In 1887 Government inspectors were sent to investigate the Old Nichol, a notorious slum on the boundary of Bethnal Green parish, where almost 6, 000 inhabitants were crammed into thirty or so streets of rotting dwellings & where the mortality rate ran at nearly twice that of the rest of Bethnal Green. Among much else they discovered that the decaying 100-year-old houses were some of the most lucrative properties in the capital for their absent slumlords, who included peers of the realm, local politicians & churchmen. The Blackest Streets is set in a turbulent period of London`s history when revolution was in the air, & award-winning historian Sarah Wise skilfully evokes the texture of life at that time, not just for the tenants but for those campaigning for change & others seeking to protect their financial interests. She recovers Old Nichol from the ruins of history & lays bare the social & political conditions that created & sustained this black hole which lay at the very heart of the Empire. ...

The Blackmore Vale in 1903 in a series of reproductions of Ordnance Survey’s famous ” Inch to the Mile” maps published in the Alan Godfrey Editions to provide a historical record of England & Wales in the second half of 19th & early 20th century. The map covers the area of north Dorset known as the Blackmore Vale, stretching from North Wootton & Folke eastward to Win Green & Tarrant Hinton, & from Shaftesbury southward to Winterborne Stickl&. Other locations include Ashmore, Belchalwell, Bishops Caundle, Blandford Forum, Blandford St Mary, Buckland Newton, Caundle Marsh, Child Okeford, Compton Abbas, Durweston, East Orchard, East Stour, Fifehead Magdalen, Fifehead Neville, Fontmell Magna, Goathill, Hammoon, Hanford, Haselbury Bryan, Haydon, Hinton St Mary, Holnest, Holwell, Ibberton, Iwerne Courtney or Shroton, Iwerne Minster, Kington Magna, Langton Long Blandford, Lydlinch, Manston, Mappowder, Margaret Marsh, Marnhull, Melbury Abbas, Okeford Fitzpaine, Pimperne, Pulham, Purse Caundle, Shillingstone, Stalbridge, Steepleton Iwerne, Stoke Wake, Stour Provost, Stourpaine, Stourton Caundle, Sturminster Newton, Sutton Waldron, Tarrant Gunville, Tarrant Rawston, Todber, Turnworth, West Orchard, West Stour, Winterborne Houghton, Woolland & Wootton Glanville; plus in Somerset Charlton Horethorne, Henstridge, Horsington, Milborne Port, Stowell & Templecombe. On the reverse is a detailed map of Stalbridge. About the Alan Godfrey Editions of the OS Inch to the Mile Maps: the maps provide an invaluable overview of a wider area, typically 18 x 12 miles (29 x 19 kms approx.), & offer historical mapping for small towns & villages not covered by the more detailed series for which the Godfrey Editions are better known. On the reverse all the maps have historical notes & most titles also include a more detailed, large scale map of a small town or a village in the area. To see other titles in this series please click on the series link. ...

Jim Francis has finally found the perfect life
- & is now unrecognisable, even to himself. A successful painter & sculptor, he
...

Jim Francis has finally found the perfect life
- & is now unrecognisable, even to himself. A successful painter & sculptor, he
...

He had always been scared of flying. Now, the fear is real. A plane crash. The water is rising over his mouth. In his nostrils. Lungs. As Daniel gasps, he swallows; & punches at his seat-belt. Nancy, the woman he loves, is trapped in her seat. He clambers over her, pushing her face into the headrest. It is a reflex, visceral action made without rational thought... But Daniel Kennedy did it. & already we have judged him from the comfort of our own lives. Almost a hundred years earlier, Daniel`s great-grandfather goes over the top at Passchendaele. A shell explodes, & he wakes up alone & lost in the hell of no-man`s-l&. Where are the others? Has he been left behind? & if he doesn`t find his unit, is he a deserter? Love; cowardice; trust; forgiveness. How will any of us behave when we are pushed to extremes? ...

A drug dealer is found battered to death in the outskirts of Oslo. A young Dutchman, walking aimlessly in central Oslo covered in blood, is taken into custody but refuses to talk. When he is informed that the woman who discovered the body, Karen Borg, is a lawyer, the young Dutchman demands her as his defender: he will speak to Karen Borg & to her alone. A couple of days later, Hansa Larsen, a lawyer of the shadiest kind is found shot to death. Very soon, police officers Hakon Sand & Hanne Wilhelmsen establish a link between the two killings. They also find a message in code hidden in the murdered lawyer's apartment. The reason why the young Dutchman insisted on having Karen Borg as a defender slowly dawns upon them: since she was the one to find & report the body, she is the only Oslo lawyer that cannot be implicated in this business. But the tentacles of this conspiracy reach much higher than a corrupt lawyer & a small-time dealer. There are political movers & shakers in the frame. Hanne must work against time to uncover the truth
- but she is in more danger than she knows. This is the first instalment in the Hanne Wilhelmsen series.
...

` From the moment I watched a documentary of Chris Bonington & Tom Patey climb the perpendicular flanks of the Old Man of Hoy I knew that my life would not be complete until I had followed in their footholds. That was in 1983 when I was thirteen. Within months I was tackling my first crags & dreaming of standing atop Europe`s tallest sea stack with the Atlantic pounding 450 feet below. Those dreams went dark at nineteen when I learned I was going blind. I hung up my harness for twenty years & tried to ignore the twinge of desire I felt every time The Old Man appeared on TV.` Middle aged, by now a family man, crime novelist & occasional radio personality, Red Szell`s life nonetheless felt incomplete. He was still climbing, but only indoors until he shared his old, unforgotten, dream with his buddies, Matthew & Andres, & it became obvious that an attempt had to be made. With the help of mountain guides Martin Moran & Nick Carter, & adventure cameraman Keith Partridge, supported by family & an ever growing following, Red set out to confront the Orcadian giant. ...

The first in Robert Wilson`s Seville series, featuring the tortured detective Javier Falcon. The man is bound, gagged & dead in front of his television. The terrible self-inflicted wounds tell of his violent struggle to avoid some unseen horror. On the screen? In his head? What could make a man do that to himself? It`s Easter week in Seville, a time of passion & processions. But detective Javier Falcon is not celebrating. Appalled by the victim`s staring eyes he is inexorably drawn into this disturbing, mystifying case. & when the investigation into the dead man`s life sends Javier trawling though his own past & into the shocking journals of his late father, a famous artist, his unreliable memory begins to churn. Then there are more killings & Falcon finds himself pushed to the edge of a terrifying truth... ...

Originally written in Persian, The Blind Owl is predominantly a love story, an unconventional love story that elicits visions & nightmare reveries from the depths of the reader`s subconscious. A young man, an old man & a beautiful young girl perform, as if framed within a Persian miniature, a ritual of destruction as gradually the narrator, & the reader, discover the meaning hidden within the dreams. This unforgettable story contains a unique blend of the mystery of the Arabian Nights & an acutely contemporary sense of panic & hallucination. ...

From the author of ” The God Delusion”, Richard Dawkins` ” The Blind Watchmaker” has been acclaimed as the most influential work on evolution in the last hundred years. In 1802 the Rev. William Paleys argued in ” Natural Theology” that just as finding a watch would lead you to conclude that a watchmaker must exist, the complexity of living organisms proves that a Creator exists. Not so, says Richard Dawkins, & in this brilliant & controversial book, the acclaimed evolutionary biologist sets out to demonstrate that the theory of evolution by natural selection
- the unconscious, automatic, blind yet essentially non-random process discovered by Charles Darwin
- is the only answer to the biggest question of all: why do we exist? `I want to persuade the reader, not just that the Darwinian world-view happens to be true, but that it is the only known theory that could, in principle, solve the mystery of our existence`. To Dawkins, ” The Blind Watchmaker” is nature itself, gradually forming order from the very building-blocks of life: DNA. ” This might just be the most important evolution book since Darwin”. (John Gribbin). ” Richard Dawkins has updated evolution.. .his subject is nothing less than the meaning of life”. (” The Times”). ” Enchantingly witty & persusive.. .pleasurably intelligible to the scientifically illiterate”. (” Observer”). Richard Dawkins is a Fellow of both the Royal Society & the Royal Society of Literature, & Vice President of the British Humanist Association. He was first catapulted to fame with The Selfish Gene, which he followed with a string of bestselling books: ” The Extended Phenotype”, ” The Blind Watchmaker”, ” River Out of Eden”, ” Unweaving the Rainbow”, & an impassioned defence of atheism, ” The God Delusion”.

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