The British codebreakers at Bletchley Park are now believed to have shortened the duration of the Second World War by up to two years. During the dark days of 1941 as Britain stood almost alone against the the Nazis this remarkable achievement seemed impossible. This extraordinary book originally published as Action This Day

Includes:: descriptions by some of Britains foremost historians of the work of Bletchley Park from the breaking of Enigma & other wartime codes to the invention of modern computing & its influence on Cold War codebreaking. Crucially it features personal reminiscences & very human stories of wartime codebreaking from former Bletchley Park codebreakers themselves. This edition

Includes:: new material from one of those who was there making The Bletchley Park Codebreakers compulsive reading.



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The Eighteenth Century was an era when brave mariners took their ships beyond the horizon in search of an unknown world. Those chosen to lead these expeditions were exceptional navigators men who had shown brilliance as they ascended the ranks in the Royal Navy. They were also bloody good sailors.rnrn From ship's boy to vice-admiral discover how much more there was to Captain Blight than his infamous bad temper. Meet a 24-year-old Master Bligh as he witnesses the demise of his captain & mentor Cook; a 34-year-old Lieutenant Bligh at the helm of the famous Bounty then cast adrift by Fletcher Christian on an epic 47-day open-boat voyage from Tonga to Timor; & a 36-year-old Captain Bligh as he takes HMS Providence the the company of a young Matthew Flinders on a grand voyage to Tahiti & back. & all this before he was forty. ...

Hundreds of years before the great Mage War a land lies unknowing on the edge of catastrophe.. . Barl is young impulsive & wants to explore her raw magical potential. But Doranas rigid class system means that only those with the right pedigree are trained. Desperate to learn Barl lets her eagerness lead her to rebellion & disgrace. She faces the possibility of never using her powers again
- until she meets Morgan Danfey who sits on the Mage Council itself. Together they realise they can create an extraordinary new magic. But the lure of this great power reveals a darkness in Morgan which will bring their land to its knees. A BLIGHT OF MAGES is set in the world of Karen Millers Bestselling debut THE INNOCENT MAGE.
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Laura Chases older sister Iris married at eighteen to a politically prominent industrialist but now poor & eighty-two is living in Port Ticonderoga a town dominated by their once-prosperous family before the First War. While coping with her unreliable body Iris reflects on her far from exemplary life in particular the events surrounding her sisters tragic death. Chief among these was the publication of The Blind Assassin a novel which earned the dead Laura Chase not only notoriety but also a devoted cult following. Sexually explicit for its time The Blind Assassin describes a risky affair in the turbulent thirties between a wealthy young woman & a man on the run. During their secret meetings in rented rooms the lovers concoct a pulp fantasy set on Planet Zycron. As the invented story twists through love & sacrifice & betrayal so does the real one; while events in both move closer to war & catastrophe. By turns lyrical outrageous formidable compelling & funny this is a novel filled with deep humour & dark drama. ...

The deepest cave on earth was a prize that had remained unclaimed for centuries long after every other ultimate discovery had been made. This is the story of the men & women who risked everything to find it earning their place in history beside the likes of Peary Amundsen Hillary & Armstrong. In 2004 two great scientist-explorers attempted to find the bottom of the world. Bold American Bill Stone was committed to the vast Cheve Cave located in southern Mexico & deadly even by supercave standards. On the other side of the globe legendary Ukrainian explorer Alexander Klimchouk
- Stones opposite in temperament & style
- had targeted Krubera a freezing nightmare of a supercave in the Republic of Georgia. Blind Descent" explores both the brightest & darkest aspects of the timeless human urge to discover
- to be first. It is also a thrilling epic about a pursuit that makes even extreme mountaineering & ocean exploration pale by comparison. These supercavers spent months in multiple camps almost two vertical miles deep & many more miles from their caves exits. They had to contend with thous&-foot drops deadly flooded tunnels raging whitewater rivers monstrous waterfalls mile-long belly crawls & much more. Perhaps even worse were the psychological horrors produced by weeks plunged into absolute perpetual darkness beyond all hope of rescue including a particularly insidious derangement called " The Rapture". " Blind Descent" is a testament to human survival & endurance
- & to two extraordinary men whose relentless pursuit of greatness led them to heights of triumph & depths of tragedy neither could have imagined."



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When her husband & son are murdered she thought she'd lost it all. But for Sarah Durandt the nightmare is just beginning.. . Sarah has just witnessed the execution of the man who confessed to killing her husband & son among others. Returning home to the small town of Hopewell Sarah vows to search for the graves of her murdered family
- something the killer would never reveal. But her hunt leads to shocking revelations & in a race to save everything she holds dear Sarah is forced to swallow the ultimate betrayal & the cruellest of lies.
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A motorway service station on the M1: dimly lit run down poorly supervised flickering lights dark corners; a favourite stopover for long-distance lorry drivers on their way up north from London. Behind it a body is found in a ditch that of a girl barely out of her teens. She appears to have no family no friends no connections anywhere. Other girls have gone missing in the vicinity & no one has stepped forward to claim them. Anna Travis is assigned to the case. Her blood runs cold when she receives a letter from a lifer -- someone she was responsible for arresting in the past -- who writes to her from prison asking her to visit him urgently. For he claims he knows who the killer is... ...

The digital age. An age of isolation warped communication disintegrating community. Where unfiltered & unregulated information pours relentlessly into our lives destroying what it means to be human. Or an age of marvels. Where there is a world of wonder at our fingertips. Where we can communicate across the globe learn in the blink of an eye pull down the barriers that divide us & move forward together. Whatever your reaction to technological culture the speed with which our world is changing is both mesmerising & challenging. In The Blind Giant novelist & tech blogger Nick Harkaway draws together fascinating & disparate ideas to challenge the notion that digital culture is the source of all our modern ills while at the same time showing where the dangers are real & suggesting how they can be combated. Ultimately the choice is ours: engage with the machines that we have created or risk creating a world which is designed for corporations & computers rather than people. This is an essential handbook for everyone trying to be human in a digital age. ...

The first in Robert Wilson's Seville series featuring the tortured detective Javier Falcon. The man is bound gagged & dead in front of his television. The terrible self-inflicted wounds tell of his violent struggle to avoid some unseen horror. On the screen? In his head? What could make a man do that to himself? It's Easter week in Seville a time of passion & processions. But detective Javier Falcon is not celebrating. Appalled by the victim's staring eyes he is inexorably drawn into this disturbing mystifying case. & when the investigation into the dead man's life sends Javier trawling though his own past & into the shocking journals of his late father a famous artist his unreliable memory begins to churn. Then there are more killings & Falcon finds himself pushed to the edge of a terrifying truth... ...

Love is not consolation it is light. From the author of Maps for Lost Lovers" comes a searing exquisitely written novel set in Pakistan & Afghanistan in the months following 9/11
- a story of war of one familys losses & of the simplest most enduring human impulses. Jeo & Mikal foster-brothers from a small Pakistani city secretly enter Afghanistan: not to fight with the Taliban but to help & care for wounded civilians. But it soon becomes apparent that good intentions cant keep them out of harms way... From the wilds of Afghanistan to the heart of the family left behind
- their blind father haunted for years by the death of his wife by the mistakes he may have made in the name of Islam & nationhood Jeos steadfast wife & her superstitious mother
- Aslams prose takes us on an extraordinary journey through war tragedy love & brotherhood."


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