Canterbury Tales Guesthouse

[Daveo]

Jim Thompson: The Unsolved Mystery by William Warren

 

Traded In recently @ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange / Cafe / Guesthouse / Pattaya, Thailand.

 

On Easter Day, 1967, American businessmen and founder of the modern Thai silk industry James H. W. Thompson disappeared while supposedly on a stroll in the Jungle clad Cameron Highlands in Central Malaysia.

Neither Jim Thompson nor his remains has ever been found.

Some twenty years earlier Jim Thompson had abandoned his former life to embark on an exotic business career in Southeast Asia.

After establishing the Thai Silk Company, Thompson built a house and an art collection which are among Bangkok's top tourist attractions today.

After vanishing, he became the subject of a massive search and investigation, and a mystery that has never been solved. This definitive account of the life of Jim Thompson, written by a man who knew him well, gives the reader a first hand glance into his private affairs and his alleged role as an agent for the CIA.

 

This true life mystery will keep you turning the pages to the final chapter.

[Daveo]

Noble House by James Clavell

 

Traded in recently @ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange / Guesthouse / Cafe, Pattaya...

 

The setting is Hong Kong, 1963.

The action spans scarcely more than a week, but these are days of high adventure: from kidnapping and murder to financial double dealing and natural catastrophes, fire, flood, landslide.

Yet they are days filled as well with all the mystery and romance of Hong Kong, the heart of Asia, rich in every trade, money, flesh, opium, power.

[Daveo]

Sightseeing by Rattawut Lapcharoensap.

 

Traded In recently @ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange / Cafe / Guesthouse / Pattaya, Thailand.

 

A glorious fiction debut written with exceptional acuity by an award winning twenty five year old Thai-American writer.

 

Sightseeing is a masterful work of fiction, a collection of stories set in contemporary Thailand and written with a grace and sophistication that belie the age of its young author. These are generous, tender tales of family bonds, youthful romance, generational conflicts, and cultural shiftings beneath the glossy surface of a warm, Edenic setting.

Rattawut Lapcharoensap offers a diverse, humorous, and deeply affectionate view of life in a small Southeast Asian country that is inevitably absorbing the waves of encroaching Westernization.

 

In the prizewinning opening story, "Farangs," the young son of a modest beachside motel owner commits the cardinal sin of falling for a pretty tourist, and the confrontation that ensues between the native boy and the girl's pompous American boyfriend culminates wondrously amid flying mangoes and Clint Eastwood, a pet pig, swimming out to sea.

 

In "Sightseeing," the much-anticipated holiday of a young man about to leave for college and his loving and fiercely independent mother becomes a different kind of pilgrimage altogether when they are forced to confront the mother's impending blindness.

The concluding novella, "Cockfighter," is a triumph of storytelling in which a young girl witnesses her proud father's valiant but foolhardy and drawn out battle against the local delinquent and violent hoodlum whose family's vicious stranglehold on the villagers has passed down unchecked through generations.

 

Through his vivid assemblage of parents and children, natives and transients, ardent lovers and sworn enemies, Lapcharoensap dares us to look with new eyes at the circumstances that shape our views and the prejudices that form our blind spots.

Gorgeous and lush, painful and candid, Sightseeing is an extraordinary reading experience, one that powerfully reveals that when it comes to how we respond to pain, anger, hurt, and love, no place is too far from home.

[Daveo]

Mekong: A Fantastic Adventure About the Search for Mias and Lost Treasure in Laos by Paul Adirex.

 

Traded In recently @ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange / Cafe / Guesthouse / Pattaya, Thailand.

 

[Daveo]

Fool Me Once by Harlan Coben.

Traded in today @ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange / Cafe, Pattaya.

If your husband was murdered 
And you were a witness
How do you explain it when he appears on your nanny cam?
You thought you trusted him.
Now you can't even trust yourself.

Dark Secrets and a terrifying hunt for the truth lie at the heart of this gripping new thriller by the 'master of the double twist', Harlan Coben.

 

[Daveo]

The Absence of Guilt by Mark Gimenez.

 

Traded in yesterday @ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange / Cafe, Pattaya, Thailand.

 

An ISIS attack on America is narrowly averted when the FBI uncovers a plot to detonate a weapon of mass destruction in Dallas, Texas during the Super Bowl.

 

A federal grand jury indicts twenty four Co conspirators, including Omar al Mustafa, a notorious and charismatic Muslim cleric known for his incendiary anti - American diatribes on Social Media and the World news.

His arrest is greeted with cheers around the world and relief at home.

The President goes on national television and proclaims: 'We won'?

 

There is only one problem: there is no evidence against Mustafa.

That problem falls to the presiding judge, newly appointed U.S. District Judge A.Scott Fenney.

 

If Mustafa is innocent, Scott must set the most dangerous man in Dallas free, with no idea who is really guilty.

 

And all with just three weeks to go before the attack is due .

[Daveo]

Antony and Cleopatra by Colleen McCullough.

 

Traded in today @ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange / Cafe, Pattaya.

 

A sweeping epic of ancient Rome from the author of "The Thorn Birds"In this breathtaking follow up to "The October Horse," Colleen McCullough turns her attention to the legendary romance of Antony and Cleopatra, and in this timeless tale of love, politics, and power, proves once again that she is the best historical novelist of our time.

 

Caesar is dead, and Rome is, again, divided. Lepidus has retreated to Africa, while Antony RULES the opulent East, and Octavian claims the West, the heart of Rome, as his domain.

Though this tense truce holds civil war at bay, Rome seems ripe for an emperor, a true Julian heir to lay claim to Caesar's legacy.

With the bearing of a hero, and the riches of the East at his disposal, Antony seems poised to take the prize.

Like a true warrior king, he is a seasoned general whose lust for power burns alongside a passion for women, feasts, and Chian wine.

His rival, Octavian, seems a less convincing candidate: the slight, golden haired boy is as controlled as Antony is indulgent and as cool headed and clear eyed as Antony is impulsive.

Indeed, the two are well matched only in ambition.

 

And though politics and war are decidedly the provinces of men in ancient Rome, women are adept at using their wits and charms to gain influence outside their traditional sphere.

Cleopatra, the ruthless, golden eyed Queen, welcomes Antony to her court and her bed but keeps her heart well guarded.

A ruler first and a woman second, Cleopatra has but one desire: to place her child on his father, Julius Caesar's, vacant throne.

Octavian, too, has a strong woman by his side: his exquisite wife, raven haired Livia Drusilla, who learns to wield quiet power to help her husband in his quest for ascendancy.

As the plot races toward its inevitable conclusion, with battles on land and sea, conspiracy and murder, love and politics become irrevocably entwined.

 

McCullough's knowledge of Roman history is detailed and extensive.

Her masterful and meticulously researched narrative is filled with a cast of historical characters whose motives, passions, flaws, and insecurities are vividly imagined and expertly drawn.

The grandeur of ancient Rome comes to life as a timeless human drama plays out against the dramatic backdrop of the Republic's final days.

[Daveo]

Culture shock Southeast Asia & the Orient.

Includes; Burma/Myanmar - Cambodia - China - Hong Kong - Indonesia - Japan - Laos - Malaysia - Philippines - Singapore - South Korea - Taiwan - Thailand - Vietnam.
In Now @ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange / Cafe, Pattaya
Many good tips on Thailand and Southeast Asia, 
How to? what to? Warnings? Money, Culture and much more.
brand new; includes Pattaya maps....*****180 baht*****
Includes Pattaya maps of the Bar's Go Go's Walking Street and general street map.

[Daveo]

The Covenant by James A. Michener

 

Traded In recently @ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange / Cafe / Guesthouse / Pattaya, Thailand.

 

Set in South Africa, beginning 15,000 years ago and ending with the Boer War, this is a novel about people caught up in the march of world history.

It is a story of adventure and heroism, love and loyalty, and cruelty and betrayal.

[Daveo]

Russka: The Novel of Russia by Edward Rutherfurd.

 

Traded In recently @ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange / Cafe / Guesthouse / Pattaya, Thailand.

 

Spanning 1800 years of Russia's history, people, politics, and culture, Edward Rutherfurd, author of the phenomenally successful SARUM: THE NOVEL OF ENGLAND, tells a grand saga that is as multifaceted as Russia itself.

Here is a story of a great civilization made human, played out through the lives of four families who are divided by ethnicity but united in shaping the destiny of their land.

[Daveo]

Thailand, The Worldly Kingdom by Maurizio Peleggi.

Traded back In today @ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange / Guesthouse / Cafe, Pattaya.

Tourist brochures and travel guides depict Thailand as an exotic country with a rich cultural heritage, strong religious traditions, and a popular monarchy. 
Historians also contribute to Thailand’s international allure with chronicles of its unique historical and cultural continuity in comparison to the other southeast Asian countries, whose histories are stained by colonialism and nationalist struggles for independence.

Thailand challenges these stereotypes with a reinterpretation as well as an introduction to the emergence of Thailand as a nation-state. 
The book argues that the development of Thai nationhood was a long-term process shaped by interactions with the outside world, its pursuit of civilization, and, more recently, globalization. 
Maurizio Peleggi original account investigates, among other issues, the evolution of the geographical and linguistic landscapes, changes in class and gender relations, the role of institutions and ideologies, modern cultural expressions, social memory, and the conception of the Thai national self as contrasted against the racial and cultural Others of Burmese, Chinese and Westerners.

[Daveo]

The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk

 

Traded In recently @ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange / Cafe / Guesthouse / Pattaya, Thailand.

 

The novel that inspired the now classic film The Caine Mutiny and the hit Broadway play The Caine Mutiny Court Martial, Herman Wouk's boldly dramatic, brilliantly entertaining novel of life and mutiny on a Navy warship in the Pacific theater was immediately embraced, upon its original publication in 1951, as one of the first serious works of American fiction to grapple with the moral complexities and the human consequences of World War II.

In the intervening half century, The Caine Mutiny has become a perennial favorite of readers young and old, has sold millions of copies throughout the world, and has achieved the status of a modern classic.

[Daveo]

The Mammoth Book of Gangs by James Morten.

 

Traded In recently @ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange, Pattaya, Thailand.

 

A chilling look at gangs in every part of the world by an accomplished writer includes gangs such as "Ma" Barker's Boys, the Purple Gang of Detroit, and the Smaldones of Denver.

To be found in our vast True Crime section.

[Daveo]

The O. Henry Prize Stories 2015 by Laura Furman.

 

Traded in yesterday @ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange / Cafe, Pattaya, Thailand.

 

The O. Henry Prize Stories 2015 gathers twenty of the best short stories of the year, selected from thousands published in literary magazines.

The winning stories span the globe, from the glamorous Riviera to an Eastern European shtetl, from a Native American reservation to a tiny village in Thailand.

But their characters are universally recognizable and utterly compelling, whether they are expats in Africa, migrant workers crossing the Mexican border, Armenian immigrants on the rough streets of East Hollywood, or pioneers in nineteenth-century Idaho.

Accompanying the stories are the editor’s introduction, essays from the eminent jurors on their favorite stories, observations from the winning writers on what inspired them, and an extensive resource list of magazines.

 

Finding Billy White Feather

PERCIVAL EVERETT

 

The Seals

LYDIA DAVIS

 

Kilifi Creek

LIONEL SHRIVER

 

The Happiest Girl in the Whole USA

MANUEL MUÑOZ

 

A Permanent Member of the Family

RUSSELL BANKS

 

A Ride out of Phrao

DINA NAYERI

 

Owl

EMILY RUSKOVICH

 

The Upside-Down World

BECKY HAGENSTON

 

The Way Things Are Going

LYNN FREED

 

The History of Happiness

BRENDA PEYNADO

 

The Kingsley Drive Chorus

NAIRA KUZMICH

 

Word of Mouth

EMMA TÖRZS

 

Cabins

CHRISTOPHER MERKNER

 

My Grandmother Tells Me This Story

MOLLY ANTOPOL

 

The Golden Rule

LYNNE SHARON SCHWARTZ

 

About My Aunt

JOAN SILBER

 

Ba Baboon

THOMAS PIERCE

 

Snow Blind

ELIZABETH STROUT

 

I, Buffalo

VAUHINI VARA

 

Birdsong from the Radio

ELIZABETH MCCRACKEN

[Daveo]

America by Stephen Coonts.

 

Traded in yesterday @ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange / Cafe, Pattaya, Thailand.

 

Dispatched on a trial run, NASA's SuperAegis satellite has been created as the foundation of an international antimissle defense system.

But moments after dispatch, it vanishes.

Rear Admiral Jake Grafton fears something worse than a grave malfunction, he suspects sabotage.

The USS America, the world's most technically advanced nuclear submarine is launched on its maiden voyage.

Then shortly after steaming out of harbor, the unthinkable happens.

Pirated by terrorists, America disappears beneath the roiling waves of the Atlantic, its Tomahawk warheads aimed directly at the United States.

 

An ingeniously calculated war has been waged, but the rogue enemy is far more insidious than Jake Grafton ever imagined. His mission: ferret out the core group responsible, overtake the stealth sub, and destroy it.

But times is running out, and the race is on for Grafton to blow the covert operation out of the water before an entire nation is brought to its knees.

[Daveo]

Sexy Thai Bar Girls And Me: Sex Adventures In Asia
By Jonathan Finch.

In today @ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange, Pattaya.

Sexy Thai Bar Girls / Sex Adventures / Hookers / ladyboys / Bars / A Go Gos / Pattaya Freelancers / Walking Street / L. K. Metro / massage Parlours / Discos / And More (From An Author Who Has Been Living In Pattaya For Ten Years And Still Thinks He’s Compos Mentis!)
Reviewers have claimed that Finch writes with “apparent lightness and liquidity” and that he is “a true navigator”, gifting his readers with a “very well written memoir / travel book”.
“Sexy Thai Bar Girls And Me / Sex Adventures In Asia”, an updated version of “Collected Selected Words”, includes everything from before and a bit more from after.
ladyboys fly in, bedevilled punters appear to lament hoodwinkery, James Bond takes that flight back to England on a stretcher, and the opening and closing fiascos are narrated by a soak (in a far worse state than the first) who gives lots of inside information about Pattaya bars, a go gos, ladyboys and more. There is also a Lonely Planet Guide of sorts which chronicles all the best hot night-spots in Pattaya. Beautiful Thai ladies jump out at you and if you survive the first, few pages you will be hooked.
Like the Pattaya punter who “loses” his air-ticket home, like the long-stay expat who extends his retirement-visa beyond his death-certificate, you won’t be going back in a hurry, and when you’ve finished the “roller-coaster ride” (aka this book), you’ll knock back a couple of Red Bulls and hit the town!

[Daveo]

Very Thai: Everyday Popular Culture by Philip Cornwel-Smith, John Goss.

 

Traded in yesterday @ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange / Cafe, Pattaya, Thailand.

 

This pioneering insight into contemporary Thai folk culture delves beyond the traditional Thai icons to reveal the casual, everyday expressions of Thainess that so delight and puzzle.

 

From floral truck bolts and taxi altars to buffalo cart furniture and drinks in a bags, the same exquisite care, craft and improvisation resounds through home and street, bar and wardrobe.

Never colonised, Thai culture retains nuanced ancient meaning in the most mundane things.

The days are colour coded, lucky numbers dictate prices, window grilles become guardian angels, tattoos entrance the wearer.

Philip scoured each region to show how indigenous wisdom both adapts to the present and customises imports, applying Roman architecture to shophouses, morphing rock into festive farm music, turning the Japanese motor-rickshaw into the tuk-tuk. Colour saturated illustrations help you navigate various social traits, whether white faced hi-so matrons or Red Bull swilling workers wearing coins in their ear.

This is Thai culture as it has never been shown before.

[Daveo]

The Bombmaker by Stephen Leather.

 

Traded In today @ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange / Cafe / Guesthouse, Pattaya.

 

Andrea Hayes was one of the IRA’s deadliest killers until a misplaced bomb ripped into a group of passing children.

Now, years later, she has a whole new life and a family, and her days of violence seem a distant memory.

But then her daughter is kidnapped by persons unknown, and she’s blackmailed into building a massive explosive device for them, target unknown

[Daveo]

The Spoilers / Juggernaut Kindle Edition

by Desmond Bagley

 

Traded in recently @ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange, Pattaya.

 

Double action thrillers by the classic adventure writer set in the Middle East and Africa.

 

THE SPOILERS

 

When film tycoon Robert Hellier loses his daughter to heroin, he declares war on the drug pedlars, the faceless overlords whose greed supplies the world with its deadly pleasures. London drug specialist Nicholas Warren is called upon to organise an expedition to the Middle East to track down and destroy them, but with a hundred million dollars' worth of heroin at stake, Warren knows he will have to use methods as deadly as his prey…

 

JUGGERNAUT

 

It was no ordinary juggernaut.

Longer than a football pitch, weighing 550 tons, and moving at just five miles per hour, its job and that of troubleshooter Neil Mannix is to move a giant transformer across an oil-rich African state.

But when Nyala erupts in civil war, Mannix's juggernaut is at the centre of the conflict, a target of ambush and threat, with no way to run and nowhere to hide…

 

Includes a unique bonus, The House of the Lions, a story written exclusively for Desmond Bagley's Christmas house guests in the 1960's.

[Daveo]

Monkeewrench by P.J. Tracy.

 

Traded In recently @ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange / Cafe / Guesthouse / Pattaya, Thailand.

 

People are dying for the new computer game by the software company Monkeewrench.

Literally.

With Serial Killer Detective out in limited release, the real life murders of a jogger and a young woman have already mimicked the first two scenarios in the game.

But Grace McBride and her eccentric Monkeewrench partners are caught in a vise.

If they tell the Minneapolis police of the link between their game and the murders, they'll shine a spotlight on the past they thought they had erased and the horror they thought they'd left behind.

If they don't, eighteen more people will die...

[Daveo]

Sleepyhead by Mark Billingham.

 

Traded in recently @ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange / Guesthouse / Cafe, Pattaya..

 

Detective Inspector Tom Thorne now knows that three murdered young women were a killer's mistakes and that Alison was his triumph.

And unless Thorne can enter the mind of a brilliant madman a frighteningly elusive fiend who enjoys toying with the police as much as he savors his sick obsession.

Alison Willetts will not be the last victim consigned forever to a hideous waking hell.

 

Already an international bestseller, Mark Billingham's "Sleepyhead" is a chilling masterwork of crime fiction, a boldly original experiment in terror that will beget dark dreams and sleepless nights.

[Daveo]

Broken Skin by Stuart MacBride

 

Traded in recently @ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange / Guesthouse / Cafe, Pattaya..

 

A new Logan McRae thriller from the bestselling author of 'Cold Granite' and 'Dying Light', set in gritty Aberdeen.

In the pale grey light of a chilly February, Aberdeen is not at its best?

There's a rapist prowling the city's cold granite streets, leaving a string of tortured women behind.

But while DS Logan McRae's girlfriend is out acting as bait, he's dealing with the blood drenched body of an unidentified male, dumped outside Accident and Emergency.

When a stash of explicit films turn up, all featuring the victim, it looks as if someone in the local bondage community has developed a taste for violent death, and Logan gets dragged into the twilight world of pornographers, sex-shops and S&M.

 

To make matters worse, when they finally arrest the Granite City Rapist, Grampian Police are forced by the courts to let him go: Aberdeen Football Club's star striker has an alibi for every attack.

Could they really have got it so badly wrong?

Logan thinks so, but the trick will be getting anyone to listen before the real rapist strikes again.

Especially as his girlfriend, PC Jackie 'Ball Breaker' Watson, is convinced the footballer is guilty and she's hell bent on a conviction at any cost.

[Daveo]

The Impossible Dead by Ian Rankin.

 

Traded in recently @ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange / Guesthouse / Cafe, Pattaya..

 

The Complaints: that's the name given to the Internal Affairs department who seek out dirty and compromised cops, the ones who've made deals with the devil.

And sometimes The Complaints must travel.

 

A major inquiry into a neighboring police force sees Malcolm Fox and his colleagues cast adrift, unsure of territory, protocol, or who they can trust.

An entire station house looks to have been compromised, but as Fox digs deeper he finds the trail leads him back in time to the suicide of a prominent politician and activist.

There are Secrets buried in the past, and reputations on the line.

 

In his newest pulse pounding thriller, Ian Rankin holds up a mirror to an age of fear and paranoia, and shows us something of our own lives reflected there.

[Daveo]

Jewelry Treasures of Thailand Hardcover 
by Richard Werly & Bernard Maquin.

Very colorful large glossy photos of much of Thailand's treasured Jewelry.

Traded in recently @ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange / Guesthouse / Cafe, Pattaya..

[Daveo]

Thailand's natural heritage: a look at some of the rarest animals in the kingdom.

 

Traded in recently @ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange / Guesthouse / Cafe, Pattaya..

 

Another coffee table book in full colour.