The final countdown to all Harry Potter Fans

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

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

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

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

Man and Boy by Tony Parsons

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

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

Hollywood Kids by Jackie Collins

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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Status: Available

Everyone Worth Knowing by Lauren Weisberger

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

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


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Status: Not Available

About Schmidt by Louis Begley

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

You pay $10
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Status: Available

Anna and Mister God by Fynn

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

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Status: Available

My Story by Dave Pelzer

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

You pay $18
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Status: Available

Angels and Demons by Dan Brown

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

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

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

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

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

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Status: Available

The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom

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

#1 New York Times bestseller!!

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

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

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

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

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



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Status: Not Available

The Surrendered Single by Laura Doyle

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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You get back $12
Status: Available

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

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

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Status: Available

The Stranger by Albert Camus

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

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

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

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

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Status: Available

Picture Perfect by Jodi Picoult

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Status: Available

Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Status: Available