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Extracts

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Becoming

When I was a kid, my aspirations were simple. I wanted a dog. I wanted a house that had stairs in it— two floors for one family.

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The Arsonist

Picture a fairytale’s engraving. Straight black trees stretching in perfect symmetry to their vanishing point, the ground covered in thick white snow.

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The Sentence is Death

Usually, I enjoy visiting film sets.

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Two Old Men Dying

At the time of the discovery of the astonishingly ancient Learned Man, some decades back, my friend Peter Jorgensen, a scientist from Melbourne, was testing dried lake basins and their sediments for records of ancient rainfall oscillations.

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The Wych Elm

I’ve always considered myself to be, basically, a lucky person.

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The Children Act

London. Trinity term one week old. Implacable June weather.

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Target: Alex Cross

Temperatures that late January morning plunged to four degrees above zero, and still people came by the hundreds of thousands, packing both sides of the procession route from Capitol Hill to the White House.

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Sea of Greed

David Ben-Avi walked along a trail on the rocky, windswept island of Jaros.

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One Day in December

It’s a wonder everyone who uses public transport in winter doesn’t keel over and die of germ overload.

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Let Her Fly

So many people ask me, with love and kindness in their hearts, “What has been your proudest moment, Ziauddin?”

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Jeeves and the King of Clubs

I was idling away the pre-cocktail ennui, flicking cards into the coal scuttle, when in buttled Jeeves with the quenching tray.

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Heroes

Zeus sits on his throne.

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Germaine

‘Brave woman!’ How often have I heard those words spoken by people who have discovered that I am writing a biography of Germaine Greer. They are speaking not of her, but of me.

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Dracul

Bram stares at the door.

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Blood Communion

I’m the vampire Lestat.

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A Sporting Chance

It will come as no surprise to Australia’s 24 million sports fans that our sunburnt continent is home to one of the most dominant predators the world has ever seen.

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No Spin

I started out in the Melbourne suburbs and I remain happily there to this day.

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The Meltdown: Diary of a Wimpy Kid (Bk 13)

When snow shuts down Greg Heffley’s middle school, his neighborhood transforms into a wintry battlefield.

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A Map of Days

Never have I doubted my soundness of mind as often as I did on that first night, when the bird-woman and her wards came to save me from the madhouse.

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Killing Commendatore

Today when I awoke from a nap the faceless man was there before me.

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Ambush

I watched the eight-story apartment building on 161st, about half a block from Melrose Avenue.

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The Kingfisher Secret

Petr Kliment held Kristína, his six-month-old granddaughter, on a patch of grass on the shore of the Jizera River.

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Any Ordinary Day

The day that turns a life upside down usually starts like any other.

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The Little Drummer Girl

It was the Bad Godesberg incident that gave the proof, though the German authorities had no earthly means of knowing this.

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