“It was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not…” In three brilliant variations on the classic detective story, Paul Auster makes the well-traversed terrain of New York City his own, as it becomes […]
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When Vianne Rocher receives a letter from beyond the grave, she allows the wind to blow her back to the village in south-west France where, eight years ago, she opened up a chocolate shop. But Lansquenet is different now: women veiled in black, the scent of spices and peppermint tea, and, on the bank of […]
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“If people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane.” Miles Halter’s whole life has been one big non-event, until he meets Alaska Young. Gorgeous, clever and undoubtedly screwed up, Alaska draws Miles into her reckless world and irrevocably steals his heart. For Miles, nothing can ever be the same again. First published: […]
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When Jacob Jankowski, recently orphaned and suddenly adrift, jumps into a passing train, he enters a world of freaks, swindlers and misfits in a second-rate circus struggling to survive. A veterinary student who almost earned his degree, Jacob is put in charge of caring for the circus menagerie. It is there that Jacob meets Marlena, […]
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It is wartime London, and the carelessness of people with no future flows through the evening air. Stella discovers that her lover Robert is suspected of selling information to the enemy. Harrison, the British intelligence agent on his trail, wants to bargain — the price for his silence being Stella herself. Slowly the flimsy structures […]
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I had a pretty busy and stressful week last week, so when Friday afternoon rolled around and I realised the weekend had started, I decided to treat myself to something nice… When I turned 19 (over a year ago, I’m now 20) I got two book vouchers for my birthday, and one of them was […]
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Chick lit. Literature for chicks. Or, as Wikipedia describes it (a bit more sophisticatedly): “genre fiction which addresses issues of modern womanhood, often humorously and lightheartedly.” Sounds like a fun read, right? Why is it, then, that for some reason this genre is so often looked down upon? When I was in secondary school I […]
Read MoreOn the eve of her ninth birthday, Rose Edelstein bites into her mother’s homemade lemon-chocolate cake and discovers she has a magical gift: she can taste her mother’s emotions in the slice. All at once her cheerful, can-do mother tastes of despair and desperation. Suddenly, and for the rest of her life, food becomes perilous. […]
Read MoreIn a vase in a closet, a couple of years after his father died in 9/11, nine-year-old Oskar discovers a key… The key belonged to his father, he’s sure of that. But which of New York’s 162 million locks does it open? So begins a quest that takes Oskar — inventor, letter-writer and amateur detective […]
Read More‘All endings are also beginnings. We just don’t know it at the time…’ On his eighty-third birthday, Eddie, a lonely war veteran, dies in a tragic accident trying to save a little girl from a falling cart. With his final breath, he feels two small hands in his – and then nothing. He awakens in […]
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Books Baking and Blogging 