Abacus (90 kníh )
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Candace Bushnell Sex and the City ENWildly funny, unexpectedly poignant, wickedly observant, SEX AND THE CITY blazes a glorious, drunken cocktail trail through New York, as Candace Bushnell, columnist and social critic par excellence, trips on her Manolo Blahnik kitten heels from the Baby Doll Lounge to the Bowery Bar. An Armistead Maupin for the real world, she has the gift of assembling a huge and irresistible cast of freaks and wonders, while…
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Gregory David Roberts Shantaram ENA novel of high adventure, great storytelling and moral purpose, based on an extraordinary true story of eight years in the Bombay underworld. 'In the early 80s, Gregory David Roberts, an armed robber and heroin addict, escaped from an Australian prison to India, where he lived in a Bombay slum. There, he established a free health clinic and also joined the mafia, working as a money launderer, forger and street…
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Yannick Murphy Signed, Mata Hari ENIn the cold October of 1917 Margaretha Zelle, alias Mata Hari, the infamous exotic dancer, sits in a prison cell in Paris awaiting trial on charges of espionage; the penalty, death by firing squad. As she waits, Mata Hari tells stories - much like Scheherazade - to buy back her life from her interrogators. From a bleak childhood on the shores of the North Sea, through a loveless marriage to a Dutch naval officer,…
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Iain Banks Stonemouth ENStewart Gilmour is back in Stonemouth. After five years in exile his presence is required at the funeral of patriarch Joe Murston, and even though the last time Stu saw the Murstons he was running for his life, staying away might be even more dangerous than turning up. An estuary town north of Aberdeen, Stonemouth, with it's five mile beach, can be beautiful on a sunny day. On a bleak one it can seem to offer…
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Jonathan Smith Summer in February ENSir Alfred Munnings, retiring President of the Royal Academy, chooses the 1949 Annual Banquet to launch a savage attack on Modern Art. The effect of his diatribe is doubly shocking, leaving not only his distinguished audience gasping but also many people tuning in to the BBC's live radio broadcast. But as he approaches the end of his assault, the speech suddenly dissolves into incoherence when he stumbles over a…
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Christine Mangan Tangerine'Girl on a Train meets The Talented Mr Ripley under the Moroccan sun. Unputdownable' The TimesThe perfect read for fans of Daphne du Maurier and Patricia Highsmith, set in 1950s Morocco, Tangerine is a gripping psychological literary thriller. The last pe
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Alexander McCall Smith Tea Time for the Traditionally Built ENIt is a troublesome fact on which even Mma Ramotswe and her assistant Mma Makutsi agree: there are things that men know and ladies do not, and vice versa. It is unfortunate, for example, when Mma Ramotswe's newest client is the big-shot owner of the ailing Kalahari Swoopers, that one thing lady detectives know very little about is football. And when the glamorous Violet Sephotho sets her sights on Mma Makutsi's…
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Sheena Iyengar The Art of Choosing ENChoice is the only tool we have for achieving fulfilment in life, allowing us to be masters of our worlds. Sometimes the path in front of us is simple and meaningless, such as choosing Coke or Pepsi, but often we are faced with life-changing choices, such as whether to stay in or leave a relationship, move house, take a new job, save or spend.
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Parinoush Saniee The Book of Fate ENA teenager in pre-revolutionary Tehran, Massoumeh is an ordinary girl, passionate about learning. On her way to school she meets a local man and falls in love - but when her family discover his letters they accuse her of bringing them into dishonour. She is badly beaten by her brother, and her parents hastily arrange a marriage to a man she's never met. Facing a life without love, and the prospect of no education,…
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Alexander McCall Smith The Careful Use of Compliments ENFor philosophically minded Isabel Dalhousie, editor of the Review of Applied Ethics, getting through life with a clear conscience requires careful thought. And with the arrival of baby Charlie, not to mention a passionate relationship with his father Jamie, fourteen years her junior, Isabel enters deeper and rougher waters. Late motherhood is not the only challenge facing Isabel. Even as she negotiates a truce with…
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Alexander McCall Smith The Comfort of Saturday ENIsabel Dalhousie is a new mother and a connoisseur of philosophy; she'd rather not be a sleuth. But when a chance conversation at a dinner party draws her into the case of a doctor whose career has been ruined, she cannot ignore what may be a miscarriage of justice. Because for Isabel ethics are not theoretical at all, but an everyday matter of life and death. As she attempts to unravel the truth behind Dr Thompson…
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Michele Giuttari The Death of a Mafia Don ENA bomb explodes in the centre of Florence, hitting the car of Chief Superintendent Michele Ferrara of the elite Squadra Mobile. The attack rocks the ancient city to its foundations. Ferrara was clearly the target - and he did, after all, just controversially imprison notorious Mafia boss Salvatore Laprua. A week later, another bomb explodes - bringing tragedy for Ferrara and a determination to find the culprit. But…
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Dennis Lehane The Drop ENThe Drop follows lonely bartender Bob Saginowski through a cover scheme of funelling cash to local gangsters — 'money drops' — in the underworld of Boston bars. Under the heavy hand of his employer and cousin Marv, Bob finds himself at the centre of a robbery gone awry and entwined in an investigation that digs deep into the neighbourhood's past where friends, families and foes all work together to make a living —…
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Tim Tzouliadis The Forsaken ENOf all the great movements of population to and from the United States, the least heralded is the migration, in the depths of the Depression of the nineteen-thirties, of thousands of men, women and children to Stalin's Russia. Where capitalism had failed them, Communism promised dignity for the working man, racial equality, and honest labour. What in fact awaited them, however, was the most monstrous betrayal. In a…
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Simon Mawer The Girl Who Fell From The Sky ENMarian Sutro is an outsider: the daughter of a diplomat, brought up on the shores of Lake Geneva and in England, half French, half British, naive yet too clever for her own good. But when she is recruited from her desk job by SOE to go undercover in wartime France, it seems her hybrid status - and fluent French - will be of service to a greater, more dangerous cause. Trained in sabotage, dead-drops, how to perform…
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Simon Mawer The Glass Room ENThe book that shone new light on our times: Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2009, The Glass Room is being reissued with a new cover alongside other classic titles from the Abacus list in our 40th Anniversary year. Cool. Balanced. Modern. The precisions of science, the wild variance of lust, the catharsis of confession and the fear of failure - these are things that happen in the Glass Room. High on a…
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Donna Tartt The Goldfinch ENAged thirteen, Theo Decker, son of a devoted mother and a reckless, largely absent father, survives an accident that otherwise tears his life apart. Alone and rudderless in New York, he is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. He is tormented by an unbearable longing for his mother, and down the years clings to the thing that most reminds him of her: a small, strangely captivating painting that ultimately…
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Alexander McCall Smith The Good Husband of Zebra Drive ENAs winter turns to spring across the red earth, acacia trees and slow green rivers of Botswana, all is not quite as it should be on Zebra Drive, home to Mma Ramotswe and her beloved husband Mr J. L. B. Matekoni. At the No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency there are the usual number of cases to be pursued, from persistent theft at Teenie Magama's printing works to the rather more serious case of three suspicious deaths at…
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Alexander McCall Smith The Handsome Man's De Luxe Cafe ENEven the arrival of her baby can't hold Mma Makutsi back from success in the workplace, and so no sooner than she becomes a full partner in the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency - in spite of Mma Ramotswe's belated claims that she is only 'an assistant full partner' - she also launches a new enterprise of her own: the Handsome Man's De Luxe Cafe. Grace Makutsi is a lady with a business plan,but who could predict…
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Jonas Jonasson The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared ENSitting quietly in his room in an old people's home, Allan Karlsson is waiting for a party he doesn't want to begin. His one-hundredth birthday party to be precise. The Mayor will be there. The press will be there. But, as it turns out, Allan will not. Escaping (in his slippers) through his bedroom window, into the flowerbed, Allan makes his getaway. And so begins his picaresque and unlikely journey involving…
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Nina George The Little Breton BistroMarianne Messmann longs to escape her loveless marriage. On a trip to Paris, she throws herself into the Seine, but is rescued by a passer-by. While recovering in hospital, Marianne sees a painting of a beautiful port town and decides to embark on...
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Nina George The Little Paris Bookshop ENOn a beautifully restored barge on the Seine, Jean Perdu runs a bookshop; or rather a 'literary apothecary', for this bookseller possesses a rare gift for sensing which books will soothe the troubled souls of his customers. The only person he is unable to cure, it seems, is himself. He has nursed a broken heart ever since the night, twenty-one years ago, when the love of his life fled Paris, leaving behind a…
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Tim Harford The Logic Of Life ENA dazzling application of new economic theories to the world around us - by the author of THE UNDERCOVER ECONOMIST.
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Henry Shukman The Lost City ENInvalided out of the army at barely twenty, Jackson Small returns to England traumatised by the violent death of his fellow soldier and blood-brother Connolly. Unable to settle and incapacitated by grief, Jackson sets off on a lunatic quest, back to the Peruvian jungle in search of something he cannot even be sure is real: the lost city of La Joya, the ancient capital of a vanished empire - a place of rare wonder…