Search results for ""Unbound""

The Surfboard is Dan Kieran's account of a week he spent in Cornwall building a seven-foot surfboard, even though he had never surfed a day in his life. He did this at a time when he felt he had reached his personal and professional limits: he needed to find a way to break through.Interspersed with the story of making the board – the intricate craft he had to learn, and the clarity of mind that came with that challenge – are the reflections on the obstacles, rewards and realisations he encountered while starting and running a successful business.This startlingly honest book is a finely crafted meditation on the importance of making things for their own sake and pushing beyond our preconceived limitations.

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A girl loses her beloved brothers when they are turned into swans by her wicked stepmother. She embarks on a vital quest with one purpose: to find them and turn them back into boys again.But the task is complicated. She must pick nettles with her bare hands and turn them to yarn, to spin and knit into shirts for each of the eleven brothers. And all the while she cannot speak, for if she does, even so much as a whisper, it will be like a knife in the heart of each swan-boy. And so she knits, silent. And where there is silence people will put words.The Wild Swans is a beautiful and lyrical extended version of the fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen in Jackie Morris's enchanting retelling, complete with delicate watercolour paintings throughout this new edition. A story about love and bravery, about how to listen, and about how, when we do not listen, we hear what we wish to hear.

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Black Vinyl White Powder is the definitive story of the British music industry’s first five decades, as told by its ultimate insider. A key player since the 1960s – whether penning hits for Dusty Springfield, discovering Marc Bolan or managing a series of stellar acts ranging from the Yardbirds to Wham! – Simon Napier-Bell draws on his wealth of contacts and unparalleled personal experience to give an enthralling account of a business that became like no other.From the crazed debauchery of rock megastars like the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin to the ecstasy culture that shaped dance music in the 1980s, Napier-Bell charts the growth of a world in which bad behaviour is not only tolerated but encouraged; where drugs are as important as talent; and where artists are pushed to their mental and physical limits in the name of profit and ego.Filled with the voices of artists, producers, managers and record company execs, Black Vinyl White Powder is the most raucous, entertaining and revealing history of British pop ever written.

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The Almanac revives the tradition of the rural almanac, connecting you with the months and seasons via moon-gazing, foraging, feast days, seasonal eating, meteor-spotting and gardening. Award-winning gardener and food writer Lia Leendertz shares the tools and inspiration you need to celebrate, mark and appreciate each moment of the year.

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The great Romantic poet Lord Byron starved himself compulsively for most of his life. His behaviour mystified his friends and other witnesses, yet he never imagined he was ill. Instead, he rationalised his behaviour as a fight for spiritual freedom and made it the cornerstone of his heroic ideal, which was central to his work and to his life and his death.This fresh biographical study aims to explore neglected or misunderstood aspects of his private life to illuminate his writing, his affairs with women, his passion for Napoleon and his conflicted friendships with Coleridge and Shelley. This in turn leads to a new understanding of his masterpiece, Don Juan. 15 July 2019 marks the 200th anniversary of its first publication.Antony Peattie situates these patterns of behaviour in a vividly rendered contemporary world, culminating in Byron’s last days in Greece, where he tried to starve himself into heroic leadership but damaged his constitution, resulting in his death at the age of thirty-six.

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The next challenge for fans of Cain''s Jawbone: the TikTok sensation and international bestseller.A body is found stabbed to death in a locked room. The police find no weapon, no motive and no suspects. However, the murderer has in their possession a box of one hundred cryptic picture postcards which - if properly understood - would explain not just this murder, but nine others. These are those cards.Readers must rearrange the pages of text to unravel the story and identify the murderer, victim and location for each of the ten murders. They must also consider the separate puzzles presented by the curious images on the other sides. Torquemada taught us that complete dedication is key and from devising detective pinboards to daily investigation diaries, Cain’s Jawbone puzzlers did him proud. But now the time has come to dust off that magnifying glass, because a global movement to sol

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A captivating blend of feminism, ancient roads and history that asks and answers the question: where are the women in nature?Why is it radical for women to walk alone in the countryside, when men have been doing so for centuries? The Hard Way is a powerful and illuminating book about addressing this imbalance, reclaiming fearlessness and diving into the history of the landscape from a woman’s point of view.Setting off to follow the oldest paths in England, The Ridgeway and The Harrow Way, Susannah Walker comes across artillery fire, concern from passing policemen and her own innate fear of lone figures in the distance: a landscape shaped by men, from prehistoric earthworks to today’s army bases.But along the way, Susannah finds Edwardian feminists, rebellious widows, forgotten writers and artists, as well as all their anonymous sisters who stayed at home throughout history. They become her co

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Not a Fictional Mum makes sure no woman gets left behind' Giovanna Fletcher In this inspiring, topical and painfully funny memoir, Not a Fictional Mum asks what it is that really makes a mum? What Makes a Mum? is a less conventional journey of being mothered and reaching motherhood, from teenage foster care, struggling with infertility and navigating the adoption process. Not a Fictional Mum reveals the policies and statistics that led her to campaign for change, and what emerges is a picture of resilience, determination and hope. A personal account and a manifesto for change, What Makes a Mum? looks at family beyond genetics and offers a guiding hand to anyone in the long and sometimes agonising pursuit of becoming a mother. Funny, clever . . . but above all else real and beautifully written' Lisa Faulkner Opened my eyes to a whole other part of being a mother' Rochelle Humes

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''This book is a tonic! Both practical and hopeful, it's essential reading for anyone who wants a route map to a fairer, greener future'' Caroline Lucas We are living in a social, political, economic and environmental emergency. The status quo is profoundly unstable; change is inevitable. Now is the time to get together to build a far healthier and more balanced world. The decades-old political orthodoxy, that greed is good, inequality doesn't matter and we can keep treating the planet as a mine and a dumping ground, has been a recipe for disaster. Our world needs a new vision, the Green vision. From Universal Basic Income to free education, from less stuff but more life, to genuine democratic opportunities for all, Natalie Bennett brings together a holistic, hopeful and practical vision for the future. The foundations of Change Everything are conversations with many thousands of people. We need to engage millions to bring together the

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Where and who do we want to be? How might we get there? What might happen if we stay on our current course?Comedian, writer and activist Grace Campbell was born into a political environment that suggested only aggressive, dominant men – like her father Alistair Campbell – were allowed power. Seeing this, she decided that if she wanted to be powerful she had to be like him, a decision that baffled the boys she grew up with.In The Future of Men, Grace draws on research, interviews and her own experience to examine how these dynamics and presumptions have shifted in her lifetime, and will continue to change in coming decades. Men have been writing about the future of women since words came into existence – now Grace returns the favour with this sharp, funny and personal essay.This brief but mighty book is one of five that comprise the first set of FUTURES essays. Each standalone book presents the author's original vision of a singular aspect of the future which inspires in them hope or reticence, optimism or fear. Read individually, these essays will inform, entertain and challenge. Together, they form a picture of what might lie ahead, and ask the reader to imagine how we might make the transition from here to there, from now to then.

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Award-winning campaigner and founder of the global Craftivist Collective Sarah Corbett shows how to respond to injustice not with apathy or aggression, but with gentle, effective protest. This is a manifesto for a more respectful and contemplative activism; for conversation and collaboration where too often these is division and conflict; for using craft to engage, empower and encourage us all to be the change we wish to see in the world. Sarah''s craftivism has helped change laws and business policies as well as hearts and minds; here, with thoughtful principles and practical examples, she shows that quiet action can speak as powerfully as the loudest voice.

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As we face global challenges like climate change and inequality, what if women could use their investments to build a cleaner, fairer and more sustainable world?Financial feminism – the belief in the financial equality of women – has been gathering momentum, largely in the context of the gender pay gap: on average a woman earns 80% of what a man does. But there’s another gap – the gender investing gap – which shows women are investing less than men, saving less for retirement and parking more in cash. When compounded by the gender pay gap, this results in a significant shortfall, but there’s more to financial feminism than simply addressing these gaps: women also care about where their money is invested and the impact it can have.In this practical and accessible guide, sustainable investing expert Jessica Robinson shows how through financial feminism, women can use their financial power to invest in a sustainable future and build the kind of world they want to live in. With jargon-free explanations and real-world examples, she demystifies the financial services industry, breaks down just what sustainable investing is and demonstrates the societal and environmental impact of the investment decisions we make.Arming women with the information they need to get started – and keep going – she hopes that more women will embrace financial feminism, invest to grow their own wealth and, in doing so, use their financial decisions to demand a better world.

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Arriving in New York with a failing relationship and a body she felt out of touch with, Stephanie Theobald set off on a 3,497 mile trip across America to re-build her orgasm from the ground up. What started as a quest for the ultimate auto-erotic experience became a fantastic voyage into her own body.She takes us from ‘body sex’ classes with the legendary feminist Betty Dodson to an interview with the former US Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders, who was fired for suggesting that masturbation should be talked about in schools. Along the way, we are immersed in a weird, countercultural America of marijuana farms and ‘ecosexual sexologists’.Sex Drive is a memoir about desire and pleasure, merging sexuality and spirituality, eighteenth-century porn and enlightenment philosophy. A new sexual revolution has begun – and this time round, it’s all about the women.

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“A bold attempt to portray the greyness of growing up without roots or identity, cast adrift in an uncomprehending and uncertain world.” Caroline Moorehead, Times Literary Supplement.March, 1945. The ravaged face of London will soon be painted with victory, but for Sylvie, the private battle for peace is just beginning. When one of her twins is stillborn, she is faced with a consuming grief for the child she never had a chance to hold. A Small Dark Quiet follows a mother as she struggles to find the courage to rebuild her life and care for an orphan whom she and her husband, Gerald, adopt two years later.Born in a concentration camp, the orphan’s early years appear punctuated with frail speculations, opening up a haunting space that draws Sylvie to bring him into parallel with the child she lost. When she gives the orphan the stillborn child’s name, this unwittingly entangles him in a grief he will never be able to console. His own name has been erased, his origins blurred. Arthur’s preverbal trauma begins to merge with the loss he carries for Sylvie, released in nightmares and fragments of emerging memories to make his life that of a boy he never knew. He learns all about ‘that other little Arthur’, yearning both to become him and to free himself from his ghost. He can neither fit the shape of the life that has been lost nor grow into the one his adopted father has carved out for him.As the novel unfolds over the next twenty years, Arthur becomes curious about his Jewish heritage, but fears what this might entail – drawn towards it, it seems he might find a sense of communion and acceptance, but the chorus of persecutory voices he has internalised becomes too overwhelming to bear. He is threatened as a child with being sent back where he belongs but no one can tell him where this is. He wanders as an adult looking for purpose but is unable to find his place. Feeling an imposter both at home and in the city, Arthur’s yearning for that sense of belonging echoes in our own time. Meeting Lydia seems to offer Arthur the opportunity to recast himself, yet all too soon he is trapped in a repetition of what he was trying to escape. A past he can neither recall nor forget lives on within him even as he strives to forge a life for himself. Survival, though, insists Arthur keeps searching and as he opens himself to the world around him, there are flashes of just how resilient the human heart can be. Through Sylvie’s unprocessed grief and Arthur’s acute sense of displacement, A Small Dark Quiet explores how the compulsion to fill the empty space death leaves behind ultimately makes the devastating void more acute. Yet however frail, the instinct for empathy and hope persists in this powerful story of loss, migration and the search for belonging.

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Bent Met police detective DI Frederick Street rules as the `Sheriff of Shoreditch' who loves shaking down the street goons he arrests. Elvis Street is the son who cannot stand his father for being the balls-out crook he caught in bed with his girl. Elvis wants to take Frederick down and end him forever. Neither father or son realises how much the other understands what controls them. Neither father or son will ever back down. Night Time Cool is the story of why?

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Hektor’s life of privilege is forever changed when a man, allegedly possessed by the sun god, inspires revolution among the oppressed townspeople of Wilusa – the historical Troy of myth. For Hektor, son of Bronze Age Wilusa’s despotic ruler, social equality contradicts every principle he has been indoctrinated into believing. But his principles and obsession with duty is alienating him from his young son, Hapi, with whom he has a fractured relationship. When the ‘possessed’ man saves Hapi’s life, Hektor is compelled to question the foundations upon which his father has constructed his life as he rebuilds his relationship with his child through the breaking of a foal. Wilusa collapses into political violence as the commoners rise up, and Hektor must decide whether to defend the people, but lose his identity, or remain loyal to an irrational, dangerous father. Breaking the Foals is a breathless gallop through an ancient world carved out by tradition, stained with blood and immortalised in the lives of heroes and villains.

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You say Lee-doh, We say Ly-doh  From beautiful Art Deco lidos to humble, fiercely loved community pools, this is the definitive photographic guide to around 130 lidos in the UK and Channel Islands. This unique collection has been updated, and each entry details what makes the pool special and what swimming there is like, as well as providing information about refreshments, accessibility and much more. This guide is organised geographically and includes information on how to find the lidos, it also suggests other nearby pools so you can plan your own lido road trips.

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'Ought to become a classic. It is an enshrinement of [Meades's] intense baroque and catholic cleverness' Roger Lewis, The Times'One of the foremost prose stylists of his age in any register . . . Probably we don’t deserve Meades, a man who apparently has never composed a dull paragraph' Steven Poole, Guardian'There are more gems in this wonderful book than I could cram into a dozen of these columns' Simon Heffer, Daily Telegraph'Such a useful and important critic . . . He is very much on the reader’s side, bringing his full wit to bear on every single thing he writes' Nicholas Lezard, SpectatorThis landmark publication collects three decades of writing from one of the most original, provocative and consistently entertaining voices of our time. Anyone who cares about language and culture should have this book in their life.Thirty years ago, Jonathan Meades published a volume of reportorial journalism, essays, criticism, squibs and fictions called Peter Knows What Dick Likes. The critic James Wood was moved to write: ‘When journalism is like this, journalism and literature become one.’Pedro and Ricky Come Again is every bit as rich and catholic as its predecessor. It is bigger, darker, funnier and just as impervious to taste and manners. It bristles with wit and pin-sharp eloquence, whether Meades is contemplating northernness in a German forest or hymning the virtues of slang.From the indefensibility of nationalism and the ubiquitous abuse of the word ‘iconic’, to John Lennon’s shopping lists and the wine they call Black Tower, the work assembled here demonstrates Meades's unparalleled range and erudition, with pieces on cities, artists, sex, England, France, concrete, faith, politics, food, history and much, much more.

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If you read only one book on business writing, make it this one. Chapters by the twelve partners of the Dark Angels Collective set out a comprehensive approach to writing more effectively for business. For nearly twenty years the Dark Angels programme has been championing the cause of more human, more emotive writing in the business world – because it’s this kind of writing that works, in branding, in copywriting, in writing for design, in annual reports, in all genres and all sectors.The Dark Angels approach is to draw on techniques from fiction, poetry and memoir to tell better stories – stories that connect with readers across all commercial media. The results, endorsed here by many of the most respected writers in the field, are gathered in this book as an indispensable source of inspiration and practical advice. It’s the book that sets the new benchmark for professional writers.

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When Chuck Mullin began to suffer from anxiety and depression aged seventeen, she turned to drawing comics as a way to make sense of her experience. She soon found that pigeons were the perfect subjects through which to explore the complexities of living with mental illness, and several years later, her funny, quirky birds have won legions of fans online.From Bad Times to Positivity, the comics in Bird Brain use humour to provide a glimpse of what’s going on in Chuck’s head: dissociative episodes; cycles of anxiety; her struggle to accept she’s not alone; and the power of optimism on the days it’s possible.

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Comedy is a game that all humans play. There are big social prizes if you win, but it is easy to end up with custard pie on your face... or worse. Comedy can soothe our pain, vent our anger, make us feel less alone and provide the answer to life's most difficult questions, such as, What do you call a man with a seagull on his head?'* It's a social glue but it can also be divisive, and the joke is on us if we don't understand how it works. So, what are the rules? How does comedy do its magic and why does it matter? Join professional comedy writer Joel Morris on a hilarious journey into the hidden world of shared laughter where he reveals the mechanisms that make jokes work and what comedy can teach us about ourselves. Offering astute analysis of everything from stand-up to slapstick and sitcom to spoof, Morris examines comedic patterns, rhythms and dynamics to uncover the algorithms that secretly underpin comedy. Packed with gags and examples of

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''Will allow you to find the peace, the rage, the acceptance, the anger, the love, the hatred, the joy and the connection that we all need to be allowed to feel'' Pippa Vosper, author of Beyond Grief No One Talks About This Stuff is a support group for almost-parents: it is a place to share journeys of loss and limbo, to confront social pressure and to find courage in the darkness of tragedies which happen every day yet are brushed under the carpet. So, we hear from a stepmother who wrestles with infertility. A husband and wife each tell their experience of losing their baby. A lesbian comes of age at a time when gay people rarely become parents. A father finds loss to be his unlikely superpower. Complex post-traumatic stress disorder impacts a person's choices about having a family. A black woman unpacks ancestral shame while finding renewed purpose. And each person shares how they lived through it. This captivatingly beautifu

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Shareware Heroes is a comprehensive, meticulously researched exploration of an important and too-long overlooked chapter in video game history.Shareware Heroes: The renegades who redefined gaming at the dawn of the internet takes readers on a journey, from the beginnings of the shareware model in the early 1980s, the origins of the concept, even the name itself, and the rise of shareware's major players — the likes of id Software, Apogee, and Epic MegaGames — through to the significance of shareware for the ‘forgotten’ systems — the Mac, Atari ST, Amiga — when commercial game publishers turned away from them.This book also charts the emergence of commercial shareware distributors like Educorp and the BBS/newsgroup sharing culture. And it explores how shareware developers plugged gaps in the video gaming market by creating games in niche and neglected genres like vertically-scrolling shoot-'em-ups (e.g. Raptor and Tyrian) or racing games (e.g. Wacky Wheels and Skunny Kart) or RPGs (God of Thunder and Realmz), until finally, as the video game market again grew and shifted, and major publishers took control, how the shareware system faded into the background and fell from memory.

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An eye-opening exploration of the weird and wonderful things human beings have done in pursuit (and denial) of the mighty orgasm, based on the hit Twitter account @WhoresofYoreThis is not a comprehensive study of every sexual quirk, kink and ritual across all cultures throughout time, as that would entail writing an encyclopaedia. Rather, this is a drop in the ocean, a paddle in the shallow end of sex history, but I hope you will get pleasantly wet nonetheless. The act of sex has not changed since people first worked out what went where, but the ways in which society dictates how sex is culturally understood and performed have varied significantly through the ages. Humans are the only creatures that stigmatise particular sexual practices, and sex remains a deeply divisive issue around the world. Attitudes will change and grow – hopefully for the better – but sex will never be free of stigma or shame unless we acknowledge where it has come from. Drawing upon extensive research from Dr Kate Lister's Whores of Yore website and written with her distinctive humour and wit, A Curious History of Sex covers topics ranging from twentieth- century testicle thefts to Victorian doctors massaging the pelvises of their female patients, from smutty bread innuendos dating back to AD 79, to the new and controversial sex doll brothels. It is peppered with surprising and informative historical slang and illustrated by eye-opening, toe- curling and hilarious images. In this fascinating book, Lister deftly debunks myths and stereotypes and gives unusual sexual practices an historical framework, as she provides valuable context for issues facing people today, including gender, sexual shame, beauty and language.

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Beware the buried skull underfoot and watch out for children with fur on their backs...Blood on Satan's Claw is widely regarded as part of the ‘unholy trinity’ of cult classics which gave birth to the film genre that would become known as folk horror. Along with The Wicker Man and Witchfinder General, it found new ways to terrify audiences using elements of superstition and folklore.Now, fifty years after its release, readers can experience the unearthing of this terror in the film’s first official novelisation: a compelling and frightening retelling of the fate of unfortunate villagers sacrificed by their own children as devil worship infiltrates their rural existence.Written by the film’s original screenwriter Robert Wynne-Simmons and featuring haunting new illustrations from Richard Wells, it is an atmospheric and defining cult classic in the making.

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Did you know that Sirimavo Bandaranaike of Sri Lanka was the first woman in the world to become a democratically elected prime minister? That Tina Anselmi was a wartime resistance fighter who became the first woman to serve as a cabinet minister in Italy? Or that Sylvie Kinigi of Burundi was the first woman to serve as a prime minister in Africa? It is high time these extraordinary women who helped shape our world became household names, and this book brings them at last to the fore.Women Who Won is a celebration of 70 women from the last 100 years: politicians from around the globe who fought for election in a man’s world… and won. Beautifully illustrated by artist Emmy Lupin, it features well-known figures, including Kamala Harris, Benazir Bhutto, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Jacinda Ardern and Julia Gillard, alongside lesser-known women whose stories are ready to be heard: Shidzue Katō, one of the first women elected to the Diet of Japan Yulia Tymoshenko, the first woman prime minister of Ukraine Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman elected to the US Congress Peri-Khan Sofieva, the first democratically elected Muslim woman Ethel Blondin-Andrew, the first Indigenous woman elected to Canadian parliament Women of the past, but also women of the present and future. Women who smashed the political glass ceiling. Women who fought to leave a positive legacy for future generations. Women who paved the way for girls of today to become women who won.

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THE NO. 1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLERWhen Douglas Adams died in 2001, he left behind 60 boxes full of notebooks, letters, scripts, jokes, speeches and even poems. In 42, compiled by Douglas’s long-time collaborator Kevin Jon Davies, hundreds of these personal artefacts appear in print for the very first time.Douglas was as much a thinker as he was a writer, and his artefacts reveal how his deep fascination with technology led to ideas which were far ahead of their time: a convention speech envisioning the modern smartphone, with all the information in the world living at our fingertips; sheets of notes predicting the advent of electronic books; journal entries from his forays into home computing – it is a matter of legend that Douglas bought the very first Mac in the UK; musings on how the internet would disrupt the CD-Rom industry, among others.42 also features archival material charting Douglas’s school days through Cambridge, Footlights, collaborations with Graham Chapman, and early scribbles from the development of Doctor Who, Hitchhiker’s and Dirk Gently. Alongside details of his most celebrated works are projects that never came to fruition, including the pilot for radio programme They’ll Never Play That on the Radio and a space-inspired theme park ride.Douglas’s personal papers prove that the greatest ideas come from the fleeting thoughts that collide in our own imagination, and offer a captivating insight into the mind of one of the twentieth century’s greatest thinkers and most enduring storytellers.

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Ever wanted to know more about the Big Bang but didn’t have Brian Cox’s email address? Ever wanted to cry out, ‘What on Earth is a black hole?’ but been afraid you’d be shouting into the abyss? Ever wanted to find out how gravity works but never found the book to pull you in?Well, have no fear: DARK is an easily digestible beginner’s guide to the Universe in a handy A to Z format, with entries on everything from Dark Matter and Quantum Physics to NASA and the Zoo Hypothesis.What’s more, the book is beautifully presented, so you’ll want to keep it out on display, dipping in to check exactly when it is that we humans are likely to be engulfed by the furnace of the Sun. It boasts a number of stunning design elements throughout, including original artworks and bespoke lettering to accompany each of the twenty-six chapters, as well as inspiring, enlightening and amusing quotes about space rendered in exquisitely considered typography.So, if you want to brush up on your astronomical ABCs while simultaneously receiving a visual massage from some rather splendid art and design, then this may well be the cosmic coffee-table book for you.

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When Lizzie Pickering's young son Harry died in 2000, she set out on a journey to understand how she could survive her grief and learn to live with it. In When Grief Equals Love, she details the lessons she’s learned from her own experiences and those of others, who share their thoughts in this moving and tender book.Lizzie opens her diaries, written in the early years after Harry’s death, revealing her observations on the grief of his siblings and family, what helped and what hurt. Revisiting those diaries, she reflects on time passing, and what has changed for her and her family since.Lizzie looks at the myth of closure, survivor’s energy and cumulative grief – when life experiences pile up and become too much to bear. She includes interviews with bereaved friends, who share their own insights, and she provides a toolkit based on what has helped her and what she recommends to those she now helps with grief guidance.In most lives, unfortunately, grief and loss are inevitable. But living with grief can still be living. This book is for those going through grief and anyone who might need to support them. There are no easy answers, but nobody should have to cope alone.

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This is the definitive behind-the-scenes account of Capcom’s horror video game series Resident Evil – one of the most popular, innovative and widely influential franchises of all time. Industry expert Alex Aniel spent two years interviewing key former members of Capcom staff, allowing him to tell the inside story of how Resident Evil was envisioned as early as the late 1980s, how its unexpected and unprecedented success saved the company from financial trouble, how the series struggled at the turn of the century and, eventually, how a new generation of creators was born after the release of Resident Evil 4. Itchy, Tasty narrates the development of each Resident Evil game released between 1996 and 2006, interspersed with fascinating commentary from the game creators themselves, offering unique insight into how the series became the world-conquering franchise it is today.

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Joe Bovshover had chosen the park. He knew that this full moon he’d become wolf. He knew the deer in the park would make easy prey. The deer lived simply and were soft, there was no wildness to these city animals, but there was in Joe. . .It’s now 1980, and Joe, the skinhead werewolf, once again stalks London. Lights in the night, burning red and white; amidst aggro, proper shmatta, and mod witches.Tim Wells brings us another short, sharp instalment of his pulp skinhead-punk-horror series.

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Feather, Leaf, Bark & Stone is a book of poems and meditations with a difference. More than a hundred short texts have been typed onto small squares of gold leaf, then photographed. These pieces are arranged in a sequence which culminates in a glorious final section made up of texts typed directly onto leaves, bark and feathers. Jackie started to write the pieces shortly after her father died, and for the first time ever she found herself unable to paint. The words grew out of her grief and, guided by her deep intimacy with the natural world, these objects emerged to fill the space her paintings had left behind. This book is full of the light and wind that fills the Pembrokeshire coast where it was crafted, each page anchored to the landscape by the mechanical rhythm of Jackie’s antique typewriters. The result is a collection of individual artworks to be both looked at and read. It is poetry re-imagined by a visual artist; words transformed back into their original function as images.Feather, Leaf, Bark & Stone announces a new departure for Jackie Morris and confirms her as an artist and writer at the peak of her power.

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The time of peace is over. The time of war has begun.Bera is struggling to reconcile her desire to be an ordinary woman with the weight of her Valla duty to shape the future. Love and friendship vie with her longing for freedom at sea on her beloved longboat. Warned that Chaos is coming and that Vikings have taken her kin as slaves, Bera realises her destiny is to follow them to Wolf Island, a land that has abandoned the old gods. In a quest to save her loved ones, Bera must use her smith’s iron lore and the knowledge of her Valla ancestors to follow an ancient path into a dark labyrinth, where human time is meaningless. There, she confronts her worst foe to finally bring peace – at the cost of a life.The voyage that began with Sea Paths and continued with Obsidian ends with Landfall, Bera’s most dangerous and important journey of all.

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Folk tales take us beyond our own boundaries into unknown lands. Yet within these adventures, riddles and enchantments we find our common ground and shared humanity. Lost & Found is Elizabeth Garner’s own retelling of fifteen treasured folk tales that have nurtured, sustained, terrified and enthralled her in equal measure. Some of the stories are taken from the books of her childhood, some are remembered, and others she has discovered in her reading over the years.Garner’s tapestry of words is adorned with engraver Phoebe Connolly's beautiful woodcut illustrations that bring the friends and foes of folklore to life. Included in the collection are stories such as ‘The Riddle of the Crossroads’, ‘The Twisted Oak’, ‘The Wits of the Whetstone’ and many more. With a varied and diverse cast of characters, Garner’s retellings expertly traverse a myriad of mysterious worlds; always staying true to tradition, while simultaneously speaking to modern times.This illustrated collection is another link in the chain between storyteller, listener and our shared ancestors: tales from the past, told to enrich the present and to be carried forward into the future.

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In 2001, fans of the internet were introduced to scanned pages from spoof local newspaper The Framley Examiner. Packed with humdrum and preposterous news stories, classified ads, local business features and headlines that seemed to have been typed while asleep, it skewered the banal madness of small-town existence, perfectly encapsulating the British national character.Framley’s strange yet familiar community – stuffed with its own cast, insane geography and rich local history – struck a chord with those who recognised their own home towns in its reflection. The website was loved and shared by an eager public as well as famous fans from Little Britain, The Simpsons and the Cambridge Centre for Theoretical Cosmology (Professor Stephen Hawking was a Framley enthusiast).Marking the twentieth anniversary of the website's first appearance The Incomplete Framley Examiner combines the pages of the original book, published in 2002, with all the pages published online in the years since and brand new material for a bigger, more luxurious, toilet-proof compendium for the annals of history.

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Plastic bottles, cardboard boxes, aluminium cans… we all get through a lot of rubbish, but do you really know what happens after you put it in the bin? Are you even sure which bin it goes in?Recycling has never been more important – but it has also never been more complicated. Where do you put bottle lids? Why can't black plastic be recycled? What do you do with labels? The Rubbish Book answers all these questions and many more, providing you with all the information you need to become a true recycling expert, so you can help protect the planet with confidence.Written by an award-winning sustainability expert, it includes an A–Z of household items and whether they can be recycled; an in-depth look at the collection and sorting processes; a break-down of what the recycling symbols on our packaging actually mean; and an insight into the future of recycling and the new materials that will change the way we look at rubbish for ever.

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Zeynel, a carpet merchant turned vampire, has accepted his fate and now searches for the stories of his past. With his ties to Istanbul threadbare after the passing of his wife, Ayşe, he travels across the West in search of a new home. On the invitation of a young friend, Alfred Grimsley, Zeynel moves to a quiet English town where he is confronted by a fad for all things Turkish – but not as he knows it.Zeynel’s new life is thrown off balance when Mora Strigoi, the vampire responsible for Zeynel’s death, appears at his door begging for forgiveness. With Mora’s arrival and Alfred on the trail of a mysterious serial killer, Zeynel must decide whether he can make peace with the past before everything he has built begins to unravel.The Carpet Merchant of Konstantiniyya, Vol II is the second and final instalment of the Eisner-nominated graphic novel. A modern Gothic story that takes apart the 'vampire as other' trope, it tells of the healing balm of compassion and the redemptive power of forgiveness.

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'This honest and beautiful book is a story of resilience and doing life your way' Fearne Cotton'Kris's story should make you feel grateful for every second you're alive. It's a testament to her positivity, empathy, bravery and her unfailing sense of humour' Dermot O'Leary'A manifesto for how to be alive. It will leave you calm, hopeful and unafraid' Dawn O'PorterKris was living a totally normal life as a twenty-three-year-old: travelling the world, falling in love, making plans. However, when she found a lump in her boob and was told that it was not only cancer, but also incurable, life took on a completely new meaning. She was diagnosed at an age when life wasn’t something to be grateful for, but a goddamn right.Little did Kris know it was cancer that would lead her to a life she had never considered: a happy one. From founding a charity to visiting Downing Street, campaigning at festivals to appearing on TV, and being present at the birth of her nephew; in the face of all the possible prognoses, Kris is surviving, thriving, and resolutely living.Glittering a Turd is more than just another cancer memoir; it’s a handbook for living life to the fullest, shining a new perspective on survival and learning to glitter your own turd, whatever it might be. Kris has survived the unsurvivable for twelve years. Here, she begins to discover why.

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Song is just a boy when he sets out from Lishui village in China. Brimming with courage and ambition, he leaves behind his impoverished broken family, hoping he’ll make his fortune and return home. Chasing tales of sugarcane, rubber and gold, Song embarks upon a perilous voyage across the oceans to the British colony of Guiana, but once there he discovers riches are not so easy to come by and he is forced into labouring as an indentured plantation worker.This is only the beginning of Song’s remarkable life, but as he finds himself between places and between peoples, and increasingly aware that the circumstances of birth carry more weight than accomplishments or good deeds, Song fears he may live as an outsider forever.This beautifully written and evocative story spans nearly half a century and half the globe, and though it is set in another century, Song’s story of emigration and the quest for an opportunity to improve his life is timeless.

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Before Edward Powys Mathers wrote Cain's Jabwone, the world's most difficult literary puzzle, he was a cryptic crossword creator. Published under his pseudonym ‘Torquemada’, his puzzles would taunt readers for days. He created his first cryptic crossword puzzle in 1924 and went on to set them for the Saturday Westminster and the Observer for the next 15 years. His true identity was only revealed when he died in 1939.As well as earning the reputation for setting the world's toughest crosswords, Torquemada – or 'Torq' as he was often referred to – was also delightfully creative: with many puzzles written in perfectly constructed verse or delivered as mini-narratives to their solvers. This selection of Torquemada's best crosswords was originally published in 1942 and this edition contains tributes to his life and achievements, including one by his widow, R.C. Mathers as well as a foreword by the crossword puzzle editor for the New York Times, Will Shortz.The successful revival of Cain's Jawbone has inspired a new generation of puzzle solvers. Here is the next challenge for Torquemada's fans – dare you take it on?Health warning: These crosswords are extremely difficult and not for the faint-hearted.

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‘Fabulous. I read this in a single weekend and I didn’t want it to end. Scammers, con-artists, catfishers – you have met your match’ Jeremy Vine‘A brilliant read. Moves effortlessly between hilarious and informative and back again’ Ed Byrne, comedian and actor'Astonishing' Daily MailOnline romance fraud is a problem across the globe. It causes financial and emotional devastation, yet many people refuse to take it seriously. This is the story of one middle-aged woman in a cardigan determined to understand this growing phenomenon.No other woman has had so many online romances – from Keanu Reeves to Brad Pitt to Prince William – and Becky Holmes is a favourite among peacekeeping soldiers and oil rig workers who desperately need iTunes vouchers. By winding up scammers and investigating the truth behind their profiles, Becky shines a revealing, revolting and hilarious light on a very shady corner of the internet.Featuring first-hand accounts of victims, examples of scripts used by fraudsters, a look into the psychology of fraud and of course plenty of Becky’s hysterical interactions with scammers, this is a must-read for anyone who needs a reminder that Keanu Reeves is NOT in love with them.

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‘As educational as it is enlightening … Read this’ SARA PASCOE‘Passionately argued, meticulously researched and angry as hell ... leads the reader beyond the strip club and on to the battlefield where sex workers fight for their rights’ KATE LISTER‘Deeply impressive ... An important book, sorely needed’ CAROL LEIGH'An unflinching takedown of inadequate working conditions … A must read’ JUNO MAC, co-author of Revolting ProstitutesForget everything you think you know about strippersIn this powerful book, Stacey Clare, a stripper with over a decade of experience, takes a detailed look at the sex industry – the reality of the work as well as the history of licensing and regulation, feminist themes surrounding sex work, and stigma. Bringing her personal knowledge of the industry to bear, she offers an unapologetic critique and searing indictment of exploitation, and raises the rights of sex workers to the top of the agenda.The Ethical Stripper rejects notions of victimhood, challenges stigma and shame, and unpacks decades of confusion and contradictions. It’s about the sex-work community’s fight for safety and self-determination, and it challenges you to think twice about every newspaper article, documentary and film you have seen about stripping and sex work.

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Shortlisted for the CWA Daggers Debut Award 2022Cullrothes, in the Scottish Highlands, where Innes hides a terrible secret from his girlfriend Alice, a gorgeous, cheating, lying schoolteacher. In the same village, Donald is the aggressive distillery owner, who floods the country with narcotics alongside his single malt; when his son goes missing, he becomes haunted by an anonymous American investor intent on purchasing the Cullrothes Distillery by any means necessary. Schoolgirl Jessie is trying to get the grades to escape to the mainland, while Grandpa counts the days left in his life.This is a place where mountains are immense and the loch freezes in winter. A place with only one road in and out. With long storms and furious midges and a terrible phone signal. The police are compromised, the journalists are scum, and the innocent folk of Cullrothes tangle themselves in a fermenting barrel of suspicion, malice and lies.The Mash House uses multiple narratives to weave together the parallel lives of individuals in the village. Each fractured by the fears and uncertainty in their own minds.

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Preston, 1981. Maud, who is twelve and lives with her dysfunctional parents and her elder brother, spends a lot of her time in her bedroom writing letters to her favourite popstar, Tom Harding, the lead singer of a punk band called Horsefly.No one really understands her or tries to – and she thinks Tom just might have some answers to her many, many questions...

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Hannah Dines and Jess Leyden are two perfectly normal, brilliant women. One, a world record-holding athlete and a Paralympian on the trike. The other, a multiple age-group world champion and one of the most promising rowers Great Britain has to offer. In the five years (yes, that’s right) between Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020, they will face cancer scares, crushing defeats, and the biggest global health crisis in a century. They will get dropped, they will get injured, and they will win medals. They will spend the best years of their lives knowing that at any moment, it could all come crashing down. That all the training, all the sacrifice could be in vain, wasted effort as a pandemic raged. That maybe these could be the years that will shape their finest hour – or that maybe, after everything that they’ve been through, it could all still be snatched away at the last…

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Featuring a foreword by Will SelfWe’ll all experience recovery at some point in our lives, whether from addiction, physical illness, mental health issues or loss. Many of us heal, and we may discover ways to live with our changed selves, to reclaim a life. We may find a new voice, or unearth a voice that has been submerged.Vitally, recovery can mean community. This anthology – which grew out of a small creative writing class run by Lily Dunn at Hackney Recovery Service, and was later broadened into a nationwide call for submissions by Dunn and her teaching partner, Zoe Gilbert – represents a community of writers: new, unheard voices alongside emerging and established authors.Theirs are stories from the dark back alleys, the deep crevices of the mind, and from the wild, ecstatic heights of life before, during and after recovery. These are voices that urgently need to be heard, in all their variety.

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The strangest detective story in the history of music – inspired by a true incident.A world spiralling towards war. A composer descending into madness. And a devoted woman struggling to keep her faith in art and love against all the odds.1933. Dabbling in the fashionable “Glass Game” – a Ouija board – the famous Hungarian violinist Jelly d’Arányi, one-time muse to composers such as Bartók, Ravel and Elgar, encounters a startling dilemma. A message arrives ostensibly from the spirit of the composer Robert Schumann, begging her to find and perform his long-suppressed violin concerto.She tries to ignore it, wanting to concentrate instead on charity concerts. But against the background of the 1930s depression in London and the rise of the Nazis in Germany, a struggle ensues as the “spirit messengers” do not want her to forget.The concerto turns out to be real, embargoed by Schumann’s family for fear that it betrayed his mental disintegration: it was his last full-scale work, written just before he suffered a nervous breakdown after which he spent the rest of his life in a mental hospital. It shares a theme with his Geistervariationen (Ghost Variations) for piano, a melody he believed had been dictated to him by the spirits of composers beyond the grave.As rumours of its existence spread from London to Berlin, where the manuscript is held, Jelly embarks on an increasingly complex quest to find the concerto. When the Third Reich’s administration decides to unearth the work for reasons of its own, a race to perform it begins.Though aided and abetted by a team of larger-than-life personalities – including her sister Adila Fachiri, the pianist Myra Hess, and a young music publisher who falls in love with her – Jelly finds herself confronting forces that threaten her own state of mind. Saving the concerto comes to mean saving herself.In the ensuing psychodrama, the heroine, the concerto and the pre-war world stand on the brink, reaching together for one more chance of glory.

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‘His marginalisation in dual cultures ascribed to him allows him a brilliant birds-eye view of both, which he employs in his bid to untangle the cultural mindsets he comes across’ Muslim News‘Offers invaluable insights into how a modern cosmopolitan navigates the complex and delicate contours of faith, identity and belonging in an otherwise globally, interconnected world’ Ekow Nelson, reimaginingWhether negotiating the mind-games of the Israeli intelligence services or performing ablutions in a London bathroom, Mohammad Chowdhury’s life as a British Muslim travelling the world brings daily challenges. Border Crossings is the story of Chowdhury’s journey, gripping in some parts and shame-inducing in others, as he describes a lifelong struggle to reconcile the British, Asian and Muslim sides of his identity, constantly dealing with the mistrust of Westerners alongside the hypocrisies of his own community and their misunderstanding of Islam.Chowdhury's story echoes the experience of thousands of Western Muslims who since 9/11 have been subjected to a constant barrage of questions that cast doubt over the very goodness of their faith. It is the story of a man who cries when England win the Ashes, yet still finds himself screaming in the face of racism and religious bigotry. This timely book powerfully rejects the poisonous narrative that Muslims can no longer be trusted as honest citizens of the West.

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