Recommendations based on "Porterhouse Blue"

From one of our greatest living writers comes a sweeping novel of unrequited love and exile, war and family.The Magician tells the story of Thomas Mann, whose life was filled with great acclaim and contradiction. He would find himself on the wrong side of history in the First World War, cheerleading the German army, but have a clear vision of the future in the second, anticipating the horrors of Nazism. He would have six children and keep his homosexuality hidden; he was a man forever connected to his family and yet bore witness to the ravages of suicide. He would write some of the greatest works of European literature, and win the Nobel Prize, but would never return to the country that inspired his creativity. Through one life, Colm Toibin tells the breathtaking story of the twentieth century.___________________________________***Praise for Colm Tóibín***'A celebration of what novels can do' Observer'Devastatingly human . . . savage, sordid and hauntingly believable' Guardian'Tremendous, richly beautiful, wonderful . . . it does everything we ought to ask of a great novel' Tessa Hadley'Subtle and enthralling' Sunday Times

Frankie and his soccer team travel to fantastic lands to play some of the wildest soccer matches ever!Frankie and his friends get transported to ancient Egypt, and they're in for a surprise. Will they be able to beat the menacing mummies?

The stand-alone sequel to The Doldrums, which the New York Times called “a dreamy charmer of a book,” is a second tour-de-force by author-illustrator Nicholas Gannon. It brims with the spirit of exploration and celebrates the bond of friendship. The exquisite hardcover package features Gannon’s distinctive full color full-page art throughout, as well as black-and-white spot illustrations. The Doldrums and the Helmsley Curse is a timeless tale and a beautiful gift for a young reader. Archer Helmsley’s grandparents—famous explorers who went missing on an iceberg two years ago—are finally coming home. Archer is overjoyed, but he may be the only one. Rumors are flying that Archer’s grandparents were never really abandoned on the iceberg; that they’re making it all up. Archer knows that the rumors are false. With his best friends, Oliver and Adélaïde, and their new neighbor, Kana, Archer sets out during a snowstorm to rescue his grandparents’ reputation. In the tradition of Roald Dahl, Lemony Snicket, and Brian Selznick, Nicholas Gannon’s wildly imaginative world of The Doldrums and the Helmsley Curse is packed with sly humor, an undeniably charming cast of characters, and the thrill of discovering secrets and adventures right in your own backyard. With approximately twenty pieces of full color full-page artwork, as well as spot illustrations, and deft, literary writing, Nicholas Gannon once again creates a fully realized world and a story to sink into and explore. “Irresistible.”—Booklist

?In The Golem and the Jinni, a chance meeting between mythical beings takes readers on a dazzling journey through cultures in turn-of-the-century New York.Chava is a golem, a creature made of clay, brought to life to by a disgraced rabbi who dabbles in dark Kabbalistic magic and dies at sea on the voyage from Poland. Chava is unmoored and adrift as the ship arrives in New York harbor in 1899.Ahmad is a jinni, a being of fire born in the ancient Syrian desert, trapped in an old copper flask, and released in New York City, though still not entirely free.Ahmad and Chava become unlikely friends and soul mates with a mystical connection. Marvelous and compulsively readable, Helene Wecker's debut novel The Golem and the Jinni weaves strands of Yiddish and Middle Eastern literature, historical fiction and magical fable, into a wondrously inventive and unforgettable tale.

Felix, a Jewish boy in Poland in 1942, is hiding from the Nazis in a Catholic orphanage. The only problem is that he doesn't know anything about the war, and thinks he's only in the orphanage while his parents travel and try to salvage their bookselling business. And when he thinks his parents are in danger, Felix sets off to warn them--straight into the heart of Nazi-occupied Poland. To Felix, everything is a story: Why did he get a whole carrot in his soup? It must be sign that his parents are coming to get him. Why are the Nazis burning books? They must be foreign librarians sent to clean out the orphanage's outdated library. But as Felix's journey gets increasingly dangerous, he begins to see horrors that not even stories can explain.Despite his grim suroundings, Felix never loses hope. Morris Gleitzman takes a painful subject and expertly turns it into a story filled with love, friendship, and even humor.

In Abilene, Texas, in 1908, Art Atchison Aimesworth, boy inventor and world explorer, enlists the aid of his sister and best friend on a quest to discover the truth about the mysterious Easter Bunny.

Two of Steinbeck's best-known short novels depict an assortment of characters who inhabit the outer fringes of society

Their eyes met across a crowded room. She was just a poor servant girl and he was the son of a rich industrialist. Er, no, this is a Christopher Brookmyre novel, although the eyes meeting across a crowded room part is true. Where it differs from the fairy tales is that the room in question was crowded with hostages and arme d bank-robbers, and his eyes were the only part of him she could see behind the mask. He is an art-thief par excellence and she is a connoisseur of crooks. Her job is to hunt him to extinction; his is to avoid being caught and he also has a secret agenda more valuable than anything he might steal. There are risks he can take without jeopardising his plans. He can afford to play cat-and-mouse with the female cop who's on his tail; it might even arguably be necessary. What he can't afford is to let her get too close: he could could end up in jail or, even more scary, he could end up in love

Pod, Homily, and Arrietty Clock -- the family of tiny Borrowers -- think they have at last found an ideal home. They've moved into a house in a miniature village built as a hobby by a retired railroad man. The village is the perfect size for the Borrowers, and after the hardships they've faced, the Clocks gratefully settle into the luxury of having a "proper" house. The easy life makes them careless. Or, rather, it makes Arrietty careless. She befriends a "human bean," and the next thing Arrietty knows, she and her family have been kidnapped. Their captors are a greedy married couple, called the Platters, who have big plans for the little people. They have created their own miniature village in a glass case and plan to imprison the Borrowers within -- like animals in a zoo -- for the rest of their lives.

The latest book in Alexander McCall Smith's entertaining and hilarious Professor von Igelfeld seriesProfessor Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld is not just any German professor - he is the author of that great work of scholarship, Portuguese Irregular Verbs. His eminence in language studies is widely recognised, even if it is rarely acknowledged by his colleague, Professor Detlev-Amadeus Unterholzer, author of a much less important work on the subjunctive. Their rivalry bubbles away under the surface, but is apt to come into the open if something unusual disturbs the calm waters of the institute in Regensburg in which they both work.One such event is the arrival from New Orleans of two visiting scholars. These ladies, Professor Pom Pom Boisseau, and her friend, Professor Alice Martinique, are both experts in the Provençal language as well as being keen bikers. When they choose to arrive on large, noisy motorbikes, Unterholzer is shocked, but von Igelfeld is rather taken with Pom Pom. In fact, he is very taken with her, even to the extent of going for a ride with her on her motorbike.Anybody can tell that this infatuation will lead to disappointment, if not worse. But for von Igelfeld, disasters often arrive in twos and threes. The great professor is invited to attend a student occasion in which the old habit of duelling rears its head. He is handed a sword...Von Igelfeld may suffer humiliation after humiliation, but at the end of it all there is the promise of a visit to Louisiana, a culinary paradise, where important research is being undertaken into communication among oysters.