New Books December

Find these books and more on our online library catalogue.

 

Entering 'early middle age' Adrian Mole lives alone with his two sons and a growing suspicion that life is passing him by. But that's the least of his problems. Forced to move his family to the notorious Gaitskell Estate, Adrian is soon doing hilarious battle once again with the fickle finger of fate - and more immediately: feral neighbours and rampant head lice, an on-off affair with shaven-headed housing officer Pamela Pigg, Pandora Braithwaite MP's Westminster tribulations, a fraternal reunion from hell, moral decline in The Archers, several disastrous brushes with employment and even a flirtation with therapy (and his therapists).  Can Adrian make sense of his own life at a time when the entire world seems to have lost the plot?

 

"The Ladies' Delight" (Au Bonheur des Dames) recounts the development of the modern department store in late nineteenth-century Paris. The store is a symbol of capitalism, of the modern city, and of the bourgeois family; it is emblematic of consumer culture and the changes in sexual attitudes and class relations taking place at the end of the century. Octave Mouret, the store's owner-manager, masterfully exploits the desires of his female customers. . This new translation of the eleventh book in the Rougon-Macquart cycle captures the spirit of one of Zola's greatest novels of the modern city.

 

 

In the summer of 1965, when rock and roll music fills the dance halls and a new era is dawning, the Marvell factory in Grafton is buzzing with life. Could it be because singing sensation Sandie Shaw is coming to town? Or maybe its because, for some of the factory workers, even bigger events are taking place off the clock... 
Wendy Robertson's heart-warming new novel is an enchanting tale of friendship, self-discovery, and the joys and hardships of factory life. For factory life is never a simple life, as theres always more going on than meets the eye.

 

Marcus, an English doctor whose Afghani wife was murdered by the Taliban, opens his home - itself an eerily beautiful monument to his losses - to the others: Lara, from St. Petersburg, looking for evidence of her soldier brother who disappeared decades before in the Soviet invasion; David, an American and former spy who has seen his ideals turned inside out; Casa, a young Afghani whose hatred of the West plunges him into the depths of zealotry; and James, the Special Forces soldier in whom David sees a dangerous revival of the unquestioning notions of right and wrong that he himself once held.