On his travels he ponders Thoreau's eager seclusion in Walden Woods; the reason Rimbaud walked in a fury, while Nerval rambled to cure his melancholy. He shows us how Rousseau walked in order to think, while Nietzsche wandered the mountainside to write. In contrast, Kant marched through his hometown every day, exactly at the same hour, to escape the compulsion of thought. Brilliant and erudite, A Philosophy of Walking is an entertaining and insightful manifesto for putting one foot in front of the other.

    Established by papal bull in 1478, the first task of the Spanish Inquisition was to question Jewish converts to Christianity and to expose and execute those found guilty of reversion. Authorities then turned on Spanish Jews in general, sending 300,000 into exile. Next in line were humanists and Lutherans. No rank was exempt. Children informed on their parents, merchants on their rivals, and priests upon their bishops. Those denounced were guilty unless they could prove their innocence. Nearly 32,000 people were publicly burned at the stake; the “fortunate” ones were flogged, fined, or imprisoned.Joseph Pérez tells the history of the Spanish Inquisition from its medieval beginnings to its nineteenth-century ending. He discovers its origins in fear and jealousy and its longevity in usefulness to the state. He explores the inner workings of its councils, and shows how its officers, inquisitors, and leaders lived and worked. He describes its techniques of interrogation and torture, and shows how it refined displays of punishment as instruments of social control. The author ends his fascinating account by assessing the impact of the Inquisition over three and a half centuries on Spain’s culture, economy, and intellectual life.

    The kicker?He’s the hottest man to walk the earth and I never got over him.Not even now…LukeI never expected to see Marie again.The first time I run into her in five years is when I pull her over for speeding.She looks even more beautiful than she did back in college.This is a chance that only comes around once.The problem is, she has a lot going on in her life and has no plans of staying.I have to do whatever I can to make her stay…Luke is a super-hot, friends to lovers insta love romance featuring a protective and passionate alpha male policeman and a younger curvy woman. It is a safe, sweet read with no cliffhangers, no cheating, and guaranteed HEA.Luke is the first book in the Rogue County Rangers Series. All books can be enjoyed separately but the stories are interconnected.

     Carlos was just another kid from the slums of Havana; the youngest son of a truck driver and a housewife, he ditched school with his friends and dreamed of becoming Cuba's best soccer player. Exasperated by his son's delinquent behavior, Carlos's father enrolled him in ballet school, subjecting him to grueling days that started at five thirty in the morning and ended long after sunset. The path from student to star was not an easy one. Even as he won dance competitions and wowed critics around the world, Carlos was homesick for Cuba, crippled by loneliness and self-doubt. As he traveled the world, Carlos struggled to overcome popular stereotypes and misconceptions; to maintain a relationship with his family; and, most of all, to find a place he could call home. This impassioned memoir is about more than Carlos's rise to stardom. It is about a young man forced to leave his homeland and loved ones for a life of self-discipline, displacement, and physical hardship. It is also about how the heart and soul of a country can touch the heart and soul of one of its citizens. With candor and humor, Carlos vividly depicts daily life in communist Cuba, his feelings about ballet -- an art form he both loves and hates -- and his complex relationship with his father. Carlos Acosta makes dance look effortless, but the grace, strength, and charisma we see onstage have come at a cost. Here, in his own words, is the story of the price he paid.

    British, Japanophile writer (she lived there for several years, returned home to work for a Japanese company, and subsequently came up with this book project) follows in the footsteps of the legendary writer Basho.

    Kaag sets off for the Swiss peaks above Sils Maria where Nietzsche wrote his landmark work Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Both of Kaag's journeys are made in search of the wisdom at the core of Nietzsche's philosophy, yet they deliver him to radically different interpretations and, more crucially, revelations about the human condition.Just as Kaag's acclaimed debut, American Philosophy: A Love Story, seamlessly wove together his philosophical discoveries with his search for meaning, Hiking with Nietzsche is a fascinating exploration not only of Nietzsche's ideals but of how his experience of living relates to us as individuals in the twenty-first century. Bold, intimate, and rich with insight, Hiking with Nietzsche is about defeating complacency, balancing sanity and madness, and coming to grips with the unobtainable. As Kaag hikes, alone or with his family, but always with Nietzsche, he recognizes that even slipping can be instructive. It is in the process of climbing, and through the inevitable missteps, that one has the chance, in Nietzsche's words, to "become who you are."

    The Summer of ’82 is the hilarious and heartfelt story of a boy becoming a man in suburban Australia.Dave O’Neil is one of our most loved comedians. He has been performing stand-up for over twenty-five years, has been part of some of Australia’s most successful FM radio teams, and is a regular on our TV screens, where he holds the honour of having the most guest appearances on ABC’s iconic Spicks and Specks (over fifty!). He is also a successful writer, columnist and actor. The Summer of ’82 is his fifth book.

     “I didn’t know they made men like that!” I was only trying to get away from the city for a weekend, I didn’t think it would turn out like this! I’ve had my share of bad luck in the romance department, but I think my luck is changing, because I’ve never seen anything like him before....and I badly want to see more. She thinks I don’t see her there, watching...looking. Well, keep looking girl, but don’t come any closer because with a body like yours, there’s no telling what I’ll do if I get my hands on you. “Giant Mountain Surprise” is an over-the-top, standalone short story about a VERY large mountain man and the woman lucky enough to find him. It’s safe, fun, and of course, HEA guaranteed. Caution: May steam up your Kindle a little! Enjoy!

    But if you look closely most of them are about motherhood. Fathers get brief paragraphs about needing the odd cuddle themselves and being helpful for carrying the heavier elements of baby kit, but that's it. Fatherhood - The Truth, on the other hand, is a shed-friendly man's guide to the whole scary, life-changing business. One that looks beyond the happy-clappy cliches into the fiery hell of night feeds and projectile vomiting. 'Shit happens' will suddenly start to make sense as a phrase. Providing crucial information and insight on every aspect of parenting with pitch-perfect humour, it takes the dad-to-be on a white-knuckle ride from conception to the first birthday that also considers the emotional truths and selfish imperatives that fathers are usually asked to bury out of sight. A personally informed journey, Fatherhood - The Truth also touches all the crucial practical bases to make it a one-stop, know-it-all manual for the father-to-be.

    In this torrential book we are told the odyssey that brought him first to Barcelona, later to Sevilla and finally to America, where he would experience all kinds of outlandish situations.Using historical facts as raw material, and with stellar appearances of characters such as Miguel de Cervantes or the brigand Serrallonga among others, Besora converses with the satirical tradition of works such as Gargantua and Pantagruel, Gulliver's Travels or Don Quixote, to paint a fresco of Catalonia in the seventeenth century and the Golden Age of the Spanish empire, creating a novel, fresh, sharp and bursting with exuberant adventures.A triumphant, playful masterpiece brought into a unique style of English thanks to the triumphant creativity of translator Mara Faye Lethem.

    She fell in love with the silence, and in this profound, frank memoir she describes how she explored this new love, searching for silence and solitude.

    It will be years before he understands that his burgeoning friendship with the Vietnam vet Rodney Falk, a strange and solitary man, will reshape his life, or that he will become obsessed with Rodney's mysterious past.Why does Rodney shun the world? Why does he accept and befriend the narrator? And what really happened at the mysterious ‘My Khe' incident? Many years pass with these questions unanswered; the two friends drift apart. But as the narrator's literary career takes off, his personal life collapses. Suddenly, impossibly, the novelist finds that Rodney's fate and his own are linked, and the story spirals towards its fascinating, surreal conclusion. Twisting together his own regrets with those of America, Cercas weaves the profound and personal story of a ghostly past.

    One midsummer week over sixty years later, Olivia Laing walked Woolf's river from source to sea. The result is a passionate investigation into how history resides in a landscape - and how ghosts never quite leave the places they love. Along the way, Laing explores the roles rivers play in human lives, tracing their intricate flow through literature and mythology alike. To the River excavates all sorts of stories from the Ouse's marshy banks, from the brutal Barons' War of the thirteenth century to the 'Dinosaur Hunters', the nineteenth-century amateur naturalists who first cracked the fossil code. Central among these ghosts is, of course, Virginia Woolf herself: her life, her writing and her watery death. Woolf is the most constant companion on Laing's journey, and To the River can be read in part as a biography of this extraordinary English writer, refracted back through the river she loved. But other writers float through these pages too - among them Iris Murdoch, Shakespeare, Homer and Kenneth Grahame, author of the riverside classic The Wind in the Willows. The result is a wonderfully discursive read - which interweaves biography, history, nature writing and memoir, driven by Laing's deep understanding of science and cultural history. It's a beautiful, lyrical work that marks the arrival of a major new writer.

    Strange Light takes us back to the docks, to drama class and prom, an undersea conversation with Jacques Cousteau, and into his famous romantic howls. The epic poem, Strange Light, anchors this collection as one of the most inventive and potent collections of modern American poetry. About.com called his 2009 collection Scandalabra, one of the best books of the year. Everything hilarious and stirring is illuminated. The power of Strange Light is waiting.

    Nominated for running book of the year in The Running Awards 2019.