The boy Laddy Merridew, sent to live with his grandmother, stumbles off the bus into a small Welsh mining community, where he begins an unlikely friendship with Ianto Passchendaele Jenkins, the town beggar-storyteller. Ianto is watchman over the legacy of the collapse many years ago of Kindly Light Pit, a disaster whose echoes reverberate down the generations of the town. Through Ianto's stories Laddy is drawn into both the town's history & the conundrums of the present. Why has woodwork teacher Icarus Evans striven most of his life to carve wooden feathers that will float on an updraft? Why is the undertaker Tutt Bevan trying to find a straight path through the town? Why does James Little, the old gas-meter emptier, dig his allotment by moonlight? & why does window cleaner Judah Jones take autumn leaves into a disused chapel? These & other men of the town, & the women who mothered them, married them & mourned them, are bound together by the echoes of the Kindly Light tragedy & by the mysterious figure of Ianto Jenkins, whose stories of loyalty & betrayal, loss & love, form an unforgettable, spellbinding tapestry. The Coward's Tale is a powerfully imagined, poetic & haunting novel, spiked with humour. It is a story of kinship & kindness, guilt & atonement, & the ways in which we carve the present out of an unforgiving past. ...

The Cowards (1958) is Josef Skvorecky`s blackly comic tale of post-war politics that was immediately banned on publication. In 1945, in Kostelec, Danny is playing saxophone for the best jazz band in Czechoslovakia. Their trumpeter has just got out of a concentration camp, their bass player is only allowed in the band since he owns the bass, & the love of Danny`s life is in love with somebody else. But Danny despairs most about the bourgeoisie patriots in his town playing at revolution in the face of the approaching Red Army
- not least because it ruins the band`s chance of any good gigs.
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` My name is Laddy Merridew. I`m a cry-baby. I`m sorry.` ` And my name is Ianto Jenkins. I am a coward. & that`s worse.` The boy Laddy Merridew, sent to live with his grandmother, stumbles off the bus into a small Welsh mining community, where he begins an unlikely friendship with Ianto Passchendaele Jenkins, the town beggar-storyteller. Ianto is watchman over the legacy of the collapse many years ago of Kindly Light Pit, a disaster whose echoes reverberate down the generations & blight the lives of many in the town. Through Ianto`s stories Laddy Merridew is drawn into both the town`s history & the conundrums of the present. Why has woodwork teacher Icarus Evans striven most of his life to carve wooden feathers that will float on an updraft? Why is the undertaker Tutt Bevan trying to find a straight path through the town? Why does James Little, the old gas-meter emptier, dig his allotment by moonlight? & why does window cleaner Judah Jones take autumn leaves into a disused chapel? These & other men of the town, both past & present, & the women who mothered them, married them & mourned them, are bound together by the echoes of the Kindly Light tragedy & by the mysterious figure of Ianto Passchendaele Jenkins, whose stories of loyalty & betrayal, loss & love, form an unforgettable, spellbinding tapestry. ...

Fearlessly frank & funny, the debut adult novel from Dawn O` Porter needs to be talked about. COW [n.] /kau/ A piece of meat; born to breed; past its sell-by-date; one of the herd. Women don`t have to fall into a stereotype. Tara, Cam & Stella are strangers living their own lives as best they can
- though when society`s screaming you should live life one way, it can be hard to like what you see in the mirror. When an extraordinary event ties invisible bonds of friendship between them, one woman`s catastrophe becomes another`s inspiration, & a life lesson to all. Sometimes it`s ok not to follow the herd. The Cows is a powerful novel about three women
- judging each other, but also themselves. In all the noise of modern life, they need to find their own voice.

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A drowned sailor, counterfeit coins & a ship full of opium can only mean one thing: another adventure for Tintin! Aboard the Karaboudjan Tintin is introduced to Captain Haddock, but soon they face deathly thirst in the Sahara desert. Haddock`s thirst in particular guarantees chaos at every turn! ...

Stranger Things meets Pullman`s Northern Lights in this dark & magical fantasy adventure. Fourteen years ago, Jane Doe & her father arrived on the steps of the Manor
- the entrance to a dangerous labyrinth connecting the island of Bluehaven to many other worlds. That was the same night the earthquakes started, & Jane & her silent, troubled father, John have been feared & despised ever since. When the strongest quake yet strikes & John disappears back into the Manor, Jane embarks on a perilous adventure to find her father & save her world
- perhaps all worlds
- from destruction... Fans of Phillip Pullman`s Dark Materials, Rick Riordan`s Percy Jackson adventures, Frances Hardinge & the Netflix blockbuster Stranger Things will love this heart-pounding & spell-binding middle grade adventure with its nod to the classic 80s movies The Goonies & Indiana Jones. Jeremy Lachlan, a Sydney bookseller, has always been obsessed with the big epic adventures such as Star Wars, Indiana Jones & The Chronicles of Narnia
- & was inspired to write The Cradle of All Worlds while lost in the Cairo Museum. The first book in a duology, this is his debut novel.



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Provocative & enlightening, Richard Sennett`s ” The Craftsman” is an exploration of craftsmanship
- the desire to do a job well
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A classic collection of healthy & delicious plant-based recipes from the Cranks kitchen Since opening their first restaurant in 1961, Cranks have been pioneers of vegetarian cuisine & champions of organic produce. Here, celebrated writer & chef Nadine Abensur presents over 200 classic meat-free recipes from the Cranks kitchen. From pumpkin & parsley risotto to aubergines with smoked ricotta, passion fruit ice-cream, walnut & raisin loaves & plum jam, every recipe is packed full of beautifully simple, natural ingredients that will nourish both body & soul. With advice on selecting the freshest seasonal produce, eating healthily & enjoying the experience of making mouth-watering food, THE CRANKS BIBLE is a celebration of vegetarian cooking & an essential resource for every home. ...

Best friends Sophie & Tye are watching TV when a car crashes through the living room wall. The driver & passenger are twins, Harry & Gemma. Next door neighbour, eleven-year-old Issy, witnesses the accident. In the aftermath, Tye is thrown into a coma, Gemma`s dark past begins to haunt the present, & Sophie starts to fall for Harry
- but how can she, when he was the driver who nearly killed her best friend? & Issy, meanwhile, hides a terrible secret.. .
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In The Crash Detectives, veteran aviation journalist & air safety investigator Christine Negroni takes the reader inside crash investigations from the early days of the jet age to the present, including the search for answers about what happened to the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. As Negroni dissects each accident, she explores the common themes &, most importantly, what has been learned from them to make planes safer. Indeed, as Negroni shows, virtually every aspect of modern pilot training, airline operation & aircraft design has been shaped by lessons learned from disaster. Along the way, she also details some miraculous saves, when quick-thinking pilots averted catastrophe & kept hundreds of people alive. Tying in aviation science, performance psychology & extensive interviews with pilots, engineers, human factors specialists, crash survivors & others involved in accidents all over the world, The Crash Detectives is an alternately terrifying & inspiring book that might just cure your fear of flying, & will definitely make you a more informed passenger. ...