Perfect for fans of Martina Cole and Lynda La Plante.For longer than she cares to remember Annie Bailey has lived in the shadow of her older sister Ruthie. Now Ruthie has her hands on Max Carter, the much feared head of the Carter family and a top class villain.Seducing Max wasn't a problem, but the guilt, shame and anger of rejection afterwards was.Thrown onto the streets Annie finds herself living with Celia, a wayward aunt with a shocking secret. As the months pass Annie's resourceful nature sees her mature and carve out a life for herself, albeit not legal. But if you play with fire, you can expect to get burned and her lavish new lifestyle and connections may be about to come crashing down around her.Annie has unwittingly placed herself between two rival gangs and upset too many people, and these kind of people don't forget. But as everyone knows, Annie Bailey is no ordinary woman.

    This volume contains the first three 'Chronicles of Ancient Darkness' adventures.

    There had been whispers and murmurs of discontent from certain quarters and the British government began to prepare for the inevitable war. After seven weeks training with the 2nd/5th Battalion Leicester, he found himself facing the might of the German army in a muddy field in Northern France, with just 30 rounds of ammunition in his weapon pouch. Horace's war didn't last long. He was taken prisoner on May 25th, 1940 and forced to endure a 10 week march across France and Belgium en route to Holland. Horace survived, barely, but many of his comrades were not so fortunate. Falling by the side of the road through exhaustion and malnourishment meant a bullet through the back of the head and the corpse left to rot. After a three day train journey without food and water, Horace found himself incarcerated in a prison camp in Poland. It was there he embarked on an incredible love affair with a German girl interpreting for his captors. He experienced the sweet taste of freedom each time he escaped to see her, yet incredibly he made his way back into the camp each time—sometimes two or three times a week. He broke out of the camp more than 200 times, often bringing food back to his fellow prisoners to supplement their meager rations, and toward the end of the war even managed to bring radio parts back in, allowing the BBC news to be delivered daily to more than 3,000 prisoners.

    When one of Bertie Wooster's American chums needs help in getting his hard-nosed uncle to approve of his intended, Jeeves demonstrates his colossal mind power with the equanimity of a true gentleman's gentleman.

    S. Naipaul left his Caribbean birthplace at the age of seventeen, his improbable life has followed the global movement of peoples, whose preeminent literary chronicler he has become. In The World Is What It Is, Patrick French offers the first authoritative biography of the controversial Nobel laureate, whose only stated ambition was greatness as a writer, in pursuit of which goal nothing else was sacred.Beginning with a richly detailed portrait of Naipaul's childhood in colonial Trinidad, French gives us the boy born to an Indian family, the displaced soul in a displaced community, who by dint of talent and ambition finds the only imaginable way out: a scholarship to Oxford. London in the 1950s offers hope and his first literary success, but homesickness and depression almost defeat Vidia, his narrow escape aided by Patricia Hale, an Englishwoman who will devote herself to his work and well-being. She will stand by him, sometimes tenuously, for more than four decades, even as Naipaul embarks on a twenty-four-year affair, which will awaken half-dead passions and feed perhaps his greatest wave of dizzying creativity. Amid this harrowing emotional life, French traces the course of the fierce visionary impulse underlying Naipaul's singular power, a gift to produce masterpieces of fiction and nonfiction.Informed by exclusive access to V. S. Naipaul's private papers and personal recollections, and by great feeling for his formidable body of work, French's revelatory biography does full justice to an enigmatic genius.

    It is both a radio and stage play and a multi-layered epic poem. This edition also includes Kay's much-acclaimed BBC radio play on CD.

    She finds it hard to adjust to her new life, not least when she discovers that the family business she has just married into -- Remer Steel -- is producing weaponry for the German army. With the First World War looming, Vicky flees to Yorkshire with her children, leaving Berlin, and her husband, behind. Striking dark-haired beauty Zelda Wallace is no stranger to marriage. Widowed at just twenty-one with a young son, she is eager to meld into Berlin's high society and sever all ties with her American identity in order to become a true Berliner. But beneath her exotic looks, Zelda holds a deeply hidden secret that if revealed, could threaten everything she holds dear!

    But however much she loves reading the stars, she just can't seem to get her life on track and this week is no exception. First she's jilted at the altar by Ben. Then, sitting alone and forlorn in her home in Hazy Hassocks, she discovers that the flat above is owned by an ex-convict!

    Twenty-seven carefully chosen works—including an isorhythmic motet by Ciconia, an English carol, a Janequin chanson, and lute composition by Ortiz—offer representative examples of the genres and composers of the period. Commentaries following each score present a careful analysis of the music, and online links to purchase and download recordings make listening easier than ever.

    John Keats's famous epitaph—"Here lies One Whose Name was writ in Water"—helped cement his reputation as the archetype of the genius cut off before his time. Keats, dead of tuberculosis at twenty-five, saw his mortality as fatal to his poetry, and therein, Plumly argues, lies his tragedy: Keats thought he had failed in his mission "to be among the English poets."In this close narrative study, Plumly meditates on the chances for poetic immortality—an idea that finds its purest expression in Keats, whose poetic influence remains immense. Incisive in its observations and beautifully written, Posthumous Keats is an ode to an unsuspecting young poet—a man who, against the odds of his culture and critics, managed to achieve the unthinkable: the elevation of the lyric poem to sublime and tragic status.

    More important, Britain's writers have long challenged readers with new ways of understanding an ever-changing world.This series of 48 fascinating lectures by an award-winning professor provides you with a rare opportunity to step beyond the surface of Britain's grand literary masterpieces and experience the times and conditions they came from and the diverse issues with which their writers grappled.The unique insights Professor Sutherland shares about how and why these works succeed as both literature and documents of Britain's social and political history can forever alter the way you experience a novel, poem, or play.More than just a survey, these lectures reveal how Britain's cultural landscape acted upon its literature and how, in turn, literature affected the cultural landscape. Professor Sutherland takes a historical approach to the wealth of works explored in these lectures, grounding them in specific contexts and often connecting them with one another.All the great writers that come to mind when you think of British literature are here, along with unique looks at their most popular and powerful works. You also enjoy the company of less-familiar voices and contemporary authors who continue to take literature into new territories.

    Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) may well have been the most original and innovative poet writing in the English language during the nineteenth century. Yet his story of personal struggle, doubt, intense introspection, and inward heroism has never been told fully. As a Jesuit priest, Hopkins's descent into loneliness and despair and his subsequent recovery are a remarkable and inspiring spiritual journey that will speak to many readers, regardless of their faith or philosophies. Paul Mariani, an award-winning poet himself and author of a number of biographies of literary figures, brilliantly integrates Hopkins's spiritual life and his literary life to create a rich and compelling portrait of a man whose work and life continue to speak to readers a century after his death.

    Already a dedicated prose writer and influential critic, he became a poet only in December 1914, at the age of 36. In April 1917 he was killed at Arras., Often viewed as a 'war poet', he wrote nothing directly about the trenches; also seen as a 'nature poet', his symbolic reach and generic range expose the limits of that category too. A central figure in modern poetry, he is among the half-dozen poets who remade English poetry in the early 20th century. Edna Longley published an acclaimed edition of Edward Thomas' "Poems" and "Last Poems" in 1973., Her work advanced Thomas' reputation as a major modern poet. Now she has produced a revised version, which includes all his poems and draws on freshly available archive material. The extensive notes contain substantial quotations from Thomas' prose, letters and notebooks, as well as a new commentary on the poems., The prose hinterland behind Edward Thomas' poems helps us to understand their depth and complexity, together with their contexts in his troubled personal life, in wartime England, and in English poetry. Edna Longley also shows how Thomas' criticism feeds into his poetry, and how he prefigured critical approaches, such as 'ecocriticism', that are now applied to his poems. The text of this edition, which has a detailed textual apparatus, differs in small but significant ways from that of other extant collections of Thomas' poems., The Bloodaxe edition is larger (with more comprehensive notes) than Faber's "Collected Poems" by Edward Thomas as well as a pound cheaper. More importantly, for academic sales, the Bloodaxe text is more authoritative than Faber's (which uses R. George Thomas' 1978 text)., Edna Longley has used manuscripts, proofs and newly available archive material to establish a text for Edward Thomas' complete poetry which will now be used by scholars and students in all future discussions of his work.

    Her body lies in a pool of blood in the north London flat where she worked as a prostitute. Deep knife wounds have been gouged into her corpse and her hands and feet are tied with coat hanger wire. For Detective Inspector Jack Delaney this is no ordinary case. He was a friend of Jackie's and she left desperate messages on his answer phone just hours before she was killed. Despite no immediate leads and no obvious suspects, the fear in her voice tells him that this was not a random act of violence. Just as Delaney begins his investigation, a young girl is reported missing, feared abducted, and he is immediately tasked with finding her. Delaney knows he must act quickly if there is any chance of finding her alive, but he is also determined to track down Jackie's killer before the trail goes cold. However, his tough and uncompromising attitude has made him some powerful enemies on the force, and Delaney soon finds that this case may provide the perfect opportunity for them to dispose of him, once and for all...

    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

    This hip primer proves that whether shooting with a film or digital camera, you don't need to invest in expensive photography equipmentor have an art school degree to take amazing photographs. Whether readers are tired of disappointing snapshots or have just picked up a camera for the first time, Hot Shots teaches with a friendly tone, picture-perfect advice, fun tricks, and easy-to-understand text. Author, lomographer, and Flickr.com guru Kevin Meredith has created a must-have handbook for any aspiring photographer.

    Witty and dark, Owens’ spare prose shocks and delights. Her talent for pithy, unsettling tales is as sharp as ever, confirming her place as one of Scotland’s finest contemporary writers.’A terrific collection,’ - The Times ’Her black humour and piercing observation bear comparison with the work of Muriel Spark,’ - Guardian’It’s almost impossible to pick up this substantial collection and find anything more worthwhile to do for the rest of the day than read it cover to cover,’- Rosemary Goring, The Herald’The woman is a genius,’ - Daily Mail'Essential reading. It is Agnes Owens at her subtle, concise best - truthful, humane and quite brilliant' - Times Literary Supplement’Her stories...carry the emotional clout of a knockout punch,’ - Observer’Owens is a rare treasure,’ - Allan Massie, The Scotsman’Acerbic, wicked, utterly honest, sly, gothic, brilliantly black deadpan funny,’ - Liz Lochead, Sunday Herald

    This unique companion is a collector's dream, allowing fans to delve into the criminal environment of foggy, gas-lit Victorian London-the world of the all-time greatest detective. The book brings to life the elements of Holmes's success, the crime scene of his day, his history in film and television, and the present-day Holmes legacy. Featured throughout are famous figures such as Holmes's faithful sidekick, Dr. Watson; his nemesis, Professor Moriarity; and Sherlock Holmes creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Filled with more than 150 images-many of the works by the great original illustrators of Conan Doyle's stories-this volume presents an excellent mix of information to satisfy legions of Holmes collectors, mystery fans, and historians fascinated by a bygone era. Through detailed text and over 150 specially researched archive illustrations, the unique volume:  Documents the greatest mysteries, methods of deduction, and notorious criminals found in the Holmes canon. Brings to startling life the Victorian London crime scene that compromised the detective's fascinating world. Examines the various media manifestations of the stories, including their history in print and film and television adaptations. Invites you to read the tales again with newfound insight.

    No one else had the ability to see it whole; no one else knew so many of its politicians, poets, and philosophers. In this first full biography, Duncan Wu draws upon over a decade of archival research toexplore all aspects of Hazlitt's life, from his early aspirations to become a painter, his engagement with revolutionary politics, his rise to prominence as one of England's greatest literary critics, and the disillusionment and poverty of his final years. Along the way, Wu reveals countless newdetails concerning Hazlitt's relationships with Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, William Godwin, J. M. W. Turner, and other important figures of the Romantic era. But Wu sees Hazlitt as an essentially modern writer who took political sketch-writing to a new level, invented sports commentary aswe know it, and created the essay-form as it is practiced in our own time. Painstakingly researched and filled with original insight, this biography benefits also from Wu's New Writings of William Hazlitt, many of which make their appearance here, illuminating obscure passages of Hazlitt's life.

    Now he is dead…And his murder, in his North Oxford home, proves to be the start of a formidably labyrinthine case for chief Inspector Morse, as he tries to track down the killer through the insular and bitchy world of the Oxford colleges…Service of All the DeadThe sweet countenance of reason greeted Morse serenly when he woke, and told him that it would be no bad idea to have a quiet look at the problem itself before galloping off to a solution.Chief Inspector Morse was alone among the congregation in suspecting continued unrest in the quiet parish of St. Frideswide’s.Most people could still remember the churchwarden’s murder. A few could still recall the murderer’s suicide. Now even the police had closed the case. Until a chance meeting among the tombstones reveals startling new evidence of a conspiracy to deceive…

    Winner of the 2008 Olivier Award for Best New Play“With touching emotion and unnerving disquietude, A Disappearing Number forces the spectator to consider the fact of love, death and belonging, within the space of his or her own personal universe.”—New Statesman

    He is saved when a frantic client turns up with a ludicrous story about being stalked by a goblin waving a contract accompanied by a hairy, green-eyed, scythe-wielding monster. When Detective Superintendent Gilks decides a headless body found in a sealed room is the result of a particularly irritating suicide, Dirk is plunged into a mystery where the interconnectedness of all things is tested to the limit...This is the second of three series adapted from the Dirk Gently books, directed by Dirk Maggs (chosen by Douglas Adams to conclude the award-winning Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy). Guest stars include Peter Davison (Doctor Who), Jan Ravens (Dead Ringers), Philip Jackson (Poirot), John Fortune (Bremner, Bird & Fortune), Morwenna Banks (Absolutely), Stephen Moore (The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy) and returning cast members Olivia Colman (Peep Show), Jim Carter (The Golden Compass) and Billy Boyd (The Lord Of The Rings). This release contains over 30 minutes of additional unbroadcast material.

    Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.

    Five years later things are now different, but a reunion weekend in London seems like a great idea - that is until Josie discovers something which will change the course of her life forever.

    A tale that deals with the marvellous Incas of Peru; with the legend also that, long before the Spanish Conquerors entered on their mission of robbery and ruin, there in that undiscovered land lived and died a White God risen from the sea.

    Perfect your English - succeed in exams with these diagnostic tests at Upper Intermediate, Advanced and Expert Levels.

    But that doesn't mean they weren't there. And it doesn't mean that they didn't achieve great things, come up with wonderful inventions or win battles!Lots of people have heard of Joan of Arc, Boadicea and Florence Nightingale, but . . . Did you know that there were actually female Gladiators - Gladiatrices? Or that Nimkasi was the Sumerian Goddess of Beer? Or that it was Mary Jacob Phelps who invented the bra?In this book, Sandi Toksvig shows that His-tory is actually Her-story. Though they're often ignored or overlooked, they have changed the world. There's no question about it . . . Girls are best!

    His serious works observe the human condition with wit and elegance.

    Born into poverty in Ireland, he won a scholarship to St. John's College, Cambridge, and was ordained into the Church of England. He was perpetual curate of Haworth in Yorkshire for 41 years, bringing up four children, founding a school, and campaigning for a proper water supply. Although often portrayed as a somewhat fobidding figure, he was an opponent of capital punishment and the Poor Law Amendment Act, a supporter of limited Catholic emancipation, and a writer of poetry. This is the first serious biography of Patrick Brontë for more than 40 years.

    The first one to assist the evaders and escapers ("E & E" as the Americans called them) was the PAT line, along the Mediterranean coast to Perpignan and down the Spanish border; named after a naval officer Pat O'Leary, from 1942 it became the PAO line.Next was the Comet line, from Brussels to the Pyrenees. Thousands of brave people were to be involved for whom, if caught, the penalty was death. Theirs is a stirring and awe-inspiring story. Respected historian Oliver Clutton-Brock has researched in depth this secret world of evasion, uncovering some treachery and many hitherto unpublished details, operations and photos.It is a tremendous reference work, written in his own colorful style with numerous anecdotes, which fills a gap of knowledge formerly unavailable to historians, professional or amateur. Packed the information, key figure biographies and listings--2, 094 evaders identified--this is a valuable testimony to the courage of all those involved.

    M. O. Grenby shows how these forms have evolved over three hundredyears as well as asking why most children's books, even today, continue to fallinto one or other of these generic categories. Why, for instance, has fantasybeen so appealing to both Victorian and twenty-first-century children? Are thereligious and moral stories written in the eighteenth century really so differentfrom the teenage problem novels of today? The book answers questions likethese with a combination of detailed analysis of particular key texts and a broadsurvey of hundreds of children's books, both famous and forgotten.Key Features- The first concise history of children's literature to be published for more thana decade- Extensive coverage of children's literature, across genres, continents andfrom the beginnings of the form to Harry Potter and Philip Pullman- Links close reading of texts with the historical and cultural context of theirproduction and reception

    The Big Book of Top Gear 2009 promises to be the biggest, brashest, loudest and funniest annual of 2009.If you like the Top Gear TV show but you wish it was made of paper and didn’t move around so much, this is the answer to your prayers. The Big Book of Top Gear is packed full of all the chunky, meaty, sometimes-a-bit-on-fire goodness:• 27 previously unknown facts about the Stig• Some of the most powerful cars ever to attack the track• The raunchy story of Richard Hammond’s love affair with a small Opel• An essential guide to May-style sheds for the modern gentleman• Everything you wanted to know, but never found out, about Top Gear’s most exciting trips• Comprehensive, fully illustrated arguments against both public transport and the humble caravanPacked with action and all the power you’d expect from the petrol heads at Top Gear, The Big Book 2009 is the must-have for Top Gear fans, from teenagers to granddads and everyone in between.

    The book features a comprehensive tour map with GPS co-ordinates for around thirty key sites. Arthur Conan Doyle is best remembered for writing sixty tales that feature his legendary detective, Sherlock Holmes. Between 1882 and 1923, Doyle visited Devon on no fewer than ten occasions and he resided there for some four months in total.

    

    Always sensitive to underlying tensions, she evokes the particular climate of countries and places in Hungary, Prague and the Crisis, and Bowen's Court. In Britain in Autumn, she records the strained atmosphere of the blitz as no other writer does. Immediately after the war, she reported on the International Peace Conference in Paris in a series of essays that are startling in their evocation of tense diplomacy among international delegates scrabbling to define the boundaries of Europe and the stakes of the Cold War. The aftershock of war registers poignantly in Opening Up the House: owners evacuated during the war return to their houses empty since 1939. Other essays in this volume, especially those on James Joyce, Jane Austen, and the technique of writing, offer indispensable mid-century evaluations of the state of literature.The essays assembled in this volume were published in British, Irish, and American periodicals during Bowen's lifetime. She herself did not gather them into any collection. Some of these essays exist only as typescript drafts and are published here for the first time. Bowen's observations on age, toys, disappointment, charm, and manners place her among the very best literary essayists of the modernist period.

    Essays by Faust scholars set the texts in context. Peter Werres introduces the collection with The Changing Faces of Dr. Faustus. Osman Durrani and Gerald Strauss discuss contexts of the Faust Book, given in the English translation The Historie of the Damnable Life and Deserved Death of Doctor John Faustus. David Wootton compares Marlowe's Doctor Faustus and the English Faust Book. Klaus L. Berghahn's analysis of transformations of the theme and seventeenth- and eighteenth-century performance announcements contextualize the popular Puppet-Play of Doctor Faust. Works of Faustian music include the ballad The Just Judgment of God shew'd upon Dr. John Faustus, Berlioz's The Damnation of Faust, and Gounod's Faust. Essays by Henry Bacon and Steven R. Cerf engage the Faust theme in Romantic music and twentieth-century opera. Osman Durrani introduces 19th-Century American Fausts, represented by Hawthorne's The Birthmark, and excerpts from Ethan Brand and Melville's Moby Dick. Faust themes in the 20th and 21st centuries are represented by Valery's My Faust, Shapiro's The Progress of Faust, Osman Durrani's overview of Faust globalized, and Paul M. Malone's work on the Faust theme in rock opera. A reading list is included.