Now entering its fifteenth year, the Caine Prize for African Writing is Africa`s leading literary prize, & is awarded to a short story by an African writer published in English, whether in Africa or elsewhere. This collection brings together the five 2014 shortlisted stories, along with stories written at the Caine Prize Writers` Workshop, taking place in Spring 2014. ...

The Cairngorms is a guide to the quality rock & ice climbing to be found in the range, covering both summer & winter routes & challenges. The title

Includes:: the Northern Corries, Shelter Stone, Hell’s Lum, Braeriach, Ben Macdui, Beinn a’ Bhuird, Lochnagar, Creag an Dubh Loch & Glen Cova. Produced by the Scottish Mountaineering Club, the guide is divided into substantial sections on the Cairngorms North & the Cairngorms South, with very in-depth sections on localised climbing areas written by different experts. Each climb is featured on an accompanying map or diagram & graded according to the British grading system. The book comes with an attached page marker ribbon & also features an introductory history of climbing in the Cairngorms, a basic geology grounding, & useful environmental & safety notes.

...

An illustrated history from the Scottish Mountaineering Trust of the first 100 years of mountaineering in The Cairngorms
- one
...

Secret Histories of the Cairngorms is a series of journeys exploring barely known human & natural stories of the Cairngorm Mountains. It looks at a unique British landscape, its last great wilderness, with new eyes. History combines with travelogue in a vivid account of this elemental scenery. There have been rare human incursions into the Cairngorm plateau, & Patrick Baker tracks them down. He traces elusive wildlife & relives ghostly sightings on the summit of Ben Macdui. From the search for a long-forgotten climbing shelter & the locating of ancient gem mines, to the discovery of skeletal aircraft remains & the hunt for a mysterious nineteenth-century aristocratic settlement, he seeks out the unlikeliest & most interesting of features in places far off the beaten track. The cultural & human impact of this stunning landscape & reflections on the history of mountaineering are the threads which bind this compelling narrative together. ...

`I am still unable to leave the burnt-out ruins` Akiyuki Nosaka, 2014 In 1945, Akiyuki Nosaka watched the Allied firebombing of Kobe kill his adoptive parents, & then witnessed his sister starving to death. The shocking & blisteringly memorable stories of The Cake Tree in the Ruins are based on his own experiences as a child in Japan during the Second World War. They are stories of a lonely whale searching the oceans for a mate, who sacrifices himself for love; of a mother desperately trying to save her son with her tears; of a huge, magnificent tree which grows amid the ruins of a burnt-out town, its branches made from the sweetest cake imaginable. Profound, heartbreaking & aglow with a piercing beauty, they express the chaos & terror of conflict, yet also how love can illuminate even the darkest moment. ...

The 5, 000-year struggle to align the heavens with the clock & what happened to the missing ten days. Measuring the daily & yearly cycle of the cosmos has never been entirely straightforward. The year 2000 is alternatively the year 2544 (Buddhist), 6236 (Ancient Egyptian), 5761 (Jewish) or simply the year of the Dragon (Chinese). The story of the creation of the Western calendar is a story of emperors & popes, mathematicians & monks, & the growth of scientific calculation to the point where, bizarrely, our measurement of time by atomic pulses is now more acurate than Time itself: the Earth is an elderly lady & slightly eccentric
- she loses half a second a century. Days have been invented (Julius Caesar needed an extra 80 days in 46BC), lost (Pope Gregory XIII ditched ten days in 1582) & moved (because Julius Caesar had thirty-one in his month, Augustus determined that he should have the same, so he pinched one from February). The Calendar links politics & religion, astronomy & mathematics, Cleopatra & Stephen Hawking. & it is published as millions of computer users wonder what will happen when, after 31 December 1999, their dates run out...
...

What is a caliphate? What is the history of the idea? How is the term used & abused today? In the first modern account of a subject of critical importance today, acclaimed historian Hugh Kennedy answers these questions by chronicling the rich history of the caliphate, from the death of Muhammad to the present. At its height, the caliphate stretched from Spain to the borders of China & was the most powerful political entity in western Eurasia. In an era when Paris & London boasted a few thousand inhabitants, Baghdad & Cairo were sophisticated centres of trade & culture, & the Umayyad & Abbasid caliphates were distinguished by major advances in science, medicine & architecture. By ending with the recent re-emergence of caliphal ideology within fundamentalist Islam, The Caliphate underscores why it is crucial that we know about this form of Islamic government to understand the political ideas of the so-called Islamic State & other Islamist groups in the twenty first century. ...

Writer & film maker Tahir Shah moved his family away from draining British life to start again in Casablanca
- a place of colour,
...

` What has risen may sink, & what has sunk may rise...` Mad, macabre tales of demonic spirits, hideous rites, ancient curses & alien entities lurking beneath the surface of rural New Engl&, from the man who created the modern horror story. This is a new series of twenty distinctive, unforgettable Penguin Classics in a beautiful new design & pocket-sized format, with coloured jackets echoing Penguin`s original covers. ...

A definitive collection of stories from the unrivaled master of twentieth-century horror in a Penguin Classics Deluxe edition with cover art by Travis Louie. Frequently imitated & widely influential, Howard Philips Lovecraft reinvented the horror genre in the 1920s, discarding ghosts & witches & instead envisioning mankind as a tiny outpost of dwindling sanity in a chaotic & malevolent universe. S. T. Joshi, Lovecraft`s preeminent interpreter, presents a selection of the master`s fiction, from the early tales of nightmares & madness such as ” The Outsider” to the overpowering cosmic terror of ” The Call of Cthulhu.” More than just a collection of terrifying tales, this volume reveals the development of Lovecraft`s mesmerizing narrative style & establishes him as a canonical- & visionary-American writer. ...