The landscape is flawless the trees majestic the flora & the fauna are right & proper. All is picturesquely typical of rural England at its best. Sir Giles an MP of few principles & curious tastes plots to destroy all this by building a motorway smack through it to line his own pocket & at the same time to dispose of his wife the capacious Lady Maude. Sir Giles recruits to his side Hoskins a corrupt local official Lord Leakham the environmental equivalent of a hanging judge & Dundridge a troublesome bureaucrat with an unhealthy passion for order. Against this powerful lobby are ranged a mere handful of local residents led by Lady Maude. Hardly at first sight a team to withstand the batteries of official inertia Compulsory Purchase Orders & bulldozer blades. But Lady Maude enlists a surprising ally in her enigmatic gardener Blott the Dresden born ex-Italian naturalised Englishman in whom adopted patriotism burns bright. Lady Maudes dynamism & Blotts concealed talents enable them to meet pressure with mimicry loaded tribunals with publicity & chilli powder & requisition orders with wickedly spiked beer. This explosively comic novel will gladden the heart of everyone who has ever confronted a bureaucrat & spells out in riotous detail how the forces of virtue play an exceedingly dirty game when the issue is close to home. ...

A life of extreme tragedy & remarkable inspiration the story of Isabella Blow is a dramatic & compelling tale of a courageous icon. Isabella Blow was the epitome of English eccentricity. A legendary figure in the fashion world she nurtured & championed the talent of some of fashions most recognisable & important figures all the time hiding her own personal unhappiness & severe depression. The news of her tragic death in 2007 aged 48 shocked the international fashion world. Her thirty year career in fashion began as Anna Wintours assistant at American Vogue & took in stints as fashion director of Tatler & Fashion Editor of The Sunday Times Magazine. But she is perhaps best-known for the iconic images of her in Philip Treacys hats the first of two designers to launch his career from the basement of Isabella & Detmar Blows house. With similar passion & verve Isabella enthusiastically displayed her admiration for young designer Alexander Mc Queen buying his entire first collection after he graduated from Central St Martins in a move that many believe launched his career. Detmar Blow was engaged to Isabella sixteen days after they first met in 1988 & the couple remained married until her death. In this visually stunning portrait Detmar & Tom reveal the truth about the intriguing world of Isabella providing incredible behind-the-scenes insight into the world of fashion & high-society as well as tracing her ancestry & early childhood offering a fresh & penetrating look at her domestic life & celebrating her incredible achievements. ...

After her resignation as Virginia's Chief Medical Examiner & the horrifying events which threatened her life in THE LAST PRECINCT Kay Scarpetta has abandoned her elegant home in Richmond & is quietly living in Florida beginning to get some balance back in her life & slowly establishing herself as a private forensic consultant. But her past won't let her rest & her grief for Benton Wesley continues to grow not diminish as does the rage within Lucy her niece. Then the architect of her changed fortunes contacts her from his cell on death row: deformed blinded by Scarpetta's own actions incarcerated in Texas strongest prison Jean-Baptiste Chardonne still has the ability to terrify. But unkown to Scarpetta there are other forces behind the wolfman's apparent actions invisibly shepherding her & those closest to her towards eliminating those who threaten them all. & it is all orchestrated by the one man in her life who knows every nuance of her soul. Visit the author's website at www.patricia-cornwell.com ...

I thought I was the biggest dope smuggler. I wasnt. He was Howard Marks. On 29 June 1988 Michael Forwell (aka The Fox) had it all
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Lieutenant John Pearce is considering his future. Lacking funds an occupation if he leaves naval service or the evidence of perjury he once held against Captain Ralph Barclay the brute who pressed he & his friends into the navy his prospects are not promising. Ralph Barclay meanwhile has problems of his own. His wife Emily is refusing to live under the same roof as him & she has the means to get her own way: the perjury evidence Pearce believes lost at sea. Barclay's slippery clerk Gherson has as much at stake as his employer & is prepared to go to any lengths to silence Emily & Pearce. So when a smiling stranger offers Pearce & his companions the illegal yet profitable opportunity to fetch a contrab&-laden ship from a French port is all as it seems? Are Pearce & his Pelicans sailing into prosperity
- or danger?
...

The wild childhood of a Glasgow tenement urchin Born during the Second World War in Glasgow Christine Fraser was her mother's eighth child. Growing up with her siblings in a tiny flat learning to avoid her hardworking hard-drinking one-eyed father making a menace of herself in the streets along with the other urchins Christine lived an impoverished life but never once cared until she was struck down by a terrible illness. Suddenly her wild days of childhood were over. A long spell in hospital completely changed her life. Now she found herself dependent on others for so many of her needs. & on top of that her mother & father died. Yet Christine was always resourceful & never once looked down. She knew that always there if you looked hard enough was some blue up above the chimneys. ...

The Blue Afternoon" is a classic prize-winning novel by bestseller William Boyd. It is winner of the 1993 Sunday Express Book of the Year Award. Los Angeles 1936. Kay Fischer a young ambitious architect is shadowed by Salvador Carriscant an enigmatic stranger claiming to be her father. Within weeks of their first meeting Kay will join him for an extraordinary journey into the old man's past initially in search of a murderer but finally in celebration of a glorious undying love. " The Blue Afternoon" will be enjoyed by fans of " Any Human Heart" & readers of Ben Macintyre Sebastian Faulks Nick Hornby & Hilary Mantel as well as lovers of the finest fiction around the world. William Boyd has always been described as a great storyteller..." Here he creates a world both elegiac & hopeful & achingly memorable". (" The Times"). "A brilliant achievement.. .has a sense of place & storytelling which you rarely find these days in British novels". (" Time Out"). " Richly entertaining... Boyd has organized his narrative into one elegant & almost seamless weave". (" Independent"). William Boyd was born in Ghana where his father was a doctor & was educated thereand in Scotl&. His first novel "A Good Man in Africa" won both the Whitbread First Novel & Somerset Maugham Prizes & his subsequent novels have gone onto win many awards. His books include: " On the Yankee Station & Other Stories" " An Ice-Cream War" " Stars & Bars" " School Ties" " The New Confessions" " Brazzaville Beach" " The Destiny of Natalie 'X' & Other Stories" " Armadillo" " Nat Tate: An American Artist 1928-1960" " Any Human Heart" " Restless" " The Dreams of Bethany Mellmoth" " Ordinary Thunderstorms" " Fascination" " Bamboo" & " Waiting for Sunrise". He divides his time between London & south-west France." ...

Mallory Dale doesnt like surprises. At least that was the case. When her boyfriend takes her to a burlesque club for her twenty-fifth birthday all she wants to do is go home & get under her bedcovers. So when she is pulled up on stage by one of the dancers & stripped down to her bra in front of a roaring crowd
- surprisingly she loves every second of it. Over time Mallory begins to devote herself to the world of burlesque. It awakens new-found sensual pleasures & reveals her true sexual nature. But she risks losing Alec in the process
- or can she really have it all?

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Patrick O' Brian's Aubrey-Maturin tales are widely acknowledged to be the greatest series of historical novels ever written. To commemorate the 40th anniversary of their beginning with Master & Commander these evocative stories are being re-issued in paperback with smart new livery. This is the twentieth book in the series. ' If we had only two or three of Patrick O' Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series we would count ourselves lucky; with six or seven the author would be safely among the greats of historical fiction... This is great writing by an undiminished talent. Now on to Volume Twenty & the liberation of Chile.' WILLIAM WALDEGRAVE Literary Review This is the twentieth book in Patrick O' Brian's highly acclaimed bestselling series chronicling the adventures of lucky Jack Aubrey & his best friend Stephen Maturin part ship's doctor part secret agent. The novel's stirring action follows on from that of The Hundred Days. Napoleon's hundred days of freedom & his renewed threat to Europe have ended at Waterloo & Aubrey has finally as the title suggests become a blue level admiral. He & Maturin have
- at last
- set sail on their much postponed mission to Chile. Vivid with the salty tang of life at sea O' Brian's writing is as powerful as ever whether he writes of naval hierarchies night-actions or the most celebrated fictional friendship since that of Sherlock Holmes & Dr Watson. Blue at the Mizzen also brings alive the sights & sounds of revolutionary South America in a story as exciting as any O' Brian has written.

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Ten years after it was first published THE BLUE BALLOON is now a celebrated classic which continues to delight millions of children. Kipper has found a soggy blue balloon in the garden. At first it seems like an ordinary balloon but it's not. It's full of fun & magic. This is a book to be treasured loved read time & time again with fantastic fold out pages. ...