There were no roads, no cars and no telephones. The tiny village that nestled among the rocky hills of Newfoundland's desolate southern coast had existed for generations with ancient customs and patterns of speech that still endured-while the modern world waited impatiently in the wings. Drawing on a wealth of first-hand experience-the Mowats lived in the outport community for five years-Claire Mowat has written a fictional memoir that beautifully recreates an almost vanished world. A world where life revolved tightly around the home and neighbours watched over one another. A world where one's kitchen was open to anyone who might drop in, day or night. A world that Claire Mowat grew to love.

    Teeming with adventure, international intrigue, and financial manipulations, the book reveals how a sky-struck young man of immense ambition and vision took a single-engined seaplane carrying mail 90 miles from Key West to Havana and expanded the operation into the vast world-wide airline that at one time considered itself the "chosen instrunment" of the State Department abroard - and was so condidered by official Washington.

    It was the only infantry division in the armies of the British Empire that accompanied Monty from during Alamein to BerlinAfter the 1940 disaster at St Vale'ry when many were killed or captured, the re-formed 51st were a superlative division, brilliantly inspired and led. The 'Highway Decorators' (after their famous HD cypher) fought with consummate success through North Africa and Tunisia and from Normandy into the heart of Germany. Blooded at Alamein - where they suffered over 2000 casualties - they pursued the Afrika Korps via Tripoli and Tunis fighting fierce battles along the way. They lost 1,500 men helping to liberate Sicily. Back to the UK for the second front, the Highlanders battled their way through Normandy bocage, the break-out to the Seine, triumphal re-occupation of St Vale'ry, and were the first troops to cross the Rhine, fighting on to Bremen and Bremerhaven. In the eleven months fighting in NW Europe in 1944 and 1945 the Highlanders suffered more than 9000 casualties.

    But journeys embarked upon full of the joys of the season all too often grind into a standstill of rage and bitterness before Hampshire even gives way to Wiltshire.Four-and-a-half thousand years ago the bluestones of Stonehenge were conveyed west from the river Avon along a small section of its route. Roman roads crossed it and drovers' paths lie beneath it. Its route cuts across some of the finest chalkland in southern England. The views are huge, the hills wide and windswept. Ancient woods lay across the summits of the downs and prehistoric monuments and sites are everywhere, the evidence of ancient habitation and worship left in abundance.Tom Fort samples the fare at the Willoughby Hedge Café , legendary among truckers. He seeks out service stations and inns and turnpike toll houses; tells stories of dreadful crashes and highway robberies; of solstice seekers and Stonehenge; of Queen Guinevere and Sir Launcelot; of army camps and racing tracks; Battles and festivals; of churches, abbeys, farms, houses, burial mounds, trout fishermen and falconers.Digging in dark corners, explorating long-forgotten byways and pouring over ancient maps Tom Fort has created a travel book, a book of social and cultural history, and a book about the England of 3000 BC and the England of 2010 AD.

    The black mass crashed through the local school. 144 people were killed. 116 were schoolchildren. Gaynor Madgwick was there. She was eight and severely injured. In this book, Gaynor tells her own story and interviews people affected by the day's events. "Gaynor Madgwick was pulled injured from one of the classrooms where her friends died. She was left behind to live out her life. This is her story, sad, sweet, sentimental, and authentic. I commend it to you." - Vincent Kane, Broadcaster "Gaynor Madgwick's sense of injustice is palpable in her clear, riveting account of this scandal and its human cost. Despite everything, however, she is not bitter and retains the quiet dignity that is, perhaps, the true and lasting legacy of Aberfan." - Frank Olding, Planet Magazine "Madgwick does not dwell too much on the politics of Aberfan, and this is left largely to an incisive introduction by the veteran broadcaster, Vincent Kane, who leaves us in no doubt where the responsibility lay for the disaster. Thankfully Madgwick has now found happiness after a troubled life, having had to live with the guilt of the survivor for all her life. And writing so sensitively has helped her to come to terms with what happened in 1966. This is certainly not an easy book to read, but as noted by Lord Snowdon, it should and must be read by all of us in memory of those who died, whilst not forgetting those who also survived this tragic event." - Richard E. Huws, Gwales

    Trains that once provoked awe and fear-they were viewed as fire chariots, smoke-spewing demons-have today become a nations lifeblood.Taking a walk along Indias first rail lines, the author stumbles upon fragments of the past-a clock at Victoria Terminus that offers a rare view of a city, a cannon near Masjid Bunder Station that is worshipped as a god, a watchtower overlooking Sion Station, believed to have housed a witch. Each pit-stop comes with stories of desire and war, ambition and death-by Dockyard Road Station, for instance, author Laurence Sternes beloved, Eliza Draper, followed a sailor into the sea or close to Parel Station, the wife of Indias governor general, Lord Canning found a garden rich in tropical vegetation this, she replicated at Barrackpore.Drawing from journals, biographies, newspapers and railway archives-and with nostalgic, first-time accounts of those who travelled by Indias earliest trains-the book captures the economic and social revolutions spurred by the countrys first train line. In this, Halt Station India is not just about the railways-it is the story of the growth of Indias business capital and a rare study of a nation.

    This is Cherry Denman's witty take on her life trailing husband Charlie round some of the most godforsaken outposts of the world. Illustrated by brilliantly funny cartoons of diplomatic life, this is a collection of clever and very funny tales of global misunderstanding.

    The history of the Camino is recounted, as well as several of the myths, legends, and miracle stories that have become attached--and given special meaning--to this itinerary. Emphasizing that personal myths are an essential part of this lore, this chronicle also includes stories from the confraternity of the pilgrims, people from all corners of the world who visit this walk for a great diversity of reasons, but all of whom leave having experienced the same miracle--that this pilgrimage will play a defining role in their lives.

    His world crashed down after he smashed his right ankle and causing severe damage to his left fibia and tibia. It was unclear if he would ever walk properly again, let alone ride a motorbike. Charley recounts the ambulance ride, the numerous operations in a Portugese hospital, the medivac flight back to London, and his journey of recovery. As his inability to walk for several months provokes introspection, Boorman recounts his childhood, where his passion for motorbikes began, and the formative influences in his life—from his father, a famed director, to his longtime friend Ewan McGregor, and Sean Connery’s son Jason, who introduced him to bikes. These touchstones give him strength on the long way back to health.

    When Eirlys Price convinces her parents to take in three young children, she never imagined it could lead to shocking family revelations which threaten all her future plans. Amidst homesickness, local gossip and the challenges of wartime, the community must pull together and wait until summer, when the town will come alive in all its seasonal glory… ​Wait Till Summer is a classic wartime saga, filled with warmth, nostalgia and period detail, wonderful characters and finely-crafted plot. It is the first in the Holidays at Home series. Grace Thompson is an acclaimed author of saga and romance novels, and a mainstay of libraries throughout the United Kingdom and beyond. Born and raised in South Wales, she is the author of numerous series, including the Valley series, the Pendragon Island series, and the Badgers Brook series. She published her 42nd novel shortly after celebrating her 80th birthday, and continues to live in Swansea.

    Perhaps the oddest quirk of Britain's railway network is also one of its least well known: around 150 of the nation's stations are request stops. Take an unassuming station like Shippea Hill in Cambridgeshire - the scene of a fatal accident involving thousands of carrots. Or Talsarnau in Wales, which experienced a tsunami. Tiny Stations is the story of the author's journey from the far west of Cornwall to the far north of Scotland, visiting around 40 of the most interesting of these little used and ill-regarded stations. Often a pen-stroke away from closure - kept alive by political expediency, labyrinthine bureaucracy or sheer whimsy - these half-abandoned stops afford a fascinating glimpse of a Britain that has all but disappeared from view. There are stations built to serve once thriving industries - copper mines, smelting works, cotton mills, and china clay quarries where the first trains were pulled by horses; stations erected for the sole convenience of stately home and castle owners through whose land the new iron road cut an unwelcome swathe; stations created for Victorian day-tripping attractions; a station built for a cavalry barracks whose last horse has long since bolted; and many more. Dixe Wills will leave you in no doubt that there's more to tiny stations than you might think.

    Driven by an unfettered appetite for personal challenge and a yen for the path of most resistance, Willis mounted a single-handed and wholly unlikely rescue in the jungles of French Guiana and then twice crossed the broad Pacific on rafts of his own design, with only housecats and a parrot for companionship. His first voyage, atop a ten-ton balsa monstrosity, was undertaken in 1954 when Willis was sixty. His second raft, having crossed eleven thousand miles from Peru, found the north shore of Australia shortly after Willis's seventieth birthday. A marvel of vigor and fitness, William Willis was a connoisseur of ordeal, all but orchestrating short rations, ship-wreck conditions, and crushing solitude on his trans-Pacific voyages. He'd been inspired by Kon-Tiki, Thor Heyerdahl's bid to prove that a primitive raft could negotiate the open ocean. Willis's trips confirmed that a primitive man could as well. Willis survived on rye flour and seawater, sang to keep his spirits up, communicated with his wife via telepathy, suffered from bouts of temporary blindness, and eased the intermittent pain of a double hernia by looping a halyard around his ankles and dangling upside-down from his mast. Rich with vivid detail and wry humor, Seaworthy is the story of a sailor you've probably never heard of but need to know. In an age when countless rafts were adrift on the waters of the world, their crews out to shore up one theory of ethno-migration or tear down another, Willis's challenges remained refreshingly personal. His methods were eccentric, his accomplishments little short of remarkable. Don't miss the chance to meet this singular monk of the sea.

    The book gives a firsthand account of a career in the Federal Bureau of Investigation from the academy to retirement, with exciting and engaging anecdotes about SWAT teams, counterterrorism activities, and undercover assignments. At the same time, it challenges the stereotype of FBI agents as arrogant, case-stealing, suit-wearing stiffs by portraying the real people who carry badges and guns. With honest, self-deprecating humor, Steve Moore’s narrative details his successes and his mistakes, the trauma the job inflicted on his marriage, his triumph over the aggressive cancer that took him out of the field for a year, and his return to the Bureau with renewed vigor and dedication to take on some of the most thrilling assignments of his career.

    An attractive and comprehensive guidebook, this work has been completely revised and updated by the author. The reader will find an easy-to-use text which details the natural history of the plants and animals found in the Galápagos Islands. Management and conservation of the Galápagos National Park is discussed, and visitor information and notes about the various tourist sites are given. An index and checklist of plants and animals with page references and a glossary of technical terms are provided. New photographs have been added.

    He sets out to explore the many, and particular, ways that he, and we, experience the natural world – beginning face down on the pavement outside his home then moving outwards to garden, local patch, wildlife reserve, craggy coastline and as far afield as the dark hills of Skye. He visits the haunts of famous nature lovers – reaching back to the likes of Charles Darwin, Etta Lemon, Gavin Maxwell, John Clare and Emma Turner – to examine their insatiable curiosity and follow in their footsteps.And everywhere he meets not only nature, but nature lovers of all varieties. The author reveals how our collective relationship with nature has changed over the centuries, what our actions mean for nature and what being a nature lover in Britain might mean today.