night-time departures unaccustomed international

books:

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Vintage)

863 reviews
Stieg Larsson

Vintage, 2009

Graphic but Great
I was alerted to this author through a review I read in a magazine. I loved it and so did my husband. What a thrill ride.

The Girl Who Played with Fire (Vintage)

455 reviews
Stieg Larsson

Vintage, 2010

Larsson's Girls Playing with Fire
I have completed Stieg Larsson's trilogy and only want for more. Too bad he died without completing other novels. Highly recommended books!

Rules for Radicals

118 reviews
Saul Alinsky

Vintage, 1989

A clear, foolproof blueprint for social change.
In the tradition of the Roman historians, here's my bias: I'm a Reagan republican, a Sarah Palin, Glen Beck & Rush Limbaugh fan, grimly clinging to my guns and religion, and I don't shop at WalMart. Got that? OK - enough about me, what about Professor Alinsky? Briefly stated, the man was a sheer and utter genius. Would that the conservative movement had men of his caliber to instruct it on ...

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America

884 reviews
Erik Larson

Vintage, 2004

Brain Candy
Incredibly entertaining. Multiple perspectives of a point in time (1890's Chicago) are presented in such a way that you never grow bored with any one thread. The author deftly toggles two not entirely unrelated themes (the building of The Chicago World's Fair and a serial killer), keeping you chronically curious about what's going on in both places at once. History and intrigue for the masses and ...

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

1592 reviews
Mark Haddon

Vintage, 2004

Wise, in His Own Way, Beyond his Years
Christopher Boone, the narrator of this story, is a fifteen year old Rain Man. He is as gifted mathematically as Dustin Hoffman was in the movie, but he's as helpless as he was as well, he's socially without a clue. He sees things differently than others, in his words, "My memory is like a filmÉ.And when people ask me to remember something I can simply press Rewind and Fast Forward and Pause like ...

Cutting for Stone (Vintage)

221 reviews
Abraham Verghese

Vintage, 2010

more praise
This book was suggested for my book group. Although we haven't met yet, people are responding their joy in reading this. I had not heard of it before the recommendation but I seem to see the title everywhere now. Perhaps it is getting that word of mouth that "The Help" received. Following this family through strange circumstances could seem very unlikely but the story always rings true, ...

Push: A Novel

512 reviews
Sapphire

Vintage, 1997

Quite a Book
Hard to believe people actually are abused like this. I am eager to see the movie now. Hopefully this will be an eye-opener into this type of crime and help to stop the sick people that engage children in these acts.

The Pyramid: The First Wallander Cases (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard)

20 reviews
Henning Mankell

Vintage, 2009

The Wallander Saga Begins
This is a collection of five stories set before (to quote author Henning Mankell) "January 8, 1990" when the first full-length Kurt Wallander novel, Faceless Killers, began. So, these tales, (ranging from 26 to 153 pages in length) provide back story for the whole series. And I feel that each segment in The Pyramid is a gem. The first is "Wallander's First Case." At this point our hero is ...

The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon (Vintage Departures)

241 reviews
David Grann

Vintage, 2010

awesome real life indiana jones novel
very well done, a true story the reads like an adventure novel, examples of fawcett knowing the rest of the archelogical world was missign something and his quest to find it as well as the authors attempt to pick up where he left off, couldnt put it down , great ending I wonder what the history books are going to do now, probably bury the discovery much like the rest of the anomolies that dont ...

Thinking in Pictures (Expanded, Tie-in Edition): My Life with Autism (Vintage)

41 reviews
Temple Grandin Ph.D.

Vintage, 2010

My review
Offers great insight into the world of autism, which is important to me since I have an 8-year old autistic son. Has definitely added value to the way the whole family relates with him.

The House on Mango Street

632 reviews
Sandra Cisneros

Vintage, 1991

The House on Mango Street is Where the Heart Is
Living on Mango Street sounds as if it would be sunny, colorful, and beautifully exotic. For Esperanza Cordero in Cisneros' novel, her small, worn house and shabby neighborhood is nothing like a dream. Various vignettes describing elderly neighbors, playmates, and family members shape the life of a young girl searching and striving to become something more than the Mexican girl who lives at 4006 ...

Unaccustomed Earth: Stories (Vintage Contemporaries)

206 reviews
Jhumpa Lahiri

Vintage, 2009

first class writer
her writing is not at all "wordy" or "flowery" - it is clear, concise, beautiful - she paints an exquisite picture and lures you along to the very end.

Darkly Dreaming Dexter (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard)

300 reviews
Jeff Lindsay

Vintage, 2009

Darkly Dreaming Dexter
When I picked up Darkly Dreaming Dexter and began reading I was immediately hooked. From the first page to the last it is one of a kind experience. It is dark, filled with black humor and fun to read. I always wanted to read on and see what Dark Dashing Dexter has next in mind . Somewhat I felt wrong, hoping for another murder enacted by Dex, but Jeff Linday makes the protagonist so loveable, ...

An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

360 reviews
Kay Redfield Jamison

Vintage, 1996

Excellent and provacative for those with bipolar
My psychiatrist recommended this the first time I was re-diagnosis-ed from severe depression to bipolar disorder, and I wanted to learn everything I could about this disorder. It was written by Kay Jamison and was her road-map through bipolar and how she led a successful life, despite he diagnosis. Most impressive is that she wrote the book back when bipolar disorder was a more of a negative ...

The Road (Movie Tie-in Edition 2009) (Vintage International)

2137 reviews
Cormac McCarthy

Vintage, 2009

Dark and depressing majesty....
When you look at it just the right way, "The road" starts to resemble several of Stephen King's books at once. Whether "The stand" or "Dark Tower" (heptalogy is it?) or any other post-apocalyptic book that has ever been writen since the invention of the genre. And in a way, Ursula Le Guin has every right to be pissed about double standards of literary circles who wilfully chose to ignore entire ...

Faceless Killers

53 reviews
Henning Mankell

Vintage, 2003

"The insecurity in this country is enormous. People are afraid. Especially in farming communities like this one."
Set in Sweden in 1990, Henning Mankell's first Kurt Wallander mystery begins with a dramatic, Raymond Chandler-esque scene. An elderly farmer from Lannarp, an "insignificant farming village" in southern Sweden, awakens early with a sense of unease: "Something is different. Something has changed." As the farmer gazes at the farm next door, he notices a series of homely, seemingly insignificant ...

Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life

124 reviews
Martin E. P. Seligman

Vintage, 2006

Don't Be Pessimistic: Buy It
I jumped to the last three chapters with the exercises and was blown away by ease and effectiveness of Seligman's system. I thought there was no reason to read the rest of the book. Wrong. This is a fascinating, rigorous, and remarkably practical book that provides simple, easy-to-remember tools for raising one's level of optimism for life. Can't work for you? People always say that? It ...

Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle (Vintage Departures)

33 reviews
Daniel L. Everett

Vintage, 2009

For both your minds.
Daniel Everett might not be the best writer, but he got a story to tell... First of all: the book is split in two parts, which the author clearly separated and that's how we should evaluate them: Part 1 is the story how Everett came to live with the Amazonian Piraha tribe (as a missionary) and a range of stories of what happened to him and his family there. His writing style is not the best ...

Invisible Man

297 reviews
Ralph Ellison

Vintage, 1995

This book should be on Kindle
I read this book in High School and College and I would like to be able to down load it on Kindle. Loved this book.

Lark and Termite (Vintage Contemporaries)

61 reviews
Jayne Anne Phillips

Vintage, 2010

Virtuosic transcendental masterpiece
To my mind, there is something of Virginia Woolf's play-poem "The Waves" in "Lark and Termite", by Jayne Anne Phillips. Each uses a similar multi-narrator technique to saturate the various moments of their narrative with the varying perceptions of the protagonists, using the retelling of unfolding events from several different perspectives, each coloured by their own particular experiences and ...

search for books
contemporaries, departures, international, night-time, unaccustomed

Impressum / about us