William Dampier, (1651-1715), was an English adventurer & pirate who preyed on ships on the Spanish Main. Poor & ill-educated & determined to make his fortune, he nonetheless had a passion for exploration & scientific research. Dampier was the first to map the winds & currents of the world`s oceans; led the first recorded party of Englishmen to set foot on Australia
- 80 years before Cook; wrote about Galapagos wildlife 150 years before Darwin, who drew on Dampier`s notes in his own work; was the first travel writer: A NEW VOYAGE AROUND THE WORLD was instant bestseller when it was published in 1697
- said to have influenced the novels of Swift & Defoe. A man full of contradictions: he who achieved so much `blew it` later in life, declining into scandal, failure & even farce. A unique man ahead of his time, he lived a large part of his life among pirates yet managed to preserve what Coleridge called his exquisite refinement of mind. A classic example of the best narrative history

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On the first day of Christmas, a gift was sent to me: a parrot in a palm tree! Ahoy mateys
- Christmas is coming, & even pirates
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With murder, everyone pays a price.. . Why would a killer ignore expensive jewellery & take a pair of turtledoves as the only bounty? This is only one of the questions that piques Chief Inspector Domenic Jejeune`s interest after a senior attache with the Mexican Consulate is found murdered alongside the director of a local bird sanctuary. The fact that the director`s death has opened up a full-time research position studying birds hasn`t eluded Jejeune either. Could this be the escape from policing that the celebrated detective has been seeking? Even if it is, Jejeune knows he owes it to the victims to solve the case first. But a trail that weaves from embittered aviary owners to suspicious bird sculptors only seems to be leading him farther from the truth. Meanwhile, Jejeune is discovering that diplomatic co-operation & diplomatic pressure go hand in h&. With two careers hanging in the balance, the stakes have never been higher for Inspector Jejeune. & this time, even bringing a killer to justice may not provide the closure he`s looking for. ...

A Place Apart is a remarkable geographical & psychological travelogue that rises above history, politics, theology & economics. Created by a southern Irishwoman, cycling into the mayhem of Northern Ireland in order to try & sort out her own opinions & emotions about this troubled l&. She came equipped with her own childhood experiences of murder & Republican martyrdom, but was otherwise unfettered by sectarian loyalties & armed with a delightful curiosity, a fine ear for anecdote, an ability to stand her own at the bar & penetrating intelligence. She travelled extensively through both town & country, frequently finding herself in horrifying situations, & sometimes among people stiff with hate & grief: but equally, she discovered an unquenchable spirit everywhere that refused to die. Other Dervla Murphy titles published by El&. Original Hardbacks: A Month by the Sea: Encounters in Gaza, The Island that Dared: Journeys in Cuba, Eland Classics: Wheels within Wheels, Full Tilt: From Ireland to India with a Bicycle, In Ethiopia with a Mule, Where the Indus is Young: A Winter in Baltistan, Tibetan Foothold, The Waiting Land: A Spell in Nepal, On a Shoestring to Coorg. ...

Who wants to live in a town where everyone has to wear glasses to stop them going blind? & who wants to be neat & tidy & perfectly behaved all the time?violet quickly discovers there`s something weird going on in the town
- she keeps hearing voices, her mam is acting strange & her dad has disappeared. When she meets Boy she realizes that her dad is not the only person to have vanished... & that the mysterious Watchers are guarding a perfectly creepy secret!
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An immensely humorous & original tale of Englishmen abroad, inspired from the hit Channel 4 series. Charting the adventures of affable yet bumbling Nigel, looking for a place to renovate in the deepest Ardeche, this compelling, original & slightly bonkers tale sees him first foray to France with the common-sensical Nippy, & later take up partnership with the truly eccentric Reza, as the pair decide to open up an Indian restaurant. Perfectly capturing the cultural & emotional wrangles of moving abroad, the book is bursting with character; featuring mad estate agents, a love triangle between Nigel, a pretty French girl
- & her boyfriend
- the trials of persuading people that Indian cuisine is what is needed in the French countryside, a chef that pulls out of the project a week before the grand opening, & of course Reza's recipes, this is a great stand alone read that also enjoys television support with the transmission of the new peak-time series.

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Chasing memories of the losses of his brother & father, the author, a young newspaper director, & his Australian wife visit the Cotswolds. On a whim they buy a cottage & Ian resigns. They slowly get to know Norman, their inscrutable & apparently terrifying neighbour; Geoff, the ebullient landlord of their eclectic local
- last bastion against the encroaching gastropub
- & Tom, an ex-gamekeeper, who lets Ian see something of a hidden rural culture. The delightful aspects of village life & an ever-changing landscape is evocatively captured; but it is from working with Norman on his small chaotic farm that they learn about the loss of the countryside to industrial farming & of no-longer affordable housing to the dreaded 'white settlers'. & it is shadows of the past & a seemingly segregated social world around them that begin to cast doubts on whether this is the place for them. This is a gentle lesson in taking time to confront our losses, memories & prejudices to discover a revitalised life in our own country.

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From the author of the critically-acclaimed Austerlitz & Across the Land & Water comes. A Place in the Country, the much anticipated translation of one of W.G. Sebald's most brilliant works. When W. G. Sebald, the prize-winning author of Austerlitz, travelled to Manchester in 1966, he packed in his bags certain literary favourites which would remain central to him throughout the rest of his life & during the years when he was settled in Engl&. In A Place in the Country, he reflects on six of the figures who shaped him as a person & as a writer, from Jean-Jacques Rousseau to Jan Peter Tripp. Fusing biography & essay, & finding, as ever, inspiration in place
- as when he journeys to the Ile St. Pierre, the tiny, lonely Swiss island where Jean-Jacques Rousseau found solace & inspiration
- Sebald lovingly brings his subjects to life in his distinctive, inimitable voice. A Place in the Country is a window into the mind of this much loved & much missed writer. Praise for W.G. Sebald: A new kind of writing, combining fiction, memoir, travelogue, philosophy & much else besides...greatness in literature is still possible. (John Banville, Irish Times). When you read Sebald you are transported to another realm. Reading him is a truly sublime experience. (Literary Review). Is literary greatness still possible? One of the few answers available to English-Language readers is the work of W.G. Sebald. (Susan Sontag). W.G. Sebald was born in Wertach im Allgau, Germany in 1944. He studied German language & literature in Freiburg, Switzerland & Manchester. In 1966 he took up a position as an assistant lecturer at the University of Manchester, & settled permanently in England in 1970. He was Professor of European Literature at the University of East Anglia, & the author of Austerlitz; The Emmigrants, which won a series of major awards, including the Berlin Literature Prize, the Heinrich Boll Prize, the Heinrich Heine Prize & the Joseph Breitbach Prize.

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A riveting psychological thriller, now a major ITV drama, from the Number One bestselling Queen of crime fiction Val Mc Dermid. In the Peak District village of Scarsdale, thirteen-year-old girls didn`t just run away. So when Alison Carter vanished in the winter of `63, everyone knew it was a murder. Catherine Heathcote remembers the case well. A child herself when Alison vanished, decades on she still recalls the sense of fear as parents kept their children close, terrified of strangers. Now a journalist, she persuades DI George Bennett to speak of the hunt for Alison, the tantalizing leads & harrowing dead ends. But when a fresh lead emerges, Bennett tries to stop the story
- plunging Catherine into a world of buried secrets & revelations. Decades later he finally tells his story to journalist Catherine Heathcote, but just when the book is poised for publication, Bennett unaccountably tries to pull the plug. He has new information which he refuses to divulge, new information that threatens the very foundations of his existence. Catherine is forced to reinvestigate the past, with results that turn the world upside down.A Greek tragedy in modern Engl&, A Place of Execution is a taut psychological suspense thriller that uniquely explores, exposes & explodes the border between reality & illusion in a multi-layered narrative that turns expectations on their head & reminds us that what we know is what we do not know. A monstrous tale of deception, the technique of the telling is the greatest deception of all.
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From the double Man Booker prize-winner comes an extraordinary work of historical imagination
- this is Hilary Mantel`s epic novel
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