|
'A great debut. You'll be itching to read more.' Anthony Horowitz
ITCH by Simon Mayo is out now in hardback, ebook & audio. Find out more at www...
more
'A great debut. You'll be itching to read more.' Anthony Horowitz
ITCH by Simon Mayo is out now in hardback, ebook & audio. Find out more at www.itchingham.co.uk
Itchingham Lofte is an element hunter. He's an ordinary 14 year old boy, with one extraordinary mission -- to collect all the elements in the periodic table. But as he soon finds out, some elements are so dangerous they can kill...
When Itch is given a strange rock by a mysterious man, it turns out to be something that no scientist has ever seen. Those who want the rock will stop at nothing, and if it gets into the wrong hands, the whole world could be in danger.
Soon, Itch has to draw on everything he knows -- and the contents of his rucksack -- to keep himself and his family alive...
less
|
|
| |
|
|
randomaudio uploaded a new video
(1 month ago)
Author Nathan Englander discusses his new audiobook of short stories, WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT ANNE FRANK, available from Random House...
more
Author Nathan Englander discusses his new audiobook of short stories, WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT ANNE FRANK, available from Random House Audio February 7, 2012. The audiobooks eight stories are read by a full cast.
These eight new stories from the celebrated novelist and short-story writer Nathan Englander display a gifted young author grappling with the great questions of modern life, with a command of language and the imagination that place Englander at the very forefront of contemporary American fiction.
The title story, inspired by Raymond Carver's masterpiece, is a provocative portrait of two marriages in which the Holocaust is played out as a devastating parlor game. In the outlandishly dark "Camp Sundown" vigilante justice is undertaken by a group of geriatric campers in a bucolic summer enclave. "Free Fruit for Young Widows" is a small, sharp study in evil, lovingly told by a father to a son. "Sister Hills" chronicles the history of Israel's settlements from the eve of the Yom Kippur War through the present, a political fable constructed around the tale of two mothers who strike a terrible bargain to save a child. Marking a return to two of Englander's classic themes, "Peep Show" and "How We Avenged the Blums" wrestle with sexual longing and ingenuity in the face of adversity and peril. And "Everything I Know About My Family on My Mother's Side" is suffused with an intimacy and tenderness that break new ground for a writer who seems constantly to be expanding the parameters of what he can achieve in the short form.
less
|
|
| |
|
|
randomaudio uploaded a new video
(1 month ago)
Author Sally Bedell Smith sat down with us as she recorded the forward to her new biography of Queen Elizabeth II, ELIZABETH THE QUEEN, available f...
more
Author Sally Bedell Smith sat down with us as she recorded the forward to her new biography of Queen Elizabeth II, ELIZABETH THE QUEEN, available from Random House Audio January 10, 2012.
About this book:
In this magisterial new biography, New York Times bestselling author Sally Bedell Smith brings to life one of the world's most fascinating and enigmatic women: Queen Elizabeth II.
From the moment of her ascension to the throne in 1952 at the age of twenty-five, Queen Elizabeth II has been the object of unparalleled scrutiny. But through the fog of glamour and gossip, how well do we really know the world's most famous monarch? Drawing on numerous interviews and never-before-revealed documents, acclaimed biographer Sally Bedell Smith pulls back the curtain to show in intimate detail the public and private lives of Queen Elizabeth II, who has led her country and Commonwealth through the wars and upheavals of the last sixty years with unparalleled composure, intelligence, and grace.
In Elizabeth the Queen, we meet the young girl who suddenly becomes "heiress presumptive" when her uncle abdicates the throne. We meet the thirteen-year-old Lilibet as she falls in love with a young navy cadet named Philip and becomes determined to marry him, even though her parents prefer wealthier English aristocrats. We see the teenage Lilibet repairing army trucks during World War II and standing with Winston Churchill on the balcony of Buckingham Palace on V-E Day. We see the young Queen struggling to balance the demands of her job with her role as the mother of two young children. Sally Bedell Smith brings us inside the palace doors and into the Queen's daily routines—the "red boxes" of documents she reviews each day, the weekly meetings she has had with twelve prime ministers, her physically demanding tours abroad, and the constant scrutiny of the press—as well as her personal relationships: with Prince Philip, her husband of sixty-four years and the love of her life; her children and their often-disastrous marriages; her grandchildren and friends.
Compulsively readable and scrupulously researched, Elizabeth the Queen is a close-up view of a woman we've known only from a distance, illuminating the lively personality, sense of humor, and canny intelligence with which she meets the most demanding work and family obligations. It is also a fascinating window into life at the center of the last great monarchy.
less
|
|
| |
|
|
randomaudio uploaded a new video
(2 months ago)
Narrator Beata Pozniak reads a preview from Eve Stachniak's THE WINTER PALACE: A Novel of Catherine the Great, available from Random House Audio Ja...
more
Narrator Beata Pozniak reads a preview from Eve Stachniak's THE WINTER PALACE: A Novel of Catherine the Great, available from Random House Audio January 10, 2012.
About the book:
Barbara is the orphaned daughter of a Polish bookbinder, a lowly servant who has only her cunning and her intelligence to raise her station in life. Sophia is a German princess, a pretty girl with a domineering, foolish mother and one chance to change her destiny--to marry the Duke Peter, nephew of the Empress and next in line for Russia's throne. Barbara becomes Varvara, one of the most cunning spies for the Chancellor of Russia and for the Empress Elizabeth. Listening to the conversations, learning every detail, she can change lives with a well-placed word in the ear of Russia's monarch. Sophia becomes Catherine the Great. As these two young women grow up, each will play a role in the greater glory of the Russian empire. Before her reign will have ended, Catherine will have brought Russia into the modern age, with culture and a military to rival any other nation in the world. She will do it through ruthlessness. She will do it through brilliance. She will do it through her most loyal spies, those who are invisible to others, those who hear and see all...
less
|
|
| |
|
|
randomaudio uploaded a new video
(2 months ago)
Narrator Tim Kang offers a preview (and real-life look into the recording process!) of Adam Johnson's THE ORPHAN MASTER'S SON, available from Rando...
more
Narrator Tim Kang offers a preview (and real-life look into the recording process!) of Adam Johnson's THE ORPHAN MASTER'S SON, available from Random House Audio January 10, 2012.
About the book:
Part-bildungsroman, part-political thriller, part-expose of the most secretive country in the world, The Orphan Master's Son is the story of a North Korean orphan who rises up through the ranks of the DPRK army as a tunnel soldier, then as a professional kidnapper, a military intelligence officer, ultimately to become--for a very short time--a rival to the Dear Leader, Kim Jong Il. Yet it is also a love story--as one character in the novel claims, "the greatest North Korean love story ever told"-- in which the protagonist, Jun Doh, an assassin shunned by society since birth and stalked in his dreams by apparitions of love, finally finds it with the wife of a man whom he has just replaced in the Dear Leader's ranks. And it's also a realistic portrait of a hidden, haunted and surreal place, an exploration of a notorious totalitarian regime and the physical and moral devastation of the North Korean people. However way you slice it, this is a towering literary achievement, a love story packed with tenderness and dread, its characters battling for their lives on every page. An excerpt from The Orphan Master's Son: Citizens, gather round your loudspeakers, for we bring important updates! In your kitchens, in your offices, on your factory floors--wherever your loudspeaker is located, turn up the volume! In local news, our Dear Leader Kim Jong Il was seen offering on-the-spot guidance to the engineers deepening the Taedong River channel. While the Dear Leader lectured to the dredge operators, many doves were seen to spontaneously flock above him, hovering to provide our Reverend General some much needed shade on a hot day. Also to report is a request from Pyongyang's Minister of Public Safety, who asks that while pigeon-snaring season is in full swing, trip wires and snatch loops be placed out of the reach of our youngest comrades. And don't forget, citizens: the ban on stargazing is still in effect. Later in the broadcast, we'll reveal the winning recipe for this month's cooking contest. Hundreds of recipes were entered, but only one can be declared the best way to prepare--Pumpkin Rind Soup! But first comes grave news from the East Sea, where American aggressors flirt with acts of all-out war after stopping and looting a North Korean fishing vessel. Once again, the Yankees have violated Korean waters to steal the precious contents of a sovereign ship, all the while accusing us of everything from banditry to kidnapping to cruelty to sharks. First off, it is the Americans and their puppets who are the pirates of the sea. Secondly, did an American woman not recently row around the entire world to defect to our great nation, a worker's paradise where citizens want for nothing? That alone should be proof enough that these persistent accusations of kidnapping are ludicrous.
less
|
|
