Pg 007 The Bridge on the River Kwai (Pierre Boulle)
1942: Boldly advancing through Asia, the Japanese need a train route from Burma going north. In a prison camp, British POWs are forced into labor. The bridge they build will become a symbol of service and survival to one prisoner, Colonel Nicholson, a proud perfectionist. Pitted against the warden, Colonel Saito, Nicholson will nevertheless, out of a distorted sense of duty, aid his enemy. While on the outside, as the Allies race to destroy the bridge, Nicholson must decide which will be the first casualty: his patriotism or his pride.
Pg 127 A Very Quiet Place (Andrew Garve)
An instinctive decision. A dangerous gang. A life at risk. When Debbie Sheldon witnesses a jewel theft - one that leaves an innocent man dead - she acts on impulse, taking a photograph of the getaway car. And now the criminals want the evidence back and to silence Debbie. For good. With the protection of the police Debbie must act as bait to lure the violent killers to a disused mill, but the plan proves to be flawed. Soon the body count is rising and the predators have become the prey. "'Always seems to be at his best . . . It is impossible for this author to be anything but supremely readable'' Guardian
Pg 237 Renoir My Father (Jean Renoir) with 16 of Renoir's Most Famous Paintings
In this delightful memoir, Jean Renoir, the director of such masterpieces of the cinema as Grand Illusion and The Rules of the Game, tells the life story of his father, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, the great Impressionist painter. Recounting Pierre-Auguste's extraordinary career, beginning as a painter of fans and porcelain, recording the rules of thumb by which he worked, and capturing his unpretentious and wonderfully engaging talk and personality, Jean Renoir's book is both a wonderful double portrait of father and son and, in the words of the distinguished art historian John Golding, it "remains the best account of Renoir, and, furthermore, among the most beautiful and moving biographies we have."
Pg 395 Duel in The Snow (Hans Otto Meissner)
In the bleak Alaskan winter, where the worst weather in the world is born, two men silently stalked each other: Captain Hidaka, a Japanese guerilla, who had been parachuted into the wartime wilderness, and chief scout McCluire who must find him in the unmapped reaches of the arctic. For these fanatical men, a deadly contest had begun, a duel to the death. Each became both hunter and hunted, with the cruel unrelenting winter and ferocious wildlife the uncommon enemy.