Recommendations based on "The Terrors of Ice and Darkness"

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY NPR • A DUA LIPA BOOK CLUB PICK“Imagine Call Me By Your Name set in Communist Poland and you'll get a sense of Jedrowski's moving debut about a consuming love affair amidst a country being torn apart.” — O, The Oprah Magazine“Captivating both for its shimmering surfaces and its terrifying depths. Tomasz Jedrowski is a remarkable writer.” — Justin Torres, bestselling author of We the AnimalsSet in early 1980s Poland against the violent decline of Communism, a tender and passionate story of first love between two young men who eventually find themselves on opposite sides of the political divide—a stunningly poetic and heartrending literary debut for fans of André Aciman, Garth Greenwell, and Alan Hollinghurst.When university student Ludwik meets Janusz at a summer agricultural camp, he is fascinated yet wary of this handsome, carefree stranger. But a chance meeting by the river soon becomes an intense, exhilarating, and all-consuming affair. After their camp duties are fulfilled, the pair spend a dreamlike few weeks in the countryside, bonding over an illicit copy of James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room. Inhabiting a beautiful, natural world removed from society and its constraints, Ludwik and Janusz fall deeply in love. But in their repressive Communist and Catholic society, the passion they share is utterly unthinkable.Once they return to Warsaw, the charismatic Janusz quickly rises in the political ranks of the party and is rewarded with a highly coveted government position. Ludwik is drawn toward impulsive acts of protest, unable to ignore rising food prices and the stark economic disparity around them. Their secret love and personal and political differences slowly begin to tear them apart as both men struggle to survive in a regime on the brink of collapse.Shifting from the intoxication of first love to the quiet melancholy of growing up and growing apart, Swimming in the Dark is a potent blend of romance, postwar politics, intrigue, and history. Lyrical and sensual, immersive and intense, Tomasz Jedrowski’s indelible and thought-provoking literary debut explores freedom and love in all its incarnations.

'So the club rose, the blood came down, and his bitterness and his anguish and his guilt were compounded'Drawing on Baldwin's own experiences of prejudice in an America violently divided by race, these searing essays blend the intensely personal with the political to envisage a better world.Penguin Modern: fifty new books celebrating the pioneering spirit of the iconic Penguin Modern Classics series, with each one offering a concentrated hit of its contemporary, international flavour. Here are authors ranging from Kathy Acker to James Baldwin, Truman Capote to Stanislaw Lem and George Orwell to Shirley Jackson; essays radical and inspiring; poems moving and disturbing; stories surreal and fabulous; taking us from the deep South to modern Japan, New York's underground scene to the farthest reaches of outer space.

Asked to treat Friedrich Nietzsche for his suicidal despair following a broken love affair, eminent Viennese physician Josef Breuer devises an ingenius approach that would force Nietzsche to apply his own theories to cure himself. Reissue. 15,000 first printing.

HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics.Winston Smith rewrites history. It’s his job. Hidden away in the Record Department of the sprawling Ministry of Truth, he helps the Party, and the omnipresent Big Brother, control the people of Oceania.Winston knows what a good citizen of Oceania must do: show his devotion for Big Brother and the Party; abstain from all vices; and, most importantly, possess no critical thoughts of their own. The new notebook he’s begun to write in is definitely against the rules – in fact, the Thought Police could arrest him simply for having it. Yet, as Winston begins to write his own history, a seed of rebellion begins to grow in his heart – one that could have devastating consequences.In George Orwell’s final and most well-known novel, he explores a dystopian future in which a totalitarian government controls the actions, thoughts and even emotions of its citizens, exercising power through control of language and history. Its lasting popularity is testament to Orwell’s powerful prose, and is a passionate political warning for today.

When the Bismarck sinks, one of the only German survivors is taken on board a British ship as a prisoner of war. Sent to live on a farm with a host family, the soldier must adapt to a new way of life, in the heart of an enemy country. Gradually, he shows his new hosts that he may be German, but he is a person too, with all the hopes and feelings that entails. So when the time finally comes to go back to Germany, it's an emotional parting, with the German leaving only a carved dog to remember him by. The question is, will the soldier and his new family ever meet again? In 1966, with the world cup coming to Britain, that opportunity may just have come along.

USA Today BestsellerCalled “a Russian Thorn Birds,” The Bronze Horseman by Paullina Simons is a sweeping saga of love and war that has been a monumental bestseller all over the world. The acclaimed author of Tully, Simons has written a stirring tale of devotion, passion, secrets, betray, and sacrifice. “A love story both tender and fierce” (Publishers Weekly )that “Recalls Dr. Zhivago” (People Magazine), The Bronze Horseman is rich and vivid historical fiction at its finest.The golden skies, the translucent twilight, the white nights, all hold the promise of youth, of love, of eternal renewal. The war has not yet touched this city of fallen grandeur, or the lives of two sisters, Tatiana and Dasha Metanova, who share a single room in a cramped apartment with their brother and parents. Their world is turned upside down when Hitler's armies attack Russia and begin their unstoppable blitz to Leningrad.Yet there is light in the darkness. Tatiana meets Alexander, a brave young officer in the Red Army. Strong and self-confident, yet guarding a mysterious and troubled past, he is drawn to Tatiana—and she to him. Starvation, desperation, and fear soon grip their city during the terrible winter of the merciless German siege. Tatiana and Alexander's impossible love threatens to tear the Metanova family apart and expose the dangerous secret Alexander so carefully protects—a secret as devastating as the war itself—as the lovers are swept up in the brutal tides that will change the world and their lives forever.

"Wild Animal ticks with the precision of a well-crafted wristwatch."—Wall Street Journal From the devious mind of New York Times bestselling author Joël Dicker —master of the plot twist—comes this gripping domestic thriller that transforms into an ambitious heist mystery involving a famed Geneva jewelry boutique. On July 2, 2022, two criminals set out to rob a jewelry shop in Geneva. But even with a foolproof plan, their “perfect” heist will prove far from uneventful. . . . Twenty days earlier, on a luxurious estate along the shores of Lake Geneva, Sophie Braun prepares to celebrate her fortieth birthday. Her life seems perfect: she has a fairytale marriage, two perfect children, and lives in a stylish modern mansion surrounded by lush forest. But her idyllic world is about to crumble. Her husband is becoming embroiled in petty schemes. Her neighbor, a policeman with a spotless reputation, is obsessed with her and spies on the most intimate moments of her life. Then, on her birthday, she receives a gift from a mysterious prowler that endangers her life. It will take many journeys into the past, far from Geneva, to unravel the origins of this diabolical plot from which no one will emerge unscathed, including readers. Told at a breathtaking pace, filled with nerve-jangling suspense, Wild Animal demonstrates once again why Joël Dicker—since the publication of The Truth About the Harry Quebert Case—reigns supreme as one of the most beloved contemporary mystery writers in the world today. Translated from the French by Robert Bononno

OVER 33 MILLION BOOKS SOLD WORLDWIDE SONNY'S ON THE RUN Sonny is a model prisoner. He listens to the confessions of other inmates, and absolves them of their sins. HE'S BEEN LIED TO HIS WHOLE LIFE But then one prisoner's confession changes everything. He knows something about Sonny's disgraced father. SONNY WANTS REVENGE He needs to break out of prison and make those responsible pay for their crimes. WHATEVER THE COST

Originally published in 1941, Arthur Koestler's modern masterpiece, "Darkness At Noon," is a powerful and haunting portrait of a Communist revolutionary caught in the vicious fray of the Moscow show trials of the late 1930s. During Stalin's purges, Nicholas Rubashov, an aging revolutionary, is imprisoned and psychologically tortured by the party he has devoted his life to. Under mounting pressure to confess to crimes he did not commit, Rubashov relives a career that embodies the ironies and betrayals of a revolutionary dictatorship that believes it is an instrument of liberation. A seminal work of twentieth-century literature, "Darkness At Noon" is a penetrating exploration of the moral danger inherent in a system that is willing to enforce its beliefs by any means necessary.

Evelyn Waugh's masterful depiction of World War II, with an introduction by Martin StannardWaugh's own unhappy experience of being a soldier is superbly re-enacted in this story of Guy Crouchback, a Catholic and a gentleman, commissioned into the Royal Corps of Halberdiers during the war years 1939-45. High comedy - in the company of Brigadier Ritchie-Hook or the denizens of Bellamy's Club - is only part of the shambles of Crouchback's war. When action comes in Crete and in Yugoslavia, he discovers not heroism, but humanity. Sword of Honour combines three volumes: Officers and Gentlemen, Men at Arms and Unconditional Surrender, which were originally published separately. Extensively revised by Waugh, they were published as the one-volume Sword of Honour in 1965, in the form in which Waugh himself wished them to be read.'Marvellous ... one of the masterpieces of the century'John Banville, Irish Times