The spellbinding tale of hustler Edgar Laplante--the king of Jazz Age con artists--who becomes the victim of his own dangerous game. Edgar Laplante was a smalltime grifter, an erstwhile vaudeville performer, & an unabashed charmer. But after years of playing thankless gigs & traveling with medicine shows, he decided to undertake the most demanding & bravura performance of his life. In the fall of 1917, Laplante reinvented himself as Chief White Elk: war hero, sports star, civil rights campaigner, Cherokee nation leader--and total fraud. Under the pretenses of raising money for struggling Native American reservations, Laplante dressed in buckskins & a feathered headdress & traveled throughout the American West, narrowly escaping exposure & arrest each time he left town. When the heat became too much, he embarked upon a lucrative continent-hopping tour that attracted even more enormous crowds, his cons growing in proportion to the adulation of his audience. As he moved through Europe, he spied his biggest mark on the Riviera: a prodigiously rich Hungarian countess, who was instantly smitten with the con man. The countess bankrolled a lavish trip through Italy that made Laplante a darling of the Mussolini regime & a worldwide celebrity, soaring to unimaginable heights on the wings of his lies. But then, at the pinnacle of his improbable success, Laplante`s overreaching threatened to destroy him... In King Con, Paul Willetts brings this previously untold story to life in all its surprising absurdity, showing us how our tremendous capacity for belief & our longstanding obsession with celebrity can make fools of us all--and proving that sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. ...

Ben Pole is on the run from his arch-enemy Monty Grabbe when he discovers a forest with rope swings, water slides, Herbert the wombat, & best of all King Coo. But watch out! Cow-pat-a-pults & Slug Pulp to the ready! Monty & his gang have a dastardly plan, & Ben & Coo need to come up with their best invention yet... ...

” Brilliantly original & hilarious. It`s nearly as good as one of my books.” DAVID WALLIAMS ” Two words
- such fun!” MIRANDA HART
...

” Edwin isn`t an ordinary boy. He is a king, with a throne, & his own suit of armour & a castle with secret passages & everything.” Every Friday, King Edwin spends all his money on chocolate for the peasants. But when the money runs out, Edwin finds himself in a fix. Cue the arrival of evil Emperor Nurbison, in his pointy-collared black cloak & accompanied by scary striding music. He has had his eye on Edwin`s kingdom for a while & intends to use the peasants` unhappiness to his advantage! When the emperor builds a fake dragon out of a cow, green crepe paper, furry monster novelty slippers & two birthday cake candles, to scare the peasants, Edwin knows it`s time to come up with the first sneaky plan he`s ever had in his life.. . ...

The Ladybird Book about King John & the Magna Carta is a gem from the Ladybird vintage archive. First published in 1969, this is a classic Ladybird hardback book, packed with information about one of the most important moments in the history of English-speaking people. This new edition, published to mark 800 years since the Magna Carta, is exactly the same as the original, with a dust jacket & beautifully reproduced images. The story of King John & the momentous events he saw take place over his reign are illustrated with twenty-four beautiful full-page pictures. ...

WINNER OF THE 1999 DUFF COOPER PRIZE. ` Brilliant.. this book must be read & re-read` Neal Ascherson`. `A hundred years ago, enlightened people in the western world were outraged by a holocaust in Africa which left millions dead. Denunciations thundered from speaker`s platforms around the US & Europe. One open letter to The Times was signed by 11 peers, 19 bishops & 75 MPs. Viscount Grey, Britain`s foreign secretary, declared that no overseas issue had so intensely aroused the British public for 30 years. Conan Doyle wrote a pamphlet on the Congo atrocities which sold 25, 000 copies in the first week alone. Yet today not one person in a thousand could say what the fuss was all about, unless, of course, they have read this amazing book.` Tariq Ali, Financial Times ` Fascinating.. .brilliant & gripping` Mail on Sunday ` An exemplary piece of history writing: urgent, vivid & compelling` Literary Review ...

This book is the winner of the 1999 duff cooper prize. ` Brilliant.. this book must be read & re-read`
- Neal Ascherson. `A hundred
...

El Comandante, an aging Castro-like dictator shambles about his mansion in Havana, visits a dying friend, tortures hunger strikers in one of his prisons, & grapples with the stale end of his life that is as devoid of grandeur as his nearly sixty-year-old revolution. Across the waters in Florida, Goyo Herrera, a Miami exile in his eighties, plots revenge against the very same El Comandante whom he blames for stealing his beloved, ruining his homel&, & taking his father`s life. Shifting between the two men with great resonance & humour, & peppered with the rabble of other Cuban voices to create a patchwork of history`s unofficial stories, Cristina Garcia`s novel plumbs the passions & realities of these two Cubas
- on the isl&, & off. Writing with wit & insight, & very much at the top of her form, she returns to the territory of her Cuban homel&.
...

Haile Selassie I, the last emperor of Ethiopia, was as brilliant as he was formidable. An early proponent of African unity & independence who claimed to be a descendant of King Solomon, he fought with the Allies against the Axis powers during World War II & was a messianic figure for the Jamaican Rastafarians. But the final years of his empire saw turmoil & revolution, & he was ultimately overthrown & assassinated in a communist coup. Written by Asfa-Wossen Asserate, Haile Selassie s grandnephew, this is the first major biography on this final king of kings. Asserate, who spent his childhood & adolescence in Ethiopia before fleeing the revolution of 1974, knew Selassie personally & gained intimate insights into life at the imperial court. Introducing him as a reformer & an autocrat whose personal history with all of its upheavals, promises, & horrors reflects in many ways the history of the twentieth century itself, Asserate uses his own experiences & painstaking research in family & public archives to achieve a colorful & even-handed portrait of the emperor.” ...

This book is set in Miami, 1981. When Detective Max Mingus & his partner Joe are called to the scene of a death at Miami's Primate Park, it looks like another routine
- if slightly bizarre
- investigation. Until two things turn up: the victim's family, slaughtered; & a partly digested tarot card in the dead man's stomach; The King of Swords. An increasingly bloody trail leads Max & Joe first to a sinister fortune-teller & her scheming pimp son, then to the infamous Solomon Boukman. Few have ever met the most feared criminal in Miami, but rumours abound of a forked tongue, voodoo ceremonies & friends in very high places. Against a backdrop of black magic & police corruption, Max & Joe must distinguish the good guys from the bad
- & track down some answers. What is the significance of the King of Swords? What makes those who have swallowed the card go on a killing spree just before they die? & can Max find out the truth about Solomon Boukman, before death's shadow reaches his own front door?


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