What was once a thriving paradise has become a battleground for fascist soldiers and Spanish patriots. It doesn't take long for Sophie to realize just how far from home she really is.Caught in the middle of what is quickly becoming a bloody battleground, she receives tragic news, but remaining in Spain is her only option. The route to safety is blocked and fighting surrounds her. On her darkest night, Sophie takes refuge with a brigade of international compatriots. It is among these volunteers, through the use of her fiance's camera and her art, that she pledges to make the plight of the Spanish people known around the world.

    This is the story of a time when brother fought brother and Christian fought Christian. Power was all and Spain was riven by strife which was political, religious and familial! One man came from the harsh land of Castile to make one land and one state. Spain truly began with Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar, El Campeador, El Cid. His story is told through the eyes of the warrior who spent his life at his side. William Redbeard came from humble origins but he was destined for greatness too as he walked in the seemingly endless shadow of El Cid. This first instalment in the Chronicles tells of Rodrigo’s rise to prominence when he became the champion of Prince Sancho of Castile. This is but the beginning of a tale which still stirs the blood a millennium after it began.

    Manchester United away against Crystal Palace at a packed-out Selhurst Park. Eric Cantona, United's mercurial talisman, has been man-marked closely all game by Richard Shaw and become increasingly frustrated. In the 48th minute, Cantona’s temper boils over and he kicks out at Shaw. The ref shows him a red card. On his way off the pitch, a Palace fan rushes towards the hoardings to hurl abuse. The Frenchman loses it. He launches into the crowd, aiming a kung-fu kick at the fan’s chest. He is forcibly restrained and then taken off down the tunnel. The football world is stunned. Nothing like this has ever happened before.What followed has entered football folklore: the media furore, the seagulls following the trawler, and the longest domestic ban ever handed to a player; it would end up lasting 250 days. As Manchester United’s campaign stuttered towards a trophy-less conclusion, surrendering the league on the last day of the season and losing the FA Cup final, Cantona withdrew from the public eye. But, behind closed doors, Ferguson was planning the most remarkable of fresh starts for his star player and for a new-look United.250 Daystells the story in brilliant detail of one of the most turbulent times in United’s recent history. Showing Cantona in a new light, and the genius of Ferguson’s man management and vision in close relief, it is an incredibly entertaining and insightful look at the most controversial episode of the Premier League era.

    Manrique's pen, the world of renaissance Spain and the Mediterranean is made vivid, its surface cracking with sudden violence and cruelty...This novel can be read as a generous salute across the centuries from one writer to another, as a sympathetic homage and recommendation...Cervantes Street brings to life the real world behind the fantastic exploits of the knight of La Mancha. The comic mishaps are funnier for being based in fact. The romantic adventures are more affecting. Cervantes Street has sent me back to Don Quixote.-- The Wall Street Journal "Manrique adopts a florid, epic style for his tale of 16th-century Spain, one with the quality of a tale told by a troubadour rather than written on the page. He ably captures the human qualities of the legendary writer, as well as his swashbuckling."-- Publishers Weekly "Manrique has penned a well-written, well-researched, fast-paced narrative ... An entertaining book ... and a superb retlling of Cervantes's life."-- Library Journal "Cervantes Street is historical fiction at its best. Compact and intense... The characters are wonderfully draw, the environments are detailed and colorful and the feeling is genuine... a gripping, adventuresome novel with profound insight into the ways in which we choose our destiny."-- New York Journal of Books “The novel is exciting, paced well, interesting and with a literary mystery to boot.”-- Seattle Post-Intelligencer "Hold onto your hats because Manrique has crafted a brilliant pastiche... This fun, diverting, swift odyssey into Cervantes' travels... puts tall tales where they belong, in capable fiction... Cervantes Street should be in your hands."--La Bloga"A sprawling vivacious big-hearted novel. Manrique is fantastically talented and this is perhaps his masterpiece."--Junot DíazThe actual facts of Miguel de Cervantes's life seem to be snatched from an epic tale: an impoverished and talented young poet nearly kills a man in a duel and is forced into exile; later, he distinguishes himself in battle and is severely wounded, losing the use of his left hand; on his way back to Spain his ship is captured by pirates and he is sold into slavery in Algiers; after prolonged imprisonment and failed escape attempts, he makes his way back home, eventually settling in a remote village in La Mancha to create his masterpiece, the first modern novel in Western literature: Don Quixote.Taking the bare bones of Cervantes' life, Jaime Manrique has accomplished a singular feat: an engaging and highly accessible take on a brilliant, enigmatic man and his epoch. This is an archetypal tale of rivalry and revenge—featuring Cervantes's antagonistic relationship with the man who would go on to write his own sequel to Don Quixote—that is sure to garner comparisons to Peter Shaffer's Amadeus, Alexandre Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo, and, with its extraordinary recreation of the life and times of Cervantes, to Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall.Jaime Manrique is a novelist, essayist, and poet. His critically acclaimed novels include Latin Moon in Manhattan and Our Lives Are the Rivers. He is a Distinguished Lecturer in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature at the City College of New York.

    En route, he travels through Spain’s most picturesque towns. And Benidorm.Along the way he learns about the region’s history, from the time four hydrogen bombs fell over Spain, to the politician who shot General Franco’s daughter in the bottom yet rose to become one of the country’s most powerful men. While riding across Spain, Chris also meets an array of eccentric characters such as the man who lives in a cave and the Airbnb host who admitted strangling her previous guest.People told him he was crazy to leave his job and his girlfriend behind to jump on the cheapest bike he could find. After a series of mishaps including one that almost sparked a mountain rescue mission, it would appear they were right.

    Many of her investigations take her into the normal realm where she subdues lost, ornery and evil spirits that haunt communities. Lavana has very little memory of her past, but a scar on her cheek is a reminder that something dark occurred. Will the hunt for her true past spring up during one of her quests? Her witch detective in training, Winnie, is an eye patched beauty with a way with the men. A wizard stole her eye...maybe a jilted lover? A talking raven, Alan, is Lavana's right hand man. He runs reconnaissance and poop bombs those he considers worthy. In a small town in the Midwest, the legend of Hatchet Man has swirled for decades. It's said his tombstone glows in the dark in the lonely cemetery at night, and folks have heard his labored breathing as he hunts for his next victim. Is it true? When a young woman is discovered murdered has the Hatchet Man come back from the dead to wreck havoc, is someone summoning him, or is there a flesh and blood killer on the loose? ***Find out in this first book in a new Witch Detective Series***

    But the historic landfall of October 1492 was only a secondary event of the year. The preceding January, they had accepted the surrender of Muslim Granada, ending centuries of Islamic rule in their peninsula. And later that year, they had ordered the expulsion or forced baptism of Spain's Jewish minority, a cruel crusade undertaken in an excess of zeal for their Catholic faith. Europe, in the century of Ferdinand and Isabella, was also awakening to the glories of a new age, the Renaissance, and the Spain of the "Catholic Kings" - as Ferdinand and Isabella came to be known - was not untouched by this brilliant revival of learning. Here, from the noted historian Malveena McKendrick, is their remarkable story.

    Eyes fixed on a mysterious point in the air, they were mesmerized by something which was invisible to everyone else. What the girls said they saw--and heard--sent shock waves that are still reverberating today. The messages the four girls claimed to receive revealed a picture of a Catholic church in crisis and a world that faced an earth-shattering future that would unfold in their lifetime. The girls’ pronouncements about coming trouble in the church and world were met with fierce skepticism from the first. Some charged the girls with being possessed by demons (based on the girls’ strange physical poses and apparent levitation), and others claimed the girls were putting on an act (revealing their true colors when they chose ordinary married lives instead of the convent). There was also a third body of critics: those who believed that a group of girls on the cusp of adolescence in a remote and insular society conjured up a psychodrama which, fueled by the spotlight and mounting frenzy, gained a frightening life of its own. There was one other possibility--that the strange events in Garabandal, Spain actually did occur, and the girls received an apocalyptic warning for both the church and the modern world. The warning to the world included a prediction that a newly militant Russia would rise again. The prophecies of Garabandal also foretell a World-Wide Warning and a Global Miracle, whose purpose is to convince a world reeling from one catastrophe to the next that God exists. But the Warning and Miracle, dramatic as they sound, are not even the most unsettling of the messages. One night, the young girls dissolved into screams. During this so-called “Night of the Screams,” the girls say they were shown a tragic chastisement that would befall the entire world if the Warning and Miracle failed to trigger global change. As disquieting as those messages were, the most shocking message at Garabandal was for the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church. Why were the messages of Garabandal so effectively suppressed? Did it have to do with the fact that the messages presciently warned of coming scandal and turmoil in the Roman Catholic Church itself? Did a portal open between worlds on a Spanish mountaintop in that summer of 1961? And if so, who opened the door--an angel of God or an angel of darkness? Did a young girl's flight of fancy one summer night spin wildly out of control? Or was it a visitation from God? Now that the “girls” at the center of this drama are 60-year-old women, should their claims be discredited or re-examined? Are the apparitions bogus or fast-approaching their fulfillment? If the events are false, Garabandal is a fascinating and perhaps tragic human interest story with several explanations. If the events and warnings are true--then what do we do? By the end of this book, readers can judge whether the visions of four young seers on a mountaintop in Spain were historical fact, a devilish fraud, or the creative confusion of four girls who would spend the rest of their lives trying to escape a human tragicomedy that they themselves had produced.

    However, Christy Kinahan will never be fêted in the financial press. For his business - drugs, guns, money-laundering, murder - also makes him Ireland's leading criminal.While Kinahan kept a low profile as he grew his empire, by the time his crime cartel shot to public attention in 2010 it was known to European police forces for over a decade. In that year police raided members' homes and premises in Spain, Ireland the UK. By then Kinahan and his sons Daniel and Christopher Jr were already among the richest men in Europe, with an estimated joint worth of €750m.However, events in February 2016 made Kinahan a household name. A daring and deadly gun attack in a suburban Dublin hotel - an attack targeting Daniel Kinahan (who escaped) - stunned the public and exposed the depth of enmity between the Kinahans and the family and associates of the veteran Dublin criminal, Gerry Hutch. Despite an intense garda crack-down on the gangsters' activities, the body count continues to rise.The Cartel gives behind-the-scenes story of that initial Spanish-led raid on the Kinahans. The authors have had exclusive access to the wiretaps that tracked the cartel for two years and talked to key officers who investigated them. They expose the criminal clan's aims and actions - in members' own words - and reveal the surprising truths behind how they built their empire.And The Cartel brings the story bang up-to-date to explain the origins of and fall-out from the feud with the Hutches, one of the most violent and vicious Ireland has ever known - and one that could be the undoing of the Kinahans.The authors' combined depth of knowledge - Stephen Breen has been a crime correspondent for over 15 years and in addition to writing about crime for over a decade, Owen Conlon is a fluent Spanish speaker - has culminated in a detailed and gripping account of double-crossing, vengeance and murder.

    Enchanted with effortlessly stylish bars and colourful buildings, this is a charismatic metropolis doused in the endless sun of southern Spain. The city is also home to two historic institutions of Spanish football - Real Betis and Sevilla - and when they go head-to-head to contest El Gran Derbi, the rest of Spain can only watch in awe. This is a pulsating and arresting experience which encapsulates the beautiful game in all its raw, spellbinding brilliance. Spanish football is more than Barcelona and Real Madrid. Much more. The city contrasts uptown Sevilla with downtown Betis. Los Rojiblancos pitted against Los Verdiblancos. Sevillistas and Beticos. Nothing can compare to this beautiful city and the crazy passion for football that it produces, either in Spain or Europe. Colin Millar - who made the city his home - charts the illustrious histories of football in the city and explores how both clubs represent a way of life for Sevillanos.

    It is decorated with graceful Victorian mansions, carpeted with gray cobblestones and bright wild flowers, and populated by sturdy, hard-working folks-most of whom are unaware that the island of Heavenly Daze is not just like the other islands of coastal Maine. The small town that crowns its peak consists of seven buildings, each inhabited, according to divine decree, by an angel who has been commanded to guard and help anyone who crosses the threshold.  Unexpected hijinks and heart-warming results occur when mortals and immortals cross paths-and unaware visitors to the picturesque establishments of Heavenly Daze discover that they have been entertained by angels.

    it was a dark place to be. No Direction Home tells the story of the series of events that landed Greg there, what it was like, and how he adventurously escaped. It starts on the first day of middle school in an upscale neighborhood in Long Island, New York. Greg was labeled the biggest piece of shit in sixth grade because of a few unfortunate circumstances, and there seemed to be no hope for redemption. Then one day everything changed, but it was a bit too late. Greg was on a crusade for vengeance.What ensues is a chain reaction of escapades, filled with theft, drug addiction, prostitution, suspension, and eventually, permanent relocation to residential rehabs across the country. Still, nothing could calm him down. He was a bit too off the hinges by then for rehabilitation, and after a scuffle with anti-Semitic cohorts at an inpatient rehab and a daring escape with a girl "too good to be true," he's scooped up and transferred to Hidden Lake Academy, a fucked up place tucked in the obscurity of the Appalachian Mountains. From that point on, all bets are off and there is one mission, and one mission only: get out. His attempted escape morphs into a chaotic tale of homelessness, bad crowds, rancid romance, and bravery in all the wrong places, but one thing is for sure... Greg will never be the same. The question is, will he ever find his way home?

    She can see the future. But the visions don't include capture by the Spanish, nor her rescue by a handsome captain. Rand Van Locken expects to find treasure when he and his crew board the galleon. Instead, they discover a bedraggled beauty in chains behind a locked door. He wants to know more about her. She wonders if he can be trusted with her secrets. Hunted by the Spanish, they embark on a quest to rescue Lissa's kidnapped sister. But when Lissa disappears in the ghost mists, is Rand's love enough to bring her back?

    A comprehensive guide to preparing for and hiking the Appalachian Trail

    But six weeks soon turned into nine years, and helping out transformed into running the company. During his stint, Tim discovered a booming city in hedonistic reaction to years of fascism, where the evenings lasted until dawn, sleep was something you only did at work, and five hour lunches invariably involved a plate of bull's testicles. Frothing with a language designed to make foreigners dribble, hospitalized by tapa-induced flatulence, and constantly frustrated by the unapproachable beauty of the women parading through the Vogue offices, he nevertheless fell in love with a city, a country, and its people—despite the fact he rarely has a clue what they’re talking about. Tim Parfitt's rise from unwanted guest to paparazzi-pursued mover in Spain's glamorous social scene is a hilarious comedy of errors.