Human exploration has been an unceasing engine of technological progress, from the first homo sapiens to leave our African cradle to a future in which mankind promises to settle another world. Beyond tells the epic story of humanity leaving home-and how humans will soon thrive in the vast universe beyond the earth. A dazzling & propulsive voyage through space & time, Beyond reveals how centuries of space explorers-from the earliest stargazers to today`s cutting-edge researchers-all draw inspiration from an innate human emotion: wanderlust. This urge to explore led us to multiply around the globe, & it can be traced in our DNA. Today, the urge to discover manifests itself in jaw-dropping ways: plans for space elevators poised to replace rockets at a fraction of the cost; experiments in suspending & reanimating life for ultra-long-distance travel; prototypes for solar sails that coast through space on the momentum of microwaves released from the Earth. With these ventures, private companies & entrepreneurs have the potential to outpace NASA as the leaders in a new space race. Combining expert knowledge of astronomy & avant-garde technology, Chris Impey guides us through the heady possibilities for the next century of exploration. In twenty years, a vibrant commercial space industry will be operating. In thirty years, there will be small but viable colonies on the Moon & Mars. In fifty years, mining technology will have advanced enough to harvest resources from asteroids. In a hundred years, a cohort of humans born off-Earth will come of age without ever visiting humanity`s home planet. This is not the stuff of science fiction but rather the logical extension of already available technologies. Beyond shows that space exploration is not just the domain of technocrats, but the birthright of everyone & the destiny of generations to come. To continue exploration is to ensure our survival. Outer space, a limitless unknown, awaits us. ...

A comically sinister tale of wicked spirits & suburban mediums from the Man Booker Prize-winning author of ` Wolf Hall` & ` Bring Up the Bodies`. Alison Hart, a medium by trade, tours the dormitory towns of London`s orbital ring road with her flint-hearted sidekick, Colette, passing on messages from beloved dead ancestors. But behind her plump, smiling persona hides a desperate woman: she knows the terrors the next life holds but must conceal them from her wide-eyed clients. At the same time she is plagued by spirits from her own past, who infiltrate her body & home, becoming stronger & nastier the more she resists... Shortlisted for the Orange Prize, Hilary Mantel`s supremely suspenseful novel is a masterpiece of dark humour & even darker secrets. ...

This book explores the Emirates beyond the beaches & shopping malls of Dubai
- focusing in particular on the remarkably rich historical
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One of the most iconoclastic philosophers of all time, Nietzsche dramatically rejected notions of good & evil, truth & God. Beyond Good & Evil demonstrates that the world is steeped in false piety & infected with a `slave morality`. With wit & subversive energy, Nietzsche demands that the individual impose their own `will to power` upon the world. ...

When Mimi first started jogging on a treadmill as an unfit 36-year-old mother-of-three, she never imagined she would go on to become a World-Record-breaking ultrarunner. After coming to terms with the anorexia that had impacted her life from a young age, Mimi begins to reassess her relationship with food & finds a new resolve in running. With a renewed sense of purpose, she decides to take the sport that saved her life to the next level, training hard & throwing herself in at the deep end by entering the epic Marathon des Sables in the Sahara desert, despite still being a novice runner. One startling success leads to another, as she finds herself taking on ever-more-challenging races
- from the Badwater Ultramarathon in Death Valley, USA, to the 6633 Arctic Ultra
- all building up to her biggest challenge yet: attempting to gain the Guinness World Record time for a female running 840 miles from John o` Groats to Land`s End. This incredible story of how an ordinary mum ran her way into the record books will inspire beginner runners & die-hard marathon devotees alike, proving that, no matter where life takes you, it`s never too late to achieve your dreams & do the impossible.

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Harriet`s parents hoped that, after leaving boarding school & doing `the Season`, she would meet & marry a suitable young man. But she was to disappoint them. Just after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, she set off for Peshawar to see for herself the plight of thousands of displaced Afghan refugees. Determined to do something about their dire situation, Harriet set up a small silk weaving project for illiterate Turkmen refugees, & was sent by UNESCO to Mazar-i-sharif to work with Afghanistan`s last remaining silk ikat weavers. During those years she was arrested by the KHAD, narrowly missed being blown up, survived acute bacterial meningitis in a Kabul hospital, & rescued an abandoned pi-dog puppy who became her devoted companion. At the end of the first Gulf War she travelled with the Peshmerga in the newly-liberated Iraqi Kurdistan. Then in 1994 she joined a group of unemployed builders & decorators driving convoys of food & aid from Croydon to the Muslim enclaves in Bosnia Herzegovina. Much has been written about conflicts in these countries, by war correspondents, diplomats & military personnel, but this is a different story. It is about young woman from a sheltered & privileged background travelling & working alone, in & around war zones, frequently with no financial or practical support, at a time of increasing Islamic fundamentalism. Harriet left her traditional, comfortable home & chose to live a life of adventure & danger helping refugees who had nowhere else to turn. She continues to raise money for charity through her business selling oriental textiles & remains friends with the refugees she helped in Afghanistan. However, she is now married, to just the sort of husband her parents always hoped for. ...

The sudden thought reverberated to the centre of Gin's being. It filled the emptiness in her nineteen-year-old heart, that of a girl whose marriage had failed & who was faced with a future devoid of hope. As a young girl from a wealthy family, Ginko Ogino seems set for a conventional life in the male-dominated society of nineteenth-century Japan. But when she contracts gonorrhoea from her husb&, she suffers the ignominy of divorce. Forced to bear the humiliation of being treated by male doctors, she resolves to become a doctor herself in order to treat fellow female sufferers & spare them some of the shame she had to endure. As more & more obstacles are placed before her, will she give in to social pressure or continue to fight against her world & her times? ...

In Beyond The Blue Horizon Alexander Frater reveals & relives the romance & breathtaking excitement of the legendary Imperial Airways Eastbound Empire service -- the world`s longest & most adventurous scheduled air route. Written with an infectious passion, this is an extraordinarily original & genre-defining piece of travel writing by one of our most highly respected travel correspondents. ` Whether being mown down by stampeding Baghdad-bound passengers in Cairo airport, or battling with Indian Airline staff (and failing) to reconfirm six vital going-on flights from Delhi, or being lured unwittingly into a souvenir shop selling pornographic wood carvings in Lombok, or hitting tropical cyclones Ferdinand in a 748 en route from Sumba to Bali, Frater rises above it all with humour, style & a wonderfully sharp eye` Evening Standard ...

The Huautla Caves system in Mexico has long been the Holy Grail of cavers. Fighting floods, cave-ins & Mazatec Indians who believe the caves are holy, caving teams have competed every year to be the first to prove the cave's depth. No-one has gone further than Bill Stone, the world's foremost caver, whose 20-year obsession nearly ended in disaster. He first explored Huautla in 1976 during the frontier days of caving. Over the next 15 years he stayed at the top, inventing clothing & equipment to help in his obsession. Finally, in 1994, after years of preparation, Stone & his 44-member team entered the Sotano de San Augustin sinkhole at Huautla. It was the beginning of a journey that would untimately claim the life of one diver & force every member of the team back
- except Bill Stone & team member Barbara am Ende, who forged on alone, with no hope of rescue, to set the record for the deepest cave dive in the Western Hemisphere.
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Richard Skelton spent nearly half a decade living in a small valley high in the Furness hills of Cumbria, in northern Engl&. When not writing or composing music, most of his days were spent beating the valley`s bounds, exploring its network of paths, streams & walls. Beyond the Fell Wall is a distillation of his observations & thoughts about this particular patch of l&. It is a poetic enquiry into the life of an seemingly inanimate landscape
- its otherwise unheard melodies & unseen movements. It considers both vast geological epochs & brief moments of intimacy, & in turn it asks us to consider sentience in all things, whether animal, vegetable or mineral. At the heart of the book is the fell wall itself: vast & serpentine
- a vessel for the lives, voices & myths of the landscape.

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