Search results for ""eye books""

After spending three decades advising multinational companies on geopolitics and security crises, Richard Fenning knows all about danger and intrigue. Kidnappings, terrorist attacks, coups d'etat, corruption scandals, cyber attacks, earthquakes and hurricanes were all in a day's work in a career that coincided with the rise of China, the tumult of the Middle East wars, the resurgence of populism and the digital revolution. Amid chaos and upheaval, he also found humanity and humour. Often witty and always insightful, What on Earth Can Go Wrong takes us from the battlefields of Iraq to the back streets of Bogota, from the steamy Niger Delta to the chill of Putin's Moscow. In a remarkable memoir of a life on the frazzled edge of globalisation, Fenning looks back with humanity and insight on the people and places he got to know, while offering some timely thoughts on the relationship between risk and fear in a profoundly volatile world.

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As a child in Australia in the Fifties, Katrina Klain is taunted in the playground as a Nazi, long before she knows what the word means. Her German mother and her Austrian father seem to be ordinary people who simply ended up on the wrong side of history, but Katrina yearns to know more about her origins. Leaving the New World behind as soon as she can, she heads to Vienna, where she imagines her Germanic name will no longer be a burden, armed with what turns out to be an inexhaustible list of questions. Is the sleazy uncle exiled to Spain a crook or a hero of the anti-Nazi resistance? Why does her father insist his brother is dead? And is her cousin in East Germany really a Stasi agent? Decades later, during a long flight back to Australia, Katrina attempts to reassemble the pieces of the puzzle she has spent so long researching. In her dream-like version of an in-flight movie, a mysterious other-worldly guide seems to know – and have control over – her own future. Told in a thrillingly inventive narrative style, Sylvia Petter’s debut novel is a powerful, pacy tale about making peace with the past, which also paints a richly evocative picture of Central Europe in the early decades after the war.

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At thirty-two, Faith Frankel has returned to her suburban hometown where she works in the fundraising department of her old school, writing thank-you notes to benefactors. Keen to get her life back on track, she buys a sweet but dilapidated bungalow on Turpentine Lane. Never mind that her fiance is currently 'finding himself' while walking across America and too busy to return her texts, that her witless boss has accused her of fraud, or that her father is going through a mid-life crisis that involves painting fake old masters and hooking up with a much younger woman - Faith is looking forward to a peaceful life in her new home. But when a policeman knocks on her door asking to look in the basement, she discovers that the history of 10 Turpentine Lane is anything but peaceful. On Turpentine Lane is a madcap comedy from one of America's most acclaimed novelists.

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Under tennis courts in the ruins of a great abbey, archaeologists find the remains of St Edmund, once venerated as England's patron saint, but lost for half a millennium. Culture Secretary Marina Spencer, adored by those who have never met her, scents an opportunity. She promotes Edmund as a new patron saint for the United Kingdom, playing up his Scottish, Welsh and Irish credentials. Unfortunately these are pure fiction, invented by Mark Price, her downtrodden aide, in a moment of panic. The only person who can see through the deception is Mark's cousin Hannah, a member of the dig team. Will she blow the whistle or help him out? And what of St Edmund himself, watching through the prism of a very different age? Splicing ancient and modern as he did in The Hopkins Conundrum and A Right Royal Face-Off, Simon Edge pokes fun at Westminster culture and celebrates the cult of a medieval saint in another beguiling and utterly original comedy.

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Are you ready to take a walk on the seriously wild side? In the early 1980s, John Pakenham walked a total of 1,500 miles, with a series of companions from the local Turkana and Samburu tribes and their long-suffering donkeys, around a lake in the Great Rift Valley of northern Kenya. Repeatedly beset by extreme thirst and dehydration, bitterly cold torrential rains, poisonous spiders, vindictive mosquitoes and the ever-present threat of bandits, not to mention a fatal fight between two of his companions, he was lucky to live to tell his tale. Pakenham's account provides a rare glimpse of a tough terrain and its even tougher inhabitants, where every day was a battle for survival. This is extreme travel that, four decades on, still packs a powerful punch.

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Decluttering her tiny New York apartment, Daphne Maritch decides to throw out any belongings that do not spark joy. These include a high-school yearbook inherited from her school teacher mother, June, to whom the class of '68 dedicated the volume. June in turn attended every class reunion, scribbling notes and observations - not always charitably - after each one. When neighbour Geneva Wisenkorn finds the discarded book and wants to use it for her own ends, Daphne realises she wants to keep it after all. Fighting to reclaim it, she uncovers some alarming Maritch family secrets and sets in motion a series of events that prove to be both poignant and absurd. Good Riddance is a vastly entertaining screwball comedy from the Jane Austen of modern New York.

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Why Mummy Drinks meets Bridget Jones. The first in the bestselling comedy series. Juliette is a new mother, but life isn't going the way she'd hoped. She doesn't live in a cottage with roses around the door. She doesn't own a rolling pin. And Daisy's out-of-work actor father still hasn't proposed. While Juliette sobs her way through sleepless nights and nappy changes, Nick drinks Guinness and plays computer games. Meanwhile, his helicopter mother is always on hand to find fault--with Juliette. At least when Nick pops the question, things will look up...won't they? With a supporting cast including Juliette's over-honest mother, potty-mouthed grandmother, militant hippy best friend, and handsome-but-scarred hotel magnate Alex Dalton, the first in Suzy K Quinn's hilarious, bestselling Bad Mother series is a sassy, uplifting, addictive treat.

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When farmer Dan Maddicott is found shot dead in one of his fields, he leaves behind a young family and a farm deep in debt. Although the coroner records accidental death, village rumours suggest he has taken his own life so that the insurance payout can save his family from ruin. Dan's wife, Kate, refuses to believe the gossip and is determined to prove to herself, and her children, that his death was an accident. But could it have been murder? Kate discovers a set of old diaries containing secrets that may reveal how Dan really died. Set against the backdrop of the farming crisis of the turn of the 21st century, Caroline Kington's absorbing family drama also tells the secret history of another resident of the farm, decades before, whose tragic tale will come to have major repercussions in the present day.

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London, 2050. The socio-economic crisis of recent decades is over and consumerism is thriving. Ownership of land outside the city is the preserve of a tiny elite, and the rest of the population must spend to earn a Right to Reside. Ageing has been abolished thanks to a radical new approach, replacing retirement with blissful euthanasia at a Dignitorium. When architect Philip goes missing, his wife Alice risks losing her home and her status, and begins to question the society in which she was raised. Her search for him uncovers some horrifying truths about the fate of her own family and the reality behind the new social order.

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Brigitte Sharp is a brilliant but haunted young MI6 hacker. When she decodes encrypted online messages, which she believes are connected to her best friend's murder, Bridge uncovers evidence of a mole inside a top secret Anglo-French military drone project. Forced back into the field by MI6, after three years deskbound and in therapy, she discovers that the truth behind the Exphoria code is far worse than she could have imagined. Soon she's on the run, desperate and alone, as a nuclear terrorist plot unfolds around her...

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Alex Hickman goes in search of adventure as a news correspondent in the Balkans. He finds himself surrounded by key political figures, watching on as corruption and scandal take over the country.

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A collection of absurdist yet plausible short stories

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'Agile, wryly funny and wise' Robert Macfarlane A search for nearby nature and wildness After years of expeditions all over the world, adventurer Alastair Humphreys spends a year exploring the detailed local map around his home. Can this unassuming landscape, marked by the glow of city lights and the hum of busy roads, hold any surprises for the world traveller or satisfy his wanderlust? Could a single map provide a lifetime of exploration? Discovering more about the natural world than in all his years in remote environments, he learns the value of truly getting to know his neighbourhood. An ode to slowing down, Local is a celebration of curiosity and time spent outdoors, as well as a rallying cry to protect the wild places on our doorstep.

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The cast of the runaway bestseller, The Corner Shop in Cockleberry Bay, are back - including Rosa, Josh, Mary, Jacob, Sheila, new mum Titch and, last but by no means least, Hot, the adorable dachshund. Newly wed, and with her inherited corner shop successfully up and running, Rosa Smith seems to have all that anyone could wish for. But the course of true love never did run smooth and Rosa's suspicions that her husband is having an affair have dire consequences. Reaching rock bottom before she can climb back up to the top, fragile Rosa is forced to face her fears, addiction and jealousy head on. With a selection of meddling locals still at large, a mystery fire and Titch's frantic search for the real father of her sick baby, the second book in this enchanting series takes us on a further unpredictable journey.

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Who really looks after British interests abroad? Behind the pomp of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, another powerful force is busily but discreetly propping up the image of UK plc. For 28 years, Julia was a diplomatic spouse, juggling a growing family while supporting the demands of her husband’s role. Sometimes hilarious, sometimes terrifying, she reveals the realities of life as an ambassador’s wife, from food shortages to terrorist incidents to rubbing shoulders with the Queen, Mrs Thatcher and George Best – and rubbing knees with Mikhail Gorbachev. Light-hearted in style, The Ambassador’s Wife Tale has a serious core message: that the diplomatic wife stands centre-stage as the drama of world affairs unfolds.

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At the age of 24, Alastair Humphreys set off to try to cycle round the world. By the time he arrived back home, four years later, he had ridden 46,000 miles across five continents on a tiny budget of just GBP7,000 (AU$15000). Thunder and Sunshine is the sequel to the best-selling Moods of Future Joys. Here Alastair sails from Africa to South America, where he rides from the southern tip of Patagonia to northern Alaska. Crossing the Pacific, he cycles into a Siberian winter, carries on through Japan, China andnearing the end of his journey at last, across Asia and Europe towards his home in Yorkshire.

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Isolated and terrifyingly cold, the South Pole is every adventurer's dream and every adventurer's nightmare. In a bid to carry messages of peace to speak out at the Pole to help the harmony of the Earth, Tess and partner Pete would venture to the very end of the world. They join the historic South Pole Race, to compete with the likes of Olympic champion James Cracknell and Ben Fogle in the first race to the South Pole since Scott and Amundsen. To complete this mission they would have to battle severe medical problems, lack of money, hardship and deprivation. For Tess it was more than combating cold hands with a warm heart, it was a journey to push out the reaches of the human mind.

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Seeking Sanctuary is a rich and detailed journey into Sudan, a country that crystallizes present fears and prejudices about Islam, extremism and borderless global terrorism. It is told through the eyes of converts-people intimately familiar with the western world but who have chosen Sudan and its apparent discomfort over their former existence. The result is not the cliched clash of cultures, or a narrative of awkwardness, but an uplifting account of joyful assimilation. The book provides an extraordinary insight into the religious journey to conversion. Its focus on the individual stories reveals the enormous complexity of motive, the subtlety of the experience, and the need for sensitivity rather than commonplace suspicion. It explains how the concerts have molded their own belief systems out of a common set of values to create an existence that allows them to feel comfortable about themselves and their environment for the first time. It contains a fascinating collection of intimate portraits, and individual discoveries.

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Jules Mountain is a survivor. The odds of surviving his type of cancer were one in five. The odds of dying on Everest are one in 60, but these are severely shortened when factoring in an avalanche triggered by the 2015 Nepal earthquake. Jules lived to tell both tales, which he does in a way that conveys the agony and euphoria that extreme adventurers face, even when things go according to plan. And yet this is not merely an account of what happened in the aftermath of the most deadly disaster ever on the world's most iconic mountain. It is an exploration--internal as well as physical--of how logic, compassion and risk assessment are affected by altitude, vested interests and the stress of extreme circumstances.

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Having crossed a continent by train and sailed around the world by container ship, Clive Wilkinson has always had a penchant for slow travel. As his eightieth birthday approaches, he and his wife Joan set out on a new expedition: to tour the edges of England by electric car. How hard could that be? Given the parlous state of the country's charge-point infrastructure back in 2018, the answer turns out to be 'very'. In a 1,900-mile odyssey through fading seaside towns, rainswept hilltop passes and England's only desert, each day's driving for these unlikely pioneers is overshadowed by a cloud of apprehension. Will they make it to the next charge point? Will it be in working order? Will someone else be using it? You could only undertake such a trip with a calm temperament and robust sense of humour. Fortunately Clive has both. With a relentless curiosity for history, geography and, above all, people, he and Joan explore the reality of life on England's periphery - the 'left behind' areas that, by voting for Brexit, changed the course of British history - making new friends with every mile.

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'A FUN AND FLIGHTY READ' THE SUN' 'ANOTHER WILD AND WITTY TALE FROM NICOLA MAY' MILLY JOHNSON From the bestselling author of the Cockleberry Bay and Ferry Lane Market series Dull security or risky freedom - which would you choose? With her marriage in pieces, shy Cali Summers is faced with this decision and hits the world of fast love on an internet dating app. Using room 102 in the hotel where she works as her dating 'lair', she opens herself up to a world of sex, lies, deception, as well as personal discovery and passionate love. With a charming F1 engineer, a handsome army officer and her adulterous ex all on the scene, a predictable love match is far from on the cards

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Some people would describe Beattie Bramshaw as a pillar of the community. Many would applaud her numerous successes in the bakery competition at the annual village show. A small number might say, if pushed, that they find her a little on the bossy side. And one or two might just whisper the words 'interfering' and 'busybody' behind her back. But no one would have her down as a murderer. So why is she being questioned in Dreighton police station after being found in the village allotments, at the dead of night, wielding a kitchen knife just yards away from where local lottery winner, Yvonne Richards, was found stabbed to death? And what does all of this have to do with Doug Sparrow's prize marrows?

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An aspiring writer from the Southside of Glasgow, Wendy is in a rut. She tries to brighten her call-centre job by shoehorning as many long words as possible into conversations with customers. But her manager isn't amused by that and, after a public dressing-down, Wendy walks out. Jobless and depressed, she finds consolation in a surprise friendship with another disgruntled ex-colleague, wild-child painter Cat, who encourages her to live more dangerously. It's just what Wendy needs and it's also brilliant for her creative juices. But a black cloud is about to overshadow this new-found liberation, as well as to put Wendy on the wrong side of the law. Fresh, insightful and funny, as well as unflinchingly honest about the tougher side of life, Kenny Boyle's debut novel takes us deep into the psyche of a likeable misfit who treads a fine line between reality and fantasy - and just wants the world to see her true self.

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Ruby Matthews never expected to be starting over. But, after a sudden tragic loss, she questions whether she will ever be happy again. A chance encounter with handsome author Michael Bell throws her fragile heart into turmoil, while a dark family secret adds to her confusion. Only when she starts volunteering at the Bow Wow Club (Boyfriends of Widows, Wives of Widowers) does she begin to tackle her grief head on. Will she let love win? Or allow her past to continue to haunt her? In this charming sequel to Working It Out, you'll laugh and cry as Ruby searches for inner peace.

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The scene is Otisville Prison, upstate New York. A crew of fraudsters, tax evaders, trigamists and forgers discuss matters of right and wrong in a Talmudic study and prayer group, or 'minyan', led by a rabbi who's a fellow convict. As the only prison in the federal system with a kosher deli, Otisville is the penitentiary of choice for white-collar Jewish offenders, many of whom secretly like the place. They've learned to game the system, so when the regime is toughened to punish a newly arrived celebrity convict who has upset the 45th president, they find devious ways to fight back. Shadowy forces up the ante by trying to 'Epstein' - ie assassinate - the newcomer, and visiting poetry professor Deborah Liston ends up in dire peril when she sees too much. She has helped the minyan look into their souls. Will they now step up to save her? Jonathan Stone brings the sensibility of Saul Bellow and Philip Roth to the post-truth era in a sharply comic novel that is also wise, profound and deeply moral.

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Rachel Klein is sacked from her job at the White House after she sends an email criticising Donald Trump. As she is escorted off the premises she is hit by a speeding car, driven by what the press will discreetly call 'a personal friend of the President'. Does that explain the flowers, the get-well wishes at a press briefing, the hush money offered by a lawyer at her hospital bedside? Rachel's recovery is soothed by comically doting parents, matchmaking room-mates, a new job as aide to a journalist whose books aim to defame the President, and unexpected love at the local wine store. But secrets leak, and Rachel's new-found happiness has to make room for more than a little chaos. Will she bring down the President? Or will he manage to do that all by himself? Rachel to the Rescue is a mischievous political satire, with a delightful cast of characters, from one of America's funniest novelists.

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It's 2019 in Sudleigh, a market town not far from the south coast. It's not a bad place to live, provided the new housing development doesn't ruin it, but most residents are too caught up in their own grudges, sores and struggles to notice. Gap-year Tom is cleaning toilets but finding unexpected solace in his Chinese house-share. Former lounge musician Frank wants to pass his carpet business to his nephew Josh, killing the boy's dream to become a chef. Sharp-elbowed phone-sex operator Heather will stop at nothing to become manager of the golf club. Miss Bennett keeps putting her house on the market when she doesn't want to move. Do they all know how their lives are linked? And will creative writing tutor Tony, hard at work on his ironic pseudo-children's book The Jazz Cats, ever pluck up the courage to leave his unappreciative girlfriend Lydia? Meticulously observed, with flashes of wicked comedy, We Need to Talk offers a jigsaw puzzle of unwitting connections for the reader to assemble. The finished picture is an unflinchingly honest portrait of multi-jobbing, gig-economy Middle England on the eve of Covid.

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Midsummer, 1968. When Frank Banner and his wife Gail move to the Suffolk coast to work at a newly built nuclear power station, they are hoping to leave violence and pain behind them. Gail wants a baby but Frank is only concerned with spending time in the gleaming reactor core of the Seton One power station. Their new neighbours are also 'Atomics' - part of the power station community. But Frank takes a dislike to the boorish, predatory Maynard. And when the other man begins to pursue a young woman who works in the power station's medical centre, Frank decides to intervene. As the sun beats relentlessly upon this bleak landscape, his demons return. A vicious and merciless voice tells him he has an obligation to protect the young woman and Frank knows just how to do it. Radiation will make him stronger, radiation will turn him into a hero... The Atomics is a Gothic story of madness, revenge and Uranium-235.

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It is December 1941, and eight-year-old Galina and her friend Vera are caught in the siege of Leningrad, eating wallpaper soup and dead rats. Galina's artist father Mikhail has been kept away from the front to help save the treasures of the Hermitage. Its cellars could provide a safe haven, as long as Mikhail can survive the perils of a commission from one of Stalin's colonels. Three decades on, Galina is a teacher at the Leningrad Art Institute. What ought to be a celebratory weekend at her forest dacha turns sour when she makes an unwelcome discovery. The painting she starts that day will hold a grim significance for the rest of her life, as the old Soviet Union makes way for the new Russia and her world changes out of all recognition. Warm, wise and utterly enthralling, Molly Gartland's debut novel guides us from the old communist era, with its obvious terrors and its more surprising comforts, into the bling of 21st-century St Petersburg. Galina's story is an insightful meditation on ageing and nostalgia as well as a compelling page-turner.

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Edith, an elderly widow with a large house in an Islington garden square, needs a carer. Lauren, a nail technician born in the East End, needs somewhere to live. A rent-free room in lieu of pay seems the obvious solution, even though the pair have nothing in common. Or do they? Why is Lauren so fascinated by Edith's childhood in colonial Kenya? Is Paul, the handsome lodger in the basement, the honest broker he appears? And how does Charity, a Kenyan girl brutally tortured during the Mau Mau rebellion, fit into the equation? Capturing the spirited interplay between two women divided by class, generation and a deeper gulf from the past, and offering vivid flashbacks to 1950s East Africa, Madeline Dewhurst's captivating debut spins a web of secrets and deceit - where it's not always obvious who is the spider and who is the fly.

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Across the world, key decisions are made by tiny coteries of political and business leaders. With enough talent, elan and hard work, any of us can join them - so we are told. Follow key rules: be transparent; defer to bosses and clients; take responsibility; feedback is everything. Understand these and the world is our oyster. But is it? Decades of working with leaders have shown headhunter, executive coach and former NGO chair Douglas Board that it may not be. Many would-be leaders and senior managers fall into traps which block their rise and undermine their self-esteem. Elites outlines those traps and shows how best to avoid them. Armed with this knowledge, you may want to use it and join the top tier. However, it may also make you reconsider. Knowing how elites work, do you still want to join them? Or can you find ways to change them? In this authoritative, ground-breaking guide, Board suggests that true fulfilment demands an adventure into the unknown inside ourselves: why do we seek what we seek? Prepared to be surprised.

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Meet old and new characters in the Bay for Christmas fun and frolics.With both the Corner Shop and Cockleberry Cafe in safe hands, Rosa turns her attention to Ned's Gift, the charity set up in memory of the great-grandfather who turned her life around. Over at the Ship Hotel, Lucas has his work cut out with his devious new girlfriend and the mystery poisoning of an anonymous hotel inspector. Will the hotel still get its 3-star Seaside Rosette?Will Mary find true love at last? Can Titch cope with the demands of the shop and being heavily pregnant. And can Rosa, with a baby of her own, pull off the Cockleberry Bay Charity Christmas Concert in time? Christmas in Cockleberry Bay is a festive delight for fans of Rosa and her cheeky mini dachshund Hot, delivering a feast of unpredictable events and surprises.

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Detective Kilroy is assigned to investigate a horrible murder. He's a fine cop, from the brim of his hat to the soles of his brogues, but his inquiries, far from solving the mystery, lead him into a deeper one - and to Cynthia, an enigmatic woman with a secret that could overturn Kilroy's entire world. But where is this world? It seems both familiar and uncanny, with electric cars, but no digital devices, and the audience for a public execution arriving by tram. Meanwhile, the seas are retreating, and the Church exerts an iron grip on society - and history. Power belongs to those who control the narrative. Kilroy is forced to take sides between the Kafkaesque state that pays his wages, and the truth-seekers striving to destroy it, all the while becoming increasingly besotted with a woman who may only love him for his mind - in an alarmingly literal way. Please Do Not Ask for Mercy as a Refusal Often Offends is a dystopian satire that manages to be funny and frightening in equal measure.

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It is February 1976, and the naked corpse of a young rent boy is fished out of a pond on Hampstead Heath. Since the police don't seem to care, twenty-year-old Tommy Wildeblood - himself a former 'Dilly boy' prostitute - finds himself investigating. Dodging murderous Soho hoodlums and the agents of a more sinister power, Tommy uncovers another, even more shocking crime: the senior politician Jeremy Thorpe has ordered the murder of his former male lover. The trail of guilt seems to lead higher still, and a ruthless Establishment will stop at nothing to cover its tracks. In a gripping thriller whose cast of real-life characters includes Prime Minister Harold Wilson and his adviser Lady Falkender, Adam Macqueen plays 'what if' with Seventies political history - with a sting in the tail that reminds us that the truth can be just as chilling as fiction.

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Detective Sergeant Eigil Holst is on holiday in the countryside when the body of a baby is washed up on the banks of a nearby lake. The local magistrate orders the lake to be drained and the body of a young woman is discovered, naked and weighed down with stones tied to her feet and neck. Her identity is a mystery. Holst then takes it upon himself to find out where this woman came from, why she was in this remote location and who could have had motive to kill her. His investigations take him across Scandinavia and into central Europe as, gradually, he realises that the solution to the mystery could have huge implications for his own future. Originally published in 1903, The Forest Lake Mystery is considered to be the very first Danish crime novel, and the annual Danish crime writing awards are named in honour of its author, Palle Rosenkrantz.

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Former farmhand Jake, now a widower in his seventies, goes on the run in the Yorkshire Dales after committing a crime. As he travels the countryside trying to avoid capture, we learn of the events of his past: the wife he loved and lost, their child that he knows cannot be his, and the deep-seated need for revenge that manifests itself in a moment of violence. The Mating Habits of Stags reveals afresh the lyrical prose and mastery of character that distinguish Ray Robinson's fiction. An early version of the story was released in 2016 as the short film Edith, starring Peter Mullan and Michelle Fairley, which was Bafta-longlisted for Best British Short Film.

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It is 1777, and England's second-greatest portrait artist, Thomas Gainsborough, has a thriving practice a stone's thrown from London's royal palaces. Meanwhile, the press talks up his rivalry with Sir Joshua Reynolds, the pedantic theoretician who is the top dog of British portraiture. Fonder of the low life than high society, Gainsborough loathes pandering to grand sitters, but he changes his tune when he is commissioned to paint King George III and his large family. In their final, most bitter competition, who will be chosen as court painter, Tom or Sir Joshua? Two and a half centuries later, a badly damaged painting turns up on a downmarket TV antiques show being filmed in Suffolk. Could the monstrosity really be, as its eccentric owner claims, a Gainsborough? If so, who is the sitter? And why does he have donkey's ears? Mixing ancient and modern as he did in his acclaimed debut The Hopkins Conundrum, Simon Edge takes aim at fakery and pretension in this highly original celebration of one of our greatest artists.

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From a handy introduction to how the publishing world works, and how authors fit into it, to practical tips on writing your book, strategies for editing and re-writing, and an indispensable guide to creating the perfect submission, Tips from a Publisher is crammed full of common-sense advice that no aspiring writer should be without. Scott Pack was head of buying for the Waterstones book chain before spending several years as a publisher at HarperCollins, acquiring and editing numerous bestsellers and award-winning books. He is now a freelance editor and university lecturer, and hosts many writing workshops and classes.

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When 25-year-old Bella Michaels is brutally murdered in the small town of Strathdee, the community is stunned and a media storm descends. Unwillingly thrust into the eye of that storm is Bella's beloved older sister, Chris, a barmaid at the local pub, whose apparently easygoing nature conceals hard-won wisdom and the kind of street-smarts that only experience can bring.

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Fleeing war and the death of her family, Eve has carefully constructed a new life for herself in London. Yet she is troubled by vivid, disturbing dreams, symptoms of her traumatic past, which intrude increasingly on her daily life. As she is drawn further into her dream world, she finds herself caught up in a fresh battle for survival. A dark, lyrical fantasy about healing and reconnecting with the full richness of the self.

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A humorous collection of British cycle lanes which are ridiculous, dangerous, badly planned, substandard. Also some cycling safety issues and tips for cyclists.

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Our healing journeys differ. Some move country or hit the bottle. Diane's healing journey was travel. Her son loved traveling and mountain climbing in South America. He'd walked the Inca Trail and longed to return to the sacred citadel of Machu Picchu. On the first anniversary of his death, fragile and aching with grief, she traveled alone to Peru to scatter his ashes there. Diane's adventures en route were by turns scary, electrifying, and humorous: flying over the Nazca Lines; a consultation with an Inca witch; an accidental brush with Peruvian porn. She immersed herself in the culture and Peru reconnected her with life. This is a story about profound loss leading to spiritual gain. And it's a story about love.

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This is a love story. It's for anyone who loves writing and writers. It's also a story about the strange and terrible love affair between creativity and addiction, told by a charming, selfish bastard who finally confronts his demons in a place that's part Priory, part Purgatory, and where the wildest fiction can tell the soberest truth.

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'A joyride with a potent dose of wry social commentary' New York Times 'I never miss one of Elinor Lipman's funny, delightful novels' Judy Blume Jane Morgan is a valued member of her law firm - or was, until a prudish neighbour, binoculars poised, observes her having sex on the roof of her Manhattan apartment building. Police are summoned, and a judge sentences her to six months of home confinement. With Jane now jobless and rootless, trapped at home, life looks bleak. Yes, her twin sister provides support and advice, but mostly of the unwelcome kind. So when a doorman lets slip that Jane isn't the only resident of her building wearing an ankle monitor, she strikes up a friendship with fellow white-collar felon Perry Salisbury. As she tries to adapt to her new circumstances, she discovers she hasn't heard the end of that nosy neighbour - whose past isn't as decorous as her snitching would suggest. Why are police knocking on Jane's door again? Might her house arrest have a silver lining? Can two wrongs make a right?

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THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 'A must-read. Funny and utterly compelling' Jonathan Ross The Bafta-garlanded creator of Father Ted and The IT Crowd tells of his rise and painful fall. Part comedy-writing masterclass, part diary of a gender wars 'cancellation'. Having cut his teeth in music journalism, Graham Linehan became the finest sitcom writer of his generation. He captured the comedy zeitgeist not just as the co-creator of Father Ted but also with The IT Crowd and Black Books, winning five Baftas and a lifetime achievement award. Then his life took an unexpected turn. When he championed an unfashionable cause, TV commissioners no longer returned his emails, showbiz pals lost his number and his marriage collapsed. In an emotionally charged memoir that is by turns hilarious and harrowing, he lets us into the secrets of the writing room and colourfully describes the high-octane atmosphere of a sitcom set. But he also berates an industry where there was no one to stand by his side when he needed help. Bruised but not beaten, he explains why he chose the hill of women and girls' rights to die on - and why, despite the hardship of cancellation, he's not coming down from it any time soon.

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Now available in paperback, kids will love this exciting excavation of ancient Egyptian myths as they follow along with the clever Marcy on a quest to save her dad from the belly of the sphinx! Many years have passed since the tale of Arthur and the Golden Rope, and Arthur is now a world-famous adventurer. If only his daughter Marcy shared his enthusiasm for exploration. Determined to bring out Marcy's adventurous side, Arthur sets off to Egypt to bring back the legendary Book of Thoth. When Arthur doesn't return, Marcy must follow in his footsteps. Can she overcome her fears and rescue her father from the clutches of the great Sphinx?

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