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Today’s Must-Read – Wilbur Smith’s latest

Assegai

by Wilbur Smith

The highly popular historical novelist returns with another guaranteed best-seller. In the early 1900s, Second Lieutenant Leon Courtney decides to hang up his military career after a near-fatal mission in British East Africa (and a subsequent court-martial proceeding instigated by a vindictive superior office). He takes up big-game hunting, but that's only his cover: in reality, he is working as a spy, gathering intelligence for his uncle Penrod Ballantyne. Leon's target is Count Otto Von Meerbach, a German weapons manufacturer (the novel is set only a handful of years before World War I), but Leon doesn't count on falling in love with the target's seductive mistress, Eva. Can Leon foil Von Meerbach's plot to foment an African rebellion and, at the same time, protect the beautiful Eva? There is a reason Smith is a hugely popular writer of historical novels: his remarkable talent for re-creating historical periods and crafting characters we care about is virtually unmatched in the genre. Smith's novels of the Courtney and Ballantyne families (in 2005, he brought the two sagas together in The Triumph of the Sun) have been entertaining readers for nearly five decades, and if this novel is any indication, he is showing no signs of slowing down. (David Pitt Booklist )

Best Price $15.00
or Buy New $17.80

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10 Days to More Confident Public Speaking


by The Princeton Language Institute, and Lenny Laskowski

From the reviews

Lenny LaSkowski is an expert in the field (and author of Dynamic Presentation Skills of the Business professional). Here he offers a course on giving public talks and seminars. It's comprehensive and covers every part of the presentation process, from investigating audience needs and meeting-room layout to having backup equipment and polished techniques for handling difficult people. It is full of interesting observations, suggestions and instructions.

The book has the tools you need to become a relaxed, effective and commanding public speaker. It is presented in a clear, concise, step-by-step approach with dozens of inside tips. It is well structured and easy readable.

Read the book and be encouraged to be comfortable with your own unique self. Learn to establish an instant rapport with an audience. There are suggestions on how to integrate humor, and memorization techniques.

The book’s lessons could also be extended to communicating more confidently and efficiently in general.

You can buy this book for just $9.40 from Amazon

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Book – 101 great ways to improve your life

101ways to improve your life

by David Riklan

You will get 101 quick, simple and -- most importantly -- proven success secrets from the top experts in the world and gain access to the greatest treasures of all time - the gold nuggets of success. 101 self help authors and experts, Zig Ziglar, Brian Tracy, Jim Rohn, Denis Waitley, plus many others have all contributed their knowledge to this great compilation.
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Obamas Will Preside Over National Book Festival

The First Couple will be honorary chairs of the National Book Festival, to be held in Washington, D.C., at the National Mall on Saturday, September 26th.

Sponsored by the Library of Congress, this will be the event’s ninth year celebrating “the joys of reading and lifelong literacy,” according to an event press release.

more ...

One of the voices behind audio books

Bernadette Dunne
Bernadette Dunne has recorded more than 250 titles since her reading of Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha(Books on Tape, 1998) helped put her on the map. She's voiced the works of everyone from actress Katharine Hepburn (Me: Stories of My Life) to National Book Award winner Richard Powers (The Echo Maker), for publishers including BBC Audiobooks America and Christian Audio. Her Audie Award-nominated narration of Elizabeth Cohen's The House on Beartown Road (Blackstone Audio) was an L Best Audiobook of 2004. Librarian Ophelia Lo (Canton Public Library, MI) caught up with the Audie Award nominee for LJ's Behind the Mike series.

How did you get your start as an audiobook narrator? Audiobook legend Flo Gibson gave me a job monitoring readers in her studio in the Washington, DC, area [in the late 1990s]. I had a golden opportunity to observe and learn from the best: Flo, Kate Reading, Grover Gardner, and Michael Russotto. » » »

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Today’s must-read is a must for cricket fans

True colours

True colours

True colours. My life

By Adam Gilchrist

True Colours is his autobiography, and like the man himself it's incomparable. With unflinching honesty, intelligence, compassion and humour, Adam takes you into the world of cricket that few outside of the Australian team have ever seen. From his early struggles to establish himself, through to the giant achievements of the Australian test and one-day sides, True Colours offers an extraordinary window on Adam, on cricket's major stars and on the game itself.

Can you face reality reading on the beach?

(Photo: Hannah Whitaker/New York Magazine)

Could this be the summer we finally bury the notion that a beach read must be mindless to be fun? We find ourselves particularly drawn this season to nonfiction and a few realistic novels. Below, some of our top picks through July. Save August for Thomas Pynchon’s latest, Inherent Vice—“part noir, part psychedelic romp”—a mere 400 pages.

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Today’s must-read is a collection of stories

Everything ravaged, everything burned

Everything ravaged, everything burned

Everything ravaged, everything burned


by Wells Tower

The stories in this outstanding debut collection explore the troubled relationships of men down on their luck, in failed marriages, estranged from family, caught in imbroglios between sons and their fathers and stepfathers, and even, in Wild America, the subtle and ferocious competition between teenage girls.

Sydney Writers’ Festival The Big Read

Sydney Writers’ Festival The Big Read title for 2009 is F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. Arguably Fitzgerald's finest work, this popular classic written in 1925 is often referred to as 'the great American novel' and the quintessential portrait of the Jazz Age, in all its decadence and excess.

To see how your Book Club can participate in The Big Read 2009 go to the Sydney Writers’ Festival website.

Read an extract

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Today’s Must-read is an absorbing, addictive, dark thriller

The Girl who played with fire

The Girl who played with fire

The Girl who played with fire

by Steig Larsson

The thriller of the decade - Evene.fr. Warning - addictive thriller. All who taste it get hooked! - Pascale Frey, Elle.

When a writer delivers such a complex and fascinating portrayal like that of Lisbeth Salander all we can do is bow down in gratitude. It doesn't get much better than this - Anders Wennberg, Gefle Dagblad.

... absorbing and exciting - highly recommended - The Literary Review.