Light Perpetual
- 336 pages
- 12 hours of reading
From the author of Golden Hill 'Glorious.' Evening Standard'Exhilarating.' TLS'Brilliant.' Observer'Dazzling.' The Times'Extraordinary.' Financial Times'Superb.' Guardian'My god he can write.






From the author of Golden Hill 'Glorious.' Evening Standard'Exhilarating.' TLS'Brilliant.' Observer'Dazzling.' The Times'Extraordinary.' Financial Times'Superb.' Guardian'My god he can write.
A lost Australian classic, from the Booker shortlisted author, Madelaine St John
Beginning eight years ago on the outskirts of Birmingham, where car factories have been replaced by Poundland, and London, where frenzied riots give way to Olympic fever, Middle England follows a brilliantly vivid cast of characters through a time of immense change. There are newlyweds Ian and Sophie, who disagree about the future of the country and, possibly, the future of their relationship; Doug, the political commentator who writes impassioned columns about austerity from his Chelsea townhouse, and his radical teenage daughter who will stop at nothing in her quest for social justice; Benjamin Trotter, who embarks on an apparently doomed new career in middle age, and his father Colin, whose last wish is to vote in the European referendum. And within all these lives is the story of modern England- a story of nostalgia and delusion; of bewilderment and barely-suppressed rage. Following in the footsteps of The Rotters' Club and The Closed Circle, Jonathan Coe's new novel is the novel for our strange new times.
'The writing glows with emotional intelligence. This atmospheric debut...had me sniffing copiously' Daily Mail
A novel about the hundreds of tiny connections between the public and private worlds and how they affect us. It is about: the legacy of war and the end of innocence; how comedy and politics are battling it out and comedy might have won; and living in a city where bankers need cinemas in their basements and others need food banks down the street.
Harry Bosch has been given three years before he must retire from the LAPD, and he wants cases more fiercely than ever. In one morning, he gets two. DNA from a 1989 rape and murder matches a 29-year-old convicted rapist. Was he an eight-year-old killer or has something gone terribly wrong in the new Regional Crime Lab? The latter possibility could compromise all of the lab's DNA cases currently in court. Then Bosch and his partner are called to a death scene fraught with internal politics. Councilman Irvin Irving's son jumped or was pushed from a window at the Chateau Marmont. Irving, Bosch's longtime nemesis, has demanded that Harry handle the investigation. Relentlessly pursuing both cases, Bosch makes two chilling discoveries: a killer operating unknown in the city for as many as three decades, and a political conspiracy that goes back into the dark history of the police department.
A counter-terrorist operation, code-named Wildlife, is being mounted on the British crown colony of Gibraltar. Its purpose- to capture and abduct a hight-value jihadist arms buyer. Its authors- an ambitious Foreign Office minister, a private defense contractor who is also his bosom firend, and a shady American CIA operative of the evangelical far right. So delicate is the operation that even the minister's private secretary, Toby Bell, is not cleared for it. Three years later, a disgraced Special Forces soldier delivers a message from the dead. Was Operation Wildlife the success it was cracked up to be - or a human tragedy that was ruthlessly covered up? Summoned by Sir Christopher ('Kit') Probyn, retired British diplomat, to his decaying Cornish manor house, and closely observed by Kit's daughter, Emily, Toby must choose between his conscience and duty to his Service. If the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing, how can he keep silent?
Music, murder ... and Madeleine William has a lot on his mind. Firstly there's The Alaska Factory, the band he plays in. They're no good and they make his songs sound about as groovy as an unpressed record. In fact they're so bad he's seriously thinking of leaving to join a group called The Unfortunates. Secondly, there's Madeleine, his high-maintenance girlfriend whose idea of a night of passion is an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical followed by a doorstep peck on the cheek. Maybe they're not soulmates after all? Lastly, there's the bizarre murder he's just witnessed. The guiding force behind The Unfortunates lies bludgeoned to death at his feet and, unfortunately for William, there aren't too many other suspects standing nearby ...
Seven months into her pregnancy, Rachel discovers that her husband is in love with another woman. The fact that this woman has a 'neck as long as an arm and a nose as long as a thumb' is no consolation. Food sometimes is, though, since Rachel is a cookery writer, and between trying to win Mark back and wishing him dead, she offers us some of her favourite recipes. HEARTBURN is a roller coaster of love, betrayal, loss and - most satisfyingly - revenge. This is Nora Ephron's (screenwriter of WHEN HARRY MET SALLY and SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE) roman a clef: 'I always thought during the pain of the marriage that one day it would make a funny book,' she once said - And it is!
The vision has haunted him for four years--a young woman lying crumpled in death, her hand outstretched in silent supplication. Harry Bosch was taken off the Angella Benton murder case when the production assistant's death was linked with the violent theft of two million dollars from a movie set. Both files were never closed. Now retired from the L.A.P.D., Bosch is determined to find justice for Angella. Without a badge to open doors and strike fear into the guilty, he's on his own. And even in the face of an opponent more powerful and ruthless than any he's ever encountered, Bosch is not backing down.
Chernobyl: the Zone of Exclusion. A ghostly place, deserted and forgotten for almost two decades; now inhabited by militia, shady scavengers, a few reckless scientists, and some elderly Ukrainian peasants . . . This is the eerie and dangerous world Inspector Arkady Renko must navigate if he is to find out the truth behind the death of one of Russia’s richest oligarchs. Pasha Ivanov has been found dead on the pavement outside his luxury high-rise apartment in Moscow. It seems like a straightforward suicide, but Renko, never one to take evidence at face value, refuses to drop the case, and there is something puzzling him: a mountain of salt found in Ivanov’s wardrobe . . . Determined to look deeper into the circumstances of Ivanov’s demise, he acquaints himself with this wealthy businessman’s powerful and corrupt circle, until his investigations lead him to Chernobyl’s notorious Zone of Exclusion, where the body of Lev Timofeyev, Ivanov’s former research partner, has been discovered in a contaminated cemetery . . . Masterfully crafted and told with extraordinary insight and imaginative breadth, the bestselling author of GORKY PARK brings us Renko’s most beguiling and unusual adventure to date.
A dazzling new thriller in which Detective Harry Bosch tears open a 20-year old murder case - with an explosive ending guaranteed to leave all Bosch fans shocked and breathless
In Praise of Older Women is as singular as a lemon tree or a giraffe or a ripe pear. In a voice free of vanity and subterfuge, the writer tells a story of the worst of times, and the ever-shifting truths about girls and youths, men and women and their sexual connections — and mis-connections — in a way that is always luminous and enlightening.
A classic tale from Doris Lessing, Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature 2007, of a family torn apart by the arrival of Ben, their feral fifth child.
Ask the Dust is a virtuoso performance by an influential master of the twentieth-century American novel. It is the story of Arturo Bandini, a young writer in 1930s Los Angeles who falls hard for the elusive, mocking, unstable Camilla Lopez, a Mexican waitress. Struggling to survive, he perseveres until, at last, his first novel is published. But the bright light of success is extinguished when Camilla has a nervous breakdown and disappears . . . and Bandini forever rejects the writer's life he fought so hard to attain.
A hugely significant political novel for the late twentieth century from one of the outstanding writers of the modern era In a London squat a band of bourgeois revolutionaries are united by a loathing of the waste and cruelty they see around them. These maladjusted malcontents try desperately to become involved in terrorist activities far beyond their level of competence. Only Alice seems capable of organising anything. Motherly, practical and determined, she is also easily exploited by the group and ideal fodder for a more dangerous and potent cause. Eventually their naive radical fantasies turn into a chaos of real destruction, but the aftermath is not as exciting as they had hoped. Nonetheless, while they may not have changed the world, their lives will never be the same again...
FROM THE PUBLISHERS OF STONER AND REVOLUTIONARY ROAD COMES REUNIONReunion is a little-known novel. Middle-class Hans is intrigued by the aristocratic new boy, Konradin, and before long they become best friends. Powerful, delicate and daring, Reunion is a story of the fragility, and strength, of the bonds between friends.