The peaceful Eldarin were the last of three ancient races. The mystical Oltor, healers & poets, had fallen before the dread power of the cruel & sadistic Daroth. Yet in one awesome night the invincible Daroth had vanished from the face of the earth. Gone were their cities, their armies, their terror. The Great Northern Desert was their only legacy. Not a trace remained for a thousand years...

The War of the Pearl had raged for seven years & the armies of the four Duchies were exhausted & weary of bloodshed. But the foremost of the Dukes, Sirano of Romark, possessed the Eldarin Pearl & was determined to unravel its secrets.

Then on one unforgettable day a dark mon rose above the Great Northern Desert, & a black tidal wave swept across the l&. In moments the desert had vanished beneath lush fields & forests & a great city could be seen glittering in the morning sunlight.

From this city re-emerged the blood-hungry Daroth, powerful & immortal, immune to spear & sword. They had only one desire: to rid the world of humankind for ever.

Now the fate of the human race rests on the talents of three heroes: Karis, warrior-woman & strategist; Tarantio, the deadliest swordsman of the age; & Duvodas the Healer, who will learn a terrible truth.







...

In 1992, an Indian climber was left to die on the South Col of Mount Everest by other climbers who watched his feebly waving hand from their tent. He was filmed in his last hours for a television feature. Why did onlookers not hold the dying man's hand & comfort him? The answer appals Joe Simpson, who was himself left for dead in a cervasse in Peru in 1985
- 'because it might compromise their summit bid'. It is an ethical question that Joe is forced to confront as he climbs a hazardous route on Pumori. Now that Everest has become the playground of the rich, where commercial operators offer guided tours to the top, camping admist the detritus & unburied corpses of previous less fortunate climbers, Joe wonders if the noble instincts that once characterised mountaineering have been irrevocably displaced
- as in politics, in business, in the media & in other facets of society.

...

For a very brief moment during the 1960s, America was moonstruck. Every boy dreamed of being an astronaut; every girl dreamed of marrying one. But despite the best efforts of a generation of scientists, the almost foolhardy heroics of the astronauts, & 35 billion dollars, the moon turned out to be a place of 'magnificent desolation', to use Buzz Aldrin's words
- a sterile rock of no purpose to anyone. In Dark Side of the Moon, Gerard De Groot reveals how NASA cashed in on the Americans' thirst for heroes in an age of discontent & became obsessed with putting men in space. Landing on the moon, it was argued, would be good for the economy, for politics, & for the soul. It could even win the Cold War. Drawing on meticulous archival research, De Groot cuts through the myths constructed by the Eisenhower, Kennedy & Johnson administrations & sustained by NASA ever since & exposes the truth behind one of the most revered fictions of American history.
...

Growing up under the spell of the captivating Harding family, Mary Fox knows she will never share their good looks, wealth or easy charm. For beautiful Godfrey, outrageous Nettie & the twins Jonathan & William, the worlds is theirs for the asking. But when the idyll is shattered by the outbreak of war, it is Mary's brains that really count
- while Nettie finds a much more unusual way of helping the brave boys fighting Hitler.
...