Fantastic finds

A beautiful summer's evening in a Kent field and around their two caravans a group of strawberry pickers celebrates a birthday. But what lies behind the buy-one-get-one-free offers at your supermarket and who picks our strawberries? The Ukrainians: Irina, just off the coach from Kiev, and Andriy, the miner's son from the other Ukraine; the Poles: Tomasz and Yola; two Chinese girls; Emanuel, the round-eyed eighteen-year-old from Malawi. And although he can't pick strawberries, there's also the dog.

When their recently widowed father announces that he plans to remarry, sisters Vera and Nadezhda realize that they must learn to put aside a lifetime of bitter rivalry in order to save him. The new woman in his life is a voluptuous gold digger from Ukraine, fifty years his junior, with fabulous breasts and a proclivity for green satin underwear and boil-in-the-bag cuisine, who will stop at nothing in pursuit of the luxurious Western lifestyle she dreams of. But separating their addled and annoyingly lecherous dad from his new love will prove to be no easy feat.As Hurricane Valentia turns the old family house upside down, all the old secrets come falling out, including the most deeply buried one, from the war, the one that explains much about why Nadezhda and Vera are so different. In the meantime, oblivious to it all, their father carries on with the great work of his dotage - a grand history of the tractor and its role in human progress, giving due credit to the crucial Ukrainian contribution. The story carries us back to prerevolutionary Ukraine, through wartime Germany, to contemporary England, taking in love and suffering, tanks and tractors, bitchiness, sibling rivalry, and, above all, the joys of growing old disgracefully.

A couple of ambitious, would-be tennis pros meet and marry in New York City, initiating a competition for fame and fortune that culminates in the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.

As further evidence of his family's bad fortune which they attribute to a curse on a distant relative, Stanley Yelnats is sent to a hellish correctional camp in the Texas desert where he finds his first real friend, a treasure, and a new sense of himself.

Summoning up more than 20 years of Japan's most dramatic history, the geisha's story uncovers a hidden world of eroticism and enchantment, exploitation and degradation. It moves from a small fishing village in 1929 to the glamorous and decadent Kyoto of the 30s and on to postwar New York.

From small-town America to the claustrophobia of the Japanese corporate lifestyle, this novel tells the story of a parallel year in the lives of two women at the opposite ends of the world, brought together in a strange convergence of global politics, meat, TV and personal crisis.

Holly and Gerry have a running joke - that she'd never cope without him. When Gerry dies of a brain tumour, Holly's life falls apart. But then she receives a package from Gerry - a last bequest. "The List" is a bundle of notes, each containing "to do" lists, aimed at getting her back on track.

1st electronic ed.;Title from ebook title screen (viewed Oct. 11, 2005).

Finding two thought-inducing philosophical questions in her mailbox, Sophie enrolls in a correspondence course with a mysterious philosopher, and begins receiving some equally strange letters.

A murder mystery like no other, this novel features Christopher Boone, a 15 year-old who suffers from Asperger's syndrome. When he finds a neighbour's dog murdered, he sets out on a terrifying journey destined to turn his whole world upside down.

The story of three generations in twentieth-century China, this is an engrossing record of Mao's impact on China, an unusual window on the female experience in the modern world, and an inspiring tale of courage and love.