A real-time five-hour story set in an airport cocktail lounge during a global disaster. Five disparate people are trapped inside: Karen, a single mother waiting for her online date; Rick, the down-on-his-luck airport lounge bartender; Luke, a pastor on the run; Rachel, a cool Hitchcock blonde incapable of true human contact; and finally a mysterious voice known as Player One. Slowly, each reveals the truth about themselves while the world as they know it comes to an end. In the tradition of Kurt Vonnegut and J.G. Ballard, Coupland explores the modern crises of time, human identity, society, religion and the afterlife. The book asks more questions than it answers and readers will leave the story with no doubt that we are in a new phase of existence as a species — and that there is no turning back.

Bernard Walsh, agnostic theologian, has a professional interest in heaven. But when he travels to Hawaii with his reluctant father Jack, to visit Jack's dying, estranged sister it feels more like purgatory than paradise. Surrounded by quarrelling honeymooners, a freeloading anthropologist and assorted tourists in search of their own personal paradise, and with his father whisked off to hospital after an unfortunate accident, Bernard is beginning to regret ever coming to Haiwaii. Until, that is, he stumbles on something he had given up hope of finding: the astonishing possibility of love.

«Are you there, Satan? It's me, Madison», declares the whip-tongued eleven-year-old narrator of «Damned», Chuck Palahniuk's subversive new work of fiction. The daughter of a narcissistic film star and a billionaire, Madison is abandoned at her Swiss boarding school over Christmas, while her parents are off touting their new projects and adopting more orphans. She dies over the holiday of a mari-juana overdose — and the next thing she knows, she's in Hell. Madison shares her cell with a motley crew of young sinners that is almost too good to be true: a cheerleader, a jock, a nerd, and a punk rocker, united by fate to form the six-feet-under version of everyone's favorite detention movie. Madison and her pals trek across the Dandruff Desert and climb the treacherous Mountain of Toenail Clippings to confront Satan in his citadel. All the popcorn balls and wax lips that serve as the currency of Hell won't buy them off. This is the afterlife as only Chuck Palahniuk could imagine it: a twisted inferno where «The English Patient» plays on end-less repeat, roaming demons devour sinners limb by limb, and the damned interrupt your dinner from their sweltering call center to hard-sell you Hell. He makes eternal torment, well, simply divine.»

When Philip Swallow and Professor Morris Zapp participate in their universities' Anglo-American exchange scheme, the Fates play a hand, and each academic finds himself enmeshed in the life of his counterpart on the opposite side of the Atlantic. Nobody is immune to the exchange: students, colleagues, even wives are swapped as events spiral out of control. And soon both sundrenched Euphoric State university and rain-kissed university of Rummidge are a hotbed of intrigue, lawlessness and broken vows...

«The British Museum is Falling Down» is a brilliant comic satire of academia, religion and human entanglements. First published in 1965, it tells the story of hapless, scooter-riding young research student Adam Appleby, who is trying to write his thesis but is constantly distracted — not least by the fact that, as Catholics in the 1960s, he and his wife must rely on 'Vatican roulette' to avoid a fourth child.»

In the middle of Europe, in the middle of the twentieth century, the Nazi and Soviet regimes murdered fourteen million people in the bloodlands between Berlin and Moscow. In a twelve-year-period, in these killing fields — today's Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Western Russia and the eastern Baltic coast — an average of more than one million citizens were slaughtered every year, as a result of deliberate policies unrelated to combat. In his revelatory book, Timothy Snyder offers a ground-breaking investigation into the motives and methods of Stalin and Hitler and, using scholarly literature and primary sources, pays special attention to the testimony of the victims, including the letters home, the notes flung from trains, the diaries on corpses. The result is a brilliantly researched, profoundly humane, authoritative and original book that forces us to re-examine the greatest tragedy in European history and re-think our past.

«In 100, carefully selected places, «BBC History Magazine» editor Dave Musgrove takes us on an unforgettable historical tour through British history, from the Roman invasion to 1960s Liverpool. Musgrove has asked foremost British historians such as Dominic Sandbrook, to nominate the sites they believe to be the most important in our history, and has travelled to each place to provide a visitor's point of view alongside the captivating stories that make each one great. Covering the length and breadth of the British mainland and two thousand of years of history, «100 Places that Made Britain» visits renowned sites such as the Tower of London and Runnymede, as well as less well-known places like Rushton Triangular Lodge in Northamptonshire — a three-sided, three-themed house built during the Reformation and designed to represent the Holy Trinity — and Jarrow, home of the first chronicler of Anglo-Saxon Britain, The Venerable Bede. Each essay adds another layer to our understanding of Britain's story, whether it be an advance in politics, religion, law or culture. Bringing the vast history of this small island to life, «100 Places that Made Britain» is a captivating historical compendium that will have every reader criss-crossing the country to explore its myriad treasures.»

Arguably the greatest horror novel ever written by the greatest horror novelist, this is a true Modern Classic that was first published in 1978, and then re-published in 1990, complete and unabridged, with 150,000 words cut from the first edition restored, and now accompanied by unusual and imaginative line art. The total copies for both editions, in hardcover and paperback, exceeds 4 million worldwide. The Stand is a truly terrifying reading experience, and became a four-part mini-series that memorably brought to life the cast of characters and layers of story from the novel. It is an apocalyptic vision of the world, when a deadly virus runs amok around the globe. But that lethal virus is almost benign compared to the satanic force gathering minions from those still alive to destroy humanity and create a world populated by evil. Stephen King is a brilliant storyteller who has the uncanny gift of putting ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances, giving readers an experience that chills and thrills on every page.

«From Manhattan to Paris and all the way to Tehran, #1 «New York Times» — bestselling author Steel weaves a powerfully compelling story that reminds readers how challenging and unpredictable life can be — and how the bonds of family hold them together.»

This rediscovered gem by a major, yet neglected, writer — here presented in a dazzling new translation — is an absorbing account of the final days of Czarist Russia. An absorbing saga about the brutalities of military life upon its own soldiers. Stranded at a distant outpost, young Romashov finds himself obliged to fight a duel — over something he realizes is meaningless. As the novel hurtles toward a startling conclusion, it reveals itself to be a luminous depiction of the end of an era.

King's #1 bestseller about a shy teenage girl who's bullied at school — but whose secret power allows her to exact revenge on her tormentors at prom.

«Brooks, author of the straight-faced parody «The Zombie Survival Guide», tells the story of the world's desperate battle against the zombie threat with a series of first-person accounts by various characters around the world.»

An innocent man is days from execution. Only a guilty man can save him. Travis Boyette is a murderer. In 1998, in the small East Texas city of Sloan, he abducted, raped, and strangled a popular high-school cheerleader. He buried her body so that it would never be found, then watched and waited as police and prosecutors arrested Donte Drumm, a local football star with no connection to the crime. Tried, convicted and sentenced, Drumm was sent to death row: his fate had been decided. Nine years later, Donte Drumm is four days from execution. Over 400 miles away in Kansas, Travis faces a fate of his own: an inoperable brain tumour will soon deliver the end. Reflecting on his miserable life, he decides to do what's right. After years of silence he is ready to confess. But how can a guilty man convince lawyers, judges and politicians that they're about to execute an innocent man?

«This title comes with an introduction by Johnny Depp. This is a screenplay based on the novel by Hunter S. Thompson. It's 1960. In a highrise hotel not far from the beaches of San Juan, a man is recovering from an animal of a hangover. Paul Kemp is an alcoholic journalist who's barely seen better days, arriving at the only job he can get: writing horoscopes for failing rag «The Daily Star». His fellow hacks are mostly crazy drunks on the verge of quitting, so Kemp fits in perfectly. But when he meets the impossibly gorgeous Chenault and her flashy boyfriend Sanderson, Kemp finds himself in way over his head — party to shady business deals, in hair-raising car chases with enraged Puerto Ricans, experimenting with a hitherto unknown hallucinogen — and finally discovers a mad, desperate devotion to the truth. Bruce Robinson brings Hunter S. Thompson's novel to the big screen with all the brilliance, wild humour and fierce energy associated with the acclaimed writer and director of «Withnail & I» and «The Killing Fields».»

«I Am a Chechen!» offers a lyrical fusion of exotic legends, stories and memories of Chechnya: a land of wondrous beauty, site of genocides past and present, and the author's ancestral home. Haunted by memories of the land he deserted, Sadulaev tells the stories of those who stayed behind. He brings dead friends back to life again, revisiting their first loves, their passion for rock music, and their quests for martyrdom. And he immerses us in the intoxicating beauty of his homeland's mountains, blossoms and the flocks of migratory swallows that fill its skies. This is an intensely personal journey through the carnage of the war, exploring the pain, the challenge, and above all the meaning of being a Chechen.»

From the award-winning and bestselling author Jennifer Egan, a dazzling, shape-shifting new work of fiction that spans fifty years and stars an aging record executive and the passionate, troubled young woman he employs.

«First American Publication This stunning and elegiac novel by the author of the internationally acclaimed Wind-Up Bird Chronicle has sold over 4 million copies in Japan and is now available to American audiences for the first time. It is sure to be a literary event. Toru, a quiet and preternaturally serious young college student in Tokyo, is devoted to Naoko, a beautiful and introspective young woman, but their mutual passion is marked by the tragic death of their best friend years before. Toru begins to adapt to campus life and the loneliness and isolation he faces there, but Naoko finds the pressures and responsibilities of life unbearable. As she retreats further into her own world, Toru finds himself reaching out to others and drawn to a fiercely independent and sexually liberated young woman. A poignant story of one college student's romantic coming-of-age, Norwegian Wood takes us to that distant place of a young man's first, hopeless, and heroic love. «From the Trade Paperback edition.»

Imagine an empire that has shut out the world for a century and a half. No one can leave, foreigners are excluded, their religions banned and their ideas deeply mistrusted. Yet a narrow window onto this nation-fortress still exists: an artificial walled island connected to a mainland port, and manned by a handful of European traders. And locked as the land-gate may be, it cannot prevent the meeting of minds — or hearts. The nation was Japan, the port was Nagasaki and the island was Dejima, to where David Mitchell's panoramic novel transports us in the year 1799. For one Dutch clerk, Jacob de Zoet, a dark adventure of duplicity, love, guilt, faith and murder is about to begin — and all the while, unbeknownst to him and his feuding compatriots, the axis of global power is turning...