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 ...

This is the story of Lizzie Vogel, a 15 year old girl who finds herself working in an old people`s home in Leicestershire in the 1970s. The place is in chaos & it`s not really a suitable job for a schoolgirl: she`d only gone for the job because she wanted a new phase & it seemed too exhausting to commit to being a full-time girlfriend or a punk. Lizzie has some knowledge of old people (they`re not suited to granary bread, & you mustn`t compare them to toddlers) but she doesn`t know there`s a right way to get someone out of the bath, or what to do when someone dies. When a rival old people`s home with better parking & daily chairobics threatens to take all their patients, Paradise Lodge`s cast of staff & helpers, from the assertively shy Nurse who only communicates through little grunts to the son of the Chinese takeaway manager who`s renowned for his erotic handholding techniques, have to come together to save the home before it`s too late. From the bestselling author of Love, Nina comes a story of being very young, & very old, & the laughter, & the tears, in between. ...

In 1976 & 1978, aerial photographer Georg Gerster had the rare opportunity to record the landscape of Iran on over 100 flights & 300 flying hours. This unique photographic project resulted in a near complete documentation of the major archaeological sites & important landscapes in the region. The book

Includes:: spectacular images of ancient citadels, desert ruins & rice fields spreading like a vast patchwork in a river delta, along with many unexpected sights, such as the bird`s eye view of a crowded ski resort in the Elburz mountains, within easy reach of Tehran. Persia`s densely packed cities like Bushehr on the Persian Gulf, are elegantly captured by Gerster & look so very different from Western European or North American cities of the same period. Persia`s complex, interlocking flat-roofed buildings are both timeless & timely, with architecture that has stood unchaged for thousands of years, along with brightly-coloured 1970s cars parked in the colonnaded courtyards. Even the Persian landscape contains surprises: on closer inspection, the elaborate patterns made in fields with tractors & ploughs turn out to have more to do with politics than agriculture or land art
- a law at the time allowed people to claim unused land by planting crops on it, & this type of `agridoodle` was apparently enough to support such a claim. Persia is the anchient name of the region we now know as Iran. We still reference the country`s long & rich cultural heritage when we speak of Persian carpets & Persian miniatures, of Persian language, history & literature. In her introduction to this book, Iranian-born writer Maryam Sachs lists some words borrowed from Persian by English speakers, which include azure, bazaar, gazelle, magic, musk, tapestry, scarlet, narcissus & paradise. These words offer insight into the country`s landscape, inhabitants & traditions
- influences that have indirectly shaped its landscape. This book vividly brings to life a place, time & culture that few people outside Iran are able to witness.



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Paradise Lost is a history of the great fire of Smyrna in 1922, by bestselling non-fiction author Giles Milton. A consequence of the latter days of Greco-Turkish War, the fire decimated much of the port city of Smyrna, modern day Izmir, causing death & destruction, & forcing hundreds of thousands of civilians to flee. Above all Milton’s book has been noted for celebrating the heroism of individuals who put lives before ideology in what can be viewed as one of history’s defining moments of ethnic & religious conflict. ...

Robert Carver, journalist & author of the acclaimed ` Among the Mountains`, searches for high adventure & intense experiences as he follows the trail of a family mystery. Once upon a time when Buenos Aires was still a tiny village, there existed an almost magical sub-tropical paradise in the lost heart of South America
- Old Paraguay. In 1537 a group of Europeans founded Asuncion on the banks of the Parana river, where they were enthusiastically welcomed by the Gurani. An extraordinary fusion of New World & Old was created -- a place where magnificent baroque cathedrals were built of carved stone in the heart of the jungle & solemn Catholic masses & high oratorios were sung & performed on European instruments by Gurani Indians & their Jesuit mentors. But every paradise has its serpents & the history of Paraguay is also studded with oppressive & even demented dictators. Robert Carver`s long-term fascination with this intoxicating world was fuelled by childhood stories of his great-uncle Charlie Carver, who vanished into the Amazonian jungle of old north Paraguay in search of Inca silver. He never returned, but his smashed gold pocket watch was traded down river & returned to the family in Engl&. Today Paraguay is the only South American country which is truly bilingual, in Spanish & Gurani: here everyone is a mestizo & proud of their dual heritage. Pink, freshwater dolphins play in the rivers of the Huan Chaco while in the forests soldier-ants cut paths six feet wide & eat anything in their way -- they can devour a nylon tent in an hour. Carver (a fluent Spanish-speaker) travels into this forbidden lost world in search of his own golden city of outlandish experience. The physically reckless journey takes him from mule trains high in frozen mountains to steamers up remote rivers in dense tropical jungle & he faces the threat of malaria, dengue fever & the odd marauding outlaw.
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Almost forty & with nothing to show for it, Hannah Luckraft is starting to realise that her lifestyle is not sustainable. Her soul is unwell, her family is wounded, her friends are odd, her body is unreliable & her drinking is out of control. Robert, a dissolute dentist, appears to offer a love she can underst&, but he may only be one more symptom of her problem. From Scotland to Dublin, from London to Montreal, to Budapest & onwards, Hannah travels in search of the ultimate altered state
- her paradise.
...