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Transworld Publishers
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This is a hymn to what makes England, especially the English countryside, so special, in a collection of passionate, eclectic and thought-provoking pieces. It includes Bill Bryson on seaside piers, Michael Palin on crags, Eric Clapton on Newlands Corner, Bryan Ferry on Penshaw Monument, Sebastian Faulks on pub signs, Kate Adie on deer parks, Kevin Spacey on canal boats, Gavin Pretor-Pinney on clouds, Richard Mabey on marshland, Simon Jenkins on English country houses, John Sergeant on Great Tew, Benjamin Zephaniah on the Malvern Hills, Joan Bakewell on estuaries, Antony Beevor on the north downs in Kent, Libby Purves on Harbour Walls, Jonathan Dimbleby on the beach at West Wittering, and many more. |
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«Six years in the writing, «The Lost Symbol» is Dan Brown's extraordinary sequel to his internationally bestselling Robert Langdon thrillers, «Angels & Demons» and «The Da Vinci Code». Nothing is ever what it first appears in a Dan Brown novel. Set over a breathtaking 12 hour time span, the book's narrative takes the reader on an exhilarating journey through a masterful and unexpected landscape as Professor of Symbology, Robert Langdon, is once again called into action. Expertly researched and written with breakneck pace, «The Lost Symbol» once again demonstrates why Dan Brown is the world's bestselling thriller writer.» |
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1925, a damp wintry night in Berlin. Englishman Philip Gibson, in Germany to seek the answers to a tantalising mystery surrounding the Grand Duchess Anastasia, witnesses an attack on Natasha, a young woman who has fled from Russia. When Philip takes the fragile, lonely Natasha in to help her recuperate, she quickly falls for his kind and caring nature. But when further threats are made on her life, Philip finds himself at the heart of another mystery. What is it that links Natasha to this mysterious, damaged woman? And will her love for Philip survive the secrets that will be unearthed? |
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«It is the Edinburgh Festival. People queuing for a lunchtime show witness a road-rage incident — an incident which changes the lives of everyone involved. Jackson Brodie, ex-army, ex-police, ex-private detective, is also an innocent bystander — until he becomes a suspect. With «Case Histories», Kate Atkinson showed how brilliantly she could explore the crime genre and make it her own. In «One Good Turn», she takes her masterful plotting one step further. Like a set of Russian dolls each thread of the narrative reveals itself to be related to the last. Her Dickensian cast of characters are all looking for love or money and find it in surprising places. As ever with Atkinson what each one actually discovers is their true self. Unputdownable and triumphant, «One Good Turn» is a sharply intelligent read that is also percipient, funny, and totally satisfying.» |
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«Deric's gentle tales of life in Huddersfield with his wife Aileen and their menagerie of playful cats have won him thousands of loyal fans. And after a few years break Deric returns with the latest, and eagerly awaited, instalment of his memoirs. Deric is getting on a bit now and so are his cats. Life chez-Longden has adjusted to a slower pace, but everyday is still full of opportunities for the sort of mischief, mishaps and adventures that come with sharing your house and life with a troop of small cats with big personalities. «Paws in the Proceedings» has all of Deric's trademark charm, homespun wisdom and gentle wit. His remarkable eye for the humorous detail and the keen observation are very much in evidence, and this is another comic gem that will delight Deric's loyal fans and bring him to a bigger audience than ever before.» |
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Jack Reacher is not pleased when Costello, a private detective, comes nosing around asking questions. Determined to keep out of trouble, he conceals his identity. But when Costello is found dead Reacher has two questions: who was Costello's employer, and why is she determined to find him. |
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Two women, victims of sexual harassment, left the army under dubious circumstances. Both are now dead. Jack Reacher knew them both. A perfect psychological match, he is arrested, but is released when another woman is murdered. Everyone fears a serial killer is on the loose and Reacher finds himself heavily involved in the investigation. |
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What Do You Say After You Say Hello? Explains what makes the winners win, the losers lose, and the in-betweens so boring... In it, Dr Eric Berne reveals how everyone's life follows a predetermined script — a script they compose for themselves during early childhood. The script may be a sad one, it may be a successful one; it decides how a person will relate to his colleagues, what sort of person he will marry, how many children he will have, and even what sort of bed he will die in... What Do You Say After You Say Hello? Demonstrates how each life script gets written, how it works and, more important, how anyone can improvise or change his script to make a happy ending... |
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Young Kindan has no expectations other than joining his father in the mines of camp Natalon, a coal mining settlement struggling to turn a profit far from the great holds where the presence of dragons and their riders means safety and civilization. |
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Pern AL 50: the geneticist Wind Blossom is nearing the end of her long life and is painfully aware that the colonists are running out of the modern technology the settlers brought with them to Pern and that they are forgetting how to use what they do have. Society is beginning to revert to a feudal system. |
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GET READY FOR THE MOST EXCITING COUNT-DOWN OF YOUR LIFE. HOUR # SIXTY-ONE — Icy winter in South Dakota. A bus skids and crashes in a gathering storm. On the back seat: Jack Reacher, hitching a ride to nowhere. A life without baggage has many advantages. And disadvantages too, like facing the arctic cold without a coat. HOUR # THIRTY-ONE — A small town is threatened by sinister forces. One brave woman is standing up for justice. If she's going to live to testify, she'll need help from a man like Reacher.Because there's a killercoming for her. HOUR # ZERO — Has Reacher finally met his match? He doesn't want to put the world to rights. He just doesn't like people who put it to wrongs. |
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The locals in the Italian village where he lives call him Signor Farfalla — Mr Butterfly. He is a discreet gentleman who spends his time studying rare butterflies. But Farfalla's real profession is deadly. He considers himself an artisan, not for the butterflies he paints but for the guns he creates for assassins. Farfalla has resolved to make his next job his last. Then, perhaps, he can settle down comfortably in the Italian village he has grown to love and enjoy the remainder of his life without constantly looking over his shoulder. But a treacherous circle is closing in on him... |
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Some know her as Meredith Nic Essus, princess of faerie. Others as Merry Gentry, LA private eye. In the fey and mortal realms alike, her life is the stuff of royal intrigue and celebrity drama. Among her own kind, she has confronted enemies, endured the treachery and malevolence of her kith and kin, and honoured her duty to conceive a royal heir...all so she could claim a throne. But now she's turned her back on court and crown in favour of exile in the human world. However, while she may have rejected the throne, she cannot abandon her people. Someone is killing the fey. The LAPD are baffled and Merry is worried: her kind are not easily captured or killed. At least not by mortals. And it's not just these murders that concern her. It appears mortals who she once healed with magic are now able to perform miracles themselves — a phenomenon that's wreaking havoc on relations between man and fey and provoking suspicions of forbidden powers. So much for leaving blood and politics behind her. Merry had dreamed of a quiet life, but evil knows no borders and it seems nobody lives forever — not even the immortal... |
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Superman, Dracula, The Avengers, Treasure Island... when you're ten years old, you can fall in love with any story so long as it's a good one. But what if you're growing up in a house without books? Christopher Fowler's memoir captures life in suburban London as it has rarely been seen: through the eyes of a lonely boy who spends his days between the library and the cinema, devouring novels, comics, cereal packets — anything that might reveal a story. But it's 1960, and after fifteen years of post-war belt-tightening, his family is not ready to indulge a child cursed with too much imagination... Caught between an ever-sensible but exhausted mother and a DIY-obsessed father fighting his own demons, Christopher takes refuge in words. His parents try to understand their son's peculiar obsessions, but fast lose patience with him — and each other. The war of nerves escalates to include every member of the Fowler family, and something has to give, but does it mean that a boy must always give up his dreams for the tough lessons of real life? Beautifully written, this rich and astute evocation of a time and a place recalls a childhood at once eccentric and endearingly ordinary. |
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Paul West, a young Englishman, arrives in Paris to start a new job — and finds out what the French are really like. They do eat a lot of cheese, some of which smells like pigs' droppings. They don't wash their armpits with garlic soap. Going on strike really is the second national participation sport after pétanque. And, yes, they do use suppositories.In his first novel, Stephen Clarke gives a laugh-out-loud account of the pleasures and perils of being a Brit in France. Less quaint than A Year in Provence, less chocolatey than Chocolat, A Year in the Merde will tell you how to get served by the grumpiest Parisian waiter; how to make perfect vinaigrette every time; how to make amour — not war; and how not to buy a house in the French countryside. |
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Three tons of Saddam Hussein's gold in an unguarded warehouse in Dubai... For two of Nick Stones closest ex-SAS comrades, it was to have been the perfect, victimless crime. But when they're double-crossed and the robbery goes devastatingly wrong, only Stone can identify his friends killer and track him down... As one harrowing piece of the complex and sinister jigsaw slots into another, Stones quest for vengeance becomes a journey to the heart of a chilling conspiracy, to which he and the beautiful Russian investigative journalist with whom he has become ensnared unwittingly hold the key. Ticking like a time-bomb, brimming with terror and threat, Andy McNabs latest Nick Stone adventure is a high-voltage story of corruption, cover-up and blistering suspense — the master thriller writer at his electrifying, unputdownable best. |
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Assistant D.A. Alexa Hamilton has just been handed the kind of case that makes careers: the trial of accused serial killer Luke Quentin. Sifting through mountains of forensic evidence, Alexa relentlessly builds her case and prepares for a high-stakes trial... until threatening letters throw her private life into turmoil. The letters are addressed to Alexa's beautiful 17-year-old daughter, Savannah, who Alexa has raised alone since her painful divorce years before. Alexa is certain that Quentin is behind the letters — and that they are too dangerous to ignore. Suddenly Alexa must make the toughest choice of all — and send her daughter back to the very place that Alexa swore she would never return: to her ex-husband's world of southern tradition, long memories, and the antebellum charm of Charleston. While Alexa's trial builds to a climax in New York, her daughter is settling into southern life, discovering a part of her family history she's never known. As a family's wounds are exposed and the healing begins, Alexa and Savannah, after a season in different worlds, will come together again — strengthened by the trials they have faced, changed by the mysteries they have unraveled, armed with miracles that are uniquely their own. |
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Are optimists just reckless dreamers? Are pessimists miserable doom-mongers or just erring on the side of caution? Is the glass half empty or half full? Brilliantly compiled and beautifully written, this is a rich anthology of evidence from both sides of any argument. Covering everything from Africa to Beauty, Happiness to Patriotism to Walking, it is sop to any disposition; the perfect tool for squabbling families, a counterbalance for arguing couples and a mine of detail for the quarrelsome. The Optimist on the Afterlife: My heaven will be filled with wonderful young men and dukes. (Dame Barbara Cartland) And the Pessimist: 'That's what Hell will be like, small chat to the babbling of Lethe about the good old days when we wished we were dead' — (Samuel Beckett). |
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Chloe needs a holiday. She's sick of making wedding dresses and her partner Philip has trouble at work. Her wealthy friend Gerard has offered the loan of his luxury villa in Spain — perfect. Hugh is not a happy man. His immaculate wife Amanda seems more interested in the granite for the new kitchen than in him. |
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