In the world of rare books everything has its price. But when the book is a satanic tract, the currency is not money but life. A well-know bibliophile is found hanged days after selling a rare manuscript of Alexander Dumas`s classic, The Three Musketeers. Across Madrid, Spain`s wealthiest book dealer has finally laid his hands on a 17th-century manual for summoning the devil. Lucas Corso, solitary & obsessive, is the detective hired to authenticate both texts. But the further he follows the trail of devil worship, the more it leads him back to Dumas. He`s the unwitting protagonist in someone`s evil plot, but is he sleuth or hero, Sherlock Holmes or d` Artagnan? ...

` The Dumpling Sisters are super cute, they know how to cook, they`ve got good flavours goin` on!` JAMIE OLIVER Amy & Julie Zhang have been entertaining & educating their thousands of followers on You Tube with their recipes for deliciously easy homemade Chinese food. Destined to be adored by every Chinese food lover, THE DUMPLING SISTERS COOKBOOK is full of Chinese-food favourites, impressive sharing dishes & even sweet treats. Beginning with the simple; Best Ever Fried Rice, & working up to the more elaborate Cracking Five-Spice Roast Pork Belly, the recipes are interspersed with the insider tips & tricks that the girls` You Tube fans adore. With insight into Chinese culture & eating etiquette (for perfecting those chopstick skills), including sharing menu planners & a guide to shopping at Chinese supermarkets, Amy & Julie take us on a journey to discover real Chinese cooking. ...

John Lister-Kaye has spent a lifetime exploring, protecting & celebrating the British landscape & its wildlife. Lister-Kaye`s joyous childhood holidays
- spent scrambling through hedges & ditches after birds & small beasts, keeping pigeons in the loft & tracking foxes around the edge of the garden
- were the perfect apprenticeship for his two lifelong passions: exploring the wonders of nature, & writing about them. Warm, wise & full of wonder, The Dun Cow Rib is a captivating coming of age tale by one of the founding fathers of nature writing.

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Journeys in the Levant. ” How to speak of the imaginative reach of a land habitually seen as a seedbed of faiths & heresies, confluences & ruptures...trouble spot & findspot, ruin & renewal, fault line & ragged clime, with a medley of people & languages once known with mingled affection & wariness as Levantine?” So begins poet Gabriel Levin in his journeys in the Levant, the exotic land that stands at the crossroads of western Asia, the eastern Mediterranean, & northeast Africa. Part travelogue, part field guide, & part literary appreciation, ” The Dune`s Twisted Edge” assembles six interlinked essays that explore the seaboard of the Levant & its deserts, bringing to life this enigmatic part of the world. Striking out from his home in Jerusalem in search of a poetics of the Fertile Crescent, Levin probes the real & imaginative terrain of the Levant, a place that beckoned to him as a source of wonder & self-renewal. His footloose travels take him to the Jordan Valley; to Wadi Rumm south of Petra; to the semiarid Negev of modern-day Israel & its Bedouin villages; &, in his recounting of the origins of Arabic poetry, to the Empty Quarter of Arabia where the pre-Islamic poets once roamed. His meanderings lead to encounters with a host of literary presences: the wandering poet-prince Imru al-Qays, Byzantine empress Eudocia, British naturalist Henry Baker Tristram, Herman Melville making his way to the Dead Sea, & even New York avantgarde poet Frank O` Hara. When he is not confronting ghosts, Levin finds himself stumbling upon the traces of vanished civilizations. He discovers a ruined Umayyad palace on the outskirts of Jericho, the Greco-Roman hot springs near the Sea of Galilee, & Nabatean stick figures carved on stones in the sands of Jordan. Vividly evoking the landscape, cultures, & poetry of this ancient region, ” The Dune`s Twisted Edge” celebrates the contested ground of the Middle East as a place of compound myths & identities. ...

The Durrell family are immortalised in Gerald Durrell`s My Family & Other Animals & its ITV adaptation, The Durrells. But what of the real life Durrells? Why did they go to Corfu in the first place
- & what happened to them after they left? The real story of the Durrells is as surprising & fascinating as anything in Gerry`s books, & Michael Haag, with his first hand knowledge of the family, is the ideal narrator, drawing on diaries, letters & unpublished autobiographical fragments. The Durrells of Corfu describes the family`s upbringing in India & the crisis that brought them to England & then Greece. It recalls the genuine characters they encountered on Corfu
- Theodore the biologist, the taxi driver Spiro Halikiopoulos & the prisoner Kosti
- as well as the visit of American writer Henry Miller. & Haag has unearthed the story of how the Durrells left Corfu, including Margo`s & Larry`s last-minute escapes before the War. An extended epilogue looks at the emergence of Larry as a world famous novelist, & Gerry as a naturalist & champion of endangered species, as well as the lives of the rest of the family, their friends & other animals. The book is illustrated with family photos from the Gerald Durrell Archive, many of them reproduced here for the first time.


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` In a voice as dim as a lighthouse on a rainy night, he said, ” Beware of loving a woman who loves bridges.”` Once upon a September in Paris... Still heartsick over the break-up of his relationship with the alluring, elusive novelist Hayat, the narrator of The Dust of Promises finds himself adrift in Paris, where he has come to receive a photography award. His photograph of a traumatised war-orphan has been declared profoundly affecting by the judges, but he knows that no picture can ever fully capture the desolation & destruction he has witnessed in his Algerian homel&. When he stumbles into an art exhibition on one of the capital`s side streets, he is struck by the power of the paintings & feels impelled to learn more about the artist
- an Algerian exile whose painful longing for the country he has lost shines out of his work. The artist is none other than Khaled, the man who haunted the pages of Hayat`s first novel, just as the narrator was inextricably entangled in her second. As the two men embark on a tentative friendship, a twist of fate brings Hayat herself to France, where the destinies of all of them will once again collide. The final novel in the international bestselling trilogy from `the literary phenomenon` (Elle) Ahlem Mosteghanemi, The Dust of Promises is a haunting, elegiac story of love, memory & betrayal
- & of what it means to come home.

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A return to the epic romance, heroism, history & warm & eccentric cast of characters that made CAPTAIN CORELLI`S MANDOLIN such an extraordinary hit (2.5 million copies sold). In the brief golden years before the outbreak of World War I, Rosie Mc Cosh & her three very different sisters are growing up in an eccentric household in Kent, with their neighbours the Pitt boys on one side & the Pendennis boys on the other. But their days of childhood adventure are shadowed by the approach of the conflict that will engulf them on the cusp of adulthood. When the boys end up scattered along the Western Front, Rosie is left confused by her love for two young men
- one an infantry soldier & one a flying ace. Can she, & her sisters, build new lives out of the opportunities & devastations that follow the Great War?
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In the brief golden years of King Edward VII`s reign, Rosie Mc Cosh & her three very different sisters are growing up in an eccentric household in Kent, with their neighbours the Pitt boys on one side & the Pendennis boys on the other. But their days of childhood adventure are shadowed by the approach of war that will engulf them on the cusp of adulthood. When the boys end up scattered along the Western Front, Rosie faces the challenges of life for those left behind. Confused by her love for two young men
- one an infantry soldier & one a flying ace
- she has to navigate her way through extraordinary times. Can she, & her sisters, build new lives out of the opportunities & devastations that follow the Great War? Louis de Bernieres` magnificent & moving novel follows the lives of an unforgettable cast of characters as they strike out to seek what happiness can be built from the ruins of the old world.

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The Dutch, in the Xenophobe guide series; consisting of a range of pocket-sized guides which take a humorous & irreverent approach to a wide range of world cultures. Each guide explores the characteristics of a country’s people in a series of dedicated sections, encompassing nationalism & identity, behaviour, manners, character, obsessions, beliefs & values, leisure & pleasure, culture, custom & tradition, business, systems, health & hygiene, crime & punishment, government & bureaucracy, conversation & gestures & language. Written in a wholly irreverent style, Xenophobes guides attempt to forewarn readers of the main stereotypes & foibles that are associated with individual nationalities. ...

The best collection of Dutch cycling photos ever assembled! For more than a decade, American photographer & author Shirley Agudo has been photographing the incomparable bicycle culture of the Netherlands, where she now lives. Following the success of her previous book, Bicycle Mania Holl&, she has amassed this new collection of 400 photos The Dutch & their Bikes: Scenes from a Nation of Cyclists. It s the definitive photo guide to the world s best bicycle culture. For the Dutch, cycling is a way of life. With more bikes than people, the Netherlands is a nation of cyclists where children virtually learn to cycle before they learn to walk. Everyone cycles, every day & everywhere. What they carry & do on their bikes is unbelievable. Agudo s fascinating photo anthology offers a privileged look at this culture that lives & breathes cycling. Hold your breath for the ride.” ...