Inside WikiLeaks – Daniel Domscheit-Berg

Apr 4, 2011
Lauren

Inside WikiLeaks - Daniel Domscheit-BergInside WikiLeaks
Daniel Domscheit-Berg

An explosive exposé of the inner workings of the whistle-blowing phenomenon and the dissent and infighting that has rocked it.

This is the true story of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks from the insider who lived it all.

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The Dating Detox – Gemma Burgess

Apr 3, 2011
Nikki

The Dating Detox - Gemma BurgessThe Dating Detox
Gemma Burgess

If you can’t date anyone nice, don’t date anyone at all…

Dating is a dangerous sport. So after her sixth successive failed relationship, romantically-challenged 20-something Sass decides she’s had enough. The Dating Detox is born. No men, no break-ups, no problem.

The result? Her life – usually joyfully/traumatically occupied with dates, clothes and vodka – is finally easy. Chastity rocks. No wonder nuns are always singing. Everything falls at her feet. Especially men.

Will Sass break the rules? Why does fate keep throwing her in the path of the irritatingly amusing – and gorgeous – Jake? Will she ever roll the dice and play again? Or is a love-free life too good to risk losing?

For the post-Carrie Bradshaw, post-Bridget Jones, post-credit crunch generation of singles, life isn’t beautiful, a bitch, or a beach. It’s a party.

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Started Early, Took My Dog – Kate Atkinson

Mar 30, 2011
Sarah

Started Early, Took My Dog - Kate AtkinsonStarted Early, Took My Dog
Kate Atkinson

A day like any other for security chief Tracy Waterhouse, until she makes a shocking impulse purchase. That one moment of madness is all it takes for Tracy’s humdrum world to be turned upside down, the tedium of everyday life replaced by fear and danger at every turn.

Witnesses to Tracy’s outrageous exchange in the Merrion Centre in Leeds are Tilly, an elderly actress teetering on the brink of her own disaster, and Jackson Brodie who has returned to his home county in search of someone else’s roots. All three characters learn that the past is never history and that no good deed goes unpunished.

Kate Atkinson dovetails and counterpoints her plots with Dickensian brilliance in a tale peopled with unlikely heroes and villains. Started Early, Took My Dog is freighted with wit, wisdom and a fierce moral intelligence. It confirms Kate Atkinson’s position as one of the great writers of our time.

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Someone Else’s Son – Sam Hayes

Mar 29, 2011
Kirsty

Someone Else's Son - Sam HayesSomeone Else’s Son
Sam Hayes

There must have been some mistake…

TV presenter Carrie Kent can’t believe the voice on the end of the phone. Surely it didn’t just say that her son – her beloved son Max – had been stabbed within his school gates? This sort of thing happens only to the guests on her daily morning chat show. Not to someone like her boy.

But when Carrie arrives at the hospital and learns that Max is dead, she is thrown into a nightmare. No one will reveal what really happened and the only witness, a schoolgirl, is refusing to talk. Carrie must enter an unknown world of fear and violence if she wants to find out the truth. But can she live with what she discovers?

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Cameron on Cameron – David Cameron and Dylan Jones

Mar 19, 2011
Rachel

Cameron on Cameron - David Cameron and Dylan JonesCameron on Cameron: Conversations with Dylan Jones
David Cameron and Dylan Jones

Just who does David Cameron think he is?

In an engaging series of landmark interviews that will define the would-be prime minister ahead of the next election, Dylan Jones finds out. David Cameron is asking you for the keys to Number 10 – but is he a smartly dressed smoothie with all the right lines, or a gifted politician who instinctively understands the country’s priorities? A throwback to the age when privilege brought power, or a dynamic alternative to a Labour Party that has run out of ideas?

Award-winning journalist Dylan Jones set out to answer these questions in a series of wide-ranging and candid interviews that will define David Cameron ahead of the next election – and for years to come.

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Dreams from my Father – Barack Obama

Mar 14, 2011
Sarah

Dreams from my Father - Barack ObamaDreams from my Father
Barack Obama

The son of a black African father and a white American mother, Obama was only two years old when his father walked out on the family. Many years later, Obama receives a phone call from Nairobi: his father is dead. This sudden news inspires an emotional odyssey for Obama, determined to learn the truth of his father’s life and reconcile his divided inheritance.

Written at the age of thirty-three, Dreams from my Father is an unforgettable read. It illuminates not only Obama’s journey, but also our universal desire to understand our history, and what makes us the people we are.

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The Children’s Book – A.S. Byatt

Mar 8, 2011
Sarah B.

The Children's Book - A.S. ByattThe Children’s Book
A.S. Byatt

Olive Wellwood is a famous writer, interviewed with her children gathered at her knee. For each of them she writes a separate private book, bound in different colours and placed on a shelf. In their rambling house near Romney Marsh they play in a storybook world – but their lives, and those of their rich cousins, children of a city stockbroker, and their friends, the son and daughter of a curator at the new Victoria and Albert Museum, are already inscribed with mystery.

Each family carries its own secrets. Into their world comes a young stranger, a working-class boy from the potteries, drawn by the beauty of the Museum’s treasures. And in midsummer a German puppeteer arrives, bringing dark dramas. The world seems full of promise but the calm is already rocked by political differences, by Fabian arguments about class and free love, by the idealism of anarchists from Russia and Germany.

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The Hating Game – Talli Roland

Mar 6, 2011
Nikki

The Hating Game - Talli RolandThe Hating Game
Talli Roland

When man-eater Mattie Johns agrees to star on a dating game show to save her ailing recruitment business, she’s confident she’ll sail through to the end without letting down the perma-guard she’s perfected from years of her love ‘em and leave ‘em dating strategy. After all, what can go wrong with dating a few losers and hanging out long enough to pick up a juicy £200,000 prize? Plenty, Mattie discovers, when it’s revealed that the contestants are four of her very unhappy exes.

Can Mattie confront her past to get the prize money she so desperately needs, or will her exes finally wreak their long-awaited revenge? And what about the ambitious TV producer whose career depends on stopping her from making it to the end? Who will win The Hating Game?

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Room – Emma Donoghue

Mar 3, 2011
Zoë

Room - Emma DonoghueRoom
Emma Donoghue

Jack is five. He lives with his Ma. They live in a single, locked room.

They don’t have the key.

Jack and Ma are prisoners.

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The Confession of Katherine Howard – Suzannah Dunn

Feb 26, 2011
Rachel

The Confession of Katherine Howard - Suzannah DunnThe Confession of Katherine Howard
Suzannah Dunn

When twelve-year-old Katherine Howard comes to live in the Duchess of Norfolk’s household, poor relation Cat Tilney is deeply suspicious of her. The two girls couldn’t be more different: Cat, watchful and ambitious; Katherine, interested only in clothes and boys. Their companions are in thrall to Katherine, but it’s Cat in whom Katherine confides and, despite herself, Cat is drawn to her.

Summoned to court at seventeen, Katherine leaves Cat in the company of her ex-lover, Francis, and the two begin their own, much more serious, love affair. Within months, the king has set aside his Dutch wife Anne for Katherine. The future seems assured for the new queen and her maid-in-waiting, although Cat would feel more confident if Katherine hadn’t embarked on an affair with one of the king’s favoured attendants, Thomas Culpeper. However, for a blissful year and a half, it seems that Katherine can have everything she wants.

But then allegations are made about her girlhood love affairs. Desperately frightened, Katherine recounts a version of events which implicates Francis but which Cat knows to be a lie. With Francis in the Tower, Cat alone knows the whole truth of Queen Katherine Howard – but if she tells, Katherine will die.

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A Winter’s Wedding – Sharon Owens

Feb 21, 2011
Cherry

A Winter's Wedding - Sharon OwensA Winter’s Wedding
Sharon Owens

Love in the bleak mid-winter…

Emily loves Dylan. And Dylan loves Emily. Their relationship is rock solid. Everyone says they are meant to be together, it’s just a matter of when – not if – Dylan’s going to pop the Big Question. There’s just one tiny fly in the ointment: Emily hates weddings. Which is fair enough seeing as she was jilted at the altar years ago by Alex, her supposed soulmate. Still, Dylan isn’t Alex. He’s gorgeous and sexy and scruffy and kind – and more than worth taking a chance on…

But what happens when the ghost of Emily’s Christmas past threatens to ruin everything? Can Dylan convince the love of his life he’s different and that their wedding day will be remembered for the right reasons? After all, with a sprinkling of snow and a touch of magic in the air, there’s nothing quite like a winter’s wedding to warm the soul…

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We Had It So Good – Linda Grant

Feb 19, 2011
Sarah

We Had It So Good - Linda GrantWe Had it So Good
Linda Grant

In 1968 Stephen Newman arrives in England from California. Sent down from Oxford, he hurriedly marries his English girlfriend Andrea to avoid returning to America and the draft board.

Over the next forty years they and their friends build lives of middle-class success, until the events of late middle-age and the new century force them to realise that their fortunate generation has always lived in a fool’s paradise.

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The Girl Who Played With Fire – Stieg Larsson

Feb 19, 2011
Rachel

The Girl Who Played With Fire - Stieg LarssonThe Girl Who Played with Fire
Stieg Larsson

Lisbeth Salander is a wanted woman. Two Millennium journalists about to expose the truth about sex trafficking in Sweden are murdered, and Salander’s prints are on the weapon. Her history of unpredictable and vengeful behaviour makes her an official danger to society – but no-one can find her.

Mikael Blomkvist, editor-in-chief of Millennium, does not believe the police. Using all his magazine staff and resources to prove Salander’s innocence, Blomkvist also uncovers her terrible past, spent in criminally corrupt institutions. Yet Salander is more avenging angel than helpless victim. She may be an expert at staying out of sight – but she has ways of tracking down her most elusive enemies.

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The Woman He Loved Before – Dorothy Koomson

Feb 14, 2011
Nikki

The Woman He Loved Before - Dorothy KoomsonThe Woman He Loved Before
Dorothy Koomson

Libby has a nice life with a gorgeous husband and a big home by the sea. But over time she is becoming more unsure if Jack has ever loved her, and if he is over the death of Eve, his first wife.

When fate intervenes in their relationship, Libby decides to find out all she can about the man she hastily married and the seemingly perfect Eve. Eventually Libby stumbles across some startling truths about Eve, and is soon unearthing more and more devastating family secrets. Frightened by what she finds and the damage it could cause, Libby starts to worry that she too will end up like the first woman Jack loved…

Tense and moving, The Woman He Loved Before explores if the love you want is always the love you need or deserve.

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