Kurt Cobain

In this compelling biography, Christopher Sandford explores the full, inside story of Kurt Cobain. From the disruptive childhood which had such a crucial impact on Cobain’s personality to the ambitious career musician who, as a friend said, ‘lunged for success’, and the worldwide breakthrough of Nirvana’s Nevermind, Sandford also writes about Cobain’s stormy marriage to Courtney Love, his heroin addiction, and how he became more and more of a recluse. Finally, he writes of the crisis when, in April 1994, Cobain turned a shotgun on himself and became a martyr for disaffected youth. The result is a saga of success and corruption which John Peel has called “the ultimate rock and roll morality story”.

The Shadow of The Wind Hidden in the heart of the old city of Barcelona is the ‘cemetery of lost books’, a labyrinthine library of obscure and forgotten titles that have long gone out of print. To this library, a man brings his 10-year-old son Daniel one cold morning in 1945. Daniel is allowed to choose one book from the shelves and pulls out La Sombra del Viento by Julian Carax. But as he grows up, several people seem inordinately interested in his find. Then, one night, as he is wandering the old streets once more, Daniel is approached by a figure who reminds him of a character from La Sombra del Viento, a character who turns out to be the devil. This man is tracking down every last copy of Carax’s work in order to burn them. What begins as a case of literary curiosity turns into a race to find out the truth behind the life and death of Julian Carax and to save those he left behind. A page-turning exploration of obsession in literature and love, and the places that obsession can lead.

Slumdog Millionaire Former tiffinboy Ram Mohammad Thomas has just got 12 questions correct on a TV quiz-show to win a cool one billion rupees. But he is brutally slung in prison on suspicion of cheating. Because how can a child from the slums know who Shakespeare was, unless he is pulling a fast one? In the order of the questions on the show, Ram tells us which amazing adventures in his street-kid life gave him the answers. From orphanages to brothels, gangsters to beggar-masters, and into the homes of Bollywood’s rich and famous, Ram’s story is brimming with the chaotic comedy, heart-stopping tragedy and tear-inducing joyousness of modern India.

Eat, Pray, Love...

It’s 3:00 am and Elizabeth Gilbert is sobbing on the bathroom floor. She’s in her thirties, she has a husband, a house, they’re trying for a baby — and she doesn’t want any of it. A bitter divorce and a turbulent love affair later, she emerges battered and bewildered and realises it is time to pursue her own journey in search of three things she has been missing - pleasure, devotion and balance. So she travels to Rome, where she learns Italian from handsome, brown-eyed identical twins and gains 25 pounds, an ashram in India, where she finds that enlightenment entails getting up in the middle of the night to scrub the temple floor, and Bali where a toothless medicine man of indeterminate age offers her a new path to peace: simply sit still and smile. And slowly happiness begins to creep up on her.

Girls of Riyadh

This book provides an inside peek into a hidden world: four young women navigate the narrow straits between love, desire and Islamic tradition. The realities of four university students from Riyadh’s elite classes, Gamrah, Michelle, Sadeem and Lam-ees, are revealed. Living in a society with strict cultural traditions while Sex and the City, dating and sneaking around behind their parents backs consume their lives, they face numerous social, romantic, professional and sexual tribul-ations. Never-ending cultural conflicts underscore the difficulties of being an educated modern female growing up in the 21st century in a culture rooted to an ancient way of life. Girls of Riyadh presents a rare and unforgettable insight into the complicated lives of these young Saudi women, whose amazing stories are unfolding in a culture so very different from our own.