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 | August - Bernard Beckett
A philosophical thriller that will turn your world upside down. Trapped in a car wreck, upside down, bleeding, broken and in pain, Tristan and Grace are staring at death. When dawn breaks they might be seen from the road and rescued, or not.
They wait, desperately holding on to life, unravelling the sequence of events that brought them together. As they await their fate, with only a glimmer of hope they might be seen and rescued, we discover the stories of their lives, the sequences of events that brought them together and the shocking truth behind the cause of their crash. Tristan, a brilliant student at the privileged St Augustine's school within the walls of the City, was the subject of an elaborate series of experiments on the seemingly contradictory concepts of determinism and free will. Part willing participant and part unknowing victim, Tristan grapples with the apparent irrefutability of a deterministic world. There is only one thing that distracts him: a woman he has glimpsed only twice, a woman he longs to know, a woman he loves. Banished from the City at the end of the experiments, he embarks on a desperate personal quest to find the woman and to prove the existence of free will, a proof he cannot live without. Meanwhile, Grace grows up outside the City walls, in a place of impoverishment and despair. Her life of hardship allows no place for philosophical musing. Forced through desperation into a life of prostitution, her only hope of escape from the life she leads is the young man she has seen watching her, the young man who would not speak to her.
The young man who stopped at the roadside and picked her up in his car... |
|  | Cleopatra: A Life – Stacy Schiff
Cleopatra's palace shimmered with onyx and gold, but was richer still in political and sexual intrigue. Though her life spanned fewer then forty years, it reshaped the contours of the ancient world. She was married twice, each time to a brother. She waged a brutal civil war against the first and she poisoned the second. Incest and assassination were family specialties. Cleopatra appears to have had sex with only two men. They happen, however to have been Julius Caesar and Mark Anthony, two of the most prominent Romans of the day. Both were married to other women. Cleopatra had a son with Caesar and - after his murder, three more with his protege. Famous long before she was notorious, Cleopatra has gone down in history for all the wrong reasons. Shakespeare and Shaw put words in her mouth. Michelangelo, Tiepolo, and Elizabeth Taylor put a face to her name. Along the way the supple personality has been lost. In a masterly return to the classical sources, Stacy Schiff here boldly separates fact from fiction to rescue the magnetic queen whose death ushered in a new world order a generation before the birth of Christ. Rich in detail, epic in scope, Schiff's is a luminous, deeply original reconstruction of a dazzling life. |
|  | Coasters – Al Brown
Al Brown explores the connection Kiwis have with their coasts. As he travels our stunning and varied coastline he visits iconic landmarks, meets colourful characters and hears rich tales from past and present. Each chapter covers a different stretch of coast - Red Rocks to Pencarrow (Wellington), Hot Water Beach to Whitianga (Coromandel), Cape Brett to Rocky Point (Bay of Islands), Mokau to New Plymouth (Taranaki), Westport to Punakaiki, Doubtful Sound & Fiordland and Birdlings Flat to Lyttelton (Christchurch). These are chosen to represent the wide array of coastal locations within in New Zealand, as well as for their combination of superb scenery and captivating stories. As well as the stretches of coastline and the great Kiwi characters who live there, the book looks at the different influences on the coast - how it was formed, how it was settled, the weather that has shaped it, the wildlife and fisheries that influence it and recreation and daily life it offers to those that live along it. It also includes one very simple recipe from Al from each area. Groper, snapper, turbot, scallops - the dishes vary with each section of coast - beautiful fresh fare treated with the respect this precious resource deserves. Think Hunger for the Wild - an excellent, heartland book that's informative and enjoyable. |
|  | Dreamrunner - Clare Jay
When Olivia's husband Carlos begins having violent nightmares in which he leaps, fighting, from his bed and rampages through the house, her family's idyllic life in Lisbon is shattered. Things escalate when Carlos unwittingly injures Olivia and Leo, their seven-year-old son, and they can no longer hide the purple bruises staining their skin. But what is causing the warm-hearted, gentle Carlos to have such explosive nightmares? While Leo retreats further into an imaginary world, it's a question that sends Olivia - desperate to protect her son and rescue her floundering family - into the depths of her husband's childhood, where she uncovers a secret so shocking it has held Carlos in its powerful grip for almost thirty years. |
|  | More Than You Can Say - Paul Torday
A late-night gambling session ends in a bet for Richard Gaunt: can he walk to Oxford by lunchtime the next day? Gaunt sets off, and as morning breaks and the dreaming spires near, his evening's winnings look set to double. But when men in a Jeep reverse into him, scooping him off the roadside, Gaunt's life takes a very strange turn. Taken to a country house, he is kept hostage by a man with impeccable manners, Mr Khan who makes him an unusual offer - ten thousand pounds in return for a 'green card' marriage to a woman called Adeena. Traumatised by a tour of duty in Iraq, Gaunt has a cavalier attitude to life and feels he has nothing to lose. His childhood sweetheart won't speak to him, he has lost every job he ever had, and he needs cash urgently. He therefore decides to accept Khan's strange proposal - never imagining where this decision will take him. For with his new bride comes a whole lot of trouble... |
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