Sunday Times bestselling author Caroline Taggart takes her usual gentle & gently humorous approach to punctuation, pointing out what really matters & what doesn`t. In Roman times, blocks of text were commonly written just as blocks without even wordspacingnevermindpunctuation to help the reader to interpret them. Orators using such texts as notes for a speech would prepare carefully so that they were familiar with the content & didn`t come a cropper over a confusion between, say, therapists & the rapists. As we entered the Christian era & sacred texts were widely read (by priests if not by the rest of us), it became ever more important to remove any likelihood of misinterpretation. To a potential murderer or adulterer, for example, there is a world of difference between ` If you are tempted, yield not, resisting the urge to commit a sin` & ` If you are tempted, yield, not resisting the urge to commit a sin`. & the only surface difference is the positioning of a comma. So yes, you SMS-addicts & `let it all hang out` Sixties children, punctuation does matter. &, contrary to what people who tear their hair out over apostrophes believe, it is there to help
- to clarify meaning, to convey emphasis, to indicate that you are asking a question or"ing someone else`s words. It also comes in handy for telling your reader when to pause for breath. Caroline Taggart, who has made a name for herself expounding on the subjects of grammar, usage & words generally (and who for decades made her living putting in the commas in other people`s work), takes her usual gentle & gently humorous approach to punctuation. She points out what matters & what doesn`t; why using six exclamation marks where one will do is perfectly OK in a text but will lose you marks at school; why hang glider pilots in training really need a hyphen; & how throwing in the odd semicolon will impress your friends. Sometimes opinionated but never dogmatic, she is an ideal guide to the (perceived) minefield that is punctuation.
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In life you never get what you deserve: you get what you negotiate… What would you do if, out of the blue, a billionaire industrialist decided to make you the CEO of his company? No prior business experience necessary. There is only one catch: you need to pass seven tests from the `textbook of life`. This is the offer made to Sapna Sinha, an ordinary salesgirl in an electronics boutique in downtown Delhi, by Vinay Mohan Acharya, one of India`s richest men. Thus begins the most challenging journey of Sapna`s life, one that will test her character, her courage & her capabilities. Along the way she encounters a host of memorable personalities, from a vain Bollywood superstar to a kleptomaniac Gandhian. At stake is a business empire worth ten billion dollars, & the future she has always dreamt of. But are the seven tests for real or is Acharya playing a deeper game, one driven by a perverse fantasy? From the acclaimed author of Slumdog Millionaire, one of the biggest films of the decade, comes this compelling, suspenseful tale of the power of dreams, the lure of money & the universal need to know who we are. ...

In life you never get what you deserve: you get what you negotiate… What would you do if, out of the blue, a billionaire industrialist decided to make you the CEO of his company? No prior business experience necessary. There is only one catch: you need to pass seven tests from the `textbook of life`. This is the offer made to Sapna Sinha, an ordinary salesgirl in an electronics boutique in downtown Delhi, by Vinay Mohan Acharya, one of India`s richest men. Thus begins the most challenging journey of Sapna`s life, one that will test her character, her courage & her capabilities. Along the way she encounters a host of memorable personalities, from a vain Bollywood superstar to a kleptomaniac Gandhian. At stake is a business empire worth ten billion dollars, & the future she has always dreamt of. But are the seven tests for real or is Acharya playing a deeper game, one driven by a perverse fantasy? From the acclaimed author of Slumdog Millionaire, one of the biggest films of the decade, comes this compelling, suspenseful tale of the power of dreams, the lure of money & the universal need to know who we are. ...

America`s most beguiling metropolis started out as a snake-infested, hurricane-battered swamp. Through intense imperial rivalries & ambitious settlers who risked their lives to succeed in colonial America, the site became a crossroads for the Atlantic world. Powell gives us the full sweep of the city`s history from its founding through statehood. ...

The sequel to Jonas Jonasson’s international bestseller The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window & Disappeared It all begins with a hot air balloon trip & three bottles of champagne. Allan & Julius are ready for some spectacular views, but they’re not expecting to land in the sea & be rescued by a North Korean ship, & they could never have imagined that the captain of the ship would be harbouring a suitcase full of contraband uranium, on a nuclear weapons mission for Kim Jong-un … Soon Allan & Julius are at the centre of a complex diplomatic crisis involving world figures from the Swedish foreign minister to Angela Merkel & President Trump. Things are about to get very complicated … Praise for The Hundred-Year-Old Man:‘A mordantly funny & loopily freewheeling debut novel about ageing disgracefully’ Sunday Times‘ Imaginative, laugh-out-loud... a brilliant satire on the foibles of mankind’ Daily Telegraph‘ Fast-moving & relentlessly sunny’ Guardian ...

Pilgrimage has been an important practice in Christianity since the fourth century, but most people`s notion of pilgrimage is one of travelling to the site of an apparition, in search of inspiration or miracles. THE ACCIDENTAL PILGRIM shows that pilgrimage is not just a relic of Catholic history, but can remain a significant practice for twenty-first century Christians today.THE ACCIDENTAL PILGRIM gives a lively overview of the history of pilgrimage & the popular pilgrim routes, exploring the mix of spiritual & other motives that have inspired pilgrims both past & contemporary. It then explores how people both inside & outside the Church can rediscover pilgrimage within twenty-first century culture. Illustrated throughout, & written by one of the UK`s most popular theologians, THE ACCIDENTAL PILGRIM is a compelling invitation to all on the journey of faith. ...

How does a man addicted to routine
- a man who flosses his teeth before love-making
- cope with the chaos of everyday life?

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LONGLISTED FOR THE CWA INTERNATIONAL DAGGER 2018 When two Parisian women are murdered in their homes, the police suspect young accordionist Clément Vauquer. As he was seen outside both of the apartments in question, it seems like an open-&-shut case. Desperate for a chance to prove his innocence, Clément disappears. He seeks refuge with old Marthe, the only mother figure he has ever known, who calls in ex-special investigator Louis Kehlweiler. Louis is soon faced with his most complex case yet & he calls on some unconventional friends to help him. He must show that Clément is not responsible & solve a fiendish riddle to find the killer... ...

The Accordionist`s Son is a remarkably powerful & accomplished novel, exploring the life of David Imaz, a former inhabitant of the Basque village of Obaba, now living in exile & ill-health on a ranch in California. As a young man, David divides his time between his uncle`s ranch & his life in the village, where he reluctantly practises the accordion on the insistence of his authoritarian father. Increasingly aware of the long shadow cast by the Spanish Civil War, he begins to unravel the story of the conflict, his father`s association with the fascists & his uncle`s opposition & brave decision to hide a wanted republican. Caught betweeen the two men, the course of his own life is changed forever when he agrees to shelter a group of students on the run from the military police. Translated by Margaret Jull Costa. ...

In 1989, a North Korean dissident writer, known to us only by the pseudonym Bandi, began to write a series of stories about life under Kim Il-sung`s totalitarian regime. Smuggled out of North Korea & set for publication around the world in 2017, The Accusation provides a unique & shocking window on this most secretive of countries. Bandi`s profound, deeply moving, vividly characterised stories tell of ordinary men & women facing the terrible absurdity of daily life in North Korea: a factory supervisor caught between loyalty to an old friend & loyalty to the Party; a woman struggling to feed her husband through the great famine; the staunch Party man whose actor son reveals to him the absurd theatre of their reality; the mother raising her child in a world where the all-pervasive propaganda is the very stuff of childhood nightmare. The Accusation is a heartbreaking portrayal of the realities of life in North Korea. It is also a reminder that humanity can sustain hope even in the most desperate of circumstances
- & that the courage of free thought has a power far beyond those seek to suppress it.
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