`A heart-warming story with a great girl-power message`
- Jacqueline Wilson Charlie Bass is a horse-mad ten-year-old who dreams
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What is it really like to be a racer? What is it like to be swept along at 60kmh in the middle of the pack? What happens to the body during a high-speed chute? What tactics must teams employ to win the day, the jersey, the grand tour? What sacrifices must a cyclist make to reach the highest levels? What is it like on the bus? In the hotels? What camaraderie is built in the confines of a team? What rivalries? How does it feel to be constantly on the road, away from loved ones, tasting one more calorie-counted hotel breakfast? David Millar offers us a unique insight into the mind of a professional cyclist during his last year before retirement. Over the course of a season on the World Tour, Millar puts us in touch with the sights, smells & sounds of the sport. This is a book about youth & age, fresh-faced excitement & hard-earned experience. It is a love letter to cycling. ...

Charles Highway, a precociously intelligent & highly sexed teenager, is determined to sleep with an older woman before he turns twenty. Rachel fits the bill perfectly & Charles plans his seduction meticulously, sets the scene with infinite care
- but it doesn`t come off quite as Charles expects...
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Strauss' Radetzky March, signature tune of one of Europe's most powerful regimes, presides over Joseph Roth's account of three generations of the Trotta family in the years preceding the Austro-Hungarian collapse in 1918. Grandfather, son & grandson are equally dependent on the empire: the first for his enoblement; the second for the civil virtues that make him a meticulous servant of an administration whose failure he can neither comprehend nor survive; the third for the family standards of conduct which he cannot attain but against which he is too enfeebled to rebel. ...

The Radetzky March is a meditation on the Austro-Hungarian Empire through the prism of three generations of the Trotta family. The novel opens in 1859 at the Battle of Solferino, when the young Lieutenant Trotta saves the life of the Emperor & is ennobled. He owes the Empire everything, & his son also becomes a conscientious servant of the great multinational state even as it enters into its period of chaos, with competing nationalisms & ideologies tearing it apart. The final generation of Trottas cannot comprehend or survive the collapse of the Empire, which no longer has any purchase on reality. Beginning at the moment when the Habsburg dominions began to crumble, & ending at the moment when the old Emperor`s body is finally entombed in the vault of Capuchins in Vienna, the narrative arc of Roth`s novel is perfectly judged. However, it is Roth`s intelligent compassion & ironic sense of history that confer on The Radetzky March its greatness. ...

` The importance of the brave & blighted dial-painters cannot be overstated.` Sunday Times `A perfect blend of the historical, the scientific & the personal.` Bustle ` Thrilling & carefully crafted.` Mail on Sundayâ Ordinary women in 1920s America. All they wanted was the chance to shine. Be careful what you wish for. ` The first thing we asked was, ” Does this stuff hurt you?” & they said, ” No.” The company said that it wasn`t dangerous, that we didn`t need to be afraid.` 1917. As a war raged across the world, young American women flocked to work, painting watches, clocks & military dials with a special luminous substance made from radium. It was a fun job, lucrative & glamorous
- the girls themselves shone brightly in the dark, covered head to toe in the dust from the paint. They were the radium girls. As the years passed, the women began to suffer from mysterious & crippling illnesses. The very thing that had made them feel alive
- their work
- was in fact slowly killing them: they had been poisoned by the radium paint. Yet their employers denied all responsibility. & so, in the face of unimaginable suffering
- in the face of death
- these courageous women refused to accept their fate quietly, & instead became determined to fight for justice. Drawing on previously unpublished sources
- including diaries, letters & court transcripts, as well as original interviews with the women`s relatives
- The Radium Girls is an intimate narrative account of an unforgettable true story. It is the powerful tale of a group of ordinary women from the Roaring Twenties, who themselves learned how to roar.






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Life with the Radleys: Radio 4, dinner parties with the Bishopthorpe neighbours & self-denial. Loads of self-denial. But all hell is about to break loose. When teenage daughter Clara gets attacked on the way home from a party, she & her brother Rowan finally discover why they can`t sleep, can`t eat a Thai salad without fear of asphyxiation & can`t go outside unless they`re smothered in Factor 50. With a visit from their lethally louche Uncle Will & an increasingly suspicious police force, life in Bishopthorpe is about to change. Drastically. ...

FAMILIES. SOMETIMES THEY`RE A BLOODY NIGHTMARE... Life with the Radleys: Radio 4, dinner parties with the Bishopthorpe neighbours & self-denial. Loads of self-denial. But all hell is about to break loose. When teenage daughter Clara gets attacked on the way home from a party, she & her brother Rowan finally discover why they can`t sleep, can`t eat a Thai salad without fear of asphyxiation & can`t go outside unless they`re smothered in Factor 50. With a visit from their lethally louche Uncle Will & an increasingly suspicious police force, life in Bishopthorpe is about to change. Drastically. ...

A dramatic & thrilling portrait of a long-forgotten true adventure & astounding seafaring achievement. In ` The Raftsmen`, author & documentary filmmaker Ryan Barnett takes readers on an astonishing maritime adventure set in the aftermath of World War II. For four French expatriates who escaped the clutches of the Nazi regime to find asylum in Canada, adventure was to be the antidote to depression brought on by the cruelty of war. In 1956, armed with nothing but the flannel on their backs, a small stock of food, & some crude navigation & communication equipment, the quartet set sail from Halifax. Their goal: become the first crew to cross the Atlantic by raft. Fashioned from telephone poles & built entirely by h&, the raft they called L` Egare II would be their home for 88 harrowing days as they crossed the North Atlantic from Canada to Britain. & they made it! In ` The Raftsmen`, Barnett & comic illustrator Dmitry Bondarenko explore the adventure-fuelled men aboard the L` Egare II, & the complex emotional undercurrents that led to their daredevil voyage. Original archival photography & film stills taken by the crew aboard the raft, along with news reports & contemporary interviews with still-living members & other key players, round out the re-telling of this amazing journey. Sixty years after they set sail, the epic story of the raftsmen`s historic Atlantic crossing is brought to life for the first time. ...

In this critically-acclaimed fictional memoir of Sir Walter Scott, Allan Massie recreates the life & times of one of Scotland`s greatest writers, convincingly capturing Scott`s humour, stoicism & eccentricity. Combining imaginative plausibility with his own deep knowledge of & love for Scott`s work, Massie reveals the intimate thoughts of a man at odds with his popular image: good & courageous, but also an enigma to thosearound him. By turns a ghost story & an examination of the Scottish character, The Ragged Lion is utterly enthralling. ...