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The Last Days of Socrates
by PlatoEuthyphro/Apology/Crito/Phaedo'Nothing can harm a good man either in life or after death'The trial and condemnation of Socrates on charges of heresy and corrupting young minds is a defining moment in the history of classical Athens. In tracing these events through four dialogues, Plato also developed his own philosophy of a life guided by self-responsibility. Euthyphro finds Socrates outside the court-house, debating the nature of piety, while the Apology is his robust rebuttal of the charges against him. In the Crito, awaiting execution in prison, Socrates counters the arguments of friends urging him to escape. Finally, in the Phaedo, he is shown calmly confident in the face of death.Translated by HUGH TREDENNICK and HAROLD TARRANT with an Introduction and notes by HAROLD TARRANT
Little Angels: The Real Life Stories of Thai Novice Monks
by Phra Peter PannapadipoThe real-life stories of the novice monks in Little Angels reflect the lives of many youths in rural Thailand who are trapped in the vicious cycle of poverty, broken homes, illiteracy and drug abuse. When all else fails, Buddhism becomes their last resort: providing them with physical shelter and spiritual refuge. It heals their childhood traumas and gives them a moral framework for living and a better outlook on life. Each individual story, heartrending as it may be, subtly shows what Phra Peter sees and hopes to show to others: the 'human face' of Thai Buddhism.
Lysistrata and Other Plays: The Acharnians, The Clouds, Lysistrata
by AristophanesThe Acharnians/The Clouds/Lysistrata'We women have the salvation of Greece in our hands'Writing at a time of political and social crisis in Athens, the ancient Greek comic playwright Aristophanes was an eloquent, yet bawdy, challenger to the demagogue and the sophist. In Lysistrata and The Acharnians, two pleas for an end to the long war between Athens and Sparta, a band of women on a sex strike and a lone peasant respectively defeat the political establishment. The darker comedy of The Clouds satirizes Athenian philosophers, Socrates in particular, and reflects the uncertainties of a generation in which all traditional religious and ethical beliefs were being challenged. Translated with an Introduction and Notes by Alan H. Sommerstein
The Man Who Sees Dead People: The Astonishing Story Of A Psychic
by Joe PowerFor almost a decade, psychic medium Joe Power has used his extraordinary powers to investigate high-profile, unsolved crimes around the world, including, most recently, the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.But it wasn't always this way. Joe had denied his psychic abilities until the day his brother was found dead. Then messages from the spirit world led him to see the shocking truth behind the tragedy . . . his brother had been murdered.Joe realized he could no longer ignore the startling visions and voices in his head. He vowed to use his psychic gift to help solve the murder cases that were leaving detectives baffled, and loved ones without closure. In The Man Who Sees Dead People he tells the astonishing story of his life for the first time.
The Master of Time: Roads to Moscow: Book Three
by David WingrovePart Three of The Roads to MoscowThe war for time is reaching its endAs the German and Russian forces seek to destroy a third, seemingly unstoppable faction, Otto Behr reluctantly finds himself at the centre of all timelines, his very existence the catalyst by which reality itself will be reset or destroyed. But for Otto, the battle to become the Master of Time has become a fight for family, love and reality itself...
Last Days in Old Europe: Trieste '79, Vienna '85, Prague '89
by Richard BassettSelected as a Book of the Year in the TLS and SpectatorThe final decade of the Cold War, through the eyes of a laconic and elegant observerIn 1979 Richard Bassett set out on a series of adventures and encounters in central Europe which allowed him to savour the last embers of the cosmopolitan old Hapsburg lands and gave him a ringside seat at the fall of another ancien regime, that of communist rule. From Trieste to Prague and Vienna to Warsaw, fading aristocrats, charming gangsters, fractious diplomats and glamorous informants provided him with an unexpected counterpoint to the austerities of life along the Iron Curtain, first as a professional musician and then as a foreign correspondent.The book shows us familiar events and places from unusual vantage points: dilapidated mansions and boarding-houses, train carriages and cafes, where the game of espionage between east and west is often set. There are unexpected encounters with Shirley Temple, Fitzroy Maclean, Lech Walesa and the last Empress of Austria. Bassett finds himself at the funeral of King Nicola of Montenegro in Cetinje, plays bridge with the last man alive to have been decorated by the Austrian Emperor Franz-Josef and watches the KGB representative in Prague bestowing the last rites on the Soviet empire in Europe.Music and painting, architecture and landscape, food and wine, friendship and history run through the book. The author is lucky, observant and leans romantically towards the values of an older age. He brilliantly conjures the time, the people he meets, and Mitteleuropa in one of the pivotal decades of its history.
Literature and Evil (Penguin Modern Classics)
by Georges Bataille'Literature is not innocent,' stated Georges Bataille in this extraordinary 1957 collection of essays, arguing that only by acknowledging its complicity with the knowledge of evil can literature communicate fully and intensely. These literary profiles of eight authors and their work, including Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights, Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal and the writings of Sade, Kafka and Sartre, explore subjects such as violence, eroticism, childhood, myth and transgression, in a work of rich allusion and powerful argument.
Lyrics: The definitive collection of the Roxy Music frontman’s iconic lyrics
by Bryan Ferry**THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER**Celebrate the 50th anniversary of Roxy Music's iconic first album with this collection of Bryan Ferry's evocative lyrics of aspiration and romantic longing, introduced by the author.'Lyrics is a book any Roxy fan would be proud to have on their shelf' The TelegraphBryan Ferry's work as a singer and songwriter, both as a solo artist and with Roxy Music, is legendary.Lyrics collects the words written for music across seventeen albums, from the first iconic Roxy album of 1972 via the masterpiece of Avalon to 2014's reflective Avonmore, introduced by the author, and with an insightful essay by James Truman.All the classic Roxy anthems are here - 'Virginia Plain', 'Do the Strand', 'Love is the Drug' - songs in which the real and the make-believe blend in a kaleidoscopic mix, shot through with cinematic allure.Also included are the evocative lyrics of romantic longing and lost illusions for which Ferry is rightly revered: 'Slave to Love', 'Mother of Pearl', 'More Than This'. As he writes in his preface, 'The low points in life so often produce the most keenly felt and best-loved songs.' And, it might be added, some of the best poetry.Discover this unforgettable collection of Bryan Ferry's work today.
The Man Who Planted Trees
by Jean Giono‘A book for children from 8 to 80. I love the humanity of this story and how one man’s efforts can change the future for so many. It’s a real message of hope.’ Michael MorpurgoDiscover this beloved masterpiece of nature writing that is a hymn to creation and to the power of the individual to do their bit to change the world for the better.In 1910, while hiking through the wild lavender in a wind-swept, desolate valley in Provence, a man comes across a shepherd called Elzéard Bouffier. Staying with him, he watches Elzéard sorting and then planting hundreds of acorns as he walks through the wilderness. Ten years later, after surviving the First World War, he visits the shepherd again and sees the young forest he has created spreading slowly over the valley. Elzéard’s solitary, silent work continues and the narrator returns year after year to see the miracle he is gradually creating: a verdant, green landscape that is a testament to one man’s creative instinct.A beautiful story of hope, survival and selflessness, The Man Who Planted Trees resonates as strongly with readers today as when it was first published.
Master of the Game
by Portia Da CostaCan a student become the master?Uninspired by her mundane office job, Joanna Darrell decides to throw herself into a new way of life that revolves around giving and receiving punishment. Drawn in by a chain of coincidences, like Alice in a decadent wonderland, she enters a parallel world of perversity and unusual pleasure. But can her experimenting really become a way of life?From Portia Da Costa, the Sunday Times bestselling author of In Too Deep and How to Seduce a Billionaire
Lyrical Ballads (Penguin Clothbound Poetry)
by William Wordsworth Samuel Taylor ColeridgeA collectible new Penguin Classics series: stunning, clothbound editions of ten favourite poets, which present each poet's most famous book of verse as it was originally published. Designed by the acclaimed Coralie Bickford-Smith and beautifully set, these slim, A format volumes are the ultimate gift editions for poetry lovers. Lyrical Ballads (1798) is a landmark collection of poems that marks the beginning of the English Romantic Movement in literature. Co-written by friends William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the collection broke away from traditional poetic form. Of the twenty-three poems, Wordsworth penned works such as 'Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey' and 'The Idiot Boy' that use colloquial speech and take the everyday as their theme. The collection also includes Coleridge's greatest poem 'The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere', a supernatural tale of a sailor's voyage.
The Man Who Mistook His Job for His Life: How to Thrive at Work by Leaving Your Emotional Baggage Behind
by Naomi Shragai'Nobody understands the everyday madness of working life better than Naomi Shragai. This book should be read by everyone who ventures anywhere near an office.' - Lucy Kellaway, Financial TimesA revolutionary approach to understanding the emotional dynamics within our working lives.'Nobody understands the everyday madness of working life better than Naomi Shragai. This book should be read by everyone who ventures anywhere near an office' - Lucy KellawayYou probably don't realise this, but every working day you replay and re-enact conflicts, dynamics and relationships from your past. Whether it's confusing an authority figure with a parent; avoiding conflict because of past squabbles with siblings; or suffering from imposter syndrome because of the way your family responded to success, when it comes to work we are all trapped in our own upbringings and the patterns of behaviour we learned while growing up.Many of us spend eighteen formative years or more living with family and building our personality; but most of us also spend fifty years - or 90,000 hours - in the workplace. With the pull of the familial so strong, we unconsciously re-enact our personal past in our professional present - even when it holds us back.Through intimate stories, fascinating insights and provocative questions that tackle the issues that cause us most problems - from imposter syndrome and fear of conflict to perfectionism and anxiety - business psychotherapist Naomi Shragai will transform how you think about yourself and your working life.Based on thirty years of expertise and practice, Shragai will show you that what is holding you back is within your gift to change - and the first step is to realise how you, like the rest of the people you work with, habitually confuse your professional present with your personal past.
A Master Of Discipline
by Zoe TempletonWhen naïve young schoolteacher Ruth is sent by her employers to Damocles Priory to learn how to administer punishment, she has no idea that the emphasis will be on practical experience. After her initial reluctance, she allows the masterful clergyman Reverend Mould to help her live out her submissive fantasies and to explore her most perverse desires.Damocles Priory is not all it seems to be, however, and the lewd reverend is taking an unusually personal interest in Ruth's education. Will she learn to take the upper hand before it is too late?By the author of A Degree of Discipline.
The Last Days: A memoir of faith, desire and freedom
by Ali MillarA Scotsman Book to Watch for 2022 It is 1982 and in the Kingdom Hall we are Jehovah's Witnesses. The state of the world shows us the end is close, and Satan is like a roaring lion, seeking to devour us. Ali Millar is waiting for Armageddon. Born into the Jehovah's Witnesses in a town in the Scottish Borders, her childhood revolves around regular meetings in the Kingdom Hall, where she is haunted by vivid images of the Second Coming, her mind populated by the bodies that will litter the earth upon Jehovah's return. In this frightening, cloistered world Ali grows older. As she does, she starts to question the ways of the Witnesses, and their control over the most intimate aspects of her life. As she marries and has a daughter within the religion, she finds herself pulled deeper and deeper into its dark undertow, her mind tormented by one question: is it possible to escape the life you are born into? A tale of love and darkness, of faith and absolution, The Last Days is an unforgettable memoir of one woman's courageous journey to freedom.
A Literary Review
by Soren KierkegaardWhile ostensibly commenting on the work of a contemporary novelist, Kierkegaard used this review as a critique of his society and age. The influence of this short piece has been far-reaching. The apocalyptic final sections are the source for central notions in Heidegger's Being and Time. Later readers have seized on the essay as a prophetic analysis of our own time. Its concepts have been drawn into current debates on identity, addiction, and social conformity.
Lyrical Ballads (Routledge Classics Ser.)
by Samuel Coleridge William WordsworthPublished in 1798, Lyrical Ballads is a dazzling collaboration containing twenty-three poems by close friends, William Wordsworth (1770-1850) and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) - two major figures of English Romanticism. The volume heralded a new approach to poetry and expresses the poets' reflections on mankind's relationship with the forces of the world. Coleridge's contribution includes the nightmarish vision of 'The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere', one of the works for which he became best known, as well as the fantastical conversational poem 'The Foster-Mother's Tale' and the melancholic 'The Nightingale'. Wordsworth's 'We are Seven' depicts a child's naïve optimism in the face of the cruel mortality, while 'Goody Blake and Harry Gill' and 'Simon Lee' celebrate the simplicity and strength he perceived in country people, and 'Tintern Abbey' explores the healing powers of nature.Published as part of the Penguin Poetry First Editions series in which the greatest collections of poetry in English will be published in their original form. All texts have been completely reset and some minor changes made to punctuation.
A Last Dance in Liverpool
by Elizabeth MortonAll she wants is one last dance…Lily and Vincent have been dancing everything from the waltz to the foxtrot together since they were six-years-old. Now a teenager, Lily realises she has feelings for Vincent that she never knew were there. However, with Vincent off to war, Lily is evacuated to a mother and baby home with her younger siblings. It is there that she finds she has more in common with the fallen women than she once thought. But as the bombs begin to fall in Liverpool, will she ever see her sweetheart again?…A heart-warming saga for fans of Call The Midwife from the author of A Liverpool Girl.
Listening To The Light
by Jim PymQuakers have long been respected for their simplicity, integrity, truthfulness, non violence and undestanding of the need for silence. This inspirational little book explores Quaker values and shows how - even if we are not members of the Society of Friends - we can bring Quaker practices and ideals into our everyday lives and relationships with others. Including a fascinating chapter on how to use the tools of Quakerism in a business context, there is also much helpful advice on how to slow down, still the mind and 'let the heart create for us'.
The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous: A tantalisingly raunchy tale from the Sunday Times bestselling author Jilly Cooper
by Jilly Cooper OBELysander Hawkley is a good man - but far, far too attractive to women.Lysander Hawkley combined breathtaking good looks with the kindest of hearts. He couldn't pass a stray dog, an ill-treated horse or a neglected wife without rushing to the rescue. And with neglected wives the rescue invariably led to ecstatic bonking, which didn't please their erring husbands one bit.Lysander's mid-life crisis had begun at twenty-two. Reeling from the death of his beautiful mother, he was out of work, drinking too much and desperately in debt. The solution came from Ferdie, his fat, fast-operating friend: if Lysander was so good at making husbands jealous, why shouldn't he get paid for it?Let loose among the neglected wives of the ritzy county of Rutshire, Lysander causes absolute havoc. But it is only when he meets Rannaldini, Rutshire's King Rat and a temperamental, fiendishly promiscuous international conductor, that the trouble really starts. The only unglamorous woman around Rannaldini is Kitty, his plump young wife who runs his life like clockwork. Soon Lysander is convinced that Kitty must be rescued from Rannaldini at all costs, even if it means enlisting the help of the old blue-eyed havoc maker: Rupert Campbell-Black.---------------------------------'Wicked, sexy, sparkling with wit' Sunday Express'Irresistible... I devoured it in a day... she's on cracking form' Sunday Telegraph'Delicious ... her bawdy humour shines through at all times ... settle down and have a rollicking good time. Satisfaction guaranteed!' Jackie Collins
The Master Of Castleleigh
by Jacqueline BellevoisWhen Richard Buxton is forced to leave the delights of 19th-century London, marry and run a country estate, he assumes that the pleasures of the whip are no longer his to be had. However, both the estate and his new wife provide unexpectedly perverse opportunities.
Listening to Britain: Home Intelligence Reports on Britain's Finest Hour, May-September 1940
by Jeremy A Crang Paul AddisonFrom May to September 1940, a period that saw some of the most dramatic events in British history - including the evacuation of Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain and the opening stages of the Blitz - the Ministry of Information eavesdropped on the conversations of ordinary people in all parts of the United Kingdom and compiled secret daily reports on the state of popular morale.
The Lymond Poetry
by Dorothy Dunnett Elspeth MorrisonA beautiful collection of Renaissance poetry, assembled by one of the world's finest historical novelists.Dorothy Dunnett died in November 2001. She left behind this anthology, chosen by her from the hundreds of poems which she used in her world-famous series of novels known as THE LYMOND CHRONICLES. It is a fascinating set of choices, featuring Thomas Wyatt, King James I, extracts from the Psalms, and even an anonymous poem called 'Monologue of a Drunkard' - as Dorothy herself writes, here in one volume is 'the poetry of love, of folk-humour and ballad, the songs of Persian poets and of the troubadours, translated where need be into English.'
The Man Who Cycled the Americas
by Mark BeaumontIn 2008, Mark Beaumont smashed the world record for cycling around the world, by an astonishing 81 days. His race against the clock took him through the toughest terrain and the most demanding of conditions. In 2009, Mark set out on his second ultra-endurance challenge. And this one would involve some very big mountains.The Man Who Cycled the Americas tells the story of a 15,000 mile expedition that once again broke the barriers of human achievement. To pedal the longest mountain range on the planet, solo and unsupported, presented its own unique difficulties. But no man had ever previously summited the continents' two highest peaks, Mt McKinley in Alaska and Aconcagua in Argentina, in the same climbing season, let alone cycling between them. Oh, and Mark had never even been up Ben Nevis before.Full of his trademark charm, warmth and fascination with seeing the world at the pace of a bicycle, Mark Beaumont's second book is a testament to his love of adventure, his joy of taking on tough mental and physical feats, and offers a thrilling trip through the diverse cultures of the Americas.
The Master of Ballantrae
by Adrian Poole Robert Louis StevensonSet at the time of the Jacobite uprising, The Master of Ballantrae tells of a family divided. James Durie, Master of Ballantrae, abandons his ancestral home to support the Scottish rebellion - leaving his younger brother Henry, who is faithful to the English crown, to inherit the title of Lord Durrisdeer. But he is to return years later, embittered by battles and a savage life of piracy on the high seas, to demand his inheritance. Turning the people against the Lord, he begins a savage feud with his brother that will lead the pair from the Scottish Highlands to the American Wilderness. Satanic and seductive, the Master was regarded by Stevenson as 'all I know of the devil'; his darkly manipulative schemes dominate this subtle and compelling tragedy.This edition takes as its text the Edinburgh Edition of the novel, the last approved by the author. The introduction considers the novel's inspiration and its place as one of Stevenson's greatest studies in cruelty.
The Last Concubine: The Shogun Quartet, Book 2
by Lesley DownerJapan, 1865, the women's palace in the great city of Edo. Bristling with intrigue and erotic rivalries, the palace is home to three thousand women and only one man - the young shogun. Sachi, a beautiful fifteen-year-old girl, is chosen to be his concubine.But Japan is changing, and as civil war erupts, Sachi flees for her life. Rescued by a rebel warrior, she finds unknown feelings stirring within her; but this is a world in which private passions have no place and there is not even a word for 'love'. Before she dare dream of a life with him, Sachi must uncover the secret of her own origins - a secret that encompasses a wrong so terrible that it threatens to destroy her ....