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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Charlie Bassett thought he was done with a military life but a soldier is always a soldier & now he must fight one last battle. A ticking bomb; a band of notorious terrorists; & a price on his head: Charlie is back on the front line & this time his foes are not only his countrys enemies but the ghosts of his own past. The Final War" is an explosive page-turner full of grit wit & heart-stopping action." ...

Mary Hetherington was a mother who dominated her family. She was kind efficient & generous
- providing they did what she wanted.
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From the author of The God Delusion" Richard Dawkins' " The Blind Watchmaker" has been acclaimed as the most influential work on evolution in the last hundred years. In 1802 the Rev. William Paleys argued in " Natural Theology" that just as finding a watch would lead you to conclude that a watchmaker must exist the complexity of living organisms proves that a Creator exists. Not so says Richard Dawkins & in this brilliant & controversial book the acclaimed evolutionary biologist sets out to demonstrate that the theory of evolution by natural selection
- the unconscious automatic blind yet essentially non-random process discovered by Charles Darwin
- is the only answer to the biggest question of all: why do we exist? 'I want to persuade the reader not just that the Darwinian world-view happens to be true but that it is the only known theory that could in principle solve the mystery of our existence'. To Dawkins " The Blind Watchmaker" is nature itself gradually forming order from the very building-blocks of life: DNA. " This might just be the most important evolution book since Darwin". (John Gribbin). " Richard Dawkins has updated evolution.. .his subject is nothing less than the meaning of life". (" The Times"). " Enchantingly witty & persusive.. .pleasurably intelligible to the scientifically illiterate". (" Observer"). Richard Dawkins is a Fellow of both the Royal Society & the Royal Society of Literature & Vice President of the British Humanist Association. He was first catapulted to fame with The Selfish Gene which he followed with a string of bestselling books: " The Extended Phenotype" " The Blind Watchmaker" " River Out of Eden" " Unweaving the Rainbow" & an impassioned defence of atheism " The God Delusion"."

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Here are animated crows a criminal monkey an ice man as well as the dreams that shape us & the things we might wish for. Whether in a chance reunion in Italy a romantic exile in Greece a holiday in Hawaii or in the grip of everyday life Murakami's characters confront loss or sexuality or the glow of a firefly or the impossible distance between those who ought to be closest of all. Following the success of Kafka on the Shore comes a collection that gives full rein to Murakami's inventive mastery. From the surreal to the mundane these stories exhibit his ability to transform the full range of the human experience in ways that are instructive surprising & relentlessly entertaining. ...

THE FIRST INTERCRIME THRILLER TO BE BROADCAST ON BBC FOUR SPRING 2013. Sweden's elite are under attack. Two rich & powerful men have been murdered & in the face of mounting panic
- & media hysteria
- a task force has been created to catch the killer. To his surprise Detective Paul Hjelm currently under investigation for misconduct after shooting a man who took the staff of an immigration office hostage is summoned to join the new team. But the killer has left no clues even removing the bullets from the crime scenes & Hjelm & his new teammates face a daunting challenge if they are to uncover the connection between the victims & catch the murderer before he kills again.

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Gavin Guile is dying. Hed thought he had five years left
- now hes got less than one. With fifty thousand refugees a bastard son
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A driver waiting at the traffic lights goes blind. An opthamologist tries to diagnose his distinctive white blindness but is affected before he can read the textbooks. It becomes a contagion spreading throughout the city. Trying to stem the epidemic the authorities herd the afflicted into a mental asylum where the wards are terrorised by blind thugs. & when fire destroys the asylum the inmates burst forth & the last links with a supposedly civilised society are snapped. No food no water no government no obligation no order. This is not anarchy this is blindness. ...