- Table View
- List View
Always By My Side: Losing the love of my life and the fight to honour his memory
by Christina SchmidA LOVE LOST.A LIFE CUT SHORT.'From the moment I set eyes on him I adored him. The connection between us was so strong it went beyond everything else. His job, my job, his lifestyle, my lifestyle. All that fell away.'And then one earth-shattering day Christina's worst nightmare came true when Oz was killed on his final day of duty before flying home to his family.This is Christina and Oz's story: a story about love and loss, hope and despair and of living in constant fear. Christina's extraordinary bravery and composure is an inspiration to anyone who has ever lost someone they love.
Crooked Talk: Five Hundred Years of the Language of Crime
by Jonathon GreenThe language of crime has a long and venerable history - in fact, the first collection of words specifically used by criminals, Hye-Way to the Spittel House, dates from as early as 1531. Jonathon Green is our national expert on slang, and in Crooked Talk he looks at five hundred years of crooks and conmen - from the hedge-creepers and counterfeit cranks of the sixteenth century to the blaggers and burners of the twenty-first - as well as the swag, the hideouts, the getaway vehicles and the 'tools of the trade'. Not to mention a substantial detour into the world of prisons that faced those unlucky enough to be caught by the boys in blue. If you have ever wondered when the police were first referred to as pigs, why prison guards became known as redraws, or what precisely the subtle art of dipology involves, then this book has all the answers.
Tough Calls: Making the right decisions in challenging times
by Allan LeightonWe all make decisions every day. Most of them are pretty straightforward, but every so often there are some really tough calls. In business the choices that executives are sometimes faced with can make the difference between acclaimed success and ongoing prosperity, and failure and financial disaster.In Tough Calls, leading businessman Allan Leighton focuses on specific decisions he has made in the course of his career - at ASDA, Royal Mail and elsewhere - and describes the thought processes behind them. He also talks to many others in the know, from Sir Stuart Rose and Sir Terry Leahy to Adam Crozier at ITV and Stephen Hester at RBS. Taking into account facts that were known to them at the time, as well as other interrelated factors and potentially high-risk consequences, this line-up of top executives outline their approaches to breaking down often highly complex problems into achievable solutions.All Allan Leighton’s royalties from this book will be donated to Breast Cancer Care (Registered charity: England and Wales 1017658, Scotland SC038104)
Gypsy Wedding
by Kate LaceBrought up in a caravan on a settled trailer park, Vicky could not be happier with her life. At 15 she is engaged to her childhood friend Liam, the handsomest man on the park. Not only that, but she can't help feeling she's got the balance of her life just right. She's doing well at school and if she works hard she might even fulfill her dream of becoming a dressmaker.But as she turns 17 the pressure is on for her and Liam to set a date for the wedding, and suddenly Vicky is not so sure. How can she give up her dreams and spend the rest of her life looking after Liam? Especially as her classmate Jordan seems a far more exciting prospect...What on earth is a girl to do? She loves Liam, but Jordan makes her feel things she's never felt before, and her best friend Kelly's life seems so much more fun than her own limited options. But can she really turn her back on her friends and family and survive in a hostile world?In the year running up to her wedding, Vicky is about to find out that life outside the traveller community is a lot more complicated than she'd thought...
A Dance of Ghosts
by Kevin BrooksPI John Craine is struggling to cope with the weight of his past. Sixteen years ago his wife, Stacy, was brutally murdered. Craine found her body in their bed. And since then, to escape the pain and the unanswered questions, he has buried himself in work by day, and whisky by night. But one phone call changes everything. The mother of missing young woman Anna Gerrish calls on his services, and Craine soon finds himself at the centre of a sinister web of corruption and lies that leads back into the murky waters of the past - and to the night that Craine has spent over a decade trying to forget. As he delves deeper and deeper into the case everything gets increasingly, terrifyingly, personal. And it's down to Craine to stop history from repeating itself ...
Chloe's Song
by Leslie ThomasThe new tale of love and life, rich with humour and pathos, from our best loved storyteller. From the prison cell where Chloe Smith, 43, is awaiting trial for the merciful murder of the only man who ever loved her with honesty, she recalls the men in her life who lied to her. She remembers her adored father, who drank too much; the loss of her virginity at Stonehenge to a schoolboy, her marriage to petty crook Zane Tomkins, the Isle of Wight ferryman who said he was a lonely deep sea sailor, the young priest who said he loved her but left to establish a church for men, or the lighthouse keeper who shouted in his sleep-all these men, and many others, have let Chloe down. Chloe`s Song is the story of one woman`s quest to get what every woman wants-a man who tells the truth.
Until the Darkness Comes
by Kevin BrooksPI John Craine has come to Hale Island to get away from it all - the memories and the guilt, and a past that just won't let go. But within hours he stumbles across the dead body of a young girl on the beach. When the police arrive the body has inexplicably disappeared. Or - in his already tormented state - did Craine imagine it in the first place?Determined to get at the truth, Craine starts asking questions. But it seems no one on the island is talking. And all too soon he finds himself tangled up in a deadly network of fear and violence. Someone has a dark secret to keep, and Craine is getting in the way...
Wrapped in White
by Kevin BrooksPI John Craine - still struggling to cope with the weight of his past - is forced to finally confront it in his most personal and frightening case yet.PI John Craine is hired to investigate the brutal murder of a Somali youth called Jamaal Tan. The police are treating the murder as just another gang-related crime, but Tan’s aunt believes there’s more to it than that, and she claims the police are trying to cover up her nephew’s death.While investigating the case, Craine learns of the sudden death of his friend and mentor Leon Mercer. At first it appears to be a tragic accident, but Craine soon finds himself entangled in two deeply suspicious investigations. And before long he comes face to face with a man he hoped never to see again.
The Burma Legacy
by Geoffrey ArcherSam Packer, hero of Firehawk and The Lucifer Network, has a new assignment that will combine all his diplomatic and survival skills. An aging, wealthy Japanese businessman, Tetsuo Kamata, wants to rescue an ailing British car company, but the moment the announcement is made, death threats are made against Kamata by a former prisoner-of -war, Peregrine Harrison, who was tortured on the infamous Burma Railway. For the last five decades, Harrison has been the leader of a British-based cult. Packer can't believe that at the age of 77 Harrison has the strength or will to exact revenge, but he reckons without Harrison's cult adherents, one of whom is a ruthless ex-SAS operative now involved in drug smuggling in the Burma triangle. Packer learns that Kamata will be hit while visiting a new factory site in Burma and is flown out under cover to prevent a tragedy. Kamata is kidnapped and Packer is soon in the jungle, both hunter and hunted as he searches for the missing man and is tracked by his enemies. The Burma Legacy combines Geoffrey Archer's immaculate research with heart stopping action.
Simply English: An A-Z of Avoidable Errors
by Simon HefferIn his best-selling Strictly English Simon Heffer explained how to write and speak our language well. In Simply English he offers an entertaining and supremely useful A–Z guide to frequent errors, common misunderstandings and stylistic howlers. What is the difference between amend and emend, between imply and infer, and between uninterested and disinterested? When should one put owing to rather than due to? Why should the temptation to write actually, basically or at this moment in time always be strenuously resisted? How does one use an apostrophe correctly, ensure that one understands what alibi really means, and avoid the perils of the double negative?With articles on everything from punctuation to tabloid English to adverbs and adjectives, Simply English is the essential companion for anyone who cares about the language and wants to use it correctly.
May I Have Your Attention Please?
by James CordenTHE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLING AUTOBIOGRAPHYSo... the story of my life. I've often thought about this moment, about what it would be like to write my memoirs. I always thought it would make me feel important. It doesn't. If anything it makes me feel a little strange.The truth is, I should never have been this famous guy. I wasn't the cool, clever, good-looking boy at school. But I always dreamt of it, hoped for it, longed for it: throughout school when I was disruptive, in my teens when I tried to form my own boy band and through hundreds of auditions for parts which were met with constant rejection. Until finally I co-wrote Gavin and Stacey. And my whole life changed...This is that story. The story of how I found myself here, talking to you.
Ancestral Vices
by Tom SharpeWith his only friend a computer, Walden Yapp has lived a singular life. Professor of Demotic History at the University of Kloone, Yapp spends his days highlighting the corrupt capitalistic nature of the upper-classes, and his nights feeding Doris his computer the information he has gatheredSo when capitalist Lord Petrefact hires him to write a damaging family history, Yapp seizes the chance to chronicle the corrupt life of the Petrefact family. Spurred on by his expectations of dishonesty and depravity Yapp heads of the town of Buscott, where nobody is what they at first appear to be.Now a pawn in Lord Petrefact’s vindictive family game, Yapp’s presence is as welcome as the plague. From provoking dwarfish marital problems to uncovering an erotic toy factory Yapp’s presence sparks a chain of events that ends in death, destruction and a murder trial. Going through a car wash will never feel the same again.
Grantchester Grind: (Porterhouse Blue Series 2) (Porterhouse Blue #2)
by Tom SharpeThough as cunning as ever, the formidable Skullion - previously head porter, now elevated to Master - is showing signs of physical frailty after his stroke. So the tricky business of appointing a new Master must start all over again. Meanwhile the College's monstrous debts refuse to go away, and a sinister American media mogul seems determined to make a television documentary on the premises, destroying part of the chapel in the process. Moreover, the widow of the previous Master is convinced that her husband was murdered, so she plants an agent in the Senior Common Room to dig up an unpleasant truth that everyone else would prefer kept under the carpet. Faced with such continuing crises, the instinct of the true Porterhouse man is to reach for the bottle - or to fall back on the subtle and traditional Cambridge skills of blackmail and kidnap. But will those be enough?
Indecent Exposure
by Tom SharpeIn Piemburgem, the deceptively peaceful-looking capital of Zululand, Kommandant van Heerden, Konstabel Els and Luitenant Verkramp continue to terrorise true Englishman and even truer Zulus in their relentless search for a perfect South Africa. Kommandant van Heerden, that great Anglophile, gropes his way towards attaining true 'Englishness' in the company of the eccentric Dornford Yates Club. But Luitenant Verkramp, whose hatred of all things English is surpassed only by his fear of sex, sets in motion an experiment in mass chastity (with the help of a lady psychiatrist), which has remarkable and quite unforeseen results.
Porterhouse Blue: (Porterhouse Blue Series 1) (Porterhouse Blue #1)
by Tom Sharpe______________________________The 'endlessly funny' novel widely regarded as a classic of comic English literaturePorterhouse College is world renowned for its gastronomic excellence, the arrogance of its Fellows, its academic mediocrity and the social cache it confers on the athletic sons of country families.Sir Godber Evans, ex-Cabinet Minister and the new Master, is determined to change all this. Spurred on by his politically angular wife, Lady Mary, he challenges the established order and provokes the wrath of the Dean, the Senior Tutor, the Bursar and, most intransigent of all, Skullion the Head Porter - with hilarious and catastrophic results.
Strictly English: The correct way to write ... and why it matters
by Simon Heffer"Be in no doubt: the beer was drunk but the man drank the beer.""We must avoid vulgarities like 'front up'. If someone is 'fronting up' a television show, then he is presenting it."Simon Heffer's incisive and amusingly despairing emails to colleagues at the The Daily Telegraph about grammatical mistakes and stylistic slips have attracted a growing band of ardent fans over recent years. Now, in his new book Strictly English, he makes an impassioned case for an end to the sloppiness that has become such a hallmark of everyday speech and writing, and shows how accuracy and clarity are within the grasp of anyone who is prepared to take the time to master a few simple rules.If you wince when you see "different than" in print, or are offended by people who think that "infer" and "imply" mean the same thing, then this book will provide reassurance that you are not alone. And if you believe that precise and elegant English really does matter, then it will prove required reading.
One Day at a Time: A Memoir
by Susan LewisShe was only nine when her world fell apart. The struggle to understand took a lifetime.In 1960s Bristol, Susan's family was like any other with its joys and frustrations, and fierce loyalties. Then tragedy struck and left a legacy that was to last a lifetime.Susan was only nine when her mother died. A year later she was sent away to school. She didn't want to go, and didn't understand why she had to. In her struggle to cope with an uncertain world - a world where nothing seemed to make sense any more - she pushed away the one person she loved best, her father. It wasn't until adulthood beckoned that she realised that, in order to turn their relationship around, she had to learn to love - and trust - again.
In A Rare Time Of Rain
by Milner PlaceDescribed in the Telegraph as 'Huddersfield's Melville', Milner Place has spent much of his life sailing the seven seas as a skipper of a trading boat, while also writing beautifully crafted poetry. His two pamphlet collections. The CONFUSION OF ANGELS and WHERE SMOKE IS, has sold out and been reprinted, and this (at the age of sixty) is his first full length collection, Simon Armitage's first acquisition for the Chatto Poetry list. Place's poems have an international or universal quality, influenced by Neruda and Rilke rather than Auden: they are lyrical and wise, rather than quotidian and clever. Some of the poems are sea-going yarns, others are set in South America and read like Gabriel Garcia Marquez in verse. There are also a handful of characters portraits, and a wonderful long poem, 'Lum Street', based on a row of terraced houses, its tenants and their relationships to each other. IN A RARE TIME OF RAIN is a powerful and assured first collection, and brings an unusual new voice into British Poetry.
The King's Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of Thomas Wolsey
by Peter J GwynProud, greedy, corrupt and driven by overwhelming personal ambition. Such is the traditional image of Thomas Wolsey, Lord Chancellor, Archbishop of York, Bishop of Winchester, Abbot of St. Albans, Bishop if Tournai and Papal Legate. It is an image which Peter Gwyn examines, challenges and decisively overturns in this remarkable book.From exceedingly humble beginnings Wolsey rose to a pinnacle of power unsurpassed by any other British commoner. Peter Gwyn explores every aspect of the Cardinal's career - not least his relationship with Henry VIII - and sets it firmly in a vividly recreated Tudor world. The Wolsey who emerges is a man of prodigious energy and ability, a tireless dispenser of justice, an enlightened reformer wholly dedicated to his king and country - a man who has been consistently misrepresented and maligned for four-and-a-half centuries.
The Romans And Their Gods
by R M OgilvieTo undestand the success of the Romans you must understand their piety. Dionysius of Halicarnassus. For over a thousand years, Roman religion satisfied the spiritual needs of a wide range of peoples throughout the empire, because is offered an intelligent and dignified interpretation of how the world functions. It was a firm, yet tolerant, religion whose adherents committed very few crimes in its name and who were healthily free of neuroses. In this short, perceptive study of Roman religious life between 80 BC and AD 69, Professor Ogilvie shows how intimately involved were the Roman gods with human activities. Drawing widely on original material (all of it quoted in translation), he tells us how the Romans prayed, what happened at a sacrifice, what sort of gods they believed in, and how seriously they took their religion - a religion in which actions, , not dogma, was paramount.
Harm
by Alan JenkinsThe poems in this, Alan Jenkin's third collection, speak of the harm done and suffered - most frequently in the name of love - in the course of lives gone adrift among lost causes, chance meetings and missed chances. A new directness and simplicity, and throughout, a raw urgency of personal feeling, inform a voice that is as resourceful as in Jenkin's earlier volumes, and continues to salvage a 'fugitive lyricism' (as one reviewer put it) from harsh and dissonant realities. 'By turns jocular, disquieting, sexy and inventive'-PETER READING, SUNDAY TIMES 'Jenkins' poetry is exhilarating. . . It is charged with erotic energy, rage, sorrow and confusion'-TLS 'Stylish, Savage, unforgiving'-HUGO WILLIAMS, SUNDAY TELEGRAPH 'Jenkins has a restless mind: following his poetry gives his readers a rocky ride, but also a rewarding one. '-PETER PORTER, OBSERVER.
Les Liaisons Culinaires
by Andreas StaïkosDimitris and Damocles live in the same block of flats. They share a love of cooking, and, it soon transpires, a lover - Nana. What follows is the story of their competition to win Nana's heart through her appetite. As the plates pile up, and the recipes grow ever more mouth watering, a bizarre and comic duel develops, fought with sea-urchin salads, stuffed vine leaves and delicacies from all corners of the Aegean to win the consummate femme fatale or to end up with the sting in the tail...
A Portrait Of Leni Riefenstahl
by Audrey SalkeldLeni Riefenstahl will always be remembered for her brilliant film of the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin - still rated as one of the best documentaries ever made. Before that she was acclaimed for her roles in silent feature films, when German cinema was in its artistic heyday in the 1920s. She pioneered the box office success of such classic mountaineering dramas as The White Hell of Piz Palu and then began to direct her own films. The Blue Light was admired by Hitler and led to her filming the Wagnerian Nuremberg Rally of 1934. After the war she was shunned by the film industry, despite a court in 1952 proclaiming her not guilty of supporting the Nazis in a punishable way. Her undoubted charisma led to many affairs and grandiose schemes - deep sea diving in her seventies and still filming wildlife in her nineties. Audrey Salkeld has sifted the fact from the legend and gives us a moving portrait of the great movie `star' who suffered more in the `wilderness' than her enduring fame suggests.
A Different Sea
by Claudio MagrisAn illuminating portrait of a world in ferment after the First world War, and a man seeking an authentic life.Early this century Enrico, a young intellectual, leaves the city of Gorizia with its abundant population and culture, to spend several years living on the Patagonian pampas, alone with his ancient Greek texts, his flocks and, every now and then, a woman. He has been taught by his closest friend, Carlo, a philosopher/poet who commits suicide in his early twenties, to search for an authentic life, free of social falsehoods. But in his search for this unattainable goal, Enrico destroys every chance he has of a normal existence. This is portrait of a world in ferment, a decaying empire shaken by war and revolution, and a life-long search for meaning.
A Goat's Song
by Dermot HealyIn a wind-battered Mayo cottage, playwright Jack Ferris tries to salvage something from his broken love affair with Catherine Adams. Drink and despair drove her away; can his imagination call her back? But as he summons up her past, Jack finds he has also called up Catherine's RUC father and a whole dangerous world of opposed traditions.