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  December 2008 Issue

ANITA NOTARO: TAKE A LOOK AT ME NOW

Most of us can remember a defining moment in our lives. A split second when time stood still and our lives changed forever. For Lily Ormond, that moment came late one night when she answered a knock on the door and discovered that while she'd been smashing garlic and rosemary and watching the soaps, her sister Alison had drowned. Coming to terms with losing her only sibling and best friend was devastating, becoming a mother overnight to Ali's three-year-old son Charlie was mind-boggling, but discovering that her identical twin had been leading a secret life for years was almost Lily's undoing. And so begins a journey linked with four men who'd been part of a life she hadn't even known existed. A journey that forces Lily to come to terms with a father who'd never really cared for her, a child who needs her too much and a sister who wasn't what she seemed. It's quite often the case that you only find out about the people you love when they're gone. Notaro turns in an outstanding tale of twin sisters, one of whom, the one with the secret life, dies suddenly, out of her depth on the beach at high tide. As the story unfolds you're left wondering how Lily will react when she finally realises what her sister was up to. Un-put-downable.

Another superb collection of erotic short stories, published by XCITE BOOKS, part of the ACCENT PRESS GROUP. Prepare to be stimulated!

GYORGY DRAGOMAN: THE WHITE KING

Eleven-year-old Djata makes sure he is always home on Sundays. It is the day the State Security came to take his father away, and he believes it will be a Sunday when his father is finally sent home again. In the mean time, Djata lives out a life of adventure. He plays wargames in flaming wheat fields; hunts for gold in abandoned claymines; watches porn in a backroom at the cinema, and plays chess with an automaton. But lurking beneath his rebel boyhood, pulling at his heartstrings, is the continued absence of his father. When he finally uncovers the real truth, he risks losing his childhood for ever. With "The White King", Gyorgy Dragoman won the prestigious Sandor Marai prize. An urgent, humorous and melancholy picture of a childhood behind the Iron Curtain it introduces a stunning new voice in contemporary fiction.

DENNIS LEHANE: THE GIVEN DAY

Danny Coughlin is Boston Police Department royalty and the son of one of the city's most beloved and powerful police captains. His beat is the predominately Italian neighbourhoods of the North End where political dissent is in the air - fresh and intoxicating. On the hunt for hard-line radicals as a favour to his father, Danny is drawn into the ideological fray and finds his loyalties compromised as the police department itself becomes swept up in potentially violent labour strife. Luther Lawrence is on the run. A suspect in a nightclub shooting in Oklahoma, he flees to Boston, leaving his wife behind.He lands a job in the Coughlin household and meets Danny and the family's Irish maid, Nora, who once had a powerful bond. As the mystery of their relationship unravels, Luther finds himself befriending them both even as the turmoil in his own life threatens to overwhelm him. Desperate to return to his wife and child, he must confront the past that has followed him and settle scores with enemies old and new. Set at the end of the Great War, "The Given Day" is meticulously researched and expertly plotted, it will transport you to an unforgettable time and place.

JUAN CARLOS ONETTI: A BRIEF LIFE

Written in 1950, "A Brief Life" is the first novel to feature Onetti's mythical town of Santa Maria. His protagonist Brausen eavesdrops on the conversation of his neighbours, a husband and wife, imagining their gestures, their expressions.Brausen lives with his wife, who has undergone major surgery after being diagnosed with breast cancer. To compensate for this physical void which stalls their caresses, Brausen imagines stories: of Santa Maria, and of a doctor named Diaz Grey.But he not only wishes to imagine himself as someone else, he also seeks release from himself and from the world he knows. He leads many lives, some real and some fantastic, in order to experience a moment of psychic weightlessness - a 'brief life'.

CLAUDE McKAY: BANJO

Lincoln Agrippa Daily, known to his drifter cohorts on the 1920s Marseilles waterfront as 'Banjo', passes his days panhandling and dreaming of starting his own little band, At night Banjo, Malty, Ginger, Dengel, Bugsy, Taloufa, Goosey, and even Jake of Home to Harlem prowl the rough waterfront bistros, drinking, looking for women, playing music, fighting, loving, and talking - about their homes in Senegal, the West Indies, or the American South; about Garvey's Back-to-Africa Movement; about being black. When Ray, a writer, joins the group, it triggers his rediscovery of his African roots and his feeling that, at last, he belongs to a race, 'weighed, tested and poised in the universal scheme.'

Susan Sallis: Rachel's Secret (Corgi PB)

In 1943 two schoolgirls, Rachel and Meriel, best friends in the Gloucestershire city where they have grown up, amuse themselves by tracking down imaginary German spies. It all seems a harmless way of whiling away the long school holidays, until their game turns into a frightening reality, the consequences of which affect their whole lives. Rachel becomes a reporter on the local paper while Meriel, a GI bride, goes to live in Florida. But the bonds which hold them together can never be broken, as the secrets and scandals which first surfaced in those far-off wartime days eventually come to light. I was born in Gloucestershire and went into the city just about every day on the way to school - lovely to hear those old street names again! This is a lovely novel, a sort of rites of passage affair, with great characters and evoking the atmosphere of the era perfectly.

DOWN AND DIRTY 2

These tantalizing tales are the most seductive snippets and erotic anecdotes around. On a mission to provide something scintillating for every erotic desire, Ms. Tyler has included stories about sexy spankings, bondage, menages, fetishes, voyeurism, exhibitionism, and much much more. This follow-up to the best-selling "Down & Dirty," showcases salacious sex writers including Thomas S. Roche, M. Christian, Sage Vivant, N. T. Morley, Rachel Kramer Bussel, Jamie Joy Gatto, and many more. It is perfect for beach reading, during a coffee break, or any time you've got a minute! It includes a frisky foreword by esteemed author Alex Mendra. Very rude indeed - not for the faint-hearted!