Signed Books

Wolf Hall

Hilary Mantel

England, the 1520s. Henry VIII is on the throne, but has no heir. Cardinal Wolsey is his chief advisor, charged with securing the divorce the pope refuses to grant. Into this atmosphere of distrust and need comes Thomas Cromwell, first as Wolsey's clerk, and later his successor. Cromwell is a man with a delicate and deadly expertise in manipulating people and events. His reforming agenda is carried out in the grip of a self-interested parliament and a king who fluctuates between romantic passions and murderous rages.

Wolf Hall is that very rare thing: a truly great English novel. With a vast array of characters, and richly overflowing with incident, it peels back history to show us Tudor England as a half-made society, moulding itself with great passion and suffering and courage.

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Coraline

Neil Gaiman

When Coraline moves with her parents to a new house she is fascinated by the fact that their 'house' is in fact only half a house! Divided into flats years before, there is a brick wall behind a door where once there was a corridor and one day it is corridor again, down which the intrepid Coraline wanders.

And so a nightmare-ish mystery begins that takes Coraline into the arms of counterfeit parents and a life that isn't quite right. Can Coraline get out? Can she find her real parents? Will life ever be the same again?

"This book will send a shiver down your spine, out through your shoes and into a taxi to the airport. It has the delicate horror of the finest fairy tales, and it is a masterpiece." - Terry Pratchett.

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Three Cups of Tea

Greg Mortenson

In 1993, after a terrifying and disastrous attempt to climb K2, a mountaineer called Greg Mortenson drifted, cold and dehydrated, into an impoverished Pakistan village in the Karakoram Mountains. Moved by the inhabitants' kindness, he promised to return and build a school.

Three Cups of Tea is the story of that promise and its extraordinary outcome. Over the next decade Mortenson built not just one but fifty-five schools - especially for girls - in remote villages across the forbidding and breathtaking landscape of Pakistan and Afghanistan, just as the Taliban rose to power. His story is at once a riveting adventure and a testament to the power of the humanitarian spirit.

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Time Traveler's Wife

Audrey Niffenegger

This extraordinary, magical novel is the story of Clare and Henry who have known each other since Clare was 6 and Henry was 36, and were married when Clare was 22 and Henry 30. Impossible but true, because Henry is one of the first people diagnosed with Chrono-Displacement Disorder: periodically his genetic clock resets and he finds himself pulled suddenly into his past or future. His experiences are alternately harrowing and amusing. They struggle to lead normal lives in the face of a force they can neither prevent nor control.

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