A secret history of China
- a fresh new way of thinking about a people, a civilisation, an epic story. The Water Kingdom takes
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The Water Road is the story of a four month circumnavigation by narrowboat of ` The Grand Cross`, the name given to the inland waterway linking the Thames to the Humber, Severn & Mersey. Starting in London, Paul Gogarty follows a figure of eight through Britain`s major cities & across the Pennines. Entering the world`s most concentrated canal network Gogarty sails into England`s past & future. ` The Cut` (the name most commonly used for the canals) is a blueprint of when England was a big island & the inland waterways its motorway. But, after more than a century of neglect, ` The Cut` is now enjoying a second golden age with waterfront cities being regenerated & more inland waterways currently opening in Britain than were being built at the height of Canal Mania 200 years ago. ` The Cut` is a hidden garden flashed with kingfishers & traditional narrowboats; a parallel universe ringing with the laughter of water gypsies, the thin cries of bats & drunken congregations in waterfront pubs. This is a journey across the face of England with all its exultations & darkness; rave boats, glorious sunshine & sheeting rain: canals that have been resurrected & enjoying their new summer & those still abandoned like shameful secrets. The Water Road is a voyage that is poignant, illuminating & entertaining at every turn. ...

In The Waters of Eternal Youth, the twenty-fifth instalment in the bestselling Brunetti series, our Commissario finds himself drawn into a case that may not be a crime at all. Brunetti is investigating a cold case by request of the grand Contessa Lando-Continui, a friend of Brunetti`s mother-in-law. Fifteen years ago the Contessa`s teenage granddaughter, Manuela, was found drowning in a canal. She was rescued from the canal at the last moment, but in many ways it was too late; she suffered severe brain damage & her life was never the same again. Once a passionate horse rider, Manuela, now aged thirty, cannot remember the accident, or her beloved horse, & lives trapped in an eternal youth. The Contessa, unconvinced that this was an accident, implores Brunetti to find the culprit she believes was responsible for ruining Manuela`s life. Out of a mixture of curiosity, pity & a willingness to fulfil the wishes of a loving grandmother, Brunetti reopens the case. But once he starts to investigate, Brunetti finds a murky past & a dark story at its heart. The Waters of Eternal Youth is awash in the rhythms & concerns of contemporary Venetian life, from historical preservation, to housing, to new waves of African migrants, all circling the haunting story of a woman trapped in a perpetual childhood. ...

Set on the English coast against the vivid backdrop of the sea, The Waves introduces six characters who are grappling with the death of a beloved friend, Percival. The characters are almost imperceptibly revealed through the kaleidoscopic accumulation of their reflections on themselves & each other. Regarded by many as Virginia Woolf`s masterpiece, The Waves was partially written in order to exorcise her private ghosts as the central, yet absent, character of Percival represents her brother Thoby, who died in 1906. It is a poetic dreamscape, visual, experimental & thrilling. With introductions by Jeanette Winterson & Gillian Beer. ...

A formally innovative work of modernist fiction, Virginia Woolf`s ” The Waves” is edited with an introduction by Kate Flint in ” Penguin Modern Classics”. More than any of Virginia Woolf`s other novels, ” The Waves” conveys the full complexity & richness of human experience. Tracing the lives of a group of friends, ” The Waves” follows their development from childhood to youth & middle age. While social events, individual achievements & disappointments form its narrative, the novel is most remarkable for the rich poetic language that expresses the inner life of its characters: their aspirations, their triumphs & regrets, their awareness of unity & isolation. Separately & together, they query the relationship of past to present, & the meaning of life itself. Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) is regarded as a major 20th century author & essayist, a key figure in literary history as a feminist & modernist, & the centre of ” The Bloomsbury Group”. This informal collective of artists & writers, which included ” Lytton Strachey” & ” Roger Fry”, exerted a powerful influence over early twentieth-century British culture. Between 1925 & 1931 Virginia Woolf produced what are now regarded as her finest masterpieces, from ” Mrs Dalloway” (1925) to the poetic & highly experimental novel ” The Waves” (1931). She also maintained an astonishing output of literary criticism, short fiction, journalism & biography, including the playfully subversive ” Orlando” (1928) & ”A Room of One`s Own” (1929) a passionate feminist essay. If you enjoyed ” The Waves”, you might like Woolf`s ” Mrs Dalloway”, also available in ” Penguin Classics”. ”A book of great beauty & a prose poem of genius.” (” Stephen Spender”). ” Full of sensuous touches...the sounds of her words can be velvet on the page.” (Maggie Gee, ” Daily Telegraph”). ...

One bright February afternoon on a beach in Cornwall, Gavin Pretor-Pinney took a break from cloudspotting & started watching the waves rolling into shore. Mesmerised, he wondered where they had come from, & decided to find out. He soon realised that waves don`t just appear on the ocean, they are everywhere around us, & our lives depend on them. From the rippling beats of our hearts, to the movement of food through our digestive tracts & of signals across our brains, waves are the transport systems of our bodies. Everything we see & hear reaches us via light & sound waves, & our information age is reliant on the microwaves & infrared waves used by the telephone & internet infrastructure. From shockwaves unleashed by explosions to torsional waves that cause suspension bridges to collapse, from sonar waves that allow submarines to `see` with sound to Mexican waves that sweep through stadium crowds...there were waves, it seemed, wherever Gavin looked. But what, he wondered, could they all have in common with ones we splash around in on holiday? By the time he made the ultimate surfer`s pilgrimage to Hawaii, Gavin had become a world-class wavewatcher, although he was still rubbish at surfing. &, while this fascinating, funny book may not teach you how to ride the waves, it will show you how to tune into the shapes, colours & forms of life`s many undulations. ...

Thom Wheeler is not a man to be put off by the prospect of an uncharted, impractical or downright dangerous journey. Having accidentally introduced his old school friend Vicky to Dmitry, the Russian love of her life, at the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, Thom decides to travel to their wedding in Astrakhan in the most obvious & straightforward way: by following the Volga river, from its source over 1, 000 miles inl&, all the way to the Caspian Sea & a party to remember. ...

Rooted in two vastly different cultures, a young man struggles to understand himself, find his place in the world, & reconnect with his mother-and her remote tribe in the deepest jungles of the Amazon rainforest-in this powerful memoir that combines adventure, history, & anthropology. ” My Yanomami family called me by name. Anyopo-we. What it means, I soon learned, is `long way around`: I`d taken the long way around obstacles to be here among my people, back where I started. A twenty-year detour.” For much of his young life, David Good was torn between two vastly different worlds. The son of an American anthropologist & a tribeswoman from a distant part of the Amazon, it took him twenty years to embrace his identity, reunite with the mother who left him when he was six, & claim his heritage. The Way Around is Good`s amazing chronicle of self-discovery. Moving from the wilds of the Amazonian jungle to the paved confines of suburban New Jersey & back, it is the story of his parents, his American scientist-father & his mother who could not fully adapt to the Western lifestyle. Good writes sympathetically about his mother`s abandonment & the deleterious effect it had on his young self; of his rebellious teenage years marked by depression & drinking, & the near-fatal car accident that transformed him & gave him purpose to find a way back to his mother. A compelling tale of recovery & discovery, The Way Around is a poignant, fascinating exploration of what family really means, & the way that the strongest bonds endure, even across decades & worlds. ...

New cover reissue of this magical story from award-winning international bestselling picture book creator of Lost & Found, Oliver Jeffers. Once there as a boy, & one day, he found an aeroplane in his cupboard... He didn`t remember leaving it in there, but he thought he`d take it out for a go right away. At first, all went well & the plane flew higher & higher & higher until...suddenly, with a splutter, it ran out of petrol. The boy was stuck on the moon...and he was not alone... ...

` The Way Inn` takes the polished surfaces of modern life, the branded coffee & the free wifi, & twists them into a nightmare. The Way Inn is a global chain of identikit mid-budget hotels, & Neil Double is a valued member of its loyalty scheme. Neil is a professional conference-goer, a man who will attend trade fairs, expos & conventions so you don`t have to. This life of anonymised, budget travel would be hell for most, but it`s a kind of paradise for Neil, who has turned his incognito professional life into a toxic personal philosophy. But Neil is about to change. In a brand new Way Inn in an airport hinterl&, he meets a woman
- a woman he has seen before in bizarre & unsettling circumstances. She hints at being in possession of an astonishing truth about this mundane world. & then she disappears. Fascinated, & with his professional life unravelling, Neil tries to find the woman again. In doing so he is drawn into the appalling secret that lurks behind the fake smiles & muzak of the hotel...
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