Rachel Pine- Twins of TriBeCa

Chick lit

Karen Jacobs has landed the job of a lifetime at New York’s hottest film studio, Glorious Pictures, which is headed by a pair of famously competitive and ambitious brothers, Phil and Tony Waxman. The young publicist quickly finds herself with an all-access pass to the tantrums, whims, follies, neuroses, and unimaginable egos of the celebrities who star in Glorious’s films -- but this comes as no surprise. It’s the absolute insanity inside the company that knocks her for a loop. Extremely competitive and cutthroat, the Glorious executives continuously search for ways to outdo, outscheme, and outmaneuver each other in their attempts to impress the Waxmans. In the tradition of The Devil Wears Prada, real-life movie publicist Rachel Pine’s razor-sharp satire captures perfectly the behind-the-scenes machinations of the film industry in all its glory.

Rachel Pine is a former publicist for Miramax Films. She is currently director of marketing and communications for Doubledown Media, LLC, a magazine publisher. She lives in New York City. This is her first book.

Barbara Delinsky- A Woman Betrayed

Romance Laura Frye has everything a woman could ask for. She and her husband, Jeff, a CPA, have been happily married for twenty years. Her two teenage kids are terrific. And her catering business is a success. But then Jeff mysteriously disappears, and that picture-perfect life is shattered. Laura insists that Jeff would never leave on his own. But as the days go by, she learns there was much more to her husband than she ever suspected. As Jeff's many secrets come to light, Laura painfully learns the truth about the man she thought she knew. Shaken to the core, Laura must look for ways to hold her family together and rebuild her life. What she finds is a strength she never knew she had -- and a love she thought she had lost forever.

Elinor Lipman- The Pursuit of Alice Thrift

Chick lit

Poor Alice Thrift, surgical intern in a Boston hospital, high of I.Q. but low in social graces. Into her workaholic and wallflower life comes Ray Russo, fast-talking fudge salesman with upwardly mobile ambitions. Is he a con man or a sincere suitor? Good guy or bad? Her roommate, Leo Frawley, a charming male nurse who has a high threshold for Alice's left-footed people skills, along with fellow resident, Sylvia Schwartz, woman of the world, don't approve. Alice ignores them. As Alice herself announces on p. 6, "it's about the weak link in my own character—wishful thinking—and a husband of short duration with a history of bad deeds."

Monica Ali- Brick Lane

Drama

A young Bangladeshi woman, Nazneem, arrives in 1980s London, leaving behind her beloved sister and home, for an arranged marriage and a new life. Trapped within the four walls of her flat in East London, and in a loveless marriage with the middle aged Chanu, she fears her soul is quietly dying. Her sister Hasina, meanwhile, continues to live a carefree life back in Bangladesh, stumbling from one adventure to the next. Nazneen struggles to accept her lifestyle, and keeps her head down in spite of life's blows, but she soon discovers that life cannot be avoided - and is forced to confront it the day that the hotheaded young Karim comes knocking at her door.

Adriana Trigiani- Lucia, Lucia

Romance

Set in the glittering, vibrant New York City of 1950, Lucia, Lucia is the enthralling story of a passionate, determined young woman whose decision to follow her heart changes her life forever.

Lucia Sartori is the beautiful twenty-five-year-old daughter of a prosperous Italian grocer in Greenwich Village. The postwar boom is ripe with opportunities for talented girls with ambition, and Lucia becomes an apprentice to an up-and-coming designer at chic B. Altman's department store on Fifth Avenue. Engaged to her childhood sweetheart, the steadfast Dante DeMartino, Lucia is torn when she meets a handsome stranger who promises a life of uptown luxury that career girls like her only read about in the society pages. Forced to choose between duty to her family and her own dreams, Lucia finds herself in the midst of a sizzling scandal in which secrets are revealed, her beloved career is jeopardized, and the Sartoris' honor is tested.

Lucia is surrounded by richly drawn New York characters, including her best friend, the quick-witted fashion protégé Ruth Kaspian; their boss, Delmarr, B. Altman's head designer and glamorous man-about-town; her devoted brothers, Roberto, Orlando, Angelo, and Exodus, self-appointed protectors of the jewel of the family; and her doting father, Antonio. Filled with the warmth and humor that have earned Adriana Trigiani hundreds of thousands of devoted readers with her Big Stone Gap trilogy, Lucia, Lucia also bursts with a New York sensibility that shows the depth and range of this beloved author. As richly detailed as the couture garments Lucia sews, as emotional as the bonds in her big Italian family, it is the story of one woman who believes that in a world brimming with so much promise, she can-and should be able to-have it all.

Marisa de los Santos- Love Walked In

Romance

Cornelia is a single thirtysomething who lives her life like a series of movie moments. She's a manager of a cafe because she hasn't figured out anything better to do. Her ideal man is Cary Grant. And just when she thinks he'll never show up, he does, in the form of Martin Grace. What she doesn't know is that Martin, with his cool charm and debonair demeanor, has a daughter, Clare. And she never would have known that except that Martin, in a state of panic, shows up with the girl at the cafe after her mother had a breakdown and left Clare to fend for herself. Estranged from his daughter for years, Martin doesn't know what to do with her. Both women's stories are told in alternating chapters, Cornelia's in first person, Clare's in third. This is a first novel with some wonderful and heartbreaking moments scattered throughout, along with some moments that are purely contrived for the forward movement of the plot. Overall, it is a sweet story about knowing what you love and why.

Roddy Doyle- The Snapper

Comedy

The warm relationship between an Irish father and his eldest daughter is tested
when she becomes pregnant. The family stands by the girl and unites against the local gossip surrounding the baby's father.

Angela Vallvey- Hunting the Last Wild Man

Funny and sarcastic novel

Candela lives in a house of women nine to be exact: six sisters, their mother, their grandmother, and their rich aunt Mary, who owns the house. Candela has had her disappointments in love and floats from one job to another before ending up at the local mortuary working as an apprentice embalmer. Her work on the late patriarch of a gypsy clan introduces her to the dead mans nephew Amador, who turns out to be both a successful businessman and a scintillating lover. In a rich style that recalls the films of Almodovar, Vallvey explores Candelas ingenious attempts to integrate the last wild man into her life.

Orhan Pamuk- My Name is Red

Historical novel

My Name is Red (Benim Adım Kırmızı) is a Turkish novel by Nobel laureate author Orhan Pamuk. It won the prestigious International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 2003 as well as the French Prix du meilleur livre étranger and Italian Premio Grinzane Cavour awards in 2002.

The main characters in the novel are miniaturists in the Ottoman Empire, and the events revolve around the murder of one of the painters, as related in the first chapter. From then on Pamuk -- in a postmodern style reminiscent of Borges -- plays with and teases the reader and literature in general.

The novel's narrator changes in every chapter, and in addition to character-narrators, the reader will find unexpected voices such as the corpse of the murdered, a coin, several painting motifs, and the color red. The novel blends mystery, romance, and philosophical puzzles, opening a window on the reign of OttomannSultan Murat III during nine snowy winter days in the Istanbul of 1591.

Enishte Effendi, the maternal uncle of Black, is reading the Book of the Soul by Ibn Qayyim Al-Jawziyya, a famous Sunni commentator on the Qur'an and continuous references are made to it throughout the book. The novel opens with master Elegant Effendi having been murdered but his soul lingering in the after-life and Elegant Effendi reflecting on the after-life. Ibn Qayyim Al-Jawziyya’s Book of the Soul (Kitab al-Ruh) ranks among the best books on the subject of the Islamic understanding of life after death according to the Qur’an, the Sunna, and the doctrine of the Salaf and the Four Imams, proposing that the dead hear the living and know of them.

Pamuk compares illustrations with the afterlife in the sense that people aspire to achieve a sense of eternity through both. Thus Shekure imagines to speak to us readers like the women on illustrations look at her. ... just like those beautiful women with one eye on the life within the book and one eye on the life outside, I, too, long to speak with you who are observing me from who knows which distant time and place. The murdered Elegant Effendi accused his murderer of sacrilegious illustrations offending Allah or God. Is true art an expression of the individual artist or is true art a close to perfect representation of the divine in which the individual artist has succeeded to overcome his personal vanity? This question becomes a question of existential meaning in Pamuk's tale. And lie the truth and the answer to this question in reality or in our imagination?

Sharon Creech- Ruby Holler

Children's novel

The "trouble twins", Dallas and Florida, are living in Boxton Creek Home, an orphanage run by Mr. and Mrs. Trepid. The Trepids are strict and unsympathetic, and Dallas and Florida are punished more than most for breaking the innumerable rules of the house. Over their thirteen years, the twins have been adopted many times, invariably by unwise and abusive adults who return them to the orphanage. One day, the twins are "hired" for a summer by an old couple from Ruby Holler, Tiller and Sairy, as companions for their separate vacations: Florida for Tiller's boat trip down the Rutabago River; Dallas for Sairy's birding expedition to the island of Kangadoon. This will be the first time either of the couples have been separated for "most of their lives". The twins bloom under the freedom and responsibilities given to them in Ruby Holler, but remain suspicious of Tiller and Sairy, as they have been of all adults, especially when they keep making mistakes that would previously have earned them severe punishments. But Tiller and Sairy realise they were just getting good at being parents when their children moved out, so the twins offer them a second chance at life.

Jenny Colgan- Amanda's Wedding

Chick lit

Jenny Colgan's fiendishly funny debut novel is a romantic comedy like no other. This is an author who will have you howling with laughter one moment and reaching for the Kleenex the next. Mel and Fran can't believe it when their old schoolfriend Amanda, Satan's very own PR girl, pulls off the ultimate publicity stunt in getting herself engaged to a Scottish laird. Who cares that Fraser McConnald has worn the same pair of Converse trainers for the last three years and that his castle is a pile of rubble with one Calor Gas heater - she'll be titled! Gentle, decent Fraser is clearly ignorant of her wiles, so Mel and Fran, still smarting from the memory of all the mean things Amanda put them through in their days at Portmount Comprehensive, set out to sabotage this mismatch of the century. Between fighting off the attentions of a love-crazed accountant, keeping Fran's deadly manoeuvres with the opposite sex under control and trying to win her own war of love with the elusive but gorgeous Alex, Mel finds herself attending a wild Scottish stag night, a hen night from hell, and preparing for a wedding that's everything you'd wish on your worst enemy.

Elizabeth Buchan -Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman

Drama

A middle-aged woman has what she believes is a great life. She's been married for 25 years, she is the book editor at a newspaper where her husband is the editor and they have a great family. That all comes to a screeching halt one day when her husband announces that he is leaving her for a younger woman. Not only that, but the younger woman is her assistant. Not only that, but he's taking the newspaper in "a new direction" and won't need her anymore. It's then that she finds out who her friends and the people who love her REALLY are, and she gets a surprise when she runs into a man from her past.

Daphne du Maurier- The Scapegoat

Mystery

Taken by the faithful servant to a huge but crumbling chateau, he finds that he is also the owner of a glass factory that appears to be failing. Indeed, the problems concerning the family are seemingly insurmountable, and at first the protagonist stumbles through one mistake after another; nevertheless no-one suspects he is not Jean, the Frenchman (other than the dog, whose behaviour is commented upon but not questioned). It soon becomes apparent that Jean is bad through and through, he has had an affair with his sister-in-law, and his sister Blanche has not spoken to him for fifteen years. We only discover the reason for this much later on in the book. Furthermore, his mother is a morphine addict, supplied with her drugs by none other than her dutiful son, Jean. His poor pathetic wife dies in an accident soon after the Englishman arrives. The double then attempts to put everyone's life to rights, little realising the extent of damage his predecessor has managed to do. Just when it seems as though he is finally succeeding, Jean returns to claim his life back.

The novel is written in the first person, John, the Englishman, so we see everything through the eyes of the narrator. This is a very effective way of relating the story, as the reader knows as much or as little as the narrator.

Thomas Hardy- Tess of the d'Urbervilles

Drama

A rural clergyman in 19th century England tells Durbeyfield, a simple farmer, that he is descended from the illustrious d'Urberville family -- now extinct. Or maybe not. Durbeyfield sends his daughter Tess to check on a family named d'Uberville living in a manor house less than a day's carriage ride away. Alec d'Urberville is delighted to meet his beautiful "cousin" and seduces her with strawberries and roses. Actually Alec has gotten his illustrious name and coat of arms by purchasing them. Tess too takes up the game of illusion when she finds, loses and finds again her true love Angel.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry- The Little Prince

Children’s story

This magical story begins as a pilot makes a forced landing on the barren Sahara Desert. He is befriended by a "little" prince from the planet Asteroid B-612. In the days that follow, the pilot learns of the small boy's history and planet-hopping journeys in which he met a King, a businessman, an historian, and a general. It isn't until he comes to Earth that the Little Prince learns the secrets of the importance of life from a Fox ,a Snake and the pilot.

Mikhail Bulgakov- The Master and Margarita

Fantasy satirical novel

Surely no stranger work exists in the annals of protest literature than The Master and Margarita. Written during the Soviet crackdown of the 1930s, when Mikhail Bulgakov's works were effectively banned, it wraps its anti-Stalinist message in a complex allegory of good and evil. Or would that be the other way around? The book's chief character is Satan, who appears in the guise of a foreigner and self-proclaimed black magician named Woland. Accompanied by a talking black tomcat and a "translator" wearing a jockey's cap and cracked pince-nez, Woland wreaks havoc throughout literary Moscow. First he predicts that the head of noted editor Berlioz will be cut off; when it is, he appropriates Berlioz's apartment. (A puzzled relative receives the following telegram: "Have just been run over by streetcar at Patriarch's Ponds funeral Friday three afternoon come Berlioz.") Woland and his minions transport one bureaucrat to Yalta, make another one disappear entirely except for his suit, and frighten several others so badly that they end up in a psychiatric hospital. In fact, it seems half of Moscow shows up in the bin, demanding to be placed in a locked cell for protection.

Meanwhile, a few doors down in the hospital lives the true object of Woland's visit: the author of an unpublished novel about Pontius Pilate. This Master--as he calls himself--has been driven mad by rejection, broken not only by editors' harsh criticism of his novel but, Bulgakov suggests, by political persecution as well. Yet Pilate's story becomes a kind of parallel narrative, appearing in different forms throughout Bulgakov's novel: as a manuscript read by the Master's indefatigable love, Margarita, as a scene dreamed by the poet--and fellow lunatic--Ivan Homeless, and even as a story told by Woland himself. Since we see this narrative from so many different points of view, who is truly its author? Given that the Master's novel and this one end the same way, are they in fact the same book? These are only a few of the many questions Bulgakov provokes, in a novel that reads like a set of infinitely nested Russian dolls: inside one narrative there is another, and then another, and yet another. His devil is not only entertaining, he is necessary: "What would your good be doing if there were no evil, and what would the earth look like if shadows disappeared from it?"

Unsurprisingly--in view of its frequent, scarcely disguised references to interrogation and terror--Bulgakov's masterwork was not published until 1967, almost three decades after his death. Yet one wonders if the world was really ready for this book in the late 1930s, if, indeed, we are ready for it now. Shocking, touching, and scathingly funny, it is a novel like no other. Woland may reattach heads or produce 10-ruble notes from the air, but Bulgakov proves the true magician here. The Master and Margarita is a different book each time it is opened.

Susan Andersen-Baby,I`m yours

Romance

Teacher Catherine MacPherson has spent her life getting her identical twin sister out of trouble. But when trouble barges into her house in the form of Bounty Hunter Sam McKade, what's she to do? Try sweet reason? Tell him he's mistaken her for her chorus girl sister? When Catherine attempts both, McKade calls her a liar. And before she can prove her claim, she finds herself being dragged from her home and taken for a ride on the wild side!

Jeffrey Archer- The Prodigal Daughter

Political

The story begins by introducing Kane and Abel's past and the feud between them. It then tells the story of Kane and Abel from the perspective of their children, Florentyna Rosnovski and Richard Kane. Their childhood, and all the incidents and people who affected them, are portrayed in a similar manner as their fathers' lives were told in Kane and Abel. Richard and Florentyna meet by sheer chance and fall in love. When their parents are told, both react explosively; Abel goes so far as to slap the daughter he had raised with such affection. The two lovers run away the same day to a friend's house in another city.

Later, the two create a chain of stores named Florentyna's, which are a huge success. Abel helps his daughter anonymously, but refuses to accept his son-in-law. The tale takes a twist with Kane's death, after which Abel's remorse leads him to accept Richard and his grandchildren. Ironically, he comes to consider it an honor that his grandson is named William Abel Kane.

Richard and Florentyna take charge of the Baron Hotels, with Florentyna as chairwoman, and then in a daring feat take over Lester's (Kane's Bank).

Eventually Florentyna takes up politics due to the persuasion of a childhood friend named Edward Winchester. Florentyna's career becomes central to the plot, as she attempts to deal with the problems a very busy and successful mother faces. Including the fact that her daughter has an abortion and smokes marijuana in the mid 1970's. However, her career takes a back seat when Richard dies in a car crash in 1985. For some time Florentyna loses the will to pursue anything, even her career. Then suddenly, seeing a homeless Vietnam Vet makes her come "back with a vengeance." Working harder than ever, she comes very near her goal of becoming the first female President.

For the good of the party, she strikes a deal with her opponent to support him if he promises not to run for a second term, and if he makes her his vice presidential candidate. During the term, Florentyna stops many a crisis for which the President takes full credit, but at the end of his term he reneges on his promises; it seems as though Florentyna's dream will never become a reality. Disgusted with the situation, she leaves Washington. While she is playing golf and discussing what to do with her life as her son William is now President of Lester, with Edward, Secret Service agents arrive to announce the President's sudden death of a heart attack. Florentyna thus becomes the President, and soon after she marries Edward.

Herman Wouk- War and Remembrance

War drama

The saga of the Henry family, begun in "The Winds of War" continues as America is attacked by Japan and enters World War II. For Victor Henry, an upwardly mobile naval career sets him in command of a cruiser with sights on selection for the Admiralty. At the same time, however, Victor must struggle with a failing marriage as well as a love affair with the daughter of a prominent British radio news reporter. Victor's son Byron has equal success as a submarine officer, eventually selected to command his own ship, yet all the while must deal with the separation of his wife and son who are held in German custody as enemy alien Jews. Through other such characters as Professor Aaron Jastrow, Naval Pilot Warren Henry, and the noble German General Armin von Roon, "War and Remembrance" unfolds into an all encompassing and fascinating story of the Second World War.

Helen Fielding- Bridget Jones : The Edge of Reason

Chick lit

Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason is a 1999 novel by Helen Fielding, a sequel to her popular Bridget Jones's Diary. It chronicles Bridget Jones's adventures after she begins to suspect that her boyfriend (Mark Darcy) is falling for a rich 'jellyfish' -- a "friend" of hers named Rebecca whose underhanded compliments sting anyone in the vicinity. The comic novel follows the characteristic ups and downs of the self-proclaimed Singleton's first real relationship in several years. It also involves many misunderstandings, a few work mishaps, and an adventure in Southeast Asia involving planted drugs and Madonna songs.

Helen Fielding- Bridget Jones's Diary

Chick lit

Bridget is a "Singleton" employed in the publishing industry. She struggles, often humorously and endearingly, to make sense of her romantic entanglement with her boss Daniel Cleaver, and later with the "top-notch human rights barrister" Mark Darcy. One concept introduced and often revisited in both Bridget Jones's Diary and The Edge of Reason is that of "fuckwittage": the emotional turmoil intentionally wreaked by men who fall anywhere along the spectrum of womanizers to commitment-phobics. Fuckwittage is no stranger to Bridget, Shazzer (a strident feminist), Jude (a highly successful business woman who throughout the novel is on-again-off-again with Vile Richard), and the gay Tom (who must deal with the fuckwittage present in his relationship with Pretentious Jerome).

Bridget's family consists of an overconfident mother who seems always to be finding new adventures and projects, a much more down-to-earth father (though he is sometimes driven into uncharacteristically unstable states of mind by his wife), and a brother, Jamie, a more peripheral character. Bridget often visits her parents, as well as her parents' friends (Geoffrey and Una Alconbury first and foremost). In these situations, Bridget is often plagued with that perennial question "How's your love life?" and exposed to the eccentricities of mid-to-upper class British society, manifested in Turkey Curry Buffets and Tarts and Vicars parties.

Helen Fielding-Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination

Thriller novel

The book delves into the world of espionage as it follows the adventures of freelance journalist-turned spy, Olivia Joules. While covering a face cream launch in Miami, Olivia meets the alluring international playboy, Pierre Feramo. Susupicious that he is an international terrorist, she follows him to Los Angeles, Honduras, and the Sudan, while he is under the impression that she is falling in love with him.

Tess Gerritsne-The sinner

Thriller

Not even the icy temperatures of a typical New England winter can match the bone-chilling scene of carnage discovered in the early morning hours at the chapel of Our Lady of Divine Light. Within the sanctuary walls of the cloistered convent, now stained with blood, lie two nuns- one dead, one critically injured- victims of an unspeakable savage attacker.

The brutal crime appears to be without motive, and the elderly nuns in residence can offer little help in the police investigation. But medical examiner Maura Isles's autopsy of the dead woman yields a shocking surprise: Twenty-four-year-old Sister Camille, the order's sole novice, gave birth before she was murdered. Then the disturbing case takes another stunning new turn when another woman is found murdered in an abandoned building, her body mutilated beyond recognition. Together, Isles and homicide detective Jane Rizzoli uncover an ancient horror that connects these terrible slaughters. As long-buried secrets come to light, Maura Isles finds herself drawn inexorably toward the heart of an investigation that strikes closer and closer to home - and toward a dawning revelation about the killer's identity too shattering to consider.

As spine-tingling as it is mind-jolting, The Sinner showcases Tess Gerritsen in peak form - bringing her intimate knowledge of the dark depths of criminal investigation brilliantly to bear. Beneath the layers of startling insight into the souls of its characters, and the richly wrought depiction of the everyday war between good and evil, beats the unstoppable heart of an irresistible thriller.

Melissa P-100 Strokes of the Brush Before Bed

Autobiographical novel

A scandalous bestseller in her native Italy , Melissa P.'s avowedly autobiographical novel recounts a Sicilian schoolgirl's erotic adventures. "I want love, Diary," she writes just before her 15th birthday. "I want to feel my heart melt, want to see my icy stalactites shatter and plunge into a river of passion and beauty." Love may be hard to find, but sex waits at every turn, and Melissa seldom says no. In calmly vivid prose, she describes the varieties of experience, beginning with her introduction to oral sex: "I now had it before my eyes, it smelled male, and every vein that crossed it expressed such power that I felt duty-bound to reckon with it." This same sense of duty mandates sex with a woman, sex with an older man, sadomasochistic sex, group sex. Although her mother tells an ill Melissa a fable about a princess, Melissa tells herself no fairy tales—and therein lies the odd, potent purity of these pages.

Mitch Albom-The Five People You Meet in Heaven

Inspirational

"At the time of his death, Eddie was an old man with a barrel chest and a torso as squat as a soup can," writes Albom, author of the bestselling phenomenon Tuesdays with Morrie, in a brief first novel that is going to make a huge impact on many hearts and minds. Wearing a work shirt with a patch on the chest that reads "Eddie" over "Maintenance," limping around with a cane thanks to an old war injury, Eddie was the kind of guy everybody, including Eddie himself, tended to write off as one of life's minor characters, a gruff bit of background color. He spent most of his life maintaining the rides at Ruby Pier, a seaside amusement park, greasing tracks and tightening bolts and listening for strange sounds, "keeping them safe." The children who visited the pier were drawn to Eddie "like cold hands to a fire." Yet Eddie believed that he lived a "nothing" life-gone nowhere he "wasn't shipped to with a rifle," doing work that "required no more brains than washing a dish." On his 83rd birthday, however, Eddie dies trying to save a little girl. He wakes up in heaven, where a succession of five people are waiting to show him the true meaning and value of his life. One by one, these mostly unexpected characters remind him that we all live in a vast web of interconnection with other lives; that all our stories overlap; that acts of sacrifice seemingly small or fruitless do affect others; and that loyalty and love matter to a degree we can never fathom. Simply told, sentimental and profoundly true, this is a contemporary American fable that will be cherished by a vast readership. Bringing into the spotlight the anonymous Eddies of the world, the men and women who get lost in our cultural obsession with fame and fortune, this slim tale, like Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, reminds us of what really matters here on earth, of what our lives are given to us for.

Jessica Adams-Single White E-mail

Chick lit

Victoria 'Total Bloody Relationships Disaster' Shepworth is recovering from yet another broken relationship and a series of disastrous dates. She's fed up with Saturday nights as a single woman, stuck at home with a video of When Harry Met Sally or going out with her eccentric women friends looking like a desperate roaming female pack. Saturday night is for couples and everybody knows it. Now's she's ready for someone new, even if it means hunting down the man of her dreams on the Internet. But is Pierre, the Englishman living in Paris , everything he promises to be?

Sarah Dunn-The Big Love

Chick Lit

The annals of love have recorded many a humiliating breakup over the years, but Alison Hopkins gets hit with a humdinger in this surprising, touching and hilariously deadpan debut novel. When she sends her live-in boyfriend Tom to the supermarket right before a dinner party, she figures the worst that can happen is that he'll get the wrong mustard. Instead he calls from a pay phone to tell her he's not coming back at all, because he's fallen in love with his college sweetheart, Kate Pearce—with whom he's been sleeping for five months. If Alison were a Sex and the City siren, she'd distract herself with martinis, Manolos and misappropriated men, but she's a broke columnist for the floundering weekly The Philadelphia Times. Plus, though now lapsed, she was raised evangelist Christian. So it's a new pair of hiking boots, pie-contest judging and furtive dalliances with a coworker for reluctant good-girl Alison as she tries to gauge the ins and outs of the single world that non-fundamentalists mastered in their early 20s. Alison's struggles to fit into the mainstream world are fresh and full of wisdom, and Dunn's humor is marvelously dry: "Bonnie had a sudden flash of what he might come up with on his own…so she drew a picture on a cocktail napkin of a wide band of channel-set diamonds, and she wrote down the words 'platinum' and 'size six' and 'BIG' and 'SOON.' " This is a delightful exploration of the empowerment that comes from escaping a Big Love turned Bad Love.

Sue Townsend-The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4

Humorous

At 13 years old, Adrian Mole has more than his fair share of problems - spots, ill-health, parents threatening to divorce, rejection of his poetry and much more - all recorded in his diary.

Charles Dickens -Great Expectations

autobiographical fiction

Young Pip is expected to become a blacksmith, but, hating the soot and smoke, he secretly dreams of becoming a gentleman. When he meets the mysterious Miss Havisham and her haughty niece Estella, Pip is confident that his dream is to come true.

Charles Dickens-Oliver Twist

Children’s story

In the Nineteenth Century, the orphan Oliver Twist is sent to a workhouse, where the children are barely fed and mistreated. He moves to the house of an undertaker, but after an unfair severe spank, he starts a seven day runaway to London. He arrives exhausted and starving, and is welcomed by a gang of pickpockets leaded by the old crook Fagin. When he is mistakenly taken as a thief, the wealthy victim Mr. Brownlow brings Oliver to his home and shelters him. But Fagin and the dangerous Bill Sykes decide to kidnap Oliver to burglarize Mr. Brownlow's fancy house. Oliver is wounded, while Mr. Brownlow tries to save Oliver.

Albert Camus-The Stranger

Absurdist

The Stranger is not merely one of the most widely read novels of the 20th century, but one of the books likely to outlive it. Written in 1946, Camus's compelling and troubling tale of a disaffected, apparently amoral young man has earned a durable popularity (and remains a staple of U.S. high school literature courses) in part because it reveals so vividly the anxieties of its time. Alienation, the fear of anonymity, spiritual doubt--all could have been given a purely modern inflection in the hands of a lesser talent than Camus, who won the Nobel Prize in 1957 and was noted for his existentialist aesthetic. The remarkable trick of The Stranger, however, is that it's not mired in period philosophy.

The plot is simple. A young Algerian, Meursault, afflicted with a sort of aimless inertia, becomes embroiled in the petty intrigues of a local pimp and, somewhat inexplicably, ends up killing a man. Once he's imprisoned and eventually brought to trial, his crime, it becomes apparent, is not so much the arguably defensible murder he has committed as it is his deficient character. The trial's proceedings are absurd, a parsing of incidental trivialities--that Meursault, for instance, seemed unmoved by his own mother's death and then attended a comic movie the evening after her funeral are two ostensibly damning facts--so that the eventual sentence the jury issues is both ridiculous and inevitable.

Meursault remains a cipher nearly to the story's end--dispassionate, clinical, disengaged from his own emotions. "She wanted to know if I loved her," he says of his girlfriend. "I answered the same way I had the last time, that it didn't mean anything but that I probably didn't." There's a latent ominousness in such observations, a sense that devotion is nothing more than self-delusion. It's undoubtedly true that Meursault exhibits an extreme of resignation; however, his confrontation with "the gentle indifference of the world" remains as compelling as it was when Camus first recounted it.

Homer-Odyssey

Epic poem

Homer's classic epic poem about the hero, Odysseus, and his travels home after the infamous ten year battle of Troy. The gods seize the opportunity to make Odysseus and his crew the pawns in their games; forcing Odysseus to take unbelievable detours that add years to his journey home. These detours throw him into conflict with great mythological creatures like Circe, the Cyclops, and Poseidon, and ultimately bring him to Hades himself. Meanwhile, Odysseus' wife, Penelope, worries that her husband is dead and is forced to fight off suitors who want to claim his kingdom. Through all of this Odysseus must keep faith and fight to find his way back home, with only the aid of the goddess Athena.

Homer-Iliad

Epic poem

As the poem begins, the Greeks have captured Chryseis, the daughter of Apollo's priest Chryses, and given her as a prize to Agamemnon. In response, Apollo has sent a plague against the Greeks, who compel Agamemnon to restore Chryseis to her father to stop the sickness. In her place, Agamemnon takes Briseis, whom the Achaeans had given to Achilles as a spoil of war. Achilles, the greatest warrior of the age, follows the advice of his goddess mother, Thetis, and withdraws from battle in revenge.

In counterpoint to Achilles' pride and arrogance stands the Trojan prince Hector, son of King Priam, a husband and father who fights to defend his city and his family. With Achilles on the sidelines, Hector leads successful counterattacks against the Greeks, who have built a fortified camp around their ships pulled up on the Trojan beach. The best remaining Greek fighters, including Odysseus and Diomedes, are wounded, and the gods favor the Trojans. Patroclus, impersonating Achilles by wearing his armor, finally leads the Myrmidons back into battle to save the ships from being burned. The death of Patroclus at the hands of Hector brings Achilles back to the war for revenge, and he slays Hector in single combat. Hector's father, King Priam, later comes to Achilles alone (but aided by Hermes) to ransom his son's body, and Achilles is moved to pity; the funeral of Hector ends the poem.

David Beckham-My Side

The Autobiography

David Beckham is one of the world's foremost media icons, his popularity transcending sport and cultural divides. This is his own in-depth account of his career to date, for Manchester United and England, his childhood, family and personal life, and the full story of his transfer to Real Madrid.

Pearl S Buck-The Big Wave

Children`s book

Kino lives on a farm on the side of a mountain in Japan. His friend, Jiya, lives in a fishing village below. Everyone, including Kino and Jiya, has heard of the big wave. No one suspects it will wipe out the whole village and Jiya's family, too. As Jiya struggles to overcome his sorrow, he understands it is in the presence of danger that one learns to be brave, and to appreciate how wonderful life can be.The famous story of a Japanese boy who must face life after escaping the tidal wave destruction of his family and village.

Ernest Hemingway-For Whom the Bell Tolls

War novel

The novel is told primarily through the thoughts of Robert Jordan. Based on Hemingway's own experience, Robert Jordan is an American who travelled to Spain to assist the struggle against the forces of the Nationalist Generalísimo Francisco Franco.

Behind enemy lines with a guerrilla band led by a disillusioned Republican called Pablo, Robert Jordan meets María, a young Spanish native whose life has been shattered by the outbreak of the war. The strong sense of duty of Robert Jordan clashes with both Pablo's unwillingness to commit to a covert operation and his own newfound love of life caused by the presence of María.

The novel describes events which demonstrate the incredible brutality of civil war.

Ernest Hemingway-The Old Man and the Sea

Tragedy

The Old Man and the Sea recounts an epic battle between an old, experienced fisherman and a giant marlin said to be the largest catch of his life. It opens by explaining that the fisherman, who is named Santiago (but only directly referred to outside of dialogue as "the old man"), has gone 84 days without catching any fish at all. He is apparently so unlucky that his young apprentice, Manolin, has been forbidden by his parents to sail with the old man and been ordered to fish with more successful fishermen. Still dedicated to the old man, however, the boy visits Santiago's shack each night, hauling back his fishing gear, feeding him, and discussing American baseball—most notably Santiago's idol, Joe DiMaggio. Santiago tells Manolin that on the next day, he will venture far out into the Gulf to fish, confident that his unlucky streak is near its end.

Thus on the eighty-fifth day, Santiago sets out alone, taking his skiff far into the Gulf. He sets his lines and, by noon of the first day, a big fish that he is sure is a marlin takes his bait. Unable to pull in the great marlin, Santiago instead finds the fish pulling his skiff. Two days and two nights pass in this manner, during which the old man bears the tension of the line with his body. Though he is wounded by the struggle and in pain, Santiago expresses a compassionate appreciation for his adversary, often referring to him as a brother.

On the third day of the ordeal, the fish begins to circle the skiff, indicating his tiredness to the old man. Santiago, now completely worn out and almost in delirium, uses all the strength he has left in him to pull the fish onto its side and stab the marlin with a harpoon, thereby ending the long battle between the old man and the tenacious fish.

Santiago straps the marlin to his skiff and heads home, thinking about the high price the fish will bring him at the market and how many people he will feed. However, the old man determines that because of the fish's great dignity, no one will be worthy of eating the marlin.

While Santiago continues his journey back to the shore, sharks are attracted to the trail of blood left by the marlin in the water. The first, a great mako shark, Santiago kills with his harpoon, losing that weapon in the process. He makes a new harpoon by strapping his knife to the end of an oar to help ward off the next line of sharks; in total, five sharks are slain and many others are driven away. But by night, the sharks have devoured the marlin's entire carcass, leaving only its tail left. The old man castigates himself for sacrificing the marlin. Finally reaching the shore before dawn on the next day, he struggles on the way to his shack, carrying the heavy mast on his shoulder. Once home, he slumps onto his bed and enters a very deep sleep.

Ignorant of the old man's journey, a group of fishermen gathers the next day around the boat where the fish's skeleton is still attached. Tourists at the nearby café mistakenly take it for a shark. Manolin, worried during the old man's endeavor, cries upon finding him safe asleep. The boy brings him newspapers and coffee. When the old man wakes, they promise to fish together once again. Upon his return to sleep, Santiago dreams of lions on the African beach.

J. D. Salinger-The Catcher in the Rye

Bildungsroman (coming-of-age novel)

The novel covers 48 hours in the life of Holden Caulfield, a tall, skinny, anxious and depressed teenager who academically flunked out of Pencey Prep, a boarding school. Holden is 17 when he tells the story; he was 16 when the events occurred.

His story starts on Holden's last day at Pencey Prep. He is standing on the crest of a hill that overlooks the American football field. It is the final game of the season, but Holden has never cared much for established tradition. He instead runs across the street to the residence of Mr. Spencer, his history teacher. It is revealed here that Holden has been expelled and that he doesn't particularly care.

Holden talks with old acquaintances at school and ultimately leaves for New York City, electing to stay there. He considers hitchhiking out west and building a cabin away from everyone he knows. At one point he propositions an ex-girlfriend to join him on the trip, even though he doesn't particularly like her. She declines.

The next day, he arranges to have his younger sister, Phoebe, meet him at lunchtime. She is carrying one of Holden's old suitcases full of clothes. Phoebe tells Holden that she is going with him. He angrily refuses, feeling that he has influenced her to want to go with him instead of staying in school. She cries and refuses to speak to him. Knowing that she will follow him, Holden walks to the zoo, letting her anger lift. Phoebe starts talking to Holden again, and Holden promises to forget about his plan to run away and return home on Wednesday. He buys her a ticket for the carousel in the park and watches her ride an old horse on it. As Holden watches her ride the carousel, his own mood lifts. Soon he is nearly moved to tears with remorse, longing, and bittersweet happiness.

At this point in the book, he explains that he will be going to another school in the fall again but doesn't know for sure if he will start applying himself. He mentions that he is being psychoanalyzed and finishes with the words, "Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody."

John Irving-A Widow for One Year

Drama

Ruth Cole is a complex, often self-contradictory character--a "difficult" woman. By no means is she conventionally "nice," but she will never be forgotten.

Ruth's story is told in three parts, each focusing on a crucial time in her life. When we first meet her--on Long Island, in the summer of 1958--Ruth is only four.

The second window into Ruth's life opens in the fall of 1990, when Ruth is an unmarried woman whose personal life is not nearly as successful as her literary career. She distrusts her judgment in men, for good reason.

A Widow for One Year closes in the autumn of 1995, when Ruth Cole is a forty-one-year-old widow and mother. She's about to fall in love for the first time.

Richly comic, as well as deeply disturbing A Widow for One Year is a multilayered love story of astonishing emotional force. Both ribald and erotic, it is also a brilliant novel about the passage of time and the relentlessness of grief.

Judith Lennox-The Dark-eyed Girls

Drama

Set in the late 1960s and 1970s, "The Dark-Eyed Girls" tells the story of three friends, Liv, Katherine and Rachel, and their changing relationships over the years. Liv, the book's central character, is romantic and looking for love. Katherine is envious of others' good fortune, hungry for experience and determined to avoid the domesticity that has, in her eyes, enslaved her mother. Only Rachel, the beautiful only child of wealthy parents, seems to want for nothing. Then a terrible tragedy occurs, and the girls' friendship is altered forever...

Lolly Winston-Good Grief

Humorous fiction

When Sophie Stanton is widowed at thirty-six, instead of cycling through the typical five stages of grief, she careens through fifteen: Denial, Oreos, Anger, Depression, Escrow, Ashes, Lust, Bargaining, Waitressing, Mentoring, Dating, Baking, Acceptance, Goodwill, and Thanksgiving.

In a high-achiever age when women are expected to be good at everything, Sophie wants desperately to be a good widow. A graceful, composed, Jackie Kennedy kind of widow. But Sophie is more the Jack Daniels type. Self medicating with cartons of ice cream for breakfast, and showing up at work in her bathrobe and bunny slippers, soon she's lost not only her husband, but also her job, her house, and her waistline. In Sophie's words: “The Funny thing about rock bottom is there's stuff underneath. You think, This is it: It's all uphill from here! Then you discover the escalator goes down one more floor to another level of bargain basement junk.” With a darkly comic edge Sophie manages to start over, and ultimately she discovers her own happily-ever-after.

Susan Elizabeth Phillips-Breathing Room

Romance

Isabel Favor is a life-style coach whose life is falling apart. Her accountant has run off with her money, her reputation is in tatters and her fiance has just dumped her for an older woman. Isabel needs to escape so she heads for Tuscany determined to find a little perspective - breathing room - and start over. Instead she ends up in a hotel room with Hollywood bad boy Lorenzo Gage. He makes his living killing people...on the screen at least. Ren's reputation is blacker than black. But when you're everyone's favourite villain, it goes with the territory. Isabel's always prided herself on her neatly ordered life. But look where being good has got her. Maybe it's time to live a little...?

Susan Elizabeth Phillips-This Heart of Mine

Romance

Molly Somerville has long had a secret crush on the Chicago Stars' key player, quarterback Kevin Tucker. Kevin's career is hard for Molly to escape, given that Molly's older sister, Phoebe, is the owner of the team. Consequently, Molly also knows about Kevin's penchant for dating gorgeous bimbos and his puzzling need to partake of risky, life-endangering hobbies, a trait that drives Phoebe crazy. Molly, however, can relate to this part of Kevin, as she has shown a tendency toward some pretty reckless behavior herself.

When fate places Molly and Kevin alone together for a weekend in Phoebe's isolated cabin, sparks fly and passions flare when both refuse to leave. In the end, Molly makes her most reckless decision yet by climbing into bed while Kevin is sleeping and seducing him before he knows what's happened. When she ends up pregnant, Kevin insists on marrying her for propriety's sake. And when Molly then has a miscarriage, it leaves both of them wounded and wary. Forced to spend their summer at the beleaguered and rundown wilderness resort that Kevin has inherited from a relative, the twosome spruce the place up and get it to turn a profit. In the process they discover the healing power of love, but not before learning some hard truths about themselves, their pasts, and their feelings for each other.

Allison Pearson-I Don't Know How She Does It

Chic lit

A victim of time famine, 35 year-old Kate counts seconds like other women count calories. A comedy about failure, a tragedy about success, this novel is the untold story of the professional working mum at the start of the 21st century.