Picador

Shuttlecock

Graham Swift, 1999

Prentis, senior clerk in the ‘dead crimes’ department of police archives, is becoming more and more confused. Alienated from his wife and children, and obsessed by his father, a wartime hero now the mute inmate of a mental hospital, Prentis feels increasingly unsettled as his enigmatic boss, Mr Quinn, turns his investigation towards him — and his father. Gradually Prentis suspects that his father’s breakdown and Quinn’s menacing behaviour are connected and the link is to be found in his father’s memoirs, ‘Shuttlecock’... Подробнее

Sputnik Caledonia

Andrew Crumey, 2008

Robbie Coyle is an imaginative kid. He wants so badly to become Scotland’s first cosmonaut that he tries to teach himself Russian and trains for space exploration in the cupboard under the sink. But the place to which his fantasies later take him is far from the safety of his suburban childhood. In a communist state, in a closed, bleak town, the mysterious Red Star heralds his discovery of cruelty and of love, and the possibility that the most passionate of dreams may only be a chimera... Подробнее

Staring at the Sun

Julian Barnes, 2005

A fighter pilot, high above the English Channel in 1941, watches the sun rise; he descends 10,000 feet and then, to his amazement, finds the sun beginning to rise again. With this haunting image Julian Barnes’ novel begins. It charts the life of Jean Serjeant, from her beginnings as a naïve, carefree country girl before the war through to her wry and trenchant old age in the year 2020. We follow her bruising experience in marriage, her questioning of male truths, her adventures in motherhood and in China; we learnt the questions she asks of life and the often unsatisfactory answers it provides. Подробнее

Swallowing Grandma

Kate Long, 2006

Katherine Millar is eighteen and desperate to be less fat, less swotty and to have cooler friends. But most of all she wishes she had two parents, instead of one grandma, Poll. Poll is pushing seventy, half blind and utterly poisonous. She has looked after Katherine since she was a baby, when her father was killed in a car crash and her mother vanished. Poll's ambition is for things to stay exactly the same for ever, and for Katherine never to leave their pit village of Bank Top. Katherine has other ideas, and she can feel change is coming; the omens are all around her. In the meantime, she cleans up after Poll, revises for her exams, watches daytime television and surfs the net at the library trying to find out how to be bulimic. What she doesn't quite realize yet is that life won't always wait for you to catch up with it. «Swallowing Grandma» is a perceptive, vivid and painfully funny novel about the ties of love and loathing, and the ways in which our versions of the past can thwart our visions for the future. In «Katherine and Poll», Kate Long has created two unforgettable characters locked in an epic battle over whose side of the story will prevail. Подробнее

The Sweet Shop Owner

Graham Swift, 1999

The first novel from the Booker Prize winning author of Last Orders and Waterland. In the sweet shop Willy Chapman was free, absolved from all responsibility, and he ran his sweet shop like his life – quietly, steadfastly, devotedly. It was a bargain struck between Chapman and his beautiful, emotionally injured wife – a bargain based on unexpressed, inexpressible love and on a courageous acceptance of life’s deprivations... threatened only by Dorry, their clever, angry, unforgiving daughter. Подробнее

What I Do More: More True Tales of Everyday Craziness

Jon Ronson, 2007

In What I Do: More True Tales of Everyday Craziness, the second volume of Jon Ronson’s collected Guardian journalism, he hilariously demonstrates how our everyday lives are determined by the craziest thoughts and obsessions; how we spend our time believing in and getting worked up by complete nonsense. But also, as he chillingly demonstrates, there are clever people working in the highest echelons of business who are employed to spot, nurture and exploit the irrationalities of those among us who can barely cope as it is. In part one, read about the time Jon inadvertently made a lewd gesture to a passing fourteen-year-old girl late at night in the lobby of a country-house hotel. And about his burgeoning obsession with a new neighbour who refused to ask him what he did for a living, despite Jon’s constant dropping of intriguing hints. And about the embarrassment of being caught recycling small talk at a party. In part two, read some of Jon’s longer stories, which explore manifestations of insanity in the wider world: the tiny town of North Pole, Alaska, where it’s Christmas 365 days of the year; behind the scenes at Deal or No Deal, which Jon likens to a cult with Noel Edmonds as its high priest; a meeting with TV hypnotist Paul McKenna, who has joined forces with a self-help guru who once stood trial for murder – but can they cure Jon of his one big phobia? As hilarious as it is perturbing, Jon Ronson’s new collection is a treat for everyone who has ever suspected themselves to be at the mercy of forces they can barely comprehend. Подробнее

Cause Celeb

Helen Fielding, 2002

Disillusioned by her glitzy life in London and her desirable but cruel TV-presenter boyfriend, Rosie Richardson chucks it all in and spends four years running a refugee camp in Africa. Then famine strikes in a nearby province and an influx of starving refugees threatens to overwhelm the camp. Frustrated by the cautious response of the aid agencies, Rosie decides on a drastic short-term solution. She returns to London, breaks back into the celebrity circuit and brings the celebs out to Africa for a star-studded TV emergency appeal. Подробнее

The Almost Moon

Alice Sebold, 2008

Helen Knightly has spent a lifetime trying to win the love of a mother who had none to spare. And as this electrifying novel opens, she steps over a boundary she never dreamt she would even approach. But while her act is almost unconscious, it also seems like the fulfilment of a lifetime's buried desire. Over the next twenty-four hours, her life rushes in at her as she confronts the choices that have brought her to this crossroads. Подробнее

2666

Roberto Bolano, 2009

Written in the last years of Roberto Bolano's life, «2666» was greeted across Europe and Latin America as the great writer's masterpiece, surpassing even his previous work in imagination, beauty, and scope. At the centre of the book is the fictional city of Santa Teresa on the Mexico-US border. It is an urban sprawl that draws in lost souls like a vortex: convicts and academics, an American sportswriter, a teenage student with her widowed father, and a reclusive, 'missing' writer. But there is a darker side still.As in the real town of Juarez, on which Santa Teresa is based, girls and women are disappearing at an alarming rate...A creeping sense of conspirac-y permeates «2666», from the apocalyptic overtones of its title, to the ways in which Santa Teresa becomes an emblem of the corruption, violence and decadence of twentieth century European history. This is a novel on an astonishing scale from a passionate, visionary writer, one who unerringly 'adjusts your angle of view on the world'. 'A tour de force — though the phrase seems hardly adequate to describe the novel's narrative velocity, polyphonic range, inventiveness, and bravery' — «New York Review of Books». Подробнее

Cities of the Plain

Cormac McCarthy, 2010

This is Volume Three of the «Border Trilogy». In «Cities of the Plain», two men marked by the boyhood adventures of «All the Pretty Horses» and «The Crossing» now stand together, between their vivid pasts and uncertain futures, to confront a country changing beyond recognition. In the fall of 1952, John Grady Cole and Billy Parham are cowboys on a New Mexico ranch encroached upon from the north by the military. On the southern horizon are the mountains of Mexico, where one of the men is drawn again and again, in this story of friendships and passion, to a love as dangerous as it is inevitable. 'In a lovely and terrible landscape of natural beauty and impending loss we find John Grady; a young cowboy of the old school, trusted by men and horses, and a fragile young woman, whose salvation becomes his obsession ...McCarthy makes the sweeping plains a miracle' — «Scotsman». 'This haunting, deeply felt novel completes one of the literary masterworks of the 1990s' — «Daily Telegraph». 'The completed trilogy emerges as a landmark in American literature' — «Guardian». Подробнее

Crossing

Cormac McCarthy, 2010

This is Volume Two of the «Border Trilogy». '»The Crossing», together with its predecessor «All the Pretty Horses», towers over most contemporary fiction. An American epic infused with a grand solemnity' — «Sunday Times». Set on the south-western ranches in the years before the Second World War, «The Crossing» follows the fortunes of sixteen-year-old Billy and his younger brother Boyd. Fascinated by an elusive wolf that has been marauding his family's property, Billy captures the animal — but rather than kill it, sets out impulsively for the mountains of Mexico to return it to where it came from. When Billy comes back to his own home he finds himself and his world irrevocably changed. His loss of innocence has come at a price, and once again the border beckons with its desolate beauty and cruel promise. 'McCarthy writes prose as clean as a bullet cutting through the air and constructs tales as compelling as any you will read ...They are stories about people as real as the land they ride and as disturbing as the rituals they enact' — «Daily Telegraph». Подробнее

The Lovely Bones

Alice Sebold, 2009

My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973. My murderer was a man from our neighborhood. My mother liked his border flowers, and my father talked to him once about fertilizer. This is Susie Salmon. Watching from heaven, Susie sees her happy suburban family devastated by her death, isolated even from one another as they each try to cope with their terrible loss alone. Over the years, her friends and siblings grow up, fall in love, do all the things she never had the chance to do herself. But life is not quite finished with Susie yet. Подробнее

The Men Who Stare at Goats

Jon Ronson, 2009

In 1979, a secret unit was established by the US Army. Defying all known military practice — and indeed the laws of physics — they believed that a soldier could adopt a cloak of invisibility, pass cleanly through walls, and, perhaps most chillingly, kill goats just by staring at them. They were the First Earth Battalion. And they really weren't joking. What's more, they're back and fighting the War on terror. So unbelievable it has to be true — this is the real-life account that inspired the film. Подробнее

The Orchard Keeper

Cormac McCarthy, 2010

Set in a small, remote community in rural Tennessee in the years between the two world wars, «The Orchard Keeper» is an early classic from one of America's finest and most celebrated authors. It tells of John Wesley Rattner, a young boy, and Marion Sylder, an outlaw and bootlegger who, unbeknownst to either of them, has killed the boy's father. Cormac McCarthy's debut novel is a magnificent evocation of an American landscape, and of a lost American time. 'The feeling for the land and seasons is so intense as to be part of the story and there are scenes one will never forget...A complicated and evocative exposition of the transience of life' — «Harper's». 'A true American original' — «Newsweek». Подробнее

Outer Dark

Cormac McCarthy, 2010

By the author of the critically acclaimed «Border Trilogy», «Outer Dark» is a novel at once mythic and starkly evocative, set in an unspecified place in Appalachia sometime around the turn of the century. A woman bears her brother's child, a boy; the brother leaves the baby in the woods and tells her he died of natural causes. Discovering her brother's lie, she sets forth alone to find her son. Both brother and sister wander separately through a countryside being scourged by three terrifying and elusive strangers, headlong toward an eerie, apocalyptic resolution. 'McCarthy is a master stylist, perhaps without equal in American letters...In his hands, everything is done with consummate skill' — «Village Voice». 'McCarthy has made the fabulous real, the ordinary mysterious' — «New York Times». 'A profound parable that ultimately speaks to any society in any time' — «Time». Подробнее

The Savage Detectives

Roberto Bolano, 2009

New Year's Eve, 1975: Arturo Belano and Ulises Lima, poets and leaders of a movement they call visceral realism, leave Mexico City in a borrowed white Impala. Their mission: to track down the poet Cesarea Tinajero, who disappeared into the Sonora desert — and obscurity — decades before. But the detectives are themselves hunted men, and their search for the past will end in violence, flight, and permanent exile. In this dazzling novel, Roberto Bolano tells the story of two modern-day Quixotes on a twenty-year, multi-continent, tragicomic quest through a darkening universe. 'A unique voice asserting the importance and exuberance of literature...Bolano writes with such elegance, verve and style and is so immensely readable. He makes you feel changed for having read him; he adjusts your angle of view on the world' — «Guardian». 'Part road movie, part joyful, nostalgic confession. A masterpiece' — «Daily Telegraph». 'Extraordinary ...A portrait of people for whom literature is bread and water, sex and death. The abiding message to be taken from Bolano's novel, and maybe from his fraught life, too: books matter' — «GQ». Подробнее

Suttree

Cormac McCarthy, 2010

This compelling novel has as its protagonist Cornelius Suttree, living alone and in exile in a disintegrating houseboat on the wrong side of the Tennessee River close by Knoxville. He stays at the edge of an outcast community inhabited by eccentrics, criminals and the poverty-stricken. Rising above the physical and human squalor around him, his detachment and wry humour enable him to survive dereliction and destitution with dignity. ''Suttree» contains a humour that is Faulknerian in its gentle wryness, and a freakish imaginative flair reminiscent of Flannery O'Connor' — «Times Literary Supplement». ''Suttree» marks McCarthy's closest approach to autobiography and is probably the funniest and most unbearably sad of his books' — Stanley Booth. Подробнее

Ancient Gonzo Wisdom

Hunter S. Thompson, 2010

Bristling with inspired observations and wild anecdotes, this collection offers unique insight into the voice and mind of the inimitable Hunter S. Thompson, as recorded over the decades in the pages of Playboy, the Paris Review, Esquire, in various lectures, and in television appearances, many in print for the first time. Fearless and unsparing, the interviews detail some of the most storied episodes of Thompson's life: his savage beating at the hands of the Hell's Angels, his talking football with Nixon on the 1972 Campaign Trail ('the only time in twenty years of listening to the treacherous bastard that I knew he wasn't lying'); his razor-sharp insight into the Bush-Cheney administration, his unlikely run for Sheriff of Aspen, and his successful public battle, during the last years of his life, to free an innocent woman from prison. In addition, Hunter Thompson's passionate tirades about journalism, culture, drugs, guns, and the law showcase his singular voice at its fiercest. Complete with an exclusive introduction by author, journalist, and cultural critic Christopher Hitchens, Ancient Gonzo Wisdom genuinely embraces the brilliance of Hunter S. Thompson — his life, his voice, and his legacy — to provide an enduring portrait of the great gonzo journalist. 'Four years after his death, the rapid-fire wit and venom of Thompson's writing is undiminished. Ancient Gonzo Wisdom features classic HST interviews' — GQ. Подробнее

The Death and Life of Charlie St: Cloud

Ben Sherwood, 2005

Heartwarming and uplifting novel examining love in all its guises. As a boy, Charlie St Cloud narrowly survived a car crash that killed Sam, his little brother. Years later, still unable to recover from his loss, Charlie has taken a job tending to the lawns and monuments in the New England cemetery where Sam is buried. Подробнее

Last Orders

Graham Swift, 2010

Four men once close to Jack Dodds, a London butcher, meet to carry out his peculiar last wish: to have his ashes scattered into the sea. For reasons best known to herself, Jack's widow, Amy, declines to join them. Подробнее

Picador

Книги

Фантастика

Детектив

Кулинария

Детская литература

Художественная литература

Юмор. Комиксы.

Семья