It tells the story of the Fall of Man, a tale of immense drama and excitement, of rebellion and treachery, of innocence pitted against corruption, in which God and Satan fight a bitter battle for control of mankind's destiny. The struggle rages across three worlds - heaven, hell, and earth - as Satan and his band of rebel angels plot their revenge against God. At the center of the conflict are Adam and Eve, motivated by all too human temptations, but whose ultimate downfall is unyielding love.Marked by Milton's characteristic erudition is a work epic both in scale and, notoriously, in ambition. For nearly 350 years it has held generation upon generation of scholars, students and readers in rapt attention and its profound influence can be seen in almost every corner of Western culture.

    . .On the day Nina and Conrad Best move into their new home in picture-perfect Willow Close a body is discovered. Hurrying inside with their belongings, they see horrified neighbours gather by the police cordon - one of the residents has been attacked and brutally killed in the woods.Believing someone must have seen the murderer, the police interview all the residents of the Close. They soon find out that each neighbour harbours their own secrets.The residents of Willow Close are far from what they initially seem and strange, even dark, things happen behind their closed doors.Nina and Conrad had thought they'd found their dream neighbourhood. But have they moved into a nightmare?Welcome to Willow Close: where you'll fit right in . . . Praise for Lesley Pearse 'Storytelling at its very best' Daily Mail'Evocative, compelling, told from the heart' Sunday Express'Glorious, heartwarming' Woman & Home'Intriguing, heart-tugging, beautifully written' Closer

    The timeline is straightforward, and each chapter delves into some aspect of Romano-British life: dealing with the concept of 'the Celts'; when Britannia actually became 'Roman'; how the two peoples attempted to blend their culture through religion; and lastly, why the Romans had to leave. Inside you will read about... ✓ The Timeline ✓ Ancient Celtic Ethnicity, A Modern Invention ✓ The Beginnings Of Roman Britain ✓ Religion And Blending Culture In Roman Britain ✓ The Bitter End It can be difficult to explain everything from a neutral, unbiased perspective as most of the records from the time are Roman in nature, but drawing on a variety of perspectives from archaeologists and historians alike has made for a thought-provoking assessment of the era. Rome's power bestowed cities like London and York to Britannia, and their lasting influence is still visible today in places like Bath, and at Hadrian's Wall to the north. Roman Britain lingers on still.

    As a novelist, Graham Swift delights in the possibilities of the human voice, imagining his way into the minds and hearts of an extraordinary range of characters. In "Making an Elephant", his first ever work of non-fiction, the voice is his own. As generous in its scope as it is acute in its observations, this highly personal book is a singular and open-spirited account of a writer's life.Swift brings together a richly varied selection of essays, portraits, poetry, and interviews, full of insights into his passions and motivations, and wise about the friends, family, and other writers who have mattered to him over the years. Kazuo Ishiguro advises on how to choose a guitar, Salman Rushdie arrives for Christmas under guard, and Ted Hughes shares the secrets of a Devon river. There are private moments, too, with long-dead writers, as well as musings on history and memory that readers of Swift's novels will recognize and love. A journey through place and time, "Making an Elephant" is a book of encounters, between a son and his father, between an author and his younger selves, between writer and reader, and between friends. It brims with charm and candour, and tells of alertness to experience and a true engagement with words; in short, with what it means to feel that writing and reading are an essential part of living.

    For centuries, tales spread about dragons, giants and devils. How and why this happened is the subject of this book.Do you wonder where dragons once lurked and where the local fairies baked their loaves? Or where wolves were trapped and suicides buried? Did people in the past really believe the marvellous stories they told and can those beliefs and those stories still teach us something about how to live in the world today?These questions lie at the heart of Christopher Hadley’s Hollow Places as it searches through the centuries for the truth behind the legend of Piers Shonks, a giant from a village in Hertfordshire, who slew a dragon that once had its lair under ancient yew in a field called Great Pepsells.Hadley’s quest takes us on a journey into the margins of history: to the margins of the Bayeux Tapestry where strange creatures gather, of ancient woodland where hollow trees hide secrets, of 18th century manuscripts where antiquaries scribbled clues to the identity of folk heroes.Hollow Places takes us back shivering to a church in Georgian England, to stand atop its tower triangulating the Elizabethan countryside, and to confront the zealous Mr Dowsing and his thugs looting the brasses and smashing the masonry during the Civil War. It asks why Churchwarden Morris could not sleep at night, and how long bones last in a crypt, and where a medieval stonemason found his inspiration.Hollow Places  rescues a vanished world and wrestles with superstition, with what people really believed; with what that tells us about them and how very much we are still alike– dragons or nay.The story of Piers Shonks is an obscure tale, but it has endured: the survivor of an 800-year battle between storytellers and those who would mock or silence them. Shonks’ story stands for all those thousands of seemingly forgotten tales that used to belong to every village. It is an adventure into the past by a talented and original new writer and a meditation on memory and belief that underlines the importance and the power of the folk legends we used to tell and why they still matter.

    Kennedy examines the nature of the individual, both in isolation and society, as characters define and deny their chosen identities. While showing us the unlikeliness of intimacy and the impossibility of communication, Kennedy also reveals the subversive liberation of impotence, the humour of discomfort as human beings chafe together, the crazed claustrophobia of the family adn the wildly funny results of an eccentricity unleashed.

    Progressively, these lives image and reverse one another in an ascending narrative of action, a narrative all too commonly broken apart and missed. These heroes of the city of God - Adam, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and others - come to flesh and blood in ways that undo our normal assumptions. In stark contrast to the selfish heroism of pagan literature, the heroism of Genesis triumphs by breaking all the standard rules. Jordan inverts so many of the traditional negative judgments against these patriarchs' alleged weaknesses and "sins" of deception, struggle, and tyranny that they stand forth as heroes rather than scoundrels. And yet this book is not just about the heroes of Genesis. Throughout, Jordan draws a picture of how Christian culture should be imagined and lived in our own day, from creativity and work to tyranny and freedom. You will never be able to read Genesis the same way again.

    It includes stunning illustrations and photographs and is a book that everyone can enjoy, dip into, and indulge their passion for dragons!

    This income only serves to highlight the emptiness of a life led by a woman deprived of the domestic trappings that have defined her.

    and his friends George and Harris decide that a jaunt up the Thames would suit them to a 'T'. But when they set off, they can hardly predict the troubles that lie ahead with tow-ropes, unreliable weather-forecasts and tins of pineapple chunks - not to mention the devastation left in the wake of J.'s small fox-terrier Montmorency. Three Men in a Boat was an instant success when it appeared in 1889, and proved so popular that Jerome reunited his now older - but not necessarily wiser - heroes in Three Men on the Bummel, for a picaresque bicycle tour of Germany. With their benign escapism, authorial discursions and wonderful evocation of the late-Victorian 'clerking classes', both novels hilariously capture the spirit of their age.

    But, after King Alfred ensured the survival of Wessex and his son Edward expanded it, his grandson Athelstan inherited the rule of both Mercia and Wessex, conquered Northumbria and was hailed as Rex totius Britanniae: ‘King of the whole of Britain’.Tom Holland recounts this extraordinary story with relish and drama, transporting us back to a time of omens, raven harbingers and blood-red battlefields. As well as giving form to the figure of Æthelstan - devout, shrewd, all too aware of the precarious nature of his power, especially in the north - he introduces the great figures of the age, including Alfred and his daughter Æthelflæd, ‘Lady of the Mercians’, who brought Æthelstan up at the Mercian court. Making sense of the family rivalries and fractious conflicts of the Anglo-Saxon rulers, Holland shows us how a royal dynasty rescued their kingdom from near-oblivion and fashioned a nation that endures to this day.

    As a sergeant in the Solomon Islands Police Force, as well as an aofia, a hereditary spiritual peacekeeper of the Lau people, he is viewed with distrust by both the indigenous islanders and the British colonial authorities. In the past few days he has been cursed by a magic man, stumbled across evidence of a cargo cult uprising, and failed to find an American anthropologist who had been scouring the mountains for a priceless pornographic icon. Then, at a mission station, Kella discovers an independent and rebellious young American nun, Sister Conchita, secretly trying to bury a skeleton. The unlikely pair of Kella and Conchita are forced to team up to solve a series of murders that tie into all these other strange goingson. Set in the 60's in one of the most beautiful and dangerous areas of the South Pacific, Devil-Devil launches an exciting new series.

    This audacious novel is a brilliant (and literal) head trip of a book that brings us into the wildly active, albeit coma-beset, mind of Roy Strang, whose hallucinatory quest to eradicate the evil predator/scavenger marabou stork keeps being interrupted by grisly memories of the social and family dysfunction that brought him to this state. It is the sort of lethally funny cocktail of pathos, violence, and outrageous hilarity that only Irvine Welsh can pull off.

    An invasion force on a scale not seen since the days of the Romans. One of the bloodiest and most decisive battles ever fought. This riveting book explains why the Norman Conquest was the single most important event in English history.Assessing the original evidence at every turn, Marc Morris goes beyond the familiar outline to explain why England was at once so powerful and yet so vulnerable to William the Conqueror's attack. Why the Normans, in some respects less sophisticated, possessed the military cutting edge. How William's hopes of a united Anglo-Norman realm unravelled, dashed by English rebellions, Viking invasions and the insatiable demands of his fellow conquerors. This is a tale of powerful drama, repression and seismic social change: the Battle of Hastings itself and the violent 'Harrying of the North'; the sudden introduction of castles and the wholesale rebuilding of every major church; the total destruction of an ancient ruling class. Language, law, architecture, even attitudes towards life itself were altered forever by the coming of the Normans. Marc Morris, author of the bestselling biography of Edward I, A Great and Terrible King, approaches the Conquest with the same passion, verve and scrupulous concern for historical accuracy. This is the definitive account for our times of an extraordinary story, a pivotal moment in the shaping of the English nation.

    Bella Ford, aged 19 and a girl of generous and determined character, having been seduced by an older and married man, Arch Wilson, goes in search of him and eventually finds him with tragic circumstances. In the meantime she is befriended and given a home by a family of shoemakers, the Wainwrights, who help her restore her faith in living. Through them, and especially the three Wainwright sons, she rediscovers beauty, fulfillment, love and great happiness...until a crisis of extreme tragedy puts her to the highest test. One critic wrote: “The story is reminiscent of Thomas Hardy…the naive girl made pregnant by the slick villain, the rural setting and seasonal rhythms, the inevitable violence, the flight with the lover and his eventual capture--all are variations on Tess of the d'Urbervilles." The title, The Feast of July, derives from the July 'Sunday of Fifty Feasts', celebrated all over the Midlands. These feasts were once religious in character, but they became annual pleasure fairs, and up to the end of the 19th century they were robust and very colourful.