Knihobot

John Niven

    1. leden 1966

    Robert Niven se ve své literární tvorbě zaměřuje na satirický pohled na hudební průmysl a na to, jak se ztratil ve svém vlastním sentimentu. Jeho styl je nabitý energií a často se ponoří do temnějšího podsvětí moderní společnosti. Nivenův přístup je syrový a přímočarý, což čtenářům umožňuje nahlédnout do cynického a ambiciózního světa, který obývá. Jeho díla jsou kritickým komentářem ke zkaženosti a povrchnosti v uměleckém světě i mimo něj.

    Cold Hands
    Kill 'em all
    The Second Coming
    The Amateurs
    The Sunshine Cruise Company
    The Amateurs. Coma, englische Ausgabe
    • The Amateurs. Coma, englische Ausgabe

      • 384 stránek
      • 14 hodin čtení
      4,2(118)Ohodnotit

      GARY is a sweet and decent man. Only two things would improve his life - having children with his gorgeous wife Pauline, and a lower golf handicap. Both are unlikely. PAULINE is wondering how she ended up living in an ugly little house, driving a second-hand car and making a living dressing up as Tinkerbell. She's planning to leave Gary for a self-made carpet millionaire. FINDLAY, the Carpet King of Scotland, wants to trade in his obese wife for a younger model. But if he goes for a divorce she'll take him to the cleaners. If only there was some way she could be made to disappear... LEE, Gary's luckless brother, has botched one too many drug deals. Local crime overlord Ranta Campbell gives him one more job - one last chance to get it right. Lee's done some bad things - but murder? When Gary gets smashed on the head by a golf ball and miraculously develops an absolutely perfect swing, everyone finds their fates rest on the final day of the Open Championship...

      The Amateurs. Coma, englische Ausgabe
    • The Sunshine Cruise Company

      • 368 stránek
      • 13 hodin čtení
      4,0(111)Ohodnotit

      Susan Frobisher and Julie Wickham are turning sixty. They live in a small Dorset town and have been friends since school. On the surface Susan has it all - a lovely house and a long marriage to accountant Barry. Life has not been so kind to Julie, but now, with several failed businesses and bad marriages behind her, she has found stability: living in a council flat and working in an old people's home. Then Susan's world is ripped apart when Barry is found dead in a secret flat - or rather, a porn dungeon. It turns out Barry has been leading a fantastical double life as a swinger. He's run up a fortune in debts. The bank is going to take Susan's house and she'll lose everything she's never worked for. Until, under the influence of an octogenarian gangster named Nails, the women decide that, rather than let the bank take the house, they're going to take the bank. With the help of several thrill-crazy, wheelchair-bound friends they pull off the daring robbery, but soon find that getting away with it is not so easy. Setting off across Europe, the team pick up a teenage hitchhiker, get entangled with Interpol and the Russian Mafia, and discover that, far from winding down, their lives are only just beginning. The Sunshine Cruise Company is a sharp satire on friendship, ageing, the English middle-classes, the housing bubble and group sex: Thelma and Louise meets the Lavender Hill Mob, written and directed by Tarantino.

      The Sunshine Cruise Company
    • The Amateurs

      • 384 stránek
      • 14 hodin čtení
      4,0(180)Ohodnotit

      Only two things would improve Gary Irvine's life - children and a lower golf handicap. Both are unlikely- Gary's wife Pauline is planning to leave him for a self-made carpet millionaire, and unfortunately Gary is an appalling golfer. Meanwhile, in the murky depths of the criminal underclass, Gary's luckless brother Lee has botched up too many drug deals, and local crime overlord Ranta Campbell understands the PR value of a certain kind of violence to keep people in line. He gives Lee one more job, one last chance to get it right...Then Gary gets smashed on the head by a golf ball and knocked into a coma. He wakes to find that the neurological trauma he's suffered has resulted in some pretty radical side effects - among them an absolutely perfect golf swing.Their stories converge as the two brothers stumble into uncharted territory - Lee towards murder and Gary teeing it up in the Open Championship...

      The Amateurs
    • God is coming, and he is going to be pissed. Having left his son in charge, God treated himself to a well-earned break around the height of the Renaissance. A good time to go fishing. He returns in 2011 to find things on Earth haven't gone quite to plan.

      The Second Coming
    • Kill 'em all

      • 400 stránek
      • 14 hodin čtení
      4,0(1170)Ohodnotit

      "It is 2017 - the time of Trump and Brexit. The time for the return of Steven Stelfox - exactly twenty years on from his Britpop heyday. Now forty-six, and rich beyond the dreams of avarice, he works only occasionally as a music industry 'consultant'. A fixer. A problem solver. He's had a call from his old friend James Trellick, who is now president of Unigram, one of the largest record companies in America. Trellick has a huge headache on his hands in the shape of... Lucius Du Pre. The biggest pop star on earth. Well, he was the biggest pop star on earth. Now he's a helpless junkie and a prolific, unrepentant paedophile. Through a programme of debt restructuring so complex even Trellick can barely understand it, Du Pre is also now massively in hock to the record company. The only way he can possibly pay it off is to embark on an enormous comeback tour he's in no shape to do. The picture is further complicated when the parents of one of Du Pre's 'special friends' begin blackmailing him. If their video gets out, Du Pre's brand will be utterly toxic, taking Unigram down with it. With stealth and cunning Stelfox begins to chart a road out of the nightmare. Needless to say, the body count on this road will be high."--Provided by publisher

      Kill 'em all
    • Cold Hands

      • 336 stránek
      • 12 hodin čtení
      3,9(86)Ohodnotit

      A terrifying, evocative and gut-wrenching thriller -- announcing the arrival of a major new voice in the genre. You thought you could leave the past behind. Think again. Donnie Miller counts himself lucky. Living in a beautiful, spacious house in the wild and remote landscape of central Canada, he spends his days writing for the local newspaper, working on a film script, and acting as house-husband. After a troubled and impoverished upbringing in Scotland, he now has all he wants: a caring wife, a bright and happy son, a generous father-in-law. As the brutal northern winter begins to bite, he can sit back and enjoy life. But his peace is soon broken. There are noises in the nearby woods, signs of some mysterious watcher. When the family dog disappears, Donnie makes a horrifying discovery. Is it wolves, as the police suspect, or something far more dangerous, far darker? What secrets has Donnie been keeping? And why does he have the terrible sense that his dream was never going to last? A taut, shocking and visceral thriller that will leave you gasping for breath, "Cold Hands" is the first in an exciting new series by the remarkable John J. Niven.

      Cold Hands
    • The f*ck-it list

      • 256 stránek
      • 9 hodin čtení
      3,8(123)Ohodnotit

      "Frank Brill, a retired small-town newspaper editor, has just been given a terminal diagnosis. Rather than compile a bucket list of all the things he's ever wanted to do in his life, he instead has at the ready his 'fuck-it list'. Because Frank has had to endure more than his fair share of personal misfortune, not to mention having to live through two terms of a Trump presidency. Armed with the names of all those who are to blame for the tragedies that have befallen him, it's time for revenge." Klappentext.

      The f*ck-it list
    • Straight White Male

      • 388 stránek
      • 14 hodin čtení
      3,9(2021)Ohodnotit

      Leroy Upton left his childhood home in a working class neighborhood of Bakersfield to create a life for himself as a father and college professor in northern California. Now his father's health, his friend's ending marriage, and his wife's troubled past force Leroy to fight for the life he has created.

      Straight White Male
    • It s not dog-eat-dog around here...it s dog-gang-rapes-dog-then-tortures-him-for-five-days-before-burying-him-alive-and-taking-out-every-motherfucker-the-dog-has-ever-known. Meet Steven Stelfox. London 1997: New Labour is sweeping into power and Britpop is at its zenith. Twenty-seven-year-old A&R man Stelfox is slashing and burning his way through the music industry, a world where no one knows anything and where careers are made and broken by chance and the fickle tastes of the general public Yeah, those animals . Fuelled by greed and inhuman quantities of cocaine Stelfox blithely criss-crosses the globe ( New York, Cologne, Texas, Miami, Cannes: you shout at waiters and sign credit card slips and all that really changes is the quality of the porn ) searching for the next hit record amid a relentless orgy of self-gratification. But as the hits dry up and the industry begins to change, Stelfox must take the notion of cutthroat business practices to murderous new levels in a desperate attempt to salvage his career. Kill Your Friends is a dark, satirical and hysterically funny evisceration of the record business, a place populated by frauds, charlatans and bluffers, where ambition is a higher currency than talent, and where it seems anything can be achieved as long as you want it badly enough.

      Kill Your Friends
    • John C. Calhoun and the Price of Union

      • 367 stránek
      • 13 hodin čtení
      3,7(38)Ohodnotit

      John C. Calhoun (1782-1850) was one of the prominent figures of American politics in the first half of the nineteenth century, serving as a senator from South Carolina, as secretary of war and secretary of state, and as vice-president in the administrations of John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson. The son of a slaveholding family, he was a staunch supporter of the interests of his region throughout his life and political career

      John C. Calhoun and the Price of Union