Dortmunder should have never listened to his cohort, Andy Kelp, who says he's got a failsafe plan to pull off the perfect kidnapping. It's all laid out in a crime novel, claims Kelp. Dortmunder has doubts. He's right. Kelp takes poetic license. What's not in the book are the suffocating Mickey Mouse masks, the getaway car that won't fit in the truck, the ransom demand that's bumbled over the phone and especially not a precocious victim named Jimmy. When the plot thickens and the FBI closes in, the book goes out the window, along with little Jimmy and the loot. So much for happy endings.
"Comic and inventive. If criminals were anything like these hooligans, we'd all be safe." (The New York Times)
Retold Shakespeare's tragedy. Macbeth is loyal and courageous, and is a friend of King Duncan’s. However, after a battle he encounters three witches who tell him that one day he will be King of Scotland. Soon his obsession to become king is reinforced by his wife’s cold-blooded ambition...
Oryx and Crake is a novel with dystopian elements by Canadian author Margaret Atwood. Like The Handmaid's Tale, the book is often categorized as science fiction novel, but Atwood herself prefers to label it speculative fiction and "adventure romance" because it does not deal with 'things that have not been invented yet' and goes beyond the realism she associates with the novel form. Oryx and Crake was first published by McClelland and Stewart in 2003 and was also shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction that same year.
Zadie Smith's White Teeth is a delightfully cacophonous tale that spans 25 years of two families' assimilation in North London. The Joneses and the Iqbals are an unlikely a pairing of families, but their intertwined destinies distill the British Empire's history and hopes into a dazzling multiethnic melange that is a pure joy to read. Smith proves herself to be a master at drawing fully-realized, vibrant characters, and she demonstrates an extraordinary ear for dialogue. It is a novel full of humor and empathy that is as inspiring as it is enjoyable. "White Teeth"is a remarkable piece of postcolonial literature.
What elevates Palahniuk's best novels (e.g., Fight Club) above their shocking premises is his ability to find humanity in deeply grotesque characters. But such generosity of spirit is not evident in his latest, which charts the trials of a group of aspiring writers brought together for a three-month writer's retreat in an abandoned theater. The novel intersperses the writers' poems and short stories with tales of the indignities they heap upon themselves after deciding to turn their lives into a "true-life horror story with a happy ending."
Oryx and Crake- Margaret Atwood
