New Crime & Mystery Fiction Titles From Harper Perennial 06 Jan-March

File Updated: 15/12/2006

New Crime & Mystery Fiction Titles From Harper Perennial JAN-MARCH 06

Michael Chabon The Final Solution Pbk published January 2006 by Harper Perennial at Ł6.99 ISBN: 0007196032

Independent ‘It takes a steady hand to appropriate the world's most famous detective, but Chabon has chutzpah to spare'
Andrew Roberts, New Statesman 'Chabon gives the reader a tantalising taste of what he's capable of'

Eagerly awaited new novella by the much -acclaimed Michael Chabon, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Amazing Advertures of Kavalier and Clay.
In the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, prose magician Michael Chabon conjured up the golden age of comic books; intertwining history, legend, and storytelling verve.
In The Final Solution, he has condensed his boundless vision to craft a short, suspenseful tale of compassion and wit that re-imagines the classic 19th-century detective story. In deep retirement in the English countryside, an 89-year-old man, vaguely recollected by locals as a once-famous detective, is more concerned with his beekeeping than with his fellow man. Into his life wanders Linus Steinman, nine-years-old and mute, who has escaped from Nazi Germany with his sole companion: an African grey parrot. What is the meaning of the mysterious strings of German numbers the bird spews out - a top-secret SS code? The keys to a series of Swiss bank accounts perhaps? Or something more sinister? Is the solution to this last case - the real explanation of the mysterious boy and his parrot - beyond even the reach of the once-famed sleuth? Subtle revelations lead the reader to a wrenching resolution. This brilliant homage is the work of a master storyteller at the height of his powers.

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Michael Kimball How Much of Us There Was Pbk published March 2006 by Harper Perennial at Ł6.99 ISBN: 0007193424

An intense, heartbreaking novel from one of the brightest and most unusual voices in American fiction. 'Fine, precise and shocking, but how will Kimball follow this incredible debut?' asked "The Times" in 2001.
"How Much of Us There Was" is Michael Kimball's bold reply. It is a small masterpiece. A husband wakes up to find that his wife has had a seizure during the night. An ambulance is called and she is rushed to the Intensive Care Unit at a nearby hospital, where she lies in a coma. By day he sits anxiously beside her. He tries to think of ways to wake her up. He brings familiar objects to her bedside - her books, her hairbrush, flowers from their garden. He talks to her. He exercises her limbs. At night he sleeps in the chair at her bedside, dreaming that she will wake up, so that they can go back home. Years later the story of this same slow death is re-told by their grandson. He wants to understand his grandmother's life and death, what it meant to his grandfather, and what it means to him. He wants to understand the long and deeply loving marriage between his grandparents, and - in his own words - 'how love can accumulate between two people over and through two lifetimes'. "How Much of Us There Was" is a poignant, heartbreaking and ultimately hopeful novel, from an extraordinary voice in American fiction.

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Alex Wheatle East of Acre Lane Pbk published March 2006 by Harper Perennial at Ł7.99 ISBN: 0007225628

"East of Acre Lane" is the fast-paced and razor sharp story of a young man trying to do the right thing, and establishes Alex Wheatle as the exciting new voice of the urban experience. When "East of Acre Lane" was first published in 2001, Alex Wheatle instantly became one of the key commentators on contemporary black culture and was featured in BBC news, radio, numerous papers and Channel 4. The BBC have already optioned 'East of Acre Lane' to be made into a film.
Set in 1981, the year of the Brixton riots, the novel is a gripping thriller in a society on the edge of explosion. Wheatle focusses on Biscuit and his posse as a way to introduce the whole community. Biscuit lives with his mother, brother and sister. He helps out by hustling on the frontline for the south London badman, Nunchaks. He doesn't want to be doing this for the rest of his life but it's difficult to get out of the trap. As the patience of the community breaks and the riots begin to erupt, Biscuit has to make a choice that could change his life forever.

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