A story of an unwanted Chinese daughter growing up during the Communist Revolution, blamed for her mother's death, ignored by her millionaire father & unwanted by her Eurasian step mother. It is a story of greed, hatred & jealousy; a domestic drama that is played against the extraordinary political events in China & Hong Kong. ...

In the opening scene of Falling Man, Keith Neudecker emerges from the smoke & ash of the burning tower where he worked, & makes his way to the apartment of his ex-wife & young son uptown. Throughout this bold & haunting novel, De Lillo traces the way the events of September 11 kindled or rekindled relationships, reconfigured our emotional landscape, our memory, & our perception of the world. Falling Man is a direct encounter with the enormous force of history, yet the story is told through the intimate lives of a few people immediately affected. It is beautiful, heartbreaking &, ultimately, redemptive. Read by John Slattery ...

A classic game of skill & action that's easy to learn & great fun for all the family!

Just roll the coloured dice,

...

Falling Upwards tells the story of the enigmatic group of men & women who first risked their lives to take to the air, & so discovered a new dimension of human experience. Why they did it, what their contemporaries thought of them, & how their flights revealed the secrets of our planet in wholly unexpected ways is its subject. In this heart-lifting book, the Romantic biographer Richard Holmes floats across the world following the pioneer generation of balloon aeronauts, from the first heroic experiments of the Montgolfiers in 1780s to the tragic attempt to fly a balloon to the North Pole in the 1890s. It is a compelling adventure story of the kind that only Holmes could tell. Dramatic sequences move from the early Anglo-French balloon rivalries, the crazy firework flights of beautiful Sophie Blanchard; the revelatory ascents over the great Victorian cities & sprawling industrial towns of Northern Europe; & the astonishing long-distance voyages of the American entrepreneur John Wise, & the French photographer Felix Nadar. Later we find balloons used to observe the horrors of modern battle during the American Civil War (including a memorable flight by General Custer); the legendary tale of sixty balloons that escaped Paris during the Prussian siege of 1870; & the terrifying high-altitude flights of James Glaisher FRS who rose above seven miles without oxygen, helping to establish the new science of meteorology as well as the environmental notion
- so important to us today
- of a 'fragile' planet. Besides the aeronauts themselves, readers will also discover the many writers & dreamers
- from Mary Shelley to Edgar Alan Poe, from Charles Dickens to Jules Verne
- who felt the imaginative impact of flight & allowed it to soar in their work. Through all these adventures, the narrative continually lifts off in unexpected literary & scientific directions, exploring the interplay between technology & science fiction, the understanding of the biosphere, & the metaphysics of flight itself. Most of all, through the strange allure of the great balloonists, Holmes offers another of his subtle portraits of human endeavour, recklessness & vision.



...

Lowri Vaughan is in need of refuge
- where better to find it than Badgers Brook?

Rumours abound that her father

...

This is a moving & beautifully crafted tale that makes an important statement about life in the face of tragedy, loss & failed ambitions & how in the end, these things can become the paving stones on the road to wisdom & the affirmation of life. ...

Mary Golightly was not a happy woman. Yet, in the last few weeks before she went missing, she was looking happier, as if something had happened to make her life sweeter. That was before a bin man found her thigh in a refuse sack. Her husband makes no pretence at sorrow over her death, but does that mean he killed her? ...

Velma is charm itself, especially when she's being inexact with the truth. Now she wants Bea, widowed owner of the Abbot Agency, to check up on her stepson Philip, as he's somehow acquired a valuable picture last seen in the flat of an elderly lady who's ...

Expansive & sprawling
- like his stomach
- Falstaff's memoirs take the unsuspecting reader into the world of a character so

...

Fame soars even higher with the extended dance edition of the film, featuring over 15 minutes of thrilling dance footage you couldn't see in cinemas. Passions will be tested. Hearts will be broken. Talent, dedication & hard work will triumph! Fame is the inspiring story of a group of dancers, singers, musicians & actors at the New York City High School of Performing Arts, & their spirited drive to live out their dreams of stardom. In an incredibly competitive atmosphere, each student must shine amidst the tumult of schoolwork, deep friendships, budding romance & self-discovery. Debbie Allen, Charles S. Dutton, Kelsey Grammer, Megan Mullally & Bebe Neuwirth co-star alongside a group of gifted young performers in this soaring reinvention of the Oscar Winning hit film. ...