We all know one! They like to groan and grumble, offering their own commentary on the shortcomings of modern life. Whether it is queues at the supermarket, the state of the health system, the price of a pint these days, the hairstyles of teenagers, or the number of Maltesers you actually get in a bag, there is always something that will get their goat. 'The Grumpy Old Git's Guide to Life' is a hilarious celebration of all these grumps, how to identify one, what exactly they find so irritating and why we find their rants quite so amusing.

    Scott Fitzgerald's first book of short stories, Flappers and Philosophers, published in 1920 after his debut novel, This Side of Paradise. The main character, Samuel Meredith, is a man who, as Fitzgerald says, "is certain that at various times in his life hitable qualities were in his face, as surely as kissable qualities have ever lurked in a girl's face." From boarding school to the business world, he gets into confrontations that lead to him being punched in the face, and these four major conflicts in his life lead him to be the type of man about whom the narrator eventually says, "At the present time no one that I know has the slightest desire to hit Samuel Meredith...."

    By one account, Gibran is the third bestselling poet of all time, after Shakespeare and Lao-Tzu.In this beautiful gift book, we discover the essential wisdom about what it means to be alive. For Gibran life is the energy that saturates all we see and feel--as well as what we can only imagine. Here are over 100 fables, aphorisms, parables, stories, and poems from the author of The Prophet.Here on display is that visionary voice of comfort, love, and tolerance.Listing to Nature's LifeTaking time to listen to the natural world reveals a new dimension of beinghuman. It is as if all of nature were already within us, reminding us of ourconnection to the one life we share.SolitudeSolitude is a silent stormthat breaks down all our dead branches.Yet it sends our living roots deeperinto the living heart of the living earth.

    Through his own lively and eloquent reminiscences, "Stepping Stones "retraces the poet's steps from his first exploratory testing of the ground as an infant to what he called his "moon-walk" to the podium to receive the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature. It also fascinatingly charts his post-Nobel life and is supplemented with a number of photographs, many from the Heaney family album and published here for the first time. In response to firm but subtle questioning from Dennis O'Driscoll, Heaney sheds a personal light on his work (poems, essays, translations, plays) and on the artistic and ethical challenges he faced during the dark years of the Ulster Troubles. Combining the spontaneity of animated conversation with the considered qualities of the best autobiographical writing, "Stepping Stones "provides an original, diverting, and absorbing store of reflections and recollections. Scholars and general readers alike are brought closer to the work, life, and creative development of a charismatic and lavishly gifted poet whose latest collection, "District and Circle," was awarded the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2007.

    

    This study analyzes Chinatown in the context of the figure of the detective in literature and film from Sophocles to Edgar Allan Poe and Alfred Hitchcock.

    While you may read this in just twenty minutes, each little nugget is only the visible tip of an information iceberg.' In this free ebook sampler to accompany the new book 1,342 QI Facts To Leave You Flabbergasted, come face-to-face with some of the most mind-blowing facts in the QI universe, such as: The sun gets 4 million tons lighter every second; The first scientifically named dinosaur bone was called Scrotum humanum because it looked like a giant pair of human testicles; A 'batman' was a unit of weight in the Ottoman Empire. Ben Affleck weighs about nine batmans; Making all the chain mail for The Lord of the Rings wore the costume designers' fingerprints away.Enjoy the incredible world of QI facts.

    Abduction is a high-tech thriller about a mysterious transmission from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean that will change everything you know about life on Earth. Two great thriller by the master of the medical thriller.

    A terrifying Halloween treat perfect for Stephen King fans... BY THE LIGHT OF THE MOONWhen Dylan O'Conner pulls into a motel, all he wants is sleep. But he soon finds himself bound, gagged and being injected with a mysterious fluid by a lunatic doctor, who claims Dylan will be the carrier of his 'life's work'. He warns Dylan and fellow victim Jillian that he's being pursued and that they too are now targets. They're sceptical. But soon they realise he isn't so mad after all. . .ONE DOOR AWAY FROM HEAVEN Leilani Maddoc's tenth birthday is nine months away. Micky Bellsong is convinced that in nine months and one day, the girl will be dead. Micky's decision to save the child's life - and pit herself against an adversary as fearsome as he is cunning - takes her on a journey of incredible peril and stunning discoveries, a journey that will change her for ever...SEIZE THE NIGHTOne by one, the children of Moonlight Bay are disappearing. No one knows if they are dead or alive. Christopher Snow has glimpsed the dark and torrid secrets of the small-town community where he has spent his life. And only he has the key to the truth - a truth that could only exist in the genetic chaos of Moonlight Bay.

    Over more than four decades, he built a reputation writing reviews for the Chicago Sun-Times and, later, arguing onscreen with rival Chicago Tribune critic Gene Siskel and later Richard Roeper about the movies they loved and loathed. But Ebert went well beyond a mere “thumbs up” or “thumbs down.” Readers could always sense the man behind the words, a man with interests beyond film and a lifetime’s distilled wisdom about the larger world. Although the world lost one of its most important critics far too early, Ebert lives on in the minds of moviegoers today, who continually find themselves debating what he might have thought about a current movie.The Great Movies IV is the fourth—and final—collection of Roger Ebert’s essays, comprising sixty-two reviews of films ranging from the silent era to the recent past. From films like The Cabinet of Caligari and Viridiana that have been considered canonical for decades to movies only recently recognized as masterpieces to Superman, The Big Lebowski, and Pink Floyd: The Wall, the pieces gathered here demonstrate the critical acumen seen in Ebert’s daily reviews and the more reflective and wide-ranging considerations that the longer format allowed him to offer. Ebert’s essays are joined here by an insightful foreword by film critic Matt Zoller Seitz, the current editor-in-chief of the official Roger Ebert website, and a touching introduction by Chaz Ebert. A fitting capstone to a truly remarkable career, The Great Movies IV will introduce newcomers to some of the most exceptional movies ever made, while revealing new insights to connoisseurs as well.

    However, emotional trouble--unhappiness--is essentially our own creation. This book explores two things you need to know about unhappiness and how to replace it with joy. The first is the failure to understand reality, and the second is egotism. Together they result in distress, dis-ease, and a failure to take personal responsibility.His Holiness the Dalai Lama counsels readers to take responsibility for their thoughts and actions; to understand that our problems are of our own making and not the result circumstances or the actions of others. He presents a path for taking charge of our lives.Accessible, direct, and down-to-earth, this slender volume is for fans of the Dalai Lama, as well as anyone looking for an easy-to-understand guide to an authentic and joyful life.

     Always Looking opens with “The Clarity of Things,” the Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities for 2008. Here, in looking closely at individual works by Copley, Homer, Eakins, Norman Rockwell, and others, the author teases out what is characteristically “American” in American art. This talk is followed by fourteen essays, most of them written for The New York Review of Books, on certain highlights in Western art of the last two hundred years: the iconic portraits of Gilbert Stuart and the sublime landscapes of Frederic Edwin Church, the series paintings of Monet and the monotypes of Degas, the richly patterned canvases of Vuillard and the golden extravagances of Klimt, the cryptic triptychs of Beckmann, the personal graffiti of Miró, the verbal-visual puzzles of Magritte, and the monumental Pop of Oldenburg and Lichtenstein. The book ends with a consideration of recent works by a living American master, the steely sculptural environments of Richard Serra. John Updike was a gallery-goer of genius. Always Looking is, like everything else he wrote, an invitation to look, to see, to apprehend the visual world through the eyes of a connoisseur.

    Orwell gives an anecdotal account of his experiences in a french public hospital which triggers a contemplation of hospital literature in the context of 19th-century medicine.

    From the author of Mystery Train and Lipstick Traces, comes an exhilarating and provocative investigation of the tangle of American identity.

    But we fall victim to the messages the world whispers in our ears: “You need to buy all of this stuff in order to feel complete.” “You’d be a lot happier if you had a different husband.” “If you’re not super mom and you can’t do it all, you aren’t good enough.”The reality is, what the world tells us isn’t true. If we listened to these messages, our lives would become harried, empty, and phony. Instead we need to listen to the messages that God gives us in his Word. A great place to start is Proverbs 31. The woman described in this passage seems like the ideal woman, and she is. But even more, she is real. She is authentic and true, with a heart for God, a heart for her family, and a heart for her community.How do you become that woman? It’s a journey, and it happens by the choices you make every day. The NIV Real-Life Devotional Bible for Women will help you become the woman you want to be. With insightful daily devotions from Lysa TerKeurst and the women at Proverbs 31 Ministries, this Bible helps you maintain life’s balance in spite of today’s hectic pace. The 365 daily devotions inspire you to live authentically as a woman of God.