The secret history

Donna Tartt

"A scholarship student at an exclusive New England college, Richard unexpectedly finds kindred spirits in the the charismatic students of his ancient Greek class, children of privilege immersed in beauty and culture. But his new friends have a horrific secret.

When blackmail and violence threaten to blow their magic circle apart, Richard is drawn into a heart of darkness from which he may never return." -- book cover.
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Stories for Summer

This collection of short stories contains 14 great stories from the pens of F. Scott Fitzgerald, D.H. Lawrenec, Henry James, Sir Aruthor Conan Doyle, Katherine Mansfield and Oscar Wilde.

It includes such great stories as The Diamond as big as the Ritz (Fitzgerald), The garden path (Mansfield) and The model millionaire (Wilde)
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Larkin about Ireland

John Larkin

John Larkin travels to Ireland in search of his spiritual home, the one his father had left behind in the fifties. Instead he finds a nation undergoing tremendous change: from poor to rich, religious to secular, leprechauns to boy bands. Ireland is on the move, cutting deals, talking bollocks on mobile phones.

It's a hilarious and often poignant journey up Croagh Patrick, the holiest of holy mountains, around The Ring of Kerry, to Knock, home to the tackiest sourvenir shops in the world (and an apparition of The Blessed Virgin), and into pubs where the locals still end their days in a lively fall off a bar stool. -- book cover.

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Nice Girls Finish Last

Sparkle Hayter

At 37, with one failed marriage and several lousy dates behind her, Robin Hudson is still working on a new attitude - a positive mental attitude! Sure she's still toiling away in the tabloidesque special reports unit at All News Network for her loathsome bodd, Jerry Spurdle, but amidst the trumours of cutbacks she thinks a good attitude might improve her karma. Besides, she's added a new weapon to her personal defence system - a hot-glue gun with two settings, steam and spray - wo what could go wrong?

Then her gynaecologist is murdered and Jerry sends Robin to investigate a link with the S&M sex-club underworld. In the meantime, someone is taking potshots at ANN's male talent. Are the shootings connected to the murder of the doctor? To Robin? Her PMA hanging by a thread, Robin must solve the mystery - or she may never have another date. -- book cover.

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Cat Catcher

Caroline Shaw

Meet Lenny Aaron, a Zen-cool young ex-cop with a few left-field addictions, a super droll style and a seedy little office of her own in downtown Footscray. Sworn off true crime after a harrowing experience on duty, Lenny earns her living tracking missing cats down Melbourne’s alleys and byways.

But everything changes for Lenny when a routine search for a daughter’s missing Ragdoll brings her into the viperous bosom of Australia’s most powerful media family. The patriarch is dying, and the stakes are sky-high for a piece of the action. When someone takes it, brutally, Lenny finds herself back in the murder business.

And is doesn’t stop there. While Lenny trawls through the morass of corruption, sex, greed, power and money to find the killer, she is forced to confront her haunting past. Will her feline cunning and ice-cool courage be enough to survive? -- book cover
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Gilead

Marilynne Robinson

In 1956, towards the end of Reverend John Ames life, he begins a letter to his young son: "I told you last night that I might be gone sometime ... you reached up and put your fingers on my lips and gave that look I never in my life say on any other face beside your mother's. It's a kind of furious pride, very passionate and stern. I'm always a little surprised to find my eyebrows unsinged after I've suffered one of those looks. I will miss them." - book cover

This book was chosed by the New York Times Book Review as one of the top six novels of the year.

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In Her Shoes

Jennifer Weiner

Rose Feller is thirty; a successful lawyer with high hopes of a relationship with Jim, Mr Not-Quite-Right, a senior partner in her firm. The last thing she needs is her messed-up, only occasionally employed sister Maggie moving in: drinking, smoking, stealing her money - and her shoes - and spoiling her chance of romance. If only Maggie would grow up and settle down with a nice guy and a steady job.

Maggie is drop dead gorgeous and irresistible to men. She's going to make it big as a TV presenter, or a singer, or an actress. All she needs is a lucky break. What she doesn't need is her uptight sister Rose interfering in her life. If only Rose would lighten-up, have some fun - and learn how to use a pair of tweezers.

Rose and Maggie think they have nothing in common but a childhood tragedy, shared DNA and the same size feet, but they are about to find out that they're more alike than they's ever believe."

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