Award-winning wine writer Alice Feiring presents an all-new way to look at the world of wine. While grape varietal is important, a surprising amount of information about flavour & composition can be gleaned from a region`s soil. Feiring`s guide makes it simple to find wines you`ll love. Breaking new ground & revealing new connections, The Dirty Guide to Wine organises wines not by grape, not by region, not by New or Old World, but by soil. The same winning qualities found in a Bordeaux might be found in a Californian Chardonnay. Feiring provides a clarifying account of the traditions & techniques of wine-tasting, demystifying the practice & introducing a whole new way to enjoy wine to sommeliers & novice drinkers alike. ...

”A captivating psychological thriller”
- The Herald. Manfred Baumann is a loner. Socially awkward & perpetually ill at ease, he
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It is the evening of 18 July 1898 & the world-renowned novelist Emile Zola is on the run. His crime? Taking on the highest powers in the land with his open letter `J`accuse` & losing. Forced to leave Paris, with nothing but the clothes he is standing in & a nightshirt wrapped in newspaper, Zola flees to England with no idea when he will return. This is the little-known story of his time in exile. Rosen has traced Zola`s footsteps from the Gare du Nord to London, examining the significance of this year. The Disappearance of Zola offers an intriguing insight into the mind, the loves, the politics & the work of the great writer. ...

Pronounced guilty of libel & sentenced to a year in prison, novelist Emile Zola went on the run. Zola`s crime had been to defend a wrongly convicted man, in what became known as the Dreyfus Affair. Fleeing the French state with just hours to spare he ended up living in the suburbs of south London unable to speak a word of English. Michael Rosen brings to life the sleepy world of late Victorian suburbia, Zola`s turbulent politics & his tangled private life. Desperate to write a novel, he was also trying to balance the extremely delicate matter of the two women in his life
- one the mother of his children, the other his wife. The Disappearance of Emile Zola is the incredible true story of a writer`s personal bravery in the face of the greatest political scandal of the age.
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Every Thursday for three years, Signora Giulia takes the train to Milan to visit her daughter. But one Thursday she simply disappears. & the case is left in your hands. You`re a born detective, but you have so many unanswered questions
- how can a young, beautiful high society woman just vanish into thin air? Why does her husband
- a prominent criminal lawyer & much older man
- know nothing about it? & who was she really visiting during those trips to Milan? For Detective Sciancalepre, the mystery is darker & more tangled than he imagined. Shadows are lurking in the grounds behind Giulia`s house. Incriminating letters are exchanging hands. & no one is who they seem. Every twist & turn takes us closer to Giulia
- & further from the truth...



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Wherever you go in the English-speaking world, there are linguistic riches from times past awaiting rediscovery. All you have to do is choose a location, find some old documents, & dig a little. In The Disappearing Dictionary, linguistics expert Professor David Crystal collects together delightful dialect words that either provide an insight into an older way of life, or simply have an irresistible phonetic appeal. Like a mirror image of The Meaning of Liff that just happens to be true, The Disappearing Dictionary unearths some lovely old gems of the English language, dusts them down & makes them live again for a new generation. dabberlick [noun, Scotland] A mildly insulting way of talking about someone who is tall & skinny. ` Where`s that dabberlick of a child?` fubsy [adjective, Lancashire] Plump, in a nice sort of way. squinch [noun, Devon] A narrow crack in a wall or a space between floorboards. `I lost sixpence through a squinch in the floor`. ...

Wherever you go in the English-speaking world, there are linguistic riches from times past awaiting rediscovery. All you have to do is choose a location, find some old documents, & dig a little. In The Disappearing Dictionary, linguistics expert Professor David Crystal collects together delightful dialect words that either provide an insight into an older way of life, or simply have an irresistible phonetic appeal. Like a mirror image of The Meaning of Liff that just happens to be true, The Disappearing Dictionary unearths some lovely old gems of the English language, dusts them down & makes them live again for a new generation. dabberlick [noun, Scotland] A mildly insulting way of talking about someone who is tall & skinny. ` Where`s that dabberlick of a child?` fubsy [adjective, Lancashire] Plump, in a nice sort of way. squinch [noun, Devon] A narrow crack in a wall or a space between floorboards. `I lost sixpence through a squinch in the floor`. ...

Graham Robb’s The Discovery of France is a book of genuine interest, redefining what we thought we knew about the history of France, with an assured, analytical, good-humoured & sympathetic understanding of the subject. It’s easy to reduce France to the sum of its parts: weekend breaks amid the culture of Paris or summer holidays basking in the sunshine of the south; accounts of the Revolution
- Madame Defarge knitting beside the guillotine
- & Napoleon’s battle at Waterloo ill-remembered from school; a country famous for its intellectuals, artists & philosophers, its fashion, food & wine. Despite this, however, the notion of ‘the French’ as one nation is relatively recent &, historically speaking, quite misleading; in order to discover the ‘real’ past of France, it is not only necessary to go back in time, but also to go at a slower pace than modern life generally allows.

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With an introduction by Colm Toibin Ten years ago, I began to explore the country on which I was supposed to be an authority.. . France is a country famous for its intellectuals, its philosophers & writers, its fashion, food & wine. & yet the notion of `the French` as one nation is relatively recent &
- historically speaking
- quite misleading. In order to discover the `real` past of France, Graham Robb realised it was not only necessary to go back in time, but also to go at a slower pace than modern life generally allows. The Discovery of France, illuminating, engrossing & full of surprises, is the result of Robb`s 14, 000 mile journey across France on a bicycle. Winner of both the Duff Cooper & the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje prizes, The Discovery of France is a modern non-fiction classic, a literary exploration of a remarkable nation. From maps & migration to magic, language & landscape, it reveals a France few will recognize. ` An extraordinary journey of discovery` Daily Telegraph ` Robb`s concise & fast-paced writing pedals along with never a dull paragraph.. .dazzling` Sunday Times

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Mario Vargas-Llosa, the Nobel Prize for Literature winner & author of The War of the End of the World, The Feast of the Goat, Aunt Julia & the Scriptwriter & Conversation in the Cathedral brings us a story set in the Peruvian town of Piura. This tale is about love & betrayal, a younger generation that can no longer tell the difference between reality & desire, & the destructive effects of media fantasies. Felicito Yanaque has raised himself from poverty to ownership of a trucking business. He receives a threatening letter demanding protection money. The police don`t take him seriously, Felicito refuses to pay up & gets sucked into a nightmare. He becomes a reluctant public hero. Then his mistress is kidnapped, & matters become seriously complicated. & he finds that his troubles have begun very close to home. His fate is interwoven with the story of Rigoberto, a wealthy Lima insurance executive. His boss & old friend, Ismael, suddenly announces that he is marrying his housekeeper, a chola from Piura, to the consternation of his twin sons, a pair of brutal wasters. Ismael escapes to Europe with his new bride, leaving Rigoberto to face the twins` threats, & their claims that he connived with a scheming woman to rob an old man of his fortune. Rigoberto is hounded by the press & TV. Meanwhile, his only son is having visions of a mysterious stranger who may or may not be the devil. ...