Shaun Whiteside
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Michel Houellebecq's Serotonin is a caustic, frightening, hilarious, raunchy, offensive, and politically incorrect novel about the decline of Europe, Western civilization, and humanity in general.
Deeply depressed by his romantic and professional failures, the aging hedonist and agricultural engineer Florent-Claude Labrouste feels he is "dying of sadness." He hates his young girlfriend, and the feeling is almost certainly mutual;
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"The Nazi regime preached an ideology of physical, mental, and moral purity. But as Norman Ohler reveals in this gripping new history, the Third Reich was saturated with drugs. On the eve of World War II, Germany was a pharmaceutical powerhouse, and companies such as Merck and Bayer cooked up cocaine, opiates, and, most of all, methamphetamines, to be consumed by everyone from factory workers to housewives to millions of German soldiers. In fact,...
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"In this sensuous and moving memoir, a young man forms a powerful connection with deer while living alone in the woods for seven years. Geoffroy Delorme does not fit in the human world. As a boy, he dreams of transforming into a fox so he can escape into the forest. As he gets older, he disappears into the woods at night, drawn to the rhythms of animal life. One night, an encounter with a deer changes his life: from then on, he knows he wants to live...
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"A soaring intellectual narrative starring the radical, brilliant, and provocative philosophers Simone de Beauvoir, Hannah Arendt, Simone Weil, and Ayn Rand by the critically acclaimed author of Time of the Magicians, Wolfram Eilenberger The period from 1933 to 1943 was one of the darkest and most chaotic in human history, as the Second World War unfolded with unthinkable cruelty. It was also a crucial decade in the dramatic, intersecting lives of...
6) The wall
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English
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"While vacationing in a hunting lodge in the Austrian mountains, a middle-aged woman awakens one morning to find herself separated from the rest of the world by an invisible wall. With a cat, a dog, and a cow as her sole companions, she learns how to survive and cope with her loneliness. Allegorical yet deeply personal and absorbing, The Wall is at once a critique of modern civilization, a nuanced and loving portrait of a relationship between a woman...
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"From the author of the "wonderfully ingenious" (Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review) novel After the Crash, a thrilling tale of a murder that takes place in Claude Monet's garden and the mystery that surrounds it. Giverny, France. During the day, the town is the home of the famous artist Claude Monet and the gardens where he painted his Water Lilies. But once the tourists have gone, there is a darker side to the peaceful French village....
8) You
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Take one man traveling down the highway.
Imagine him without mercy.
Call him the Traveler and fear him.
Take five girls who open the door to chaos and watch them run.
Put five kilos of heroin and a gun in their luggage.
Call them the Sweet Nightmares and fear them.
Take a father haunted by his past who never forgets a grudge.
Call him the Kingpin and don’t go near him.
All hurtle...
Imagine him without mercy.
Call him the Traveler and fear him.
Take five girls who open the door to chaos and watch them run.
Put five kilos of heroin and a gun in their luggage.
Call them the Sweet Nightmares and fear them.
Take a father haunted by his past who never forgets a grudge.
Call him the Kingpin and don’t go near him.
All hurtle...
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International Bestseller: This “absolute gem of a book” offers a month-by-month account of the year before World War I—one of the most exciting times in the 20th century (The Observer).
“A sexy, comic and occasionally heartbreaking soap opera” for history buffs interested in 20th-century art, music, and literature (Washington Post).
It was the year Henry Ford first put a...
“A sexy, comic and occasionally heartbreaking soap opera” for history buffs interested in 20th-century art, music, and literature (Washington Post).
It was the year Henry Ford first put a...
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"The lunacy of the final months of World War II, as experienced by a young German soldier Distant, silent, often drunk, Walter Urban is a difficult man to have as a father. But his son -- the narrator of this slim, harrowing novel -- is curious about Walter's experiences during World War II, and so makes him a present of a blank notebook in which to write down his memories. Walter dies, however, leaving nothing but the barest skeleton of a story on...
12) Never forget
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"In the town of Yport, during a run along Europe's tallest cliff, Jamal notices a red scarf hanging on a fence. Then he sees the woman, her dress torn, her back to the void, her eyes fixed on his own. Jamal holds the scarf out to her like a buoy. A few seconds later, the stranger's lifeless body is found lying on the icy pebbles of the empty beach below. Around her neck, the red scarf. Everyone thinks he pushed her. He only wanted to save her. That's...
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"A singular man in the history of modern art, betrayed by Vichy, is the subject of this riveting family memoir On September 20, 1940, one of the most famous European art dealers disembarked in New York, one of hundreds of Jewish refugees fleeing Vichy France. Leaving behind his beloved Paris gallery, Paul Rosenberg had managed to save his family, but his paintings--modern masterpieces by Cézanne, Monet, Sisley, and others--were not so fortunate....
14) Lea
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From the author of the international bestseller Night Train to Lisbon, a riveting novel about a father's boundless love for his daughter as her obsessive desire to become a concert violinist drives them both to the brink of destruction.
Martijn van Vliet's daughter, Lea, cuts herself off from the world after the death of her mother. She is brought back to life by the sound of a violin playing in the hall of a train station. Lea vows to learn the...
15) Brother of sleep
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Set against the backdrop of a nineteenth century Alpine village, Brother of Sleep tells the story of Johannes Elias Alder, a musical genius with an uncanny ear who develops his talent in secret midnight sessions at the church organ. Though he plays transcendently, his unrequited love and his struggle to break free from his circumstance threaten to destroy him.
Translated into twenty-four languages and adapted into a film, a ballet, an opera, and...
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An academic finds himself contemplating the unthinkable in a "tour de force" psychological thriller.
Pascal Mercier's critically acclaimed debut novel, Night Train to Lisbon, became an international bestseller and the basis for a film starring Jeremy Irons. Now, in Perlmann's Silence, Mercier delivers a deft psychological portrait of a man striving to get his life back on track in the wake of his beloved wife's death.
Philipp Perlmann, prominent...
17) The weekend
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Bernhard Schlink burst onto the literary scene with the internationally best-selling Oprah's Book Club selection The Reader. Through his unique brand of gripping narrative, Schlink scores again with The Weekend, the tale of old friends who come together for a remarkable reunion. One of the group is a convicted murderer and terrorist, fresh out of prison and joined by his devoted sister. But another guest has remained true to the cause that might spell...
18) Sorry
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English
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Kris, Tamara, Wolf, and Frauke are four young friends with too much time on their hands and one big idea: an agency called Sorry. Unfair dismissals, the wrongly accused, jilted lovers: everyone has a price and the Sorry team will find out what that is. It's as simple as that. The idea catches on like wildfire and the quartet are soon raking in the cash, doing the emotional dirty work for fat cats, businessmen, and the romantically challenged. But...
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"A startling account of corruption and hypocrisy at the heart of the Vatican. In the Closet of the Vatican exposes the rot at the heart of the Vatican and the Roman Catholic Church today. This brilliant piece of investigative writing is based on four years' authoritative research, including extensive interviews with those in power. The celibacy of priests, the condemnation of the use of contraceptives, countless cases of sexual abuse, the resignation...