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Journey Into Russia
by Sir Laurens Van Der PostLaurens Van Der Post takes us behind the iron curtain of Soviet officialdom in a quest to discover the real Russia - a land full of enigma and secrecy, but treasured by its ordinary people.
The Killing Zone
by Richard DorneyOn a tour of duty in the Helmand River Valley, the Grenadier Guards faced the toughest challenge of their lives...Carrying out patrols in the most fiercely contested land in Afghanistan the Guards were under fire almost constantly. The summer of 2007 saw some of the most frequent and intense combat yet, beyond what anyone could have predicted. Based in isolated forward operating bases their nearest reinforcements were often miles away, down a track strewn with deadly roadside bombs. The Killing Zone is an action-packed and authentic insight into the real Afghanistan. This is what it’s like to deliberately draw fire on your own position so that your mates can escape an ambush, to experience the adrenaline rush of being the first in to clear a Taliban compound, and to rely on skill, loyalty and quick-thinking to survive in one of the most dangerous places on earth.
Imagining Alexandria
by Louis de BernieresPoetry was Louis de Bernières’ first literary love and Imagining Alexandria is his debut poetry collection. Here the author of the much-loved Captain Corelli’s Mandolin returns us to the vivid Mediterranean landscape of his fiction.De Bernières was introduced to Greek poetry while in Corfu in 1983, and since then he has always travelled with a book of Cavafy's poetry in his pocket. Not surprisingly, his own poems about the distant past, the erotic and the philosophical owe much to the influence of the great Alexandrian poet.Beautifully illustrated with line drawings by Donald Sammut, this is a collection rich in sensuality, nostalgia, and music.
Journey from Innocence
by Jean-Philippe AuborgMoving to London to start a new career, shy young Philippa is happy to accept a houseshare with a young couple, Jack and Jenny, little realising the extent of the depraved games of bondage and submission they like to play. When she wakes one night to hear Jenny's cries of pleasure as Jack chastises her, she goes to investigate.And so begins Philippa's journey, an initiation into new realms of perversion, taking her to the limits of her own ability to submit - and to the heights of debauchery.
The Killing Of The Countryside
by Graham HarveyOver then past fifty years the British countryside has changed out of all recognition. A wide range of wildlife species are disappearing - victims of modern intensive farming, of pesticides and fertilisers and the sheer relentless pressure to maximise output from every hedge bank and field corner. It need not have happened. The loss of our wildlife and countryside has come about through a deliberate and sustained national policy, one that costs the British people 8 billion a year. The Killing of the Countryside is a devastating attack on modern British agricultural policy and practice and a plea for a return to natural cycles, an end to subsidies and the domination of agribusiness, and for a safe, sustainable farming system.Winner of the 1997 BP Natural World Book Award.
I’m Sure I Speak For Many Others…: Unpublished letters to the BBC
by Colin Shindler'Dear Mr. Adam, I am writing on behalf of the Central Watch and Social Problems Committee of the Mothers' Union to ask whether you have a programme in mind on the moral issue of venereal disease.''Sir, Where are the B.B.C's censors? We do not care for the language that was inflicted on us Tuesday night in "The Battle of Britain". Don't retort, 'You need not listen if you don't want to'. We did not know it was coming.''Dear Mr. Frost, Let me start by saying how much I enjoy your programme & that I was among those many who felt almost that they had lost a blowsy old friend when dear & vulgar, but nonetheless thought-provoking and funny TW3 went off the air.'For anyone who regularly feels tempted to put pen to paper, I'm Sure I Speak For Many Others is an alternative history of the BBC, from its triumphant broadcast of the coronation in 1953, to that Tynan moment, the controversial That Was The Week That Was, and the groundbreaking Grange Hill.Stretching across over forty years of programming, these never before seen letters represent the joy, the fury and the wit of the nation.
Jake Cake: The Football Beast (Jake Cake)
by Michael BroadHave you ever met a yeti playing football, a very tricky sea monster or a REAL phantom on the ghost train at the funfair? Jake has, and here's what happened when he met them! (Nobody believed him, of course.)
Killer in the Kremlin: The instant bestseller - a gripping and explosive account of Vladimir Putin's tyranny
by John SweeneyTHE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER - NOW UPDATED WITH FOUR NEW CHAPTERS'This swashbuckling book is a furious attack on the Russian president. Killer in the Kremlin traces Putin's bloody career... a life littered with corpses.' - THE TIMESA gripping and explosive account of Vladimir Putin's tyranny, charting his rise from spy to tsar, exposing the events that led to his invasion of Ukraine and his assault on Europe.In Killer in the Kremlin, award-winning journalist John Sweeney takes readers from the heart of Putin's Russia to the killing fields of Chechnya, to the embattled cities of an invaded Ukraine.In a disturbing exposé of Putin's sinister ambition, Sweeney draws on thirty years of his own reporting - from the Moscow apartment bombings to the atrocities committed by the Russian Army in Chechnya, to the annexation of Crimea and a confrontation with Putin over the shooting down of flight MH17 - to understand the true extent of Putin's long war.Drawing on eyewitness accounts and compelling testimony from those who have suffered at Putin's hand, we see the heroism of the Russian opposition, the bravery of the Ukrainian resistance, and the brutality with which the Kremlin responds to such acts of defiance, assassinating or locking away its critics, and stopping at nothing to achieve its imperialist aims.In the midst of one of the darkest acts of aggression in modern history - Russia's invasion of Ukraine - this book shines a light on Putin's rule and poses urgent questions about how the world must respond.'An extraordinarily prescient and fascinating book.' - NIHAL ARTHANAYAKEInstant Sunday Times bestseller, March 2023
Jake Cake: The Visiting Vampire (Jake Cake)
by Michael BroadIn this fourth book in the series, Jake battles with a vampire visiting his school (fangs and bats and zombies), a demon hairdresser (arrrrrggggh!) and stays in a haunted castle (things that go CLANG in the night!).
Journey: A Spiritual Odyssey
by Peter FrancePeter France looks at the various stages of his own spiritual odyssey and talks intimately of his long search for knowledge and enlightenment. Warm, lucid, humorous, Journey is grounded in France's own life and experience. He takes us from the beginning of his journey in a small Methodist chapel in Yorkshire, and his first perception of Christianity, through Oxford where he rejected Christianity and became a humanist and a career as a colonial administrative officer in Fiji, to his later position as an investigative reporter for BBC religious television. Finally-and movingly-he writes about his conversion to the Greek Orthodox Church, and describes his baptism at the age of 57 on the Greek island of Patmos by total immersion in a 44 gallon oil drum of lukewarm water. Illuminated by personal anecdote and information by a broad knowledge of different religions and religious experiences, Journey is both immensely engaging, and studded with powerful spiritual insight.
I'm Not Really Here
by Paul LakePaul Lake was Manchester born, a City fan from birth. His footballing talent was spotted at a young age and, in 1983, he signed coveted schoolboy forms for City. Only a short time later he was handed the team captaincy.An international career soon beckoned and, after turning out for the England under-21 and B teams, he received a call-up to the England training camp for Italia '90. Earmarked as an England captain in the making, Paul became a target for top clubs like Manchester United, Arsenal, Spurs and Liverpool, but he always stayed loyal to his beloved club, deeming Maine Road the spiritual home at which his destiny lay.But then, in September 1990, disaster struck. Paul ruptured his cruciate ligament; sustaining the worst possible injury that a footballer can suffer. And so began his nightmare.Neglected, ignored and misunderstood by his club after a succession of failed operations, Paul's career began to fall apart. Watching from the sidelines as similarly injured players regained their fitness, he spiralled into a prolonged bout of severe depression. With an enforced retirement from the game he adored, the death of his father and the collapse of his marriage, Paul was left a broken man.Set against a turning point in English football, I'm Not Really Here is the powerful story of love and loss and the cruel, irreparable damage of injury; of determination, spirit and resilience and of unfulfilled potential and broken dreams.
The Journals of Captain Cook: A Literal Transcription Of The Original Mss
by Captain James CookCook led three famous expeditions to the Pacific Ocean between 1768 and 1779. In voyages that ranged from the Antarctic circle to the Arctic Sea, Cook charted Australia and the whole coast of New Zealand, and brought back detailed descriptions of the natural history of the Pacific. Accounts based on Cook's journals were issued at the time, but it was not until this century that the original journals were published in Beaglehole's definitive edition. The JOURNALS tells the story of these voyages as Cook wanted it to be told, radiating the ambition, courage and skill which enabled him to carry out an unrivalled series of expeditions in dangerous waters.
Kill Me Once
by Jon OsborneNathan Stiedowe is seeking perfection - and he has been learning from the best. Recreating some of the most sickening murders in history, his objective appears chillingly simple, but his true motive remains unclear.On the trail of this sadistic monster is FBI Special Agent Dana Whitestone. Driven by the brutal childhood slaying of her parents, Dana's relentless pursuit of the most evil and twisted criminals has seen her profile many violent cases. But never has she encountered a maniac as demented as Stiedowe, or a mind as horrifyingly disturbed...
Jaguars and Electric Eels (Great Journeys Ser.)
by Alexander von HumboldtA great, innovative and restless thinker, the young Humboldt (1769-1859) went on his epochal journey to the New World during a time of revolutionary ferment across Europe. This part of his matchless narrative of adventure and scientific research focuses on his time in Venezuela - in the Llanos and on the Orinoco River - riding and paddling, restlessly and happily noting the extraordinary things on every hand.Great Journeys allows readers to travel both around the planet and back through the centuries – but also back into ideas and worlds frightening, ruthless and cruel in different ways from our own. Few reading experiences can begin to match that of engaging with writers who saw astounding things: Great civilisations, walls of ice, violent and implacable jungles, deserts and mountains, multitudes of birds and flowers new to science. Reading these books is to see the world afresh, to rediscover a time when many cultures were quite strange to each other, where legends and stories were treated as facts and in which so much was still to be discovered.
Kill All Enemies
by Melvin BurgessEveryone says fourteen-year-old BILLIE is nothing but trouble. A fighter. A danger to her family and friends.But her care worker sees someone different. Her classmate ROB is big, strong; he can take care of himself and his brother.But his violent stepdad sees someone to humiliate. And CHRIS is struggling at school; he just doesn't want to be there.But his dad sees a useless no-hoper. Billie, Rob and Chris each have a story to tell. But there are two sides to every story, and the question is . . . who do you believe?
I'm Chevy Chase ... and You're Not: The Authorized Biography
by Rena FruchterChevy Chase is a much-loved Hollywood star. His success as a writer and actor on Saturday Night Live in the 70s made him a household name. It had been a long, hard route to the top for Chevy. Behind the fame lay a childhood riddled with abuse. But his remarkable strength and determination helped him rise above it and find his talent as an actor, writer, comedian, and musician. Best known for his role in the National Lampoon Vacation series Chevy has starred in some of the greatest comedies of our time. His latest film, Funny Money, received critical acclaim at the Sarasota Film Festival.Now, for the first time, Chevy speaks openly and candidly about his career, his personal struggle with drugs, his friendship with three American Presidents, and his family life. Honest, funny and informative, this is the complex and fascinating world of Chevy Chase.
Jacques the Fatalist
by Denis DiderotDenis Diderot (1713-1784) was among the greatest writers of the Enlightenment, and in Jacques the Fatalist he brilliantly challenged the artificialities of conventional French fiction of his age. Riding through France with his master, the servant Jacques appears to act as though he is truly free in a world of dizzying variety and unpredictability. Characters emerge and disappear as the pair travel across the country, and tales begin and are submerged by greater stories, to reveal a panoramic view of eighteenth-century society. But while Jacques seems to choose his own path, he remains convinced of one philosophical belief: that every decision he makes, however whimsical, is wholly predetermined. Playful, picaresque and comic, Diderot's novelis a compelling exploration of Enlightment philosophy. Brilliantly original in style, it is one of the greatest precursors to post-modern literature.
The Journals Of A White Sea Wolf
by Mariusz WilkIn 1991 Mariusz Wilk, a Polish journalist long fascinated by the mysteries of the Russian soul, decided to take up residence in the Solovki islands, a lonely archipelago lost amid the far northern reaches of Russia's White Sea. For Wilk these islands represented the quintessence of Russia: a place of exile and a microcosm of the crumbling Soviet empire. On the one hand, they were a cradle of the Orthodox faith and home to an important monastery; on the other, it was here that the first experimental gulag was built after the 1917 revolution. Over the course of years Wilk came to know every single one of the islands' 1000 or so residents. From his remote home, from which he sent regular despatches to the Paris-based Polish newspaper Kultura, he attempted to observe and come to terms with the complexities and contradictions of Russian history, its glorious past and the cruelty of Soviet Communism. In the process, he has written a most unusual travel book, a beautifully descriptive work that belongs in the best tradition of writers such as Norman Lewis, Patrick Leigh Fermor and Claudio Magris.
Journals and Letters: The Streatham Years, Part Ii, 1780-1781
by Frances BurneyNovelist and playwright Frances (Fanny) Burney, 1752-1840, was also a prolific writer of journals and letters, beginning with the diary she started at fifteen and continuing until the end of her eventful life. From her youth in London high society to a period in the court of Queen Charlotte and her years interned in France with her husband Alexandre d'Arblay during the Napoleonic Wars, she captured the changing times around her, creating brilliantly comic and candid portraits of those she encountered - including the 'mad' King George, Samuel Johnson, Sir Joshua Reynolds, David Garrick and a charismatic Napoleon Bonaparte. She also describes, in her most moving piece, undergoing a mastectomy at fifty-nine without anaesthetic. Whether a carefree young girl or a mature woman, Fanny Burney's forthright, intimate and wickedly perceptive voice brings her world powerfully to life.
The Illustrated Woman: SHORTLISTED FOR THE FORWARD PRIZE 2022
by Helen Mort*SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2022 FORWARD PRIZE FOR BEST COLLECTION*'A raw, tender, potent collection' - JESSICA ANDREWS'Gorgeous poems - profound, exploratory, wild, playful - and completely now' - RUTH PADEL________The brilliant new collection from T.S. Eliot Prize and Costa Award shortlisted poet Helen MortLet me kneelbefore the sky and let me be humble, untidy,let me be decorated.Here are women's bodies. Hungry adolescent bodies, fluctuating pregnant bodies, ailing aging bodies. Here are bodies as products to be digitized and consumed. Here is the body in nature, changing and growing stronger. Here are tattooed women through history, ink unfurling across their skin.The Illustrated Woman is a tender and incisive collection about what it means to live in a female body - from the joys and struggles of new motherhood to the trauma of deepfakes. Amidst the landscapes of the Peak District and the glaciers of Greenland, Helen Mort's remarkable poems transfix the reader in a celebration of beauty and resilience.'These are poems that will leave their indelible mark' - ANDREW MCMILLAN
Jacques Tati His Life & Art
by David BellosJacques Tati's Monsieur Hulot, unmistakeable with his pipe, brolly and striped socks, was a creation of sheer slapstick genius that made audiences around the world laugh at the sheer absurdity of life. This biography charts Tati's rise and fall, from his earliest beginnings as a music hall mime during the Depression, to the success of Jour de Fete and Mon Oncle, to Playtime, the grandiose masterpiece that left the once delebrated director bankrupt and begging for equipment to complete his final films. Analysing Tati's singular vision, Bellos reveals the intricate staging of his most famous gags and draws upon hitherto inaccessible archives to produce a unique assessment of his work and its context for film lovers and film students alike.
Kidnapped (Penguin Little Black Classics)
by Olaudah Equiano'Cut iron with iron,What makes iron valuable,Big kuku tree and big silk-cotton tree,Fari and Kaunju -' Told and retold since the fourteenth century, this West African epic chronicles the story of the mighty warrior who saves his people and founds an empire. One of 46 new books in the bestselling Little Black Classics series, to celebrate the first ever Penguin Classic in 1946. Each book gives readers a taste of the Classics' huge range and diversity, with works from around the world and across the centuries - including fables, decadence, heartbreak, tall tales, satire, ghosts, battles and elephants.
Jacques Tati
by David BellosThe full story of one of France's greatest cinema legends, a clown whose film-making innovation was to turn everyday life into an art form.Jacques Tati's Monsieur Hulot, unmistakable with his pipe, brolly and striped socks, was a creation of slapstick genius that made audiences around the world laugh at the sheer absurdity of life. This biography charts Tati's rise and fall, from his earliest beginnings as a music hall mime during the Depression, to the success of Jour de Fête and Mon Oncle, to Playtime, the grandiose masterpiece that left the once celebrated director bankrupt and begging for equipment to complete his final films. Analysing Tati's singular vision, Bellos reveals the intricate staging of his most famous gags and draws upon hitherto inaccessible archives to produce a unique assessment of his work and its context for film lovers and film students alike.
A Journal of the Plague Year
by Daniel Defoe'The most reliable and comprehensive account of the Great Plague that we possess' Anthony Burgess In 1665 the plague swept through London, claiming over 97,000 lives. Daniel Defoe was just five at the time of the plague, but he later called on his own memories, as well as his writing experience, to create this vivid chronicle of the epidemic and its victims. 'A Journal' (1722) follows Defoe's fictional narrator as he traces the devastating progress of the plague through the streets of London. Here we see a city transformed: some of its streets suspiciously empty, some - with crosses on their doors - overwhelmingly full of the sounds and smells of human suffering. And every living citizen he meets has a horrifying story that demands to be heard.
The Illustrated History of Football: the highs and lows of football, brought to life in comic form…
by David SquiresStunningly illustrated by David Squires (as featured in the Guardian), The Illustrated History of Football is a wry look at the highs and lows of the beautiful game. Laugh-out- loud and occasionally moving, it's the perfect gift for anyone who loves football.'Squires is the master of the football comic strip and this collection is recommended reading for enlightened football fans everywhere' -- Late Tackle'No one captures the absurdities and ugliness of football better than him ... hilarious' -- Coach Magazine'[Illustrated History of Football] is the funniest football tome since Viz's Billy the Fish Football Yearbook, published 26 years earlier' -- Esquire'Simply brilliant - my favourite football book' -- ***** Reader review'Completely amazing cartoons with beautiful insight as to the how, why, when & wow' -- ***** Reader review'Simply wonderful' -- ***** Reader review'One of the funniest books I've read in a very long time. A must for anyone who loves football' -- ***** Reader review*********************************************************************************************Football and comics. Once a hearty Saturday combination to match cartoons and cereal, in recent years they've drifted apart. Thankfully for us, illustrator Squires is here to change all that.In The Illustrated History of Football, his first book, Squires relives some of football's most glorious moments and meets its greatest figures. In a sport full of handsome paycheques and corporate sponsors, he also casts a critical eye over corrupt backroom workings and helps pierce football's overblown balloon.Funny, good-looking and preternaturally astute, this book is everything Sepp Blatter wishes he could be.More than the archetypal loo book, this is a satirical look at the highs and lows of football and the perfect gift for all fans...