The Electric Hotel


Dominic Smith - 2019
    A sweeping work of historical fiction, it shimmers between past and present as it tells the story of the rise and fall of a prodigious film studio and one man’s doomed obsession with all that passes in front of the viewfinder.For nearly half a century, Claude Ballard has been living at the Hollywood Knickerbocker Hotel. A French pioneer of silent films, who started out as a concession agent for the Lumière brothers, the inventors of cinema, Claude now spends his days foraging mushrooms in the hills of Los Angeles and taking photographs of runaways and the striplings along Sunset Boulevard. But when a film-history student comes to interview Claude about The Electric Hotel—the lost masterpiece that bankrupted him and ended the career of his muse, Sabine Montrose—the past comes surging back. In his run-down hotel suite, the ravages of the past are waiting to be excavated: celluloid fragments and reels in desperate need of restoration, and Claude’s memories of the woman who inspired and beguiled him.

Storms Gather Between Us


Clare Flynn - 2019
    Since escaping his family’s notoriety in Australia Will Kidd has spent a decade sailing the seas, never looking back. Content to live the life of a wanderer, everything changes in a single moment when he comes face to face with a ghost from his past on a cloudy beach in Liverpool.The daughter of an abusive zealot, every step of Hannah Dawson's life has been laid out for her... until she meets Will by chance and is set on a new path. Their love is forbidden and forces on all sides divide them, but their bond is undeniable. Now, they will have to fight against all the odds to escape the chains of their histories and find their way back to one another. A compelling tale of family secrets and love against the odds, perfect for fans of Fiona Valpy and Gill Paul. Praise for Storms Gather Between Us 'Another great book by Clare Flynn’ Reader Review‘A really gripping and moving pre WWII story’ Reader Review‘I would recommend this book without hesitation’ Reader Review‘Very descriptive, immersive and well written. This book is guaranteed to make you turn each and every page.’ Reader Review‘I was totally gripped from the first page’ Reader Review

Stoned


Andrew Loog Oldham - 2000
    I didn't. They were there already. They only wanted exploiting. They were all bad boys when I found them. I just brought out the worst in them.' Andrew Loog Oldham was nineteen years old when he discovered and became the manager and producer of an unknown band called The Rolling Stones. His radical vision transformed them from a starving south London blues combo to the Greatest Rock 'n' Roll Band That Ever Drew Breath, while the revolutionary strategies he used to get them there provoked both adulation and revulsion throughout British society and beyond. An ultra-hip mod, flash, brash and schooled in style by Mary Quant, he was a hustler of genius, addicted to scandal, notoriety and innovation.

Crate Digger: An Obsession with Punk Records


Bob Suren - 2015
    His new passion causes him to form a band, track down out-of-print records that he loves and begin to reissue them, open a record store, begin a record distribution operation as a public service, mentor a host of young musicians, and befriend all manner of punk luminaries along the way. Slowly, his life’s pursuit pushes him to the point of personal ruination and ultimately redemption.

Aa Maratheyum Marannu Marannu Njan: And Slowly Forgetting That Tree …


K.R. Meera - 2010
    Raped at age ten, raped again as a young collegiate, she is abandoned twice: first by her father and later by Christy who loved her, but takes her through a wedding ceremony only to leave her later the same day. When Christy returns sixteen years later, shattered and unstable, the burnt and withered roots of love bloom again. Trauma, betrayal, and loneliness are the colours that paint this picture of physical and emotional violence that Radhika endures.

Start Without Me


Joshua Max Feldman - 2017
    Surrounded by his parents and siblings, nieces and nephews—all who have seen him at his worst—he can’t shake the feeling that no matter how hard he tries, he’ll always be the one who can’t get it right.Marissa is a flight attendant whose marriage is strained by simmering tensions over race, class and ambition. Heading to her in-laws for their picture-perfect holiday family dinner, her anxiety is intensified by the knowledge she is pregnant from an impulsive one-night-stand.In an airport restaurant on Thanksgiving morning, Adam and Marissa meet. Over the course of this day fraught with emotion and expectation, these two strangers will form an unlikely bond as they reckon with their family ties, their pasts, and the choices that will determine their way forward.Joshua Max Feldman focuses his knowing eye on one of the last bastions of classical American idealism, the Thanksgiving family gathering, as he explores our struggles to know—and to be—our best selves. Hilarious and heartrending, Start Without Me is a thoughtful and entertaining page-turner that will leave its indelible mark on your heart.

The Lords of Dûs


Lawrence Watt-Evans - 2002
    The answer sent him into a web of treachery, of ancient secrets and forbidden knowledge, and entangled him in matters far beyond his understanding, until he found himself face to face with the gods of destruction and death.

Spaceship Medic


Harry Harrison - 1969
    Follw space survival drill.''We are all dead men,' says First Engineer Holtz, when the spaceship Johannes Kepler is hit by a meteorite. But Lieutenant Donald Chase, a young doctor on his first flight, refuses to give in to despair. Soon he's in charge of the damaged ship, sailing off course without radio contact and heading for a solar storm.Can he get to Mars safely?

Fortune's Daughters


Consuelo Saah Baehr - 2017
    Often misunderstood, she trusts few as she grows up on the family’s manicured Long Island estate. Just twenty-nine miles away, on lower Manhattan’s dirty, crowded streets, Hope Lee’s world is one of poverty and desperation. The scrappy child of hard-working Irish and Chinese immigrants has learned to fend for herself, until a terrible disaster thrusts her into a strange, new world of privilege.When she meets Faith, Hope has faced enough loss to last a lifetime, and, like Faith, she has built an emotional wall to survive. Compelled by the tragic bonds of very different childhoods, they soon forge a strong alliance. But when Faith’s father chooses Hope as his protégé, and, worse yet, both Faith and Hope fall in love with the same man, resentment and betrayal threaten their bond. Caught in the tumult of World War I, Wall Street, union fights, and changing women’s roles, these two extraordinary women find that true fortune can’t be bought or sold.

Driving in the Dark


Deborah Moggach - 1994
    Now a coach driver, he is at the most crucial crossroads of his life. His wife has thrown him out. The crisis serves only to deepen his despair over another failed liaison - until he elects to steer his coach on a spectacularly reckless quest for the son he has never seen.

Wrecks and Other Plays


Neil LaBute - 2007
    Meet Edward Carr: loving father, successful businessman, grieving widower. In this concise powerhouse of a play, LaBute limns the boundaries of love, exploring the limits of what society will accept versus what the heart will desire. This collection also features rarely staged short plays, including "Liars' Club," "Coax," and the never-before-seen "Falling in Like."

Memoirs Of A Geisha: Music From The Motion Picture Soundtrack


John Williams - 2006
    Includes: As the Water * Becoming a Geisha * The Chairman's Waltz * Going to School * Sayuri's Theme * Sayuri's Theme and End Credits.

Maximum Bob


Léonard Elmore - 1991
    -Washington Post Book World A character so outrageous he could only have come from the ingenious imagination of Elmore Leonard, lewd, lecherous, law-bending Florida jurist Judge Robert Maximum Bob Gibbs has been judged guilty by a grudge-bearing malefactor and sentenced to death-by alligator, if necessary. Maximum Bob is a delightfully dark classic thriller from the greatest crime writer of our time, perhaps ever (New York Times Book Review), and any reader who loved getting gleefully lost in criminal mayhem of Get Shorty, Rum Punch, Out of Sight, The Hot Kid, or any number of the inimitable Leonards numerous crime fiction masterworks will get maximum enjoyment out of this one. Product Details: Hardcover Publisher: Imprint unknown (September 26, 1991) ISBN-10: 0670843121 ISBN-13: 978-0670843121 Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.1 x 1.1 inches Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces

The Year the Music Changed


Diane Thomas - 2005
    Achsa is a lonely, passionate and precocious fourteen-year-old. Isolated at school by her intelligence and disfigurement, troubled at home by the undercurrents in her parents' relationship, she finds comfort and inspiration in the tunes and rhythms she hears on her radio. Hearing a recording by an unknown 20-year-old country singer named Elvis Presley, she fires off a fan letter, telling him she knows he's going to be a star.

Selected Poems 1988-2013


Seamus Heaney - 2014
    This volume encapsulates the finest work from Seeing Things (1991) with its lines of loss and revelation; The Spirit Level (1996) where we experience "the poem as ploughshare that turns time / Up and over."; the landmark translation of Beowulf (1999); Electric Light (2001), a book of origins and oracles; and his final collections, District and Circle (2006) and Human Chain (2010), which limn the interconnectedness of being, our lifelines to our inherited past.