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WW2 is about to start but life for a young boy in a small town in Albania is still a game. Yet, as the town falls to the Italians, the Greeks, then the Nazis, the boy grows up. Falling in love with unattainable women, seduced by magic and literature and finally forced to flee, his existence changes from marvellous, terrifying and extraordinary into a primitive world where the severed arm of a British airman becomes a talisman and girls vanish-possibly killed by their own fathers. Forging the unexpected and terrible link between childish playfulness and a horrifying political future, Kadare has created a story with a depth and brilliance characteristic of the master story-teller.

There are no reasons for unreasonable things. Following in the footsteps of Samuel Beckett's tramps from 'Waiting for Godot' Milligan and Murphy finally cut the ties to their ma's apron strings and head out into the big bad world. But they are not alone. Someone is looking after then. Someone else is cycling after them. Will they get to see the sea and once they have what then? Scottish author Jim Murdoch's new novel is an existentialist delight.

Each year, the storyteller, Hassan, gathers listeners to the city square to share their recollections of a young, foreign couple who mysteriously disappeared years earlier. As various witnesses describe their encounters with the couple-their tales overlapping, confirming, and contradicting each other-Hassan hopes to light upon details that will explain what happened to them, and to absolve his own brother, who is in prison for their disappearance. As testimonies circle an elusive truth, the couple takes on an air as enigmatic as their fate. But is this annual storytelling ritual a genuine attempt to uncover the truth, or is it intended instead to weave an ambiguous mythology around a crime?

For anyone who bought and enjoyed reading 'Eats, Shoots and Leaves' by Lynee Truss, felt guilty for five minutes after finishing it that their own punctuation skills were lacking and then put the book on a shelf and went back to their haphazard ways Harper Collins have now released a workbook called 'Can You Eat, Shoot and Leave?' Written in s similar style and tone to the original book this is a timely and necessary help for those of us who feel their school English lessons slipping away.

`The Next Stop is Croy' is a skilfully written collection of short stories revolving around the same set of characters that takes the reader straight to the bittersweet spot of the human condition. Exploring familiar terrains of shame, frustration and loss, the writer differentiates these stories by revealing those elusive, critical moments in life that knit together to make a boy into a man. The writer manages to distil a lifetime into the spoken (and unspoken) language of fathers and sons. Only available as an ebook.

A collection of fantastic tales by the French writer Marcel Aymé including his most famous story which has been filmed several times. Reminiscent of Borges in many ways he tells tales of men who can pass through solid objects, women who can replicate themselves, about governments who legislate leaps in time or who ration life all presented, in the best magic realism tradition, as the most ordinary things in the world.

In the summer of 2009, Miranda July was struggling to finish writing a screenplay. During her increasingly long lunch breaks, she began to obsessively read the PennySaver, the iconic classifieds booklet. Who was the person selling the "Large leather Jacket, $10"? It seemed important to find out - or at least it was a great distraction from the screenplay. Accompanied by photographer Brigitte Sire, July crisscrossed Los Angeles to meet a random selection of sellers, glimpsing 13 surprisingly moving and profoundly specific realities, along the way shaping her film, and herself, in unexpected ways.

The haunting record of a journey in search of the man-seal legends of the Celts. David Thomson's travels in the Hebrides and the west coast of Ireland brought him into contact with a people whose association with the sea and its fertile lore runs deep. These simple people were gifted with the most ancient storytelling arts. They told of men rescued by seals in stormy seas, of babies suckled by seal-mothers, and of men who took sea-women for wives-stories centuries-old handed down to them by their forefathers. This book seeks to brings these fascinating legends alive

"Dear friend, I am writing to you because she said you listen and understand and didn't try to sleep with that person at that party even though you could have. Please don't try to figure out who she is because then you might figure out who I am, and I really don't want you to do that. I will call people by different names or generic names because I don't want you to find me. I didn't enclose a return address for the same reason. I mean nothing bad by this. Honest. I just need to know that someone out there listens and understands and doesn't try to sleep with people even if they could have. I need to know that these people exist." - The Perks of Being a Wallflower. The film is out soon.

The Roman gods may be history but Cupid's not dead in fact he's had a sex change, is living in London and goes by the name Felicity; she drinks too much and pops too many pills but it's still business as usual for this Cupid. Her current target is one Julius Miles, a tall, socially-awkward statistician and everything is going by the numbers under the woman who is top of her list dies and Felicity finds she can't move onto Plan B as easily as she might have hoped and turns detective.

A story about a little person in a very big world. Magnus Mandalora never thought he would leave the safe confines of the small homely village of Lower Kertoob. He certainly never expected to end up in the middle of a long-running war between the saintly Cherines and the beastly Glurgs. But when circumstance places him in such a dubious position, he finds himself on a rollicking adventure where nothing is quite as it seems. Magnus Opum is an epic fantasy that's slightly skewed - Tolkien with a twist.

"Have you ever wondered how Ernest Hemingway wrote his masterpieces? When we read and reread a book we admire, we get inspired from all aspects of the story, but rarely think about the way it was written and the effort that went into it."

This is a must-see site. This book is on the cutting-edge of psychedelic writing, a crazy story about hippies who travel through time and cross dimensions to encounter the Goddess Kali.

This week the Novel of Life brings us to glittering Las Vegas, where Lethe grows anxious about returning to the Backpacker's Inn with the older man he has been hanging out with. In a desperate move, he flees from a poker table and runs through a labyrinthine casino at breakneck speed.