On Beauty is Zadie Smith’s wonderful homage to Howard’s End & it provides plenty of parallels for devotees to spot while remaining greatly enjoyable on its own terms. The action has transferred to New Engl&, with some taking place in London, & concerns a pair of feuding families embroiled in a clutch of doomed affairs when the son of an unsatisfied English professor falls for the daughter of a right-wing icon. The professor’s own marriage is in difficulty too. He’s a Rembrandt scholar, who doesn’t like Rembrandt, married to a larger-than-life African-American who’s not quite the sexy activist she once was. When the two families are thrown together the real wars in the background are soon forgotten as their own cultural & personal wars begin in this beautiful corner of America. ...

” First you take a drink, ” F. Scott Fitzgerald once noted, ”then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you.” Few writers have conveyed the effects of alcohol as vividly as Fitzgerald, & this collection gathers debutantes & dandies, rowdy jazz musicians, lost children & ragtime riff-raff into a collection taken from The Crack-Up & other works. On Booze portrays ” The Jazz Age” as Fitzgerald experienced it: roaring, rambunctious, & lush with quite a hangover. ...

On Brick Lane explores the contrast of extremes that make up the historical street in East London
- a street that is constantly
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' As they used to say in Irel&, the devil only comes into good things.' Narrated by Lilly Bere, On Canaan's Side opens as she mourns the loss of her grandson, Bill. The story then goes back to the moment she was forced to flee Dublin, at the end of the First World War, & follows her life through into the new world of America, a world filled with both hope & danger. At once epic & intimate, Lilly's narrative unfurls as she tries to make sense of the sorrows & troubles of her life & of the people whose lives she has touched. Spanning nearly seven decades, it is a novel of memory, war, family-ties & love, which once again displays Sebastian Barry's exquisite prose & gift for storytelling. ...

` As they used to say in Irel&, the devil only comes into good things`. Narrated by Lilly Bere, ” On Canaan`s Side” opens as she mourns the loss of her grandson, Bill. The story then goes back to the moment she was forced to flee Dublin, at the end of the First World War, & follows her life through into the new world of America, a world filled with both hope & danger. At once epic & intimate, Lilly`s narrative unfurls as she tries to make sense of the sorrows & troubles of her life & of the people whose lives she has touched. Spanning nearly seven decades, it is a novel of memory, war, family-ties & love, which once again displays Sebastian Barry`s exquisite prose & gift for storytelling. ...

It is June 1962. In a hotel on the Dorset coast, overlooking Chesil Beach, Edward & Florence, who got married that morning, are sitting down to dinner in their room. Neither is entirely able to suppress their anxieties about the wedding night to come... On Chesil Beach is another masterwork from Ian Mc Ewan. ...

It is July 1962. Edward & Florence, young innocents married that morning, arrive at a hotel on the Dorset coast. At dinner in their rooms they struggle to suppress their private fears of the wedding night to come &, unbeknownst to them both, the events of the evening will haunt them for the rest of their lives. ...

A seasonal anthology of Christmas-themed writings to savour during the highs & lows of Christmas Day. This delightful book offers a diverse array of classic & contemporary writers who have expressed their thoughts about Christmas over the centuries
- with joy, nostalgia & dazzling wit.

Includes:: selections from Dostoevsky, Truman Capote, A.A. Milne, Jerome K Jerome, & modern day diarists, this beautiful volume is as full of delight & nostalgia as Christmas itself.


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” Oh! that the faculty would look deeper into & make themselves better acquainted with the crying evil of obesity
- that dreadful
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On Courage is a collection of twenty-eight moving & inspirational stories of valour displayed by recipients of the Victoria Cross & George Cross. *GBP2.70 of the publisher`s RRP of all copies of this book sold in the United Kingdom & Republic of Ireland will be donated to Combat Stress.*WITH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM: Alexander Armstrong, Baroness Hale, Bear Grylls, Bill Beaumont, Bobby Charlton, Katherine Grainger, Kelly Holmes, Derek Jacobi, Eddie Redmayne, Frank Bruno, Geoffrey Palmer, Jeremy Irons, Joanna Kavenna, Joanna Lumley, John Simpson, Joseph Calleja, Julian Fellowes, Kate Adie, Ken Dodd, Margaret Mac Millan, Mark Pougatch, Mary Berry, Michael Whitehall & Jack Whitehall, Miranda Hart, Richard Chartres, Tom Ward, Will Greenwood, & Willie Carson. From RAF flight engineer Norman Jackson, who climbed out onto the wing of a Lancaster bomber in flight to put out a fire, using a twisted parachute as a rope, on the night his first child was born; children`s writer turned Assistant Section Officer Noor Inayat-Khan, who was the first female operator to infiltrate occupied France & refused to abandon what had become the most dangerous post in the country; to Irish seaman & Antarctic explorer Tom Crean, who struck out alone for a supply depot during Captain Scott`s expedition to the South Pole to save the life of his ailing companion, these courageous men & women are an inspiration to us all. Written by leading historians & authors Tom Bromley, Saul David, Paul Garlington, James Holland & Dr Spencer Jones, these incredible accounts tell of the recipients` determination & selfless actions in times of war. Each story is introduced by a public figure, including Mary Berry, Bear Grylls, Sir Bobby Charlton, Joanna Lumley, Eddie Redmayne & the late Sir Ken Dodd. ...