Having escaped domestic servitude in Germany by teaching herself to sing, & established a career in Engl&, Caroline Herschel learned astronomy while helping her brother William, then Astronomer Royal. Soon making scientific discoveries in her own right, she swept to international scientific & popular fame. She was awarded a salary by George III in 1787
- the first woman in Britain to make her living from science. But, as a woman in a male-dominated world, Herschel`s great success was achieved despite constant frustration of her ambitions. Drawing on original sources
- including Herschel`s diaries & her fiery letters
- Claire Brock tells the story of a woman determined to win independence & satisfy her astronomical ambition.


...

Isabel Dalhousie is a new mother & a connoisseur of philosophy; she`d rather not be a sleuth. But when a chance conversation at a dinner party draws Isabel into the case of a doctor whose career has been ruined, she cannot ignore what may be a miscarriage of justice. Because for Isabel ethics are not theoretical at all, but an everyday matter of life & death. As she attempts to unravel the truth behind Dr Thompson`s disgrace, Isabel`s patient intelligence is also required to deal with challenges in her own life. There is her baby son Charlie; Cat`s deli to look after, not to mention her vulnerable assistant Eddie; & a mysterious & unlikeable composer who has latched on to Jamie, making Isabel fear for the future of her new family. Isabel treads a difficult path between trust & gullibility, philanthropy & interference, while keeping in her sights the small but certain comforts of family, philosophy & a fine Saturday morning. ...

As their holiday unfolds, Colin & Maria are locked into their own intimacy. They groom themselves meticulously, as though there waits someone who cares deeply about how they appear. Then they meet a man with a disturbing story to tell & become drawn into a fantasy of violence & obsession. ...

Packed with fantastic facts, figures & stories about the world we live in & the galaxies beyond, this single volume contains 288 colour pages of pure Comic Strip genius. Learn about everything
- from the smallest amoeba to the secrets of the furthest corners of the known Universe, & the myths that shaped the way we see the world. This Big Fat Book is an irresistibly humorous & accessible source of knowledge (with pictures) for the whole family to enjoy.
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A sweeping historical novel of the American West that follows the dramatic life of Daytime Smoke, Nez Perce son of explorer William Clark. The Coming is an epic novel of native-white relations in North America, intimately told through the life of Daytime Smoke--the real-life red-haired son of William Clark & a Nez Perce woman. In 1805, Lewis & Clark stumble out of the Rockies on the edge of starvation. The Nez Perce help the explorers build canoes & navigate the rapids of the Columbia, then spend two months hosting them the following spring before leading them back across the snowbound mountains. Daytime Smoke is born not long after, & the tribe of his youth continues a deep friendship with white Americans, from fur trappers to missionaries, even aiding the United States government in wars with neighboring tribes. But when gold is discovered on Nez Perce land in 1860, it sets an inevitable tragedy in motion. Daytime Smoke`s life spanned the seven decades between first contact & the last great Indian war. Capturing the trajectory experienced by so many native peoples--from friendship & cooperation to betrayal, war, & genocide--this sweeping novel, with its large cast of characters & vast geography, braids historical events with the drama of one man`s remarkable life. Rigorously researched & cinematically rendered, The Coming is a page-turning, heart-stopping American novel in a classic mode. ...

Barrytown, Dublin, has something to sing about. The Commitments are spreading the gospel of the soul. Ably managed by Jimmy Rabitte, brilliantly coached by Joel ` The Lips` Fagan, their twin assault on Motown & Barrytown takes them by leaps & bounds from Paris Hall to immortality on vinyl. But can The Commitments live up to their name? ...

1812 & the fate of Europe lies in the hands of newly appointed Commodore Hornblower... Dispatched to northern waters to protect Britain`s Baltic interests, Horatio Hornblower must halt the advance of Napoleon`s empire into Sweden & Russia. But first he must battle the terrible Baltic weather: fog, snow & icebound waterways; overcome Russian political & commercial intrigues; avoid the seductive charms of royalty as well as the deadly reach of assassins in the imperial palace; & contend with hostile armies & French privateers. With the fate of Europe balanced on a knife edge, the responsibility lies heavy on a Commodore`s shoulders... This is the eighth of eleven books chronicling the adventures of C. S. Forester`s inimitable nautical hero, Horatio Hornblower. ...

This is the story of a village in East Anglia, astride its common stream, a saga of continuity & change which stretches back across a landscape of two thousand years. It took Rowland Parker thirteen years of detective work to piece this jigsaw together, combing his way through records of archaeological excavations & manor court rolls, & collecting stories at the pub alongside his scholarly inspection of old wills & land tax returns. The intense focus he brought to his work was amplified by his desire to tell the story of the common man, his feuds & fun, his farms, fights, fornications & families. ...

Walter Ferranini has been born & bred a man of the left. His father was a worker & an anarchist; Walter himself is a Communist. In the 1930s, he left Mussolini`s Italy to fight Franco in Spain. After Franco`s victory, he left Spain for exile in the United States. With the end of the war, he returned to Italy to work as a labor organizer & to build a new revolutionary order. Now, in the late 1950s, Walter is a deputy in the Italian parliament. He is not happy about it. Parliamentary proceedings are too boring for words: the Communist Party seems to be filling up with ward heelers, timeservers, & profiteers. For Walter, the political has always taken precedence over the personal, but now there seems to be no refuge for him anywhere. The puritanical party disapproves of his relationship with Nuccia, a tender, quizzical, deeply intelligent editor who is separated but not divorced, while Walter is worried about his health, haunted by his past, & increasingly troubled by knotty questions of both theory & practice. Walter is, always has been, & always will be a Communist, he has no doubt about that, & yet something has changed. Communism no longer explains the life he is living, the future he hoped for, or, perhaps most troubling of all, the life he has led. ...

As the Second World War draws to a close, George Clark finds himself posted to Bajapur to begin his life with the British Army. Worn out & broken-hearted, it isn't long before he is caught up in an impossible tangle. When George is tasked with spying on local nationalist activists in a bid to curry favour with the paranoid, communist-obsessed Captain Dennis Porter, he is not only forced to betray his close friend Deborah Sunderl&, but his new love Anna Benson too. Only Anna can infiltrate the local Congress networks to extract the information that George is required to turn up. Set amidst the political unrest of India in the 1940s, The Communist Cookbook is a compelling tale of espionage & divided loyalties. ...