Carrie Slayton, a big-city society-page columnist, longs to write more serious news stories. So her editor hands her a challenge first: Carrie must score the paper an interview with Finn Dalton, the notoriously reclusive author.

Living in Alaskan wilderness, Finn has written a bestselling book about surviving in the wild. But he stubbornly declines to speak to anyone, and no one even knows exactly where he lives. With her career at stake, Carrie sacrifices her family celebrations and flies out to snowy Alaska. When she finally finds Finn, she discovers a man both more charismatic and more stubborn than she expected. And soon Carrie is torn between pursuing the story of a lifetime and following her heart.

Starry Night is a standalone Christmas novel from Debbie Macomber and a romantic and heart-warming winter read. The story focuses on Carrie Slayton who is a journalist for a big newspaper in Chicago. Originally from Seattle, Carrie is considering moving back t her hometown as her career as a journalist isn’t taking the direction that she’d like; she’s the society columnist and although her life is filled with great events and parties, Carrie wants to cover the big stories and serious news.

The book opens with Carrie deciding to tender her resignation but as she confronts her editor he gives her a challenge that is too good to refuse. If she can track down reclusive best-selling author Finn Dalton, he will let her take her pick of the writing jobs and hard news stories. As Carrie accepts the challenge, the scene is set for a winter adventure that she won’t forget!

The novel is written in Debbie Macomber’s trademark honest and warm style and I liked Carrie immediately. She has a strong relationship with her family and is bright and intelligent and has a good sense of integrity. This book is pure romance and moves at quite a pace – I did find the ease with which Carrie found a lead on Finn when countless others had failed before a little unbelievable but I was willing to overlook that and happy to be swept along with the story.

As Carrie tracks down Finn, her reception in his life is as frosty as the Alaskan weather and I loved the tension that Macomber created between them. Not only is Finn reclusive and distrustful, he isn’t a fan of journalists or women in general so Carrie certainly has her work cut out getting the interview she needs. As the pair are thrown together I loved the banter and slow burn of attraction between them.

The second half of the story took a couple of twists that I hadn’t predicted and I read this book quickly to find out what the ending would be as Carrie faces the dilemma of following her heart or her head. Having only read my first Debbie Macomber book earlier this year, I’m now a huge fan of her stories and Starry Night is no exception. It’s the perfect escape this Christmas; warm, romantic and sparkling!

Sharply observed and brilliantly plotted, Stars and Bars is an uproarious portrait of culture clash deep in the heart of the American South, by one of contemporary literature’s most imaginative novelists.A recent transfer to Manhattan has inspired art assessor Henderson Dores to shed his British reserve and aspire to the impulsive and breezy nature of Americans. But when Loomis Gage, an eccentric millionaire, invites him to appraise his small collection of Impressionist paintings, Dores's plans quite literally go south. Stranded at a remote mansion in the Georgia countryside, Dores is received by the bizarre Gage family with Anglophobic slurs, nausea-inducing food, ludicrous death threats, and a menacing face off with competing art dealers. By the time he manages to sneak back to New York City — sporting only a cardboard box — Henderson Dores realizes he is fast on the way to becoming a naturalized citizen.

A day like any other for security chief Tracy Waterhouse, until she makes a purchase she hadn't bargained for. One moment of madness is all it takes for Tracy 's humdrum world to be turned upside down, the tedium of everyday life replaced by fear and danger at every turn.Witnesses to Tracy 's Faustian exchange in the Merrion Centre in Leeds are Tilly, an elderly actress teetering on the brink of her own disaster, and Jackson Brodie, who has returned to his home county in search of someone else's roots. All three characters learn that the past is never history and that no good deed goes unpunished.Kate Atkinson dovetails and counterpoints her plots with Dickensian brilliance in a tale peopled with unlikely heroes and villains. Started Early, Took My Dog is freighted with wit, wisdom and a fierce moral intelligence. It confirms Kate Atkinson’s position as one of the great writers of our time.

Nominated for the National Book Award in 1974, this haunting, profoundly disquieting novel manages to be at once sparse and lush, to combine Biblical simplicity with Gothic intensity and strangeness. It is the story of Kate, despised by her mother, bound to her father by ties stronger and darker than blood. It is the story of her attempted escapes−in detached sexual encounters, at a Southern college populated by spoiled and perverse beauties, and in a doomed marriage to a man who cannot understand what she is running from. Witty, erotic, searing acute, STATE OF GRACE bears the inimitable stamp of one of our fines and most provocative writers.

Pharmaceutical researcher Dr. Marina Singh sets off into the Amazon jungle to find the remains and effects of a colleague who recently died under somewhat mysterious circumstances. But first she must locate Dr. Anneck Swenson, a renowned gynecologist who has spent years looking at the reproductive habits of a local tribe where women can conceive well into their middle ages and beyond. Eccentric and notoriously tough, Swenson is paid to find the key to this longstanding childbearing ability by the same company for which Dr. Singh works. Yet that isn’t their only connection: both have an overlapping professional past that Dr. Singh has long tried to forget. In finding her former mentor, Dr. Singh must face her own disappointments and regrets, along with the jungle’s unforgiving humidity and insects, making State of Wonder a multi-layered atmospheric novel that is hard to put down. Indeed, Patchett solidifies her well-deserved place as one of today’s master storytellers. Emotional, vivid, and a work of literature that will surely resonate with readers in the weeks and months to come, State of Wonder truly is a thing of beauty and mystery, much like the Amazon jungle itself.

Tytuł powieści (oczywiście ukłon w stronę niezrównanej Jane Austen) sugeruje dwie bohaterki, i tak jest rzeczywiście: są dwie, mają dosyć różne charaktery i różne prowadzą życie jedna jest kustoszką w muzeum, druga luksusową narzeczoną biznesmena. Ten, niestety, okazuje się gangsterem, w dodatku pechowym: idzie siedzieć, a narzeczona zostaje na lodzie. Wraz z przyjaciółką i przyjaciółmi przyjaciółki rozpoczyna więc nowe życie daleko od rodzinnego miasta, w podupadającym ośrodku jeździeckim, który zamierzają przekształcić w kwitnące gospodarstwo agroturystyczne. Żadne z nich nie ma co prawda zielonego pojęcia o gospodarzeniu, ale od czegóż wrodzona inteligencja! Ponieważ wszyscy mieszkańcy Rotmistrzówki (nie wyłączając gospodyni, starej rotmistrzowej) dysponują nie tylko inteligencją, ale również wdziękiem i iście mołojecką fantazją, życie w dworku zaczyna się toczyć w zupełnie nowym tempie. Zwłaszcza kiedy w charakterze gościa przybywa dawna właścicielka domu i całej wsi, leciwa niemiecka baronowa. Dodajmy do tego skomplikowane perypetie sercowe i rodzinne, leciutki i raczej dobrotliwy powiew kryminału, sporo humoru, ciepła i życzliwości dla ludzi, a otrzymamy pełny obraz tej pogodnej i bardzo kobiecej powieści.

A deeply humane, piercingly funny, and already widely acclaimed new short story collection that features men and women we all know or might be, nagivating a world made unfamiliar by a lapse in judgment, a change of fortune, by loss, or by love.The stories in Tom Barbash's evocative and often darkly funny collection explore the myriad ways we try to connect to one another and to the sometimes cruel world around us. The newly single mother in "The Break" interferes with her son's love life over his Christmas vacation from college. The anxious young man in "Balloon Night" persists in hosting his and his wife's annual watch-the-Macy's-Thanksgiving-Day-Parade-floats-be-inflated party, while trying to keep the myth of his marriage equally afloat. "Somebody's Son," tells the story of a young man guiltily conning an elderly couple out of their home in the Adirondacks, and the young narrator in "The Women" watches his widowed father become the toast of Manhattan's mid-life dating scene, as he struggles to find his own footing.The characters in Stay Up with Me find new truths when the old ones have given out or shifted course. In the tradition of classic story writer like John Cheever and Tobias Wolff, Barbash laces his narratives with sharp humor, psychological acuity, and pathos, creating deeply resonant and engaging stories that pierce the heart and linger in the imagination.

The Carter House girls are divided when two of them go after the same guy. Rhiannon and Taylor are at serious odds, and before it’s over several girls get hurt.

Set in the turbulent years before the 1952 revolution that would overthrow King Farouk and bring Gamal Abdel Nasser to power, Stealth by Sonallah Ibrahim, one of Egypt s most respected and uncompromising novelists is a gripping story seen through the eyes of an eleven-year-old boy. A young Egyptian s coming of age proves halting and uncertain as he fails to outgrow dependence on his aging father and tries to come to terms with the absence of his mother. Through the boy s memories, fantasies, and blunt observations, we experience his attempts at furtively spying on the world of Egyptian adults. His adventures portray a Cairo full of movie stars, royalty, revolutionaries, and ordinary people trying to survive in the decaying city."

Off the coast of Maine, Ruth Thomas is born into a feud fought for generations by two groups of local lobstermen over fishing rights for the waters that lie between their respective islands. At eighteen, she has returned from boarding school – smart as a whip, feisty, and irredeemably unromantic – determined to throw over her education and join the 'stern men' working the lobster boats. Gilbert utterly captures the American spirit through an unforgettable heroine who is destined for greatness – and love – despite herself.

Tibet is a land lost in the glare of politics and romanticism, and Ma Jian set out to discover its truths. Stick Out Your Tongue is a revelation: a startlingly vivid portrait of Tibet, both enchanting and horrifying, beautiful and violent, seductive and perverse.In this profound work of fiction, a Chinese writer whose marriage has fallen apart travels to Tibet. As he wanders through the countryside, he witnesses the sky burial of a Tibetan woman who died during childbirth, shares a tent with a nomad who is walking to a sacred mountain to seek forgiveness for sleeping with his daughter, meets a silversmith who has hung the wind-dried corpse of his lover on the wall of his cave, and hears the story of a young female incarnate lama who died during a Buddhist initiation rite. In the thin air of the high plateau, the divide between dream and reality becomes confused.When this book was published in Chinese in 1997, the government accused Ma Jian of "harming the fraternal solidarity of the national minorities," and a blanket ban was placed on his future work. With its publication in English, including a new afterword by the author that sets the book in its personal and political context, readers get a rare glimpse of Tibet through Chinese eyes-and a window on the imagination of one of China's foremost writers.

Clare, stuck on the wrong side of town, is desperate to live the good life among the writers and artists of trendy Notting Hill, like her friend Sophie. So she doesn't think twice about moving into a house with a horrible history, even if some of its former occupants are still making their presence felt…But how far is Clare prepared to go for a W11 postcode? As far as sharing a flat with someone who is, as she puts it, "vitally challenged"?From the author of cult vampire novel Suckers comes a 'sexy, sardonic and distinctly spooky' tale of girls, ghosts and glitterati, set in a part of London that in less than a century has been transformed from a perilous slum called The Piggeries into one of the most fashionable addresses in town.

A profound and dazzlingly entertaining novel from the writer Louis Menand calls "Jane Austen with a Russian soul"In her warm, absorbing and keenly observed new novel, Lara Vapnyar follows the intertwined lives of four immigrants in New York City as they grapple with love and tumult, the challenges of a new home, and the absurdities of the digital age.Vica, Vadik, Sergey and Regina met in Russia in their school days, but remained in touch and now have very different American lives. Sergey cycles through jobs as an analyst, hoping his idea for an app will finally bring him success. His wife Vica, a medical technician struggling to keep her family afloat, hungers for a better life. Sergey’s former girlfriend Regina, once a famous translator is married to a wealthy startup owner, spends her days at home grieving over a recent loss. Sergey’s best friend Vadik, a programmer ever in search of perfection, keeps trying on different women and different neighborhoods, all while pining for the one who got away.As Sergey develops his app — calling it "Virtual Grave," a program to preserve a person's online presence after death — a formidable debate begins in the group, spurring questions about the changing perception of death in the modern world and the future of our virtual selves. How do our online personas define us in our daily lives, and what will they say about us when we're gone?

If there's an even darker side to Hollywood than the one America is familiar with, Bruce Wagner has found it. A twenty-first-century Nathanael West, he has been hailed for his powerful prose, his Swiftian satire, and the scalpel-sharp wit that has, in each of his novels, dissected and sometimes disemboweled Hollywood excess.Now, in his most ambitious book to date, Still Holding, the third in the Cellular Trilogy that began with I'm Losing You and I'll Let You Go, Wagner immerses readers in post-September 11 Hollywood, revealing as much rabid ambition, rampant narcissism, and unchecked mental illness as ever. It is a scabrous, epiphanic, sometimes horrifying portrait of an entangled community of legitimate stars, delusional wanna-bes, and psychosociopaths. Wagner infiltrates the gilded life of a superstar actor/sex symbol/practicing Buddhist, the compromised world of a young actress whose big break comes when she's hired to play a corpse on Six Feet Under, and the strange parallel universe of look-alikes — an entire industry in which struggling actors are hired out for parties and conventions to play their famous counterparts. Alternately hilarious and heartfelt, ferocious and empathetic, Still Holding is Bruce Wagner's most expertly calibrated work.

Barry Osgathorpe, known in the seventies as Ishmael the Zen Road Warrior, has decided to hole up for the nineties. A person can't even drive his Volkswagen Beetle with a clear conscience any more, for fear of polluting the environment. Yet, powerful forces are converging that will get him on the road again. When Barry learns that Volkswagens are being blown up all over the country, that a gang of skinheads is cruising the streets in a fleet of customized Beetles, and that his ex-girlfriend's deranged, Volkswagen-obsessed father and her current VW-collecting boyfriend are missing, he knows it's time to put the pedal to the metal.

"An invigorating challenge. The reader indeed finds in it entertainment, emotions and intrigue, but also reflection and thought on grave issues." — Lluís Satorras, BabeliaRiddled with problems, Joanes has to travel to the Mayan Ribera to attend his father-in-law's new wedding. There, forced to leave the hotel due to a hurricane alert, on his trip toward safer ground he has a chance encounter with an old college professor, whom he blames for the failure of his career. It will be Joanes' opportunity to settle accounts with him.Jon Bilbao is a Spanish literary writer and translator who lives in Bilbao, Spain.

Gardner’s relentlessly honest and moving portrayal of a broken marriage, and his ambitious unfinished masterpiece — a metafictional mystery centering around one man’s struggle to recover his lost identity — together in one accomplished volumeStillness:Martin and Joan Orrick — distant cousins who have known each other since early childhood — are in the final throes of a failing marriage. Martin is a compulsive drinker who obsesses about his writing, and Joan is struggling with a debilitating physical condition. Together they search for some type of collective identity, and identify where the dissolution of their love began.Inspired by therapy sessions Gardner experienced with his first wife, Stillness is an insightful portrait of one couple’s struggle for fulfillment in a tumultuous world.Private detective Gerald Craine is pursuing an unknown murderer. At the same time, he himself is the target of an unknown person’s pursuit. Stumbling through an alcohol-soaked haze, Craine desperately seeks meaning and understanding in a world fraught with fragmented narratives.Shadows:John Gardner’s friend Nicholas Delbanco has supplemented this unfinished novel with seven sections from Gardner’s original manuscript that provide critical insight into Gardner’s approach to developing the novel and its characters, giving a rare glimpse inside the creative process of one of the twentieth century’s most inventive writers.This ebook features a new illustrated biography of John Gardner, including original letters, rare photos, and never-before-seen documents from the Gardner family and the University of Rochester Archives.

Stone Arabia, Dana Spiotta’s moving and intrepid third novel, is about family, obsession, memory, and the urge to create — in isolation, at the margins of our winner-take-all culture.In the sibling relationship, “there are no first impressions, no seductions, no getting to know each other,” says Denise Kranis. For her and her brother, Nik, now in their forties, no relationship is more significant. They grew up in Los Angeles in the late seventies and early eighties. Nik was always the artist, always wrote music, always had a band. Now he makes his art in private, obsessively documenting the work, but never testing it in the world. Denise remains Nik’s most passionate and acute audience, sometimes his only audience. She is also her family’s first defense against the world’s fragility. Friends die, their mother’s memory and mind unravel, and the news of global catastrophe and individual tragedy haunts Denise. When her daughter, Ada, decides to make a film about Nik, everyone’s vulnerabilities seem to escalate.Dana Spiotta has established herself as a “singularly powerful and provocative writer” (The Boston Globe) whose work is fiercely original. Stone Arabia — riveting, unnerving, and strangely beautiful — reexamines what it means to be an artist and redefines the ties that bind.

Peirene simply fell in love with the narrative voice of this beautiful love story. A voice totally free of anger and bitterness, a voice of someone who just tried to ride the waves to her best ability. It's a calming and rare voice in these times of recessionary gloom.Of course, a voice needs substance. Here you go: loss, love, life, guilt, hate, history, war and death. This little book covers it all, including an entire century and a complete life. When I finished reading it I felt as if there was nothing more to say.Admittedly, on the surface it sounds like any old country side story. The Catalan Pyrenees at the beginning of the last century: 13-year-old Conxa is sent to live and work for her childless aunt in another village. Years of hard work follow. Eventually she finds love and happiness with Jaume. But the civil war causes havoc and Conxa moves to Barcelona. It is here that she, now an old woman, sits down to tell us her story.We’ve heard such a story before, you say? Well, what Maria Barbal has managed to do with Conxa’s voice has few parallels in modern literature. She created the voice of a perceptive person but with no formal education. As a result she can’t use modern jargon. Instead she allows individual scenes to come to life making the reader see what, sometimes, Conxa herself does not understand. It’s a poetic, timeless voice, down to earth and full of contradictory nuances. It’s a voice that searches for understanding in a changing world but senses that ultimately there may be no such thing. She’s worth a listen.

A recently widowed fantasy writer is guided through a stormy winter evening by the voice of her late husband. An elderly lady with Charles Bonnet’s syndrome comes to terms with the little people she keeps seeing, while a newly-formed populist group gathers to burn down her retirement residence. A woman born with a genetic abnormality is mistaken for a vampire. And a crime committed long-ago is revenged in the Arctic via a 1.9 billion year old stromatalite.In these nine tales, Margaret Atwood ventures into the shadowland earlier explored by fabulists and concoctors of dark yarns such as Robert Louis Stevenson, Daphne du Maurier and Arthur Conan Doyle — and also by herself, in her award-winning novel Alias Grace. In Stone Mattress, Margaret Atwood is at the top of her darkly humorous and seriously playful game.