Surratt, who has spent the years since Lincoln's death as an obscure shipping clerk, is approached by D.W. Griffith to read from his Civil War diary in Griffith's movie Birth of a Nation.  As Surratt reads over his diary for the first time in fifty years, the reader returns to the tumultuous days of 1864, and a chance encounter between Surratt and John Wilkes Booth.  Booth, a larger-than-life personality whose appetites, fame, and sheer force of will bedazzle everyone around him, helps to secure Surratt a position as the assistant to renowned photographer Alexander Gardner.  Over the following weeks, Booth continues to lavish attention on Surratt, slowly drawing him bit by bit into his web of intrigue.  By the time Surratt discovers the desperate nature of Booth's true intentions, it is too late, and he finds himself caught up in a firestorm of violence that shatters forever his insulated life and mild ambitions.Based on the actual historical record of the plot to kill Lincoln, and illustrated with photographs of the conspirators and their execution, the novel is filled with the kind of detail of nineteenth-century architecture, photography, and day-to-day bustle that brings Civil War Washington vividly to life.  A powerful evocation of a dangerous, chaotic, and tragic time, Booth is the compulsively readable story of the most infamous assassination in our history, as well as a riveting portrait of an enigmatic figure who continues to haunt the American imagination.Booth is a selection of both the Barnes and Noble "Discover Great New Writers" program and Borders' "Discover" program.

    He was a seemingly respectable businessman from Canada, so attentive and caring it was easy to ignore the warning signs - until he started, step by step, to take over her life. Six months after they first met Al Amin's web of lies started to unravel and Alison became aware that he had a sinister dark side. When she tried to end the relationship, the unthinkable happened and she found herself the victim of an escalating campaign of terror. Even when Al Amin was found with knives and guns, the police had no powers to detain him. Nobody could have imagined the events that were to follow, as Alison was left fearing for her life. It would take all her strength to survive. Brave and gripping, Stalked tells of one young woman's fight against the man who terrorized her, and her determination to defeat the fear and live a normal life.

    Laying bare the personalities, pyrotechnics and political intrigues of the Blair years, it was described as Yes Minister meets Alan Clark.Funny and self-deprecating, the new diaries run from his sacking by Blair as a minister after the 2005 elections to Election Day 2010 as he prepares to step down after 23 years as an MP wryly observing ' they say failed politicians make the best diarists, in which case I am in with a chance.'Praise for A View from the Foothills'...gems sprinkled across every page...' Peter Hain

    She lives on a farm in Texas, and keeps five little dolls in a homemade shoebox house she fixed up for them. The box children are her only friends, the brothers and sisters she never had, the babies her mother was supposed to have but didn't. This is her first diary, and it's hard to hide it from her bullying older brother, her philandering father, and her crazy pregnant mother. But these are her secrets, her hopes, her dreams. And this is the summer she will stop talking to dolls...and start thinking about people and places she doesn't know yet.

    100 UNFORTUNATE DAYS book brings a realization that the mad walk among us--and me BE us.

    She and her husband, Harvey Loomis, used as their guidebooks medieval texts, including the first official biography of the saint, completed in 1229, just three years after he died. Theirs was not a spiritual journey but one based on admiration for a man whose legend continues to inspire and fascinate millions around the world. From Assisi–a small Umbrian town that now draws five million visitors a year, making it second only to Rome as an Italian pilgrimage destination–Saint Francis crisscrossed Italy for twenty years. And so too does the author travel through the “green heart” of Italy to such hill towns and cities as Siena, Bologna, Venice, Gubbio, and Rome, and to the many mountaintop Franciscan sanctuaries from La Verna and Le Celle di Cortona in Tuscany to the Rieti Valley.Along the way, Francke movingly depicts the many miracles Francis performed and draws us into the splendid beauty of the landscape that inspired the saint’s love for nature and regard for all living things. Unlike Francis, however, whose asceticism caused him to add ashes to his food to deaden its earthly pleasure, Francke and her husband indulge in the fabled Umbrian cuisine, from wild boar to the region’s famed black truffles, and the incomparable local wines.On the Road with Francis of Assisi embraces the spirit and person of its legendary subject, and invites the reader to marvel at his spiritual intensity and follow in his footsteps through the timeless beauty of Italy.From the Hardcover edition.

    Betrayed once again by another woman’s marriage plans, she knew her romantic youth was over. So many of her female friends had married and settled. Anne cast around forlornly for the life-companion she had so long sought. She held melancholy spirits at bay by reading new geology and new gardening books in Shibden’s well-stocked library.
 Then a chance re-acquaintance with neighbouring heiress Ann Walker changed all that. Anne Lister is best known to us as a lesbian diarist. Nature’s Domain tracks her intense courtship of Ann Walker, vividly and candidly recorded in Anne’s daily journals - and partly written in her own secret code. This influential Anne Lister book also documents how she began redesigning the Shibden landscape and playing a powerful new role in the local political tumult after the passing of the great Reform Bill. This dramatic story, hitherto unknown and never before unpublished, unfolds to New Year’s Eve 1832. It records how Anne Lister’s indomitable will enabled her to mould nature to her own powerful desires. “Nature’s Domain gives a compelling overview of a key time in Anne Lister’s remarkable life. Jill Liddington guides us knowledgeably through the diaries of 1832, offering crucial insight into Anne’s private and candour observations about love, sex, money and politics.” Laura Johansen, Cultural Destinations Manager, Halifax. Jill Liddington is co-author of One Hand Tied Behind Us (1978) which became a suffrage classic. She is author of Presenting the Past: Anne Lister of Halifax 1791-1840 (1994) and of Female Fortune: the Anne Lister diaries 1833-36 (1998). She is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Leeds, and lives in Mytholmroyd near Halifax. Sally Wainwright’s BBC1 drama series, Gentleman Jack was inspired by Female Fortune and Nature’s Domain

    In this amazing book, he offers an account of his own incredible flights of "soul travel"--and shows us how we too can develop this life-changing ability.

    In that time, he played alongside some of the great characters in cricket: Mike Brearley, Mike Gatting, Phil Edmonds and Ian Botham. This is not an autobiography of a good county pro, but a look at the ups and downs, the lifestyle, the practical jokes and sheer hard yakka that make such a poorly paid, insecure job appeal to so many. Now a respected journalist and broadcaster, Simon Hughes has written a brilliant, amusing and wrily self-depracating book, packed with hilarious and embarrassing anecdotes about some of the greatest cricketers of the last 20 years.

    Lonely and stricken by grief, she gives herself three months to decide whether to go on beyond her thirty-third birthday and begins to record her thoughts in her daily diary.When Ruth meets the eccentric Red, an artist who Ruth commissions to paint her portrait, she feels the faint stirrings of something that has been missing from her life for so long: love.But can Red thaw Ruth's frozen heart - and does he want to? While Ruth tries to rebuild relationships with friends and family, the clock is ticking. Can Red save Ruth from herself and make her believe life is worth living - before it's too late...Thaw is an intense and thought-provoking read that will appeal to anyone who has ever been touched by the healing power of love. Once again, the bestselling author of The Most Beautiful Thing applies her insight and shows us how, even when there appears to be none, there is always hope.

    It provides a depiction of American spirit and life in war-time England. The author's love story (and the love stories of her friends) illuminates war-time relationships, showing with sensitivity how they developed and how they were understood and accepted at the time.

    I looked forward to the year as a potent harvest," May Sarton writes. Assailed by debilitating illnesses, Sarton found herself instead using much of her energy battling for health. Yet, as this record shows, she did after all do what she had wanted to, as she persevered in work, friendships, and love of nature, discovering in the process new landscapes in the country of old age.

    Jammed into one house for three days, with Uncle Tristram hurling potatoes at the cat and Mum on the verge of a breakdown, it soon becomes obvious that more definitely does not mean merrier.

    Armed only with a fan belt made of cotton, wooden wheels and a trunkload of ‘wise-ass Limey liberal gumption’, his route takes him exclusively through Donald-voting counties, meeting the everyday folks who voted red along the way.He meets a people defined by extraordinary generosity, willing to shift heaven and earth to keep him on the road. And yet, this is clearly a nation in conflict with itself: citizens ‘tooling up’ in reaction to ever-increasing security fears; a healthcare system creaking to support sugar-loaded soda lovers; a disintegrating rust belt all but forgotten by the warring media and political classes.With his trademark blend of slapstick humour, affable insight and butt-clenching peril, Tim Moore invites us on an unforgettable road trip through America. Buckle up!

    Based on her diary, the tale of Libby, her husband, and the powerful first officer is told in all its passion. 20 line drawings.