` Cracking another country`s cipher is an undercover fight to the death...` Hidden deep in the mountains, the recruits at ` Unit 701`, China`s secret services, operate in a dark, shadowy world. There is the `wind-listener`, a blind surveillance officer who can hear sounds from miles away; the beautiful, unstable maths genius who meets a violent end; the old man who deciphers codes in his dreams; the spy who recounts a dangerous mission from beyond the grave. In this story of conspiracies, geniuses, revolutionaries & terrible moral choices, people sacrifice everything for a world of secrets
- until, ultimately, it destroys them.
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She lost her sight, but she can still see the truth... Jenny Aaron was once part of an elite police unit tracking Germany`s most dangerous criminals. She was the best. Until it all went wrong. A disastrous mission saw her abandon a wounded colleague & then lose her sight forever. Now, five years later, she has learnt to navigate a darkened world. But she`s still haunted by her betrayal. Why did she run? Then she receives a call from the unit. They need her back. A prison psychologist has been brutally murdered. & the killer will only speak to one person... ...

In the Darkness of the Night takes the reader through the sounds that a young child hears whilst curled up in bed waiting to fall asleep. From the familiar, reassuring noises of the family & the home including muffled voices & humming pipes. Next we move out into the garden, with the snuffling & screeching of foxes. & then suddenly what`s that? Zoom! A car speeds by & a distant siren sounds. Then the illustrations expand to the city beyond, as we see those who work throughout the night, such as cleaners or nurses. & finally, as the sun rises, the early morning sounds begin with the birdsong, clatter of dustbins & letterboxes as the city wakes up again. Emily Rand takes us on a gentle journey through the night, looking at all the sounds & activity that happen whilst you`re tucked up warm in your bed! ...

A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR WINNER OF THE KIRKUS PRIZE SHORTLISTED FOR THE PULITZER PRIZE 2017 From the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist & best-selling author of Backlash, an astonishing confrontation with the enigma of her father & the larger riddle of identity. In 2004 feminist writer Susan Faludi set out to investigate someone she scarcely knew: her estranged father. Steven Faludi had lived many roles: suburban dad, Alpine mountaineer, swashbuckling adventurer in the Amazon, Jewish fugitive in Holocaust Budapest. Living in Hungary after sex reassignment surgery & identifying as `a complete woman now, ` how was this new parent connected to the silent & ultimately violent father who had built his career on the alteration of images? Faludi`s struggle to come to grips with her father`s metamorphosis takes her across borders
- historical, political, religious, sexual
- & brings her face to face with the question of the age: is identity something you ”choose” or is it the very thing you cannot escape?

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In the vein of Bad Blood & Why be Happy when you can be Normal?: an enthralling, at times shocking, & deeply personal family memoir of growing up in, & breaking away from, a fundamentalist Christian cult. ` At university when I made new friends & confidantes, I couldn`t explain how I`d become a teenage mother, or shoplifted books for years, or why I was afraid of the dark & had a compulsion to rescue people, without explaining about the Brethren or the God they made for us, & the Rapture they told us was coming. But then I couldn`t really begin to talk about the Brethren without explaining about my father...` As Rebecca Stott`s father lay dying he begged her to help him write the memoir he had been struggling with for years. He wanted to tell the story of their family, who, for generations had all been members of a fundamentalist Christian sect. Yet, each time he reached a certain point, he became tangled in a thicket of painful memories & could not go on. The sect were a closed community who believed the world is ruled by Satan: non-sect books were banned, women were made to wear headscarves & those who disobeyed the rules were punished. Rebecca was born into the sect, yet, as an intelligent, inquiring child she was always asking dangerous questions. She would discover that her father, an influential preacher, had been asking them too, & that the fault-line between faith & doubt had almost engulfed him. In In the Days of Rain Rebecca gathers the broken threads of her father`s story, & her own, & follows him into the thicket to tell of her family`s experiences within the sect, & the decades-long aftermath of their breaking away. ...

An amusing & erudite account of Harry Bucknall`s 183-day journey through the Greek islands from Venice, in the West, to Istanbul, in the East In the summer of 2006, Harry Bucknall traveled from Venice to Istanbul--a journey across the Aegean of more than 5, 500 miles that included the glories of Mount Athos, 36 islands, & every island chain in the Greek Archipelago. It also involved 57 sea passages on 35 ferries, four landing craft, three hydrofoils, a fishing caique, a sea plane, 11 buses, two trains, an open-top Land Rover, & a duck egg blue 1961 Morris Oxford. Recounted with humor, pathos, & at times drama, this is not only a journey through the Greek islands but also a journey through Greek history, mythology, custom, & folklore--a Greek island companion loaded with adventure, mishap, & laughter offering a contemporary image of Aegean life today. ...

A morose provincial inspector of roads in Aragon settles down to write the fable of the Snow Queen. The Netherlands has now been stretched into a vast country with Northern flatlands & hazardous Alpine ranges in the south. Kai & Lucia are circus illusionists, & when Kai is kidnapped, Lucia must rescue him from the Snow Queen`s palace. In the Dutch Mountains is an elegantly constructed story within a story, laced with the wit that characterises the work of this outstanding European writer. ...

*WINNER OF THE THOMAS COOK/ DAILY TELEGRAPH TRAVEL BOOK 2001*” In The Empire of Genghis Khan” is a superb book, feeling like ...

Based in the modern-day chaos of the Middle East`s political arena, Egyptian journalist Ahdaf Soueif takes a look into the lives of Arab women in this acclaimed novel. It follows Asya, who after growing up among the elite upper class in Egypt marries a westernised & wealthy husb&, later becoming involved with an unrefined Englishman while pursuing her doctorate. This is a love story; a story about growing up; a story about what it`s like to be a woman
- both in the east & the west; a story about the history of the post-imperial Middle East during the last 30 years; & a story about home.
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America is a nation of ardent, knowledgeable birdwatchers. But how did it become so? & what role did the field guide play in our passion for spotting, watching, & describing birds? In the Field, Among the Feathered tells the history of field guides to birds in America from the Victorian era to the present, relating changes in the guides to shifts in science, the craft of field identification, & new technologies for the mass reproduction of images. Drawing on his experience as a passionate birder & on a wealth of archival research, Thomas Dunlap shows how the twin pursuits of recreation & conservation have inspired birders & how field guides have served as the preferred method of informal education about nature for well over a century. The book begins with the first generation of late 19th-century birdwatchers who built the hobby when opera glasses were often the best available optics & bird identification was sketchy at best. As America became increasingly urban, birding became more attractive, & with Roger Tory Peterson`s first field guide in 1934, birding grew in both popularity & accuracy. By the 1960s recreational birders were attaining new levels of expertise, even as the environmental movement made birding`s other pole, conservation, a matter of human health & planetary survival. Dunlap concludes by showing how recreation & conservation have reached a new balance in the last 40 years, as scientists have increasingly turned to amateurs, whose expertise had been honed by the new guides, to gather the data they need to support habitat preservation. Putting nature lovers & citizen-activists at the heart of his work, Thomas Dunlap offers an entertaining history of America`s long-standing love affair with birds, & with the books that have guided & informed their enthusiasm. ...