On the eve of the next Space Shuttle mission a divided family comes together... Warm witty & wise All Families Are Psychotic is Coupland at the very top of his form. In a cheap motel an hour from Cape Canaveral Janet Drummond takes her medication & does a rapid tally of the whereabouts of her children. Wade has spent the night in jail; suicidal Bryan is due to arrive at any moment with his vowel-free girlfriend Shw; & then there is Sarah a bolt of lightning frozen in midflash
- here in Orlando to be the star of Fridays shuttle mission. With Janets ex-husband & his trophy wife also in town Janet spends a moment contemplating her family & where it all went wrong. Or did it?
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Eighteen-year-old Malcolm Castle became a fireman so he could rush into burning buildings to save fair damsels in distress. He didnt realise he would also be jumping into slurry pits to rescue cows horses & any number of other unfortunate animals. Nothing about the country fire service was quite what Malcolm expected when he joined the watch in Shrewsbury. Yes he had to face the heart-stopping dramas & tragedies of farm & house fires. But as the newest member of the service he was also first in line when swans began to terrorise the high street when a sheepdog got his head caught in a broken fence panel
- & when a flock of owls got stuck on the roof of his local pub. His early days in the brigade in the late 1970s & early 80s was a time when crews tackled fires wearing plastic leggings plastic gloves & cork hats covered in highly flammable gloss paint. Funny moving & gloriously nostalgic ALL FIRED UP paints a unique portrait of rural Britain
- & shows just how surprising a firemans life can be.

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Nothing about the county fire service was quite what Malcolm expected when he joined the watch in Shrewsbury. As the newest member of the service he was first in line when swans terrorised the high street
- & when a flock of owls got stuck on the roof of his local pub. Eighteen years old & more than ready to rush into burning buildings to save fair damsels in distress young Malcolm soon realised he was more likely to be jumping into slurry pits & rivers to rescue any number of unfortunate animals. But for all the embarrassing situations Malcolm found himself in there were heart-stopping dramas too
- & tragic farm & house fires. As he learns on the job & begins to win the respect of the old-timers Malcolm starts to feel that maybe one day he just might make it as a fireman. But first he has to catch the eye of the smiley secretary in the office opposite the station.. . Funny moving & gloriously nostalgic All Fired Up paints a unique portrait of rural Britain
- & shows just how surprising a fireman's life can be.


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The new fabulously addictive read from No. 1 bestselling author Sheila O' Flanagan. As TV's favourite weather forecaster Lainey is good at making predictions. But what she doesn't foresee is that her own life is about to hit a stormy patch. With a string of failed relationships behind her surely history isn't about to repeat itself with her beloved Ken? To add fuel to the fire her estranged mother announces that she's returning to Dublin. Deanna has always been dismissive of Lainey's choices
- particularly in men. & Deanna's lectures are the last thing Lainey needs now. Yet is there more to her mother than she knows? Uncovering some long-concealed family secrets Lainey begins to reassess her life. Is the happy-ever-after she's always dreamed of really what she wants after all?
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Maya Angelous five volumes of autobiography are a testament to the talents & resilience of this extraordinary writer. Loving the world she also knows its cruelty. As a black woman she has known discrimination & extreme poverty but also hope joy achievement & celebration. In the fifth volume Maya Angelou emigrates to Ghana only to discover that you cant go home again but she comes to a new awareness of love & friendship civil rights & slavery
- & the myth of mother Africa.
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All He Really Needs Griffin Cain makes love better than any man. Night after night his decadent sensual acts turn conservative Sydney Edwards into a wanton woman. But all that stops when Griffin is made CEO of his family company...and becomes Sydney's boss. Now Griffin needs his forbidden lover's help
- in the boardroom...A Tricky Proposition Ming Campbell is no longer in the market for love; however starting a family is at the top of her todo list. There's no one better to assist than her best friend Jason Sinclair. Only Jason has a proposal of his own: conceive their child the oldfashioned way.
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A magisterial history of the greatest & most terrible event in history from one of the finest historians of the Second World War. A book which shows the impact of war upon hundreds of millions of people around the world- soldiers sailors & airmen; housewives farm workers & children. Reflecting Max Hastingss thirty-five years of research on World War II All Hell Let Loose describes the course of events but focuses chiefly upon human experience which varied immensely from campaign to campaign continent to continent. The author emphasises the Russian front where more than 90% of all German soldiers who perished met their fate. He argues that while Hitlers army often fought its battles brilliantly well the Nazis conducted their war effort with stunning incompetence. He suggests that the Royal Navy & US Navy were their countries outstanding fighting services while the industrial contribution of the United States was much more important to allied victory than that of the US Army. The book ranges across a vast canvas from the agony of Poland amid the September 1939 Nazi invasion to the 1943 Bengal famine in which at least a million people died under British rule- & British neglect. Among many vignettes there are the RAFs legendary raid on the Ruhr dams the horrors of Arctic convoys desert tank combat jungle clashes. Some of Hastingss insights & judgements will surprise students of the conflict while there are vivid descriptions of the tragedies & triumphs of a host of ordinary people in uniform & out of it. The cliche is profoundly true he says. The world between 1939 & 1945 saw some human beings plumb the depths of baseness while others scaled the heights of courage & nobility. This is everymans story an attempt to answer the question: What was the Second World War like ? & also an overview of the big picture. Max Hastings employs the technique which has made many of his previous books best-sellers combining top-down analysis & bottom-up testimony to explore the meaning of this vast conflict both for its participants & for posterity. ...

A magisterial history of the greatest & most terrible event in history from one of the finest historians of the Second World War. A book which shows the impact of war upon hundreds of millions of people around the world- soldiers sailors & airmen; housewives farm workers & children. Reflecting Max Hastings's thirty-five years of research on World War II All Hell Let Loose describes the course of events but focuses chiefly upon human experience which varied immensely from campaign to campaign continent to continent. The author emphasises the Russian front where more than 90% of all German soldiers who perished met their fate. He argues that while Hitler's army often fought its battles brilliantly well the Nazis conducted their war effort with 'stunning incompetence'. He suggests that the Royal Navy & US Navy were their countries' outstanding fighting services while the industrial contribution of the United States was much more important to allied victory than that of the US Army. The book ranges across a vast canvas from the agony of Poland amid the September 1939 Nazi invasion to the 1943 Bengal famine in which at least a million people died under British rule- & British neglect. Among many vignettes there are the RAF's legendary raid on the Ruhr dams the horrors of Arctic convoys desert tank combat jungle clashes. Some of Hastings's insights & judgements will surprise students of the conflict while there are vivid descriptions of the tragedies & triumphs of a host of ordinary people in uniform & out of it. ' The cliche is profoundly true' he says. ' The world between 1939 & 1945 saw some human beings plumb the depths of baseness while others scaled the heights of courage & nobility'. This is 'everyman's story' an attempt to answer the question: ' What was the Second World War like ?' & also an overview of the big picture. Max Hastings employs the technique which has made many of his previous books best-sellers combining top-down analysis & bottom-up testimony to explore the meaning of this vast conflict both for its participants & for posterity. ...

Seven years ago Zella Grisham was arrested for illegal possession of a firearm assault with a deadly weapon attempted murder & grand theft. After two years of fruitless negotiations Zella was sentenced to 25 years in prison mainly because she refused to give up her accomplices in a $6.8 million heist from Rutgers Assurance Corp. But Zella had played no part in that heist. PI Leonid Mc Gill had planted the evidence. All Zella had done was shoot her man her cheating husband Harry Tangelo when she'd caught him in bed with her best friend. That was a long time ago & Mc Gill has regrets. So he hires a hotshot attorney to set her free. Zella's big regret is that she tried to kill Tangelo. Mc Gill agrees to track him down but the trail leads back to Rutgers Assurance & the man who paid Mc Gill to plant the evidence is found dead. As Zella is hounded & an attempt is made on Mc Gill's life the detective realises the case is more complicated than he had ever imagined
- but can he live long enough to sort it out?
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When asked what he does Robert Fulghum usually replies that he is a philosopher & explains that what he likes to do is to think about everyday things & then to express what he thinks by writing speaking or painting. This is a collection of his favourite observations written over the years that reveal simple truths about small lives with big meanings. ...