William Boyd is perhaps best described as a wry historian of 20th century life and an ironic commentator on the ways that life is represented, not only in literature, but in visual art, film and photography. While his geographical settings vary from the conflict-stricken west African coast of Brazzaville Beach (1990) to the romantic vistas of the Philippine islands in The Blue Afternoon (1993), his focus is on the English personality and how it adapts, or fails to adapt, to the demands of a foreign landscape. His novels include A Good Man in Africa (1981), winner of the Whitbread Award and the Somerset Maugham Award; Any Human Heart (2002), winner of the Prix Jean Monnet; Restless (2006), winner of the Costa Novel of the Year; and Ordinary Thunderstorms (2010).
His new novel, Waiting for Sunrise (Paperback, $22.99), is an incandescent thriller that explores the line between consciousness and reality as a young English actor becomes ensnared in a bewildering scandal with an enigmatic woman in early 20th century Vienna. "Sly, clever, frequently hilarious, always involving...the literary event of the year." - John O'Connell, The Times
Author photo by Eamonn McCabe
Categories: New Releases, Literature, Author of the Month
Our Author of the Month for April is , whose novels include the New York Times bestsellers The Post-Birthday World (2007) and We Need to Talk About Kevin, which won the 2005 Orange Prize. Her work is praised for its tense plot lines and her writing for its narrative power and journalistic detail.
In her latest novel, The New Republic, reporter Edgar Kellogg is sent to an imaginary outpost called Barba to report on the terrorist activities of the SOB (Os Soldados Ousados de Barba - the Daring Soldiers of Barba). He's replacing the larger-than-life Barrington Saddler, who has mysteriously disappeared. But all is not as it appears. Why, with Barrington vanished, do terrorist incidents claimed by the "SOB" suddenly dry up? While this droll, playful novel addresses weighty issues like terrorism with a deft, tongue-in-cheek touch, Shriver presses a more intimate issue: what makes particular people so infuriatingly magnetic, when the rest of us inspire barely a shrug? What's their secret? And who really has the better life - the admired or the admirer?
Categories: Author of the Month
is recognized as a distinctive postmodern voice in contemporary British literature. He is best known as a writer of essayistic books that have been described as a "philosophy of everyday life." He's written on literature (How Proust Can Change your Life, 1997), travel (The Art of Travel, 2002), and architecture (The Architecture of Happiness, 2006). Critics view application of philosophy and literary classics to circumstances within contemporary life as an attempt to make complex ideas more accessible, popular and relevant to his readers.
In his new book, Religion for Atheists, asks the question: What if religions are neither all true or all nonsense? He suggests that rather than mocking religions, agnostics and atheists should steal from them because they're packed with good ideas on how we might live and arrange our societies. Blending deep respect with total impiety, (a non-believer himself), proposes that we should look to religions for insights on such things as building communities, making relationships last, and how to get more out of art, architecture, travel and music.
Categories: Authors, Author of the Month
Our Author of the Month for February is celebrated historian .
Among the remarkable generation of historians who came out of Cambridge in the 1960s -- , and among others -- one name stands out. Well before his death in 2010 at the age of 62 from a progressive neurological disorder, proved himself a great historian of modern Europe and a brilliant political commentator. In his guise as a political and historical essayist, he was a fearless critic of narrow orthodoxies and bullying cliques, from communist apologists to the Israel lobby, from "liberal hawks" to progressive educationists.
Thinking the Twentieth Century is the final book by this unparalleled historian and public critic. Where masterpiece Postwar redefined the history of modern Europe by uniting the stories of its eastern and western halves, Thinking the Twentieth Century unites the century's conflicted intellectual history into a single soaring narrative. Spanning the entire era and all currents of thought in a manner never previously attempted, Thinking the Twentieth Century is a triumphant tour de force that restores clarity to the classics of modern thought with the assurance and grace of a master craftsman.
Categories: Authors, Author of the Month 
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