' The West that Henry mourned belonged to the Western movie, where the land & the cattle went to their proper guardians & brought a fortune in respect & power. It was a West where the best cowboy got to shoot the meanest outlaw, woo the prettiest schoolteacher, bed her briefly to produce sons, & then ignore her for the finer company of other cowboys
- a West as sentimental & as brutal as the people who made a virtue of that curious combination of qualities & called it the American experience. ' From the Introduction Henry Blanton is the 'last cowboy' of Jane Kramer's classic portrait, the failed hero of his own mythology, the man who ends an era for himself. His story
- his flawed, funny, & in the end tragic efforts to be a proper cowboy, 'expressin' right' in a world where the range is a feed yard & college boys run ranches from air-conditioned Buicks -is the story of a country coming of age in great promise & greater disappointment. A hundred & fifty miles up the highway from agri-business Amarillo, Henry claimed the extravagant prerogatives of a free man on a horse. He rode his own frontier, decked out in his vigilance & his honour, until the shocking moment when in the person of Henry Blanton the West & the Western had a showdown.

...

News of the untimely death of Charles Dickens reaches James R. Osgood at his American publisher. Expecting the arrival of the latest instalment of The Mystery of Edwin Drood & suspicious of unscrupulous New York publishers keen to get their hands on the novel, Osgood sends his clerk, Daniel Sands, to await its arrival.
When Daniel
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THE LAST ENEMY recounts Richard Hillary's experiences as a fighter pilot in the Second World War, in which he was shot down & spent months in hospital, undergoing operations to rebuild his face & hands. It was published in 1942, seven months before his death in a second crash. ...

THE LAST ENEMY recounts Richard Hillary's experiences as a fighter pilot in the Second World War, in which he was shot down & spent months in hospital, undergoing operations to rebuild his face & hands. It was published in 1942, seven months before his death in a second crash. ...

Meet the Hunter family: Adam, Kate, & their children Hal & Charlotte. & Prince, their black Labrador. -Prince is an earnest young dog, striving hard to live up to the tenets of the Labrador Pact (Remain Loyal to Your Human Masters, Serve & Protect Your Family at Any Cost). Other dogs, led by the Springer Spaniels, have revolted. Their slogans are ' Dogs for Dogs, not for Humans' & ' Pleasure not Duty'. Mentored by an elderly Labrador called Henry, Prince takes his responsibilities seriously, & as things in the Hunter family begin to go badly awry
- marital breakdown, rowdy teenage parties, attempted suicide
- his responsibilities threaten to overwhelm him. & down in the park it's even worse: Henry has disappeared; Falstaff the Springer Spaniel wants to lead Prince astray; Joyce the Irish wolfhound has been murdered. In the end Prince is forced to break the Labrador Pact & take desperate action to save his Family.

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Will most of the major fisheries of the world be exhausted by 2048, as has been claimed? Have the number of large fish in the ocean decreased by 90 per cent over the past 50 years, as has been asserted by a respected scientist? Are 60 per cent of the fish species studied by the United Nations Food & Agriculture Organisation either fully exploited or depleted, as one of their reports attests? Fishing at sea, an ancient trade & a way of life that has defined coastal towns throughout history, may be coming to an end. The culture & traditions of coastal Britain & of seagoing nations everywhere are now threatened with extinction.

In his most important book yet, Mark Kurlansky

...

Will most of the major fisheries of the world be exhausted by 2048, as has been claimed? Have the number of large fish in the ocean decreased by 90 per cent over the past 50 years, as has been asserted by a respected scientist? Are 60 per cent of the fish species studied by the United Nations Food & Agriculture Organisation either fully exploited or depleted, as one of their reports attests? Fishing at sea, an ancient trade & a way of life that has defined coastal towns throughout history, may be coming to an end. The culture & traditions of coastal Britain & of seagoing nations everywhere are now threatened with extinction.

In his most important book yet, Mark Kurlansky

...