As a critic, George Orwell cast a wide net. Equally at home in discussing Charles Dickens & Charlie Chaplin, he moved back & forth across the porous borders between essay & journalism, high art & low. A frequent commentator on literature, language, film & drama throughout his career, Orwell turned increasingly to the critical essay in the 1940s, when his most important experiences were behind him & some of his most incisive criticism lay ahead.

These essays follow Orwell as he demonstrates in piece after piece how intent analysis of a work or a body of work gives rise to trenchant aesthetic & philosophical commentary. With masterpieces such as ' Politics & the English Language' & ' Rudyard Kipling' & gems such as ' Good Bad Books', here is an unrivalled education in

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Dr Abby Dolan was on the fast track at a major San Francisco hospital when she made a critical choice: to follow her fiance, Josh Wyler, to the picturesque California town of Patience, where he has a new job with the manufacturing giant Colstar. Working in a small-town emergency room, knowing her every move sparks gossip, Abby nonetheless begins to feel at home-until the first undiagnosable patients start to showing up. Abby calls them NIWWs: No Idea What, s Wrong. & despite her cosiderable skills, she can, tcrack these baffling, seemingly random cases. When Josh too begins to suffer disturbing symptoms, followed by manic, even violent behaviour, she wonders: could Colstar somehow be poisoning the town? Warned by a colleague that her predecessor in the ER died in a dubious accident after makink similar allegations, Abby refuses to back off. She begins to question everyone & everything around her in the now hosti le town of patience-while her most dangerous enemy is far closer than she thinks. ...

Is there a 'physics of society'? Ranging from Hobbes & Adam Smith to modern work on traffic flow & market trading, & across economics, sociology & psychology, Philip Ball shows how much we can understand of human behaviour when we cease to try to predict & analyse the behaviour of individuals & look to the impact of hundreds, thousands or millions of individual human decisions, whether in circumstances in which human beings co-operate or conflict, when their aggregate behaviour is constructive & when it is destructive. By perhaps Britain's leading young science writer, this is a deeply thought-provoking book, causing us to examine our own behaviour, whether in buying the new Harry Potter book, voting for a particular party or responding to the lures of advertisers. ...

Denis Stone, a naive young poet, is invited to stay at Crome, a country house renowned for its gatherings of 'bright young things'. Crome's hosts, the world-weary Henry Wimbush & his exotic wife Priscilla are joined by a party of colourful guests whose intrigues & opinions ensure Denis's stay is a memorable one. In the course of the weekend Henry tells his guests fantastical stories from the history of the house, Mr Barbecue-Smith invents inspirational aphorisms conceived in trances, Mary dispense with her virginity on the roof, the local vicar prophesies the Apocalypse, the annual Crome Fair takes place & Denis tries to capture it all in poetry & has his heart broken. First published in 1921, Crome Yellow was Aldous Huxley's much-acclaimed debut novel. With the evident relish of the true satirist, he mocked the fads, foibles & spirit of his time with an unsurpassed wit & brilliance. ...

A boy has been crucified in Galway city.

People are shocked; the broadsheets debate how the brutal death reflects the state

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cross /krôs/ n., v., & adj.

1 an ancient instrument of torture
2 in a very bad


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A boy has been crucified in Galway city.

People are shocked; the broadsheets debate how the brutal death reflects the state

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An orthodox Jew is found shot dead in Montreal, the mutilated body is barely recognisable.

Extreme heat has accelerated

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