The third instalment from Roddy Doyle & his & Barrytown& trilogy which follows the fortunes of a redundant Dublin banker who buys a fish &n& chip van ...

When the human race spread out among the stars they took the profit motive with them & none exemplified that fact better than Nicholas Van Rijn interstellar trader & capitalist extraordinaire He might look like Falstaff & talk in a steady stream of malapropisms but anybody who might take him for a bumbling buffoon would quickly find themselves taken—to the cleaners! In Nick Van Rijn Poul Anderson created one of the most memorable & popular characters in science fiction & now for the first time all the stories of Van Rijn & the Polesotechnic League will be published in chronological order in three volumes This first volume

Includes:: the classic novel The Man Who Counts in which Van Rijn & two associates are stranded on a planet inhabited by a winged race two factions of which happen to be at war with each other The planet has no food that is not poisonous to humans & the three humans have only a small supply of food in their wrecked ship Somehow the humans must get to another continent where a human outpost is before they starve in spite of the planet’s inhabitants being too busy fighting a war to bother with the troubles of these three odd-looking wingless aliens An impossible problem? Not for Nick Van Rijn Also included are more stories of Van Rijn flamboyant exploits plus stories set elsewhere in the Polesotechnic universe & after the three volumes chronicling the Polesotechnic League’s rise & fall will come more volumes telling of the rise of the Terran Empire & the adventures of Poul Anderson’s other legendary character Captain Sir Dominic Flandry About the Author Poul Anderson was one of the most prolific & popular writers in science fiction He won the Hugo Award seven times & the Nebula Award three times as well as many other awards notably including the Grand Master Award of the Science Fiction Writers of America for a lifetime of distinguished achievement With a degree in physics & a wide knowledge of other fields of science he was noted for building stories on a solid foundation of real science as well as for being one of the most skilled creators of fast-paced adventure stories He was author of over a hundred novels & story collections & several hundred short stories as well as several mysteries & non-fiction books He died in 2001

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Please note this is a region 2 DVD & will require a region 2 (Europe) or region Free DVD Player in order to play Horror set in a world where the human race is on the verge of extinction after the world&s fuel reserves have almost entirely depleted In an attempt to control the rising human population an organisation known as The Corporation manufactures a lethal drug Unfortunately the drug doesn&t work as intended & instead transforms humans into primitive ape-like creatures known as Biosyns The Biosyns are virtually blind & rely on their sense of hearing & smell to survive Max (Ray Bullock Jr) is a young man who lives on his own in the wilderness He spends most of his days fighting the Biosyns in order to preserve his own existence The Corporation views Max as a serious threat to the world it&s created & sends a group of genetically-engineered soldiers known as Trackers to kill him & eliminate the Biosyns ...

Lying at the bottom of his apartment stairs a postman is found dead At first glance his death appears to be a tragic accident However when Detective Superintendent Konrad Simonsen is called to investigate he notices that something doesn't add up Did he fall? When life-sized images of a vanished girl are discovered plastering the walls of the dead man's attic the case takes a new & sinister turn Who is she? Could she be alive? Soon the homicide team find themselves delving into the past but as they approach the truth Simonsen is forced to confront long-hidden skeletons in his own cupboard ...

Can Lincoln Rhyme catch a diabolical killer in a world of truth & lies? ' Deaver is the master puzzler'
- Sunday Telegraph A killer
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From the Costa Award winning bestselling author of THIS MUST BE THE PLACE & I AM I AM I AM comes an intense breathtakingly accomplished story of a woman's life stolen & reclaimed ' Unputdownable' Ali Smith Edinburgh in the 1930s The Lennox family is having trouble with its youngest daughter Esme is outspoken unconventional & repeatedly embarrasses them in polite society Something will have to be done Years later a young woman named Iris Lockhart receives a letter informing her that she has a great-aunt in a psychiatric unit who is about to be released Iris has never heard of Esme Lennox & the one person who should know more her grandmother Kitty seems unable to answer Iris's questions What could Esme have done to warrant a lifetime in an institution? & how is it possible for a person to be so completely erased from a family's history? ...

Please note this is a region 2 DVD & will require a region 2 (Europe) or region Free DVD Player in order to play Originally based on & The Golden Egg& by Tim Krabbe this dark thriller follows Jeff Harriman&s (Keifer Sutherland) obsession with finding his girlfriend Diane Shaver (Sandra Bullock) who was abducted three years before whilst waiting at a road stop Presented with a series of clues to the disappearance by the abductor himself a psychotic scientist (Jeff Bridges) Jeff retraces his girlfriend&s sinister journey George Sluizer directs this Hollywood remake of his 1988 feature & Spoorloos& ...

When twenty-two-year-old Gerty Freely travels to Russia to work as a governess in early 1914 she has no idea of the vast political upheavals ahead nor how completely her fate will be shaped by them Yet as her intimacy with the charismatic inventor Nikita Slavkin deepens she's inspired by his belief in a future free of bourgeois clutter alight with creativity & sleek as a machine In 1917 revolution sweeps away the Moscow Gerty knew The middle classes
- & their governesses
- are fleeing the country but she stays throwing herself into an experiment in communal living led by Slavkin In the white-washed modernist rooms of the commune the members may be cold & hungry but their overwhelming feeling is of exhilaration They abolish private property & hand over everything even their clothes to the collective; they swear celibacy for the cause Yet the chaos & violence of the outside world cannot be withstood for ever Nikita Slavkin's sudden disappearance inspires the Soviet cult of the Vanishing Futurist the scientist who sacrificed himself for the Communist ideal Gerty alone & vulnerable must now discover where that ideal will ultimately lead

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WINNER OF THE JAMES TAIT BLACK BIOGRAPHY PRIZESHORTLISTED FOR THE RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZELONGLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTIONSelected as a Book of the Year in the Herald In 1845 a Reading bookseller named John Snare came across the dirt-blackened portrait of a prince at a country house auction Suspecting that it might be a long-lost Velazquez he bought the picture & set out to discover its strange history
- a quest that led from fame to ruin & exile Fusing detection & biography this book shows how & why great works of art can affect us even to the point of mania & on the trail of John Snare Cumming makes a surprising discovery of her own But most movingly The Vanishing Man is an eloquent & passionate homage to the Spanish master Velazquez bringing us closer to the creation & appreciation of his works than ever before
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Why is the Brazilian rainforest vanishing so fast? & why is it essential not only to the people & animals within it but to the whole world? Can anything be done to save it? This story seen through the eyes of a child called Remaema describes how the Yanomami tribe are battling against potential developers Can a solution be found that will protect the forest & allow the tribe to continue living as they always have done while benefiting from limited development? This picture book offers an exciting perspective on a controversial & topical subject ...