Search results for ""profile books""

Vivid, enjoyable and comprehensible, the poet and pre-eminent translator Stephen Mitchell makes the oldest epic poem in the world accessible for the first time. Gilgamesh is a born leader, but in an attempt to control his growing arrogance, the Gods create Enkidu, a wild man, his equal in strength and courage. Enkidu is trapped by a temple prostitute, civilised through sexual experience and brought to Gilgamesh. They become best friends and battle evil together. After Enkidu's death the distraught Gilgamesh sets out on a journey to find Utnapishtim, the survivor of the Great Flood, made immortal by the Gods to ask him the secret of life and death. Gilgamesh is the first and remains one of the most important works of world literature. Written in ancient Mesopotamia in the second millennium B.C., it predates the Iliad by roughly 1,000 years. Gilgamesh is extraordinarily modern in its emotional power but also provides an insight into the values of an ancient culture and civilisation.

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In a frank and unpretentious series of letters addressed to a teenage granddaughter, this highly original book teaches us to know and understand the world we live in and its rules, and how to behave in it. In these thirty letters, Alan Macfarlane answers his granddaughter's questions about how the world works, how it got to be as it is, what it could be, and where she fits in. Lily's enquiries range from the intimate, personal and moral to the political, social and philosophical. What is the nature of good and evil? What is religion? How can I be truly me? Is right and wrong the same wherever you are? What is beauty? Does there have to be torture? Does money matter? Is knowledge always good? What is progress? What is truth? What is sex? Is democracy a good idea? These are just a few of the questions. In responding to Lily's challenging problems, Alan Macfarlane, from a lifetime's experience as a historian, anthropologist and teacher, ranges through history and across the world's cultures. Her questions are timeless. His answers add up to a classic.

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Eight hundred years ago, the Cathars, a group of heretical Christians from all walks of society, high and low, flourished in what is now the Languedoc in Southern France. Their subversive beliefs brought down on them the wrath of Popes and monarchs and provoked a brutal 'Crusade' against them. The final defeat of the Cathars was horrific with mass burnings of men, women and children in the village of Montaillou in the Pyrenees.

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When Pepe Carvalho's uncle asks him to find his son, Ra?l, in Buenos Aires, Pepe is reluctant. All he knows about Argentina is 'tango, Maradona, and the disappeared' and he has no desire to find out more. But family is family and soon Carvalho is in Buenos Aires, getting more caught up in Argentina's troubled past than is good for anybody. As he gets nearer to finding Raul, he begins to realise the full impact of the traumas caused by a military junta who went so far as to kidnap the children of the political activists they tortured. A few excellent tangos, bottles of Mendoza Cabernet Sauvignon and a sexy semiotician are no compensation for the savage brutality Carvalho experiences in his attempt to come to grips with Argentina's recent history.

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Tilly Dunnage left her hometown of Dungatar in rural Australia under a black cloud of accusation. Years later Tilly, now a couturier for the Paris fashion houses, returns home to make amends with her mentally unstable mother. Mid-century Dungatar is a small town, and small towns have long memories. At first she wins over the suspicious locals with her extraordinary dressmaking skills. But when the eccentric townsfolk turn on Tilly for a second time, she decides to teach them a lesson and exact long-overdue revenge... Packed with memorable characters, acid humour and luscious clothes, The Dressmaker is an irresistible gothic tale of small-town revenge.

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A new century, new threats to love . . . Love without risks is like war without deaths - but, today, love is threatened by an alliance of liberalism and hedonism. Caught between consumerism and casual sexual encounters devoid of passion, love - without the key ingredient of chance - is in danger of withering on the vine. In In Praise of Love, Alain Badiou takes on contemporary 'dating agency' conceptions of love that come complete with zero-risk insurance - like US zero-casualty bombs. He develops a new take on love that sees it as an adventure, and an opportunity for re-invention, in a constant exploration of otherness and difference that leads the individual out of an obsession with identity and self. Liberal, libertine and libertarian reductions of love to instant pleasure and non-commitment bite the dust as Badiou invokes a supporting cast of thinkers from Plato to Lacan via Karl Marx to form a new narrative of romance, relationships and sex - a narrative that does not fear love.

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Behind the bar at Jameel's in Cairo hang two mugs engraved with the names of Ram and Font. During their years together in London, they drank many a pint of Bass from these mugs. But there is no Bass in Nasser's Egypt, so Ram and Font have to make do with a heady mixture of beer, vodka and whisky. Yearning for Bass they long to be far from a revolution that neither serves the people nor allows their rich aunts to live the life of leisure they are accustomed to. Stranded between two cultures, Ram and Font must choose between dangerous political opposition and reluctant acquiescence. First published in 1964, Beer in the Snooker Club is a classic of the literature of emigration.

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'He achieves the miraculous,' the sculptor Auguste Rodin wrote of dancer Vaslav Nijinsky. 'He embodies all the beauty of classical frescoes and statues'. Like so many since, Rodin recognised that in Nijinsky classical ballet had one of the greatest and most original artists of the twentieth century, in any genre. Immersed in the world of dance from his childhood, he found his natural home in the Imperial Theatre and the Ballets Russes, he had a powerful sponsor in Sergei Diaghilev - until a dramatic and public failure ended his career and set him on a route to madness. As a dancer, he was acclaimed as godlike for his extraordinary grace and elevation, but the opening of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring saw furious brawls between admirers of his radically unballetic choreography and horrified traditionalists. Nijinsky's story has lost none of its power to shock, fascinate and move. Adored and reviled in his lifetime, his phenomenal talent was shadowed by schizophrenia and an intense but destructive relationship with his lover, Diaghilev. 'I am alive' he wrote in his diary, 'and so I suffer'. In the first biography for forty years, Lucy Moore examines a career defined by two forces - inspired performance and an equally headline-grabbing talent for controversy, which tells us much about both genius and madness. This is the full story of one of the greatest figures of the twentieth century, comparable to the work of Rosamund Bartlett or Sjeng Scheijen.

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Strategy-to-performance gaps foster a culture of under-performance Unrealistic plans create the expectation throughout the organisation that plans simply will not be fulfilled. This book shows how to overcome such failings and implement strategy effectively. Common failings include: Companies rarely track their performance against long-term plans - less than 15% of companies make it a regular practice to go back and compare the business' results with the performance forecast for each business unit in its prior years' strategic results Results rarely meet projections - when companies do track performance, it rarely matches the prior years' projection. The consequence is year-after-year of under-performance relative to the original plan A lot of value is lost in translation - a combination of poor communications, misapplied resources, limited accountability and lack of information creates an in-built strategy-to-performance gap

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In 2050 there will be 9.3 billion people alive - compared with 7 billion today - and the number will still be rising. The population aged over sixty-five will have more than doubled, to more than 16 per cent; China's GDP will be 80 per cent more than America's; and the number of cars on India's roads will have increased by 3,880 per cent. And, in 2050 it should be clear whether we are alone in the universe. What other megachanges can we expect - and what will their impact be? This comprehensive and compelling book will cover the most significant trends that are shaping the coming decades, with each of its twenty chapters elegantly and authoritatively outlined by Economist contributors, and rich in supporting facts and figures. It will chart the rise and fall of fertility rates across continents; how energy resources will change in light of new technology, and how different nations will deal with major developments in science and warfare. Megachange is essential reading for anyone who wants to know what the next four decades hold in store.

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Suspended in a strangely modern-day version of limbo, a young man must create a life for himself in the wake of incarceration. Known only as the Kid, and on probation after doing time for a liaison with an underage girl, he is shackled to a GPS monitoring device and forbidden to live within 2,500 feet of anywhere children might gather. With nowhere else to go, the Kid takes up residence in a makeshift encampment with other convicted sex offenders. Barely beyond childhood himself, the Kid is in many ways an innocent, trapped by impulses and foolish choices. Enter the Professor, a man who has built his own life on secrets and lies. A university sociologist of enormous size and intellect, he finds in the Kid the perfect subject for his research on homelessness and reoffending sex offenders. The two men forge a tentative partnership. But when the Professor's past resurfaces and threatens to destroy his carefully constructed world, the balance in the two men's relationship shifts. Suddenly, the Kid must reconsider everything he has come to believe, and choose what course of action to take when faced with a new kind of moral decision.

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If you want to learn how to conform to confound, raze hopes, succeed your successor, order absence in the absence of order, win by losing and think contrapositively, look no further. Here you can unlock the secrets of Plato's void, Wittgenstein's investigations, Schopenhauer's intelligence test, Voltaire's big bet, Russell's slip of the pen and lobster logic. Among your discoveries will be why the egg came before the chicken, what the dishwasher missed and just what it was that made Descartes disappear. Experience the unbearable lightness of logical conclusions in Professor Sorensen's intriguing cabinet of riddles, problems, paradoxes, puzzles and the anomalies of human utterance. As you accompany him on investigations into the mysteries of truth, falsehood, reason and delusion, prepare to be surprised, enlightened, mystified and, above all, entertained.

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Sheep are the thread that runs through the history of the English countryside. Our fortunes were once founded on sheep, and this book tells a story of wool and money and history, of merchants and farmers and shepherds, of English yeomen and how they got their freedom, and above all, of the soil. Sheep have helped define our culture and topography, impacting on everything from accent and idiom, architecture, roads and waterways, to social progression and wealth. With his eye for the idiosyncratic, Philip meets the native breeds that thrive in this country; he tells stories about each breed, meets their shepherds and owners, learns about their past - and confronts the present realities of sheep farming. Along the way, Philip meets the people of the countryside and their many professions: the mole-catchers, the stick-makers, the tobacco-twisters and clog-wrights. He explores this artisan heritage as he re-discovers the countryside, and finds a lifestyle parallel to modern existence, struggling to remain unchanged - and at its heart, always sheep.

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It was the British victory at the Battle of El Alamein in November 1942 that inspired one of Winston Churchill's most famous aphorisms: 'This is not the end, it is not even the beginning of the end, but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning'. And yet the significance of this episode remains unrecognised. In this thrilling historical account, Jonathan Dimbleby describes the political and strategic realities that lay behind the battle, charting the nail-biting months that led to the victory at El Alamein in November 1942. It is a story of high drama, played out both in the war capitals of London, Washington, Berlin, Rome and Moscow, and at the front in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Morrocco and Algeria and in the command posts and foxholes in the desert. Destiny in the Desert is about politicians and generals, diplomats, civil servants and soldiers. It is about forceful characters and the tensions and rivalries between them. Drawing on official records and the personal insights of those involved at every level, Dimbleby creates a vivid portrait of a struggle which for Churchill marked the turn of the tide - and which for the soldiers on the ground involved fighting and dying in a foreign land. Now available in paperback in time, Destiny in the Desert, which was shortlisted for the Hessell-Tiltman prize 2012-13, is required reading for anyone with an interest in the Desert War.

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Robert Knapp seeks out the ordinary people who formed the fabric of everyday life in ancient Rome and the outlaws and pirates who lay beyond it. They are the housewives, prostitutes, freedmen, slaves, soldiers, and gladiators who lived commonplace lives and left almost no trace in history - until now. But their words are preserved in literature, letters, inscriptions and graffiti and their traces can be found in the histories, treatises, plays and poetry created by the elite. A world lost from view for two millennia is recreated through these, and other, tell-tale bits of evidence cast off by the visible mass of Roman history and culture. Invisible Romans reveals how everyday Romans sought to survive and thrive under the afflictions of disease, war, and violence, and to control their fates under powers that both oppressed and ignored them. Their lives - both familiar and foreign to ours today - are shown against the tumult of a great empire that shaped their worlds as it forged the wider world around them.

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In 264 BC, a Roman army was poised to cross from southern Italy into Sicily. They couldn't know that this crossing would be Rome's first step on its journey from local republic to vast and powerful empire. At the beginning of the three dramatic centuries that make up this book's narrative, Rome had no emperor and limited global influence; by the book's end, Hadrian was set to pass into history as one of the greatest emperors, whose territories stretched from England to Turkey. In David Potter's masterful history of this period, we trace the process of cultural, political and civic transformation which led to the creation of a monarchy and the acquisition of territory, via wars with Hannibal, the destruction of Carthage, Augustan Empire-building and Hadrian's famous wall, all of which contributed to the most successful multi-cultural state in the history of Europe. This is a lively, scholarly approach to an essential era.

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We make decisions, and these decisions make us and our organisations. And in theory, decision-making should be easy: a problem is identified, the decision-makers generate solutions, and choose the optimal one - and powerful mathematical tools are available to facilitate the task. Yet if it is all so simple why do organisations, both private and public sector, keep making mistakes - the results of which are borne by shareholders, employees, taxpayers and ultimately society at large? This guide to decision making. by leading decision science academic Helga Drummond, aims to improve decision-making in organisations. It explores how and why decisions go awry in the first place - and offers practical advice on what decision-makers can do to counter the psychological, social and other forces that can undermine individual judgment and pull organisations off course. Full of examples of good and bad decision-making from around the world, it will make readers think more clearly about decisions big and small.

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Ian Stewart, author of the bestselling Professor Stewart's Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities, presents a new and magical mix of games, puzzles, paradoxes, brainteasers, and riddles. He mingles these with forays into ancient and modern mathematical thought, appallingly hilarious mathematical jokes, and enquiries into the great mathematical challenges of the present and past. Amongst a host of arcane and astonishing facts about every kind of number from irrational or imaginary to complex or cuneiform, we find out: how to organise chaos; how matter balances anti-matter; how to turn a sphere inside out (without creasing it...); why you can't comb a hairy ball; how to calculate pi by observing the stars. And we get some tantalising glimpses of the maths of life and the universe.Mind-stretching, enlightening and endlessly amusing, Professor Stewart's new entertainment will stimulate, delight, and enthral.

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Mary Beard's by now famous blog A Don's Life has been running on the TLS website for nearly three years. In it she has made her name as a wickedly subversive commentator on the world in which we live. Her central themes are the classics, universities and teaching -- and much else besides. What are academics for? Who was the first African Roman emperor? Looting -- ancient and modern. Are modern exams easier? Keep lesbos for the lesbians. Did St Valentine exist? What made the Romans laugh? That is just a small taste of this selection (and some of the choicer responses) which will inform, occasionally provoke and cannot fail to entertain.

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'This is the room from which I will direct the war,' Churchill declared, shortly after becoming Prime Minister in 1940. It was from these cramped confines that Churchill turned a seemingly inevitable defeat at the hands of the Nazis into a famous victory. Built in 1938 as a temporary refuge in case of air raid attack, this secret bunker became a second home to Churchill - and to large numbers of military personnel and civil servants whose work until now has been largely unsung. Drawing on a fascinating range of original material, including newly available first-hand accounts of the people who lived there, Holmes reveals how and why the bunker and its war machine developed; how the inhabitants' lives were transformed; and how their work led to victory. Elegant and illuminating, Churchill's Bunker is a unique exploration of one of the most important sites in British history.

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Outwardly Nella's life was probably seen as ordinary; but behind this mask were a lively mind and a persistent pen - a pen that never gave up over almost three decades, reporting, describing, pondering, and disclosing. Nella, 55 when the war ends, writes of what ordinary people felt during those years of privation, hope and the re-building of Britain, providing a moving and inspiring account of the years that shaped the society we live in today. Her diary offers a detailed, moving and humorous narrative of the changing experiences of ordinary people at this time, and thoughts on the aftermath of war and whether 'peace' really meant peace, for everyone.

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Ever since the first human settlements 10,000 years ago, weeds have dogged our footsteps. They are there as the punishment of 'thorns and thistles' in Genesis and , two millennia later, as a symbol of Flanders Field. They are civilisations' familiars, invading farmland and building-sites, war-zones and flower-beds across the globe. Yet living so intimately with us, they have been a blessing too. Weeds were the first crops, the first medicines. Burdock was the inspiration for Velcro. Cow parsley has become the fashionable adornment of Spring weddings. Weaving together the insights of botanists, gardeners, artists and poets with his own life-long fascination, Richard Mabey examines how we have tried to define them, explain their persistence, and draw moral lessons from them. One persons weed is another's wild beauty.

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Does what's in your bathroom or on your desk reveal what's on your mind? What's the best way to find out what your partner is really like? For ten years, ingenious academic Sam Gosling has been studying how people project (and protect) their inner selves. Full of cutting-edge research, Snoop will sharpen your perception of others, as well as of yourself. Amazingly, and perhaps alarmingly, Gosling proves that what we own and how we act can inadvertently reveal more about our personalities than even our most intimate conversations.

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Time has always been the great Given, a fact of existence which cannot be denied or wished away; but the character of lived time is changing dramatically. Medical advances extend our longevity, while digital devices compress time into ever briefer units. We can now exist in several time-zones simultaneously, but we suffer from endemic shortages of time. We are working longer hours and blurring the distinctions between labour and leisure. For many, in an inversion of the old adage, time has become more valuable than money. In this look at life's most ineffable element, spanning fields from biology and culture to psychoanalysis and neuroscience, Eva Hoffman asks: are we coming to the end of time as we know it?

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''America''s foremost thinker and writer on the single experience '' Atlantic''Bella DePaulo isn''t just a powerhouse, she''s a lighthouse ... We need more luminaries like her'' Catherine Gray, author of The Unexpected Joy of Being SingleAll too often, society issues dire warnings about the risks of single living. But is finding a romantic partner really a requirement for a full life? World-leading expert on single life Dr Bella DePaulo argues that a healthy, happy life is possible not in spite of being single - but because of it. DePaulo draws on her research expertise, as well as her own experience as a single woman, to demonstrate how choosing to be single can provide confidence, strength and deep fulfilment. With advice on topics including solitude, freedom, intimacy, children and societal pressure, Single at Heart addresses misconceptions about single life and gives you the tools and self-knowledge to stand up for what is right for you.

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''Help Wanted is like a great nineteenth-century novel about now, at once an effervescent workplace comedy and an exploration of the psychic toll exacted by the labour market'' Elif Batuman, author of The Idiot''Poignant, funny, stealthily ambitious'' The New York Times''Eliot-like ... . It is simultaneously a joke, a homage, and a provocation for our unequal age. Help Wanted washes labour in a stately, almost Steinbeckian light, emphasizing its difficulty but also its dignity'' New YorkerTightly plotted, slyly caustic and often very funny'' Daily MailAt a superstore in a small town in upstate New York, the members of Team Movement clock in every day at 3.55 am. Under the red-eyed scrutiny of their self-absorbed and barely competent boss, they empty delivery trucks of mountains of merchandise, stock the shelves and stagger home (or to another poorly paid day job) before the customers arrive. When Big Will the store manager announces he''s leaving, everything changes. The eclectic team

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Do leaders make history, or does history make leaders? What should we do when the wrong people are in power? And how can we harness the answers to find and become better leaders today? This book offers a deep-dive into the art, science and practice of leadership around the world and across ages, led by a Harvard professor and historian. Through wide-ranging and lively stories, Moshik Temkin considers the lessons, and warnings, we can take from leaders such as Franklin D Roosevelt and the suffragettes, the Civil Rights struggle and anticolonial wars. From the necessary qualities of leaders in a crisis, to how to lead when you don''t have any power, this book also examines how, in a world desperate for good leadership, we might draw lessons for ourselves today.

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'Irresistible - a funny, sexy romp that's also smart, even wise' Kirkus starred review ' Pure elegance, subtlety and wit. A triumph of a novel' - Francesca Segal, author of Mother Ship It is 1954, and prostitution is legal in the tropical haven that is Verona Island. Here, among gangsters and corrupt lawmen, Lila Gulliver runs a brothel that promises her exclusive clientele privacy and discretion. When nineteen-year-old Carità, beautiful and blind since birth, comes to her door seeking employment, Mrs Gulliver sees a business opportunity and takes a chance. Carità is mesmerising, sharp and a mystery to her employer, always holding herself at a distance. One night, the son of a wealthy judge patronises Mrs Gulliver's establishment, immediately falling madly in love with Carità. This is Ian Drohan - young, idealistic and cushioned by wealth and family connections. Mrs Gulliver mistrusts him, and worries for Carità's future. Carità, on the other hand, is fearless, headstrong and a force of nature that Mrs Gulliver is always several steps behind. A dazzling drama filled with sex, wry wit and literary references, Mrs Gulliver follows two women who have nothing to lose in their fight for agency on an island too ready to dismiss them.

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* FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF GIRL IN TRANSLATION * 'Kwok is an impressive talent' - KARIN SLAUGHTER 'A beautiful, propulsive story' - LAURA DAVE 'A hugely atmospheric and suspenseful mystery' - LUCY FOLEY 'I will find my daughter. No matter the cost...' Jasmine Yang thought her daughter was dead at birth. But five years after she was taken from her arms, she learns that her controlling husband sent the baby to America to be adopted, a casualty of China's one-child-policy. Fleeing her rural Chinese village, Jasmine arrives in New York City with nothing except a desperate need to find her daughter. But with her husband on her trail, the clock is ticking, and she's forced to make increasingly risky decisions if she ever hopes to be reunited with her child. Meanwhile, Rebecca Whitney seems to have it all: a high-powered career, a beautiful home, a handsome husband and an adopted Chinese daughter she adores. But when an industry scandal threatens to jeopardise not only Rebecca's job but her marriage, this perfect world begins to crumble. Two women in a divided city, separated by wealth and culture, yet bound together by their love for the same child. And when they finally meet, their lives will never be the same again...

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A NEW STATESMAN BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023 'Stylish, beautiful and strange' Jessie Greengrass As featured on BBC Open Book: 'poses questions about whether we can love AI and whether AI could love us ... I couldn't help but develop a soft spot for Mother' -- Johny Pitts Lena has always lived in the jungle with Mother. There they look after a holiday home in surroundings that burst with colour and crawl with danger. Lena's only other friend is Isabella, who once visited regularly with her wealthy parents and security drone, Anton. But Isabella and her family haven't been seen in years. Mother is not like other mothers. She gets angry when Lena draws her with a face. When Lena challenges her to portray herself, she paints a tiny yellow dot surrounded by swirling black. She is a bastion of light, she says, against an army of darkness. Outside, rebels are fighting to take over the country. Mother is determined nothing will change inside the security fence, nothing to threaten her bond with Lena, or endanger the family. But there are secrets that need to emerge. How did Lena end up here? And what has happened to the family who no longer visit? What has Mother been planning, and what is gathering around them to change their lives forever?

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'High-concept, formally daring, and sonically rich [...] What a tremendous gift to readers to witness a poetics balanced so deftly between intellect and instinct.' - Kayo Chingonyi In myth, the Pillars of Hercules near the Straits of Gibraltar mark the edge of what was then the known world, with the warning Ne plus ultra - No more beyond. Beyond power, beyond the sublime, beyond love, PLUS ULTRA begins where other poetry gives up. Sarah Fletcher's dazzling debut collection pushes at the world, reaching towards the 'beyond' of its title poem to explore questions of power, romance, pain and the sublime. These poems challenge, play and press, but also carry an anxiety around borders: what is 'beyond'? What happens when you reach the boundary and keep going? With a sharp, Plathian interrogative voice Fletcher's poems prowl the bars and night-haunts of Madrid and London, and in rich, mythic language plumb the below-places where discoveries are made, drowned, and left behind.

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''An essential text for anyone who wants to start making art and not stop. One of those rare books - like The Artist''s Way and Writing Down the Bones - to keep close by for courage and company.'' - Tanya Shadrick, author of The Cure for Sleep and creator of The Wild Patience Scrolls: A Mile of WritingArt & Fear is about the way art gets made, the reasons it often doesn''t get made, and the nature of the difficulties that cause so many artists to give up along the way. Drawing on the authors'' own experiences as two working artists, the book delves into the internal and external challenges to making art in the real world, and shows how they can be overcome every day.First published in 1994, Art & Fear quickly became an underground classic, and word-of-mouth has placed it among the best-selling books on artmaking and creativity. Written by artists for artists, it offers generous and wise insight into what it feels like to sit down at your easel or keyboard, in your studio or performance

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A Stylist 'Non-fiction You Can't Miss' selection for 2023 This serial memoir follows Charlotte over the course of several years as she falls in and out of love, muses on the nature of sex work and the value of beauty, discovers hidden emotional complexities and contemplates leaving her profession. Growing out of a series of confessional letters sent by the author to a small but devoted mailing list, her candid, unstinting and sometimes heart-breaking meditations have gained thousands of subscribers and a cult status. Prostitute Laundry is a deeply thoughtful book about sensuality, money, and identity - how those forces can break us, and how they can make us whole again. By turns philosophical, funny and explicit, this is an affecting, immediate account of one life lived to its fullest.

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''An inspiring guide for all leaders'' Justine Roberts, Founder and CEO of Mumsnet''Highly recommended'' Jack Parsons, CEO of The Youth GroupA practical, enjoyable and proven manual for leading transformational change - by the award-winning author of No Bullsh*t Leadership.Drawing on an international career of leading successful change programmes, Chris Hirst cuts through the bullsh*t to reveal uncomplicated strategies for transformation - no matter the size of your organisation or the nature of the challenge. Leading change is about: Being honest and clear Building teams full of thriving people Finding your point of maximum impact Most importantly, it''s about taking action - and this book will show you how.

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''There have been plenty of books on the Edwardians before, but never one as richly enjoyable as this ... nobody has done a better job of capturing what ordinary people thought and cared about more than a century ago'' Dominic Sandbrook, Book of the Week, Sunday Times''In Little Englanders, Alwyn Turner reveals striking parallels between Britain in decline at the start of the 20th century and our own divisive age ... [a] page turner of a popular history'' Andrew Marr, New Statesman''The very best sort of panoramic portrait'' David Kynaston''The Edwardians have long been the lost decade of British history, yet they are that history at its climax. Alwyn Turner sets the record straight, bringing its characters, strains and stresses brilliantly to life'' Simon Jenkins''Britain''s most electrifying contemporary social historian conjures the forgotten country of more than a century ago ... fiercely recommended'' Alan MooreWhen Queen Victoria died in 1901 it was the end of an era. Britain''s

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SHORTLISTED FOR THE WINGATE LITERARY PRIZE 2024 A WALL STREET JOURNAL BOOK OF THE YEAR NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD WINNER 'Beautiful, sober and affecting - a testament to remembrance and friendship' - DALIA SOFER 'A momentous historic retrieval and work of literary art' - PHILLIP LOPATE Nearly a century of life behind her, Stella Levi had never shared the full details of her past with anyone. That is until she met Michael Frank, and asked him to help her polish a talk she was to give about life in the Juderia of Rhodes. Neither of them could know that this was the first of one hundred Saturdays that they would spend in each other's company. Courageous and sharp, elegant and sly, Stella is a formidable modern Scheherazade whose Saturday instalments give a window into the vibrant, vanished world of the Jews of Rhodes. She unspools for the first time the long threads of her history - from the sun-soaked shores of her childhood, to the fifteen harrowing months she spent in camps scattered throughout Europe, and finally to the United States and New York as one of only 150 Jews from Rhodes to survive. Featuring colour illustrations based on Stella's family photographs, One Hundred Saturdays is an unusual and extraordinary memoir. It is a testament to the soul-saving power of relationships; to memories revisited; to resilience. It's not only a vital slice of history that has largely been ignored, but a story of the possibility of an ever-evolving self, even after confronting Hell.

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'Brilliant...as entertaining and interesting as it is practical' - Graham Allcott, author of How to be a Productivity Ninja We are surrounded by feedback, whether we're being asked to like, rate or otherwise comment on products, services or even people. At work, the right kind of feedback delivered at the right time and in the right way can help us all to learn and improve. On the ground, though, that's easier said than done. Help is at hand. Margaret Cheng's six golden rules and Giving Good Feedback Framework offer a clear guide to what feedback is, how we can master the things that get in the way and deploy some simple techniques to make feedback a more routine - and less emotionally charged - part of our routine work communications.

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The grandson of Prince Genji lives outside of space and time and wanders the grounds of an old monastery in Kyoto. The monastery, too, is timeless, with barely a trace of any human presence. The wanderer is searching for a garden that has long captivated him.This novel by International Booker Prize winner László Krasznahorkai - perhaps his most serene and poetic work - describes a search for the unobtainable and the riches to be discovered along the way. Despite difficulties in finding the garden, the reader is closely introduced to the construction processes of the monastery as well as the geological and biological processes of the surrounding area, making this an unforgettable meditation on nature, life, history, and being.

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'A legendary writer entirely on his own account' Observer 'Stunningly good' Guardian Gloria Goltz's intellectual ambitions are derailed when she meets Leonard at college. Self-taught, blue-collar, possessor of an aggressive intelligence, Leonard claims to hold the key to unlocking her potential. After making her pregnant, he disappears. Her son Corey grows up without a father, looking for a male role model ­- and restless, dreaming of a great adventure. Instead, when Corey is fifteen, Gloria is diagnosed with motor neuron disease, and his estranged father - this man of domineering charisma and dubious moral character - returns. Determined to be his mother's hero at any cost, Corey begins shouldering responsibility for her expensive medical care, pushing himself to his physical and emotional limits as her disease progresses. And as Leonard's influence over son and mother grows, Corey must dismantle the myth of his father's genius and confront the evil that lurks beneath it. Atticus Lish won a Pen/Faulkner award for his debut Preparation for the Next Life, a novel 'described as the finest and most unsentimental love story of the new decade' in The New York Times. His second novel confirms Lish as a beguiling storyteller and a prose stylist of extraordinary emotional reach and beauty.

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'A sheer joy' JOANNA LUMLEY 'This book gives me hope ... that life and marriage might permanently include taking the absolute piss while simultaneously dancing in the kitchen' EMMA FREUD 'An endearing portrait of exasperation, laced with hard won tolerance - and love' GUARDIAN Joanna and Roger have been married for over forty years. Children of the Sixties, they're still free spirits, drawn together by their passion for music - and each other. Conversations from a Long Marriage is exactly that: following conversations that take them from the local café, to their kitchen table, taking in her resentment of new glasses - a symbol of ageing - and fury at being lectured by the dental hygienist. He has a dodgy knee and is on statins, and when they discuss the marriage break-up of their closest friends, Sally and Peter, there's jealousy and talk of affairs. She suggests there are advantages to single beds, separate holidays and wants to go clubbing in Ibiza for her imminent 'big' birthday. Witty, big-hearted and a whole lot of fun, Conversations from a Long Marriage will resonate with couples of any age - but especially those who are still dancing in the kitchen, singing in the car and trying to keep the passion alive.

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The more we ponder, the odder the world can seem. How do footballers get their shirt numbers? Why does having daughters make couples more likely to divorce? How do you move a horse from one country to another? What counts as a journey into space? The keen minds at The Economist contemplate all these questions and more in their quest for the globe's most extraordinary quandaries and conundrums, with bizarre facts and headscratchers that show the world is even stranger than we might have thought. From plant-based milk and supermoons to the next Dalai Lama and what really happened at the storming of the Bastille, this collection of the oddest and most mindboggling explanations will amaze and delight in equal measure.

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'Wise and thorough' Spectator 'Brisk and readable ... very valuable' Financial Times 'He is an engaging guide ... and writes with the same flair demonstrated in his previous bestseller Afgantsy' Sunday Telegraph 'A scholarly yet highly readable gallop through the last 1000 years of Russian history ... To understand this tormented nation, you can do no better than read this illuminating portrait' Jonathan Dimbleby With its attack on Ukraine, Russia's future seems almost as uncertain as its past. The largest country in the world - with the largest arsenal of nuclear weapons - has been known over the past thousand years as Rus, Muscovy, the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. Thirty years ago it was reinvented as the Russian Federation. Russia is not an enigma but its past is violent, tragic, sometimes glorious, and certainly complicated. Like the rest of us, the Russians constantly rewrite their history. They too omit episodes of national disgrace in favour of patriotic anecdotes, sometimes more rooted in myth than reality. Expert and former ambassador Rodric Braithwaite unpicks fact from fiction to discover what lies at the root of the Russian story, more relevant to the rest of the world now than ever before.

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Now a major Netflix film starring Tessa Thompson, Ruth Negga and Alexander Skarsgård Childhood friends Clare and Irene are both light-skinned enough to pass as white, but only one of them has chosen to cross the colour line and live with the secret hanging over her. Clare believes she had successfully cut herself off from any connection to her past. Married to a racist white man who is oblivious to her African-American heritage, it is vital to her that the truth remains hidden. Irene is living as a middle-class Black woman with her husband and children in Harlem, taking on an important role in her community and embracing her origins. Both women are forced to re-examine their relationships with each other, with their husbands and with the truth, confronting their most closely guarded fears. Nella Larsen's powerful, tragic and acutely observant writing established her as a lodestar of America's Harlem Renaissance. Almost a century later, Passing and its nuanced exploration of the many fraught ways in which we seek to survive remains as timely as ever

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As cities expand and rents rise, what does it really mean to have a home? 'A marvel, by an inspiring and deeply humane writer' - Philippe Sands A home is important because it offers sanctuary and privacy. It can help improve mental health and emotional resilience, and it can help break people out of cycles of poverty. Yet in the past 30 years we've seen home ownership dwindle as council housing stocks deplete and more of us are caught in insecure tenancies. And it's not just London - there isn't a single major city in the world today not suffering from an affordable housing crisis. Why does this matter - and what can be done? Drawing on his own history of housing insecurity and his professional career as a planning barrister, Hashi Mohamed examines the myriad aspects of housing - from Right-to-Buy to Grenfell, slums and evictions to the Bank of Mum and Dad. A Home of One's Own is a deeply personal study of the crisis confronting global metropoles - and an exploration of the ways we can remove barriers, improve equality and create cities where more people have a place to call their own.

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''A fresh new voice in crime fiction'' - JANICE HALLETT''Funny, sad, witty and very engaging'' - EMMA CURTIS''Darkly funny and deftly plotted'' - ALICE CLARK-PLATTSEveryone needs a hobby...Things haven''t been going well for Beth. Her husband has left her for one of her friends. Her fellow school mums judge her for swearing too much and not shifting the baby weight. And now she''s stuck in A&E after her son fell off the climbing wall on the first day of school.In fact, things haven''t been going well for Beth since Charlotte died - her best friend, a favourite at the school pick-ups and the only person to ever run an interesting PTA meeting. But after being hit by a car while on an ill-timed evening jog, Charlotte is no longer there to help Beth pick up the pieces of her increasingly difficult life.That is, until Beth discovers that Charlotte left her toddler alone in the house during that fatal run. The Charlotte she knew would never do something so irresponsible, and suddenly Beth is

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'Everything Wharton-Malcolm does has the aim of helping people achieve the best version of themselves' Evening Standard 'In a world where expectations of others is making people drop out of sport, Cory hooks you back in. With his straight up communication and infectious sense of humour, Cory inspires people from all around the world to find the joy in running.' Chris Watt, Runner, Friend, Brand Director Think running isn't for you? Running coach Cory Wharton-Malcolm challenges this idea head-on with this joyful love letter to running and motivational guide for beginners. Advocating running as an inclusive and community-focused activity, Cory shows us how to celebrate the incredible mind-body connection by getting your trainers on and starting your running journey from the couch to the end of the road and beyond. Sharing stories of his own mental and physical health challenges and the way running - both alone and with track buddies - lifted him up, All You Need is Rhythm and Grit includes advice on kit, running routes, pacing, good beats and the will to start and keep going. Cory believes you don't have to be a tall and slim superhuman to run and feel good doing it! For anyone who thinks running isn't for them, here is a vibrant and inclusive guide to one of the most egalitarian sports for people of all genders, all bodies, all identities and every class and colour.

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Revised and updated fourth edition The world today rests on increasingly unstable fault lines. From the conflict in Ukraine or fresh upheavals in the Middle East to the threats posed to humanity by a global pandemic, climate change and natural disasters, the world's danger zones once again draw their battle lines across our hyperconnected, yet fragmented, globe. Join veteran Economist journalist John Andrews as he analyses the old enmities and looming collisions that underlie conflict in the twenty-first century. Region by region, discover the causes, contexts, participants and likely outcomes of every globally significant struggle now underway. From drug cartels to cyber war, this is the indispensable guide for anyone who wants to understand our perilous world.

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