Archive | New Releases

Richard Poplak –

What happens to our pop culture when it meets another culture head-on—especially one that according to some is completely at odds with our own?

In The Sheikh’s Batmobile, pop-cultural commentator Richard Poplak sets out on an unusual two-year odyssey. His mission is to see what becomes of his, and North America’s, obsessions—pop songs and sitcoms, Hollywood movies and shoot-em-up video games, muscle cars and punk music—when they make their way into the Muslim world. Over the course of his journey, Poplak is body slammed by WWE fans in Afghanistan, hangs out with hip-hop artists in Palestine, head bangs to heavy metal in Cairo, discovers a world of extreme makeovers in Beirut, bowls with the chief of police in small-town Kazakhstan, and encounters a mysterious Texan building rocket-propelled batmobiles for a clientele of sheikhs.

With uproarious humour and keen cultural insight, Poplak asks some vital questions: How is American pop culture consumed and reinterpreted in the Islamic world? What does that say about how we are viewed by young Muslims? And can Homer Simpson bridge the differences that are tearing our world apart?

David Van –

If you’ve ever owned a sailboat or had a friend who did, you know how it begins: with a dream. You dream about the ship, and gradually the dream consumes you. Practical considerations lose all meaning … until, inevitably, the dream morphs into a nightmare.

David Vann is familiar with that nightmare. His begins in Turkey: a thirty-year-old tourist, he stumbles across the steel frame of a ninety-foot sailboat that cries out to be built. From friends, family, and credit cards, he borrows the $150,000 to construct the ship. The Turkish builders take shameless advantage of him, eventually charging him over $500,000.

On the edge of financial ruin, Vann starts a chartering business. But, when some new part of the ship isn’t falling apart, he encounters freak storms. As his debts escalate, Vann begins to wonder if he is merely repeating his father’s dreams and failures at sea—which ended with his father’s suicide.

At once a page-turning true story of adventure on the open ocean and an archetypal tale of one man’s attempt to overcome fate and realize his dream, A Mile Down is an unforgettable story of struggle and redemption by a writer at the top of his form.

Mark Juddery –

With conflicts around the globe, rampant environmental damage, economic struggles, poverty and the ongoing threat of terrorism, the world isn’t perfect right now. But is everything really going to hell in a hand basket? Should we really be feeling so miserable?

Best Times Ever briefly assesses 100 of our favourite things to complain about, and explains why, believe it or not, things aren’t as bad as they used to be. In fact, we’re actually improving!

From the serious (the number of people dying in wars is 2,000 a year; in the 1950s, it was 65,000 a year) to the frivolous (Vertigo had bad reviews in 1957, was considered a cinema classic by 1987, and was recently voted the greatest movie ever made – so even movies get better), this is an optimistic answer to those who say that everything is getting worse.

There is room for improvement, but we’re heading in the right direction! Humorous, light reading, but peppered with useful information and trivia and an all round uplifting message.

P.J. O’Rourke –

O’Rourke began writing funny things in 1960s “underground” newspapers, became editor-in-chief of National Lampoon, then spent 20 years reporting for Rolling Stone and The Atlantic Monthly as the world’s only trouble spot humorist, going to wars, riots, rebellions, and other “Holidays in Hell” in more than 40 countries.

Now O’Rourke, born at the peak of the Baby Boom, turns his keen eye on himself and his 75 million accomplices in making America what it is today. With laughter as an analytical tool, he uses his own very average, if sometimes uproarious experiences as a key to his exceptional age cohort. He writes about the way the post-war generation somehow came of age by never quite growing up and created a better society by turning society upside down.

THE BABY BOOM: How it Got That Way… And It Wasn’t My Fault… And I’ll Never Do It Again, is at once a social history, a group memoir of collectively impaired memory, a hilarious attempt to understand his generation’s messy hilarity, and a celebration of the mess the Baby Boom has made.

Solomon Northup –

This unforgettable memoir was the basis for the Academy Award-winning film 12 Years a Slave. This is the true story of Solomon Northup, who was born and raised as a freeman in New York. He lived the American dream, with a house and a loving family – a wife and two kids. Then one day he was drugged, kidnapped, and sold into slavery in the deep south. These are the true accounts of his twelve hard years as a slave – many believe this memoir is even more graphic and disturbing than the film. His extraordinary journey proves the resiliency of hope and the human spirit despite the most grueling and formidable of circumstances.

Mark Helprin –

New York City is subsumed in arctic winds, dark nights, and white lights, its life unfolds, for it is an extraordinary hive of the imagination, the greatest house ever built, and nothing exists that can check its vitality. One night in winter, Peter Lake, orphan and master-mechanic, attempts to rob a fortress-like mansion on the Upper West Side.
Though he thinks the house is empty, the daughter of the house is home. Thus begins the love between Peter Lake, a middle-aged Irish burglar, and Beverly Penn, a young girl, who is dying.
Peter Lake, a simple, uneducated man, because of a love that, at first he does not fully understand, is driven to stop time and bring back the dead. His great struggle, in a city ever alight with its own energy and besieged by unprecedented winters, is one of the most beautiful and extraordinary stories of American literature.

James Patterson –

When two dead bodies are found inside a wrecked car on the Golden Gate Bridge, Detective Lindsay Boxer doubts that it will be anything as simple as a traffic accident.
The scene is more gruesome than anything she has seen before. It definitely wasn’t the crash that killed these people.
While Lindsay starts to piece this case together, she gets a call she wasn’t expecting. Sightings of her ex-colleague-turned-ruthless-killer Mackie Morales have been reported.
Wanted for three murders, Mackie has been in hiding since she escaped from custody. But now she’s ready to return to San Francisco and pay a visit to some old friends

Kirsty Wark –

Elizabeth Pringle has lived on the beautiful island of Arran for over 90 years; the retired teacher and spinster is a familiar and yet solitary figure tending her garden and riding her bicycle around the island. When she dies she leaves her beloved house, “Holmlea” to a woman she merely saw pushing a pram down the road over thirty years ago.

That young mother, Anna, had put a letter through Elizabeth’s door asking to buy the house, but Elizabeth never pursued her. But time passed and Anna is now in a home with dementia and it falls to her daughter Martha, the baby in the pram, to come and take up their inheritance.

Danielle Steel –

Fiona Carson has proven herself as CEO of a multibillion-dollar high-tech company – a successful woman in a man’s world. Devoted single mother, world-class strategist, and tough negotiator, Fiona has to keep a delicate balance every day.
Meanwhile, Marshall Weston basks in the fruits of his achievements. At his side is his wife Liz who has gladly sacrificed her own career to raise their three children. Smooth, shrewd and irreproachable, Marshall’s power only enhances his charisma – but he harbors secrets that could destroy his life at any moment.
Both must face their own demons, and the lives they lead come at a high price. But just how high a price are they willing to pay?
POWER PLAY is a compelling, heart-rending portrayal of love, family and career – the perfect read for fans of Barbara Taylor Bradford, Penny Vincenzi and Lesley Pearce.

Noel Beddoe –

When a teenage boy is killed in a targeted shooting, the events that unfold rock the lives of the migrant families of Cringila. School friends Jimmy and Piggy have witnessed the violent crime, but need to protect their fledgling drug business.
After seasoned police detective Gordon Winter is assigned the murder case, his investigations uncover long-buried secrets and an entrenched culture of loyalty and fear.
On Cringila Hill weaves a gripping story of power, racial tensions and blood ties in a once-vibrant industrial community.