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Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family

Don and Mimi Galvin seemed to be living the American dream. After World War II, Don's work with the Air Force brought them to Colorado, where their twelve children perfectly spanned the baby boom: the oldest born in 1945, the youngest in 1965. In those years, there was an established script for a family like the Galvins - aspiration, hard work, upward mobility, domestic harmony - and they worked hard to play their parts. But behind the scenes was a different story: psychological breakdown, sudden shocking violence, hidden abuse. By the mid-1970s, six of the ten Galvin boys, one after the other, were diagnosed as schizophrenic. How could all this happen to one family?

What took place inside the house on Hidden Valley Road was so extraordinary that the Galvins became one of the first families to be studied by the National Institutes of Mental Health. Their story offers a shadow history of the science of schizophrenia, from the era of institutionalization, lobotomy, and the schizophrenogenic mother, to the search for genetic markers for the disease, always amidst profound disagreements about the nature of the illness itself. And unbeknownst to the Galvins, samples of their DNA informed decades of genetic research that continues today, offering paths to treatment, prediction, and even eradication of the disease for future generations.

With clarity and compassion, bestselling and award-winning author Robert Kolker uncovers one family's unforgettable legacy of suffering, love and hope.

12.50 €

High Fidelity

Rob does. He keeps a list, in fact. But Laura isn't on it - even though she's just become his latest ex. He's got his life back, you see. He can just do what he wants when he wants: like listen to whatever music he likes, look up the girls that are on his list, and generally behave as if Laura never mattered. But Rob finds he can't move on. He's stuck in a really deep groove - and it's called Laura. Soon, he's asking himself some big questions: about love, about life - and about why we choose to share ours with the people we do.

A million-copy bestseller, and adapted into a 2000 film starring John Cusack, High Fidelity explores the world of break-ups, make-ups and what it is to be in love. This astutely observed and wickedly funny book will be enjoyed by readers of David Nicholls and William Boyd, and by generations of readers to come.

12.50 €

His Dark Materials: The Amber Spyglass : 3

"An astonishing imaginative feat - Pullman has conjured a universe of intensity and beauty that leaves one gasping" The Times "Only Rankin can light and photograph faces with such intensity and drama. I'm delighted with this vision of my story." Philip Pullman The third volume in the ground-breaking His Dark Materials trilogy, now with a breath-taking new cover creatively directed and photographed by the legendary Rankin. "We're going to the land of the dead and we're going to come back." Will and Lyra, whose fates are bound together by powers beyond their own worlds, have been violently separated. But they must find each other, for ahead of them lies the greatest war that has ever been - and a journey to a dark place from which no one has ever returned... Rankin's lens has exquisitely captured the bond between character and daemon; the soul of the stories The His Dark Materials trilogy is award-winning, internationally bestselling and a modern classic. Now a major BBC/HBO television series, with an all-star cast of Ruth Wilson, James McAvoy, Anne-Marie Duff and Lin-Manuel Miranda
12.50 €

His Dark Materials: The Subtle Knife : 2

"My hands shook, turning the pages." The Times "Only Rankin can light and photograph faces with such intensity and drama. I'm delighted with this vision of my story." Philip Pullman The second volume in the ground-breaking His Dark Materials trilogy, now with a breath-taking new cover creatively directed and photographed by the legendary Rankin. "What is he? A friend, or an enemy?" "He is a murderer." Will has just killed a man. He's on the run. His escape will take him far beyond his own world, to the eerie disquiet of a deserted city, and to a girl, Lyra. Her fate is strangely linked to his own, and together they must find the most powerful weapon in all the worlds... Rankin's lens has exquisitely captured the bond between character and daemon; the soul of the stories The His Dark Materials trilogy is award-winning, internationally bestselling and a modern classic. Now a major BBC/HBO television series, with an all-star cast of Ruth Wilson, James McAvoy, Anne-Marie Duff and Lin-Manuel Miranda
12.50 €

Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick: Stories from the Harlem Renaissance

In 1925, Zora Neale Hurston was living in New York as a fledgling writer. This collection of stories, found in archives after her death, reveal African American folk culture in Harlem in the 1920s. This book includes eight of Hurston's "lost" Harlem g
22.10 €

Homer's Daughter

In Homer's Daughter Robert Graves recreates the Odyssey. This bold retelling of the ancient epic imagines that its author was not the blind and bearded Homer of legend, but a young woman in Western Sicily who calls herself Nausicaa. In Robert Graves's words, Homer's Daughter is 'the story of a high-spirited and religious-minded Sicilian girl who saves her father's throne from usurpation, herself from a distasteful marriage, and her two younger brothers from butchery by boldly making things happen, instead of sitting still and hoping for the best.'
12.50 €

Hornblower and the Crisis

A Horatio Hornblower Tale of the SeaIn the final instalment of the Horatio Hornblower series we visit some lesser known adventures across our hero's long career, including Napoleon's plans to invade England . . .

1805 and Horatio Hornblower is in possession of confidential dispatches from Bonaparte after a vicious hand-to-hand encounter with a French brig. The admiralty rewards Hornblower by sending him on a dangerous espionage mission that will light the powder trail leading to the battle of Trafalgar . .

. Hornblower and the Crisis was unfinished at the time of Forester's death, but the author left notes - included here - telling us how the tale would end. Also included are two further stories - Hornblower and the Widow McCool and The Last Encounter - that tell of Hornblower as a very young and very old man, respectively.

This is the eleventh and final book chronicling the adventures of C. S. Forester's inimitable nautical hero, Horatio Hornblower.

'The true master of the genre' Boris Johnson
11.30 €

Housekeeping

'A classic.' Guardian'A masterpiece.' The New Yorker'I just adore this book and have probably reread it a hundred times.' Michelle Zauner From the Orange Prize winning author of Home and Gilead. Housekeeping is the story of Ruth and Lucille, orphans growing up in the small desolate town of Fingerbone in the vast northwest of America. Abandoned by a succession of relatives, the sisters find themselves in the care of Sylvie, the remote and enigmatic sister of their dead mother.

Steeped in imagery of the bleak wintry landscape around them, the sisters' struggle towards adulthood is powerfully portrayed in a novel about loss, loneliness and transience.
12.50 €

How Much of These Hills is Gold

In the twilight of the Gold Rush, two siblings cross a landscape with a gun in their hands and the body of their father on their backs . . . Ba dies in the night, Ma is already gone. Lucy and Sam, twelve and eleven, are suddenly alone and on the run. With their father's body on their backs, they roam an unforgiving landscape dotted with giant buffalo bones and tiger paw prints, searching for a place to give him a proper burial. How Much of These Hills is Gold is a sweeping adventure tale, an unforgettable sibling story and a remarkable novel about a family bound and divided by its memories. 'A daring and haunting epic' SUNDAY TIMES'A unique reimagining of the American West adventure' THE TIMES'A fierce, feminist Western' DAILY MAIL'Remarkable' HARPER'S BAZAAR'Reminiscent of both Cormac McCarthy and Toni Morrison' IRISH TIMES'C Pam Zhang's arresting, beautiful first novel is filled with myths of her own making as well as sorrows and joys
11.20 €

Humboldt's Gift

"I think it A Work of genius, I think it The Work of a Genius, I think it brilliant, splendid, etc. If there is literature (and this proves there is) this is where it's at." -John Cheever Saul Bellow's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel explores the long friendship between Charlie Citrine, a young man with an intense passion for literature, and the great poet Von Humboldt Dleisher. At the time of Humboldt's death, Charlie's life is falling apart: his career is at a standstill, and he's enmeshed in an acrimonious divorce, infatuated with a highly unsuitable young woman, and involved with a neurotic Mafioso. And then Humboldt acts from beyond the grave, bestowing upon Charlie an unexpected legacy that may just help him turn his life around. This Penguin Classics edition features an introduction by Jeffrey Eugenides. F
20.20 €