Get creative with this Par Avion (Air Mail) Rubber Stamps set from Cavallini & Co.! Comprising of twelve high quality wood-block & rubber stamps with accompanying black ink pad, all housed in a well presented brush-metal case, the Par Avion Rubber Stamps set is ideal for adorning cards, labels & letters
- & makes a great gift in-itself! Each of these well crafted wood-block & rubber stamps are individually sized according to the design, an example of which is presented on each block. Add a personal touch to your letters & cards!
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This is a beautiful & unique wrapping paper featuring a collage of air mail postal envelops from Cavallini & Co. measuring 51x 71 cm (20”x 28”). It is printed on thick quality Italian paper stock. The beautiful print & quality of the paper makes it absolutely ideal for wrapping special presents as well as framing & other creative purposes. ...

Four twenty-somethings share an apartment in Tokyo. In Parade each tells their story: their lives, their hopes & fears, their loves, their secrets. Kotomi waits by the phone for a boyfriend who never calls. Ryosuke wants someone that he can`t have. Mirai spends her days drawing & her nights hanging out in gay bars. Naoki works for a film company, & everyone treats him like an elder brother. Then Satoru turns up. He`s eighteen, homeless, & does night work of a very particular type. In the next-door apartment something disturbing is going on. & outside, in the streets around their apartment block, there is violence in the air. From the writer of the cult classic Villain, Parade is a tense, disturbing, thrilling tale of life in the city. ...

Parade's End is the great British war novel & Ford Madox Ford's major achievement as a novelist. Originally published as four linked novels between 1924 & 1928, it follows the story of Christopher Tietjens, as his life is shattered by his wife's infidelities & overturned by the mud, blood & destruction of the First World War. Tietjens, with his old-fashioned Tory values, is already out of step with the corrupt political culture of Edwardian England: his experiences at the Front & his developing relationship with the suffragette Valentine Wannop force him into a radical reconfiguring of his values as he participates in the post-war period of national re-construction. Parade's End is both a subtly perceptive psychological novel & a richly descriptive chronicle of 'the public events of a decade'. Through Tietjens, his beautiful (and unforgettably cruel) wife, Sylvia, & the principled Valentine, Ford draws us into the world of the English upper class as it goes through a period of crisis & transformation. ...

Booker Prize-winner Julian Barnes introduces Ford Madox Ford`s masterpiece ” Parade`s End”
- now a major new BBC/HBO TV adaptation
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Almost forty & with nothing to show for it, Hannah Luckraft is starting to notice that her lifestyle is not entirely sustainable: her subconscious is turning against her, her soul is a little unwell. Her family is wounded, her friends are odd, her body is not as reliable as it once was & her drinking is frankly out of h&. Robert, a dissolute dentist, appears to offer a love she can underst&, but he may only be one more symptom of the problem she must cure. From the north-east of Scotland to Dublin, from London to Montreal, to Budapest & onwards, Hannah travels in search of the ultimate altered state: the one where she can be happy
- her paradise. Paradise is a compelling examination of failure that is also a comic triumph, a novel of dark extremes that is full of the most ravishing lyrical beauty.
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Beatrice Kizza, a woman in flight from a homeland that condemned her for daring to love, flees to London. There, she shields her sorrow from the indifference of her adopted city, & navigates a night-time world of shift-work & bedsits. Howard Pink is a self-made millionaire who has risen from Petticoat Lane to the mansions of Kensington on a tide of determination & bluster. Yet self-doubt still snaps at his heels & his life is shadowed by the terrible loss that has shaken him to his foundations. Carol Hetherington, recently widowed, is living the quiet life in Wandsworth with her cat & The Jeremy Kyle Show for company. As she tries to come to terms with the absence her husband has left on the other side of the bed, she frets over her daughter`s prospects & wonders if she`ll ever be happy again. Esme Reade is a young journalist learning to muck-rake & doorstep in pursuit of the elusive scoop, even as she longs to find some greater meaning & leave her imprint on the world. Four strangers, each inhabitants of the same city, where the gulf between those who have too much & those who will never have enough is impossibly vast. But when the glass that separates Howard`s & Beatrice`s worlds is shattered by an inexcusable act, they discover that the capital has connected them in ways they could never have imagined. ...

Mario Leme is a low-ranking detective in the Sao Paolo civil police. Every day on the way to work he sets off early & drives through the favela known as Paraisopolis
- Paradise City. It`s a pilgrimage: his wife Renata was gunned down at an intersection here a year ago, the victim of a stray bullet in a conflict between drug dealers. One morning, parked near the place where Renata died, he sees an SUV careen out of control & flip over. The driver Leo is killed, but before his body is removed, Leme is sure he sees bullet wounds. Leo`s death wasn`t an accident, he was murdered. Soon, his girlfriend turns up dead too. & if they were killed deliberately, perhaps Renata was too.. . Leme finds himself immersed further & further in the dark underbelly of Brazilian society, as corruption seeps from the highest to the lowest echelons, & the devastating truth about Renata begins to emerge.
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This timely portrait of Lebanon exposes the fault lines that underlie the current crisis in the Middle East, & charts the country`s attempts to rebuild a fragile peace after its long civil war & recent conflict with Israel. Part reportage, part travel narrative, ” Paradise Divided” chronicles the delicate web of relationships that make up contemporary Lebanese society. Drawing on interviews with community leaders & relationships with ordinary people, it reveals a richly-textured social & religious fabric in which Sunni & Shia Muslims, Druze & Christians of all kinds, from Maronite Catholics to evangelical Protestants, strive to maintain a delicate balance. It offers an insight into how Lebanon`s religious communities, their identities formed by history, landscape & their relationships with one another, came to be what they are today
- & how their different perspectives can lead to potentially destructive tensions. What emerges is a quintessentially Middle Eastern form of coexistence, poised between tolerance & sectarianism
- a theme powerfully developed through the author`s privileged access to the normally secretive Druze. The reader follows the country`s changing fortunes after the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, the subsequent pro-democracy movement & withdrawal of Syrian forces from Lebanese soil. The final chapters examine the aftermath of Israel`s military campaign & the emergence of the new battle dividing Lebanese society as opposing camps struggle to have their vision for Lebanon made reality. ” Paradise Divided” opens a window onto a country little-visited by Westerners for decades, & one very different from the war-torn images of the Middle East that dominate our television screens. Offering a unique view of the struggle between sectarianism & tolerance, & the relationship between the Arab world & the West, it is a book which sheds light on some of the central issues of our time.

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A journey through some of the world`s most stunning gardens from Spain & Morocco to Turkey & India. An exploration of the beauty ...