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An acclaimed bestseller and international sensation, Patrick Suskind's classic novel provokes a terrifying examination of what happens when one man's indulgence in his greatest passion—his sense of smell—leads to murder.In the slums of eighteenth-century France, the infant Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is born with one sublime gift—an absolute sense of smell. As a boy, he lives to decipher the odors of Paris, and apprentices himself to a prominent perfumer who teaches him the ancient art of mixing precious oils and herbs. But Grenouille's genius is such that he is not satisfied to stop there, and he becomes obsessed with capturing the smells of objects such as brass doorknobs and fresh-cut wood. Then one day he catches a hint of a scent that will drive him on an ever-more-terrifying quest to create the "ultimate perfume"—the scent of a beautiful young virgin. Told with dazzling narrative brilliance, Perfume is a hauntingly powerful tale of murder and sensual depravity.

Ian McEwan’s symphonic novel of love and war, childhood and class, guilt and forgiveness provides all the satisfaction of a brilliant narrative and the provocation we have come to expect from this master of English prose.On a hot summer day in 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis witnesses the flirtation between her older sister, Cecilia, and Robbie Turner, the son of a servant. But Briony’s incomplete grasp of adult motives and her precocious imagination bring about a crime that will change all their lives, a crime whose repercussions Atonement follows through the chaos and carnage of World War II and into the close of the twentieth century.

Do you know your desert-island, all-time, top five most memorable split-ups?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 behaves 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.

Japan's most highly regarded novelist now vaults into the first ranks of international fiction writers with this heroically imaginative novel, which is at once a detective story, an account of a disintegrating marriage, and an excavation of the buried secrets of World War II.In a Tokyo suburb a young man named Toru Okada searches for his wife's missing cat. Soon he finds himself looking for his wife as well in a netherworld that lies beneath the placid surface of Tokyo. As these searches intersect, Okada encounters a bizarre group of allies and antagonists: a psychic prostitute; a malevolent yet mediagenic politician; a cheerfully morbid sixteen-year-old-girl; and an aging war veteran who has been permanently changed by the hideous things he witnessed during Japan's forgotten campaign in Manchuria.Gripping, prophetic, suffused with comedy and menace, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a tour de force equal in scope to the masterpieces of Mishima and Pynchon.Three books in one volume: The Thieving Magpie, Bird as Prophet, The Birdcatcher. This translation by Jay Rubin is in collaboration with the author.

John MacDougall Hay (1879–1919) was a Scottish novelist.He was born and grew up in Tarbert, Argyll. He was initially a school teacher, but then became a Church of Scotland minister. He was the father of George Campbell Hay, the Scottish Gaelic poet.He is mainly known for his novel Gillespie, set in a fictionalised version of his home town of Tarbert. It received favourable reviews when it was published in 1914, but was largely forgotten until it was re-discovered in the late 20th century. He also wrote a second novel Barnacles, and a collection of poems.In poor health for much of his adult life, he died of tuberculosis at the age of only 39.

One of the most important and controversial writers of the 20th century, Knut Hamsun made literary history with the publication in 1890 of this powerful, autobiographical novel recounting the abject poverty, hunger and despair of a young writer struggling to achieve self-discovery and its ultimate artistic expression. The book brilliantly probes the psychodynamics of alienation, obsession, and self-destruction, painting an unforgettable portrait of a man driven by forces beyond his control to the edge of the abyss. Hamsun influenced many of the major 20th-century writers who followed him, including Kafka, Joyce and Henry Miller. Required reading in world literature courses, the highly influential, landmark novel will also find a wide audience among lovers of books that probe the "unexplored crannies in the human soul" (George Egerton).

On a chilly February day, two old friends meet in the throng outside a London crematorium to pay their last respects to Molly Lane. Both Clive Linley and Vernon Halliday had been Molly's lovers in the days before they reached their current eminence: Clive is Britain's most successful modern composer, and Vernon is editor of the newspaper The Judge. Gorgeous, feisty Molly had other lovers, too, notably Julian Garmony, Foreign Secretary, a notorious right-winger tipped to be the next prime minister.In the days that follow Molly's funeral, Clive and Vernon will make a pact with consequences that neither could have foreseen. Each will make a disastrous moral decision, their friendship will be tested to its limits, and Julian Garmony will be fighting for his political life. A sharp contemporary morality tale, cleverly disguised as a comic novel, Amsterdam is "as sheerly enjoyable a book as one is likely to pick up this year" (The Washington Post Book World).

One of Zola's most famous realist novels, Therese Raquin is a clinically observed, sinister tale of adultery and murder among the lower classes in nineteenth-century Parisian society.Set in the claustrophobic atmosphere of a dingy haberdasher's shop in the passage du Pont-Neuf in Paris, this powerful novel tells how the heroine and her lover, Laurent, kill her husband, Camille, but are subsequently haunted by visions of the dead man, and prevented from enjoying the fruits of their crime.Zola's shocking tale dispassionately dissects the motivations of his characters--mere "human beasts", who kill in order to satisfy their lust--and stands as a key manifesto of the French Naturalist movement, of which the author was the founding father. Published in 1867, this is Zola's most important work before the Rougon-Macquart series and introduces many of the themes that can be traced through the later novel cycle.

I had an intense reaction to this book. I friggin hated it. Or, rather, I loved to hate it, while I was reading it. It was an assignment in a Postmodern Lit. class, and everyone in the class liked the protagonist but me. I thought he was awful. I couldn't believe they enjoyed him, much less admitted to enjoying him. But some part of me must have understood....That was the point. This is a story I felt in my stomach. It was so full of perversion, of the grotesque, and I was 20 and a "good girl" and wanted so badly to not be drawn to it but there I was, ploughing through. Disgusted with so much along the way, but to my great surprise I found myself touched. I cried for a character I thought I was completely repelled by. I couldn't believe it. And at the end, when I reached the last page, when I finished and shut the book...I was grateful. Not to have finished it; I was grateful that I got to read it in the first place. There are awful images and episodes that stick with me. It is not pleasant to revisit them. But you know what? With every bit of my smiley, idealistic being I say...Thank God. (Or, rather, Thank Grass.) There isn't always easy beauty, or recognizable beauty around us. Oftentimes the beauty is buried in dirt and hard-earned, and doesn't even look like anything lovely at all once you get to it. But you hold it in your hands and it will move you. And if you're lucky, it will change you.

Dostoevsky’s most revolutionary novel, Notes from Underground marks the dividing line between nineteenth- and twentieth-century fiction, and between the visions of self each century embodied. One of the most remarkable characters in literature, the unnamed narrator is a former official who has defiantly withdrawn into an underground existence. In complete retreat from society, he scrawls a passionate, obsessive, self-contradictory narrative that serves as a devastating attack on social utopianism and an assertion of man’s essentially irrational nature.Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, whose Dostoevsky translations have become the standard, give us a brilliantly faithful edition of this classic novel, conveying all the tragedy and tormented comedy of the original.

The acclaimed author of the cult classics Trainspotting and The Acid House, Irvine Welsh has been hailed as "the best thing that has happened to British writing in a decade" (London Sunday Times). This audacious novel is a brilliant (and literal) head trip of a book that brings us into the wildly active, albeit coma-beset, mind of Roy Strang, whose hallucinatory quest to eradicate the evil predator/scavenger marabou stork keeps being interrupted by grisly memories of the social and family dysfunction that brought him to this state. It is the sort of lethally funny cocktail of pathos, violence, and outrageous hilarity that only Irvine Welsh can pull off.

The bestselling novel by Irvine Welsh that provided the inspiration for Danny Boyle’s hit film Choose us. Choose life. Choose mortgage payments; choose washing machines; choose cars; choose sitting oan a couch watching mind-numbing and spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fuckin junk food intae yir mooth. Choose rotting away, pishing and shiteing yersel in a home, a total fuckin embarrassment tae the selfish, fucked-up brats ye've produced. Choose life.

One Sunday morning in Glasgow, shoplifting ex-con Sammy awakens in an alley, wearing another man's shoes and trying to remember his two-day drinking binge. He gets in a scrap with some soldiers and revives in a jail cell, badly beaten and, he slowly discovers, completely blind. And things get worse: his girlfriend disappears, the police question him for a crime they won't name, and his stab at disability compensation embroils him in the Kafkaesque red tape of the welfare bureaucracy. Told in the utterly uncensored language of the Scottish working class, this is a dark and subtly political parable of struggle and survival, rich with irony and black humor.

The Old Man and the Sea is a novella written by the American author Ernest Hemingway in 1951 in Cayo Blanco (Cuba), and published in 1952. It was the last major work of fiction written by Hemingway that was published during his lifetime. One of his most famous works, it tells the story of Santiago, an aging Cuban fisherman who struggles with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream off the coast of Cuba.

Charles Arrowby, leading light of England's theatrical set, retires from glittering London to an isolated home by the sea. He plans to write a memoir about his great love affair with Clement Makin, his mentor both professionally and personally, and to amuse himself with Lizzie, an actress he has strung along for many years. None of his plans work out, and his memoir evolves into a riveting chronicle of the strange events and unexpected visitors--some real, some spectral--that disrupt his world and shake his oversized ego to its very core.In exposing the jumble of motivations that drive Arrowby and the other characters, Iris Murdoch lays bare "the truth of untruth"--the human vanity, jealousy, and lack of compassion behind the disguises they present to the world. Played out against a vividly rendered landscape and filled with allusions to myth and magic, Charles's confrontation with the tidal rips of love and forgiveness is one of Murdoch's most moving and powerful novels.

Named as one of the 100 Best Things in the World by GQ magazine in 2003, the riotous adventures of Vernon Gregory Little in small town Texas and beachfront Mexico mark one of the most spectacular, irreverent and bizarre debuts of the twenty-first century so far. Its depiction of innocence and simple humanity (all seasoned with a dash of dysfunctional profanity) in an evil world is never less than astonishing. The only novel to be set in the barbecue sauce capital of Central Texas, Vernon God Little suggests that desperate times throw up the most unlikely of heroes.

Frank, no ordinary sixteen-year-old, lives with his father outside a remote Scottish village. Their life is, to say the least, unconventional. Frank's mother abandoned them years ago: his elder brother Eric is confined to a psychiatric hospital; and his father measures out his eccentricities on an imperial scale. Frank has turned to strange acts of violence to vent his frustrations. In the bizarre daily rituals there is some solace. But when news comes of Eric's escape from the hospital Frank has to prepare the ground for his brother's inevitable return - an event that explodes the mysteries of the past and changes Frank utterly.The Wasp Factory is a work of horrifying compulsion: horrifying, because it enters a mind whose realities are not our own, whose values of life and death are alien to our society; compulsive, because the humour and compassion of that mind reach out to us all. A novel of extraordinary originality, imagination and comic ferocity.

"Who cares about poetry? Fifty people in Australia? Ten with minds you might respect"- Peter Carey, My Life as a FakeI love Peter Carey. If every artist is indeed a thief, Carey is a literary larcenist. I've read three of his novels this year and all were fantastic and all seemed to be written by an inspired ventriloquist who juggles voice-to-voice, scene-to-scene, on a tightrope of his own fancy. He steals stories from the headlines, from history, and bends them and reshapes them to explore themes of art, identity, ideas and ideals. It is messy metafiction. It isn't absolutely fiction. It isn't asolutely origional, but it is entirely strange and magical.

In 2006-2007 a group of investors bet against the US mortgage market. In their research, they discover how flawed and corrupt the market is.

2015 American biographical comedy-drama film directed by Adam McKay

When an open-minded Jewish librarian and his son become victims of the Holocaust, he uses a perfect mixture of will, humor, and imagination to protect his son from the dangers around their camp.

1997 Italian film directed by and starring Roberto Benigni

Tells the story of Benjamin Button, a man who starts aging backwards with consequences.

A mother personally challenges the local authorities to solve her daughter's murder when they fail to catch the culprit.

A criminal pleads insanity and is admitted to a mental institution, where he rebels against the oppressive nurse and rallies up the scared patients.

1975 drama film based on the novel by Ken Kesey

World War II American Army Medic Desmond T. Doss, who served during the Battle of Okinawa, refuses to kill people and becomes the first man in American history to receive the Medal of Honor without firing a shot.

2016 World War II biographical film directed by Mel Gibson

24 hours in the lives of three young men in the French suburbs the day after a violent riot.

A sexually frustrated suburban father has a mid-life crisis after becoming infatuated with his daughter's best friend.

1999 American drama film directed by Sam Mendes

An examination of the machinations behind the scenes at a real estate office.

1992 American drama directed by James Foley

A delusional young man strikes up an unconventional relationship with a doll he finds on the Internet.

Mourning his dead child, a haunted Vietnam War veteran attempts to uncover his past while suffering from a severe case of dissociation. To do so, he must decipher reality and life from his own dreams, delusions, and perceptions of de

An outcast New York City cop is charged with bringing down Harlem drug lord Frank Lucas, whose real life inspired this partly biographical film.

Scampia Vele is the corbusian architecture which has become a stronghold for Mafia of Naples, Italy.

A quiet observation of the triumphs and defeats of daily life, along with the poetry evident in its smallest details.

A sole survivor tells of the twisty events leading up to a horrific gun battle on a boat, which began when five criminals met at a seemingly random police lineup.

1995 German-American neo-noir crime thriller film directed by Bryan Singer

Six complete strangers with widely varying personalities are involuntarily placed in an endless maze containing deadly traps.

1997 Canadian independent science-fiction horror film by Vincenzo Natali

Sketches include Dave starring in his own video game. Plus, Dave introduces 'The Playa Haters' Club', and Dave's take on Japanese monster movies with 'Blackzilla!'.

Ranch foreman Pete Perkins looks to fulfill the promise to his recently deceased best friend by burying him in his hometown in Mexico.

Ben Sanderson, a Hollywood screenwriter who lost everything because of his alcoholism, arrives in Las Vegas to drink himself to death. There, he meets and forms an uneasy friendship and non-interference pact with prostitute Sera.

Norman is a curmudgeon with an estranged relationship with his daughter Chelsea. At Golden Pond, he and his wife nevertheless agree to care for Billy, the son of Chelsea's new boyfriend, and a most unexpected relationship blooms.

The story of an office that faces closure when the company decides to downsize its branches. A documentary film crew follow staff and the manager David Brent as they continue their daily lives.

The misadventures of club owner Brian Potter who is determined to make The Phoenix Club the best working men's club in Greater Manchester.

Limmy's Show! is a Scottish surreal comedy sketch show broadcast on BBC Two Scotland, written, directed and based on the 2006 podcast Limmy's World of Glasgow by Brian "Limmy" Limond, who stars as himself and a variety of characters in a series of observational, surreal, dark, and bizarre sketches. Limmy frequently breaks the fourth wall by directly talking to viewers through the camera. The show stars Brian Limond, Paul McCole, Alan McHugh, and Kirstin McLean. The first series featured a completely different supporting cast, consisting of Debbie Welsh, Tom Brogan and Raymond Mearns. The show has amassed a cult following since its release.

An anthology series exploring a twisted, high-tech multiverse where humanity's greatest innovations and darkest instincts collide.

Philip J. Fry, a pizza delivery boy, is accidentally frozen in 1999 and thawed out on New Year's Eve 2999.

American animated sitcom for the Fox Broadcasting Company and Comedy Central

The satiric adventures of a working-class family in the misfit city of Springfield.

American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening

Follows criminal investigations in Paris from all the different points of view of those involved.

A surreal, ambient mix of bleak comedy sketches.

A spoof of the British style of news broadcasting - including ridiculous stories, patronising vox pops, offensively hard-hitting research and a sports presenter clearly struggling for metaphors.

surreal British parody of television current affairs programmes

The life and times of Larry David and the predicaments he gets himself into with his friends and complete strangers.

Mark and Jez are a couple of twenty-something roommates who have nothing in common - except for the fact that their lives are anything but normal. Mayhem ensues as the pair strive to cope with day-to-day life.

Controversal spoof of current affairs television, and the role of celebrity in the UK.

A comedy that follows a group of six students about to embark on the most exciting period of their lives so far, university.

While telling her husband he's dying, Jill sets her sights on the next door neighbour, Don. And torments his wife, who suffers from MS.

An Atlantic City politician plays both sides of the law by conspiring with gangsters during the Prohibition era.

American TV series set in Atlantic City during the Prohibition era

By day, mild-mannered Dexter is a blood-spatter analyst for the Miami police. But at night, he is a serial killer who only targets other murderers.

Andy Millman (Ricky Gervais) is an actor with ambition and a script. Reduced to working as an extra with a useless agent, Andy's attempts to boost his career invariably end in failure and embarrassment.

Ordinary people find themselves in extraordinarily astounding situations, which they each try to solve in a remarkable manner.

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