Traces the turbulent emotional journey of Martin Lynch-Gibbon a smug well-to-do London wine merchant & unfaithful husband whose life is turned inside out when his wife leaves him for her psychoanalyst 680 pages Murdoch Iris ...

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY JOHN BURNSIDEWhen Charles Arrowby retires from his glittering career in the London theatre he buys a remote house on the rocks by the sea He hopes to escape from his tumultuous love affairs but unexpectedly bumps into his childhood sweetheart & sets his heart on destroying her marriage His equilibrium is further disturbed when his friends all decide to come & keep him company & Charles finds his seaside idyll severely threatened by his obsessions ...

The Sea-Wolf belongs in the honorific tradition of American sea fiction where the voyage motif became a means of exploring the meaning of life as in Richard Henry Dana's Two Years Before the Mast (1840) Edgar Allan Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (1838) & Herman Melville's Moby Dick (1851) The dominant subject is an intellectual conflict between a ship-wrecked literary figure Humphrey Van Weyden & the brutal captain of a seal-hunting schooner Wolf Larsen who rescues Van Weyden & puts him to menial work on the schooner The central chapters focus on the gory details of seal-hunting & the final section shows how far Van Weyden has learned seamanship as he restores The Ghost to sailing health & returns to port with the only woman passenger another shipwrecked figure to plight their troth ...

' There is nothing more enticing disenchanting & enslaving than the life at sea' wrote Joseph Conrad There is certainly nothing more integral to the development of the modern world In The Sea A Cultural History John Mack considers those great expanses that both unite & divide us & the ways in which human beings interact because of the sea from navigation to colonization to trade Much of the world's population lives on or near the coast & people inhabit & engage with the sea in a variety of ways The Sea explores the diversity of seas themselves maritime technologies (especially the practice of navigation) & different cultures surrounding the sea Seafarers have characteristic social & technical practices as well as having distinctive language & customs Many cultures have created a society of the sea which is usually all-male often cosmopolitan & always hierarchical The separation of sea & land is evident in the use of different vocabularies on land & on sea for the same things the change in a mariner's behavior when on land & in the liminal status of points uniting the two realms like beaches & ports Ships are also deployed in symbolic contexts on land from ship burials to ecclesiastical & public architecture The two realms
- land & sea
- are never completely separate Casting a wide net The Sea uses histories maritime archaeology anthropology art history biography & literature to provide an innovative & experiential account of the waters that surround us

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The full story of seabirds from one of the greatest nature writers The book looks at the pattern of their lives their habitats the threats they face & the passions they inspire
- beautifully illustrated by artist Kate Boxer SHORTLISTED FOR THE RICHARD JEFFERIES SOCIETY AWARD FOR NATURE WRITING 2017 In ten chapters each dedicated to a different bird & each beautifully illustrated by Kate Boxer The Seabird's Cry travels their ocean paths fusing traditional knowledge with all that modern science has come to know about them the way their bodies work their dazzling navigational expertise their ability to smell their way to fish or home to understand the workings of the winds in which they live At the heart of the book are the Shiant Isles
- a cluster of Hebridean islands in the Minch that Adam Nicolson has known all his life
- but he has pursued the birds much further across the Atlantic up the west coast of Ireland to St Kilda Orkney Shetland the Faeroes Iceland & Norway to the eastern seaboard of America the Falklands South Georgia the Canaries & the Azores
- reaching out across the widths of the world ocean This book is a paean to the beauty of life on the wing but even as we are coming to understand the seabirds a global tragedy is unfolding Their number is in freefall dropping by nearly seventy per cent in the last sixty years a billion fewer now than in 1950 Of the ten birds in this book seven are in decline Extinction stalks the ocean & there is a danger that the grand cry of a seabird colony rolling around the bays & headlands of high latitudes will this century become but a memory



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The debut novel of abduction & slavery set in 17th century Iceland & North Africa by Sunday Times bestselling author & broadcaster Sally Magnusson Selected for the Zoe Ball ITV Book Club & BBC Radio 2 Book Club 384 pages Magnusson Sally ...

Maria Duenas's million copy best-selling tale of adventure tragedy love & war The Seamstress a Richard & Judy 2012 book club pick Spain 1936 & the brink of civil war Aged twelve Sira Quiroga was apprenticed to a Madrid dressmaker As she masters the seamstress's art her life seems to be clearly mapped out
- until she falls passionately in love & flees with her seductive lover But in Morocco she is betrayed & left penniless As civil war engulfs Spain Sira finds she cannot return & so turns to her one true skill
- & sews beautiful clothes for the expat elite & their German friends With Europe rumbling towards war Sira is lured back to Franco's Nazis-friendly Spain She is drawn into the shadowy world of espionage rife with love intrigue & betrayal & where the greatest danger lies ' Maria Duenas is a true storyteller Read this book & prepare to be transported' Kate Morton author of The House at Riverton'A wonderful novel with intrigue love mystery & tender audacious & clean-cut characters' Mario Vargas Llosa'A magnificent novel that flawlessly brings together history & intrigue' Juan Gomez-Jurado author of The Moses Expedition Maria Duenas holds a Ph D in English Philology & is currently a professor at the University of Murcia She has also taught at American universities is the author of several academic articles & has participated in various educational cultural & editorial projects She is currently writing her second novel

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In 1995 two Swiss astronomers discovered a planet circling a star other than our Sun This changed our perception of the Universe forever proving that Earth & the other celestial bodies in our Solar System are not alone in outer space Now after a decade of exploration more than 860 planets have been discovered many of which are completely unlike anything else we know Some are blacker than coal; some are bathed in molten lava; others are perpetually scoured by hurricane-force winds; some have not one sun but two that rise in the morning & others are perpetually drowned in global oceans But as well as strange inhabitable lands there is familiarity too Some of these alien worlds are strikingly similar to planets in our Solar System Astronomers now know of planets just like Jupiter Neptune Mars & Mercury orbiting stars similar to our Sun both nearby & deep into space Authoritatively written & fully up to date on this fast-moving area of science The Search for the Earth's Twin will take you on a journey through the cosmos via frozen wastelands slow-moving globes & fiery volcanic bodies to planets that can
- & just might
- sustain complex life The prospect of discovering the Earth's twin is now tantalisingly close

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Please note this is a region B Blu-ray & will require a region B or region free Blu-ray player in order to play The story of the evolution of extreme sports featuring breath-taking footage & interviews with the pioneers of the movement More than just a compilation of stunts The Search for Freedom is an exciting engrossing & considered look at the on-going pursuit of personal freedom & the desire to keep pushing limits ...

Please note this is a region 2 DVD & will require a region 2 (Europe) or region Free DVD Player in order to play The story of the evolution of extreme sports featuring breath-taking footage & interviews with the pioneers of the movement More than just a compilation of stunts The Search for Freedom is an exciting engrossing & considered look at the on-going pursuit of personal freedom & the desire to keep pushing limits ...