Radio 4 Today presenter and national treasure John Humphrys' funny and engaging memoir of building a home in Greece with his son Christopher.

    Kinky Friedman, lead singer of the outrageous country-and-western band The Texas Jewboys, is the author of five detective stories featuring himself as the wise-cracking, cigar-smoking, cat-loving sleuth.This omnibus includes A Case of Lone Star, Greenwich Killing Time, and When the Cat's Away.

    He is plagued by fragmented visions of the past, and has resigned himself to a life of quiet desolation. That is, until the night he meets wealthy and eccentric jazz fan Leonard Fry.In the days that follow, Leonard makes Bent a devilish deal, proposing a bizarre experiment in which Bent will play a vital part.The deal provides an opportunity for Bent to start afresh, to question everything he knows, and for the two men to move beyond the one terrifying frontier from which neither of them can be sure they’ll ever return: the borders of their own sanity.Fred Strydom’s novel The Inside-Out Man is a jazzy and surreal mind-bender of a book.

    Others wanted to share lessons and memories and, most important, pass them down to their own children. This book is for all fathers, young or old, who can learn from the men in these pages how to get it right, and to understand that sometimes it is the little gestures that can make the big difference for your child. For some in this book, the appreciation came later than they would have liked. But as Wisdom of Our Fathers reminds us, it is never too late to embrace it. From the father who coached his daughter in sports (and life), attending every meet, game, performance, and tournament, to the daughter who, after a fifteen-year estrangement, learned to make peace with her difficult father just before he died, to the son who came, at last, to appreciate the silent way his father could show affection, Wisdom of Our Fathers shares rewarding lessons, immeasurable gifts, and lasting values.Heartfelt, humorous, engaging, irresistibly readable, and bound to bring back memories of unforgettable moments with our own fathers, Tim Russert’s new book is not only a fitting companion to his own marvelous memoir, but also a celebration of the positive qualities passed down from generation to generation.

    What is he hiding in this house?Handsome and mystery all combined in Gabriel, the only other person living, and he’s not used to talking or having guests.I’m drawn to him, but his dead wife has him living like she was still here and watching him. Talking isn’t easy for him.With the never ending storm outside the windows, I’m pulled into more danger and mystery within the walls that no longer seem safe.The house itself seems to throw obstacles, but if I don’t figure this out, will I survive?

    Like countless amateurs before him--Albert Einstein, Humphrey Bogart, Marcel Duchamp--the game has consumed his life and his mind. First captivated by it as a member of his high school chess club, his passion was rekindled during an accidental encounter with chess hustlers on the streets of Kathmandu. In its aftermath, he forgot how to care about anything else. He played at all hours, for weeks at a time. Like a spurned lover, he tried to move on, but he found the game more seductive the more he resisted it.And so, he thought, if he can't defeat his obsession, he had to succumb to it. All the Wrong Moves traces Chapin's rollicking two-year journey around the globe in search of glory. He travels to tournaments in Bangkok and Hyderabad. He seeks out a mentor in St. Louis, a grandmaster whose personality is half rabbi and half monk, and who offers cryptic wisdom and caustic insults ("you're the best player in your chair"). His story builds toward the Los Angeles Open, where Chapin is clearly outmatched and yet no less determined not to lose.Along the way, he chronicles the highs and lows of his fixation, driven on this quest by lust, terror, and the elusive possibility of victory. Stylish, inventive, and laugh-out-loud funny, All the Wrong Moves is more than a work of history or autobiography. It's a celebration of the purity, violence, and beauty of the game.

    It has three questions at its heart: where did Dark Souls come from, what makes it so special, and why are we all so obsessed with it? YOU DIED is a must-read for anyone who’s ever braved the wilds of Lordran, for five hours or 500. Includes exclusive new interview material with the game’s director Hidetaka Miyazaki

    Chess board graphics illustrate different scenarios and support the text explanations so readers can visualize different moves and their potential outcomes as they go.Let Chess for Kids and International Master Michael Basman turn you into a champion chess player.

    Sparked more than two thousand feet below ground, the fire spewed flames, smoke, and poisonous gas through a labyrinth of underground tunnels. Within an hour, more than four hundred men would be locked in a battle to survive. Within three days, one hundred and sixty-four of them would be dead.Fire and Brimstone recounts the remarkable stories of both the men below ground and their families above, focusing on two groups of miners who made the incredible decision to entomb themselves to escape the gas. While the disaster is compelling in its own right, Fire and Brimstone also tells a far broader story striking in its contemporary relevance. Butte, Montana, on the eve of the North Butte disaster, was a volatile jumble of antiwar protest, an abusive corporate master, seething labor unrest, divisive ethnic tension, and radicalism both left and right. It was a powder keg lacking only a spark, and the mine fire would ignite strikes, murder, ethnic and political witch hunts, occupation by federal troops, and ultimately a battle over presidential power.

    She searches for her true identity but is caught between worlds of Africa and Europe, her parents' and her own, colony and capital. Ultimately it is an ­account of possession, identity and the realities of urban life in the late twentieth century. She is pursued by Julian, the son of French-Algerians who is an ardent Orientalist. Pigeon-holed by Julian into the ­stereotypical exotic mold, Shérazade endeavors to create her own definition of Algerian ­femininity and in doing so breaks down conventions and stereotypes. It is Julian's obsession with her that spurs her on to self-discovery and to make decisions about her future.

    But beneath the surface of her seemingly perfect life are the dark secrets of the past she's tried to forget. Disturbing postcards begin arriving in the mail; she is recognized by a man who knew her from her past-an avalanche of small moments that will threaten everything she thought was real. When her youngest daughter falls ill with a mysterious illness, the doctors and even her husband suspect that she is deliberately making her child sick.As her marriage unravels, she comes dangerously close to the edge-and to losing everything that she loves-as the past she has fought so hard to bury becomes her witness and prosecutor.This is a haunting, heartbreaking novel-domestic fiction at its very finest.

    Her use of tactics, combinations, and strategy during her games gave her the critical advantage she needed against her opponents. In Chess Tactics for Champions, Polgar gives insight into the kind of thinking that chess champions rely on while playing the game, specifically the ability to recognize patterns and combinations. With coauthor Paul Truong, Susan Polgar teaches the tactics she learned from her father, Laszlo Polgar, one of the world's best chess coaches.• Teaches players how to calculate the effect of a move in order to gain an edge over an opponent• For intermediate to advanced chess players of all ages

    Shad Helmstetter reveals the actual difference between people who succeed in their lives - day after day - and people who don't.For the first time in any book, Shad Helmstetter discloses three underlying breakthrough concepts that are foundational to successful personal and professional growth in each of us. He discovered that when the three concepts are combined, they virtually guarantee success.In an easy-to-follow program that takes the self out of self-help, Dr. Helmstetter shows the reader how to use these breakthough concepts to lose weight and improve physical fitness, increase income, build self-esteem and self-confidence, improve family and relationships, reduce stress, and become more organized and in control.Presenting the most important and up-to-date findings from the field of motivational research, Dr. Helmstetter immediately helps the reader get rid of old mental programs, find focus, set and track goals, stay motivated, and have help along the way

    came along, letters from New York City children to Santa Claus were destroyed, unopened, by the U.S. Post Office. Gluck saw an opportunity, and created the Santa Claus Association. The effort delighted the public, and for 15 years money and gifts flowed to the only group authorized to answer Santa’s mail. Gluck became a Jazz Age celebrity, rubbing shoulders with the era’s movie stars and politicians, and even planned to erect a vast Santa Claus monument in the center of Manhattan — until Gotham’s crusading charity commissioner discovered some dark secrets in Santa’s workshop. The rise and fall of the Santa Claus Association is a caper both heartwarming and hardboiled, involving stolen art, phony Boy Scouts, a kidnapping, pursuit by the FBI, a Coney Island bullfight, and above all, the thrills and dangers of a wild imagination. It’s also the larger story of how Christmas became the extravagant holiday we celebrate today, from Santa’s early beginnings in New York to the country’s first citywide Christmas tree and Macy’s first grand holiday parade. The Santa Claus Man is a holiday tale with a dark underbelly, and an essential read for lovers of Christmas stories, true crime, and New York City history.

    Matt Owens is a Pulitzer Prize–nominated journalist, but at thirty-five, he’s adrift, more inclined to hit the bottle alone than the Miami Beach club scene. But when his beloved younger sister Mandy comes to visit, Matt wants to show her a new world. It’s the trip of her dreams, but the nightmare begins when Mandy disappears from a crowded dance floor. When her lifeless body is found, one clue—a grisly rock song downloaded onto her iPod—may be the calling card of a serial killer. Shattered with grief and guilt, Matt begins a lonely journey to find Mandy’s killer, following a chain of musical clues that lead him from an abandoned London rock club to a crumbling Scottish castle and finally to the ancient bone-strewn catacombs below Paris. Only one person believes in his quest—Eve Bellamont, a dedicated French detective whose own five-year obsession to find the phantom killer has left her an outcast in her own department. Together, they race to decipher the “killing songs” that the madman leaves with each victim and stop him before another beautiful young woman dies.