Wednesday, 24 November 2010
The Distant Hours, Kate Morton
Friday, 19 November 2010
Don't Miss These Great Books.....
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Thursday, 28 October 2010
Top Ten Bestsellers - October 2010
1262 A.D. In the dusty heat of French fields, knights battle for supremacy in a fierce tournament. At its violent heart is Edward of England, who leads his men under the banner of the dragon, a potent reference to the legendary King Arthur. As heir to the throne, Edward has a vision for his future kingdom -- a vision sprung from the words of an ancient prophecy written in the time of Arthur himself -- that will change the face of Britain forever. More
2) Fall of Giants by Ken Follett
A huge novel that follows five families through the world-shaking dramas of the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the struggle for votes for women.
It is 1911. The Coronation Day of King George V. The Williams, a Welsh coal-mining family, is linked by romance and enmity to the Fitzherberts, aristocratic coal-mine owners. Lady Maud Fitzherbert falls in love with Walter von Ulrich, a spy at the German Embassy in London. Their destiny is entangled with that of an ambitious young aide to U.S. President Woodrow Wilson and to two orphaned Russian brothers, whose plans to emigrate to America fall foul of war, conscription and revolution. More
3) The Fort by Bernard Cornwell
n the summer of 1779 a British force of fewer than a thousand Scottish infantry backed by three sloops-of-war , was sent to what is now Castine in the State of Maine. The War of Independence was in its third year and the Scots were the only British troops between Canada and New York. Their orders were to make a garrison that could serve as a safe haven and a naval base. The State of Massachusetts was determined to expel the British and sent a fleet of forty vessels and some one thousand infantrymen to ' captivate , kill and destroy ' the invaders. But what followed was a classic example of impetuosity and irresolution on one side , and calm professionalism on the other. More
4) Mr Chartwell by Robecca Hunt
It's July, 1964. In bed at home in Kent, Winston Churchill is waking up. There's a visitor in the room, someone he hasn't seen for a while, a dark, mute bulk, watching him with tortured concentration. It's Mr. Chartwell. In her terraced house in Battersea, Esther Hammerhans, young, vulnerable and alone, goes to answer the door to her new lodger. Through the glass she sees a vast silhouette the size of a mattress. It's Mr. Chartwell. More
5) Worth Dying For by Lee Child
Has Jack Reacher finally met his match? 61 Hours ended with Reacher trapped in a desperate situation from which escape seemed impossible. Even for him. Was that really the end of the road for the maverick loner? More
6) Spook's Bestiary by Joseph Delaney
A companion title to the phenomenally successful Spook’s series. Discover how to bind a boggart and deal with a dead witch in this fascinating and lavishly illustrated Spook’s own “notebook”. A must for die-hard fans of the series and an irresistible introduction to the dark and the dangerous for new recruits. More
7) Oscar Wilde and the Nest of Vipers by Gyles Brandreth
The fourth of Gyles Brandreth’s acclaimed series of Victorian murder mysteries, Oscar Wilde and the Nest of Vipers opens in the spring of 1890 at a glamorous reception hosted by the Duke and Duchess of Albemarle. All London’s haut monde is there, including the Prince of Wales, who counts the Albemarles as close friends. Although it is the first time Oscar and Bertie have met, Oscar seems far more interested in Rex LaSalle, a young actor, who disarmingly claims to be a vampire... More
8) Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaniemi
Jean le Flambeur is a post-human criminal, mind burglar, confidence artist and trickster. His origins are shrouded in mystery, but his exploits are known throughout the Heterarchy - from breaking into the vast Zeusbrains of the Inner System to steal their thoughts, to stealing rare Earth antiques from the aristocrats of the Moving Cities of Mars. Except that Jean made one mistake. Now he is condemned to play endless variations of a game-theoretic riddle in the vast virtual jail of the Axelrod Archons - the Dilemma Prison - against countless copies of himself. More
9) Harbour by John Ajvide Lindqvist
It was a beautiful winter's day. Anders, his wife and their feisty six-year-old, Maja, set out across the ice of the Swedish archipelago to visit the lighthouse on Gavasten. There was no one around, so they let her go on ahead. And she disappeared, seemingly into thin air, and was never found. Two years later, Anders is a broken alcoholic, his life ruined. He returns to the archipelago, the home of his childhood and his family. But all he finds are Maja's toys and through the haze of memory, loss and alcohol, he realizes that someone or something is trying to communicate with him. Soon enough, his return sets in motion a series of horrifying events which exposes a mysterious and troubling relationship between the inhabitants of the remote island and the sea. More
10) Fool's Crusade by Pip Vaughan-Hughes
ing Louis of France is about to invade Egypt on his vainglorious Seventh Crusade. The Pope and the Emperor are at each other's throats. And where greed and ambition cross, blood soon follows. Caught in the middle of this is Petroc of Auneford, or Patch to his friends. After years aboard the Cormoran, a ship of relic-traders and adventurers, Patch has finally returned to living on dry land. Now a rich man, running a bank in Venice, life should be easy. But money and liberty are not the same thing - and all too soon, Patch is being called on by all sides to do their bidding in this deadly game of power and glory. More
Friday, 22 October 2010
Tainted Love
But no matter how much I liked it, it did get me thinking about something that has bugged me since reading Twilight, obsessive love in young adult fiction. In I Am Number Four the lead character - John/Number Four finds a love interest in Sarah Hart and from that point on they are almost inseperable, combined with how young the two characters are this concerns me a little, are we teaching teenagers that this is a love they should aspire to at such a young age? Thankfully I Am Number Four does a lot to waylay my concerns on this point because it addresses the problem of letting your partner become your whole life (in the explanation of why Sarah broke up with her ex) and presents a picture of something that could be seen as quite healthy (no jealousy etc.) but I still can't help worrying about it. I also can't help worrying about my mental state; Am I just getting old? Can't I remember what having a first love was like at that age? Why am I even so angry about this? Well, I thought I'd analyse it for your benefit.
I was visiting my family a few weeks ago and to my absolute horror my fourteen-year-old cousin announced that she was looking for a love like Bella and Edward's in Twilight, what? I think my jaw actually dropped to the floor. To have my intelligent, independent doesn't-follow-the-crowd cousin say this to me was like being punched in the stomach, it disturbs me. Let's just think about this a moment, Bella has no real friends to speak of, no life outside of Edward and her only ambition is to become a vampire so she might live an eternal life with him - I wouldn't really want anyone thinking that this was OK, let alone something to aspire to. This isn't just seen in young adults either, I read an article where women had broken up with their partners purely because their love wasn't like the love in Twilight. Call me a cynic but this is real life, not Stephanie Meyer's dream! In real life you don't fall in love with someone without any justification and they certainly don't fall in love with you because your blood smells tasty. What's really disturbing though is that if these grown women can abandon reason for fiction then what chance to teenagers have?
If I'm honest with myself this lunacy isn't entirely what's worrying me, it's more that in my mind obessive love is dangerous - if you're willing to let your partner treat you in any way they want for the all-consuming love you aspire to - how far will you go? And where would you turn once you've abandoned all your friends and family for this love? It bothers me that we are showing teenagers that this is OK, that such an intense love is a good thing.
This whole thing annoys me to the point of distraction but I'm not saying ban the books, I'm not a Nazi, what I would like to do though is find out what other people think, so come on - give us a comment, do you agree? What would you do about it if anything? Did you enjoy I Am Number Four? Are you here to tell me that you have, in fact, fallen in love with someone because their blood smelt good? Either way let me know and let's see where this goes... Nicola.
Friday, 1 October 2010
This week at Goldsboro...
Friday, 24 September 2010
Nourishment
A part of its genius, I feel, is the light-hearted tone of the book which thoroughly belies the seriousness of its subject, and yet somehow never undermines it. While I found myself unable to fully empathise with the characters (as the comic narration creates something of a barrier in this respect) I nevertheless found myself understanding all that they were going through. I was able to engage with the book and the lives of the protagonists on an entirely different level to any I have experienced before, so much so that I can barely account for how Woodward has managed it. I have a small inkling however, that it has something to do with the seamless transition between character viewpoints that pervades the book; from Mrs Head to Tory, Donald and Branson, each character has a wonderfully constructed point of view that allows the reader to see different aspects of the same occurrence. Tory's letters serve as a brilliant example of this; at first Donald's apparently illogical and relentless insistence on Tory writing him a dirty letter tends to grate on the nerves a bit and left me wondering at his blinkered persistence and Tory's equally annoying refusal to try, but as the novel progresses we learn the reasons behind his requests and, for me at least, it serves as a strong reminder that assumptions can be dangerous things.
The other great thing about this book is the perfect title! Perfect because it is interwoven so tightly with the book that I can't seem to make it come unstuck. Addressing not just issues of edible nourishment (as I initially thought) but also issues of sexual and emotional nourishment (without being cheesy); the prose is engaging, witty and whole-hearted, altogether it makes for a fantastic read.
Thoroughly recommended. Signed copies are available from today.
Thursday, 23 September 2010
Victor Lodato wins the PEN USA
PEN USA, the West Coast centre for the renowned writers' organization International PEN, has unveiled the winners of its prestigious 2010 Literary Awards competition. We are delighted that a previous Book of the Month, a Goldsboro Books exclusive slipcase edition, Mathilda Savitch by Victor Lodato won the fiction prize. We have a handful of copies left of this beautiful edition.
Friday, 17 September 2010
Annexed, Sharon Dogar and a new blogger...
Hello Book Lovers,
My name is Nicola and I am the new blogger on the block for Goldsboro Books! Nice to meet you all, unfortunately for you, you now have to put up with my inane wittering until such a time as David comes to his senses and decides to drag me kicking and screaming from the computer, before changing the password and username to get on here, and then seriously considering the future of my employment at Goldsboro...
A few weeks ago we had a signing by Sharon Dogar of her new, rather controversial book, Annexed and I was lucky enough to be at her launch party with Andersen Press. I can safely say, despite the uproar surrounding it, it was a very sensitive, illuminating account of life in the Annexe. Dogar I think has a special talent for dealing with the teenage years of her protagonists with sensitivity and clarity and this is no different, she has picked a difficult subject but has done it justice, exploring a fresh viewpoint of life in the Annexe and considering a question with an otherwise slightly elusive answer – what happened after Anne’s Diary?
It is all too easy to forget that events such as the Holocaust could be repeated – here I will reference a film called The Wave. Based on an actual sociological experiment it features a class of school children that believe the Holocaust could never happen in today’s society. The teacher then creates a group which the class vote to call The Wave, complete with salute and uniform. Over the course of a week the children form a tight-knit group, rejecting those that speak out against The Wave and creating a creepy group mentality that quickly takes over the school, resulting in terrifying consequences when the teacher then tries to make his point and disband The Wave. An extremely scary comment on how easy it actually was and is to fall into the mentality the Nazi’s created.
But I digress, the point is, in my opinion, Annexed serves to keep these issues alive, it is something we should continually be considering, and whilst Anne’s diary should always be a compulsory text in anybody’s reading list, Annexed casts a fresh light on some important issues the youth of today who, languishing in our fairly comfortable society, might otherwise forget. Signed and dated copies are available now.
Thursday, 16 September 2010
New Books from Goldsboro Books
Greetings!
Not too long ago, it would have been hard to think of examples of Scandinavian crime fiction beyond Miss Smilla's Feeling of Snow. Suddenly, readers are blessed with a range of choices. What has led to such a renaissance of crime fiction from scandanavia? Well, Steig Larsson helped! The Millenium Trilogy has been a world-wide success. Henning Mankell's Wallender series is also garnering deserved praise and more readers. Plus Camilla Lackberg and Yrsa Sigurðardóttir are building nicely.
The new one's with a lot of promise are award-winning journalist Anders Roslund and ex-criminal Börge Hellström who are Sweden's most acclaimed fiction duo. Their unique ability to combine inside knowledge of the brutal reality of criminal life with searing social criticism in complex, intelligent plots has put them at the forefront of modern Scandinavian crime writing. Three Seconds is to be published in the next week here in the UK and we are delighted that both authors will be visiting Goldsboro Books to sign this fantastic novel. Watch a trailer here.
Camilla Ceder's Frozen Moment is her debut novel in English and we are delighted to have signed, lined (in Swedish) and dated copies which were signed by the author at her home in Sweden.
Away from Scandanavia, we are pleased to announce that we have signed, lined and dated copies of 15 Miles by Rob Scott which is the author's first solo novel. He wrote the Eldarn trilogy, THE HICKORY STAFF, LESSEK'S KEY and THE LARION SENATORS with Jay Gordon. We are the only UK bookshop to have signed copies.
Ruth Rendell visited us yesterday on her return from her Australian tour to sign copies of Tigerlilly's Orchids. From the much-loved Inspector Wexford series or her disturbing stand-alone psychological crime novels this will appeal more to the fans of the latter.
Jed Rubenfeld is the author of The Interpretation of Murder which was the bestselling UK adult paperback title of 2007, and winner of the Richard and Judy Bookclub. The Death Instinct is his second novel and the author visited us this morning on his whistle-stop tour of the UK to sign and date copies.
Peter F. Hamilton has also been to sign copies of The Evolutionary Void.
Daniel Kehlmann's Measuring the World was a huge success and Fame is his new published novel here in the UK. We have signed and dated copies available.
We have many, many more new releases.. Visit our New Arrivals Page.
Sincerely,
David Headley
Goldsboro Books Limited