A ​Dead Man in Deptford

Jared Cade - Agatha ​Christie és a hiányzó tizenegy nap
1926. ​december 3-án eltűnt otthonából egy közepesen ismert angol krimiszerző. 1926. december 14-én este, mikor férje azonosította egy harrogate-i szállodában, már a világ egyik leghíresebb asszonya volt Agatha Christie. A közbeeső tizenegy napban egész Anglia őt kereste, megtalálójának magas összegű jutalmat ígért egy napilap, médiumok kinyilatkoztatásait olvashatták az érdeklődők, az Amerikai Egyesült Államokban is újsághír lett belőle. Amikor végre megkerült, mindenki azt várta, interjúkat ad és elmagyarázza, mi történt az alatt a tizenegy nap alatt. De Agatha Christie egy nyilatkozatot kivéve soha nem volt hajlandó beszélni róla. Jared Cade angol újságíró elhatározta, hogy utánajár a titoknak. Először is elolvasott mindent, amit valaha összeírtak a világ legismertebb eltűnéséről, aztán elkezdte felkutatni a még élő szemtanúkat, illetve a hajdani szemtanúk családtagjait. És eközben bukkant a kincsesbányára: Agatha Christie gyerekkori barátnőjének, sógornőjének lányára, aki mindent elmesélt, amit anyjától csak hallott, ráadásul olyan fényképekkel is megajándékozta, amelyeket még soha nem publikáltak. Ezt a könyvet Agatha Christie nem hivatalos életrajzának is nevezhetjük, hiszen az eltűnés előtti és utáni éveiről is beszámol. Izgalmas, új nézőpontú mű egy tehetséges és bölcs asszonyról.

Iris Murdoch - The ​Black Prince
"The ​Black Prince" is both a remarkable thriller and a story about being in love. Bradley Pearson, narrator and hero, is an elderly writer with a 'block'. Finding himself surrounded by predatory friends and relations - his ex-wife, her delinquent brother, a younger, deplorably successful writer, Arnold Baffin, Baffin's restless wife and engaging daughter - Bradley attempts to escape. His failure to do so and its aftermath lead to a violent climax and a most unexpected conclusion.

Iris Murdoch - A ​Severed Head
Martin ​Lynch-Gibbon believes he can possess both a beautiful wife and a delightful lover. But when his wife, Antonia, suddenly leaves him for her psychoanalyst, Martin is plunged into an intensive emotional re-education. He attempts to behave beautifully and sensibly. Then he meets a woman whose demonic splendour at first repels him and later arouses a consuming and monstrous passion. As his Medusa informs him, 'this is nothing to do with happiness'.

Iris Murdoch - The ​Time of the Angels
Carel ​is rector of a non-existent City church (it was destroyed in the war). In the rectory live his daughter, Muriel, his beautiful invalid ward, Elizabeth, and their West Indian servant, Patti. Here too are Eugene, a Russian emigre, and his delinquent son, Leo. Carel's brother, Marcus, co-guardian with him of Elizabeth, tires to make contact with Carel but is constantly rebuffed. These seven characters go through a dance of attraction and repulsion, misunderstanding and revelation, the centre of which is the enigmatic Carel himself - a priest who believes that, God being dead, His angels are released. At the end, Muriel finds herself with the power of life and death over her father.

Iris Murdoch - The ​Unicorn
When ​Marian Taylor takes a post as governess at Gaze Castle, a remote house upon a beautiful but desolate coast, she finds herself confronted with a number of weird mysteries and involved in a drama she only partly understands. Some crime or catastrophe in the past still keeps the house, like the castle of the Sleeping Beauty, under a spell, whose magic also touches the neighbouring house of Riders, inhabited by a scholarly recluse. Marian's employer, Hannah, and her retainers, seem to be acting out some tragic pattern: but it is not clear whether Hannah herself, the central figure, the Unicorn, is innocent victim or violent author, saint or witch... In a novel that has all the beauty of a fairy story and the melodrama of a Gothic tale, Murdoch explores the fantasies and ambiguities which beset those who are condemned to be passionately abandoned and yet hopelessly imperfect in their search for God.

Anthony Burgess - Gyilkosság ​Deptfordban
Anthony ​Burgess 1964-ben, Shakespeare születésének négyszázadik évfordulójára publikált egy regényt a nagy drámaköltő elképzelt szerelmi életéről. Alig harminc évvel később, 1993-ban pedig megjelentette egy másik nagy drámaköltő regényes életrajzát. Akkor volt a négyszázadik évfordulója Christopher Marlowe halálának. A mai napig nem sokat tudunk Marlowe-ról. Egy varga fia, Cambridge-ben magiszteri titulust szerez, kiváló latintudós, az első igazán nagy Erzsébet-kori drámaíró, ateista, kém, homoszexuális, gyilkos és áldozat. Az ő alakján keresztül teremti újjá az angol nyelv szerelmese, Anthony Burgess az angol nyelv, kultúra és történelem egyik legnagyobb korát, I. Erzsébet uralkodásának szűk tíz esztendejét. A Nagy Armada támadását várva a királynő titkosszolgálata mindenhol összeesküvést szimatol, titkos katolikusok után nyomoz, Stuart Mária híveit fürkészi. Ezek közé a kémek közé jelentkezik még cambridge-i diákként "Kit" Marlowe, nem annyira hazaszeretetből, hanem inkább pénzért. Látva kutakodásának eredményét, a leleplezett összeesküvők felakasztását, kibelezését, felnégyelését, már odahagyná a testületet, de ez persze lehetetlen. Közben két igaz szerelmet is átél: a névtelen színészfiúval, aki a kor szokása szerint női szerepeket játszik (nem is csak a színpadon), és Tom Walsinghammel, a kor egyik legbefolyásosabb családjának sarjával, a titkosszolgálat vezetőjének unokaöccsével. A kémkedés elviszi Párizsba, Németalföldre, Skóciába, alkotótehetsége pedig feljuttatja a csúcsra: a Doktor Faustus és A máltai zsidó máig az angol drámairodalom mérföldkövei. És belekezd még egy történelmi darabba, ezt azonban már csak egy másik, frissen Londonba érkező tollforgató fejezi be - Will Shakespeare. Az Erzsébet-kori Anglia mindennapjai, színei, szagai vesznek körül bennünket, amint kinyitjuk a könyvet. Urak és mesteremberek élete tárul elénk, meg uzsorásoké és gonosztevőké. Aki szívesen merül bele a történelembe, annak kincsesbánya ez a mű. Mint ahogy annak is, aki a tehetség kifejlődését és kifejeződését vizsgálná - szerző és főhős párhuzamos zsenialitása teszi páratlanná Burgess utolsó regényét.

A. S. Byatt - Possession
Possession ​is an exhilarating novel of wit and romance, at once a literary detective novel and a triumphant love story. It is the tale of a pair of young scholars investigating the lives of two Victorian poets.Following a trail of letters, journals and poems they uncover a web of passion, deceit and tragedy, and their quest becomes a battle against time.

Ian McEwan - Atonement
In ​this rich novel by the author of the Booker Prize-winning novel "Amsterdam", a young girl unwittingly tells a tale that turns her family upside down. Brilliant and utterly enthralling in its depiction of childhood, love and war, England and class, "Atonement" is at its center a profound--and profoundly moving--exploration of shame and forgiveness, of atonement and the difficulty of absolution.

Iris Murdoch - The ​Italian Girl
Edmund ​has escaped from his family into a lonely life. Returning for his mother's funeral he rediscovers the eternal family servant, the ever-changing Italian girl, who was always "a second mother."

Iris Murdoch - The ​Sea, the Sea
Charles ​Arrowby, leading light of England's theatrical set, retires from glittering London to an isolated home by the sea. He plans to write a memoir about his great love affair with Clement Makin, his mentor, both professionally and personally, and amuse himself with Lizzie, an actress he has strung along for many years. None of his plans work out, and his memoir evolves into a riveting chronicle of the strange events and unexpected visitors-some real, some spectral-that disrupt his world and shake his oversized ego to its very core.

Nigel Farage - Fighting ​Bull
Nigel ​Farage is a founder member of the UK Independence Party, which was established in September 1993. He is the Member of the European Parliament for the South East region and is the leader of the parliamentary party in the EU parliament.

Paul Auster - Winter ​Journal
From ​the bestselling novelist and author of The Invention of Solitude, a moving and highly personal meditation on the body, time, and language itself "That is where the story begins, in your body, and everything will end in the body as well. Facing his sixty-third winter, internationally acclaimed novelist Paul Auster sits down to write a history of his body and its sensations—both pleasurable and painful. Thirty years after the publication of The Invention of Solitude, in which he wrote so movingly about fatherhood, Auster gives us a second unconventional memoir in which he writes about his mother's life and death. Winter Journal is a highly personal meditation on the body, time, and memory, by one of our most intellectually elegant writers.

Virginia Woolf - The ​Common Reader
Woolf’s ​first and most popular volume of essays. This collection has more than twenty-five selections, including such important statements as “Modern Fiction” and “The Modern Essay.” Edited and with an Introduction by Andrew McNeillie; Index.

Salman Rushdie - Joseph ​Anton (angol)
On ​February 14, 1989, Valentine’s Day, Salman Rushdie received a telephone call from a BBC journalist who told the author that he had been “sentenced to death” by the Ayatollah Khomeini. It was the first time Rushdie heard the word fatwa. His crime? To have written a novel called The Satanic Verses, which was accused of being “against Islam, the Prophet, and the Quran.” So begins the extraordinary story of how a writer was forced underground, moving from house to house, with the constant presence of an armed police protection team. Rushdie was asked to choose an alias that the police could call him by. He thought of writers he loved and various combinations of their names. Then it came to him: Conrad and Chekhov—Joseph Anton. How do a writer and his family live with the threat of murder for more than nine years? How does he go on working? How does he fall in and out of love? How does despair shape his thoughts and actions, and how does he learn to fight back? In this remarkable memoir, Rushdie tells that story for the first time; the story of the crucial battle for freedom of speech. He shares the sometimes grim, sometimes comic realities of living with armed policemen, and the close bonds he formed with his protectors; of his struggle for support and understanding from governments, intelligence chiefs, publishers, journalists, and fellow writers; and of how he regained his freedom. Compelling, provocative, and moving, Joseph Anton is a book of exceptional frankness, honesty, and vital importance. Because what happened to Salman Rushdie was the first act of a drama that is still unfolding somewhere in the world every day.

Thomas Pynchon - V.
The ​Quest for V. sweeps us through sixty years and a panorama of Alexandria, Paris, Malta, Florence, Africa and New York. But who, where or what is V.? Bawdy, sometimes sad and frequently hilarious, _V_ has become a modern classic.

Michael Heatley - Ricky ​Gervais
It's ​been an unorthodox road to the top for Gervais, who was brought up the youngest of four brothers on a rough and ready Reading housing estate in the early 1960s. He studied philosophy at London University and, after graduation, worked for the university as entertainments manager, before embarking on several other short-lived jobs that included managing nascent Brit-pop stars Suede. He had already tried his own pop luck as singer with new romantics Seona Dancing, two-single wonders who were big only in the Philippines. Undeterred, Gervais became a presenter on London alternative radio station XFM in 1996, where he met his writing partner and long-term collaborator, Stephen Merchant. Televisual rungs on the stepladder to fame included Channel 4's "Comedy Lab" and "The 11 O'Clock Show", plus an unsuccessful chat show, "Meet Ricky Gervais", all in the late 1990s. "The Office" became the talk of the water cooler in offices all over Britain in 2001. "Extras" followed in 2005, and attracted guest stars of the calibre of Ben Stiller, Samuel L. Jackson, Patrick Stewart and Kate Winslet. In addition to his TV and stand-up comedy work, Gervais has also created a series of wacky children's books called "Flanimals". "Ricky Gervais: The Unauthorized Biography" is a must read for all fans of the man and his work, and the comedy book of 2006.

Art Spiegelman - Maus: ​A Survivor's Tale - My Father Bleeds History
A ​story of a Jewish survivor of Hitler's Europe and his son, a cartoonist who tries to come to terms with his father's story and history itself.

P. H. Newby - Something ​to Answer For
Townrow ​is a 31-year-old Fund Distributor stealing from the fund he is in charge of. He is contacted by the widow of an old friend, Elie Khoury. They had met in 1946, in Port Said in Cairo after he had fallen off a horse in front of the Khoury's beach hut. Mrs Khoury wants Townrow to go to see her in Cairo because she believes her husband was murdered. After thinking it through, Townrow accepts Mrs Khoury's offer of a plane ticket to Cairo. He stops over in Rome where he argues with two men, defending the British Government from its involvement in Nazi Germany's Final Solution campaign. The discussion ends on a friendly note. In Cairo, Townrow makes a joke about marrying Mrs Khoury for her money to an immigration officer, which leads his being interrogated. He is kept in a cell and is released once his train has departed. In Port Said, Townrow doesn't go straightaway to see Mrs Khoury, instead opting to stay in a hotel. Here he considers having no one who really cares about him in his life. Townrow visits a bar he used to frequent while serving as a sergeant. The owner of the bar, Christous, recognises him and kicks out his clientele for some privacy. Townrow asks about Elie's death. Christous tells him that Mrs Khoury, with great difficulty, took her husband's body back to Lebanon to be buried. Because of her actions, Colonel Nasser took the Suez Canal as Egypt's.

Hermione Lee - Virginia ​Woolf
Moving ​freely between a detailed life-story and attempts to understand significant questions, this biography of Virginia Woolf addresses topics such as the impact of her childhood, the cause and nature of her madness and suicide, the truth about her marriage, her feelings for women, and her prejudices and obsessions. The author uses primary sources to show Woolf as occupying a distinct and even uneasy position within the Bloomsbury Set, and how the concerns of her work arise and develop. She is also presented as a radically sceptical, subversive, courageous feminist. Hermione Lee's other books include "The Novels of Virginia Woolf", "Elizabeth Bowen", "Philip Roth" and "Willa Cather".

Quentin Bell - Virginia ​Woolf: A Biography
Ehhez a könyvhöz nincs fülszöveg, de ettől függetlenül még rukkolható/happolható.