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Find (UK) Vanity Fair NOW!

US hardback edition, click HERE

Fatman Jos Sedley, look-alike to 53-stone Daniel Lambert, misses chance to pull his sister's finishing school pal, orphaned gold-digger, Rebecca Sharpe. Tant pis! Our heroine without a hero makes eyes for employer Crawley's eldest son, Rawdon, to produce Bloomsbury glitterati duo on "nothing a year". Meanwhile, sweet Amelia Sedley spurns carthorse Dobbin for dashing redcoat, George Osborne, marries (on nothing), and carries baby Boy Georgie to collect daddy's remains from Waterloo. A chance tête-a-tête reveals old Osborne-Sharpe liaison dangereuse. Resourceful Rebecca gets the fatman's insurance payout and, for faithful Dobbin, a sugar-lump.

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Find Peter Pan UK OR US

Pubescent, middle-class Wendy Darling yearns for her own little house and children. Instead, she gets a cold call from eponymous high-flying software salesman of Never-Never Land plc who exposes her, through virtual reality, to the terrors of adulthood: orphaned boys made homeless by savage redskins, subservient squaws, young flower maidens abducted by lustful pirates, playful mermaids resentful they cannot become Pan's People. Suffering the slings and arrows of a fairy named Tinker Bell Wendy decides, on balance, it's too soon yet to leave the nursery cocoon and become a bitch like Nana.

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Find (UK) Of Mice and Men NOW!

US hardback edition, click HERE

Little and Large duo drifts into east of eden ranch to buck barley with a bunch of bindle bums. Grumpy George hides grudging affection for slow-witted sidekick, leviathan Lennie. Trouble brews when the gentle giant's penchant for small, furry creatures results in fatal breakages to red-painted resident looloo. Beating the lynch-mob to an emergency rendezvous, they recall dreams of a little place to tend rabbits and live off the fatta' the land. But George's voice trembles and tears fall into the green Salinas river pool as his finger tightens on the Luger at Lennie's neck.

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Find (UK) Mansfield Park NOW!

US hardback edition, click HERE

Mariner's daughter, Fanny Price, raised from the lower orders by widowed fusspot Aunt Norris, is compensated with a fireless garret at Uncle Sir Thomas's Northamptonshire estate. Fanny's social standing vis-a-vis four cousins is defined by a makeshift coming-out ball at which fickle gamecock Henry Crawford rounds for a leg-over. For spurning a good match, Fanny is banished to her humble Portsmouth roots but recalled in time to rescue cousin Edmund from the clutches of Crawford's gamehen sister Mary. Cousin Maria, however, ditches rich dumbhead Rushworth and elopes adulterously with cad Crawford for a fate worse than "trade".

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Sorry, I can't get worked up over this week's CRIME theme. I've lost my copy of Wilkie Collins' Moonstone but for what it's worth, here's a barrel-scraping re-hash of 'one I prepared earlier'

Find Philip Kerr novels UK OR US

Techno-friek loner, Paul Esterhazy, hacks into LOMBROSO police computer, discovers own codename - Wittgenstein - on a list of somatogenic (VMN-negative) males and launches death wish crusade to wipe out Pythagoras, Aristotle, Plato etc before they commit the recreational sex crimes predicted of them. Hot on his trail is homophobic jewess DCI "Jake" Jakovicz who smokes nicofree cigarettes, rejects the phallocentric methods of colleagues and employs two-dimensional (bisexual) techniques to collar young Ludwig before he can reach Bertrand Russell. Too bad he's just screwed her senseless from within a black rubber "Reality Approximation Outfit"!

Some old favourites can be re-hashed as often as necessary without losing originality!

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Find (UK) Treasure Island NOW!

US hardback edition, click HERE

Ha-hargh, Jim lad! Th'as sin off Billy Bones an' Blind Pew and now ee's after Cap'n Flint's doubloons, eh? Well you stick wi' old Long John and nay mind thet Squire Trelawney, curse his paniola. T'were the admiral's bimbo as give us this spot and now I've to cook and serve grog to fifteen of the blackest swabs, lubbers and sea-dogs as ever lay on a dead man's chest. Moot'ny? Mayhem? Aye, shiver me timbers! Now, teck you off to Rum Cove where Ben Gunn's stashed the treasure - an' watch out for ol' Israel! Yo-ho-ho!

My Gormenghast is gone, and Gandalf cannot be ground down, so herewith:-

Metamorphosis
 - by Franz Kafka

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Find (UK) Metamorphosis NOW!

Find Franz Kafka works UK OR US

Ugh! Shock, Horror! Stressed out sales rep. Gregor Samsa awakes one morning transformed into a giant dung-beetle. Initial delight at new-found ability to scuttle around walls and ceilings subsides into melancholoy as family members recoil insensitively at loss of their breadwinner. Pa Samsa angrily embeds a rotten apple into the black rump of his offspring and retreats into self-pity at enforced return to gainful economic activity. Sister Grete, initially compassionate, tires of her lepidopteric charge, grows couldn't-care-less in the community and delivers coup de grâce with a violin solo.

Smart, well-heeled Emma Woodhouse aspires to join Hope Knott as agony aunt for 3 or 4 country families living near the Arsenal football stadium. Anxious to uphold regency values, Miss Meddlesome organises matchmaking expedition to Box Hill where kites are flown for eligible well-to-dos. Sadly, it all backfires when Ben Elton, marked down to fancy Harriet Harman, gets bowled over by our eponymous heroine, Frank Churchill looks melancholy but turns out gay, Bob Martin forgets his pet pills and teams up with Harriet, she fancies everyone else and Miss Knott gets her come-uppance with Twice Knightley.

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Find (UK) 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea NOW!

Find Jules Verne novels UK OR US

Benevolent despot and fugitive from terra firma, Captain Nemo, takes Professor Aronnax, oceanographer, on fish-spotting and treasure-seeking voyage around the seven seas. On a mission rather to inspire Dr No than Greenpeace Rainbow Warrior, Nemo's armour-plated, all-electric narwhal, a kind of submersible dreadnought, defies physics and explores unvisited ocean depths, carves out Nemotarctica in breathless South Pole adventure and awakens a kraken for the amusement of trigger-happy harpooner Ned Landless. Tiring of zoophytes, Nemo succumbs to an attack of the poulpes, hitches a ride on the Gulf Stream and heads down the plug-hole.

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Find (UK) Dr Zhivago NOW!

US hardback edition, click HERE

Incurably romantic Russian medical student marries fancy cousin, plays wartime doctors and nurses, returns to Moscow gripped by energy crisis, takes intourist break at trans-Ural country resort, joins red and white ping-pong tournament, picks up life in the pink with lovely Lara (nurse Antipova), forfeits wife and family to Uncle Sam, returns to vegetable roots in faded Varykino villa and is finally stitched up by streetwise Komrade Komarovsky who puts paid to Lara's Trotskyite husband, overlooks Zhivago's bourgeois revisionist poetry-writing tendencies and pulls strings for joint sleigh-rides to Siberia. Yury misses his tram.

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Find Animal Farm NOW!

Find George Orwell novels UK OR US

Old John Major, prize boar, makes last legs appeal to battered livestock: "Don't be a grey bore like me, you have nothing to lose but your yokes!". Battle of the Cowshed ensues and revolting quadrupeds invent slogans to rule. OK, until Napoleon and Squealer - filthy rotten swine - oust rival Snowball's faction and slide into bipedal Stalinism. Stoical carthorse Boxer builds, builds and builds again the New Socialist Dream but finally drops, knackered. Trotsky (sorry, Snowball) gets blamed for spilt milk and surplus (ie stolen) produce is eventually traded with the Old Order in new enterprise: Pig in a Poker game.

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Find (UK) Frankenstein NOW!

US hardback edition, click HERE

Over-zealous medical student Victor Frankenstein practices spare parts surgery and unleashes supercharged bionic yetti onto alpine crofting community. But this 8-foot gothic snowman is no ordinary abomination. Smarter than your average sixthformer (IQ and appearance), Shelley's chimerical peeping tom joins generations of A-Level students reacting badly to Milton's Paradise Lost, arms up with Mary's holiday snaps and runs amok with Victor's nearest and dearest. Following unlikely Irish Sea encounter with guilt-consumed maker and vain pleas for a Mrs Monster, Noble Savage zooms off for an NVQ^* in arctic pyre-building, Victor joins Hammer Studios as Boris Karloff makeup artist.

* National Vocational Qualification (fashionable in the mid-90's)

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Find (UK) Barchester Towers NOW!

US hardback edition, click HERE

Whig government overlooks diocesan heir-apparent, Archdeacon Grantly, in favour of evangelical husband-and-wife team, exciting wrath of the cloth in dreamy Barsetshire. Mrs Proudie, Clintonesque wife of incumbent Bishop Bill, employs Puddingdale parish parson plus fourteen vicarage children in controversial healthcare scheme to lower average age in Hiram Harding's Hospital. Oily chaplain, Obadiah Slope, assigned to smooth waters, becomes scapegoat in explosive mixture of gas and gaiters, seeks comfort through church widow's legacy and loses frock to a piece of Italian skirt. The widow secures marriage to new Puseyite Dean and consolation for Father Harding.

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Don't bother trying to order this - it's trash!

Find Jackie Collins 'novels' UK OR US

Tinseltown tramps do blow-jobs for nose-jobs and pay dear to look cheap. Ross Conti, fading movie star, gets leg-up from wife Elaine's leg-overs, ousts George Lancaster (aka Burt Kennedy?) in plotless Montana street movie. Gorgeous Angel Hudson digs gold for studdy Buddy hubby, same film set. Gay killer, Deke Andrews, abandoned son of Sadie La Salle (Conti), searching for whore-mother, murders mucky mouse, uncovers geneaological twist: Who is Buddy Hudson? Answer: Deke's twin brother, Ross's son. All survivors have big parts. Angel has twins. PS... girl with a grudge ensures formulaic sleazy sequel: Hollywood Husbands.

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Find (UK) The Catcher in the Rye NOW!

US hardback edition, click HERE

If you really wanna know the truth, I was depressed about flunking out of school and all. Big deal! Phoney jerks. Pimply slobs who drop about two million nail parings on your floor. I hate that. Yeah, I drifted downtown. Eddie's bar. Even called up old Sally and took in a movie for chrissake! Cheap hotel. Some broad and a lift attendant stung me for ten bucks. Dumb morons. Christmas - yuk! This psychoanalysis stuff bores me. Phoebe's a sure smart kid sister but so what if DB's some Hollywood bigshot? Maybe Holden Caulfield'll be a sixties cult hero or something!

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Find (UK) Robinson Crusoe NOW!

US hardback edition, click HERE

Early go-it-alone colonialist, bored with Copacabana nightlife, mounts business quest for cut-price negro slaves. Shipwrecked and marooned on Desert Island Discs, our resourceful 17th Century DIY merchant, undaunted by absence Sue Lawley's CD player, puts faith in Providence and builds Englishman's home, arsenal and liquor store. Unwelcome discovery first customer footprint arouses paranoid aversion to Sunday pot-roasts but signals deliverance twenty five years' weekday washing-up duties and grateful cries of "Thank God it's Friday". Cull some heathen savages, quell a mutiny then it's back to European 'civilisation' for the bear-baiting season.

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A real gem this one!

Find (UK) Cider with Rosie NOW!

US hardback edition, click HERE

Seasoned prose-poet recalls delirious childhood in fading Cotswold valley community, conjures magical glimpses of golden cottages, scullery handpumps, billowing dresses, tuckets and gussets, khaki, leather, steamy boots, victory flushes, mouldy cowpats, crabby teachers, scabby knees, scary legends, kitchen gossip, dreadful darker doings and hints of a wider worrying world, generations of odd but gentle ancients, uncles, grannies, snuff and cowslip wine, primordial landscapes, wind, rain, flood and mud, beechwood moss, blue skies, frost, sun, summer corn, charabancs, haywains, holihocks, sweethearts, matriarchs, cidrous kisses, haycock fumblings... alas, all ruined by motor cars and the Child Support Agency.

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Find (UK) Liza of Lambeth NOW!

Good-time girl goes on Essex pub crawl to escape bank holiday blues and grimy grey south bank slums, learns of stout ladies' labour troubles and boozin' 'usbands' rows with the bloomin' missus abaht the boomin' babies, chucks it in with wimpish boyfriend, teams up with charming cockney skirt-chaser, suffers inevitable fall from favour, knocks 'em in the Old Kent Road and finally bewails: "O Gawd, Liza's up the spaht".

So what's changed in 100 years?

Gem Rating: !!!!

Find (UK) Genesis and the Big Bang NOW!

In the beginning, some old whitebeard called God made a Big Bang and six days later Adam, the first Man, appeared. Adam was lonely so God sent him a woman to play with. Adam and Eve romped around in the pink near the Serpentine where a wideboy sold them toffee apples and got them into trouble with God. After this, they dropped their fig leaves and bred generations of boys with Jewish sounding names. Some were visited by an angel, Gabriel, and persuaded to make sacrifices for Greenpeace. Others formed a pop group and built a stairway to heaven.

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Find (UK) Tom Sawyer NOW!

US hardback edition, click HERE

Artful juvenile commodities trader from mid-west bible belt falls head-over-heels in elaborate courtship ritual to win yellow-haired heartthrob, Maggie Thatcher. Though impressed with his etchings, this prissy pig-tailed beauty is not for turning, even with brass door-knobs. Tom wanders off into the Missouri mud-flats with other pirate-pariahs seeking fun, fame and fortune. Dramatic Sunday morning resurrection gains new admiration but fewer sexual favours and Sawyer resorts to desperate cave-man tactics to captivate the damsel. Loot lures larger than love and Injun Joe's treasure finally displaces the unaccommodating maiden.

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Find (UK) I, Claudius NOW!

US hardback edition, click HERE

This c-c-c-chronicle I dedicate to Rupertus Murdochulus, future republican, who by Aunt Sibyl's prediction, will relish News of the Roman World, however sordid. Take Livia, my poisonous grandmother. More crab than apple. She bumped off brother Germanicus so that gloomy uncle Tiberius could do unsavoury things to little boys. Then cousin Caligula - what a pervert, and with his sisters, too! Well, I'm Emperor now. Last of the hairy Claudians. Next thing's God. My illustrious ancestors would be proud. I just worry for sweet, shy Messalina, my third wife - it might all go to her h-h-h-head!

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Find (UK) A Christmas Carol NOW!

US hardback edition
with Quentin Blake illustrations,
click HERE

The night before Christmas, London 1843. Thrifty old bachelor, Ebenezer Scrooge - Samuel Smiles minus the merriment - suffers distressing midnight visitation from Bob Marley and the Spirituals. Overdosing on Fezziwig festivities, forced to endure nightmarish David Copperfield illusions based on bed-knob plum puddings and heaving hot knockers, our model Victorian employer weeps for employee Jacob Scratchit's underfed chip-off-the-shoulder pre-Darwinian child survivor, Tiny Tim, goes completely doolally in hanky-panky parlour games, loses all sense of healthy seasonal cynicism, abandons monetarism, finally succumbing to Ignorance, Want and Doom. God bless us, everyone, what a humbug!

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FIND Lark Rise to Candleford UK OR US

Superannuated postmistress recalls harsh but cherished memories of childhood upbringing in self-sufficient close-knit third world rural community, lays bare its muddy roots and paints charming but unsentimental pastiche of a proud peasant way of life when yeomen wore smocks and laboured long on the land, yeowomen wore pinnafores and laboured long in confinement, boys became farriers, wheelwrights or smiths, girls became servants and wore hobnail boots, when melodeons and pig-sticking provided amusement to many and, whilst there were not yet pooh-sticks, yet there was plenty of pooh!

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Find (UK) The Animals of Farthing Wood NOW!

Over-sexed rodents, alarmed by unseasonal earth movements, muster larger cousins to search out less erogenous zone ripe for fresh colonisation. Wily, brush-chasing fox and dim but loyal badger lead caravan of miscellaneous mammals, reptiles and fine-feathered friends who sign non-aggression pact and trek off to prove that nature, though not necessarily red in tooth and claw, shows powerful tendencies for reverting to type when motorways or shotguns in evidence. Reunited - minus a flattened hedgehog, peppered pheasant or two - the stragglers reach albino territory and perform useful PR exercise for County Council country parks.

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Find Joyce's Ulysses UK OR US

Ineluctable modality, Begob! And why anyone right stream of consciousness read millions groangrousegrumblings (some even English) Bloom's contransmagnificandjewbangtantiality days lifes bodily functions some bnut in a novel? shell/b out 14shillings Telegraph brainfogfag hear of bluggy drunkables and balmy ballocks of bullock-befriending bard with bunch of buttocksmothered bumbooser tablenumpkins fart and mucksweat oddysey Dublin pub brothels relish kosher kidney weggebobbles Balti (Punarjariam patsypunjaub) inner organs beasts and fowls? Answer flahoolagh Pflaaaap! Rambunctious females in the boreens and green lanes the colleens' erin swains so please your flabbyarse I'm in harumscarum neverrip loveysticky Molly Bloom's camiknickers - yes and oooOOOH YES!