In May 1996 a number of expeditions attempted to climb Mount Everest on the Southeast Ridge route. Crowded conditions slowed their progress & late in the day 23 men & women, including the expedition leaders, were caught in a ferocious blizzard. Disorientated & out of oxygen, climbers struggled to find their way to safety. Alone & climbing blind, Anatoli Boukreev rescued a number of climbers from certain death. This honest & gripping account

Includes:: the transcript of the Mountain Madness debriefing, recorded five days after the tragedy, as well as G. Weston de Walt`s response to Jon Krakauer. ` Powerful.. .a breath of brisk, sometimes bitter clarity.. . Boukreev did the one thing that denies the void. He took action. He chose danger, & he saved lives.` New York Times Book Review ` The best book I`ve read this year.. . The Climb has a story that will grip & haunt you.` Alex Garl&, author of The Beach & The Tesseract

...

The Climbing Handbook is the essential reference for anyone interested in climbing, from those just discovering the sport to experienced climbers. It is a full-colour book packed with stunning photography & illustrations giving detailed & easy-to-follow guidance on every aspect of climbing. This book takes the reader from the very first steps to detailed drills to improve skills & fitness. It covers: getting started equipment essential safety skills key techniques improving skill & strength descending & ascending types of climbing. The Climbing Handbook is from the same series as the well received Sailing Handbook & forthcoming Scuba Handbook. ...

New Faces of Fiction 2017, Observer Observer Fiction to look out for in 2017 The Irish Times What To Look Out for in 2017 from Independent Publishers Jen Campbell`s ` Most Anticipated Books of 2017` Jean Bookish Thoughts ` Most Anticipated Releases of 2017` A dark social-realist fairytale, spotlighting the shadowy underside of 1920s England Summer 1923: the modern world. Orphaned Lucy Marsh climbs into the back of an old army truck & is whisked off to the woods north of London
- a land haunted by the past, where lost souls & monsters conceal themselves in the trees. In a sunlit clearing she meets the `funny men`, a quartet of disfigured ex-soldiers named after Dorothy`s companions in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Here are the loved & the damaged, dark forests & darker histories, & the ever-present risk of discovery & violent retribution. Xan Brooks` stunning debut is heartbreaking, disturbing & redemptive.
...

A magical story of snow & stars by Catherine Fisher. The Clockwork Crow is a mysterious gothic Christmas tale set in a frost-bound Victorian country mansion. When orphaned Seren Rees is given a mysterious package by a strange & frightened man on her way to her new home, she reluctantly takes it with her. But what is in the parcel? Who are the Family who must not be spoken of, & can the Crow help Seren find Tom, before the owner of the parcel finds her? The Clockwork Crow is a gripping Christmas tale of families & belonging set in snowy Wales from a master storyteller. ...

Jonathan Coe's previous novel, The Rotters' Club, was a novel of innocence: a nostalgic, humorous evocation of adolescent life in 1970s Britain. The Closed Circle is its mirror image: a novel of experience. On Millennium night, with Blair presiding over a superficially cool, sexed-up new version of the country, Benjamin Trotter finds himself watching the celebrations on his parents' TV in the same Birmingham house in which he grew up. He is watching, in fact, his younger brother, Paul, now a bright young New Labour MP who has bought wholeheartedly into the Blairite dream. Neither of them can know that their lives are about to implode. Set against the backdrop of Britain's racial & social tensions & the country's increasingly compromised role in America's 'war against terrorism', The Closed Circle shuttles between London & Birmingham, taking in fat cats, media advisers & political protestors. As its characters struggle to make sense of the perennial problems of love, vocation & family in a changing world, it offers a bitter-sweet conclusion to the unfinished business of The Rotters' Club. ...

How do you clothe a book? In this deeply personal reflection, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jhumpa Lahiri explores the art of the book jacket from the perspectives of both reader & writer. Probing the complex relationships between text & image, author & designer, & art & commerce, Lahiri delves into the role of the uniform; explains what book jackets & design have come to mean to her; & how, sometimes, ”the covers become a part of me.” ...

AS HEARD ON BBC RADIO 4 WOMAN`S HOUR In this assured debut about loneliness & passion in Africa, Sue Eckstein enthrals with a deliciously intricate plot, compelling characters & razor-sharp dialogue. West Africa in the early 1990s. Isabel Redmond is tiring of her iconoclastic husband`s penchant for pendulous black breasts; the High Commissioner & his wife Fenella are both enjoying illicit affairs; an old English judge is wandering through the scrub following a tribe of Fulani herdsmen; Bob Newpin is about to make a killing in timeshares; & just what Father Seamus is up to is anyone`s guess. Enter new diplomat Daniel Maddison on his first posting abroad. Rebelling against the endless rounds of cocktail parties, golf & gossip, he finds himself drawn to people & places that lie way beyond the experience of his High Commission colleagues
- & specifically to the dusty warehouse in the heart of the city where a thin white woman is silently measuring out lengths of brightly coloured cloth.
...

By the author of THE THOUSAND AUTUMNS OF JACOB DE ZOET, David Mitchell`s bestselling & Booker Prize-shortlisted novel, one of Richard & Judy`s 100 Books of the Decade, CLOUD ATLAS has now been adapted for film. The major motion picture, directed by the Wachowskis & Tom Tykwer, stars Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Susan Sarandon, Jim Sturgess, Ben Whishaw, Jim Broadbent & Hugh Grant. The novel features six characters in interlocking stories, each interrupting the one before it: a reluctant voyager crossing the Pacific in 1850; a disinherited composer blagging a precarious livelihood in between-the-wars Belgium; a high-minded journalist in Governor Reagan`s California; a vanity publisher fleeing his gangland creditors; a genetically modified dinery server on death-row; & Zachry, a young Pacific islander witnessing the nightfall of science & civilisation. The narrators of CLOUD ATLAS hear each other`s echoes down the corridor of history, & their destinies are changes in ways great & small. Mitchell`s other novels are GHOSTWRITTEN, BLACK SWAN GREEN & NUMBER9DREAM, all published by Sceptre. www.sceptrebooks.com Facebook: Sceptre Books Twitter: Sceptre Books ...

THE CLOUD COLLECTOR`S HANDBOOK fits into the pocket, allowing cloudspotters to identify cloud formations anytime & anywhere. All the common cloud types are represented, as are many of the rare ones, each fully described & illustrated with a range of photographs. Not only is THE CLOUD COLLECTOR`S HANDBOOK an invaluable resource for anyone who wants to be able to identify & understand every cloud that floats by, it also caters for the competitive cloudspotter. Points are awarded for each cloud type identified
- the rarer the cloud, the greater points
- & there`s space to fill in where & when it was sighted. Beautifully designed, in colour throughout, & full of the humour that made THE CLOUDSPOTTER`S GUIDE so engaging, the HANDBOOK is the essential reference for anyone with their head in the clouds.

...

Peter Mattiessen has long been known for his travels to some of the remotest lands on earth, most notably recorded in The Snow Leopard. The Cloud Forest brings to vivid life a South American journey that took him from the Sargasso Sea to the jungles of Amazonia, from the Inca city of Machu Picchu high in the Andes to the bleak rocks of Tierra del Fuego & the winds & vast skies of Patagonia. The result is an incisive & marvellously well-observed journal by a born writer & naturalist, a voyage of exploration among the people, places & fading wildlife of this most exotic & mysterious of continents. ...