F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Beautiful and the Damned

The Beautiful and Damned is the story of Anthony Patch and his wife, Gloria. Harvard-educated and an aspiring aesthete, Patch is waiting for his inheritance upon his grandfather's death. His reckless marriage to Gloria is fueled by alcohol and is destroyed by greed. The Patches race through a series of alcohol-induced fiascoes – first in hilarity, and then in despair. The Beautiful and Damned, a devastating portrait of the nouveaux riches, New York night life, reckless ambition, and squandered talent, was published in 1922 on the heels of Fitzgerald's first novel. It signaled his maturity as a storyteller and, more important, as a novelist.

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MINIKRITIKA | Stephen King - Mile 81

With ​​the heart of Stand By Me and the genius horror of Christine, Mile 81 is Stephen King unleashing his imagination as he drives past one of those road signs…

At Mile 81 on the Maine Turnpike is a boarded up rest stop on a highway in Maine. It's a place where high school kids drink and get into the kind of trouble high school kids have always gotten into. It's the place where Pete Simmons goes when his older brother, who's supposed to be looking out for him, heads off to the gravel pit to play „paratroopers over the side.” Pete, armed only with the magnifying glass he got for his tenth birthday, finds a discarded bottle of vodka in the boarded up burger shack and drinks enough to pass out.Not much later, a mud-covered station wagon (which is strange because there hadn't been any rain in New England for over a week) veers into the Mile 81 rest area, ignoring the sign that says „closed, no services.” The driver's door opens but nobody gets out.Doug Clayton, an insurance man from Bangor, is driving his Prius to a conference in Portland. On the backseat are his briefcase and suitcase and in the passenger bucket is a King James Bible, what Doug calls „the ultimate insurance manual,” but it isn't going to save Doug when he decides to be the Good Samaritan and help the guy in the broken down wagon. He pulls up behind it, puts on his four-ways, and then notices that the wagon has no plates.Ten minutes later, Julianne Vernon, pulling a horse trailer, spots the Prius and the wagon, and pulls over. Julianne finds Doug Clayton's cracked cell phone near the wagon door — and gets too close herself. By the time Pete Simmons wakes up from his vodka nap, there are a half a dozen cars at the Mile 81 rest stop. Two kids — Rachel and Blake Lussier — and one horse named Deedee are the only living left. Unless you maybe count the wagon.

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MINIKRITIKA | Karen M. McManus: One of us is lying

The ​Breakfast Club meets Pretty Little Liars, One of Us Is Lying is the story of what happens when five strangers walk into detention and only four walk out alive. Everyone is a suspect, and everyone has something to hide. 

Pay close attention and you might solve this. On Monday afternoon, five students at Bayview High walk into detention. Bronwyn, the brain, is Yale-bound and never breaks a rule. Addy, the beauty, is the picture-perfect homecoming princess. Nate, the criminal, is already on probation for dealing. Cooper, the athlete, is the all-star baseball pitcher. And Simon, the outcast, is the creator of Bayview High’s notorious gossip app. Only, Simon never makes it out of that classroom. Before the end of detention Simon's dead. And according to investigators, his death wasn’t an accident. On Monday, he died. But on Tuesday, he’d planned to post juicy reveals about all four of his high-profile classmates, which makes all four of them suspects in his murder. Or are they the perfect patsies for a killer who’s still on the loose? Everyone has secrets, right? What really matters is how far you would go to protect them.

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Lauren DeStefano: Fever (The Chemical Garden Trilogy #2)

Rhine ​and Gabriel have escaped the mansion, but danger is never far behind.
Running away brings Rhine and Gabriel right into a trap, in the form of a twisted carnival whose ringmistress keeps watch over a menagerie of girls. Just as Rhine uncovers what plans await her, her fortune turns again. With Gabriel at her side, Rhine travels through an environment as grim as the one she left a year ago – surroundings that mirror her own feelings of fear and hopelessness.
The two are determined to get to Manhattan, to relative safety with Rhine’s twin brother, Rowan. But the road there is long and perilous – and in a world where young women only live to age twenty and young men die at twenty-five, time is precious. Worse still, they can’t seem to elude Rhine’s father-in-law, Vaughn, who is determined to bring Rhine back to the mansion…by any means necessary.
In the sequel to Lauren DeStefano’s harrowing Wither, Rhine must decide if freedom is worth the price – now that she has more to lose than ever.

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Dawn French: A Tiny Bit Marvellous

Meet Mo Battle, about to turn 50 and mum to two hormonal teenagers. There's 17-year-old daughter Dora who blames Mo for, like, EVERYTHING and Peter who believes he's quite simply as marvellous as his hero Oscar Wilde. Somewhere, keeping quiet, is Dad, who's just, well … Dad. 

However, Mo is having a crisis. She's about to so something unusually wild and selfish, which will leave the entire family teetering on the edge of a precipice. Will the family fall? Or will they, when it really matters, be there for each other?

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Lauren DeStefano: Wither (The Chemical Garden trilogy #1)

What ​if you knew exactly when you would die?
Thanks to modern science, every human being has become a ticking genetic time bomb—males only live to age twenty-five, and females only live to age twenty. In this bleak landscape, young girls are kidnapped and forced into polygamous marriages to keep the population from dying out.
When sixteen-year-old Rhine Ellery is taken by the Gatherers to become a bride, she enters a world of wealth and privilege. Despite her husband Linden's genuine love for her, and a tenuous trust among her sister wives, Rhine has one purpose: to escape—to find her twin brother and go home.
But Rhine has more to contend with than losing her freedom. Linden's eccentric father is bent on finding an antidote to the genetic virus that is getting closer to taking his son, even if it means collecting corpses in order to test his experiments. With the help of Gabriel, a servant Rhine is growing dangerously attracted to, Rhine attempts to break free, in the limted time she has left.

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Austin Kleon: Steal like an artist

You ​don’t need to be a genius, you just need to be yourself. That’s the message from Austin Kleon, a young writer and artist who knows that creativity is everywhere, creativity is for everyone. A manifesto for the digital age, Steal Like an Artist is a guide whose positive message, graphic look and illustrations, exercises, and examples will put readers directly in touch with their artistic side.

When Mr. Kleon was asked to address college students in upstate New York, he shaped his speech around the ten things he wished someone had told him when he was starting out. The talk went viral, and its author dug deeper into his own ideas to create Steal Like an Artist, the book. The result is inspiring, hip, original, practical, and entertaining. And filled with new truths about creativity: Nothing is original, so embrace influence, col- lect ideas, and remix and re-imagine to discover your own path. Follow your interests wherever they take you. Stay smart, stay out of debt, and risk being boring—the creative you will need to make room to be wild and daring in your imagination.

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Jasinda Wilder - Big Girls Do It Wilder (Big Girls Do It #3)

 I'm going. Going to New York City to be with gorgeous, mysterious, rockstar Chase Delany seemed like a crazy dream, a fantasy come true. The bright lights and music, and his tight, sexy leather pants called to me… and I answered. Chase might want more and I just might give it to him, if I could only forget what I started with Jeff back in Detroit. I thought I had my love life all figured out, I thought I knew what I wanted, and then things went and changed on me all over again…

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MINIKRITIKA | Nick Hornby: A long way down

„The story is written in the first-person narrative from the points of view of the four main characters, Martin, Maureen, Jess and JJ. These four strangers happen to meet on the roof of a high building called Topper's House in London on New Year's Eve, each with the intent of committing suicide. Their plans for death in solitude, however, are ruined when they meet. The novel recounts their misadventures as they decide to come down from the roof alive – however temporarily that may be.”

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MINIKRITIKA | John Green: The Fault in Our Stars

Diagnosed with Stage IV thyroid cancer at 12, Hazel was prepared to die until, at 14, a medical miracle shrunk the tumours in her lungs… for now.

Two years post-miracle, sixteen-year-old Hazel is post-everything else, too post-high school, post-friends and post-normalcy. And even though she could live for a long time (whatever that means), Hazel lives tethered to an oxygen tank, the tumours tenuously kept at bay with a constant chemical assault.
Enter Augustus Waters. A match made at cancer kid support group, Augustus is gorgeous, in remission, and shockingly to her, interested in Hazel. Being with Augustus is both an unexpected destination and a long-needed journey, pushing Hazel to re-examine how sickness and health, life and death, will define her and the legacy that everyone leaves behind.

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MINIKRITIKA || Non Pratt - Trouble

A boy. A girl. A bump. Trouble. A smart, touching and funny contemporary young adult book from an extraordinary new talent.

Hannah’s smart and funny … she’s also fifteen and pregnant. Aaron is new at school and doesn’t want to attract attention. So why does he offer to be the pretend dad to Hannah’s unborn baby? Growing up can be trouble but that’s how you find out what really matters.

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MINIKRITIKA | Jeff Kinney: Double Down (Diary of a Wimpy Kid #11)

The latest book in the phenomenally successful Diary of a Wimpy Kid series by bestselling author Jeff Kinney will go on sale November 1, 2016. One of the most anticipated books of the year, tens of millions of fans all over the world eagerly await this newest installment—the eleventh book in the series. There are now more than 165 million copies of the books in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series in print globally. Book eleven follows the enormous international acclaim of Old School, which debuted at the top of bestseller lists around the world and has remained at the top of the bestseller lists ever since it went on sale last November. Diary of a Wimpy Kid continues to dominate sales charts in 2016.

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MINIKRITIKA | Cecily von Ziegesar: Gossip Girl (Gossip Girl #1)

The story begins with Blair Waldorf attending a party at her house with her friends Kati Farkas and Isabel Coates. Soon after, Blair Waldorf sneaks away from the party to her room in order to have sex with her boyfriend, Nate Archibald. However, they are interrupted by the arrival of Serena van der Woodsen, Blair's old friend who left one year ago to attend boarding school. When Serena was around, Blair was always left in her shadow, so when she returned Blair was not particularly thrilled to see her, especially when Blair finds out that Serena and Nate had sex the summer before Serena left. Serena does not understand why she is being ignored by all of her friends, but the reader knows that Blair had something to do with that. Also all throughout the book, Gossip Girl, a popular blog site, which many visit, spreads around rumors, or gossip, about this group.

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MINIKRITIKA | A. J. Adams - The customer is not always right

Retailers, restaurants, and tech support providers believe service is king, but in The Customer Is Not Always Right, A.J. Adams proves that customers will do anything they can to put that motto to the test.

Readers get a collection of insights and stories from the popular Web site NotAlwaysRight.com. The book and site showcase customer-relations horror stories everyone can relate to. No matter what side of the counter you're on, there are hilarious tales about everything that can go wrong between the customer and retail or service provider. Whether it's a confrontation in the drive-through over not enough fries or arguing over a one-cent price difference on milk, this book proves the principle of „the customer is always right” can be dead wrong.

From groaning, to intense complaining, to situations that leave workers asking, „Are you serious?,” readers will enjoy these hilarious tales of customers gone wrong.

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MINIKRITIKA | Jennifer E. Smith: The Geography of You and Me

Lucy and Owen meet somewhere between the tenth and eleventh floors of a New York City apartment building, on an elevator rendered useless by a citywide blackout. After they're rescued, they spend a single night together, wandering the darkened streets and marveling at the rare appearance of stars above Manhattan. But once the power is restored, so is reality. Lucy soon moves to Edinburgh with her parents, while Owen heads out west with his father.

Lucy and Owen's relationship plays out across the globe as they stay in touch through postcards, occasional e-mails, and – finally – a reunion in the city where they first met.
A carefully charted map of a long-distance relationship, Jennifer E. Smith's new novel shows that the center of the world isn't necessarily a place. It can be a person, too.

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MINIKRITIKA | Harold Rabinowitz: A ​Passion for Books

Those who share Erasmus's love of those curious bundles of paper bound together between hard or soft covers know exactly how he felt. These are the people who can spend hours browsing through a bookstore, completely oblivious not only to the passage of time but to everything else around them, the people for whom buying books is a necessity, not a luxury. A Passion for Books is a celebration of that love, a collection of sixty classic and contemporary essays, stories, lists, poems, quotations, and cartoons on the joys of reading, appreciating, and collecting books.

This enriching collection leads off with science-fiction great Ray Bradbury's Foreword, in which he remembers his penniless days pecking out Fahrenheit 451 on a rented typewriter, conjuring up a society so frightened of art that it burns its books. This struggle--financial and creative--led to his lifelong love of all books, which he hopes will cosset him in his grave, „Shakespeare as a pillow, Pope at one elbow, Yeats at the other, and Shaw to warm my toes. Good company for far-travelling.”Booklovers will also find here a selection of writings by a myriad of fellow sufferers from bibliomania. Among these are such contemporary authors as Philip Roth, John Updike, Umberto Eco, Robertson Davies, Nicholas Basbanes, and Anna Quindlen; earlier twentieth-century authors Chris-topher Morley, A. Edward Newton, Holbrook Jackson, A.S.W. Rosenbach, William Dana Orcutt, Robert Benchley, and William Targ; and classic authors such as Michel de Montaigne, Gustave Flaubert, Petrarch, and Anatole France.Here also are entertaining and humorous lists such as the „Ten Best-Selling Books Rejected by Publishers Twenty Times or More,” the great books included in Clifton Fadiman and John Major's New Lifetime Reading Plan, Jonathan Yardley's „Ten Books That Shaped the American Character,” "Ten Memorable Books That Never Existed," „Norman Mailer's Ten Favorite American Novels,” and Anna Quindlen's „Ten Big Thick Wonderful Books That Could Take You a Whole Summer to Read (but Aren't Beach Books).”Rounding out the anthology are selections on bookstores, book clubs, and book care, plus book cartoons, and a specially prepared „Bibliobibliography” of books about books.Whether you consider yourself a bibliomaniac or just someone who likes to read, A Passion for Books will provide you with a lifetime's worth of entertaining, informative, and pleasurable reading on your favorite subject--the love of books.

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MINIKRITIKA | Jeff Kinney: Cabin fever (Diary of a Wimpy Kid #6)

Greg Heffley is in big trouble. School property has been damaged, and Greg is the prime suspect. But the crazy thing is, he’s innocent. Or at least sort of.

The authorities are closing in, but when a surprise blizzard hits, the Heffley family is trapped indoors. Greg knows that when the snow melts he’s going to have to face the music, but could any punishment be worse than being stuck inside with your family for the holidays?

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MINIKRITIKA | Kathryn Stockett: The Help

What ​​perfect timing for this optimistic, uplifting debut novel (and maiden publication of Amy Einhorn's new imprint) set during the nascent civil rights movement in Jackson, Miss., where black women were trusted to raise white children but not to polish the household silver. Eugenia Skeeter Phelan is just home from college in 1962, and, anxious to become a writer, is advised to hone her chops by writing about what disturbs you. The budding social activist begins to collect the stories of the black women on whom the country club sets relies and mistrusts enlisting the help of Aibileen, a maid who's raised 17 children, and Aibileen's best friend Minny, who's found herself unemployed more than a few times after mouthing off to her white employers. The book Skeeter puts together based on their stories is scathing and shocking, bringing pride and hope to the black community, while giving Skeeter the courage to break down her personal boundaries and pursue her dreams. Assured and layered, full of heart and history, this one has bestseller written all over it.

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George Orwell: Állatfarm

Orwell ​​1943/44-ben írott műve – amelynek a szerző a Tündérmese alcímet adta – ténylegesen a sztálini korszak szatírája, a Lenin halálától a szovjet-német megnemtámadási egyezményig terjedő időszakban, de természetesen minden elnyomó, totalitárius rendszerre ráillik. Egy angol farm – Mr . Jones Major-ja – a színhely, ahol az állatok a disznók vezetésével megdöntik az Ember uralmát, és a maguk igazgatta Állatfarm-on élik először szabadnak, derűsnek látszó, majd egyre jobban elkomoruló életüket. Az 1984 írójának már ebben a művében is nagy szerepet játszik a történelmi dokumentumok meghamisításának motívuma. Visszamenőlegesen megváltoznak, majd feledésbe merülnek az állatok hajdani ideológusának, az Őrnagynak eszméi, a Napóleon nevű nagy kan ragadja magához a hatalmat, és – természetesen mindig a megfelelő ideológiai magyarázattal – egyre zordabb diktatúrát kényszerít állattársaira. A kezdeti jelszó pedig – Minden állat egyenlő – érdekesen módosul… A könyvet Ralph Steadman egyedülálló rajzai illusztrálják.

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MINIKRITIKA || Richard Benson - F in Exams

Celebrating the creative side of failure, „F in Exams” gathers the most hilarious and inventive test answers provided by students who, faced with a question they have no hope of getting right, decide to have a little fun instead.

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