The Store doesn't just want your money
- it wants your soul Imagine a future of unparalleled convenience A powerful retailer The
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Originally published as The Collected Works of A J Fikry Who the hell are you? AJ asks the baby For no apparent reason she stops crying & smiles at him Maya she answers That was easy AJ thinks How old are you? he asks Maya holds up two fingers You're two? Maya smiles again & holds up her arms to him AJ Fikry the grumpy owner of Island Books is going through a hard time his bookshop is failing he has lost his beloved wife & a prized rare first edition has been stolen But one day AJ finds two-year-old Maya sitting on the bookshop floor with a note attached to her asking the owner to look after her His life
- & Maya's
- is changed forever

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Throughout her career prize-winning novelist Jane Gardam has been writing glorious short stories each one hallmarked with all the originality poignancy wry comedy & narrative brilliance of her longer fiction Passion & longing metamorphosis & enchantment are Gardam's themes & like a magician she plucks them from the quietest of corners from Wimbledon gardens & cold churches from London buses & industrial backstreets A mother watching her children on the beach dreams of a long-lost lover an abandoned army wife sees a ghost at a moorland gate a translator adrift in Geneva is haunted by the unspeakable manifestation of her own fears & a colonial servant wreaks a delicious revenge on her monstrous masters Gardam's cast is wide & wonderful saints & mystics trollops & curmudgeons yearning mothers & lost children beloved figures such as Old Filth & less familiar
- but equally unforgettable
- characters like Signor Settimo the sad-eyed provincial photographer marooned in Shipley or Florrie Ironside the ferocious matron he seduces With a mischievous ear for dialogue a glittering eye for detail & a capacious understanding of the vagaries of the human heart Jane Gardam's stories will captivate sadden & delight

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When & why did 'thou' disappear from Standard English? Would a Victorian Cockney have said 'observation' or 'hobservation'? Was Jane Austen making a mistake when she wrote ' Jenny & James are walked to Charmonth this afternoon'? This superbly well-informed
- & also wonderfully entertaining
- history of the English language answers all these questions showing how the many strands of English (Standard English dialect & slang among them) developed to create the richly-varied language of today

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INTERNATIONALLY BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE JAPANESE LOVER A captivating collection of short fiction by one of the most beloved writers of our time Eva Luna is a young woman whose powers as a storyteller bring her friendship & love Lying in bed with her lover European refugee & journalist Rolf Carle Eva answers his request for a story 'you have never told anyone before' with these twenty-three samples of her vibrant artistry Interweaving the real & the magical she explores love vengeance compassion & female power depicting worlds that are at once poignantly familiar & intriguingly new Rendered in her sumptuously imagined uniquely lyrical style The Stories of Eva Luna is a cornerstone of Isabel Allende's work & in her character Eva Luna she creates a modern-day Scheherazade ' Eva Luna's stories are delicate their images akin to poetry Perfectly crafted & thematically rich' Barbara Kingsolver ' Vital & compelling' The Times ' Arresting & altogether distinctive powerful & haunting; a collection to be read aloud & repeated for generations' Los Angeles Times ' Enchanting magnificent Absolute magic on every level' Cosmopolitan ...

The Roman Republic was one of the most remarkable achievements in the history of civilization After its founding in 509 BCE Rome grew from an unremarkable Italian city-state to the dominant superpower of the Mediterranean world Through it all the Romans never allowed a single man to seize control of the state Every year for four hundred years the annually elected consuls voluntarily handed power to their successors Not once did a consul give in to the temptation to grab absolute power & refuse to let it go It was a run of political self-denial unmatched in the history of the world The disciplined Roman republicans then proceeded to explode out of Italy & conquer a world filled with petty tyrants barbarian chieftains & despotic kings But the very success of the Republic proved to be its undoing The republican system was unable to cope with the vast empire Rome ruled Bankrolled by mountains of imperial wealth & without a foreign enemy to keep them united ambitious Roman leaders began to stray from the republican austerity of their ancestors Almost as soon as they had conquered the Mediterranean Rome would become engulfed in violent political conflicts & civil wars that would destroy the Republic less than a century later The Storm Before the Storm tells the story of the beginning of the end of the Roman Republic--the story of the first generation that had to cope with the dangerous new political environment made possible by Rome's unrivaled domination over the known world The tumultuous years from 133-80 BCE set the stage for the fall of the Republic The Republic faced issues like rising economic inequality increasing political polarization the privatization of the military endemic social & ethnic prejudice rampant corruption ongoing military quagmires & the ruthless ambition & unwillingness of elites to do anything to reform the system in time to save it--a situation that draws many parallels to present-day America These issues are among the reasons why the Roman Republic would fall & as we all know those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it ...

Tilly is going to stay with her gran & great-gran in Wales She's got a big school project about the Second World War to do & Gran who was evacuated herself during the war has promised to help Travelling on the train for the first time alone Tilly falls asleep & wakes up to discover she's travelled all the way back to World War II She's being evacuated to Wales with her two younger brothers Stern Mr Edwards offers to give them a home on his remote farm where she meets a very special sheepdog ...

From best-selling author Holly Webb comes a charming wintery story just in time for Christmas The countdown to Christmas has begun & Isabelle is enjoying a family day out at the zoo As her sister watches the penguins Isabelle is the only one to catch a glimpse of a snow leopard with its beautiful spotted silver-grey coat & long fluffy tail Fascinated by these rare & endangered creatures Isabelle tries to find out what she can do to help protect them Little does she know she's about to be whisked into her very own magical snow leopard adventure where a mother & her cubs are in danger ...

From best-selling author Holly Webb comes a charming wintery story just in time for Christmas The countdown to Christmas has begun & Isabelle is enjoying a family day out at the zoo As her sister watches the penguins Isabelle is the only one to catch a glimpse of a snow leopard with its beautiful spotted silver-grey coat & long fluffy tail Fascinated by these rare & endangered creatures Isabelle tries to find out what she can do to help protect them Little does she know she's about to be whisked into her very own magical snow leopard adventure where a mother & her cubs are in danger ...

Ally D' Apliese is about to compete in one of the world's most perilous yacht races when she hears the news of her adoptive father's sudden mysterious death Rushing back to meet her five sisters at their family home she discovers that her father
- an elusive billionaire affectionately known to his daughters as Pa Salt
- has left each of them a tantalising clue to their true heritage Ally has also recently embarked on a deeply passionate love affair that will change her destiny forever But with her life now turned upside down Ally decides to leave the open seas & follow the trail that her father left her which leads her to the icy beauty of Norway There Ally begins to discover her roots
- & how her story is inextricably bound to that of a young unknown singer Anna Landvik who lived there over a hundred years before & sang in the first performance of Grieg's iconic music set to Ibsen's play ' Peer Gynt' As Ally learns more about Anna she also begins to question who her father Pa Salt really was & why is the seventh sister missing? Following the bestselling The Seven Sisters The Storm Sister is the second book in Lucinda Riley's spellbinding series based loosely on the mythology surrounding the famous star constellation


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