From the prize-winning author of In the Place of Fallen Leaves comes a hypnotic pastoral novel about an unexpected friendship between two children, set in Devon in 1911 1911. In a forgotten valley on the Devon-Somerset border, the seasons unfold, marked only by the rituals of the farming calendar. Twelve-year old Leopold Sercombe skips school to help his father, a carter. Skinny & pale, Leo dreams of a job on the estate`s stud farm. He is breaking a colt for his father when a boy dressed in a Homburg, breeches & riding boots appears. Peering under the stranger`s hat, he discovers Miss Charlotte, the Master`s daughter. & so begins a friendship between the children, bound by a deep love of horses, but divided by rigid social boundaries
- boundaries that become increasingly difficult to navigate as they approach adolescence.
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From the prize-winning author of In the Place of Fallen Leaves comes a beautiful, hypnotic pastoral novel reminiscent of Thomas Hardy, about an unexpected friendship between two children, set in Devon in 1911 1911. In a forgotten valley, on the Devon-Somerset border, the seasons unfold, marked only by the rituals of the farming calendar. Twelve-year-old Leopold Sercombe skips school to help his father, a carter. Skinny & pale, with eyes as dark as sloes, Leo dreams of a job on the Master`s stud farm. As ploughs furrow the hard January fields, the Master`s daughter, young Miss Charlotte, shocks the estate`s tenants by wielding a gun at the annual shoot. Spring comes, Leo watches swallows build their nests, hedgerows thrum with life & days lengthen into summer. Leo is breaking a colt for his father when a boy dressed in a Homburg, breeches & riding boots appears. Peering under the stranger`s hat, he discovers Charlotte. And so a friendship begins, bound by a deep love of horses, but divided by rigid social boundaries
- boundaries that become increasingly difficult to navigate as they approach adolescence... Hallucinatory, beautiful & suffused with the magic of nature, this tale of an unlikely friendship & the loss of innocence builds with a hypnotic power. Evoking the realities of agricultural life with precise, poetic brushstrokes, Tim Pears has created a masterful, Hardyesque pastoral novel. The first in a dazzling new trilogy, The Horseman is his greatest achievement.
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Melanie Stryder refuses to fade away. The earth has been invaded by a species that takes over the minds of their human hosts while leaving their bodies intact, & most of humanity has succumbed. Wanderer, the invading `soul` who has been given Melanie`s body, knew about the challenges of living inside a human: the overwhelming emotions, the too-vivid memories. But there was one difficulty Wanderer didn`t expect: the former tenant of her body refusing to relinquish possession of her mind. Melanie fills Wanderer`s thoughts with visions of the man Melanie loves
- Jared, a human who still lives in hiding. Unable to separate herself from her body`s desires, Wanderer yearns for a man she`s never met. As outside forces make Wanderer & Melanie unwilling allies, they set off to search for the man they both love.
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In this gripping blend of reportage, memoir, & analysis, a journalist & daughter of one of the world`s most famous hostages, Terry Anderson, takes an intimate look at her father`s captivity during the Lebanese Hostage Crisis & the ensuing political firestorm on both her family & the United States-as well as the far-reaching implications of those events on Middle Eastern politics today. In 1991, six-year-old Sulome Anderson met her father, Terry, for the first time. While working as the Middle East bureau chief for the Associated Press covering the long & bloody civil war in Lebanon, Terry had been kidnapped in Beirut & held for her entire life by a Shiite Muslim militia associated with the Hezbollah movement. As the nation celebrated, the media captured a smiling Anderson family joyously reunited. But the truth was far darker. Plagued by PTSD, Terry was a moody, aloof, & distant figure to the young daughter who had long dreamed of his return-and while she smiled for the cameras all the same, she absorbed his trauma as her own. Years later, after long battles with drug abuse & mental illness, Sulome would travel to the Middle East as a reporter, seeking to understand her father, the men who had kidnapped him, & ultimately, herself. What she discovered was shocking-not just about Terry, but about the international political machinations that occurred during the years of his captivity. The Hostage`s Daughter is an intimate look at the effect of the Lebanese Hostage Crisis on Anderson`s family, the United States, & the Middle East today. Sulome tells moving stories from her experiences as a reporter in the region & challenges our understanding of global politics, the forces that spawn terrorism & especially Lebanon, the beautiful, devastated, & vitally important country she came to love. Powerful & eye-opening The Hostage`s Daughter is essential reading for anyone interested in international relations, this violent, haunted region, & America`s role in its fate. ...

For aficionados of hot, spicy food, the humble chilli inspires near-fanatical devotion. Chillies come in a variety of shapes, sizes & colours
- from long & thin to round & berry-like, & from green to fiery orange
- & there is a huge variation in the degree of hotness (measured on the Scoville scale). There are some 400 varieties of chillies, ranging in strength from the mild jalapeno to the blisteringly hot habanero. Chillies are grown all over the world, & are an essential ingredient (fresh or dried) in many world cuisines. Indeed, it would be hard to imagine a curry, mole poblano or fajitas without the hot stuff. The Hot Book of Chillies is an essential companion to enjoying chillies, & covers the history & biology of the plants, how hotness is measured, chillies & health, nutritional & medicinal value & how to preserve & use chillies. A gallery of chillies presents Approx. 100 of the most popular chilli varieties, & the book

Includes:: a selection of recipes for salsas, hot sauces, jams & chutneys.



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Established in 1898 in the heart of Paris on the Place Vendome, the Hotel Ritz instantly became an icon of the city frequented by film stars & celebrity writers, American heiresses & risque flappers, politicians, playboys, & princes. In June 1940, when France fell to the Germans, orders from Berlin specified that the Hotel Ritz would be the only luxury hotel of its kind in occupied Paris. Tilar J. Mazzeo traces the history of this cultural landmark from its opening in fin-de-siecle Paris to the modern era. The Hotel on Place Vendome chronicles life at the Ritz during wartime, when the hotel simultaneously served as headquarters to the highest-ranking German officers, such as Reichsmarschall Hermann Goring, & home to wealthy patrons (and the spies among them) who stayed on in Paris. Mazzeo takes us into the grand palace`s suites, bars, dining rooms, & wine cellars, revealing a hotbed of illicit affairs & deadly intrigue, as well as stunning acts of defiance & treachery, in which refugees were hidden in secret rooms, a Jewish bartender passed coded messages for the German resistance, & Wehrmacht officers plotted to assassinate the Fuhrer. The result is the story of The Hotel on Place Vendome--a singular season at the world-class hotel, an intimate & riveting portrait of the last days of the Second World War. ...

The very aptly named Mr Pong had the kind of breath that could stun at over ten feet... This wasn`t just bad
- there was something
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Hotel Tito is an award-winning autobiographical novel of the Serbo-Croatian War. Author Ivana Bodrozic was born in the Croatian town of Vukovar, just across the Danube from Serbia. In the fall of 1991, Vukovar was besieged by the Yugoslav People`s Army for eighty-seven days. When the army broke the siege, people came up out of the basements where they`d been sheltering from bombardment; women & children were allowed out of the besieged city, but the army bused 400 men from the hospital to a farm on the outskirts where soldiers & Serbian paramilitaries massacred them. Bodro ic`s father was among those taken & murdered. In Hotel Tito, after fleeing the war zone their town has become, the mother & two children are housed along with other displaced persons at a former communist school in the village of Kumrovec (the birthplace of Josip Tito). For years they share a single room just large enough for their three beds, waiting to hear whether the narrator`s father survived & when they`ll be granted an apartment of their own. In the meantime life goes on for the teenage protagonist, first loves bloom & burn quickly, new friendships are acquired & lost, new truths emerge, & new emotions. But she never loses her shy, insightful voice, nor her self-deprecating sense of humor. Hotel Tito is a sensitive & forthright coming of age novel in a time of atrocity & loss. ...

The hotel that I love like a fatherland is situated in one of the great port cities of Europe, & the heavy gold Antiqua letters in which its banal name is spelled out shining across the roofs of the gently banked houses are in my eye metal flags, metal bannerets that instead of fluttering shine out their greeting. In the 1920s & 30s, Joseph Roth travelled extensively in Europe, leading a peripatetic life living in hotels & writing about the towns through which he passed. Incisive, nostalgic, curious & sharply observed
- & collected together here for the first time
- his pieces paint a picture of a continent racked by change yet clinging to tradition. From the `compulsive` exercise regime of the Albanian army, the rickety industry of the new oil capital of Galicia, & `split & scalped` houses of Tirana forced into modernity, to the individual & idiosyncratic characters that Roth encounters in his hotel stays, these tender & quietly dazzling vignettes form a series of literary postcards written from a bygone world, creeping towards world war; introduced & exquisitely translated by Michael Hofmann.

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The hotel that I love like a fatherland is situated in one of the great port cities of Europe, & the heavy gold Antiqua letters in which its banal name is spelled out shining across the roofs of the gently banked houses are in my eye metal flags, metal bannerets that instead of fluttering shine out their greeting. In the 1920s & 30s, Joseph Roth travelled extensively in Europe, leading a peripatetic life living in hotels & writing about the towns through which he passed. Incisive, nostalgic, curious & sharply observed
- & collected together here for the first time
- his pieces paint a picture of a continent racked by change yet clinging to tradition. From the `compulsive` exercise regime of the Albanian army, the rickety industry of the new oil capital of Galicia, & `split & scalped` houses of Tirana forced into modernity, to the individual & idiosyncratic characters that Roth encounters in his hotel stays, these tender & quietly dazzling vignettes form a series of literary postcards written from a bygone world, creeping towards world war.

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