On the 23rd September 1939, the last live broadcast on Polish radio came from a young pianist named Wladyslaw Szpilman. German shelling put a stop to the transmission. The Pianist is Szpilman's best-selling account of his war years, his survival against all odds. Whilst his family was deported to Treblinka and exterminated, Szpilman escaped, thanks to a music loving policeman who recognised him. (...)
Spook Country is a 2007 political thriller set in contemporary North America, following on from the author's previous novel, Pattern Recognition (2003). The plot comprises the intersecting tales of three protagonists: Hollis Henry, a journalist researching a story on locative art; Tito, a Cuban-Chinese spy working for a renegade ex-CIA agent; and Milgrim, a drug-addled translator held captive by a quasi-governmental covert operative.
The Difference Engine (by William Gibson & Bruce Sterling)
The Difference Engine is an alternate history and a prime example of the steampunk sub-genre (of science fiction). It posits a Victorian Britain in which great technological and social change has occurred after entrepreneurial inventor Charles Babbage succeeded in his ambition to build a mechanical computer (actually his analytical engine rather than the difference engine).
All Tomorrow's Parties is the final novel in William Gibson's Bridge trilogy. Like its predecessors, Virtual Light and Idoru, it is a speculative fiction novel set in a postmodern, dystopian, postcyberpunk near-future.It features three separate but overlapping stories, with the continual appearance of pivotal characters as narrative anchor points. The San Francisco Bridge provides the overarching setting of the trilogy.
