Shortly before Christmas, Dan reluctantly agrees to help Astrid Desmarais, a World Bank executive, who asks him to steal five books from the locked collection of "Forbidden Books" in a monastery in Prague.  The very existence of these books is a secret that has been kept for centuries.  But from the moment he enters the monastery, events spiral out of control.  Dan must draw on the former life that he tried to bury, as he faces decisions that pull at every fiber of his being.

    In the Cornish seaside town of Treeve, Cat’s husband, Brian Oxley, is on the brink of losing everything. Eight pubs, five restaurants, and six pasty shops worth of everything…When a potential, financial bailout comes in the form of lottery winner Ewan Davies, it is the answer to all of Brian’s prayers. The creepy, ex-furniture restorer makes Brian an offer he can’t refuse. His offer is twenty million.And the price of Brian’s salvation? His wife.Never in her wildest imaginings, could Cat imagine what lies in store for her at the millionaire’s mansion. She will never look at a piece of furniture in the same way again…This is an extreme horror novella. It contains some scenes that readers may find upsetting.

    But when detectives uncover a vile ring of sexual deviance with ties to a city official, the commissioner calls his brilliant but rough-edged protégé back into action.With help from an assortment of petty criminals, romantic interests, and colorful misfits, the Anti-Crime Brigade must work outside the department to bring down the corrupt official and the despicable company he keeps. Can Le Goënec play both sides of the law to deliver vigilante justice to an exploited city?

    Titles include #2 Rodrick Rules and #3 The Last Straw.

    Ringed by a jail, a sewerage works, a rifle range and a housing commission estate, it was where the streets of Sydney met the beach. It was a place where the local boys surfed hard and partied harder. It was also a place where trouble easily found you. Adopted by Maroubra Beach at a young age, the four Abberton brothers, all born to different fathers and a mother in the clutches of heroin addiction, grew up at a time when the area was shadowed by drugs and gang violence. Raised largely by their grandmother, Sunny, Jai, Koby and Dakota found solace in the surf, and solidarity with their mates, the Bra Boys.The official biography of the Abberton brothers follows their story from a turbulent upbringing on the sands of Maroubra to international surf stardom, and the fateful events of 5 August 2003, when Jai shot dead Maroubra underworld figure and childhood friend Tony Hines, only to be acquitted on the grounds of self-defence. The Official Bra Boys Story: My Brothers Keeper is raw, gritty, from the heart ... and everything you won′t read about in the newspapers.

    Enthralled at first by these strangers, he begins to discover their dark and dangerous side, touching off a decades-long struggle against determined explorers, aggressive traders, land-hungry settlers, and ruthless officials. If his own people are to survive, the boy-turned-man must use his wits, build alliances, and draw on unique skills to block the rising tide of the white "salt people."Ambition and fear, love and loathing, mutual respect and open contempt bring Europeans and "savages" together in the untold story of the founding of New York City and the fabled island at its heart: Manhattan.If you have a passion for the historical fiction of Ken Follett, James Michener, or Edward Rutherfurd, you'll savor this rich and meticulously researched novel.A novel based on true events.(This Omnibus Edition includes updated and revised versions of the four short ebooks in The Manhattan Series plus new added content.)

    Today, buffeted by one food fad after another, America is suffering from what can only be described as a national eating disorder. The omnivore's dilemma has returned with a vengeance, as the cornucopia of the modern American supermarket and fast-food outlet confronts us with a bewildering and treacherous food landscape. What's at stake in our eating choices is not only our own and our children's health, but the health of the environment that sustains life on earth.The Omnivore's Dilemma is a groundbreaking book in which one of America's most fascinating, original, and elegant writers turns his own omnivorous mind to the seemingly straightforward question of what we should have for dinner. The question has confronted us since man discovered fire, but, according to Michael Pollan, the bestselling author of The Botany of Desire, how we answer it today, ath the dawn of the twenty-first century, may well determine our very survival as a species. Should we eat a fast-food hamburger? Something organic? Or perhaps something we hunt, gather or grow ourselves?To find out, Pollan follows each of the food chains that sustain us—industrial food, organic or alternative food, and food we forage ourselves—from the source to a final meal, and in the process develops a definitive account of the American way of eating. His absorbing narrative takes us from Iowa cornfields to food laboratories, from feedlots and fast-food restaurants to organic farms and hunting grounds, always emphasizing our dynamic coevolutionary relationship with the handful of plant and animal species we depend on. Each time Pollan sits down to a meal, he deploys his unique blend of personal and investigative journalism to trace the origins of everything consumed, revealing what we unwittingly ingest and explaining how our taste for particular foods and flavors reflects our evolutionary inheritance.The surprising answers Pollan offers to the simple question posed by this book have profound political, economic, psychological, and even mortal implications for all of us. Ultimately, this is a book as much about visionary solutions as it is about problems, and Pollan contends that, when it comes to food, doing the right thing often turns out to be the tastiest thing an eater can do. Beautifully written and thrillingly argued, The Omnivore's Dilemma promises to change the way we think about the politics and pleasure of eating. For anyone who reads it, dinner will never again look, or taste, quite the same.

    Lanza has teamed with Bob Berman, the most widely read astronomer in the world, to produce Biocentrism, a revolutionary new view of the universe.Every now and then a simple yet radical idea shakes the very foundations of knowledge. The startling discovery that the world was not flat challenged and ultimately changed the way people perceived themselves and their relationship with the world. For most humans of the 15th century, the notion of Earth as ball of rock was nonsense. The whole of Western, natural philosophy is undergoing a sea change again, increasingly being forced upon us by the experimental findings of quantum theory, and at the same time, towards doubt and uncertainty in the physical explanations of the universe’s genesis and structure. Biocentrism completes this shift in worldview, turning the planet upside down again with the revolutionary view that life creates the universe instead of the other way around.In this paradigm, life is not an accidental byproduct of the laws of physics. Biocentrism takes the reader on a seemingly improbable but ultimately inescapable journey through a foreign universe—our own—from the viewpoints of an acclaimed biologist and a leading astronomer. Switching perspective from physics to biology unlocks the cages in which Western science has unwittingly managed to confine itself. Biocentrism will shatter the reader’s ideas of life—time and space, and even death. At the same time it will release us from the dull worldview of life being merely the activity of an admixture of carbon and a few other elements; it suggests the exhilarating possibility that life is fundamentally immortal.The 21st century is predicted to be the Century of Biology, a shift from the previous century dominated by physics. It seems fitting, then, to begin the century by turning the universe outside-in and unifying the foundations of science with a simple idea discovered by one of the leading life-scientists of our age. Biocentrism awakens in readers a new sense of possibility, and is full of so many shocking new perspectives that the reader will never see reality the same way again.

    Enter Kathryn Kellogg, who can fit all her trash from the past two years into a 16-ounce mason jar. How? She starts by saying “no” to straws and grocery bags, and “yes” to a reusable water bottle and compostable dish scrubbers.In 101 Ways to Go Zero Waste, Kellogg shares these tips and more, along with DIY recipes for beauty and home; advice for responsible consumption and making better choices for home goods, fashion, and the office; and even secrets for how to go waste free at the airport. “It’s not about perfection,” she says. “It’s about making better choices.”This is a practical, friendly blueprint of realistic lifestyle changes for anyone who wants to reduce their waste.

    Known for their simple clothing, plain lifestyle, and horse-and-buggy mode of transportation, Amish communities continually face outside pressures to modify their cultural patterns, social organization, and religious world view. An intimate portrait of Amish life, The Amish explores not only the emerging diversity and evolving identities within this distinctive American ethnic community, but also its transformation and geographic expansion.Donald B. Kraybill, Karen M. Johnson-Weiner, and Steven M. Nolt spent twenty-five years researching Amish history, religion, and culture. Drawing on archival material, direct observations, and oral history, the authors provide an authoritative and sensitive understanding of Amish society.Amish people do not evangelize, yet their numbers in North America have grown from a small community of some 6,000 people in the early 1900s to a thriving population of more than 275,000 today. The largest populations are found in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Indiana, with additional communities in twenty-seven other states and Ontario.The authors argue that the intensely private and insular Amish have devised creative ways to negotiate with modernity that have enabled them to thrive in America. The transformation of the Amish in the American imagination from "backward bumpkins" to media icons poses provocative questions. What does the Amish story reveal about the American character, popular culture, and mainstream values? Richly illustrated, The Amish is the definitive portrayal of the Amish in America in the twenty-first century.

    Escaping the schemes of her father, Evony makes her way to her new life, in a rival packs territory. But what happens when she finds her mate in brutal Alpha Reed Nelson?Alpha Reed Nelson, viscous and ruthless alpha of the Blood Moon Pack is only interested in converting rogues and overlooking his growing pack. He definitely isn't interested in finding his mate. But how will he handle it when Evony Morris strolls into his life?Some alliances are made to be broken.

    Brother of William, also an accomplished rider, son of the late Robert and nephew of the late great Joey Dunlop, Michael can fairly claim that racing is in his blood. Now for the first time he talks in depth about his family story, how he got involved in the family business and how he manages to keep getting back on his bike despite all he knows of the deadly risks he encounters every time he crosses the start line.The death of his uncle during a competition in Estonia in 2000 was followed just eight years later by the death of his father at the North West 200. But despite these tragic losses Michael was undeterred and, two days after his father's death, he returned to the North West, and won. The next year Michael won his first TT, joining both his father and uncle in the record books.Now with thirteen TT wins to his name Michael is a phenomenal competitor, and in this sensational autobiography he reveals the highs and lows of racing, what it was like growing up part of a motorcycle dynasty and how that made him the incredible racing driver he is today.

    In this far-reaching narrative, Weisman explains how our massive infrastructure would collapse and finally vanish without human presence; which everyday items may become immortalized as fossils; how copper pipes and wiring would be crushed into mere seams of reddish rock; why some of our earliest buildings might be the last architecture left; and how plastic, bronze sculpture, radio waves, and some man-made molecules may be our most lasting gifts to the universe.The World Without Us reveals how, just days after humans disappear, floods in New York's subways would start eroding the city's foundations, and how, as the world's cities crumble, asphalt jungles would give way to real ones. It describes the distinct ways that organic and chemically treated farms would revert to wild, how billions more birds would flourish, and how cockroaches in unheated cities would perish without us. Drawing on the expertise of engineers, atmospheric scientists, art conservators, zoologists, oil refiners, marine biologists, astrophysicists, religious leaders from rabbis to the Dalai Lama, and paleontologists—who describe a prehuman world inhabited by megafauna like giant sloths that stood taller than mammoths—Weisman illustrates what the planet might be like today, if not for us.From places already devoid of humans (a last fragment of primeval European forest; the Korean DMZ; Chernobyl), Weisman reveals Earth's tremendous capacity for self-healing. As he shows which human devastations are indelible, and which examples of our highest art and culture would endure longest, Weisman's narrative ultimately drives toward a radical but persuasive solution that needn't depend on our demise. It is narrative nonfiction at its finest, and in posing an irresistible concept with both gravity and a highly readable touch, it looks deeply at our effects on the planet in a way that no other book has.

    While this is typically attributed to climate change and habitat destruction, few people realize that there is a direct link to consumer demand for cheap meat.Some may see intensive farming as a necessary evil. After all, we need to produce more food for a growing global population and are led to believe that squeezing animals into factory farms and growing crops in vast, chemical-soaked prairies is efficient and leaves land free for wildlife--but this is far from the truth. With the limits of the planet's resources now seemingly within touching distance, awareness is growing about how the wellbeing of society depends on a thriving natural world. Through the lens of a dozen iconic and endangered species, Dead Zone examines the role of industrial farming in their plight and meets the people doing something about it.By the author of the internationally successful Farmageddon, Dead Zone takes the reader on a global safari involving some of the world's most iconic and endangered species. The focus shifts from the plight of farm animals to the impact of industrial farming on specific endangered species, as the book lays bare the myths that prop up factory farming and shows what we can do to save the planet with healthy food.

    This lavish and unmissable companion to the series reveals the undiscovered side of Africa's five unique regions. Inspiring photography captures unprecedented glimpses of wildlife behavior, mesmerizing creatures, and magical landscapes that will astound, captivate, and challenge what audiences think they know about Africa. This is a spectacular journey through a vast and diverse continent in all its beautiful and unexpected abundance. Readers will witness the drama of eagles catching giant bats on the wing, lizards stalking their prey on the backs of lions, antelope-hunting monkeys, and a nail-biting giraffe fight; share the discovery of the world's rarest fish species and the first-ever access to an island sanctuary for the elusive African penguin; marvel at a Congo fish that flies like a butterfly and a lovestruck beetle who thinks he's James Bond; and join a unique expedition to the most extreme parts of this vast continent.