.Barker creates a wonderfully fantastical and unimaginable world: an unborn baby escapes an unsuitable mother through a secret belly-button zip; a wayward and yet enigmatic man attempts to rescue eels from an East End pie shop; a young woman discusses her fascination in other women’s breasts; a boy with his inside organs back to front desperately seeks attention; and a bitter old woman becomes bent on war with a tramp.This collection confirms Nicola Barker as one of the most versatile and original writers of her generation with a brilliant unconventional imagination she creates a new world that sparkles with dark humour.

On the sun-drenched island of Haiti in the 1970s, under the shadow of “Baby Doc” Duvalier’s notorious regime, locals eke out an existence as servants, bartenders and panderers to the white elite. Fanfan, Charlie, and Legba, aware of the draw of their adolescent, black bodies, seduce rich, middle-aged white tourists looking for respite from their colourless jobs and marriages.These “relationships” mirror the power struggle inherent in all transactions in Port-au-Prince’s seedy back streets. Heading South takes us into the world of artists, rappers, Voodoo priests, hotel owners, uptight Parisian journalists and partner-swapping Haitian lovers, all desperately trying to balance happiness with survival.Made into an award-winning film starring Charlotte Rampling, this provocative novel, translated for the first time into English, explores the lines between sexual liberation and exploitation, artistic freedom and appropriation, independence and colonialism.

On the sun-drenched island of Haiti in the 1970s, under the shadow of “Baby Doc” Duvalier’s notorious regime, locals eke out an existence as servants, bartenders and panderers to the white elite. Fanfan, Charlie, and Legba, aware of the draw of their adolescent, black bodies, seduce rich, middle-aged white tourists looking for respite from their colourless jobs and marriages.These “relationships” mirror the power struggle inherent in all transactions in Port-au-Prince’s seedy back streets. Heading South takes us into the world of artists, rappers, Voodoo priests, hotel owners, uptight Parisian journalists and partner-swapping Haitian lovers, all desperately trying to balance happiness with survival.Made into an award-winning film starring Charlotte Rampling, this provocative novel, translated for the first time into English, explores the lines between sexual liberation and exploitation, artistic freedom and appropriation, independence and colonialism.

Hear the Wind Sing (風の歌を聴け Kaze no uta o kike?) is the first novel by Japanese writer Haruki Murakami. It first appeared in the June 1979 issue of Gunzo (one of the most influential literary magazines in Japan), and in book form the next month. The novel was adapted by Japanese director Kazuki Ōmori in a 1981 film distributed by Art Theatre Guild. An English translation by Alfred Birnbaum appeared in 1987.It is the first book in the so-called "Trilogy of the Rat" series of independent novels, followed by Pinball, 1973 (1980) and A Wild Sheep Chase (1982), before the later epilogue Dance Dance Dance (1988). All four books in the series have been translated into English, but Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973 (which are realist novels slightly differing from the author's later style) were never widely distributed in the English-speaking world, having only been published in Japan by Kodansha under their Kodansha English Library branding (for English Foreign Language learners), and both only as A6-sized pocketbooks. Translations by Ted Goossen of "Hear the Wind Sing" and "Pinball, 1973" are scheduled to be released by Knopf on August 4, 2015 under the title "Wind, Pinball".

A Dance to the Music of Time — his brilliant 12-novel sequence, which chronicles the lives of over three hundred characters, is a unique evocation of life in twentieth-century England.The novels follow Nicholas Jenkins, Kenneth Widmerpool and others, as they negotiate the intellectual, cultural and social hurdles that stand between them and the “Acceptance World.”

A Dance to the Music of Time — his brilliant 12-novel sequence, which chronicles the lives of over three hundred characters, is a unique evocation of life in twentieth-century England.The novels follow Nicholas Jenkins, Kenneth Widmerpool and others, as they negotiate the intellectual, cultural and social hurdles that stand between them and the “Acceptance World.”

A classic Mahfouz story exploring themes of marriage across class lines, spirituality, and the harsh realities of a precarious life.Jaafar Ibrahim Sayyed al-Rawi, the main character in this most recently translated Mahfouz novel, is guided by his motto, "let life be filled with holy madness to the last breath." He narrates his life story to a friend during one long night in a caf in old Cairo. Through a series of bad decisions, he has lost everything: his family, his position in society, and his fortune. A man driven by his passions, he married a beautiful Bedouin nomad for love, and as a consequence pays a punishingly high price. From a life of comfort with a promising future guaranteed by his wealthy grandfather, he descends to the spartan life of a pauper, after being disinherited. Jaafar faces his tribulations with surprising stoicism and hope, sustained by his strong convictions, his spirituality, his sense of mission, and his deep desire to bring social justice to his people.

In her debut story collection Heartbreaker, Maryse Meijer peels back the crust of normalcy and convention, unmasking the fury and violence we are willing to inflict in the name of love and loneliness. Her characters are a strange ensemble — a feral child, a girl raised from the dead, a possible pedophile — who share in vulnerability and heartache, but maintain an unremitting will to survive. Meijer deals in desire and sex, femininity and masculinity, family and girlhood, crafting a landscape of appetites threatening to self-destruct. In beautifully restrained and exacting prose, she sets the marginalized free to roam her pages and burn our assumptions to the ground.

In a word-drunk romp through an alternate, pre-apocalyptic United States, Ana Simo’s fiction debut, Heartland, is the uproarious story of a thwarted writer’s elaborate revenge on the woman who stole her lover, blending elements of telenovela, pulp noir, and dystopian satire.

There’s only one solution for a nasty case of writer’s block, and that’s murder. Specifically, that of one Mercy McCabe, a cunning SoHo art dealer who was once our Latina narrator’s rival for the scrumptious Bebe. When she discovers that McCabe has squandered Bebe’s affections after stealing her away, revenge is not enough: she must admit her guilt, sentence herself, and beg for her own execution, Soviet-style.

In the all-too-terrifyingly-familiar America of Heartland, the inconceivable has become ordinary: corruption and greed at the top have led to mass starvation in the heartland; hordes of refugees have escaped from resettlement camps and attack the cities; a puritanical Caliphate has toppled Constantinople, with America in its sights. Meanwhile, escaping her New York life in disguise, our heroine lures McCabe to her home turf: a hilltop house in the Great Plains where her parents worked as domestic servants. Her nemesis, though, is slippery, and McCabe disappears, threatening to ruin a homicidal masterplan so detailed as to be akin to love.

Heartland is a hilarious, genre-defying debut that confronts taboos of race, assimilation, and sex through a high-voltage tale of love, language, and revenge.

The newest installment in Sara Shepard’s bestselling Pretty Little Liars series is packed with juicy drama and delicious surprises that will keep readers guessing to the very end.Hanna, Aria, Emily, and Spencer have been telling some outrageous tales; only, the proof always seems to go missing. The friends insist they’re telling the truth, but all of Rosewood thinks they’re just out for attention—and nobody likes a girl who cries wolf. So when the big bad killer comes after them, will anyone believe the girls. . . or will they be the next to disappear?

The newest installment in Sara Shepard’s bestselling Pretty Little Liars series is packed with juicy drama and delicious surprises that will keep readers guessing to the very end.Hanna, Aria, Emily, and Spencer have been telling some outrageous tales; only, the proof always seems to go missing. The friends insist they’re telling the truth, but all of Rosewood thinks they’re just out for attention—and nobody likes a girl who cries wolf. So when the big bad killer comes after them, will anyone believe the girls. . . or will they be the next to disappear?

Хотите оказаться на месте другого человека, разделить его эмоции и переживания? В недалеком будущем такое возможно благодаря приложению Heartstream — виртуальному потоку живых эмоций. Эми Беккер — стример, десятки тысяч подписчиков следят за всем, что чувствует девушка, подключаясь к ее трансляции. Героиня делится самым сокровенным, пока однажды не оказывается в заложниках у незнакомки с бомбой. Что нужно этой женщине, и сможет ли Эми выбраться из плена? «Heartstream. Поток эмоций» от Тома Поллока — динамичный и невероятно актуальный детектив про нашу двойную жизнь, реальную и виртуальную, а также разрушительную силу соцсетей. Тираж книги Heartstream в Великобритании был распродан за 2 недели! Книга наверняка понравится всем поклонникам сериала «Черное зеркало» (Black Mirror).