Small Island

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Margaret Atwood

Oryx and Crake is at once an unforgettable love story and a compelling vision of the future. Snowman, known as Jimmy before mankind was overwhelmed by a plague, is struggling to survive in a world where he may be the last human, and mourning the loss of his best friend, Crake, and the beautiful and elusive Oryx whom they both loved. In search of answers, Snowman embarks on a journey–with the help of the green-eyed Children of Crake–through the lush wilderness that was so recently a great city, until powerful corporations took mankind on an uncontrolled genetic engineering ride. Margaret Atwood projects us into a near future that is both all too familiar and beyond our imagining.

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Hilary Mantel

Alison Hart is a medium by trade: dead people talk to her, and she talks back. With her flat-eyed, flint-hearted sidekick, Colette, she tours the dormitory towns of London's orbital road, passing on messages from dead ancestors: 'Granny says she likes your new kitchen units.' Alison's ability to communicate with spirits is a torment rather than a gift. Behind her plump, smiling and bland public persona is a desperate woman. She knows that the next life holds terrors that she must conceal from her clients. Her days and nights are haunted by the men she knew in her childhood, the thugs and petty criminals who preyed upon her hopeless, addled mother, Emmie. They infiltrate her house, her body and her soul; the more she tries to be rid of them, the stronger and nastier they become. This tenth novel by Hilary Mantel is a witty and deeply sinister story of dark secrets and forces, set in an England that jumps at its own shadow, a country whose banal self-absorption is shot through by fear of the engulfing dark.

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Gillian Slovo

"Irina Davydovna, survivor of the ice ship Chelyuskin, which sank in the Arctic circle, is back in her beloved home city of Leningrad. She thinks her troubles are over. But this is Leningrad in 1933. As Stalin begins to turn against the city, and his old favourite Sergei Kirov, Irina finds herself caught up in forces beyond anyone's control." "Loyalties, belief, love and family ties: all are about to be tested to the limit in one of the most devastating moments of human history." "There is Boris Aleksandrovich, who, having persuaded Irina Davydovna to go on the ice ship, feels honour bound to find her a new position within his family circle. Boris thinks he can negotiate between idealism and politics, yet his daughter, Natasha, a carefree girl, will be almost crushed by his compromises. Meanwhile, his oldest friend, Anton Antonovich, in an uncharacteristic moment, rescues a young orphan he finds on a Moscow train, only to discover that her ferocity for life will eventually threaten his own." "And watching all this unfold is Irina: wise, ironic, marvellous Irina, who comes to understand how love for another may, in the end, be more powerful and more profound than blind loyalty to an idea."--BOOK JACKET.

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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is an acclaimed literary masterpiece celebrating major critical honors and timeless storytelling.