New this month
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September 2010
ISBN 978-5-389-01107-6
304 pages
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September 2010
ISBN 978-5-389-01021-5
192 pages
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September 2010
ISBN 978-5-389-01020-8
576 pages
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August 2010
ISBN 978-5-389-01026-0
464 pages
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August 2010
ISBN 978-5-389-00972-1
320 pages
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August 2010
ISBN 978-5-389-00970-7
320 pages
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August 2010
ISBN 978-5-389-01003-1
208 pages
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August 2010
ISBN 978-5-389-00981-3
160 pages
The novel concerns the greatest critic of the culinary world, the "Pope of Gastronomy." Early in the story, one is told that he will die tomorrow. It is his history, and that of his family, acquaintances, even his pets. Ms. Barbery tells the story in 29 separate vignettes, alternating between the culinary critic (whose name we finally learn towards the end) and all the other characters. A literary technique that works well, despite the multitude of view points, which she sharply reduced in "The Elegance of the Hedgehog." Her style is rich and dense, like a wonderful chocolate éclair. Writing to be savored. The novel "works" on several different dimensions. There are the human relation aspects, a man who is at the epitome of his field, estranged from most of his family - his most caring relationship is with the servant who is now head of the household, and his pets. His wife, Anna, is resigned to his philandering. In the vignettes told by his daughter, Laura, and his granddaughter, Lotte, one gain's insight into his dysfunctional character. There is a wonderful chapter on how he first entered the ranks of a food critic, impressing a to-be mentor with the right answer, thus, "the king is dead, long live the king." One of the central characters in "The Elegance...", Renee, the concierge, plays a cameo role in this novel, a tantalizing foreshadowing...
And the novel is very much about the French concern on what is placed into the stomach, and the pleasure derived in the process. There are some wonderful meals described: in Morocco, along the beach; a chance invitation to a home meal in Normandy; the importance of bread; the sorbets of his grandmother whose correct description launched his career; the pleasure of fish; and would any book on gastronomy be complete without venturing into Japanese cuisine, with the art of serving raw food? The "surprise" at the end involves a turn towards the crasser aspects of commercial food.... Alas.
Alas, also, my French is not good enough to understand why Ms. Barbery entitled her book "Une Gourmandise" as opposed to "Un Gourmand." Clearly an English translation of the book should be provided. She is a superlative writer, with deep insights into the human condition. Perhaps others will address why the title is in the feminine
Ms. Barbery still has much to tell us, and I eagerly await.
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July 2010
ISBN 978-5-389-00982-0
480 pages
Pour avoir rossé un armateur responsable de la mort de deux marins, Joss Le Guern, capitaine du chalutier Le Vent de Norois, a connu la prison, puis le chômage avant d'échouer à Paris et de devenir "crieur", place Edgar Quinet. Trois fois par jour, Joss relève les messages, accompagnés de pièces ou de billets, que ses clients ont déposés dans sa boîte et, trois fois par jour, perché sur une estrade, il crie les nouvelles devant les habitués du quartier. Un jour, Joss découvre dans sa boîte une étrange missive qui se révèle inquiétante. C'est tout au moins ce que pense Hervé Decambrais, un septuagénaire qui allie à la broderie de napperons une érudition peu commune. Et comme ces messages bizarres continuent d'arriver trois fois par jour, il va déployer tous ses efforts pour en détecter le sens caché.
Le commissaire principal Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg, qui vient d'être affecté à l'antenne du XIIIe arrondissement de la brigade criminelle, reçoit Maryse. La jeune femme est affolée d'avoir découvert peint en noir sur presque toutes les portes de son immeuble un grand 4 inversé accompagné des lettres CLT. Le policier se décide à prendre l'affaire au sérieux lorsque des tags similaires sont découverts dans un autre arrondissement et qu'un cadavre est retrouvé, la peau enduite de charbon. Bientôt les deux affaires vont se recouper.
Avec ses accroches insolites, Fred Vargas crée d'emblée un mystère. Elle entraîne le lecteur dans une plongée au cœur de l'histoire en compagnie de personnages déjà croisés dans de précédent romans, comme Adamsberg et son amie Camille (L'Homme à l'envers), ou encore Marc, l'un des évangélistes (Debout les morts). On y croise aussi d'autres individus singuliers comme Joss le crieur, Hervé, l'as du napperon brodé ou l'ancienne prostituée Lizbeth. Instructif et divertissant, ce nouvel opus qu'on déguste avec délice, est évidemment copieusement garni de digressions et des célèbres aphorismes qui font le charme des polars de Fred Vargas.
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July 2010
ISBN 978-5-389-00808-3
352 pages
Any talk of The Namesake--Jhumpa Lahiri's follow-up to her Pulitzer Prize-winning debut, Interpreter of Maladies--must begin with a name: Gogol Ganguli. Born to an Indian academic and his wife, Gogol is afflicted from birth with a name that is neither Indian nor American nor even really a first name at all. He is given the name by his father who, before he came to America to study at MIT, was almost killed in a train wreck in India. Rescuers caught sight of the volume of Nikolai Gogol's short stories that he held, and hauled him from the train. Ashoke gives his American-born son the name as a kind of placeholder, and the awkward thing sticks.
Awkwardness is Gogol's birthright. He grows up a bright American boy, goes to Yale, has pretty girlfriends, becomes a successful architect, but like many second-generation immigrants, he can never quite find his place in the world. There's a lovely section where he dates a wealthy, cultured young Manhattan woman who lives with her charming parents. They fold Gogol into their easy, elegant life, but even here he can find no peace and he breaks off the relationship. His mother finally sets him up on a blind date with the daughter of a Bengali friend, and Gogol thinks he has found his match. Moushumi, like Gogol, is at odds with the Indian-American world she inhabits. She has found, however, a circuitous escape: "At Brown, her rebellion had been academic ... she'd pursued a double major in French. Immersing herself in a third language, a third culture, had been her refuge--she approached French, unlike things American or Indian, without guilt, or misgiving, or expectation of any kind." Lahiri documents these quiet rebellions and random longings with great sensitivity. There's no cleverness or showing-off in The Namesake, just beautifully confident storytelling. Gogol's story is neither comedy nor tragedy; it's simply that ordinary, hard-to-get-down-on-paper commodity: real life. --Claire Dederer --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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July 2010
ISBN 978-5-389-00969-1
448 pages
The magical new novel from number one bestseller Cecelia Ahern. Tamara Goodwin has always got everything she's ever wanted. Born into a family of wealth, she grew up in a mansion with its own private beach, a wardrobe full of designer clothes and all that a girl could ever wish for. She's always lived in the here and now, never giving a second thought to tomorrow. But then suddenly her dad is gone and life for Tamara and her mother changes forever. Left with a mountain of debt, they have no choice but to sell everything they own and move to the country. Nestled next to Kilsaney Castle, their gatehouse is a world away from Tamara's childhood. With her mother shut away with grief, and her aunt busy tending to her, Tamara is lonely and bored and longs to return to Dublin. When a travelling library passes through Kilsaney Demesne, Tamara is intrigued. Her eyes rest on a mysterious large leather bound tome locked with a gold clasp and padlock. What she discovers within the pages takes her breath away and shakes her world to its' core.
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July 2010
ISBN 978-5-389-00978-3
416 pages
Två småflickor våldtas och mördas av en galning som sedermera grips och fängslas. Fyra år senare lyckas han dock rymma vid en dåligt bevakad transport, och förgriper sig på ytterligare en flicka. Besviken på livets totala orättvisa, besviken på samhället och på polisen, tar pappan saken i egna händer och mördar i sin tur mannen
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July 2010
ISBN 978-5-389-00957-8
528 pages
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July 2010
ISBN 978-5-389-00977-6
480 pages
Starred Review. Many books, documentaries and movies claim to chronicle daily life in ancient Rome, but it's rare to find a narrative so encrusted in detail as this lively offering from an Italian author and television host. Adopting a first person plural voice, Angela takes us on an eagle-eyed tour of the ancient city on an "ordinary day" in the year A.D. 115. Serving as a Virgil-like guide, Angela begins in a Domus, an upper-class home, exploring its meticulous inner workings, from the aqueduct hook-up to the slave labor. Out in the streets, Angela provides a fascinating, nail-by-nail description of Roman construction before schooling readers in the particulars of buying slaves. Next up is a bloody scene at the Coliseum (featuring hungry lions and their worthy meal), and a steamy sunset tour of bedrooms, salons, and sexual mores; Romans viewed sex as "a gift of the gods," something to enjoy, and would "judge our sexuality as excessively complicated... by mental complexes and roles." Angela's rigorous research and populist style, aided by Conti's seamless translation, should fascinate casual readers as well as dedicated Italophiles.
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July 2010
ISBN 978-5-389-01011-6
256 pages
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July 2010
ISBN 978-5-389-00983-7
432 pages
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July 2010
ISBN 978-5-389-00867-0
320 pages
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July 2010
ISBN 978-5-389-00971-4
368 pages
With more than 70 books to his credit, Gardner remains thoroughly enjoyable to read. This latest is a collection of 24 articles, book reviews and other pieces on subjects like science, bogus science, mathematics, logic, literature, religion and politics. The range demonstrates that Gardner should be well-known for more than his remarkable Mathematical Games column published for 25 years in Scientific American. Gardner is a debunker who begs folks to think critically and carefully, usually doing so himself with wit and wisdom. He takes on Ann Coulter for her pronouncements on intelligent design and those who claim the sinking of the Titanic was foretold by numerous people. He is most personal in the book's longest piece, Why I Am Not an Atheist, in which he explores the nature of belief. His essays on The Wizard of Oz, Santa Claus and the book's eponymous poem on evolution by Langdon Smith are of a different genre than the rest, but no less interesting. Least compelling in such a general collection are the somewhat pedantic mathematical explorations. The collection represents Gardner at his best.
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July 2010
ISBN 978-5-389-00316-3
272 pages
En la Roma del año 45 d.C., el noble senador Publio Aurelio debe investigar la repentina y extraña muerte de un popular gladiador, en una peligrosa aventira por cuarteles y palacios. Una historia que recrea vívidamente la Roma imperial con el rigor de la más completa documentación histórica y la tensión dramática de la mejor novela.
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July 2010
ISBN 978-5-389-00912-7
160 pages
Zoïle qui porte le nom de ce sophiste grec outrecuidant censeur d Homère a pris place dans l avion de 13h30 au départ de Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle. Et a le dessein de le faire exploser. Il va confier à son premier et ultime journal intime ses réflexions sur l injustice assumée de son acte. Des réflexions mais aussi des souvenirs sans destinataire, qui lui servent seulement à écouler le temps d attente. Réalité ou fantasme ? Roman ou fable ? Allez savoir !
Thibault de Montalembert se met avec talent au diapason de la prose d Amélie Nothomb, insolente, érudite et délicieusement désinvolte.
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June 2010
ISBN 978-5-389-00918-9
448 pages
Magali, une jeune journaliste, est venue se réfugier au coeur de l'Ardèche pour écrire un article difficile. C'est aussi en Ardèche que Gleipnir la louve errante a élu domicile, loin des hommes. Une étonnante amitié naît entre la jeune femme et l'animal. Heureusement, car le danger est proche ! A la suite d'un article que Magali avait écrit, Angelo, un trafiquant de drogue, a fait cinq ans de prison. Relâché, il n'a plus qu'une idée : se venger. Gleipnir pourra-t-elle protéger Magali sans révéler sa présence à tous les habitants de la région ?
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June 2010
ISBN 978-5-389-00955-4
752 pages
This tense thriller from the author of A Small Death in Lisbon (2000) mixes mathematics with wartime intrigue to fine effect. British intelligence hires Andrea Aspinall, a mathematical wunderkind, to make use of her extraordinary gift in hunting atomic secrets. But Andrea disappears in Lisbon, where she adopts a new identity and meets Karl Voss, an attach‚ at the German legation, who's plotting against the Nazis. The action shifts to Portugal and cold-war Berlin, where intrigue and counter-intrigue are routine, until a bleak ending brings the reader up short. The narrative spans the years from WWII to glasnost and the collapse of the Berlin Wall, yet for all the inevitable social commentary the novel remains at heart a conventional sociopolitical thriller with strong echoes of le Carr‚, Ambler, Deighton and others not to mention Gravity's Rainbow. As the story lengthens and the calendar pages fall away, suspense inevitably slackens, though for the most part the novel remains supremely readable. Wilson's spare prose style never becomes skeletal, and the characters, while lightly sketched, remain believable. The author portrays Andrea in particular with sympathy and insight, and adumbrates her remarkable ability early on when she describes what might be called the joys of mathematics: "The number six... has three divisors one, two and three which if added together come to... six. Isn't that perfect?" The verdict: an evocative and compelling thriller. 5-city author tour; 75,000 first printing.
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June 2010
ISBN 978-5-389-00775-8
448 pages
In Anderson's third mystery (after 2005's Killer Cocktail) to feature Molly Forrester, advice columnist for Zeitgeist magazine, the fashionable New York City journalist still yearns to be an investigative crime reporter. She gets her chance when her editor asks her to interview Gwen Lincoln, the wealthy ex-wife of "advertising rock star" Garth Henderson and the prime suspect in Henderson's high-profile murder, which the police think may be connected to the victim's agency's recent merger with a rival firm. Molly's two best friends—attorney Cassady Lynch and events planner Tricia Vincent—hope to see Molly's byline in the New York Times, but Molly's sexy homicide detective boyfriend, Kyle Edwards, wants her to keep out of danger and off his turf. As Molly investigates the many possible suspects, she jeopardizes her romance, her friends' safety and her own life. But this "Sleuth in the City" stays on her toes as Anderson keeps the story lighthearted and fast-paced.
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