Yann Martel: Life of Pi

‘ Carry Me Down is uncompromising, unputdownable and done with expert lightness. It’s a work of discreet brilliance. MJ Hyland is a truly gifted writer.’ Ali Smith

‘This is fiction-writing of the highest order.’ JM Coetzee

‘Enthralling and absorbing.’ Observer

£ 7.99

ISBN 978 1 84195 906 1

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THE SECRET RIVER

KATE GRENVILLE

Winner of the 2006 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize Shortlisted for the 2006 Man Booker Prize

London, 1806 – William Thornhill, happily wedded to his childhood sweetheart Sal, is a waterman on the River Thames. Life is tough but bearable until William makes a mistake, a bad mistake for which he and his family are made to pay dearly. His sentence: to be transported to New South Wales for the term of his natural life.

Arriving with his growing family in a harsh and alien land, Thornhill’s primary concern is survival. But among the convicts there is a rumour that freedom can be bought, that ‘unclaimed’ land up the Hawkesbury offers an opportunity to start afresh, far away from the township of Sydney. When William takes a hundred acres for himself he is shocked to find Aboriginal people already living on the river. And other recent arrivals – Thomas Blackwood, Smasher Sullivan and Mrs Herring – are finding their own ways to respond to them.

Soon Thornhill, a man neither better nor worse than most, has to make the most difficult decision of his life …

‘Splendidly paced, passionate and disturbing.’ Salley Vickers, The Times

‘Grenville shows again the excellent form that won her the Orange Prize.’ Sunday Times

‘A magnificent novel – an unflinching exploration of modern Australia’s origins.’ New Yorker

£ 7.99

ISBN 978 1 84195 828 6

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THE CRIMSON PETAL AND THE WHITE

MICHEL FABER

Gripping from the first page, this immense novel is an intoxicating and deeply satisfying read. Faber’s most ambitious fictional creation yet, it affirms his position as one of the most talented and brilliant writers working in the UK.

Sugar, an alluring, nineteen-year-old whore in the brothel of the terrifying Mrs Castaway, yearns for a better life. Her ascent through the strata of 1870s London society offers us intimacy with a host of loveable, maddening and superbly realised characters. At the heart of this panoramic, multi-layered narrative is the compelling struggle of a young woman to lift herself body and soul out of the gutter.

The Crimson Petal and the White is a big, juicy, must-read of a novel that will delight, enthral, provoke and entertain young and old, male and female.

‘When a book is big it had better be good – this one is. Dive in. Enjoy!’ Alice Sebold, author of The Lovely Bones

‘The most enjoyable novel I’ve read all year.’ Independent on Sunday

‘Unputdownable … a heady and intoxicating mixture of affection, respect and scabrous resistance.’ The Times

‘Irresistibly readable.’ Ruth Rendell

£ 9.99

ISBN 978 1 84195 431 8

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THE PEOPLE’S ACT OF LOVE

JAMES MEEK

Longlisted for the 2005 Man Booker Prize

Deepest Siberia, 1919. Deep in the unforgiving landscape a town lies under the military rule of a Kurtz-like commander, awaiting the remorseless assault of Bolsheviks along the Trans-Siberian railway. A shunned Christian community, the townspeople remain committed to practising their esoteric religion.

Then Samarin arrives, appearing from the woods with tales of escape from Russia’s northernmost prison camp and of pursuit by a cannibal known only as ‘The Mohican’. Anna, a beautiful young widow, feels something for the new arrival. Then the local shaman is found dead, and suspicion and terror engulf the little town.

‘The best and most original book I have read for years.’ Louis de Bernières

‘Spellbinding. Though set in the past, this feels like the most contemporary fiction you’ll ever read … A truly great read.’ Irvine Welsh

‘A quite extraordinary novel … the language is so fresh and crisp and sparkling. And what a narrative! What a story!’ Philip Pullman

£ 7.99

ISBN 978 1 84195 706 7

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Yann Martel was born in 1963 and lives in the Canadian prairie province of Saskatchewan. Life of Pi , his second novel, was published to international acclaim in over forty countries and won the 2002 Man Booker Prize. He is presently working on a novel and an essay, both on the murder of the Jews of Europe at the hands of the Nazis.

Copyright

First published in Great Britain in 2002

by Canongate Books Ltd,

14 High Street, Edinburgh, EH1 1TE

This digital edition first published in 2008

by Canongate Books Ltd

Originally published in Canada by Alfred A. Knopf,

a division of Random House Canada

Copyright © Yann Martel, 2001

Reading Group Guide copyright © Harcourt Trade Publishers, 2002

Reading Group Guide material reprinted with kind permission of Harcourt Books

The moral rights of the author have been asserted

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available on

request from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 84767 421 0

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