Zoe

Before I Go To Sleep – S J Watson

Sep 21, 2011
Zoë

Before I Go To Sleep - S J WatsonBefore I Go To Sleep
S J Watson

‘As I sleep, my mind will erase everything I did today. I will wake up tomorrow as I did this morning. Thinking I’m still a child. Thinking I have a whole lifetime of choice ahead of me …’

Memories define us. So what if you lost yours every time you went to sleep? Your name, your identity, your past, even the people you love – all forgotten overnight. And the one person you trust may only be telling you half the story. Welcome to Christine’s life.

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Bossypants – Tina Fey

Aug 3, 2011
Zoë

Bossypants - Tina FeyBossypants
Tina Fey

Once in a generation a woman comes along who changes everything.

Tina Fey is not that woman, but she met that woman once and acted weird around her.

Before 30 Rock, Mean Girls and ‘Sarah Palin’, Tina Fey was just a young girl with a dream: a recurring stress dream that she was being chased through a local airport by her middle-school gym teacher. She also had a dream that one day she would be a comedian on TV. She has seen both these dreams come true. At last, Tina Fey’s story can be told.

From her youthful days as a vicious nerd to her tour of duty on Saturday Night Live; from her passionately halfhearted pursuit of physical beauty to her life as a mother eating things off the floor; from her one-sided college romance to her nearly fatal honeymoon — from the beginning of this paragraph to this final sentence. Tina Fey reveals all, and proves what we’ve all suspected: you’re no one until someone calls you bossy.

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I am the Messenger – Markus Zusak

Jul 22, 2011
Zoë

I am the Messenger - Markus ZusakI am the Messenger
Markus Zusak

protect the diamonds
survive the clubs
dig deep through the spades
feel the hearts

Ed Kennedy is an underage cabdriver without much of a future. He’s pathetic at playing cards, hopelessly in love with his best friend, Audrey, and utterly devoted to his coffee-drinking dog, the Doorman. His life is one of peaceful routine and incompetence until he inadvertently stops a bank robbery.

That’s when the first ace arrives in the mail.

That’s when Ed becomes the messenger.

Chosen to care, he makes his way through town helping and hurting (when necessary) until only one question remains: Who’s behind Ed’s mission?

A 2005 Michael L. Printz Honor Book and recipient of five starred reviews, I Am the Messenger is a cryptic journey filled with laughter, fists, and love.

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The Help – Kathryn Stockett

May 2, 2011
Zoë

The Help - Kathryn Stockett The Help
Kathryn Stockett

Enter a vanished and unjust world: Jackson, Mississippi, 1962. Where black maids raise white children, but aren’t trusted not to steal the silver…

There’s Aibileen, raising her seventeenth white child and nursing the hurt caused by her own son’s tragic death; Minny, whose cooking is nearly as sassy as her tongue; and white Miss Skeeter, home from College, who wants to know why her beloved maid has disappeared.

Skeeter, Aibileen and Minny. No one would believe they’d be friends; fewer still would tolerate it. But as each woman finds the courage to cross boundaries, they come to depend and rely upon one another. Each is in a search of a truth. And together they have an extraordinary story to tell…

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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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Dear Me: A Letter to My Sixteen-Year-Old Self – Joseph Galliano

Feb 8, 2011
Zoë

Dear Me: A Letter to My Sixteen-Year-Old Self - Joseph GallianoDear Me: A Letter to My Sixteen-Year-Old Self
Joseph Galliano

If you were to write a letter to your 16-year-old self, what would it say?

In Dear Me, some of the world’s best loved personalities have written just such a letter. Dear Me includes letters from three knights, a handful of Oscar winners, a bevy of Baftas, an intrepid explorer, a few teenage pop stars, an avid horticulturalist, pages and pages of bestselling authors, a dishy doctor, a full credit of film directors, a lovey of top actors, a giggle of comedians and an Archbishop!

The letters range from the compassionate to the shocking via hilarity and heartbreak, but they all have one thing in common: they offer a unique insight into the teenager who would grow up to be…. Stephen Fry, Annie Lennox, Paul O’Grady, Jackie Collins, Fay Weldon, Alan Carr, Peter Kay, Debbie Harry, Brenda Blethyn , Jonathan Ross, Liz Smith, Will Young, Alison Moyet, Rosanne Cash, Sir Ranulph Fiennes, Yoko Ono, Emma Thompson… to name but a few.

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William Walker’s First Year of Marriage: A Horror Story – Matt Rudd

Jan 13, 2011
Zoë

William Walker's First Year of Marriage: A Horror StoryWilliam Walker’s First Year of Marriage: A Horror Story
Matt Rudd

For anyone who has ever dreamed of finding true love only to discover that happy endings are just the beginning comes this brilliantly comic novel about marriage, ex-girlfriends, ‘performance anxiety’, and what it takes to make happily ever last beyond the honeymoon.

William is a happy man. He has just married Isabel, the girl of his dreams, and is confidently sailing along on a sea of wedded bliss. He’s got a hot wife, a snazzy new job and things couldn’t be much better. Sure, there are a few bumps in the road, but life on the whole is good. That is until Isabel’s ‘best friend’ Alex starts to intrude on their wedded bliss. And when William’s ex-girlfriend Saskia – aka the ‘Destroyer of Relationships’ – appears on the scene, things go from bad to worse. For marriage, William quickly discovers, has its own set of rules. And while falling in love is easy, staying in love can be a whole lot trickier!

Witty, irreverent and laugh-out-loud funny, William Walker’s First Year of Marriage: A Horror Story is the perfect novel for anyone who has ever wanted to know what the person they’re facing at the altar is REALLY thinking – and been rightly afraid to ask.

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JPod – Douglas Coupland

Jan 10, 2011
Zoë

JPod - Douglas CouplandJPod
Douglas Coupland

Ethan and his five co-workers are marooned in JPod, a no-escape architectural limbo on the fringes of a massive game-design company. There they wage battle against the demands of boneheaded marketing staff who torture them with idiotic changes to already idiotic games. Meanwhile, Ethan’s personal life is being invaded by marijuana grow-ops, people-smuggling, ballroom dancing, global piracy and the rise of China. Everybody in both worlds seems to inhabit a moral grey zone, and nobody is excemp, not even his seemingly strait-laced parents or Coupland himself.

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Juliet, Naked – Nick Hornby

Jan 8, 2011
Zoë

Juliet, Naked - Nick HornbyJuliet, Naked
Nick Hornby

Nick Hornby returns to his roots – music and messy relationships – in this funny and touching new novel which thoughtfully and sympathetically looks at how lives can be wasted but how they are never beyond redemption. Annie lives in a dull town on England’s bleak east coast and is in a relationship with Duncan which mirrors the place; Tucker was once a brilliant songwriter and performer, who’s gone into seclusion in rural America – or at least that’s what his fans think. Duncan is obsessed with Tucker’s work, to the point of derangement, and when Annie dares to go public on her dislike of his latest album, there are quite unexpected, life-changing consequences for all three. Nick Hornby uses this intriguing canvas to explore why it is we so often let the early promise of relationships, ambition and indeed life evaporate. And he comes to some surprisingly optimistic conclusions.

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Sister – Rosamund Lupton

Jan 7, 2011
Zoë

Sister - Rosamund LuptonSister
Rosamund Lupton

Nothing can break the bond between sisters…

When Beatrice gets a frantic call in the middle of Sunday lunch to say that her younger sister, Tess, is missing, she boards the first flight home to London. But as she learns about the circumstances surrounding her sister’s disappearance, she is stunned to discover how little she actually knows of her sister’s life – and unprepared for the terrifying truths she must now face. The police, Beatrice’s fiance and even their mother accept they have lost Tess, but Beatrice refuses to give up on her. So she embarks on a dangerous journey to discover the truth, no matter the cost.

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