The final countdown to all Harry Potter Fans

Today is a special day. It is the day of release for the very last book of Harry Potter - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
Have you got your copy?

You can add your comments and have a discussion about the ending.
Who will die? Who will survive? Do you enjoy the outcome of the story?

Lets all share!
I am going to start reading my book now!!!

I am hoping that Harry will not die! *Fingers crossed*

Man and Boy by Tony Parsons

Harry had it all: a beautiful wife, an adorable four-year-old son, and a high-paying media job. But on the eve of his thirtieth birthday, with one irresponsible act, he threw it all away. Suddenly he finds himself an unemployed single father trying to figure out how to wash his son's hair the way Mommy did and whether green spaghetti is proper breakfast food. This brilliantly engaging novel will tug at your heart as Harry learns to become a father to his son and a son to his aging father, takes stabs at finding new love, and makes the hardest decision of his life.

You pay $13
You get back $7
Status: Not Available

Hollywood Kids by Jackie Collins

Wherever there's money and glamour, trouble can't be too far behind. In Hollywood Kids Jackie Collins takes her readers back to the Hollywood Hills for another absorbing page-turner of sex, ambition, and deadly revenge.

At the novel's core is the Hollywood Five, a clique of jaded twenty-somethings whose parents (all major players) thought that child-rearing ended with naming their offspring after themselves.

Jordanna Levitt is the wildly beautiful daughter of a powerful producer and legendary movie star mother. Even though she flaunts a coltish bad-girl image, Jordanna yearns for more than lounging behind the velvet ropes in chi-chi clubs and existing on a diet of Midnight Cowboys.

Jordanna's best friend, Cheryl Landers, is a sassy, leggy redhead, who is equally idle. Cheryl fills her days doing lunch and buying up Rodeo Drive until a Hollywood Madam asks her to mind shop while she's out of town. Pandering to the rich and famous goes so smoothly that she can't resist turning a trick herself.

Grant Lennon, Jr., the son of the last generation's wildly handsome icon, is a junior agent at International Artists Agents. Not satisfied with the number of starlets he can get on his own, he agrees to "test-run" women for Cheryl's fledgling entrepreneurial venture for a fee.

Marjory Sanderson is a dreamy-eyed head case. Barely recovered from anorexia, she invents one phobia fast on the heels of the last one in order to keep her television magnate father's attention.

Shep Worth, the effeminately beautiful son of a sex-symbol mother, who won't publicly acknowledge her age, is a man who won't publicly acknowledge his alternative sexual preference.

"The group had grown up together, sharing the experience of too much too soon," Collins writes. When you've got your family's great looks, and you're always driving next year's hottest sportscar, and work isn't necessary because you've got a wallet filled with the sky's-the-limit credit cards -- why fight it?

These Hollywood kids have been given everything money can buy except a raison d'être. Though their attitudes are large enough to fill any room, these offspring of privilege are all desperately trying to figure out what to do with themselves. However, life among the rich means life among the damned. A recently released psycho-killer, erotically propelled by blood-lust, is determined to wreak havoc and revenge on the kids' lives.

Interwoven into this central drama are the strong stories of a supporting cast of characters: Michael Scorsinni, the street-smart ex-NYPD detective who is doomed to traverse the country until he finds his kidnapped daughter; Bobby Rush, the ambitious and talented actor/producer, who only has his Hollywood Royalty lineage working against him; Kennedy Chase, the blonde and brilliant young widow and journalist who puts the pieces together before the cops and felicitously learns in the process that she's still capable of falling in love; Luca Carlotti, the dandy mob kingpin with the cobra's smile and a weakness for classy call-girls; and finally there's Charlie Dollar, the stoned movie-star savant, perpetually on the prowl for women to fulfill his fantasy of a polygamous idyll.

Not since best-selling superstar Jackie Collins created Hollywood Wives, the book which established a whole new standard for novels of the American dream in the extreme, has she dealt so incisively and so revealingly with tinseltown, and with the people who live and die there.

Jackie Collins is back doing what she does best, chronicling the lives of the rich, famous and infamous with devastating accuracy. Hollywood Kids is Jackie Collins at her suspenseful roller coaster ride best.


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Status: Available

Everyone Worth Knowing by Lauren Weisberger

When Bette Robinson quits her Manhattan banking job like the impulsive girl she's never been, she knows she won't miss the 80-hour workweeks, her claustrophobic cubicle, or her revolting boss. But soon the novelty of walking her four-pound dog around her unglamorous Murray Hill neighborhood wears as thin as the "What Are You Going to Do With Your Life?" phone calls from her parents.

Then Bette meets Kelly, head of Manhattan's hottest PR firm, and suddenly she has a brand-new job where the primary requirement is to see and be seen inside the VIP rooms of the city's most exclusive nightclubs. Bette learns not to blink at the famous faces, the black Amex cards, or the ruthless paparazzi. Soon she's dating an infamous playboy—and scaring off the one decent guy she meets. Still, how can she complain about a job that pays her to party? But when Bette begins appearing in a vicious new gossip column, she realizes that the line between her personal and professional life is . . . invisible.


You pay $12
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Status: Not Available

About Schmidt by Louis Begley

Proud, traditional, and impeccably organized, Albert Schmidt is a button-down lawyer of the old school. But now, after years of careful management, his life is slowly unraveling. His beloved wife has recently died. He stumbles--or is he being pushed?--into early retirement. And his daughter, his only child, is planning to marry a man Schmidt cannot approve of, for reasons he can scarcely admit, even to himself. As Schmidt gropes for resolutions, he finds unexpected hope in an intense passion that comes out of the blue.
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Set in the Hamptons and Manhattan, infused with black humor and startling eroticism, About Schmidt is both a meditation on loneliness and on the power of romance to unlock the most impenetrable recesses of the heart.

You pay $10
You get back $4
Status: Available

Anna and Mister God by Fynn

A timeless classic with a heart-rending storyline. It is a book for adults who want to take a chance to rediscover who they are and what they believe in. The two protagonists are Fynn, an adult with passion for mathematics, and a street waif called Anna, who has a passion for an entity called God. The two lives intermingle and both lives are enriched. Fynn, the adult, grows up to realise that life is limitless and beautiful, while Anna discovers the possibilities in hte world of numbers. This story helps os realise that Mathematics and the notion of an entity called God can go together and that life is limitless should we choose to open up to love and to rediscover the world we live in.

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Status: Available

My Story by Dave Pelzer

A CHILD CALLED 'IT' is Dave Pelzer's story of a child beaten and starved by his emotionally unstable, alcoholic mother: a mother who played torturous, unpredictable games that left one of her three sons nearly dead. Dave was no longer considered a son, or a boy, but an 'it'. His bed was an old army cot in the basement and when he was allowed food it was scraps from the dogs' bowl. Throughout, Dave kept alive the dream of finding a family who would love and care for him. THE LOST BOY: the harrowing but ultimately uplifting true story of Dave's journey through the foster-care system in search of a family who will love him. A MAN NAMED DAVE: the gripping conclusion to this inspirational trilogy. With extraordinary generosity of spirit, Dave takes us on a journey into his past. At last he confronts his father and ultimately his mother. Finally, Dave finds the courage to break the chains of the past and learn to love, trust and live for the future.

You pay $18
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Status: Available

Angels and Demons by Dan Brown

When world-renowned Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is summoned to a Swiss research facility to analyze a mysterious symbol -- seared into the chest of a murdered physicist -- he discovers evidence of the unimaginable: the resurgence of an ancient secret brotherhood known as the Illuminati... the most powerful underground organization ever to walk the earth.

The Illuminati has surfaced from the shadows to carry out the final phase of its legendary vendetta against its most hated enemy... the Catholic Church.

Langdon's worst fears are confirmed on the eve of the Vatican's holy conclave, when a messenger of the Illuminati announces he has hidden an unstoppable time bomb at the very heart of Vatican City. With the countdown under way, Langdon jets to Rome to join forces with Vittoria Vetra, a beautiful and mysterious Italian scientist, to assist the Vatican in a desperate bid for survival.

Embarking on a frantic hunt through sealed crypts, dangerous catacombs, deserted cathedrals, and even to the heart of the most secretive vault on earth, Langdon and Vetra follow a 400-year old trail of ancient symbols that snakes across Rome toward the long-forgotten Illuminati lair... a secret location that contains the only hope for Vatican salvation.

An explosive international thriller, ANGELS & DEMONS careens from enlightening epiphanies to dark truths as the battle between science and religion turns to war...

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Status: Available

The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom

"All ending are beginnings. We just don't know it at the time..."

#1 New York Times bestseller!!

From the author of the number one New York Times bestseller Tuesdays with Morrie comes this long-awaited follow-up, an enchanting, beautifully crafted novel that explores a mystery only heaven can unfold.

Eddie is a grizzled war veteran who feels trapped in a meaningless life of fixing rides at a seaside amusement park. As the park has changed over the years -- from the Loop-the-Loop to the Pipeline Plunge -- so, too, has Eddie changed, from optimistic youth to embittered old age. His days are a dull routine of work, loneliness, and regret.

Then, on his 83rd birthday, Eddie dies in a tragic accident, trying to save a little girl from a falling cart. With his final breath, he feels two small hands in his -- and then nothing. He awakens in the afterlife, where he learns that heaven is not a lush Garden of Eden, but a place where your earthly life is explained to you by five people who were in it. These people may have been loved ones or distant strangers. Yet each of them changed your path forever.

One by one, Eddie's five people illuminate the unseen connections of his earthly life. As the story builds to its stunning conclusion, Eddie desperately seeks redemption in the still-unknown last act of his life: Was it a heroic success or a devastating failure? The answer, which comes from the most unlikely of sources, is as inspirational as a glimpse of heaven itself.

In The Five People You Meet in Heaven, Mitch Albom gives us an astoundingly original story that will change everything you've ever thought about the afterlife -- and the meaning of our lives here on earth. With a timeless tale, appealing to all, this is a book that readers of fine fiction, and those who loved Tuesdays with Morrie, will treasure.



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Status: Not Available

The Surrendered Single by Laura Doyle

This controversial approach to dating has given thousands of single women everything they need to attract romance, intimacy, and a marriage proposal - while answering the question, "Where are all the good men?"

A Surrendered Single doesn't have to look for Mr. Right - she attracts him.

In her popular workshops, Laura Doyle has taught thousands of accomplished women the principles of The Surrendered Single. They are simple: when you try to control who asks you out, when a man will call, or corner him into a commitment, you drive him away. When you let him woo you instead, tenderness and romance appear. You enjoy the pleasure of being pursued. You feel confident, feminine, and dignified. Dating becomes fun again. Marriage follows. You stop going it alone.

Practical and compassionate, The Surrendered Singleis a step-by-step guide that teaches women how to:

Ask men to ask you out so that you always have a date
Avoid the remorse of, "I wish I hadn't said..."
Judge a man's character in 30 days or less
Become your best self and attract a man at your level
Whether you're recovering from a breakup or divorce, already on the dating scene or wanting to take your current romance to the next level, The Surrendered Singlewill show you how to have the relationship you've always dreamed of...

You pay $15
You get back $9
Status: Available

Why the Toast Always Land Butter Side Down - The Science of Murphy's Law

The frustrating component of life known as Murphy's (or Sod's) Law is no respecter of persons. The more you are desperate for things to go right, the more they go wrong. But, is that really the case, and, if so, is there a rational explanation? So: when you drop the toast how do you know it will land butter-side down? Why does the queue you're in always go slowest? That tune you hate – isn't it the one you can't get out of your head? However odd it seems, there is generally a scientific explanation. Much of Murphy's Law stems from the way the mind works – its physical limitations, evolutionary biases and social impressionability. In this fascinating book, popular-science presenter Richard Robinson teases out the answers, accessibly and entertainingly.


search, the author draws on more than 350 interviews with executives at Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, and other companies, including Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin and CEO Eric Schmidt. Battelle explores how search technology works, the amazing power of targeted advertising as a business model, and the frenzy of the Google IPO when the company tried to rewrite the rules of Wall Street and declared ?don't be evil? as one of its core goals.

You pay $18
You get back $12
Status: Available

Who Says Elephants Can't Dance by Louis V. Gerstner, Jr

Gerstner quarterbacked one of history's most dramatic corporate turnarounds. For those who follow business stories like football games, his tale of the rise, fall and rise of IBM might be the ultimate slow-motion replay. He became IBM's CEO in 1993, when the gargantuan company was near collapse. The book's opening section snappily reports Gerstner's decisions in his first 18 months on the job-the critical "sprint" that moved IBM away from the brink of destruction. The following sections describe the marathon fight to make IBM once again "a company that mattered." Gerstner writes most vividly about the company's culture. On his arrival, "there was a kind of hothouse quality to the place. It was like an isolated tropical ecosystem that had been cut off from the world for too long. As a result, it had spawned some fairly exotic life-forms that were to be found nowhere else." One of Gerstner's first tasks was to redirect the company's attention to the outside world, where a marketplace was quickly changing and customers felt largely ignored. He succeeded mightily. Upon his retirement this year, IBM was undeniably "a company that mattered." Gerstner's writing occasionally is myopic. For example, he makes much of his own openness to input from all levels of the company, only to mock an earnest (and overlong) employee e-mail (reprinted in its entirety) that was critical of his performance. Also, he includes a bafflingly long and dull appendix of his collected communications to IBM employees. Still, the book is a well-rendered self-portrait of a CEO who made spectacular change on the strength of personal leadership.

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Status: Available

The Stranger by Albert Camus

The novel tells the story of an alienated man, Meursault, who eventually commits a murder and waits to be executed. The book uses an Algerian setting, drawn from Camus's own upbringing.

At the start of the novel, Meursault attends his mother's funeral, where he does not express any emotions. The novel goes on to document the next few days of his life, through the first person point-of-view. In these days, he befriends one of his neighbors, Raymond Sintès. He aids Raymond in dismissing one of his Arab mistresses. Later, the two confront the woman's brothers on a beach and Raymond gets cut in the resulting knife fight. Meursault afterwards goes back to the beach and shoots one of them, in response to the glare of the sun. Consequently, "The Arab" is killed. Meursault then fires four more times at the dead body.

At the trial, those prosecuting seem more interested on the inability or unwillingness of Meursault to cry at his mother's funeral. The killing of the Arab apparently is less important than whether Meursault is capable of remorse. The argument follows that if Meursault is incapable of remorse, he should be considered a dangerous misanthrope and subsequently executed to prevent him from doing it again, and making him an example to those considering murder.

As the novel comes to a close, Meursault meets with a chaplain, and is enraged by the chaplain's insistence that he turn to God. The novel ends with Meursault recognizing the universe's indifference for humankind. The final lines echo his new realization: "As if that blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself — so like a brother, really — I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again. For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate."

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Status: Available

Picture Perfect by Jodi Picoult

As Picture Perfect begins, it is daybreak in downtown L.A. A woman suffering from amnesia is taken in by an officer new to the L.A. police force, after he finds her wandering aimlessly near a graveyard. Days later, when her husband comes to claim her at the police station, no one is more stunned than Cassie Barrett to learn that not only is she a renowned anthropologist, but she is married to Hollywood's leading man, Alex Rivers.

As Alex helps Cassie become reaccustomed to her fairy-tale existence, fragments of memory return: the whirlwind romance on location in Africa, her major anthropological discovery, the trajectory of Alex's career. Yet as Cassie settles into her glamour-filled life, uneasiness nags at her. She senses there is something troubling and wild that would alter the picture of her perfect marriage. When she finds a positive pregnancy test in her bathroom, she is flooded with dark memories. Trying to piece together her past, she runs to the other person she trusts to keep her hidden-- Will Flying Horse, the policeman who had initially harbored her.

Out of loyalty he cannot fully understand, Will spirits Cassie away to stay with his parents on the reservation where he grew up-- and to which he never wanted to return-- for the duration of her pregancy. Safe in South Dakota, Cassie contemplates her future. She weighs the ominous pattern of her marriage against her compassion for her husband. Cassie knows of the fear and self-loathing Alex harbors-- and of his hard-won transformation to the skilled actor he has become.

Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, Alex's life is falling apart. Nominated for Best Actor for his most recent film, he can no longer conceal from the press the fact that his wife is gone. Lies beget lies, and soon his career is rocked by scandal.

When Cassie agrees to return to Hollywood with her son, it is with a conditional promise from Alex. But it is a promise he cannot keep. In order to free them both, Cassie holds a press conference and tells the world the secret about Alex it never knew-- and never would have believed.

Moving from the sweltering African grasslands to the desolate plains of the reservation to the claustrophobic glitz of Hollywood, Jodi Picoult's story is one rich in detail, breadth, and emotion.

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Status: Available

Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

It is 1929 in Japan. Before her mother dies, the protagonist, Sakamoto Chiyo, and her older sister, Satsu, are taken to Gion by Mr. Tanaka. Satsu is sold to a "house of pleasure" as a prostitute, while Chiyo, having unusual blue grey eyes, is sold to an okiya, a house for geishas.

Chiyo is trained to become a geisha, but is constantly antagonized by Hatsumomo, the resident, and only geisha of the Nitta okiya. The arrogant Hatsumomo recognises Chiyo's potential and is upset at any hint of competition. Due to Hatsumomo's machinations, Chiyo is reduced to becoming a maid in the okiya, ostensibly with no future of becoming a geisha.

An encounter with the wealthy and benevolent Chairman changes her view of life forever, and Chiyo developes a liking for the Chairman. Soon after, Chiyo wins the eye of Mameha, the most successful geisha in Gion, who is despised by Hatsumomo because she outshines her in every aspect and, having earned her independence as a geisha, unlike Hatsumomo, cannot be toppled. She takes Chiyo in as her younger sister and protégé and trains Chiyo to become a geisha. Chiyo suspects that Mameha is only using her as a weapon to rid herself of Hatsumomo. However, Chiyo knows that to meet Chairmain again, she would have to become a geisha and hope to meet him one day. Chiyo's entrance into apprenticeship is marked by being given a new name: Sayuri.

Mameha orchestrates a bidding war between rich patrons for Sayuri's mizuage (a deflowering ceremony), and Sayuri's final price is enough to pay off her entire debt to the Nitta okiya, establishing her as a highly successful geisha and earning her adoption by the mistress of the okiya. Sayuri and Mameha destroy Hatsumomo's reputation entirely thereafter and Hatsumomo is thrown out of the okiya.

The outbreak of World War II, a theme foreshadowed by growing reference to the Japanese military, becomes another major challenge for the heroine. Her successes are quickly made irrelevant, and her physical beauty is tarnished by manual labor and malnutrition. The life of luxury is replaced by a new reality: her personal dark valley.

During her time as a geisha before the war, she encounters the Chairman again, but finds it impossible to get close to him as she desires. Instead, she finds herself constantly being pushed to be with Nobu, the Chairman's trusted friend. It is Nobu who saves Sayuri from the harsh labor of the war until Gion is able to open again on the condition that she will allow him to become her danna. A danna was typically a wealthy man, sometimes married, who had the means to support the very large expenses related to a geisha's traditional training and other costs.

However, it is not until she puts herself in an undesirable position that Sayuri's desire to be with the Chairman truly frees her to pursue her own destiny. The Chairman reveals to her that it was him who requested that Mameha take Sayuri as her apprentice, and Mameha was not, as Sayuri thought, using her as a weapon against Hatsumomo. The Chairman then frees her from the okiya and becomes her 'danna'.

Memoirs of a geisha is an extremely well written historical fiction that provides interesting insight into a subject that has fascinated readers worldwide. Readers will enjoy the refreshing novel that opens up their eyes about the Japanese culture, especially the lifestyle of the geisha, in an interesting "autobiographic" manner.

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Status: Available

He's just not that into you by Greg Behrendt & Liz Tuccillo

He says:
Oh sure, they say they're busy. They say that they didn't have even a moment in their insanely busy day to pick up the phone. It was just that crazy. All lies. With the advent of cell phones and speed dialing, it is almost impossible not to call you. Sometimes I call people from my pants pocket when I don't even mean to. If I were into you, you would be the bright spot in my horribly busy day. Which would be a day that I would never be too busy to call you.

She says:
There is something great about knowing that my only job is to be as happy as I can be about my life, and feel as good as I can about myself, and to lead as full and eventful a life as I can, so that it doesn't ever feel like I'm just waiting around for some guy to ask me out. And most importantly, it's good for us all to remember that we don't need to scheme and plot, or beg anyone to ask us out. We're fantastic.

For ages, women have come together over coffee, cocktails or late-night phone chats to analyze the puzzling behavior of men.

He's afraid to get hurt again.
Maybe he doesn't want to ruin the friendship.
Maybe he's intimidated by me.
He just got out of a relationship.

Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo are here to say that—despite good intentions—you're wasting your time. Men are not complicated, although they'd like you to think they are. And there are no mixed messages.

The truth may be He's just not that into you.

Unfortunately, guys are too terrified to ever directly tell a woman, "You're not the one." But their actions absolutely show how they feel.

He's Just Not That Into You—based on a popular episode of Sex and the City—educates otherwise smart women on how to tell when a guy just doesn't like them enough, so they can stop wasting time making excuses for a dead-end relationship.

Reexamining familiar scenarios and classic mindsets that keep us in unsatisfying relationships, Behrendt and Tuccillo's wise and wry understanding of the sexes spares women hours of waiting by the phone, obsessing over the details with sympathetic girlfriends, and hoping his mixed messages really mean "I'm in love with you and want to be with you."

He's Just Not That Into You is provocative, hilarious and, above all, intoxicatingly liberating. It deserves a place on every woman's night table. It knows you're a beautiful, smart, funny woman who deserves better. The next time you feel the need to start "figuring him out," consider the glorious thought that maybe he's just not that into you. And then set yourself loose to go find the one who is.

You pay $12
You get back $6
Status: Not Available

A Million Little Pieces by John Frey

Intense, unpredictable, and instantly engaging, A Million Little Pieces is a story of drug and alcohol abuse and rehabilitation as it has never been told before. Recounted in visceral, kinetic prose, and crafted with a forthrightness that rejects piety, cynicism, and self-pity, it brings us face-to-face with a provocative new understanding of the nature of addiction and the meaning of recovery.

By the time he entered a drug and alcohol treatment facility, James Frey had taken his addictions to near-deadly extremes. He had so thoroughly ravaged his body that the facility’s doctors were shocked he was still alive. The ensuing torments of detoxification and withdrawal, and the never-ending urge to use chemicals, are captured with a vitality and directness that recalls the seminal eye-opening power of William Burroughs’s Junky.

But A Million Little Pieces refuses to fit any mold of drug literature. Inside the clinic, James is surrounded by patients as troubled as he is -- including a judge, a mobster, a one-time world-champion boxer, and a fragile former prostitute to whom he is not allowed to speak — but their friendship and advice strikes James as stronger and truer than the clinic’s droning dogma of How to Recover. James refuses to consider himself a victim of anything but his own bad decisions, and insists on accepting sole accountability for the person he has been and the person he may become ­ which runs directly counter to his counselors’ recipes for recovery.

James has to fight to find his own way to confront the consequences of the life he has lived so far, and to determine what future, if any, he holds. It is this fight, told with the charismatic energy and power of One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, that is at the heart of A Million Little Pieces: the fight between one young man’s will and the ever-tempting chemical trip to oblivion, the fight to survive on his own terms, for reasons close to his own heart.

A Million Little Pieces is an uncommonly genuine account of a life destroyed and a life reconstructed. It is also the introduction of a bold and talented literary voice.

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Status: Available

Shopaholic & Sister

Everyone's favorite shopaholic is back! Becky Bloomwood is about to get some incredible news—she has a long lost sister. But can her very own sister really... hate shopping?! From the bestselling author of CONFESSIONS OF A SHOPAHOLIC

You pay $13
You get back $7
Status: Not Available
p/s: Check out the whole series and also her novel Can You Keep A Secret

Shopaholic Ties the Knot by Sophie Kinsella

Becky Bloomwood is back—and she just can't say no to saying "I do"—in this hysterical New York Times bestselling novel from the author who "gives chicklit lovers a reason to stay home from the mall"

You pay $13
You get back $7
Status: Available
p/s: Check out the whole series and also her novel Can You Keep A Secret

Shopaholic Takes Manhattan by Sophie Kinsella

Becky Bloomwood returns! She and Luke and her credit cards are headed across the Atlantic ... to a Big Apple address that her bill collectors don't have. With all of Fifth Avenue to shop, she's taken the city by storm ... but will she have to return it?

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Status: Available

Confessions of a Shopaholic by Sophie Kinsella

Here is the beloved bestseller that first introduced Becky Bloomwood, the irrepressible one-woman shopping phenomenon whose hilarious adventures have kept readers coming back for more! In CONFESSIONS OF A SHOPAHOLIC, Becky lands a dream job, and a dreamy guy, and then, lands in a lot of hot water.



Excerpt

Ok. don't panic. Don't panic. It's only a VISA bill. It's a piece of paper; a few numbers. I mean, just how scary can a few numbers be?

I stare out of the office window at a bus driving down Oxford Street, willing myself to open the white envelope sitting on my cluttered desk. It's only a piece of paper, I tell myself for the thousandth time. And I'm not stupid, am I? I know exactly how much this VISA bill will be.

Sort of. Roughly.

It'll be about ... £200. Three hundred, maybe. Yes, maybe £300. Three-fifty, max.

I casually close my eyes and start to tot up. There was that suit in Jigsaw. And there was dinner with Suze at Quaglinos. And there was that gorgeous red and yellow rug. The rug was £200, come to think of it. But it was definitely worth every penny — everyone's admired it. Or, at least, Suze has.

And the Jigsaw suit was on sale — 30 percent off. So that was actually saving money.

You pay $13
You get back $7
Status: Available
p/s: Check out the whole series and also her novel Can You Keep A Secret

Can You Keep A Secret

With the same wicked humor, buoyant charm, and optimism that have made her Shopaholic novels beloved international bestsellers, Sophie Kinsella delivers a hilarious new novel and an unforgettable new character. Meet Emma Corrigan, a young woman with a huge heart, an irrepressible spirit, and a few little secrets—secrets she lets slip to just the wrong guy.

Excerpt

Of course I have secrets.

Of course I do. Everyone has a few secrets. It's completely normal. I'm not talking about big, earth-shattering secrets. Not the-president-is planning-to-bomb-Japan-and-only-Will-Smith-can-save-the-world type secrets. Just normal, everyday little secrets.

Like, for example, here are a few random secrets of mine, off the top of my head:

1. My Kate Spade bag is a fake.

2. I love sweet sherry, the least cool drink in the universe.

3. I have no idea what NATO stands for. Or even exactly what it is.

4. I weigh 128 pounds. Not 118, like my boyfriend, Connor, thinks. (Although, in my defense, I was planning to go on a diet when I told him that. And, to be fair, it is only one number different.)

5. I've always thought Connor looks a bit like Ken. As in Barbie and Ken.

6. Sometimes, when we're right in the middle of passionate sex, I suddenly want to laugh.

7. I lost my virginity in the spare bedroom with Danny Nussbaum while Mum and Dad were downstairs watching Ben-Hur.

8. I've already drunk the wine that Dad told me to save for twenty years.

9. Sammy the goldfish at home isn't the same goldfish that Mum and Dad gave me to look after when they went to Egypt.

10. When my colleague Artemis really annoys me, I feed her plant orange juice. (Which is pretty much every day.)

You pay $13
You get back $7
Status: Available
p/s: Check out her shopaholic series!

Saving Fish from Drowning by Amy Tan

A pious man explained to his followers: "It is evil to take lives and noble to save them. Each day I pledge to save a hundred lives. I drop my net in the lake and scoop out a hundred fishes. I place the fishes on the bank, where they flop and twirl. 'Don't be scared, ' I tell those fishes. 'I am saving you from drowning.' Soon enough, the fishes grow calm and lie still. Yet, sad to say, I am always too late. The fishes expire. And because it is evil to waste anything, I take those dead fishes to market and I sell them for a good price. With the money I receive, I buy more nets so I can save more fishes." - Anonymous

Twelve American tourists join an art expedition that begins in the Himalayan foothills of China - dubbed the true Shangri-La - and heads south into the jungles of Burma. But after the mysterious death of their tour leader, the carefully laid plans fall apart, and disharmony breaks out among the pleasure-seekers as they come to discover that the Burma Road is paved with less-than-honorable intentions, questionable food, and tribal curses.
And then, on Christmas morning, eleven of the travelers boat across a misty lake for a sunrise cruise - and disappear.

Drawing from the current political reality in Burma and woven with pure confabulation, Amy Tan's picaresque novel poses the question: How can we discern what is real and what is fiction, in everything we see? How do we know what to believe?

Saving Fish from Drowning finds sly truth in the absurd: a reality TV show called Darwin's Fittest, a repressive regime known as SLORC, two cheroot-smoking twin children hailed as divinities, and a ragtag tribe hiding in the jungle - where the sprites of disaster known as Natslurk, as do the specters of the fabled Younger White Brother and a British illusionist who was not who he was worshipped to be.
With her signature "idiosyncratic, sympathetic characters, haunting images, historical complexity, significant contemporary themes, and suspenseful mystery" (Los Angeles Times), Amy Tan spins a provocative and mesmerizing tale about the mind and the heart of the individual, the actions we choose, the moral questions we might ask ourselves, and above all, the deeply personal answers we seek when happy endings are seemingly impossible.

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Status: Available

p/s: Also check out the topseller The Joy Luck Club!

The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

A New York Times Bestseller
In 1949 four Chinese women - drawn together by the shadow of their past - begin meeting in San Francisco to play mah jong, invest in stocks, eat dim sum, and "say" stories. They call their gathering the Joy Luck Club. Nearly forty years later, one of the members has died. When her daughter comes to take her place, she learns of her mother's lifelong wish, and the tragic way in which it has come true

You pay $13
You get back $7
Status: Available
Remarks: Also check out her latest novel "Saving Fish from Drowning"!

The Little Lady Agency by Hester Browne

Brit Melissa Romney– Jones is living in the wrong era. She excels in all of the domestic arts, but her special skills tend to go unnoticed and unappreciated in the corporate world she inhabits. When Melissa is unceremoniously sacked due to a merger, a scarcity of funds leads her accept a job as an escort (platonic, of course), and "Honey" is born.

Honey is Melissa in a blonde wig, with stockings, stilettos and an extra dose of confidence. Melissa quickly realizes that while she's not cut out to be an escort, she would make an excellent girlfriend for hire for the slew of clueless men that need advice on everything from their wardrobe to buying gifts for their mothers. Thus, Melissa (as Honey) decides to open The Little Lady Agency, which provides all the services of a girlfriend without the sex.

Soon, Honey and her services are in high demand. But things get complicated when a new American client wants Honey's services exclusively, and Melissa finds herself wanting the new client. The harder Melissa struggles to keep her world and family from colliding with Honey's, the more inevitable it becomes. Soon, because she's falling in love, Melissa must choose whose life she wants -- her own or Honey's.

This is a fabulous book. Melissa's adventures both as herself and as Honey are funny, romantic and relatable. She is such a loveable, sensitive, fallible character that the reader can't wait to see what marvelous thing she is going to do next. The supporting characters of her friends and family, from the yummy Jonathan to her scowling, unappreciative father, are all well developed and interesting in and of themselves.

With this book, Browne has given the reader not only a witty, romantic love story but also a character that the reader cannot wait to read more about


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Status: Available

I am a Cat by Soseki Natsume

Written over the course of 1904-6, Soseki’s comic masterpiece, I Am a Cat, satirizes the follies of upper-middle-class Japanese society during the Meiji era. With acerbic wit and sardonic perspective, it follows the whimsical adventures of a world-weary stray kitten who comments on the follies and foibles of the people around him.
The New Yorker called it "a nonchalant string of anecdotes and wisecracks, told by a fellow who doesn't have a name, and has never caught a mouse, and isn't much good for anything except watching human beings in action..."

You pay $30
You get back $24
Status: Available
Remarks: As the book is very big and bulky, special arrangement will be done in the collection of the book. Pls email me to know more.

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

Best-selling author Gladwell (The Tipping Point) has a dazzling ability to find commonality in disparate fields of study. As he displays again in this entertaining and illuminating look at how we make snap judgments—about people's intentions, the authenticity of a work of art, even military strategy—he can parse for general readers the intricacies of fascinating but little-known fields like professional food tasting (why does Coke taste different from Pepsi?). Gladwell's conclusion, after studying how people make instant decisions in a wide range of fields from psychology to police work, is that we can make better instant judgments by training our mind and senses to focus on the most relevant facts—and that less input (as long as it's the right input) is better than more. Perhaps the most stunning example he gives of this counterintuitive truth is the most expensive war game ever conducted by the Pentagon, in which a wily marine officer, playing "a rogue military commander" in the Persian Gulf and unencumbered by hierarchy, bureaucracy and too much technology, humiliated American forces whose chiefs were bogged down in matrixes, systems for decision making and information overload. But if one sets aside Gladwell's dazzle, some questions and apparent inconsistencies emerge. If doctors are given an algorithm, or formula, in which only four facts are needed to determine if a patient is having a heart attack, is that really educating the doctor's decision-making ability—or is it taking the decision out of the doctor's hands altogether and handing it over to the algorithm? Still, each case study is satisfying, and Gladwell imparts his own evident pleasure in delving into a wide range of fields and seeking an underlying truth.

You pay $12
You get back $6
Status: Available

The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards

Edwards's assured but schematic debut novel (after her collection, The Secrets of a Fire King) hinges on the birth of fraternal twins, a healthy boy and a girl with Down syndrome, resulting in the father's disavowal of his newborn daughter. A snowstorm immobilizes Lexington, Ky., in 1964, and when young Norah Henry goes into labor, her husband, orthopedic surgeon Dr. David Henry, must deliver their babies himself, aided only by a nurse. Seeing his daughter's handicap, he instructs the nurse, Caroline Gill, to take her to a home and later tells Norah, who was drugged during labor, that their son Paul's twin died at birth. Instead of institutionalizing Phoebe, Caroline absconds with her to Pittsburgh. David's deception becomes the defining moment of the main characters' lives, and Phoebe's absence corrodes her birth family's core over the course of the next 25 years. David's undetected lie warps his marriage; he grapples with guilt; Norah mourns her lost child; and Paul not only deals with his parents' icy relationship but with his own yearnings for his sister as well. Though the impact of Phoebe's loss makes sense, Edwards's redundant handling of the trope robs it of credibility.


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Status: Available

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

THIS powerful first novel, by an Afghan physician now living in California, tells a story of fierce cruelty and fierce yet redeeming love. Both transform the life of Amir, Khaled Hosseini's privileged young narrator, who comes of age during the last peaceful days of the monarchy, just before his country's revolution and its invasion by Russian forces.

But political events, even as dramatic as the ones that are presented in ''The Kite Runner,'' are only a part of this story. A more personal plot, arising from Amir's close friendship with Hassan, the son of his father's servant, turns out to be the thread that ties the book together. The fragility of this relationship, symbolized by the kites the boys fly together, is tested as they watch their old way of life disappear.

Amir is served breakfast every morning by Hassan; then he is driven to school in the gleaming family Mustang while his friend stays home to clean the house. Yet Hassan bears Amir no resentment and is, in fact, a loyal companion to the lonely boy, whose mother is dead and whose father, a rich businessman, is often preoccupied. Hassan protects the sensitive Amir from sadistic neighborhood bullies; in turn, Amir fascinates Hassan by reading him heroic Afghan folk tales. Then, during a kite-flying tournament that should be the triumph of Amir's young life, Hassan is brutalized by some upper-class teenagers. Amir's failure to defend his friend will haunt him for the rest of his life.

Hosseini's depiction of pre-revolutionary Afghanistan is rich in warmth and humor but also tense with the friction between the nation's different ethnic groups. Amir's father, or Baba, personifies all that is reckless, courageous and arrogant in his dominant Pashtun tribe. He loves nothing better than watching the Afghan national pastime, buzkashi, in which galloping horsemen bloody one another as they compete to spear the carcass of a goat. Yet he is generous and tolerant enough to respect his son's artistic yearnings and to treat the lowly Hassan with great kindness, even arranging for an operation to mend the child's harelip.

As civil war begins to ravage the country, the teenage Amir and his father must flee for their lives. In California, Baba works at a gas station to put his son through school; on weekends he sells secondhand goods at swap meets. Here too Hosseini provides lively descriptions, showing former professors and doctors socializing as they haggle with their customers over black velvet portraits of Elvis.

Despite their poverty, these exiled Afghans manage to keep alive their ancient standards of honor and pride. And even as Amir grows to manhood, settling comfortably into America and a happy marriage, his past shame continues to haunt him. He worries about Hassan and wonders what has happened to him back in Afghanistan.

The novel's canvas turns dark when Hosseini describes the suffering of his country under the tyranny of the Taliban, whom Amir encounters when he finally returns home, hoping to help Hassan and his family. The final third of the book is full of haunting images: a man, desperate to feed his children, trying to sell his artificial leg in the market; an adulterous couple stoned to death in a stadium during the halftime of a football match; a rouged young boy forced into prostitution, dancing the sort of steps once performed by an organ grinder's monkey.

When Amir meets his old nemesis, now a powerful Taliban official, the book descends into some plot twists better suited to a folk tale than a modern novel. But in the end we're won over by Amir's compassion and his determination to atone for his youthful cowardice.

In ''The Kite Runner,'' Khaled Hosseini gives us a vivid and engaging story that reminds us how long his people have been struggling to triumph over the forces of violence -- forces that continue to threaten them even today.


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Status: Available

Scribbles from the Same Island by Neil Humphrey

Singapore's most famous Toa Payoh HDB flat-dwelling ang moh, Neil Humphreys is back with more with 'Scribbles from the Same Island', after a successful first book, Notes From An Even Smaller Island. Expect to find more of his take on innocuous subjects made hilarious through his witty observations. 'Scribbles' is a collection of Neil Humphreys' column published in WEEKEND TODAY and includes several short stories specially written for this book.

You pay $10
You get back $4
Status: Available

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

Clare, a young 20 year old artist meets Henry for the first time in the Chicage library where he works. Henry has never laid eyes on Clare before, but Clare knows Henry well. In fact she has been meeting him secretly throughout her whole childhood and has been desperately looking forward to this day. Henry has an undiscovered genetic disorder - chrono-displacement disorder - that causes him to involuntarily disappear from his present and turn up somewhere in his past, and occasionally his future. Hence, an older Henry has been returning to the past and meeting his future wife Clare while she is still a child.

Rather than a super power or gift, his time travelling is more of a curse. Brought on by moments of stress, he is forever leaving and catapulting naked into an unknown moment of his own past. His visits tend to be back to important events or people in his own life - hence his adult visits to the young Clare, occasionally he returns to a younger self and has repeated painful visits to the scene of the tragic car accident when he was six, that killed his beloved mother.

You pay $20
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Status: Available

A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka

Nadia, the narrator, is a fifty something sociology lecturer who has not seen her domineering older sister, Vera, since their mother’s controversial will was read out two years before. Vera and her parents were born in the Ukraine and came to England after the war as refugees, However Nadia is “the peace baby”, who is English by birth, if not by heritage. The two feuding sisters must band together to defeat Valentina, their father’s “child bride”.

Valentina has high expectations of her new husband and of western consumerism.. Nikolai quickly discovers he is out of his depth. Instead of being a damsel in distress, Valentina is a demanding virago who leaves her aged husband trembling with fear. The only pleasure he has left in life is working on his history of tractors. Can Vera and Nadia save their father? Is Valentina really that evil? Will Nikolai’s definitive history ever get completed? Why are Vera and Nadia so very different in their outlooks on life and will they ever be totally reconciled?

This rollercoaster of a novel will keep you intrigued to the very last page with its wonderful mixture of comedy and tragedy. What’s more, there is a Kiwi connection – the author, who was born to Ukrainian parents in a refugee camp in Germany just after the war, is married to a New Zealander.

This novel was nominated for the Orange Award for 2005

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Status: Available

A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby

On New Year’s Eve, four strangers make their way to the rooftop of a London apartment building called Toppers’ House. Their goal, however, is not celebration but obliteration. For various reasons, each one has decided that the time has come to put an end to his or her life. As they inadvertently meet and begin to share their stories, they find themselves citizens of a sort of independent state, where street-level laws no longer apply. And gradually, very gradually, they help one another to discover reasons to live, at least for the time being.

Hornby tells his story through the alternating, idiosyncratic voices of his four main characters. There is Maureen, the mousy, fifty-something mother of a mentally and physically incapacitated son, who has done little but care for him for the past twenty years; Martin, a disgraced former TV morning show host and ex-con; Jess, an obnoxious and explosive teenager; and JJ, the lone American in the bunch, an aspiring rock star.

New York has called Nick Hornby “a fine writer, swift and pointed, with a lighter, more mischievous heart than he lets on, and more sympathy for the devil than he admits to.” According to the New York Daily News, Hornby is “a sympathetic writer who actually likes the people whose stories he chooses to tell.” Nowhere are these qualities more evident than in his keenly awaited fourth novel.

In A Long Way Down, Nick Hornby poses deep questions about suffering, evil, spirituality, and the possibility of redemption with a deft, sly wit, an acute intelligence, and a contemporary cultural sensibility that are uniquely his. Challenging, tender, profane, ribald, acerbic, uplifting, and laugh-out-loud funny, it is a novel about suicide that turns out to have much more to do with life.

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Status: Available

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

From the Booker Prize-winning author of The Remains of the Day comes a devastating new novel of innocence, knowledge, and loss. As children Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy were students at Hailsham, an exclusive boarding school secluded in the English countryside. It was a place of mercurial cliques and mysterious rules where teachers were constantly reminding their charges of how special they were.

Now, years later, Kathy is a young woman. Ruth and Tommy have reentered her life. And for the first time she is beginning to look back at their shared past and understand just what it is that makes them special–and how that gift will shape the rest of their time together. Suspenseful, moving, beautifully atmospheric, Never Let Me Go is another classic by the author of The Remains of the Day

You pay $13
You get back $$7
Status: Available

Marley and Me by John Grogan

Synopsis
The heartwarming and unforgettable story of a family in the making and the wondrously neurotic dog who taught them what really matters in life.

John and Jenny were just beginning their life together. They were young and in love, with a perfect little house and not a care in the world. Then they brought home Marley, a wiggly yellow furball of a puppy. Life would never be the same.

Marley quickly grew into a barreling, ninety-seven-pound streamroller of a Labrador retriever, a dog like no other. He crashed through screen doors, gouged through drywall, flung drool on guests, stole women's undergarments, and ate nearly everything he could get his mouth around, including couches and fine jewelry. Obedience school did no good—Marley was expelled. Neither did the tranquilizers the veterinarian prescribed for him with the admonishment, "Don't hesitate to use these."

And yet Marley's heart was pure. Just as he joyfully refused any limits on his behavior, his love and loyalty were boundless, too. Marley shared the couple's joy at their first pregnancy, and their heartbreak over the miscarriage. He was there when babies finally arrived and when the screams of a seventeen-year-old stabbing victim pierced the night. Marley shut down a public beach and managed to land a role in a feature-length movie, always winning hearts as he made a mess of things. Through it all, he remained steadfast, a model of devotion, even when his family was at its wit's end. Unconditional love, they would learn, comes in many forms.

You pay $14
You get back $8
Status: Available

Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl by Tracy Quan

A fun, witty, sexy, page-turning novel written by a real-life, high-priced Manhattan call girl. This is the diary of Nancy Chan, busy career girl, in her thirties, newly engaged and trying to balance job and romance. But Nancy is a high-class call girl, a fact her banker fiance, Matt does not know (he thinks she's a copy editor) and Nancy wants to keep it that way. With one foot in the bedrooms of her rich and demanding clients and one in the world of her fiance and his family, Nancy demonstrates, in her inimitable fashion, that if you know the dance, you can keep those two worlds from colliding. At least for a while. This wonderfully intelligent, sexually frank, rollicking novel gives us fresh insight into the machinations and politics of being an expensive call girl in the modern world. Quan pulls no punches, gives no apologies, and has written one of the best and most honest books yet on the topic.

You pay $10.
You will get back $4
Status: Available

The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger

Synopsis
A delightfully dishy novel about the all-time most impossible boss in the history of impossible bosses.

Andrea Sachs, a small-town girl fresh out of college, lands the job “a million girls would die for.” Hired as the assistant to Miranda Priestly, the high-profile, fabulously successful editor of Runway magazine, Andrea finds herself in an office that shouts Prada! Armani! Versace! at every turn, a world populated by impossibly thin, heart-wrenchingly stylish women and beautiful men clad in fine-ribbed turtlenecks and tight leather pants that show off their lifelong dedication to the gym. With breathtaking ease, Miranda can turn each and every one of these hip sophisticates into a scared, whimpering child.

THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA gives a rich and hilarious new meaning to complaints about “The Boss from Hell.” Narrated in Andrea’s smart, refreshingly disarming voice, it traces a deep, dark, devilish view of life at the top only hinted at in gossip columns and over Cosmopolitans at the trendiest cocktail parties. From sending the latest, not-yet-in-stores Harry Potter to Miranda’s children in Paris by private jet, to locating an unnamed antique store where Miranda had at some point admired a vintage dresser, to serving lattes to Miranda at precisely the piping hot temperature she prefers, Andrea is sorely tested each and every day—and often late into the night with orders barked over the phone. She puts up with it all by keeping her eyes on the prize: a recommendation from Miranda that will get Andrea a top job at any magazine of her choosing. As things escalate from the merely unacceptable to the downright outrageous, however, Andrea begins to realize that the job a million girls would die for may just kill her. And even if she survives, she has to decide whether or not the job is worth the price of her soul.