Karratha is a mining town a long way further north. The landscape is extraordinary, being composed of vast heaps of dark red earth and rock poking out of the never-ending bush. I imagine that Mars must have a similar feel to it. I went exploring and discovered the bronze statue to Red Dog outside the town of Dampier. I felt straight away that I had to find out more about this splendid dog. A few months later I returned to Western Australia and spent two glorious weeks driving around collecting Red Dog stories and visiting the places that he knew, writing up the text as I went along. I hope my cat never finds out that I have written a story to celebrate the life of a dog.’ Louis de Bernières.‘If you love Australia it will have you aching for the scent of gums and sight of the Southern Cross, while if you love dogs it is sure to make you highly indulgent towards the one you love’ Observer

    The driving test reaches its 80th anniversary in 2015, and this commemorative edition of the Highway Code is a celebration of that milestone in British road safety. Updated for 2015, The Official Highway Code is essential reading for all road users in England, Scotland and Wales, providing all the latest rules of the road and traffic signs. All road users have a responsibility to keep their knowledge up-to-date, so make sure you do just that with the latest edition of this handy reference guide. Every day, on average, five people are killed and 60 people are seriously injured on our roads. If we're to bring those figures down, it's vital that all road users - drivers, motorcyclists, cyclists, horse riders and pedestrians - are familiar with all the rules in The Official Highway Code. This 2015 edition includes the new drug-driving laws, HGV speed limit changes on single and dual carriageways in England and Wales, updated drink-driving limits in Scotland and general rule changes. The Highway Code is available in just about any format you can think of and is constantly updated to reflect changes in technology, understanding and the law. Please continue to read it - not just as a learner driver, but as a responsible lifelong road user - so we can keep Britain's roads among the safest in the world.

    In Samuel Pepys, Claire Tomalin offers us a fully realized and richly nuanced portrait of this man, whose inadvertent masterpiece would establish him as the greatest diarist in the English language.Against the backdrop of plague, civil war, and regicide, with John Milton composing diplomatic correspondence for Oliver Cromwell, Christopher Wren drawing up plans to rebuild London, and Isaac Newton advancing the empirical study of the world around us, Tomalin weaves a breathtaking account of a figure who has passed on to us much of what we know about seventeenth-century London. We witness Pepys’s early life and education, see him advising King Charles II before running to watch the great fire consume London, learn about the great events of the day as well as the most intimate personal details that Pepys encrypted in the Diary, follow him through his later years as a powerful naval administrator, and come to appreciate how Pepys’s singular literary enterprise would in many ways prefigure our modern selves. With exquisite insight and compassion, Samuel Pepys captures the uniquely fascinating figure whose legacy lives on more than three hundred years after his death.

    Poe is viewed as the ultimate doomed romantic whose last days are shrouded in sordid mystery. His life was a disaster, but his achievements in writing are amazing. He is widely recognized as father of the modern short story, inventor of the detective story and the master of horror. A Boston born writer, editor, and literary critic, he's best known for his creepy and macabre tales as well as being one of the central figures in the Romanticism movement in the United States.  Accurately being dubbed as the ultimate doomed romantic, Poe was a drunk, his last days are shrouded in mystery akin to that of his short stories.  During his lifetime, Edgar Allan Poe didn't make a dime out of writing, but his legacy to the world is one of never-ending riches.  He left behind seventy-three wonderfully gruesome stories and a novel filled with suspense and brilliantly twisted plots.  Hist stories and poems are now read and revered globally.  As another master of horror, Stephen King, has said, we are all "the children of Poe." Abraham Lincoln, Josef Stalin, Michael Jackson, and Bart Simpson all have one thing in common; they are fans of the nineteenth century American writer and poet, Edgar Allan Poe.  The writer of "The Raven" has legions of such devotees across the globe.  The list of authors inspired by Poe is long and varied, but his profound influence reaches much further-into music, film, and art just as much as modern day literature.  There have been more than a dozen film adaptations of his story "The Fall of the House of Usher," and his works have inspired composers ranging from Claude Debussy to Lou Reed.  More than 160 years after his death, Charlotte Montague has written a fascinating account of Poe's life and times, in which she uncovers a strange man, standing deep in the shadows, who's unique imagination and macabre writing have changed popular culture forevermore.  n the process, she uncovers a strange man, standing deep in the shadows, whose macabre stories and twisted plots changed literature forever. The Oxford People series offers deep dives into the most influential people, subjects, and cultures from history. From horror-fiction legends like H. P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allen Poe, to historical heavyweights like Houdini and JFK, to the supernatural world of vampires, werewolves, and ghosts—Oxford People encompasses it all. Other titles in this series include: Angels, Che, Creating Sherlock Holmes, Extreme Science, Gettysburg, Ghosts, Gunfighters, Houdini, HP Lovecraft, John F. Kennedy, Myths and Legends, Privates and Privateers, Roosevelt and Churchill, Royal Weddings, Skies of WWII, Tesla, Tesla vs. Edison, Vampires, Vikings, Werewolves, Women of Invention, Zombies.

    The time is 1939. White South Africa is a deeply divided nation with many of the Afrikaner people fanatically opposed to the English.The world is also on the brink of war and South Africa elects to fight for the Allied cause against Germany. Six-year-old Tom Fitzsaxby finds himself in The Boys Farm, an orphanage in a remote town in the high mountains, where the Afrikaners side fiercely with Hitler's Germany. Tom's English name proves sufficient for him to be ostracised, marking him as an outsider. And so begin some of life's tougher lessons for the small, lonely boy. Like the Whitethorn, one of Africa's most enduring plants, Tom learns how to survive in the harsh climate of racial hatred. Then a terrible event sends him on a journey to ensure that justice is done. On the way, his most unexpected discovery is love.This is a return to Africa for me, a revisiting of a past that wasn't always easy, but which nevertheless gave my childhood a richness and understanding that served me well in later life. After ten books set in my beloved Australia, Whitethorn is back to that fierce and dark landscape where kindness and cruelty, love and hate share the same backyard. I do hope you enjoy it.Bryce Courtenay

    Headstrong, accomplished journalist Martha Gellhorn is confident with words but less so with men when she meets disheveled literary titan Ernest Hemingway in a dive bar. Their friendship—forged over writing, talk, and family dinners—flourishes into something undeniable in Madrid while they’re covering the Spanish Civil War.Martha reveres him. The very married Hemingway is taken with Martha—her beauty, her ambition, and her fearless spirit. And as Hemingway tells her, the most powerful love stories are always set against the fury of war. The risks are so much greater. They’re made for each other.With their romance unfolding as they travel the globe, Martha establishes herself as one of the world’s foremost war correspondents, and Hemingway begins the novel that will win him the Nobel Prize for Literature. Beautiful Exiles is a stirring story of lovers and rivals, of the breathless attraction to power and fame, and of one woman—ahead of her time—claiming her own identity from the wreckage of love.

    With the very real possibility that Rome might become a republic once more, the ambitions of a few are about to bring untold corruption, chaos and bloodshed. Aulus Caecina Severus, hero of the campaign against Boudica, is caught up in a conspiracy to overthrow Caesar's dynasty, where he will commit treason, raise a rebellion, and face torture and intrigue. But is it really all for the good of Rome? The boundary between service and self-preservation is far from clear, and keeping to the dangerous path he's chosen requires all Severus' skills: as a cunning soldier and, increasingly, a deft politician. As the Year of the Four Emperors unfolds, the mighty Roman empire will be plunged into anarchy and civil war… The Last Caesar , the first in the Aulus Severus Adventures, is perfect for fans of Conn Iggulden, Simon Scarrow and Ben Kane

    Their relationship continued until 1601, when the Earl of Essex was beheaded for treason. And, in a succession of brilliant scenes, Strachey portrays the Queen's and the Earl's compelling attraction for on another, their impassioned disagreements, and their mutual contest for power, which led to a final, tragic confrontation. Here we also have superb portraits of influential people of the time: Francis Bacon, Robert Cecil, Walter Raleigh, and other figures of the court who struggled to assert themselves in a kingdom that was primarily defined by her sovereign, and so now seen through history's lens as Elizabethan England.

    In these accounts, written with sensitivity as cautionary tales about what to do and what not to do in one of our wildest national parks, Whittlesey recounts deaths ranging from tragedy to folly—from being caught in a freak avalanche to the goring of a photographer who just got a little too close to a bison. Armchair travelers and park visitors alike will be fascinated by this important book detailing the dangers awaiting in our first national park.

    In the summer of 1863 seven people left London on a train that would take them on a thrilling adventure across the Alps. They were the Junior United Alpine Club and members of Thomas Cook's first Conducted Tour of Switzerland. For them it was an exciting novelty; it turned out to be the birth of mass tourism, and it started with the Swiss.Best-selling author of Swiss Watching Diccon Bewes acquires a copy of Alpine member Jemima Morell's journal and travels from London to Lucerne—and back in time. He brings only the journal and the club's nineteenth-century guidebook to retrace their steps one by one, traveling by train whenever possible. Bewes follows the 1863 expedition, experiencing firsthand through Jemima's journal the original British "holiday" that shaped the future of two disparate nations, one a global monarchy and the other a recovering, struggling republic. Alongside vintage illustrations, Bewes creates a fascinating comparison of how people across the globe explore and vacation today. This is also the story of how a nostalgic tour surprised an expat author, revealing a Switzerland very different from the present—and an unexpected personal connection with the diarist in a startling twist. A perfect read for anyone who seeks an expert blend of context and consequence to their travel writing.Diccon Bewes became a travel writer via the scenic route of bookselling. After ten years at Lonely Planet and Holiday magazine, he decamped to Switzerland, where he has until recently managed the Stauffacher English Bookshop in Bern. Following the success of Swiss Watching, a Financial Times Book of the Year and international bestseller, he is now a full-time writer.

    The pages are populated with figures from myth, history, and the present-from Saint Patrick to Oliver Cromwell, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, and Charles Parnell to Sinead O'Connor and Bono. Some beloved, some controversial-each influenced the course of Irish and world history. While McCourt vividly describes Ireland's turbulent history, he also offers a cultural survey with fresh insights to the folklore, literature, art, music, and cuisine of Ireland, producing an irresistible tour through the Emerald Isle.

    The only takers are two eccentric Englishmen who want to embark for the other side of the globe. The Reverend Geoffrey Wilson believes the Garden of Eden was on the island of Tasmania. His traveling partner, Dr. Thomas Potter, unbeknownst to Wilson, is developing a sinister thesis about the races of men. Meanwhile, an aboriginal in Tasmania named Peevay recounts his people’s struggles against the invading British, a story that begins in 1824, moves into the present with approach of the English passengers in 1857, and extends into the future in 1870. These characters and many others come together in a storm of voices that vividly bring a past age to life.

    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

    The story begins in 1825, with the deaths of Maria and Elizabeth, the eldest siblings. It is in response to this loss that the four remaining Brontë children set pen to paper and created the fictional world that became known as Glass Town. This world and its cast of characters would come to be the Brontës’ escape from the realities of their lives. Within Glass Town the siblings experienced love, friendship, war, triumph, and heartbreak. Through a combination of quotes from the stories originally penned by the Brontës, biographical information about them, and Greenberg's vivid comic book illustrations, readers will find themselves enraptured by this fascinating imaginary world.

    Bartering, backstabbing, browbeating, bribing...and praying for a little more weight to throw on the delicate balance of international power. This is a novel of men at the summit, their bold deals and soiled souls -- and their women, clutching at fevered moments as the time for loving, the time for living, slipped so quickly away.