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Marko surfaces from a drug-induced haze to find himself hidden from the world in a psychiatric ward. He is certain the doctor means to kill him, and he in turn has vengeful plans of his own. But how is it he came to stop taking his medication? Who can Marko trust and how much time does he have?

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A plane crashes in the vast Northern Territory of Australia,

and the only survivors are two children from Charleston, South Carolina, on their way to visit their uncle in Adelaide. Mary and her younger brother Peter set out on foot, lost in the vast, hot Australian outback. They are saved by a chance meeting with an Aboriginal boy on walkabout, who teaches them to find food and water in the wilderness, but whom Mary can’t bring herself to trust.

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A memoir of growing up in New York in the 1930s and in Ireland in the 1940s. McCourt tells of extreme hardship and suffering, in Brooklyn tenements and Limerick slums - too many children, too little money, his mother barely coping as his father's drinking bouts brought the family close to disaster.

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Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild examines true story of Chris McCandless, a young man, who in 1992 walked deep into the Alaskan wilderness and whose SOS note and emaciated corpse were found four months later, internationally bestselling author Jon Krakauer explores the obsession which leads some people to explore the outer limits of self, leave civilization behind and seek enlightenment through solitude and contact with nature.

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In May 1996, writer Jon Krakauer joined a party of experienced and amateur climbers, led by Everest veterans Scott Fischer and New Zealander Rob Hall, who attempted to reach the summit of the world's highest mountain, with disastrous results. This is the true story of a 24-hour period on Everest, when members of three separate expeditions were caught in a storm and faced a battle against hurricane-force winds, exposure, and the effects of altitude, which ended the worst single-season death toll in the peak's history.

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Joe Simpson and his climbing partner, Simon Yates, had just reached the top of a 21,000-foot peak in the Andes when disaster struck. Simpson plunged off the vertical face of an ice ledge, breaking his leg. In the hours that followed, darkness fell and a blizzard raged as Yates tried to lower his friend to safety. Finally, Yates was forced to cut the rope, moments before he would have been pulled to his own death.
The next three days were an impossibly grueling ordeal for both men. Yates, certain that Simpson was dead, returned to base camp consumed with grief and guilt over abandoning him. Miraculously, Simpson had survived the fall, but crippled, starving, and severely frostbitten was trapped in a deep crevasse. Summoning vast reserves of physical and spiritual strength, Simpson crawled over the cliffs and canyons of the Andes, reaching base camp hours before Yates had planned to leave.
How both men overcame the torments of those harrowing days is an epic tale of fear, suffering, and survival, and a poignant testament to unshakable courage and friendship.

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Wild Swans: Three daughters of China : Jung Chang

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Wild Swans: Three daughters of China : Jung Chang

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An engrossing record of Mao’s impact on China, an unusual window on the female experience in the modern world, and an inspiring tale of courage and love, Jung Chang describes the extraordinary lives and experiences of her family members: her grandmother, a warlord’s concubine; her mother’s struggles as a young idealistic Communist; and her parents’ experience as members of the Communist elite and their ordeal during the Cultural Revolution. Chang was a Red Guard briefly at the age of fourteen, then worked as a peasant, a “barefoot doctor,” a steelworker, and an electrician. As the story of each generation unfolds, Chang captures in gripping, moving—and ultimately uplifting—detail the cycles of violent drama visited on her own family and millions of others caught in the whirlwind of history.

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After Odella's mother leaves her, her sisters, and their father in Manitoba and moves to Iceland with another man, she then dies there, and the family finally learns some of the many secrets that have haunted them for two generations.

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"I think I saw Jenny today. A hemisphere away and fifteen years later...."But could it be the same person that Marie now sees, the friend with whom she thought she would face all the uncertainties of adulthood. The friend who disappeared.This chance sighting in a railway carriage takes Marie back through the years to try to understand what happened to her best friend and why. In facing the past she is forced to confront her own fears and admit that running away is not always the answer - although for some it might be impossible to run far enough. Intriguing, moving, vividly portrayed and beautifully written, this is a stunning first novel dealing sensitively and assuredly with the complex issue of coming of age.

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He's long, lean, lanky, has all the right stuff but has never bothered to make the school rugby team. Yet Mathew Spider Trent has just been voted Number 10 on a teen magazine's list of the hottest hunks. Everyone thinks Spider Trent's got it made - but has he?

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The Catcher in the Rye is the ultimate novel for disaffected youth, but it's relevant to all ages. The story is told by Holden Caulfield, a seventeen- year-old dropout who has just been kicked out of his fourth school. Throughout, Holden dissects the 'phony' aspects of society, and the 'phonies' themselves- the headmaster whose affability depends on the wealth of the parents, his roommate who scores with girls using sickly-sweet affection.Lazy in style, full of slang and swear words, it's a novel whose interest and appeal comes from its observations rather than its plot intrigues (in conventional terms, there is hardly any plot at all). Salinger's style creates an effect of conversation, it is as though Holden is speaking to you personally, as though you too have seen through the pretenses of the American Dream and are growing up unable to see the point of living in, or contributing to, the society around you.

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It would be much easier to tell this story if it were all about a chaste and perfect love at an Extreme Time in History. But let's face it. . .

Daisy is sent to England from New York to live with her cousins for a perfect summer. There are four of them- Osbert, Isaac, Edmond and Piper. Three boys and a girl. And two dogs and a goat. Daisy has never met anyone like them before. Especially Edmond. This summer will change her life. It will change the world too.

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A plane crashes on a desert island and the only survivors, a group of schoolboys, assemble on the beach and wait to be rescued. By day they inhabit a land of bright fantastic birds and dark blue seas, but at night their dreams are haunted by the image of a terrifying beast. As the boys' delicate sense of order fades, so their childish dreams are transformed into something more primitive, and their behaviour starts to take on a murderous, savage significance.

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Callum is a nought - a second-class citizen; Sephy is a Cross. In their world, Noughts and Crosses don't mix. Can Callum and Sephy find a way to be together? In what has already become a modern classic, award-winning author Malorie Blackman tackles the issues of prejudice and racism in a way that will thoroughly engage and inspire students.

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The people of Onewere, a small island in the Pacific, have survived a deadly event that consumed the earth. Now, from a rotting cruise ship, the elite control the population, manipulating old texts to set themselves up as 'living gods'. When Mayam crosses from child to woman, she must leave everything she has ever known and make a crossing of another kind. But life inside the ship is not as she had dreamed, and she is faced with two choices: obey the leaders and very likely die, or turn her back on her beliefs.

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Beware the deadly Count Dracula Jonathan Harker is travelling to Castle Dracula to see the Transylvanian noble, Count Dracula. He is begged by locals not to go there, because on the eve of St George's Day, when the clock strikes midnight, all the evil things in the world will come full sway. But business must be done, so Jonathan makes his way to the Castle - and then his nightmare begins. His beloved wife Meena and other lost souls have fallen under the Count's horrifying spell. Dracula must be destroyed...

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Set in 1906, this work describes a world very similar to ours, except for a special place, where only a select group of people can go. These are the Dreamhunters and they harvest dreams, which are then transmitted to the general public. This work is suitable for children aged 11 and above.

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The last thing the wizard Drum Billet did, before Death laid a bony hand on his shoulder, was to pass on his staff of power to the eighth son of an eighth son. Unfortunately for his colleagues in the chauvinistic (not to say misogynistic) world of magic, he failed to check on the new-born baby's sex...

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Death comes to us all. When he came to Mort, he offered him a job.

After being assured that being dead was not compulsory, Mort accepted. However, he soon found that romantic longings did not mix easily with the responsibilities of being Death's apprentice...

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This text is a magical fable about learning to listen to your heart, read the omens strewn along life's path and, above all, following your dreams. The book tells the story of Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd boy who dreams of travelling the world in search of a worldly treasure as fabulous as any ever found. From his home in Spain he journeys to the markets of Tangiers, and from there into the Egyptian desert, where a fateful encounter with the alchemist awaits him. With a visionary blend of spirituality, magical realism and folklore, the author hopes that The Alchemist has the power to inspire nations and change people's lives.

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Kestrel can't stand the structure and rules of Aramanth. In defiance, she climbs the wooden tower known as the wind singer and brings the wrath of the Chief Examiner on her family. Her beloved father is taken, and only Kestrel and her twin brother Bowman can save him . . . and themselves. It is a terrifying quest, travelling along the Great Way and into the fire. Kestrel and Bowman must defeat the power of the Morah and retrieve the voice of the wind singer to release Aramanth from the grip of evil.

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A Thousand Splendid Suns : Khaled Hosseini

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A Thousand Splendid Suns : Khaled Hosseini

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Born a generation apart and with very different ideas about love and family, Mariam and Laila are two women brought jarringly together by war, by loss and by fate. As they endure the ever escalating dangers around them - in their home as well as in the streets of Kabul - they come to form a bond that makes them both sisters and mother-daughter to each other, and that will ultimately alter the course not just of their own lives but of the next generation. With heart-wrenching power and suspense, Hosseini shows how a woman's love for her family can move her to shocking and heroic acts of self-sacrifice, and that in the end it is love, or even the memory of love, that is often the key to survival.

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All Quiet on the Western Front : Erich Maria Remarque

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All Quiet on the Western Front : Erich Maria Remarque

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We were eighteen and had begun to love the world and love being in it; but we had to shoot at it. The first shell to land went straight for our hearts. We've been cut off from real action, from getting on, from progress. We don't believe in those things anymore; we believe in the war.

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On the hottest day of the summer of 1934, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis sees her sister Cecilia strip off her clothes and plunge into the fountain in the garden of their country house. Watching her is Robbie Turner, her childhood friend who, like Cecilia, has recently come down from Cambridge. By the end of that day, the lives of all three will have been changed for ever. Robbie and Cecilia will have crossed a boundary they had not even imagined at its start, and will have become victims of the younger girl's imagination. Briony will have witnessed mysteries, and committed a crime for which she will spend the rest of her life trying to atone.

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Sequel to Shakespeare's Macbeth focusing on Fleance, who escapes to England after Banquo's murder and eventually returns to Scotland on a quest to avenge his father.

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Boys of Blood and Bone : David Metzenthen

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Boys of Blood and Bone : David Metzenthen

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Two parallel stories about two young men, separated by nearly nine decades in two different eras. As Andy and his mates head inexorably towards the bloody torturous Great War, Henry faces challenges, dangerous situations and tragedies of his own.

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Krystyna's Story : Helena Ogonowska-Coates

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Krystyna's Story : Helena Ogonowska-Coates

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Krystyna is one of 732 'Polish children' who survived forced deportation to the Soviet Union and was given a home in New Zealand in 1944. Her story, drawn from interviews with Polish survivors, begins in a Polish village and follows her family's harrowing journey to a labour camp in Siberia, the terrible flight to freedom, and Krystyna's lonely voyage to a safe refuge in New Zealand.

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After the trouble starts and the soldiers arrive on Matilda's island, there comes a time when all the white people have left. Only Mr Watts remains, and he wears a red nose and pulls his wife around on a trolley; the kids call him Popeye behind his back. But there is no one else to teach them their lessons, and no books left to learn from - except for Mr Watts's battered copy of Great Expectations , 'by my friend Mr Dickens'. As Mr Watts stands before the class and reads, Dickens's hero, Pip, starts to come alive in Matilda's imagination. Soon he has become as real to her as her own family, and the greatest friendship of her life has begun. But Matilda is not the only one who believes in Pip. And on an island at war, the power of the imagination can be a dangerously provocative thing. A dazzling achievement, Mister Pip is a love song to the power of storytelling. It is about belonging and losing one's way, about love, grief and memory, and it shows how books can change our lives forever.

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Montana, 1948; and the events of one cataclysmic summer will for ever alter twelve-year-old David Hayden's view of his family. His father, a small-town sheriff; his remarkably strong-willed mother; his uncle, a war hero and respected doctor; and the family's Sioux housekeeper, Marie Little Soldier, whose shocking revelations form the heart of the story. As their memories unravel before David's eyes, he comes to learn that the truth is not what you believe it to be. That power is abused. And that sometimes you have to choose between loyalty and justice... Brilliantly evoking both time and place, Larry Watson recounts David's age-old tale of childhood lost and adulthood gained.

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This historical novel tells of the love of two young people, in a society that forbids their being together. Susanna Thorn is a Quaker in Restoration England, and Will Heywood a rich country gentleman, captivated and intrigued by this plain-living, independent young woman.

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Set in provincial, pre-1940 New Zealand, this novel explores the Withers family and in particular Daphne. When one of Daphne's sisters, Francie, dies at the rubbish dump where the children search for treasure, the crisis leads Daphne to a mental asylum where she is given shock treatment.

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It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will become busier still. Liesel Meminger and her younger brother are being taken by their mother to live with a foster family outside Munich. Liesel's father was taken away on the breath of a single, unfamiliar word - Kommunist - and Liesel sees the fear of a similar fate in her mother's eyes. On the journey, Death visits the young boy, and notices Liesel. It will be the first of many near encounters. By her brother's graveside, Liesel's life is changed when she picks up a single object, partially hidden in the snow. It is The Gravedigger's Handbook, left there by accident, and it is her first act of book thievery. So begins a love affair with books and words, as Liesel, with the help of her accordion-playing foster father, learns to read. Soon she is stealing books from Nazi book-burnings, the mayor's wife's library, wherever there are books to be found. But these are dangerous times. When Liesel's foster family hides a Jewish fist-fighter in their basement, Liesel's world is both opened up, and closed down. THE BOOK THIEF is a story about the power of words to make worlds. In superbly crafted writing that burns with intensity, award-winning author Markus Zusak has given us one of the most enduring stories of our time.

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Set in the deep American south between the wars, this is the classic tale of Celie, a young poor black girl. Raped repeatedly by her father, she loses two children and then is married off to a man who treats her no better than a slave. She is separated from her sister Nettie and dreams of becoming like the glamorous Shug Avery, a singer and rebellious black woman who has taken charge of her own destiny. Gradually Celie discovers the support of women that enables her to leave the past behind and begin a new life.

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Arthur Miller's classic parable of mass hysteria draws a chilling parallel between the Salem witch-hunt of 1692 - 'one of the strangest and most awful chapters in human history' - and the McCarthyism which gripped America in the 1950s. The story of how the small community of Salem is stirred into madness by superstition, paranoia and malice, culminating in a violent climax, is a savage attack on the evils of mindless persecution and the terrifying power of false accusations.

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Jay Gatsby had once loved beautiful, spoiled Daisy Buchanan, then lost her to a rich boy. Now, mysteriously wealthy, he is ready to risk everything to woo her back.
A social satire and a milestone in 20th century literature, 'The Great Gatsby' peels away the layers of the glamorous twenties in the U.S. to display the coldness and cruelty at its heart.

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In Jackson, Mississippi, in 1962, there are lines that are not crossed. With the civil rights movement exploding all around them, three women start a movement of their own, forever changing a town and the way women--black and white, mothers and daughters--view one another.

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The Kite Runner is a novel about friendship, betrayal, and the price of loyalty. It is about the bonds between fathers and sons, and the power of fathers over sons - their love, their sacrifices, and their lies.

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A beautiful and thought provoking novel: lost to history by the chronicles of men, here at last is the dazzling story of Dinah, Jacob's only daughter in the Book of Genesis.

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Lily has grown up believing she accidentally killed her mother when she was four. She not only has her own memory of holding the gun, but her father's account of the event. Now fourteen, she yearns for her mother, and for forgiveness. Living on a peach farm in South Carolina with her father, she has only one friend: Rosaleen, a black servant whose sharp exterior hides a tender heart. South Carolina in the sixties is a place where segregation is still considered a cause worth fighting for. When racial tension explodes one summer afternoon, and Rosaleen is arrested and beaten, Lily is compelled to act. Fugitives from justice and from Lily's harsh and unyielding father, they follow a trail left by the woman who died ten years before. Finding sanctuary in the home of three beekeeping sisters, Lily starts a journey as much about her understanding of the world, as about the mystery surrounding her mother.

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Harper Lee's classic novel of a lawyer in the Deep South defending a black man charged with the rape of a white girl. One of the best-loved stories of all time, To Kill a Mockingbird has earned many distinctions since its original publication in 1960. It won the Pulitzer Prize, has been translated into more than forty languages, sold more than thirty million copies worldwide, and been made into an enormously popular movie. Most recently, librarians across the country gave the book the highest of honors by voting it the best novel of the twentieth century.

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The only survivor of three young men who went to war from his family, Tu faces the past and tells his niece and nephew, through the pages of his war journal, what really happened to the brothers as the Maori Battalion fought the war in Italy.

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In a house haunted by memories, the past is everywhere . . . As darkness falls, a man caught in a snowstorm is forced to shelter at the strange, grim house Wuthering Heights. It is a place he will never forget. There he will come to learn the story of Cathy- how she was forced to choose between her well-meaning husband and the dangerous man she had loved since she was young. How her choice led to betrayal and terrible revenge - and continues to torment those in the present. How love can transgress authority, convention, even death. And how desire can kill.

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Tessa has just a few months to live. Fighting back against hospital visits, endless tests, drugs with excruciating side-effects, Tessa compiles a list. It's her To Do Before I Die list. And number one is sex. Released from the constraints of 'normal' life, Tessa tastes new experiences to make her feel alive while her failing body struggles to keep up. Tessa's feelings, her relationships with her father and brother, her estranged mother, her best friend, her new boyfriend, all are painfully crystallized in the precious weeks before Tessa's time finally runs out. BEFORE I DIE is a brilliantly-crafted novel, heartbreaking yet astonishingly life-affirming. It will take you to the very edge.

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A young adult drama, about adoption and the tragic consequences which follow when the past intrudes. A novel about the sparkle of friendship, first love and the memories that linger for a lifetime.

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Kelly is seventeen. She's a scholarship girl, her dad drinks too much and her mum lives in another city. Her house isn't renovated like those of her friends. But Kelly has one thing her friends are envious of - Phil. Rich, devoted, handsome Phil. And it looks like their future together is all mapped out. Then, on a hot afternoon in a dingy little pizza shop, Kelly meets Con. He's unlike anyone she's ever known before. It's a dramatic meeting, a chance encounter that changes everything . . .

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Letters From the Coffin-Trenches : Ken Catran

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Letters From the Coffin-Trenches : Ken Catran

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Poignant YA historical romance between a teen who runs away to fight in World War One, and his sweetheart back at home. Harry Wainwright is 17, not quite 18, but he can't wait to enlist for the Great War - so instead of going back to boarding school he runs away to war. He does this with the help of his sweetheart, Jessica. They are a wholesome Edwardian couple, steeped in all the respectable morality of their age. Both are in love with romance. Their letters begin idealistically and enthusiastically but gradually both young people learn of the horror of war and its associated cynicism. Rather than a depressing read, this is an interesting chronicle of the times and a charming portrayal of innocent love. Finalist in the Senior fiction category of the NZ Post Children's Book Awards 2003.

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If people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane. Miles Halter's whole life has been one big non-event, until he meets Alaska Young. Gorgeous, clever and undoubtedly screwed-up, Alaska draws Miles into her reckless world and irrevocably steals his heart. For Miles, nothing can ever be the same again.

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Months after a dramatic tragedy has brought her life to a standstill, Catriona Stuart is embarking on a painful search for the truth. The truth about her boyfriend Jerem Jeremiah, about her wayward mother Stella, and about her past and why her world fell apart.

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My old school, St Stella's, only goes to Year Ten and most of my friends now go to Pius Senior College, but my mother wouldn't allow it because she says the girls there leave with limited options and she didn't bring me up to have limitations placed upon me. If you know my mother you'll sense there's an irony there, based on the fact that she is the Queen of Limitation Placers in my life.Francesca is at the beginning of her second term in Year Eleven at an all boy's school that has just started accepting girls. She still misses her old friends, and, to make things worse, her mother has had a breakdown and can barely move from her bed.But Francesca had not counted on the fierce loyalty of her new friends, or falling in love, or finding that it's within her power to bring her family back together.

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Will the rising young rugby star, Matt Cassidy, be able to handle the truth about the dad he has never known as well as deal with his crush's dangerous boyfriend?   Fifteen-year-old Matthew Cassidy is an up-and-coming rugby star. The talent scouts are circling him, his school team has reached the finals for the first time ever, and he's determined to one day play professionally. Despite everything, Matt really only wants one thing in life--a Dad. However, when Matt receives an anonymous card on his 15th birthday, he tracks down the mysterious writer and discovers his Dad is alive and in jail. Meanwhile, Matt is facing another dilemma: a crush on blue-eyed Kelly Sinclair. The only problem is her boyfriend. Captain of an opposing team and Matt's mortal enemy, he regularly hurts Kelly. Matt tries to rescue her from a cycle of domestic abuse, but this is not as simple as it seems, as he tries to fight his own feelings for Kelly and the violent nature of her boyfriend.

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Despite the tumour-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis. But when a gorgeous plot twist named Augustus Waters suddenly appears at Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel's story is about to be completely rewritten.

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If someone hurts your sister and you're any kind of man, you seek revenge, right? When Mikey's sister claims a boy assaulted her, his world begins to fall apart. If your brother's accused of a terrible crime but says he didn't do it, you defend him, don't you? When Ellie's brother is charged with the offence, her world begins to unravel. When Mikey and Ellie meet, two worlds collide.

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The son of a zookeeper, Pi Patel has an encyclopedic knowledge of animal behavior and a fervent love of stories. When Pi is sixteen, his family emigrates from India to North America aboard a Japanese cargo ship, along with their zoo animals bound for new homes. The ship sinks. Pi finds himself alone in a lifeboat, his only companions a hyena, an orangutan, a wounded zebra, and Richard Parker, a 450-pound Bengal tiger. Soon the tiger has dispatched all but Pi, whose fear, knowledge, and cunning allow him to coexist with Richard Parker for 227 days while lost at sea. When they finally reach the coast of Mexico, Richard Parker flees to the jungle, never to be seen again. The Japanese authorities who interrogate Pi refuse to believe his story and press him to tell them "the truth." After hours of coercion, Pi tells a second story, a story much less fantastical, much more conventional--but is it more true?

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No Country for Old Men : Cormac McCarthy

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No Country for Old Men : Cormac McCarthy

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Llewelyn Moss, hunting antelope near the Rio Grande, stumbles upon a transaction gone horribly wrong. Finding bullet-ridden bodies, several kilos of heroin, and a caseload of cash, he faces a choice - leave the scene as he found it, or cut the money and run. Choosing the latter, he knows, will change everything. And so begins a terrifying chain of events, in which each participant seems determined to answer the question that one asks another: how does a man decide in what order to abandon his life?

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Quentin Jacobsen has spent a lifetime loving the magnificent Margo Roth Spiegelman from afar. So when she cracks open a window and climbs back into his life--summoning him for an ingenious campaign of revenge--he follows. When their all-nighter ends and a new day breaks, Margo has disappeared. But Q soon learns that there are clues--and they're for him. Embarking on an exhilarating adventure to find her, the closer Q gets, the less he sees the girl he thought he knew.

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Now a major film! Paper Towns from John Green, bestselling author of The Fault in Our Stars. A boy, a girl, some clues and a brilliant road trip across America. Film tie-in edition: http://amzn.to/1edgOPx Standard edition: http://amzn.to/1LDpIF8 Special slipcase edition with pop-up paper town: http://amzn.to/1L3mya9

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The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time : Mark Haddon

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The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time : Mark Haddon

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Fifteen-year-old Christopher has a photographic memory. He understands maths. He understands science. What he can't understand are other human beings. When he finds his neighbour's dog lying dead on the lawn, he decides to track down the killer and write a murder mystery about it. But what other mysteries will he end up uncovering?

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Robert Langdon, Harvard Professor of symbology, receives an urgent late-night call while in Paris: the curator of the Louvre has been murdered. Alongside the body is a series of baffling ciphers. Langdon and a gifted French cryptologist, Sophie Neveu, are stunned to find a trail that leads to the works of Da Vinci - and further. The curator, part of a secret society named the Priory of Sion, may have sacrificed his life to keep secret the location of a vastly important religious relic hidden for centuries. It appears that the clandestine Vatican-sanctioned Catholic sect Opus Dei has now made its move. Unless Landon and Neveu can decipher the labyrinthine code and quickly assemble the pieces of the puzzle, the Priory's secret - and a stunning historical truth - will be lost forever.

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The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo : Steg Larsson

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The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo : Steg Larsson

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Forty years ago, Harriet Vanger disappeared from a family gathering on the island owned and inhabited by the powerful Vanger clan. Her body was never found, yet her uncle is convinced it was murder - and that the killer is a member of his own tightly knit but dysfunctional family. He employs disgraced financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist and the tattooed, truculent computer hacker Lisbeth Salander to investigate. When the pair link Harriet's disappearance to a number of grotesque murders from forty years ago, they begin to unravel a dark and appalling family history. But the Vangers are a secretive clan, and Blomkvist and Salander are about to find out just how far they are prepared to go to protect themselves.

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Guilt, murder, ghosts - will David and Lily ever escape the past?

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Susie Salmon speaks to us from heaven, because she was murdered when she was 14 years old by a man who lived in the same neighbourhood. Over the years, her friends and siblings grow up, fall in love and do the things she has never had the chance to do. But life is not quite finished with Susie yet.

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Meet Ed Kennedy - cab driving prodigy, pathetic card player and useless at sex. He lives in the suburbs, shares coffee with his dog, the Doorman, and he's in nervous-love with Audrey. His life is one of peaceful routine and incompetence - until he inadvertently stops a bank robbery. That's when the first ace turns up. That's when Ed becomes the messenger. Chosen to care, he makes his way through town, helping and hurting (where necessary) until only one question remains. Who's behind Ed's mission?

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Neddy Poindexter's sister, Prudence, has turned sixteen and is the prettiest girl in Klynham. Neddy can't protect her from the men in town, but can he protect her from the killer on the loose?

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Tawera and his sister are inseparable, in a relationship that is impossible for others to share. In fact his whole whanau is bonded by secrets, a genealogy stitched together by shame, joy, love and sometimes grief.

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Caught in the middle of the struggle between two great Maori clans, Simeon, grandson of Bulibasha and Ramona, struggles with his own feelings and loyalties as the battles rage.

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There are many crimes in this chilling novel by Maurice Gee. Crime Story spans political and high-finance, murder and the terror of domestic violence, asking questions about the perpetrators and victims of crime, and about the price of greed and personal isolation. It is a haunting portrayal of human frailty but also of human courage.

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The third in a trilogy of novels beginning with Season of the Jew and continuing with Monday's warriors, deriving from the New Zealand wars (1845-72)

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When Celia Inverarity, aged seventeen, is found brutally murdered in a secluded West Auckland park one Sunday afternoon, Paul Prior, her English teacher and mentor, is suspected of being her murderer. Celia's death and the violence which follows send Prior back to examine the past - which proves as secret as his father's den in the old poison shed. Eventually the murderer is exposed, but not before a family has been split apart and old wounds revealed. In My Father's Den is Maurice Gee's third novel and was first published in 1972.

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A powerful story of a Maori family where everyone is a victim, until the strength and vision of one of them transcends the brutality of their existence and leads the way to new possibilities.

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When Mel storms out of school she sees it as an escape. But running to her self-centred father or her Auckland boyfriend aren't easy answers either; and for Mel, the greatest shocks still lie ahead.

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How do you help someone who is their own worst enemy? And can you protect them from more harm? A perceptive novel about one girls destructive way of coping with pressure, and the boy who would save her.

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Jimmy Sullivan believed he was protected by God until his parents' unhappy marriage finally broke down, with tragic consequences. Now a disturbed thirteen-year-old at a Catholic boarding school, Jimmy rages at God for failing him as he tells of his own violent and obsessive reaction to the turbulent events of two years before. Through his uncomprehending and often humorous voice of tough indifference, a very adult drama emerges of marital strife, drunkenness and illicit abortion. Ian Cross evokes life in a provincial New Zealand town in the 1950s, in his tale of the crippling of a bright and hopeful young mind.

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The Sky People and Other Stories : Patricia Grace

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The Sky People and Other Stories : Patricia Grace

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In this collection of Patricia Grace's stories we meet the sky people, those under the guardianship of Ranginui and Sky Parent, who are the unwanted, the dispossessed, the wounded in love. But shining through even the darkest human condition is the light to which sky people everywhere aspire. To love and in turn be loved; to create and to belong; even, perhaps, to fly.

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A mystical story of Maori culture The birth of a daughter - Kahu - breaks the lineage of a Maori tribe. Rejected by her grandfather, Kahu develops the ability to communicate with whales, echoing those of the ancient Whale Rider after whom she was named. This magical and mythical novel tells of the conflict between tradition and heritage, from the perspective of Kahu's grandfather, and Kahu's destiny to secure the tribe's future.

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Which street racer really controls the strip? An award-winning YA novel full of fast cars, burn-offs and an unwritten code of loyalty. "'Thunder Road' . You find it in any city after the cops are in bed. It's where street racers go to test their machines - and their nerve. For me it was a the steep rising pitch of the turbo, the screaming tyres and curtain of white smoke hanging behind me: all the stuff that spells street racing.' Trace is 19 and has grown out of small-town ways. He's hungry for more. In Auckland he hooks up with Devon, a guy with the Midas touch, who introduces Trace to burn-offs, big city style. Soon everything is smoking. There is a code with drivers: you don't criticise and you don't show fear. When Trace falls for a girl even Devon says is out of his league, loyalties are stretched. Then Devon hits on a scheme for hauling in cash. Soon enough he and Trace find out who really controls the strip. As the underworld closes in, it looks like their friendship is heading for burn-out. Menacing, suspenseful - a gripping novel from a remarkable talent which won the of the NZ Post Children's Book Awards Young Adult Fiction category in 2004.

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A novel from the author of HIGH FIDELITY about a 36 year-old man who dreads the ruinous effects of children on his fashionable lifestyle. Despite this he poses as a single father in order to woo a single mother.

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The Good For You Party has been elected to power in Britain and is busy improving the health of the population. Fruit and vegetables are compulsory, sweets and chocolate banned, and children must take the Politeness Pledge and perform at least one good deed per day. Two 13-year-old boys and some surprising adult collaborators conspire to undermine the cruel ban on chocolate and bring down the government.

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"Ash, it's nearly four o'clock! Couldn't you wait till morning?"
Poor Mum, she wasn't going to be happy. "Sam's just blown in," I said. "He's hungry. Situation normal".
I was right, she wasn't happy. "Oh, Ash! Why? You've got exams coming up! What's he done this time?" I shrugged. "Haven't talked to him yet. And come to that, he must have exams coming up as well." But nobody ever worried about that where Sam Westerby was concerned. They were too busy worrying about what else he might have done, or he planning to do.

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Alice is fifteen, white, middle-class. She diets. She dates. She gets decent grades. She thinks someday she'd like to get married and raise a family. On July 9, Alice is turned on to acid. She digs it. Acid makes the world a better place. It opens up the world of sex. It makes Alice feel free. Sometimes Alice worries about taking drugs, but she figures life is more bearable with them than without. Alice's parents don't know what's happening. They notice changes. They think Alice might be 'associating with the wrong people'. They have no idea she's on drugs. They cannot help her. The difference between Alice and a lot of other kids on drugs is that Alice kept a diary... This is her unsettling true life account of her journey.

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A gutsy, gripping and realistic story about corruption at a high school. John Malarkey is the new kid at Brook High who uncovers a mafia-like system at the school, involving fixed football games, a homework club where money changes hands, fake report cards and even teachers willing to take bribes.

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Will he or won't he? Have sex, of course. Malcolm is sixteen. With the mind of a scientist, the body of a teenager, and an ambition to reconcile the two, he embarks upon his latest research project: sex. Join Malcolm on his journey, as he meets the cast of characters who will take him a little closer to the centre of life's mystery.

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With her penetrating insight into the hearts and minds of real people, Jodi Picoult's My Sister's Keeper examines what it means to be a good parent, a good sister, a good person, and what happens when emotions meet with scientific advances.

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One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest : Ken Kesey

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One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest : Ken Kesey

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Boisterous, ribald, and ultimately shattering, Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is the seminal novel of the 1960s that has left an indelible mark on the literature of our time. Here is the unforgettable story of a mental ward and its inhabitants, especially the tyrannical Big Nurse Ratched and Randle Patrick McMurphy, the brawling, fun-loving new inmate who resolves to oppose her. We see the struggle through the eyes of Chief Bromden, the seemingly mute half-Indian patient who witnesses and understands McMurphy's heroic attempt to do battle with the awesome powers that keep them all imprisoned.

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Former tiffinboy Ram Mohammad Thomas has just got twelve questions correct on a TV quiz-show to win a cool one billion rupees. But he is brutally slung in prison on suspicion of cheating. Because how can a kid from the slums know who Shakespeare was, unless he is pulling a fast one. In the order of the questions on the show, Ram tells us which incredible adventures in his life on the streets gave him the answers. From orphanages to brothels, gangsters to beggar-masters, and into the homes of Bollywood's rich and famous, Ram's story is brimming with the chaotic comedy, heart-stopping tragedy and tear-inducing joyousness of modern India.

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Plans have a way of falling over, and other people have a bad habit of getting in the way. People like Carissa, who has her own nightmare to live. Then there's Samuel himself, and all the trouble he attracts. This is some year. Whether or not it's Samuel's won't be decided until the very end.

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Smashed tells the story of three teenage friends, and how their friendship, loyalties and values are thrown into confusion when the main character's younger sister is raped by one of his best friends. His reaction sets in motion a ripple effect , which culminates in a violent act of revenge upon the rapist. Has our hero done this? As he finds himself deep in trouble and confused about the truth, he is forced to the vital question: are we really just puppets controlled by our genes, or do we have the free will to rewrite our own destiny? Smashed is a cautionary tale about growing up of the huge and complex challenges today's young people face in their lives. Told with humour and compassion it is also, ultimately, a story of courage, love and redemption.

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For sixteen-year-old Ben Bancroft -- a kid with cerebral palsy, no parents, and an overprotective grandmother -- the closest thing to happiness is hunkering alone in the back of the Rialto Theatre and watching Bride of Frankenstein for the umpteenth time. The last person he wants to run into is drugged-up Colleen Minou, resplendent in ripped tights, neon miniskirt, and an impressive array of tattoos. But when Colleen climbs into the seat beside him and rests a woozy head on his shoulder, Ben has that unmistakable feeling that his life is about to change. With unsparing humor and a keen flair for dialogue, Ron Koertge captures the rare repartee between two lonely teenagers on opposite sides of the social divide. His smart, self-deprecating protagonist learns that kindred spirits may be found for the looking -- and that the resolve to follow your passion can be strengthened by something as simple as a human touch.

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In 1949, four Chinese women--drawn together by the shadow of their past--begin meeting in San Francisco to play mah jong, invest in stocks and "say" stories. They call their gathering the Joy Luck Club--and forge a relationship that binds them for more than three decades.

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The Memory Keeper's Daughter : Kim Edwards

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The Memory Keeper's Daughter : Kim Edwards

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A doctor who decides to institutionalise his own severely retarded twin daughter at her birth must live with the disastrous consequences when his own nurse disappears to another city with the infant to raise the child as her own.

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A darkly comic portrait of human life and possibility. Quoyle is a hopeless hack journalist working in New York. When his two-timing wife dies in a road accident, he retreats to his ancestral home on the coast of Newfoundland where he must confront the unpredictable forces of nature and society.

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Novel for teenagers dealing with issues of violence, racism, aggression and revenge. Michael develops amnesia after he is badly beaten up. A Lebanese boy who had previously been nearly killed by Michael during a soccer match is suspected. But what is the truth?

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Nick McDonell's Twelve created a sensation around the world, establishing its seventeen-year-old author as one of the new and important voices of his generation. The book sold over 300,000 copies worldwide and was published in twenty-four countries. Like Catcher in the Rye and Less Than Zero , Twelve captures the soul of a generation. It is a book for the new millennium, a chronicle of urban adolescence that created an international sensation. Set in Manhattan between Christmas and New Year's Eve, it tells an inexorable tale that ranges from the housing project of Harlem to the penthouses of Park Avenue. McDonell introduces us to White Mike, a seventeen-year-old drug dealer, and the kids he encounters - Chris and Claude and Hunter and Jessica with their lives of extraordinary privilege. The story he tells is unputdownable. And just when we think nothing can surprise us, Twelve races to a shocking finale.

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At the center of this invigorating and hilarious novel are two unlikely friends, Archie Jones and Samad Iqbal, hapless veterans of World War II. Set against London's racial and cultural tapestry, venturing across the former empire's past as it barrels toward the future, "White Teeth" is an international bestseller now available in paperback.

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The year 1984 has come and gone, George Orwell's nightmarish vision in 1949 of the world we were becoming is timelier than ever. 1984 is the great modern classic of a "negative utopia" - a startling original and haunting novel that creates an imaginary world that is completely convincing.

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In 2052, New Zealand has been renamed The Republic and has separated itself from a plague-ridden globe and all approaching boats, aircraft or refugees are shot on sight. Society is rigidly divided and individuals deviate from their assigned roles at their peril. When Adam Forde insists on his right to independent thought and action, he is imprisoned: his sentence is to become the participant in an experiment with a new brand of artificial intelligence.

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After being interrogated for days by the Department of Homeland Security in the aftermath of a major terrorist attack on San Francisco, California, seventeen-year-old Marcus, released into what is now a police state, decides to use his expertise in computer hacking to set things right.

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A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don't know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food--and each other.

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