Rent-a-lit

Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney

2010-05-23T19:42:00.000-07:00

Book #1: Diary of a Wimpy Kid
Book #2: Rodrick Rules
Book #3: The Last Straw
Bundle deal (rent all 3 books at an attractive rate of $12!)
You pay: $32
you get back: $20

3 chick lit by Alexandra Potter

2010-05-01T23:06:00.000-07:00

1. Be careful what you wish for
2. Me and Mr Darcy
3. Who's That Girl

Rent the hot chick lit @ S$15/book.
You will get back S$9

Twenties Girl by Sophie Kinsella

2010-02-21T21:52:00.000-08:00

Lara has always had an overactive imagination. Now she wonders if she is losing her mind. Normal twenty-something girls just don't get visited by ghosts! But inexplicably, the spirit of Lara's great aunt Sadie – in the form of a bold, demanding Charleston-dancing girl – has appeared to make one last request: Lara must track down a missing necklace Sadie simply can't rest without. Lara's got enough problems of her own. Her start-up company is floundering, her best friend and business partner has run off to Goa, and she's just been dumped by the love of her life. But as Lara spends time with Sadie, life becomes more glamorous and their treasure hunt turns into something intriguing and romantic. Could Sadie's ghost be the answer to Lara's problems and can two girls from different times end up learning something special from each other?

You pay: $15
You get back: $9

Cocktail for Three by Madeline Wickham

2010-01-05T21:37:00.000-08:00

At the first of every month, when the office has reached its pinnacle of hysteria,Maggie, Roxanne, and Candice meet at London’s swankiest bar for an evening of cocktails and gossip. Here, they chat about what’s new at The Londoner, the glossy fashion magazine where they all work, and everything else that’s going on in their lives. Or almost everything. Beneath the girl talk and the laughter, each of the three has a secret. And when a chance encounter at the cocktail bar sets in motion an extraordinary chain of events, each one will find their biggest secret revealed…

(Credit: http://us.macmillan.com/cocktailsforthree)

You pay $15
You get back $9

Freakonomics

2010-01-05T21:34:00.000-08:00

Freakonomics
You pay $15
you get back $9

SuperFreakonomics (New!!)
You pay $25
You get back $19

Falling Leaves by Adeline Yen

2009-10-05T06:30:00.000-07:00

Born in 1937 in a port city a thousand miles north of Shanghai, Adeline Yen Mah was the youngest child of an affluent Chinese family who enjoyed rare privileges during a time of political and cultural upheaval. But wealth and position could not shield Adeline from a childhood of appalling emotional abuse at the hands of a cruel and manipulative Eurasian stepmother. Determined to survive through her enduring faith in family unity, Adeline struggled for independence as she moved from Hong Kong to England and eventually to the United States to become a physician and writer.

A compelling, painful, and ultimately triumphant story of a girl's journey into adulthood, Adeline's story is a testament to the most basic of human needs: acceptance, love, and understanding. With a powerful voice that speaks of the harsh realities of growing up female in a family and society that kept girls in emotional chains, Falling Leaves is a work of heartfelt intimacy and a rare authentic portrait of twentieth-century China.

Nights In Rodanthe by Nicholas Sparks

2009-10-05T06:26:00.000-07:00

The novel is about two people who discover there is always a second chance to find the love of your life. Adrienne, a woman still reeling from her husband's betrayal and struggling to rebuild a life without him, has just learned that he wants to come home. Torn by conflicting feelings, she welcomes the chance for escape when an old friend asks her to manage her inn in Rodanthe for a weekend. There, on a remote spot along the Outer Banks of North Carolina, Adrienne hopes to find the tranquility she needs to rethink her life. It's the off-season and the inn would be shuttered but for the unlikely arrival of its solitary guest, Paul, a doctor from the city. A man who long ago sacrificed his family to his career, Paul has come to Rodanthe to fulfill a difficult obligation and to face his own crisis of conscience.

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

The Time Traveller's Wife

2009-09-11T02:18:00.000-07:00

Watched the movie? How about reading the novel to get more details so that you can appreciate the movie better? It is now available for rental at a fee of $6!

Do email me to reserve the book today!

The Quickie by James Patterson

2009-08-02T19:46:00.000-07:00

Lauren Stillwell is not your average damsel in distress. When the NYPD cop discovers her husband leaving a hotel with another woman, she decides to beat him at his own game. But her revenge goes dangerously awry, and she finds her world spiraling into a hell that becomes more terrifying by the hour.

In a further twist of fate, Lauren must take on a job that threatens everything she stands for. Now, she's paralyzed by a deadly secret that could tear her life apart. With her job and marriage on the line, Lauren's desire for retribution becomes a lethal inferno as she fights to save her livelihood--and her life.

Patterson takes us on a twisting roller-coaster ride of thrills in his most gripping novel yet. This story of love, lust and dangerous secrets will have reader's hearts pounding to the very last page.

Chasing Harry Winston by Lauren Weisberger

2009-08-02T19:34:00.000-07:00

Leigh, Adriana and Emmy are best friends, all leading very different lives and about to make some extreme choices...

Emmy has just split with her boyfriend of five years. A serial monogamist, she suddenly realises how much she′s missed the thrill of single life. A new job travelling across the globe could offer her the one thing she is craving.

Leigh, on the surface appears to have it all - a fantastic job and a gorgeous high-profile boyfriend. But buried deep down is a woman racked with nerves and a life-long ambition not yet realised.

Adriana is breathtakingly beautiful and can have any man she wants, but prefers to play the field.Yet suddenly the excitement of yet another fling begins to lose its edge. Perhaps it is time for her to start thinking about settling down.

The three girls meet for dinner one evening and make a pact - they each have to change one thing in their lives by the end of the year. But will they keep to their decisions? And will their choices come at a high price?

Angels and Demons by Dan Brown

2009-05-23T21:48:00.000-07:00

When a world renowned scientist is found brutally murdered in a Swiss research facility, a Harvard professor, Robert Langdon, is summoned to identify the mysterious symbol seared onto the dead man’s chest. His baffling conclusion: that it is the work of the Illuminati, a secret brotherhood presumed extinct for nearly four hundred years - reborn to continue their bitter vendetta against their most hated enemy, the Catholic church.

In Rome, the college of cardinals assembles to elect a new pope. Yet somewhere within the walls of the Vatican, an unstoppable bomb of terrifying power relentlessly counts down to oblivion. While the minutes tick away, Langdon joins forces with Vittoria Vetra, a beautiful and mysterious Italian scientist, to decipher the labyrinthine trail of ancient symbols that snakes across Rome to the long-forgotten Illuminati lair – a secret refuge wherein lies the only hope for the Vatican.

But, with each revelation comes another twist, another turn in the plot, which leaves Langdom and Vetra reeling and at the mercy of a seemingly invisible enemy…

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga

2009-05-23T21:33:00.000-07:00

Balram Halwai is the White Tiger - the smartest boy in his village. His family is too poor for him to afford for him to finish school and he has to work in a teashop, breaking coals and wiping tables. But Balram gets his break when a rich man hires him as a chauffeur, and takes him to live in Delhi. The city is a revelation. As he drives his master to shopping malls and call centres, Balram becomes increasingly aware of immense wealth and opportunity all around him, while knowing that he will never be able to gain access to that world. As Balram broods over his situation, he realizes that there is only one way he can become part of this glamorous new India - by murdering his master."The White Tiger" presents a raw and unromanticised India, both thrilling and shocking - from the desperate, almost lawless villages along the Ganges, to the booming Wild South of Bangalore and its technology and outsourcing centres. The first-person confession of a murderer, "The White Tiger" is as compelling for its subject matter as for the voice of its narrator - amoral, cynical, unrepentant, yet deeply endearing.

Books for Job Seeker

2009-02-20T20:50:00.000-08:00

Are you out of job? Or looking for a career switch?
Well, do not despair as the economic downturn is spread worldwide. It is important to keep ourselves in high spirit at this gloomy period.
If you have lost your job recently, do not be disheartened. You should constantly upgrade yourself so as to find a better career in your next employment. Being a recruitment personnel myself, I see a growing trend of hiring of more contract/temp staff. I would encourage all to be open to opportunities. Even if it is just a temporary assignment, take it up! You never know what will lies ahead for you in the company. If performance is good and they are have additional headcount, you will have a higher chance of conversion.
What is important to gain a foothold in a company? You have to impress during the interview. Here are some books which can be helpful in your comin interviews.

1. Great Answers to Tough Interview Questions by Martin John Yate
2. How Would You Move Mount Fuji? Microsoft's Cult of the Puzzle - How the World's Smartest Company Selects the Most Creative by William Poundstone

The books are available for rental at a rate of $6. Email me at prettyfly07@hotmail.com to enquire for more.

Everyone, let's just stay motivated!!!

Slumdog Millionaire by Vikas Swarup

2009-02-05T01:03:00.000-08:00

Vikas Swarup's spectacular debut novel opens in a jail cell in Mumbai, India, where Ram Mohammad Thomas is being held after correctly answering all twelve questions on India's biggest quiz show, Who Will Win a Billion? It is hard to believe that a poor orphan who has never read a newspaper or gone to school could win such a contest. But through a series of exhilarating tales Ram explains to his lawyer how episodes in his life gave him the answer to each question.

Ram takes us on an amazing review of his own history -- from the day he was found as a baby in the clothes donation box of a Delhi church to his employment by a faded Bollywood star to his adventure with a security-crazed Australian army colonel to his career as an overly creative tour guide at the Taj Mahal.

Swarup's Q & A is a beguiling blend of high comedy, drama, and romance that reveals how we know what we know -- not just about trivia, but about life itself. Cutting across humanity in all its squalor and glory, Vikas Swarup presents a kaleidoscopic vision of the struggle between good and evil -- and what happens when one boy has no other choice in life but to survive.

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

2009-02-05T00:28:00.000-08:00

In this stunning new book, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of"outliers"--the best and the brightest, the most famous and the most successful. He asks the question: what makes high-achievers different? His answer is that we pay too much attention to what successful people are like, and too little attention to where they are from: that is, their culture, their family, their generation, and the idiosyncratic experiences of their upbringing. Along the way he explains the secrets of software billionaires, what it takes to be a great soccer player, why Asians are good at math, and what made the Beatles the greatest rock band.
Brilliant and entertaining, OUTLIERS is a landmark work that will simultaneously delight and illuminate.

You pay: $22
You get back: $16

Rent-A-Lit goes to Town

2009-01-02T00:10:00.000-08:00

Yes, Singaporeaderz will be at CozyCot bazzaar on 17th Jan 2009.

You may send in the request for the book with the book titles and collect from the bazzaar on 17th Jan 09. Each book will be rented out at $4! Send in your requests by 16th Jan 2009 5pm. Book is subjected to availability and on a first-come-first-served basis.

Rent-A-Lit goes to Town
Date: 17 January 2009
Time: 12 - 6pm
Address: 110 Middle Road #09-00 Chiat Hong Building, Singapore 188968

p/s: do visit the bazzaar as there will be lotsa of attractive bargains up for grab!

Singaporeaderz Contest

2008-12-25T23:35:00.000-08:00

Simply answer the question correctly and you will get to rent the book for FREE!

Question: When was this website set up?

Send your particulars with your answer to prettyfly07@hotmail.com
Name:
Email Add:
Contact No:
Address:

Contest will be run from now til 31st January 2009.

NY Promotion!

2008-12-25T23:28:00.000-08:00

Time flies.. 1 year has just flashed by, and a brand new year is about to begin! Guess all of us are very excited about this coming new year. The outlook may be bleak, but we still can make the best out of it all! I hope all of you are as positive as I am!

In celebration of the coming 2009, we are holding a special promotion.

The first 10 readers will get to rent the book of their choice for half price!!
(that's why there is this saying that early bird catches the worm!)

And for the not-so-early folks, rent a book in January and get your 2nd book at half price too (valid til March 2009)!

Hurry up and get your eyes busy!

Yakuzu Moon by Tendo, Shoko (Soft cover)

2008-12-15T22:56:00.000-08:00

A shocking yet intensely moving first-person account of one woman's experience of growing up in Japan's yakuza society. Born into the family of a wealthy yakuza boss, Shoko Tendo lives her early years in luxury. But labelled "the yakuza kid", she is the victim of bullying and discrimination from teachers and classmates at school, and of her father's violent rages at home. The family falls into debt and Tendo falls in with the wrong crowd. By the age of fifteen she is a gang member, by the age of eighteen a drug addict, and her young adulthood is marked by a series of abusive and violent relationships with men. After the death of her parents and her own attempt at suicide, Tendo turns her life around. A pivotal moment is the decision to get tattooed: an act of empowerment that helps her take control of her life. This is the universally appealing story of a young woman's successful struggle to escape from a life of ostracism and abuse, and a rare glimpse into Japan's closed yakuza world from an insider's viewpoint. Translated by Louise Heal.

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

More Jodi Picoult books!

2008-12-09T01:21:00.001-08:00

2 more titles to the collection!

1. The Pact
2. Second Glance

You pay $12
You get $6

Dilbert

2008-11-30T04:07:00.000-08:00

1. Dilbert - The principles
2. Ways of the Weasel
3. Dilbert and the Future

You pay: $15
You get back: $9
(price based on per book)

New titles added!

2008-11-23T17:50:00.000-08:00

Why Men Marry Bitches
You pay $23
You get back $17

The Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult

You pay $14
You get back $8

Email me to reserve the book TODAY!

Remember Me by Sophie Kinsella

2008-11-18T21:16:00.001-08:00

Get the book today

You pay: $15
You get back: $9

Be my Baby by Neil Humphrey

2008-11-16T05:29:00.000-08:00

When two lines appear on the pregnancy test kit, Humphreys’ world is turned upside down. He is excited but clueless and urgently needs some directions. After all, his biggest responsibility to this point had been a pet hamster and he lost that twice.

From the moment his doctor tells him to book an obstetrician’s appointment, he knows he is out of his depth — he doesn’t know what an obstetrician is.

Humphreys deals with parents who mock his sex drive, midwives who question his usefulness, friends who share only horrific birth stories, strangers who rub his wife’s belly and folks who seem to know everything there is to know about pregnancy (but often don’t have kids of their own). And there’s that troubling dream about her giving birth to a plastic toy lizard made in China.

How will he deal with his parental insecurities?

What’s the secret to being a decent dad?

Will he drop his baby at the birth?

Both funny and poignant, Be My Baby is a frank account of Humphreys’ quest to be a good father.

Every parent will identify with his journey and perhaps begin to realise what they themselves put their mummy and daddy through, even in the womb.

You pay: $15
You get back: $9

Meg Cabot is here!

2008-10-26T07:01:00.000-07:00

Available for rental titles from Meg Cabot
1. Size 12 is not fat
2. Size 14 is not fat either
3. Queen of Bable

You pay $14
You get back $8

Grab these interesting chick lit fast!!

The Empress Series by Anchee Min

2008-08-27T22:48:00.000-07:00

Empress Orchid & The Last Empress is now available!

Rent the 2 books together at a special price of $10!

About Empress Orchid
A richly-detailed novel based on Tzu Hsi, the last empress of China. Orchid, a beautiful seventeen-year-old from an aristocratic but impoverished family, is chosen to become a lower-ranking concubine of the Emperor. The thousands of concubines will go to any lengths to bear the Emperor a son and become his Empress. Determined not to be a victim of the jealousies and foul play, Orchid trains herself in the art of pleasuring a man, bribes her way into the royal bed and seduces the monarch. Little does she know that China will collapse around her and she will be its last Empress.

About The Last Empress
At the end of the 19th century, China is rocked by humiliating foreign attacks and local rebellions. The only constant is the power wielded by one woman: the resilient, ever-resourceful Tzu Hsi, also known as Empress Orchid. Moving from the intimacy of the concubine quarters into the spotlight of the world stage, Orchid makes a dramatic metamorphosis from a strong-willed young woman to a wise political leader, who must not only face the perilous condition of her fading empire but also a series of devastating personal losses. Yearning to step aside yet growing constantly into her role, only she can hold the nation's rival factions together. In this sequel to the bestselling novel Empress Orchid, Anchee Min brings to life one of the most important figures in Chinese history, a very human leader who assumes power reluctantly, and who sacrifices all she has to protect both those she loves and her doomed empire.

You pay $30
You get back $20

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

2008-07-28T23:58:00.000-07:00

The No Excuses to Understanding Guys

He's Just Not That Into You is not a guide to dating. Aimed at women of a certain class and lifestyle and filling a slim 165 pages, the book serves merely as a calling card for its authors, five-years-out-of-the-dating-pool Sex and the City consultant Greg Behrendt and 41-years-old-and-single SatC executive story editor Liz Tuccillo. Presumably their participation in the creation of that callow and over-praised HBO television series is what qualifies Greg and Liz (the book always refers to its authors by their first names) to offer relationship guidelines: the book is titled after an episode of the show, and the design of the book is engineered to reinforce that connection.

The first eleven out of sixteen chapters have titles that begin with the phrase "He's Just Not That Into You If" and end with putative sins such as "He's Not Calling You," "He's Not Having Sex With You," "He's Having Sex With Someone Else," and "He Doesn't Want to Marry You." These chapter titles, and the relationship failures they indicate, tend to represent either the blindingly obvious or an intensification of traditional dating and relationship rules, often both at the same time. The book is addressed to urbane, heterosexual women looking for marriage. It's not exactly an under-served market, but it is only slightly narrower than the Sex and the City demographic.

Each of these chapter contains a brief description of the problem from Greg; two or three advice-column style questions from women, which Greg answers; a paragraph or two under the heading "It's so simple," which reinforces the chapter title; "Here's Why This One Is Hard," wherein Liz empathizes with reluctant readers and whines ad nauseum about how difficult her romantic life is; "This is What It Should Look Like," which discusses how an ideal situation would appear by contrast; and "Greg, I Get It," credited to one woman or another who finds the advice liberating. Three items end each chapter: "If You Don't Believe Greg," which always has '20 out of 20' or '100% of polled men' giving advice that stands by the chapter's rule; a redundant "What You Should Have Learned in This Chapter" summary; and a trivial but occasionally giggle-worthy "Workbook" section.

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

The Bonesetter's Daughter by Amy Tan

2008-07-28T23:41:00.000-07:00

The Bonesetter's Daughter tells the intertwined stories of a mother-daughter pair. Ruth Young, a middle-aged Chinese-American, has trouble relating to her elderly China-born mother, LuLing Young. LuLing is suffering from memory loss: a symptom of dementia, or Alzheimer's, perhaps.

But when LuLing tells Ruth the story of her past, Ruth finds the power to understand and forgive her mother. LuLing recalls her life in the village called Immortal Heart, brought up by her Precious Auntie, more than a nursemaid to her. Precious Auntie, the daughter of a famous bonesetter, found herself plagued by misfortune and ghosts from the past. LuLing fears the effect of such bad luck will filter down through many generations. This was why Ruth's mother burdened her with insecurities and paranoia all through her childhood.

Once again, Amy Tan plumbs her fascination with the supernatural, while capturing the idiosyncratic dynamics within a Chinese family. All the same, Tan affirms the role of the mother in preserving the continuity of tradition. "A mother is always the beginning. She is how things begin."

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

Local Delights - Neil Humphreys

2008-07-27T07:01:00.000-07:00

* Notes from an Even Smaller Island

From the aunties in the hawker centres to expats dressed as bananas, from Singlish to kiasuism, and from Singaporeans at home to Singaporeans abroad, Humphreys explores all aspects of Singaporean life, taking in the sights, dissecting the culture and illuminating each place and person with his perceptive and witty observations.

Written by someone who is at once both insider and outsider, the book is wonderfully funny and disarmingly honest portrait of Singapore and its people.

** Scribbles From the Same Island
Singapore’s most famous Toa Payoh HDB flat-dwelling ang moh, Neil Humphreys is back with more Scribbles from the Same Island. He is not rich, doesn’t own a condo, and doesn’t have many expat privileges, but nonetheless manages to remain the same funny bloke happily living in the heartlands of Toa Payoh.

One year after his best-selling, Notes From An Even Smaller Island had the whole of Singapore laughing helplessly, Neil Humphreys is still madly in love with his humble but stimulating existence on the sunny island of Singapore.

So much, in fact, that he now makes a living poking gentle fun at every oddball aspect of Singaporean life. Expect to find more of his take on SPG, sex, doctors, toilets, farecards ...... all seemingly innocuous subjects but made hilarious through his witty observations.

Nothing is safe from Neil’s humorous scrutiny. Not even the unsuspecting creatures at the zoo, and certainly not the bawdy nightlife at Geylang.

Scribbles From The Same Island is a collection of Neil Humphreys’ columns that were first published in WEEKEND TODAY on life in Singapore. Also included are several short stories specially written for this book. The 38 pieces of writing take a humorous look at how a foreigner adapts and copes with life in the lion city as well as the regular Singaporean’s reaction to his behaviour.

*** Final Notes from a Great Island
The country’s best-selling author and popular columnist is back. After a decade in Singapore, Neil Humphreys has decide to move on to the land Down Under because he really wanted to spend time living among the world’s most poisonous snakes and roo poo.

But the British writer didn’t want to leave the island he fell in love with 10 years ago without taking one final, kaypoh look around the place. Embarking on a farewell tour from his Toa Payoh home, Humphreys vowed to explore Singapore as he did when he first arrived, on foot and unaware, taking in his favourite places, the ulu haunts, the green spots, the clean parts and the dirty bits; the nation’s underbelly and its belly dancers.

From Sentosa to Sembawang, Choa Chu Kang to Changi, St John’s Island to Johor (he got a bit carried away), Humphreys treks, cycles and even hitchhikes his way across this great island, encountering murderous dogs, dead cats, wild crocodiles, mad cyclists, terrifying transvestites, persistent prostitutes and half-naked ice cream vendors.

Humphreys’ unique tours take in the glorious countryside of Lim Chu Kang, the serene beaches of Kusu Island, the history of Changi, the pristine public toilets of Raffles Hotel and the mating couples of Mount Faber to prove, once and for all, that there is so much more to Singapore than shopping malls.

Honest, insightful and funny, Final Notes From a Great Island is a warm, uplifting tribute to Singapore and every Singaporean (and tourist, employment pass holder and permanent resident for that matter) should read it.

Visit http://www.neilhumphreys.net/books.html

You pay $12 (per book)
You get back $6

NDP Promo Special

2008-07-27T06:50:00.001-07:00

Celebrating the Singapore Spirit...

It's our nation's celebration month as we anticipate for the 43rd birthday of our little red dot.

Introducing the NDP promo, rent 1 book, and rent the next book at 50% off!!!
The promo is valid for the whole month of August.

Let's celebrate the month and read up!!!

Gods Behaving Badly

2008-07-27T06:46:00.000-07:00

From Marie Phillips, hailed by the Guardian Unlimited website as a “hot author” destined to “break through” in 2007, comes a highly entertaining novel set in North London, where the Greek gods have been living in obscurity since the seventeenth century.

Being immortal isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Life’s hard for a Greek god in the twenty-first century: nobody believes in you any more, even your own family doesn’t respect you, and you’re stuck in a dilapidated hovel in North London with too many siblings and not enough hot water. But for Artemis (goddess of hunting, professional dog walker), Aphrodite (goddess of beauty, telephone sex operator) and Apollo (god of the sun, TV psychic) there’s no way out… until a meek cleaner and her would-be boyfriend come into their lives and turn the world upside down.

Gods Behaving Badly is that rare thing, a charming, funny, utterly original novel that satisfies the head and the heart.

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

Then We Came To The End By Joshua Ferris

2008-07-21T00:09:00.000-07:00

This wickedly funny, big-hearted novel about life in the office signals the arrival of a gloriously talented new writer.

The characters in Then We Came To The End cope with a business downturn in the time-honored way: through gossip, secret romance, elaborate pranks, and increasingly frequent coffee breaks. By day they compete for the best office furniture left behind and try to make sense of the mysterious pro-bono ad campaign that is their only remaining "work."

Visit the website http://www.hachettebookgroupusa.com/features/twctte/twctte_022307/index.html for more details about the book.

You pay : $14
You get back: $8

Lovers Zone

2008-06-07T04:43:00.000-07:00

Come and read about love, love, LOVE!

1. Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus by John Gray
2. Men and Women Together Forever by John Gray
3. The 100 secrets of Great Relationship
4.

These LOVEly books are available for rental
You pay: $15
You get back: $9

HAPPY April Fool's Day!

2008-03-25T02:35:00.000-07:00

As we know, 1st April is April Fool's day!

And here, we are celebrating the special day, not by fooling you. Rent 3 books in the month of April and get the 4th book rental at $0.00!

No joke!!!

So hurry and celebrate the special month with me!

My Story By Dave Pelzer

2008-03-25T00:47:00.000-07:00

A CHILD CALLED 'IT': Dave Pelzer's story is of a child beaten and starved by his emotionally unstable, alcoholic mother: a mother who played tortuous, unpredictable games that left one of her three sons nearly dead. No longer considered a son, or a boy, but an 'it', Dave had to learn how to play these games in order to survive. 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. This is an inspirational look at the horrors of child abuse and the steadfast determination of one child to survive despite the odds. 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.

Night Train to Lisbon by Pascal Mercier

2008-03-21T20:44:00.000-07:00

Raimund Gregorius is a Latin teacher at a Swiss college with a vast knowledge of Greek and Hebrew who one day — after a chance encounter with a mysterious Portuguese woman — abandons his old life to start a new one. He takes the night train to Lisbon and carries with him a book by Amadeu de Prado, a (fictional) Portuguese doctor and essayist whose writings explore the ideas of loneliness, mortality, death, friendship, love, and loyalty. Chafing against his solitary routine for the first time in his life, Gregorius becomes obsessed by what he reads and restlessly struggles to comprehend the life of the author. His investigations lead him all over the city of Lisbon, as he speaks to those who were entangled in Prado's life. Gradually, the picture of an extraordinary man emerges — a doctor and poet who rebelled against Salazar's dictatorship.

Recalling Bernhard Schlink and Nicole Krauss in its affirmation of the power of literature, will, and the individual, Night Train to Lisbon is a book of sensual beauty and artistic excellence, one that will be remembered for its soul and wit as well as its universality and great intellectual depth.

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

Eat Love Pray by Elizabeth Gilbert

2008-03-21T20:38:00.000-07:00

A celebrated writer's irresistible, candid, and eloquent account of her pursuit of worldly pleasure, spiritual devotion, and what she really wanted out of life

This beautifully written, heartfelt memoir touched a nerve among both readers and reviewers. Elizabeth Gilbert tells how she made the difficult choice to leave behind all the trappings of modern American success (marriage, house in the country, career) and find, instead, what she truly wanted from life. Setting out for a year to study three different aspects of her nature amid three different cultures, Gilbert explored the art of pleasure in Italy and the art of devotion in India, and then a balance between the two on the Indonesian island of Bali. By turns rapturous and rueful, this wise and funny author (whom Booklist calls “Anne Lamott’s hip, yoga- practicing, footloose younger sister”) is poised to garner yet more adoring fans.

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

Let's read together!

2008-02-11T21:53:00.000-08:00

Special promotion for February

Recommend a friend to rent a book, and it benefits both you and your friend!
get 50% off the rental price of any ONE book.

Remember Me by Sophie Kinsella

2008-02-08T19:38:00.000-08:00

Sophie Kinsella is the author of the bestselling Shopaholic series, as well as The Undomestic Goddess and Can You Keep a Secret?

With the same wicked humor and delicious charm that have won her millions of devoted fans, Sophie Kinsella, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Shopaholic & Baby, returns with an irresistible new novel and a fresh new heroine who finds herself in a life-changing and utterly hilarious predicament….

When twenty-eight-year-old Lexi Smart wakes up in a London hospital, she’s in for a big surprise. Her teeth are perfect. Her body is toned. Her handbag is Vuitton. Having survived a car accident—in a Mercedes no less—Lexi has lost a big chunk of her memory, three years to be exact, and she’s about to find out just how much things have changed.

Somehow Lexi went from a twenty-five-year-old working girl to a corporate big shot with a sleek new loft, a personal assistant, a carb-free diet, and a set of glamorous new friends. And who is this gorgeous husband—who also happens to be a multimillionaire? With her mind still stuck three years in reverse, Lexi greets this brave new world determined to be the person she…well, seems to be. That is, until an adorably disheveled architect drops the biggest bombshell of all.

Suddenly Lexi is scrambling to catch her balance. Her new life, it turns out, comes complete with secrets, schemes, and intrigue. How on earth did all this happen? Will she ever remember? And what will happen when she does?

This book is coming up real soon. Get your hand on it by reserving it first! Be among the 1st to read this chicklit! Reservation by email at prettyfly07@hotmail.com today!!

New Arrival - The Golden Compass

2008-01-26T08:21:00.000-08:00

Synopsis
The Golden Compass forms the first part of a story in three volumes. The first volume is set in a world like ours, but different in many ways. The second volume is set partly in the world we know. The third moves between many worlds.

In The Golden Compass, readers meet for the first time 11-year-old Lyra Belacqua, a precocious orphan growing up within the precincts of Jordan College in Oxford, England. It quickly becomes clear that Lyra's Oxford is not precisely like our own - nor is her world. In Lyra's world, everyone has a personal dæmon, a lifelong animal familiar. This is a world in which science, theology and magic are closely intertwined.

These ideas are of little concern to Lyra, who at the outset of the story, spends most of her time with her friend Roger, a kitchen boy. Together, they share a carefree existence scampering across the roofs of the college, racing through the streets of Oxford, or waging war with the other children in town. But that life changes forever when Lyra and her dæmon, Pantalaimon, prevent an assassination attempt on her uncle, the powerful Lord Asriel, and then overhear a secret discussion about a mysterious entity known as Dust.

It is at this time that children mysteriously began to disappear. Children, and only the children, are vanishing at the hands of what become known as the "Gobblers." Who the Gobblers are and what they want is unknown, but soon, children from far and wide are disappearing with out a trace, even Lyra's good friend, Roger.

But before she can begin her search for Roger, Lyra is introduced to Mrs. Coulter, a beautiful and bewitching woman. Mrs. Coulter is a scholar and an explorer - seemingly everything that Lyra could ever hope to be. Mrs. Coulter takes Lyra under her wing and employs her as an assistant to help in the next expedition to explore the Arctic North. On the morning she is to leave Jordan College, the Master of the school gives Lyra an alethiometer, a rare and powerful instrument with the power to reveal the truth in all things.

While under Mrs. Coulter's guidance, Lyra learns of her mentor's critical role in Church's General Oblation Board, a.k.a. the Gobblers, the party responsible for the disappearing children. It is revealed that these kidnapped children are taken to Bolvangar, a place in the far North, to participate in Dust experiments whereby they are severed from their dæmons through a process called intercision. Lyra also learns that the Church has captured and imprisoned Lord Asriel in the Arctic region of Bolvanger where he has undertaken Dust experiments of his own.

Horrified at what she has learned, Lyra and Pantalaimon flee Mrs. Coulter's home in the middle of the night and are rescued through the kindness of two gyptian men. The gyptians are a gypsy group of boat-people who live a harsh life on the water tempered by their unwavering sense of family, loyalty and love. It is the gyptians' children who have suffered most at the hands of the Gobblers, and they have vowed to travel North to rescue them. Lyra pledges to share what she knows, rescue her dear friend Roger, and ultimately find her imprisoned father. Through the gyptian elders, Lord Faa and Farder Coram, Lyra is bewildered to learn that her parents are Lord Asriel and Mrs. Coulter. Despite this shock, Lyra quickly learns to read the alethiometer and understand its messages. Although her alethiometer enables her to discover the truth in everything around her, Lyra is unaware of the incredible role her own life plays in the fate of the universe. Lyra is the subject of a great prophecy in which she is destined to commit a fateful betrayal that will determine the future of all worlds.

To succeed in the rescue mission for the children, the gyptians enlist the alliances of three people who come to regard Lyra dearly: Serafina Pekkala, the witch queen who reveals that the fate of universe lies in Lyra's future; Lee Scoresby, a Texan aeronaut and commander of a hot air balloon; and Iorek Byrnison, a renegade armored polar bear, deposed as king of his clan by a deceitful brother. While on their long, hard journey in the far North, Lyra and Pantalaimon are kidnapped by hunters who take them to Bolvangar, the place where all the kidnapped children have been brought. At long last, Lyra is happily reunited with Roger, but to her horror, she witnesses intercision, the gruesome Dust experiment that separates child and dæmon. Banding together, the children and their daemons escape the terrors of Bolvangar, fleeing into the safety of the gyptians, Serafina Pekkala's witches, Lee Scoreby's balloon, and Iorek Byrnison.

Although the children are rescued, the journey for Lyra and Roger is far from over. They travel further north and finally find Lyra's father, Lord Asriel. Lord Asriel has experimented with Dust as well, and has discovered its role in crossing the barriers into other worlds. He has constructed a bridge to another world, but crossing that bridge requires the energy released in an intercision. Unable to sacrifice his own child, Lord Asriel makes Roger his prey and escapes to another world. The universe has been broken and Lyra's friend lies dead, but she vows get revenge and discover the secret of Dust.

<女人我最大 2007冬季号> Queen Magazine 2007 # 9 Winter Issue

2008-01-12T07:55:00.000-08:00

Queen Magazine 2007 #9 Winter Issue* [Taiwan] (Traditional Chinese Text)
Nv Ren Wo Zui Da ~ 2007 Dong Ji Hao

Inside this issue
Your Very Own Winter Beauty

Miss Poor VS Miss Rich ~ Best Party Look

MAKEUP How to best use the season's color BEIGE by Kevin
SKINCARE Pros and Cons of 6 major winter skincare items by Niu-er
HAIR Step by Step Latest 'IN' Hair Styles of Japan

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

The Game by Neil Struass

2008-01-12T07:50:00.000-08:00

There are men who act as if their virginity were only misplaced and might one day be restored; as if a dearth of sex will cause them to metamorphose into the callow, playground laughing-stock of macho nightmare.

One such man was Neil Strauss, professional womaniser and author of The Game. Strauss, a journalist and writer, was a bit nervous, a bit on the short side, a bit on the bald side. He had no luck with women. That made him sad. Then a more effectively libidinous friend introduced him, via the internet, to the world of pick-up artists, men who claim to have cracked the code of female attraction, and who, for a handsome fee, will share it with their frustrated brethren.

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

Customers are the King (and Queen)!

2008-01-07T22:07:00.000-08:00

p/s: Yes, the ever thoughtful me is not leaving any ladies out of the lobang!

And because I firmly believe in this statement, I am hereby offering you the opportunity to request for the books that you would like to rent.

If the books that you are raving to read is not available on the website, you can send the request to me and I will do my very best to bring in the book, JUST FOR YOU!

Email me at prettyfly07@hotmail.com for the book request.

Come on! Don't be shy!!!

Coming Soon....

2008-01-07T21:46:00.000-08:00

The very latest from the Shopaholic series by Sophie Kinsella.

Be the first to rent this latest chicklit from the bestseller Shopaholic series at a low low rate of S$6!!!

Becky's life is blooming! She's working at London's newest fashion store, The Look, house-hunting with husband Luke (her secret wish is a Shoe Room)...and she's pregnant! She couldn't be more overjoyed - especially since discovering that shopping cures morning sickness. Everything has got to be perfect for her baby: from the designer nursery...to the latest, coolest pram...to the celebrity, must-have obstetrician. But when the celebrity obstetrician turns out to be her husband Luke's glamorous, intellectual ex-girlfriend, Becky's perfect world starts to crumble. She's shopping for two...but are there three in her marriage?

Also available are the first four books from the series.
1. Confessions of a Shopaholic
2. Shopaholic Takes Manhatten
3. Shopaholic Ties the Knot
4. Shopaholic and Sister

Make your reservation today to prettyfly07@hotmail.com!

Great reads to kickstart the year!

2008-01-07T18:22:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year!!!
I am sure looking forward to a great year ahead as we embarked on it. I hope you are too.... new year, new hopes!

What is the best way to start the year?
Of course is to enrich ourselves, and one of the easiest way is through reading.

I am introducing some great reads for great people like you!

For the disoriented ladies who is out looking for their prince charming - Why Men Loves Bitches. . This fun book shares with us how we should love ourselves and never take ourselves for granted. We are who we are and we deserve privileged treatment from the gentlemen. I shall say no more, but to urge you to read this book

For the pet lover (or animal lover)-
Marley And Me. This book is written in a very candid and interesting style which made me unable to put the book down. This is the very first book in my life that I cried while reading (I swear!). The unconditioned love given by Marley (in case you are wondering, yes, Marley is the lab) Oh.... I shall not be a spoiler, and leave you to find out about the book itself!

For the stressed up individuals-
Stick To Drawing Comics, Monkey Brain. This book written by none other than Scott Adams.

Huh?
Who???

Dilbert! The creator of Dilbert! Erm, you have heard of Dilbert.... right???
This book is funny! Adams regularly write pieces on his blog and hence he finally decide to publish a book containing various entries. I, myself is a big fan of Dilbert and his writing definately does not disappoint me at all!

5 Secrets to an Enriching Life - Box Set

2008-01-07T18:11:00.000-08:00

Retail price: $52.45
Special price: $28.95

The five books to discover the secrets to improving work life while enriching social life, by turning hectic lives into something more peaceful and effective.

The titles includes:
1. Downshifting by John D. Drake
2. Finding Your Strength in Life by David Viscott
3. The Power of Purpose by Richard J. Leider
4. Repacking Your Bags by Richard J. Leider & David Shapiro
5. Simple Steps by Dr. Arthur Caliandro

** A Delivery charge of S$2 is applicable.
Pls contact me at prettyfly07@hotmail.com for more information.

Business Bestseller Pack (Promotion has ended)

2008-01-07T18:08:00.000-08:00

Business Bestseller Pack

Retail price: $53.45

Special price $31.95

This pack bundles three enthralling and top selling titles on economics, globalization and politics.

The titles are:
1. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkin
2. The World is Flat by Thomas L Friedman
3. The Undercover Economist by Tim Harford

** A Delivery charge of S$2 is applicable.
Pls contact me at prettyfly07@hotmail.com for more information.

New Feature added

2008-01-05T19:56:00.000-08:00

I have added in a chatbox (if you look at the right side of the column).

Yes! We can chat now!!

Post all your questions and feedback in the chatbox and I will get back to you in lightning speed (keep your fingers crossed!).

You can also introduce great reads in the chat box, or any topics that you would like to discuss (but preferably about books, and not food).

Let's chat today! :)

Stick to Drawing Comics, Monkey Brain!: Cartoonist Ignores Helpful Advice by Scott Adams

2008-01-04T22:01:00.000-08:00

Everyone knows Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, as the king of workplace humor. His brilliant insights into the crazy world of business have long been on display in his hugely popular comic strip and bestselling books like The Dilbert Principle. But there’s much more to life than work, and it turns out that the man behind Dogbert and the Pointy-Haired Boss has an equally outrageous take on life outside the cubicle.

Now Adams ventures into uncharted territory in this hilarious collection of more than 150 short pieces on everything from lunar real estate to exploding bladders, not to mention politics, religion, dating, underwear, alien life, and the menace of car singing.

In his essays on Helpful Critical Guy syndrome (HCGS) and the Who Cares Most (WCM) Method, Adams shares his recently acquired insights on married life. He shares his diet secret that involves experiencing a wrenching personal problem to lose weight or, if that fails, buying stretch pants and growing a goatee. He also gives expert advice on how to appear smarter than you are (two words: zeitgeist and eponymous).

Adams isn’t afraid to confront the most pressing questions of our day, such as the pros and cons of toothpaste smuggling, why kangaroos don’t drive cars, and whether or not Jesus would approve of your second iPod.

His “optimistic cynicism” enlivens his no-holds-barred rants about stupidity, Komodo dragons, getting old, nose snorkeling, and the end of humanity.

He even takes us behind the scenes of his process for creating Dilbert, showing a series of strips that he wasn’t allowed to run in their original form. And he reveals why a syndicated comic strip can never show a police officer firing a gun—but a donut that shoots bullets is totally fine.

Why Men Love Bitches NEW TITLE!!

2007-12-29T06:48:00.000-08:00

From Doormat to Dreamgirl - A woman's guide to holding her own in a relationship

New!!

2007-12-05T06:56:00.001-08:00

Latest additions to the library

1. Why Men Love Bitches
2. How Starbucks saves my life
3. 92 Ways to talk to Anyone
4. The other side of the story by Marian Keyes

Pls contact me at prettyfly07@hotmail.com for more details.

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

2007-09-05T23:00:00.000-07:00

EVEN before she's born, Calliope Stephanides's gender is up for debate. Her parents, Milton and Tessie Stephanides of Detroit, want a girl, and a bachelor uncle convinces Milton, ostensibly on the authority of an article in Scientific American magazine, that if the couple have ''sexual congress'' 24 hours prior to ovulation ''the swift male sperm would rush in and die off. The female sperm, sluggish but more reliable, would arrive just as the egg dropped.'' Tessie complies, despite her worries that ''to tamper with something as mysterious and miraculous as the birth of a child was an act of hubris.'' Once Tessie is pregnant, Milton's mother, Desdemona -- a refugee with her husband, Lefty, from a Greek village on the slopes of Mount Olympus -- dangles a silver spoon tied to a string over the belly of her daughter-in-law and pronounces the child a boy. Her son storms in to protest the divination; the baby is a girl, he insists. ''It's science, Ma.''

They're both right, after a fashion. Callie will spend the 1960's and early 70's, the first years of her life, as the relatively unremarkable daughter of an entrepreneurial Greek-American family, only to discover at 14, in the office of a Manhattan physician, that she is a hermaphrodite -- or, more precisely, a pseudohermaphrodite, a sufferer of 5-alpha-reductase deficiency syndrome. ''To the extent that fetal hormones affect brain chemistry and histology, I've got a male brain,'' explains Cal, the man Callie decides to become after she learns the truth and the narrator of ''Middlesex,'' Jeffrey Eugenides's expansive and radiantly generous second novel. ''But I was raised as a girl.''

Eugenides's first novel, ''The Virgin Suicides'' (1993), was a dreamy, slender book about the gulf in understanding between the adolescent boys in a Michigan suburb and the five daughters of a strict Roman Catholic couple living in their neighborhood. The boys fill that gulf with romantic obsession, a beast that thrives in a vacuum, and the girls, stricken with a fatal loneliness, die by their own hands like a bevy of unlucky fairy tale princesses. ''Middlesex'' may be an entirely different sort of book -- it's longer, more discursive and funnier, for a start -- but it's equally preoccupied with rifts. There's the gap between male and female, obviously, but also between Greek and WASP, black and white, the old world and the new, the silver spoon and the sluggish sperm. Finally, there is the tug of war between destiny and free will -- an age-old concern of Greek storytellers, as every college freshman learns, reborn in the theories advanced by evolutionary psychology.

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

New Titles added!!!

2007-09-05T22:37:00.000-07:00

New Titles added!!!
1. Lord of the Ring 1, 2 & 3 by J.R.R Tolkein
2. American God by Neil Gaiman
3. Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
4. Twilight by Stephanie Meyers
5. The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
6. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
7. Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
8. Daughter of the Empire by Janny Wurts and Raymon E. Feist

If the book you are looking for is not available on the website, you can email me at prettyfly07@hotmail for your desired title, and I will do my best to deliver the title to you.

The final countdown to all Harry Potter Fans

2007-07-20T21:20:00.000-07:00

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

2007-07-18T07:58:00.000-07:00

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

2007-07-18T07:54:00.000-07:00

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.

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

Everyone Worth Knowing by Lauren Weisberger

2007-07-18T07:48:00.000-07:00

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
You get back $6
Status: Not Available

About Schmidt by Louis Begley

2007-07-18T07:43:00.000-07:00

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.
>
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

2007-07-15T06:43:00.000-07:00

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.

You pay $20
You get back $14
Status: Available

My Story by Dave Pelzer

2007-07-15T06:30:00.000-07:00

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
You get back $12
Status: Available

Angels and Demons by Dan Brown

2007-07-15T06:23:00.000-07:00

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...

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

The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom

2007-07-15T06:15:00.000-07:00

"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.

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

The Surrendered Single by Laura Doyle

2007-07-15T06:01:00.000-07:00

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

2007-07-15T05:22:00.000-07:00

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

2007-07-15T05:10:00.000-07:00

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.

You pay $16
You get back $10
Status: Available

The Stranger by Albert Camus

2007-07-15T04:57:00.000-07:00

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."

You pay $15
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Status: Available

Picture Perfect by Jodi Picoult

2007-07-15T04:54:00.000-07:00

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.

You pay $15
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Status: Available

Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

2007-07-15T04:43:00.000-07:00

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.

You pay $15
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Status: Available

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

2007-07-15T04:35:00.000-07:00

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

2007-07-15T04:25:00.000-07:00

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.

You pay $16
You get back $10
Status: Available

Shopaholic & Sister

2007-07-15T03:54:00.000-07:00

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

2007-07-15T03:52:00.000-07:00

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

2007-07-15T03:45:00.000-07:00

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

2007-07-15T02:06:00.000-07:00

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

2007-07-15T01:59:00.000-07:00

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

2007-07-15T01:42:00.000-07:00

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.

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

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

The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

2007-07-15T01:38:00.000-07:00

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

2007-07-14T23:47:00.000-07:00

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

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

I am a Cat by Soseki Natsume

2007-07-14T23:19:00.000-07:00

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

2007-07-14T10:11:00.000-07:00

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

2007-07-14T09:58:00.000-07:00

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.

You pay $14
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Status: Available

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

2007-07-14T09:53:00.000-07:00

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

2007-07-14T09:49:00.000-07:00

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.

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Status: Available

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

2007-07-14T09:45:00.000-07:00

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.

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Status: Available

A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka

2007-07-14T09:40:00.000-07:00

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

2007-07-14T09:35:00.000-07:00

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

2007-07-14T08:50:00.000-07:00

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

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Status: Available

Marley and Me by John Grogan

2007-07-14T08:33:00.000-07:00

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.

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Status: Available

Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl by Tracy Quan

2007-07-13T22:14:00.000-07:00

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.

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Status: Available

The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger

2007-07-13T22:06:00.000-07:00

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.