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Climates

Written in 1928 by French biographer and novelist Andre Maurois, Climates became a best seller in France and all over Europe. The first 100,000 copies printed of its Russian translation sold out the day they appeared in Moscow bookstores. This magnificently written novel about a double conjugal failure is imbued with subtle yet profound psychological insights of a caliber that arguably rivals Tolstoy's. Here Phillipe Marcenat, an erudite yet conventional industrialist from central France, falls madly in love with and marries the beautiful but unreliable Odile despite his family's disapproval. Soon, Phillipe's possessiveness and jealousy drive her away. Brokenhearted, Phillipe then marries the devoted and sincere Isabelle and promptly inflicts on his new wife the very same woes he endured at the hands of Odile. But Isabelle's integrity and determination to save her marriage adds yet another dimension to this extraordinary work on the dynamics and vicissitudes of love.
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Prizzi's Honor

Charley Partanna works as a hitman for the Prizzis, New York’s most dangerous crime family. Irene Walker does, too—an LA-based tax consultant, she moonlights as a hitwoman. And now she’s stolen a large sum of money for the mob—and it’s Charley’s job to find her. The catch? Charley is married to Irene. Faced with divided loyalties, he must make a choice—between the only family he’s ever known and the woman he loves. Prizzi’s Honor was made into an award-winning film in 1985 starring Jack Nicholson, Robert Loggia, Kathleen Turner, and Anjelica Huston, who won an Academy Award for her performance. A compelling page-turner fueled by rich characterization and fast-paced prose, this book is sure to keep you on the edge of your seat. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Richard Condon (1915-1996) is a political novelist from New York who wrote over 26 satirical thrillers throughout a prolific career—dealing with themes of political corruption, greed, and abuse of power. Before his career as a novelist, Condon served in the US Merchant Marines and later became a Hollywood publicist, agent, and advertising writer. Condon’s best-selling works include The Manchurian Candidate and the Prizzi series, dealing with the life of a crime family in New York. The Manchurian Candidate was made into a movie twice, once in 1962 and again in 2004. The 1962 movie starred Frank Sinatra and Angela Lansbury, who was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actress for her role.
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An Infinity of Mirrors

In love with a Prussian officer, a Jewish woman moves to Hitler's Berlin Every afternoon, Paule tends to her father's newspaper clippings and listens to his stories. An actor, Paul-Alain Bernheim has a sexual appetite and a lust for life that have made him a legend of the Paris stage. He is also a fiercely proud Jew, and he has imbued his daughter with an unshakeable pride in the history of her people. So why, she wonders, has she fallen in love with a German? From the moment Paule spots Wilhelm von Rhode at an embassy reception, she can't take her eyes off him. So after a whirlwind Paris romance, when von Rhode is recalled to Berlin, Paule follows as his wife. But as the Nazis tighten their stranglehold on Germany and the world prepares for war, will Paule's love stand against the night?
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Barns, Blood and Rock and Roll

Barns, Blood and Rock and Roll is a short story collection where the blood of summer flows throughout the barns and cornfields of Indiana. Learn the terrifying secret of a young boy in 1947. Witness the sick, bloody revenge of a sixteen year old girl unto her stepmother. Read in disgust as two sisters make a wrong turn in a secluded state park. Discover these and many more stories inside!
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Kept

A rich tale centred around the lives of Marjorie Fairfield, a beautiful and penniless young woman who is the mistress of a wealthy business man; and the symbolically named Ransom Heritage, one of the many young men who were cast adrift after the First World War ended and who has been abruptly deprived of a sense of purpose, ambition and hope.Around these young people and their circle whirls the carefree society of fashionable post-war London - a raucous, glamorous and perhaps slightly shrill world of cocktails and nightclubs, tea dances and illicit tête-à-têtes.Waugh depicts a frenetic society where all too many people are 'kept' in some way – financially, by a well-off lover, inherited capital, an unwanted husband; or more figuratively, by a reputation, a title – a relationship, even.
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Fuel for the Flame

An imaginary island on the Equator has suddenly achieved importance through the discovery of oil – what will happen to the men and women living under the tensions of life on this island?At one end of this island is the oil refinery where the members of the staff live in constant proximity to one another, and where emotions are heightened by the lack of privacy. The men are goaded by ambitions for power, while the women are drawn into affairs of love and passion. At the other end of the island is a hotbed of politics where a British diplomat is attempting to retain the island under Britain's sphere of influence; where an ailing king is fearful of what will happen when he is succeeded by a young and untrained prince; where a nationalist group is plotting to overthrow the monarchy and seize the oil fields.Waugh handles brilliantly his political plots, but always interwoven with them are the personal dramas of love and fear, of cowardice and courage. Rich in detail and...
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Apprenticed to Venus

In 1962, eighteen-year old Tristine Rainer was sent on an errand to Anaïs Nin's Village apartment. The chance meeting would change the course of her life and begin her years as Anaïs's accomplice, keeping her mentor's confidences—including that of her bigamy—even after Anaïs Nin's death and the passing of her husbands, until now. Set in the underground literary worlds of Manhattan and Los Angeles during the sixties and seventies, Tristine charts her coming of age under the guidance of the infamous Anaïs Nin: lover to Henry Miller, Parisian diarist, feminist icon of the sexual revolution, and author of the erotic bestseller Delta of Venus. As an inexperienced college-bound girl from the San Fernando Valley, Tristine was dazzled by the sophisticated bohemian author and sought her instruction in becoming a woman. Tristine became a fixture of Anaïs's inner circle, implicated in the mysterious author's daring intrigues—while simultaneously finding her...
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The Buddha of Brewer Street

Backbench MP Tom Goodfellowe is caught up in the search for the new Dalai Lama in this highly original and compelling thriller from the author of GOODFELLOWE MP and HOUSE OF CARDS -- now reissued in new cover style. Tom Goodfellowe is the unlikeliest of political heroes. An MP whose career has already been consigned to the scrapheap of history, with a private life that staggers between confusion and chaos... And it's all about to get worse. A new Dalai Lama is born. The infant god-king of Tibet. And around the child explodes an international conspiracy that will carve a trail of death from the slopes of Mount Everest right to the heart of London's Chinatown. Goodfellowe becomes drawn into a murderous race against time and against sinister sources within his own government. On the outcome will hang the fate of one of the world's great religions -- and Goodfellowe's turbulent personal life. Because someone, someone very...
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From London Far

As Meredith, an academic, stands in a Bloomsbury tobacconist waiting for his two ounces of tobacco, he murmurs a verse of 'London, a Poem' and is astounded when a trap door opens into the London Catacombs, bringing him face to face with the Horton Venus, by Titian. From then on he is trapped in a maze of the illicit art trade, in the company of the redoubtable Jane Halliwell.
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