If wishes were horses beggars would ride. (Trad.) When Lara was twelve & her younger brother Alfie eight their father died in a helicopter crash. A prominent plastic surgeon & Irishman he had honed his skills on the bomb victims of the Troubles. But the family grew up used to him being absent: he only came to London for two weekends a month to work at the Harley Street Clinic where he met their mother years before & they only once went on a family holiday together to Spain where their mother cried & their father lost his temper & left early. Because home for their father wasnt Earls Court: it was Belfast where he led his other life... Narrated by Lara nearing forty & nursing her dying mother All the Beggars Riding" is the heartbreaking portrait of a woman confronting her past." ...

A beautiful June day in the Yorkshire Dales & a group of children are spending the last of their half-term freedom swimming in the river near Hindswell Woods. But the idyll is shattered by their discovery of a man's body hanging from a tree. DI Annie Cabott soon discovers he is Mark Hardcastle the well-liked & successful set designer for the Eastvale Theatre's current production of Othello. Everything points to suicide & Annie is mystified. Why would such a man want to take his own life? Then Annie's investigation leads to another shattering discovery & DCI Alan Banks is called back from the idyllic weekend he had planned with his new girlfriend. Banks soon finds himself plunged into a shadow-world where nothing is what it seems where secrets & deceit are the norm & where murder is seen as the solution to a problem. The deeper he digs the more he discovers that the monster he has awakened will extend its deadly reach to his friends & family. Nobody is safe. ...

Out of 193 countries that are currently UN member states we've invaded or fought conflicts in the territory of 171. That's not far off a massive jaw-dropping 90 per cent. Not too many Britons know that we invaded Iran in the Second World War with the Soviets. You can be fairly sure a lot more Iranians do. Or what about the time we arrived with elephants to invade Ethiopia? Every summer hordes of British tourists now occupy Corfu & the other Ionian islands. Find out how we first invaded them armed with cannon instead of camera & set up the United States of the Ionian Islands. Think the Philippines have always been outside our zone of influence? Think again. Read the surprising story of our eighteenth-century occupation of Manila & how we demanded a ransom of millions of dollars for the city. This book takes a look at some of the truly awe-inspiring ways our country has been a force for good & for bad right across the world. A lot of people are vaguely aware that a quarter of the globe was once pink but that's not even half the story. We're a stroppy dynamic irrepressible nation & this is how we changed the world often when it didn't ask to be changed! ...

It is 1946: the war is over & three young women face a new kind of life. But peacetime brings its own pressures.. . Katie ONeills childhood has been dominated by her temperamental mother & by frightening secrets that she barely understands. Innocent yet hungry for love she is easily taken in by male charm & is left outcast & alone with her young son. Emma Brown has spent the war at home in Birmingham longing for her husband Norm to return & meet the son he has never seen. But she soon finds that the joy of homecoming only brings a whole new set of problems. & Molly Fox after a sad & brutal childhood found a place to belong during the war in the womens army the ATS. Now the women are no longer wanted & Molly finds peacetime a bleak difficult challenge. Finding work in guesthouses & holiday camps she keeps running from herself in search of a place she can call home. All the Days of Our Lives" is the story of three girls who first met in a Birmingham classroom in the 1930s each facing life with all its joys sorrows & surprises." ...

This gorgeously designed wedding organizer from wedding planner Alison Hotchkiss

Includes:: thoughtful advice

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'A uniquely brilliant book.. .told in language as subtly beautiful as its desert setting. One of the most important pieces of American writing of our time' Stephen Amidon Sunday Times John Grady Cole is the last bewildered survivor of long generations of Texas ranchers. Finding himself cut off from the only life he has ever wanted he sets out for Mexico with his friend Lacey Rawlins. Befriending a third boy on the way they find a country beyond their imagining: barren & beautiful rugged yet cruelly civilized; a place where dreams are paid for in blood. All the Pretty Horses is an acknowledged masterpiece & a grand love story: a novel about childhood passing along with innocence & a vanished American age. Steeped in the wisdom that comes only from loss it is a magnificent parable of responsibility revenge & survival. 'A darkly shining work.. .executed with consummate skill & much subtlety -- the effect is magnificent' John Banville Observer ' An exhilarating exceptional novel' Spectator ' In a single stride it takes Mc Carthy to the forefront of contemporary American fiction. All the Pretty Horses is indisputably a masterpiece' Financial Times ...

Philadelphia Gordon is an artist a riverboat skipper & a beautiful independent woman. Orphaned by a shipwreck Philadelphia grows up on the banks of her beloved Murray River in Australia with her kindly uncle & strict aunt seemingly destined for a conventional life. But then tragedy changes everything & leads her to a successful career as a painter & then to a meeting with the dashing captain of the paddle-steamer which bears her name. ...

With a thrilling narrative that sheds much light on recent events this national bestseller brings to life the 1953 CIA coup in Iran that ousted the countrys elected prime minister ushered in a quarter-century of brutal rule under the Shah & stimulated the rise of Islamic fundamentalism & anti-Americanism in the Middle East. Selected as one of the best books of the year by the Washington Post & The Economist it now features a new preface by the author on the folly of attacking Iran. ...

Samantha Brooks' boyfriend has made a mistake. One his friends family & Sam herself know he'll live to regret. Jamie has announced he's leaving out of the blue. Jamie is loving intelligent & while he isn't perfect he's perfect for her
- in every way except one: he's a free spirit. & after six years in one place doing a job he despises he is compelled to do something that will tear apart his relationship with Sam: book a one-way flight to South America. But Sam isn't giving up without a fight. With Jamie still totally in love with her & torn about whether to stay or go she has three months to persuade him to do the right thing. So with the help of her friends Ellie & Jen she hatches a plan to make him realise what he's giving up. A plan that involves dirty tricks plotting & a single aim: to win him back. But by the time the tortured Jamie finally wakes up to what he's lost a gorgeous new pretender has entered Sam's life. Which begs the question.. .does she still want him back?
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When AIVAS -- the Artificial Intelligence Voice Address System -- was first discovered at Landing the enture planet of Pern was awed at the knowledge it divulged. All the history of the people of Pern was there. Dragonholders Lord Holders & Craftmasters crowded into the tiny inner room to learn the secrets of their beginnings. Ana AIVAS had other gifts to offer -- stored information of old crafts that had been forgotten of medicine music & technology. Bu the greatest promise AIVAS offered was the chance to rid Pern of Thread forever. All the great ones of Pern began the long & arduous task of learning just how to operate the incredible plan -- a plan of such daring & epic proportions that both dragons & riders would be put at risk. ...