If you’ve ever paid off one credit card with another，thrown out a bill before opening it，or convinced yourself that buying at a two-for-one sale is like making money，then this silly，appealing novel is for you。In the opening pages of Confessions of a Shopaholic，recent college graduate Rebecca Bloomwood is offered a hefty line of credit by a London bank。Within a few months，Sophie Kinsella’s heroine has exceeded the limits of this generous offer，and begins furtively to scan her credit-card bills at work，certain that she couldn’t have spent the reported sums。 In theory anyway，the world of finance shouldn’t be a mystery to Rebecca，since she writes for a magazine called Successful Saving。 Struggling with her spendthrift impulses，she tries to heed the advice of an expert and appreciate life’s cheaper pleasures： parks， museums， and so forth。Yet her first Saturday at the Victoria and Albert Museum strikes her as a waste。Why？ There’s not a price tag in sight
Salander is plotting her revenge - against the man who tried to kill her, and against the government institutions that very nearly destroyed her life. But it is not going to be a straightforward campaign. After taking a bullet to the head, Salander is under close supervision in Intensive Care, and is set to face trial for three murders and one attempted murder on her eventual release. With the help of journalist Mikael Blomkvist and his researchers at Millennium magazine, Salander must not only prove her innocence, but identify and denounce the corrupt politicians that have allowed the vulnerable to become victims of abuse and violence. Once a victim herself, Salander is now ready to fight back .
Since the series' inception in 1915, the annual volumes of TheBest American Short Stories have launched literary careers,showcased the most compelling stories of each year, and confirmedfor all time the significance of the short story in our nationalliterature. Now THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES OF THE CENTURYbrings together the best -- fifty-six extraordinary stories thatrepresent a century's worth of unsurpassed achievements in thisquintessentially American literary genre. This expanded editionincludes a new story from The Best American Short Stories 1999 toround out the century, as well as an index including every storypublished in the series. Of all the writers whose work has appearedin the series, only John Updike has been represented in each of thelast five decades, from his first appearance, in 1959, to his mostrecent, in 1998. Updike worked with coeditor Katrina Kenison tochoose the finest stories from the years since 1915. The result is"extraordinary . . . A one-volume literary history of thi
With amazing vividness,Nina Foch essays Henry James's earliest(1881)and perhaps most accessible masterpiece.A penniless American girl is brought to Europe where her beauty,ingenuousness,and na veté attract a variety of suitors.In spite of wanting to do everything right,everything comes out wrong in this perceptive,subtle,and multilayered psychological novel,which Foch plays like a musical instrument.A rather loud one——she hits all the notes correctly but coarsely.The effect is like a bordello pianist--albeit one with nimble fingers--playing Chopin on an old upright.A maladroit abridgment causes occasional confusion.
Selden Edwards, apparently, took 35 years to write this dismal piece of drivel. He started writing at age 25, but I suspect that he conceived the idea at the age of 15. How else to explain the wholly un-ironic adoption of the puerile schoolboy nickname for the main character's guru - the Venerable Haze, a.k.a. the Haze - throughout the book? On page 6, Mr Edwards employs the word 'momentarily' to mean 'in a moment' - when in fact it means 'for a moment'. I would say that if it is English teaching that he has recently retired from, then it is just as well that he has retired. Time travel, I can (only just) live with, but the plot is contrived, and the story wholly devoid of humour, takes itself far too seriously, and employs tortured coincidences to allow the hero to make his way through life in 19th Century 'fin de siecle' (he loves that term!) Vienna. I managed 36 pages of this rubbish, and then gave up in disgust. I trust that Mr Edwards, if he ever does write another novel, will again take 35 years t
YA?The events in this book are horribly off-putting, which, paradoxically, is why they must be remembered. Chang tells of the Sino-Japanese War atrocities perpetrated by the invading Japanese army in Nanking in December 1937, in which roughly 350,000 soldiers and civilians were slaughtered in an eight-week period, many of them having been raped and/or tortured first. Not only are readers given many of the gory details?with pictures?but they are also told of the heroism of some members of a small foreign contingent, particularly of a Nazi businessman who resided in China for 30 years. The story of his bravery lends the ironic touch of someone with evil credentials doing good. Once the author finishes with the atrocities, she proceeds with the equally absorbing and much easier-to-take story of what happened to the Nazi businessman when he returned to Germany and the war ended. This by itself is material for a movie. The author tells why the Japanese government not only allowed the atrocities to occur but also r
A romance that stretches across centuries and past livesconstitutes the core of Brashares's varied second adult novel, thefirst in a planned trilogy. The story is primarily that of Daniel,as, in the present, he pursues Lucy (whom he knows as Sophia in aprevious life) and attempts to persuade her of their history anddestiny, but his passion initially and understandably scares heroff. He disappears, presumed dead, but Lucy, unable to forget him,investigates his claims of their history until she discovers thetruth. Meanwhile, Daniel takes readers on a tour of romanticnear-misses, from sixth-century Africa through eighth-centuryTurkey to WWI. The story moves slowly and predictably, though whena plot finally materializes, Brashares ( Sisterhood of theTraveling Pants ) manages some satisfying momentum, even if thestory begins to feel like it's borrowed from a James Pattersonnovel. Brashares's insights into human nature, meanwhile, shouldappeal to readers who enjoyed The Time-Traveler's Wife , butcan appreci
A deadly love triangle Elena: beautiful and popular, the girl who can have any guy shewants. Stefan: brooding and mysterious, desperately trying to resist hisdesire for Elena . . . for her own good. Damon: sexy, dangerous, and driven by an urge for revenge againstStefan, the brother who betrayed him. Elena finds herself drawn to both brothers . . . who will shechoose?
Set during the Napoleonic wars at a time of national economicstruggles, Shirley is an unsentimental yet passionatedepiction of conflict among classes, sexes, and generations.Struggling manufacturer Robert Moore considers marriage to thewealthy and independent Shirley Keeldar, yet his heart lies withhis cousin Caroline. Shirley, meanwhile, is in love with Robert’sbrother, an impoverished tutor. As industrial unrest builds to apotentially fatal pitch, can the four be reconciled?
A new collection from David Sedaris is cause for jubilation. His recent move to Paris has inspired hilarious pieces, including Me Talk Pretty One Day, about his attempts to learn French. His family is another inspiration. You Cant Kill the Rooster is a portrait of his brother who talks incessant hip-hop slang to his bewildered father. And no one hones a finer fury in response to such modern annoyances as restaurant meals presented in ludicrous towers and cashiers with 6-inch fingernails. Compared by The New Yorker to Twain and Hawthorne, Sedaris has become one of our best-loved authors. Sedaris is an amazing reader whose appearances draw hundreds, and his performancesincluding a jaw-dropping impression of Billie Holiday singing I wish I were an Oscar Meyer weinerare unforgettable. Sedariss essays on living in Paris are some of the funniest hes ever written. At last, someone even meaner than the French! The sort of blithely sophisticated, loopy humour that might have resulted if Dorothy Parker and James Thurbe
Nicholas Nickleby,a gentleman's son fallen upon hard times,must set out to make his way in the world.Along the way various older,money-grubbing villains attempt to injure him.Eventually,with the assistance of kind patrons,he and his family achieve economic security and a happy home.Sounds rather trite,doesn't it? Not with characters written by Dickens(Hard Times,Audio Reviews,LJ 5/1/98).Schoolmaster Squeers would make a fine poster boy for child abusers.Ralph Nickleby's initial desire to injure Nicholas gradually develops into a full-blown obsession.Then there are the kind Cheeryble brothers,the gentle,much-abused Smike,and a host of other friends who provide comic relief.Martin Jarvis does an outstanding job of reading this book.His ingenues sound young(a frequent problem area for male readers)while his villains are deliciously evil.The only problems are with the abridgment.In several places,choppy editing has left brief,disconnected scenes and/or character cameos without relevance to the abridged tale.Still
The controversial bestseller from Tom Clancy, the all-time master of the techno-thriller. CIA Deputy Director Jack Ryan joins the war on drugs. And when three American officials are assassinated in Colombia, the U.S. response is swift-and shocking.
Calvino shows that the novel, far from being a dead form, iscapable of endless mutations. If on a winter's night a travelerturns out to be not one novel but ten, each with a different plot,style, ambience, and author. Translated by William Weaver. A Helenand Kurt Wolff Book
Early responses to Jane Eyre, first published in 1847, were mixed. Some held the book to be anti-Christian, others were disturbed by a heroine so proud, self-willed, and essentially unfeminine. The modern reader may well have trouble understanding what all the fuss was about. On the surface a fairly conventional Gothic romance (poor orphan governess is hired by rich, brooding Byronic hero-type), Jane Eyre hardly seems the stuff from which revolutions are made. But the story is very much about the nature of human freedom and equality, and if Jane was seen as something of a renegade in nineteenth-century England, it is because her story is that of a woman who struggles for self-definition and determination in a society that too often denies her that right. But self-determination does not mean untrammeled freedom for men or women. Rochester, that thorny masculine beast whom Jane eventually falls for, is a man who sets his own laws and manipulates the lives of those around him; before he can enter into a marriage
In an Arizona desert a man wanders in a daze, speaking wordsthat make no sense. Within twenty-four hours he is dead, his bodyswiftly cremated by his only known associates. Halfway around theworld archaeologists make a shocking discovery at a medieval site.Suddenly they are swept off to the headquarters of a secretivemultinational corporation that has developed an astoundingtechnology. Now this group is about to get a chance not to studythe past but to enter it. And with history opened to the present,the dead awakened to the living, these men and women will soon findthemselves fighting for their very survival--six hundred years ago.. . .
Que vient faire ce chien errant dans une petite ville italienne? Pourquoi cinq frères s'évitent-ils soudain ? Qui a composé cettemusique révolutionnaire et obsédante? Trois nouvelles aux décors etaux situations sans lien apparent. Pourtant, à la lecture, toujoursla même atmosphère inquiétante et mystérieuse. L'auteur du " Désertdes Tartares " et du " K ", tout en se plaisant à détourner labanale anecdote vers le fantastique ou l'irréel, sonde ici le genrehumain à travers ses passions et ses vanités.
Set in the reign of Richard I,Coeur de Lion,Ivanhoe is packed with memorable incidents-sieges,ambushes and combats-and equally memorable characters:Cedric of Rotherwood,the die-hard Saxon:his ward Rowena;the fierce Templar knight,Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert;the lew,isaac of Yourk,and his beautiful,spirited daughter Rebecca;Wamba and Gurth,Jester and swineherd respecitively. Scott explores the conflicts betwwen the Crown and the powerful Barons,between the Norman overlords and the conquered Saxons,and between Richard and his scheming brother,Prince John.At the same time he brings into the novel the legendary Robin Hood and his band,and creates a brilliant,colourful account of the age of chivalry with all its elaborate rituals and costumes and its values of honour and personal glory.
