WINNER OF THE 2015 COSTA FIRST NOVEL AWARD ` The Loney is not just good, it`s great. It`s an amazing piece of fiction` Stephen King Two brothers. One mute, the other his lifelong protector. Year after year, their family visits the same sacred shrine on a desolate strip of coastline known as the Loney, in desperate hope of a cure. In the long hours of waiting, the boys are left alone. & they cannot resist the causeway revealed with every turn of the treacherous tide, the old house they glimpse at its end.. . Many years on, Hanny is a grown man no longer in need of his brother`s care. But then the child`s body is found. & the Loney always gives up its secrets, in the end. ` This is a novel of the unsaid, the implied, the barely grasped or understood, crammed with dark holes & blurry spaces that your imagination feels compelled to fill` Observer `A masterful excursion into terror` The Sunday Times ...

We`ve always measured the world around us, from how big things are, to how fast they go, how much they`re worth & practically everything in between. But who decided how we do it, & why? The Long & the Short of It takes us back in time to discover the origins & evolution of a huge variety of different units of measurement. On the way it answers such questions as: Why do we measure time in units of 60? How do you determine the height of a mountain when sea level keeps changing? Why did the length of a mile once depend on where you came from? What`s the width of a horse`s backside got to do with NASA`s booster rockets? Packed with fascinating stories, this is an intriguing guide to the many systems of measurement that make sense of our daily lives, from pounds & parsecs to bushels & barricades. ...

Winner of the Parliamentary Book Award, best memoir by a Parliamentarian, 2016 From the condemned slums of Southam Street in West London to the corridors of power in Westminster, Alan Johnson`s multi-award-winning autobiography charts an extraordinary journey, almost unimaginable in today`s Britain. This third volume tells of Alan`s early political skirmishes as a trades union leader, where his negotiating skills & charismatic style soon came to the notice of Tony Blair & other senior members of the Labour Party. As a result, Alan was chosen to stand in the constituency of Hull West & Hessle, & entered Parliament as an MP after the landslide election victory for Labour in May 1997. But this is no self-aggrandizing memoir of Westminster politicking & skulduggery. Supporting the struggle of his constituents, the Hull trawlermen & their families, for justice comes more naturally to Alan than do the byzantine complexities of Parliamentary procedure. But of course he does succeed there, & rises through various ministerial positions to the office of Home Secretary in 2009. In The Long & Winding Road, Alan`s characteristic honesty & authenticity shine through every word. His book takes you into a world which is at once familiar & strange: this is politics as you`ve never seen it before... ...

From the condemned slums of Southam Street in West London to the corridors of power in Westminster, Alan Johnson`s multi-award-winning autobiography charts an extraordinary journey, almost unimaginable in today`s Britain. This third volume tells of Alan`s early political skirmishes as a trades union leader, where his negotiating skills & charismatic style soon came to the notice of Tony Blair & other senior members of the Labour Party. As a result, Alan was chosen to stand in the constituency of Hull West & Hessle, & entered Parliament as an MP after the landslide election victory for Labour in May 1997. But this is no self-aggrandizing memoir of Westminster politicking & skulduggery. Supporting the struggle of his constituents, the Hull trawlermen & their families, for justice comes more naturally to Alan than do the byzantine complexities of Parliamentary procedure. But of course he does succeed there, & rises through various ministerial positions to the office of Home Secretary in 2009. In The Long & Winding Road, Alan`s characteristic honesty & authenticity shine through every word. His book takes you into a world which is at once familiar & strange: this is politics as you`ve never seen it before. ...

In classic British crime fiction, dazzling detective work is often the province of a brilliant amateur
- whereas the humble police
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When the farmer wakes at dawn, he can already feel the heat of the day rising & the silence from his wife hanging heavy in the air. As he sets out across his parched fields to find a missing cow, his mind starts to turn over the dreams he harbours, the cares he & his wife both carry alone, & the uneasy sense that something is about to change. Written with clarity & depth, this is a powerful novel about the fragility of life & the small, unseen moments upon which fate twists. ...

`A city no worse than others, a city rich & vigorous & full of pride, a city lost & beaten & full of emptiness. It all depends on where you sit & what your own private score is. I didn`t have one. I didn`t care` Down-&-out drunk Terry Lennox has a problem: his millionaire wife is dead & he needs to get out of LA fast. So he turns to his only friend in the world: private investigator Philip Marlowe. He is willing to help a man down on his luck, but later Lennox commits suicide in Mexico & things start to turn nasty. Marlowe is drawn into a sordid crowd of adulterers & alcoholics in LA`s Idle Valley, where the rich are suffering one big suntanned hangover. Marlowe is sure Lennox didn`t kill his wife, but how many more stiffs will turn up before he gets to the truth? The Long Good-Bye is Raymond Chandler`s sixth novel featuring laconic PI Philip Marlowe.` Chandler gave birth to a different kind of detective` The Times` Chandler grips the mind from the first sentence` Daily Telegraph ` One of the greatest crime writers, who set standards others still try to attain` Sunday Times` Chandler is an original stylist, creator of a character as immortal as Sherlock Holmes` Anthony Burgess ...

In The Long Hangover, Shaun Walker provides a deeply reported, bottom-up explanation of Russia`s resurgence under Putin. By cleverly exploiting the memory of the Soviet victory over fascism in World War II, Putin`s regime has made ordinary Russians feel that their country is great again. Shaun Walker provides new insight into contemporary Russia & its search for a new identity, telling the story through the country`s troubled relationship with its Soviet past. Walker not only explains Vladimir Putin`s goals & the government`s official manipulations of history, but also focuses on ordinary Russians & their motivations. He charts how Putin raised victory in World War II to the status of a national founding myth in the search for a unifying force to heal a divided country, & shows how dangerous the ramifications of this have been. The book explores why Russia, unlike Germany, has failed to come to terms with the darkest pages of its past: Stalin`s purges, the Gulag, & the war deportations. The narrative roams from the corridors of the Kremlin to the wilds of the Gulags & the trenches of East Ukraine. It puts the annexation of Crimea & the newly assertive Russia in the context of the delayed fallout of the Soviet collapse. The Long Hangover is a book about a lost generation: the millions of Russians who lost their country & the subsequent attempts to restore to them a sense of purpose. Packed with analysis but told mainly through vibrant reportage, it is a thoughtful exploration of the legacy of the Soviet collapse & how it has affected life in Russia & Putins policies. ...

The Long Haul is Alex Hibbert’s account of his unsupported voyage, across the icecap to the Arctic coast of Greenl&. Hibbert, & his expedition partner George Bullard, undertook four months, man-hauling 430lb sledges over 1, 374 miles
- further than any previous unsupported polar undertaking. Hibbert had devised an epic plan, with the conscious effort to undertake a trail that would return him & his companion to the raw basics of polar travel. As an isolated double act, Hibbert & Bullard had only each other to rely on for both their survival & their sanity. This account is a reflection on the mental & physical turmoil that the men endured, & a testament to the triumph of mental perseverance.
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