Edie Burchill & her mother have never been close but when a long lost letter arrives with the return address of Milderhurst Castle Kent printed on its envelope Edie begins to suspect that her mother's emotional distance masks an old secret. Evacuated from London as a thirteen year old girl Edie's mother is chosen by the mysterious Juniper Blythe & taken to live at Millderhurst Castle with the Blythe family. Fifty years later Edie too is drawn to Milderhurst & the eccentric Sisters Blythe. Old ladies now the three still live together the twins nursing Juniper whose abandonment by her fiance in 1941 plunged her into madness. Inside the decaying castle Edie begins to unravel her mother's past. But there are other secrets hidden in the stones of Milderhurst Castle & Edie is about to learn more than she expected. The truth of what happened in the distant hours has been waiting a long time for someone to find it... ...

As they dazzle all the men at Queen Victorias jubilee ball Beth & Milly Goodwin seem to be mirror images of one another: beautiful graceful & rich they can take their pick of any man in St Helens. Only those who know them best realize that Millys dark brown eyes hide a wild untamed wantonness while Beths silvery-grey ones betray her idealism & kindness. But the only man in the room either of them wants is the one who could destroy both their lives. Hugh sixteenth Lord Thornley is a rake who needs to marry an heiress to restore the fortune his father gambled away. Even a lowly daughter of a glass manufacturer will do
- provided she is biddable & strong & willing to bear the son he needs. Beth he decides will make him the perfect wife. But it is Milly who traps him into a loveless marriage
- & sets in motion a chain of events that could destroy everything they hold dear.

...

This delightful book of writer-to-writer correspondence joins a full shelf of volumes in the genre yet it is perhaps the first set of such letters ever transacted via the Internet. Also unusual at least for correspondents in the twenty-first century is that Frederic Raphael & Joseph Epstein have never met nor even spoken to each other. But what is most rare about this book is the authors abundant talent for entertaining their readers as much when the topic is grave as when it is droll. Raphael & Epstein agree to embark on a year-long correspondence but other rules are few. As the weeks progress their friendship grows & each inspires the other. Almost any topic large or small is considered: they write of schooling parents wives children literary tastes enmities delights & beliefs. They discuss their professional lives as writers their skills or want of them respective experiences with editors producers & actors & in priceless passages scattered throughout the letters they assess such celebrated figures as Gore Vidal Christopher Hitchens Sontag/ Leibowitz Malcolm Gladwell Harold Bloom George Steiner Harold Pinter Isaiah Berlin George Weidenfeld & Robert Gottlieb among many others. Epstein & Raphael capture a year in their letters but more they invite us into an intimate world where literature cinema & art are keys to self-discovery & friendship. ...

In September 1914 as the fate of Europe was being decided along the banks of the Marne thousands of young men across Britain continued to flock to the recruiting stations. One of these was Matthew Richardson who joined the 1/7th Battalion of the Manchester Regiment. But their destination was not Flanders or France but Egypt Sudan & ultimately Gallipoli where the fighting was as bitter as any on the Western Front. Twice Matthew Richardson was plunged into a major battle. On the first occasion an act of reckless bravery earned him the DCM; on the second he was severely wounded. But through all these events he kept up a steady correspondence with his family back home. These letters published here for the first time form a continuous narrative which tells the story of this remarkable odyssey from peace to war & of its hero's return. ...

How does a literary historian end up thinking in terms of z-scores principal component analysis & clustering coefficients? The essays in Distant Reading led to a new & often contested paradigm of literary analysis. In presenting them here Franco Moretti reconstructs his intellectual trajectory the theoretical influences over his work & explores the polemics that have often developed around his positions. From the evolutionary model of Modern European Literature " through the geo-cultural insights of " Conjectures of World Literature" & " Planet Hollywood " to the quantitative findings of " Style inc." & the abstract patterns of " Network Theory Plot Analysis " the book follows two decades of conceptual development organizing them around the metaphor of "distant reading " that has come to define
- well beyond the wildest expectations of its author
- a growing field of unorthodox literary studies."

...

Britains leading contemporary historian revisits & exounds upon the grand themes that have run throughout twentieth & twenty first century Britain including the abiding trends of the postwar era
- Britains persistent impulse to punch well above its weight in the world; the sustenance of a nuclear weapons policy which has accompanied that impulse & the secrecy that has too often concealed it; the contrasting styles & achievements of post-war prime ministers from Attlee to Cameron; the successes & failures of major constitutional reform. As importantly in Distilling the Frenzy a genuine heavyweight of British scholarship lays bear the contemporary historians art for all to see exposing the fine line between observation & felt experience whilst incorporating elements of autobiography that gives the book a poignancy thaat is lacking in other grand historial works. This is the story of Britains century through the eyes of its most celebrated chronicler. A major work of our time.
...

His forbidding distraction! Jarrett Gaskill has worked his way up from nothing to become a ruthless property tycoon. His next acquisition? High Ridge Hall... Knowing his charm & business skills always seal the deal hes shocked to find a new tenant already at the manor refusing to leave! Escaping her cruel marriage Sophia Markham has arrived at High Ridge Hall looking for a new life
- one that certainly doesnt include any involvement with the tall dark handsome stranger on her doorstep. But Jarrett isnt going anywhere
- at least not until hes got Sophia exactly where he wants her...

...

Seamus Heaneys new collection starts in an age of bare hands & cast iron & ends as the automatic lock/clunks shut in the eerie new conditions of a menaced twentieth-first century. In their haunted almost visionary clarity the poems assay the weight & worth of what has been held in the hand & in the memory. Images out of a childhood spent safe from the horrors of World War II
- railway sleepers a sledgehammer the heavyweight silence of cattle out in rain
- are coloured by a strongly contemporary sense that anything can happen & other images from the dangerous present
- a journey on the underground a melting glacier
- are fraught with this same anxiety. But District & Circle" which

Includes:: a number of prose poems & translations offers resistance as the poet gathers his staying powers & stands his ground in the hiding places of love & excited language. In a sequence like " The Tollund Man in Springtime" & in several poems which do the rounds of the district
- its known roads & rivers & trees its familiar & unfamiliar ghosts
- the gravity of memorial is transformed into the grace of recollection. With more relish & conviction than ever Seamus Heaney maintains his trust in the obduracy of workaday realities & the mystery of everyday renewals."







...

Seamus Heaney's new collection starts 'in an age of bare hands & cast iron' & ends 'as the automatic lock / clunks shut' in the eerie new conditions of a menaced twenty-first century. In their haunted almost visionary clarity the poems assay the weight & worth of what has been held in the hand & in the memory. Images out of a childhood spent safe from the horrors of World War II
- railway sleepers a sledgehammer the 'heavyweight silence' of cattle out in rain
- are coloured by a strongly contemporary sense that 'anything can happen' & other images from the dangerous present
- a journey on the underground a melting glacier
- are fraught with this same anxiety. But District & Circle" which

Includes:: a number of prose poems & translations offers resistance as the poet gathers his staying powers & stands his ground in the hiding places of love & excited language. In a sequence like ' The Tollund Man in Springtime' & in several poems which 'do the rounds of the district'
- its known roads & rivers & trees its familiar & unfamiliar ghosts
- the gravity of memorial is transformed into the grace of recollection. With more relish & conviction than ever Seamus Heaney maintains his trust in the obduracy of workaday realities & the mystery of everyday renewals."







...

Born in Belfast Patricia Jordan left for England to train as a nurse in the 1940s & DISTRICT NURSE is her moving & humorous account of life as a visiting nurse in a small English town. She leaves behind a close-knit family & a failed romance in Ireland to begin training in Barnet & Middlesex. She early on treats a patient who eventually becomes her husband & means that she accepts a job in the north of England that takes her first by bicycle & then in an unreliable little car into the homes of the people who need her care. In DISTRICT NURSE she brings to life everyone she encounters from the doctors & other nurses to the diverse & always compelling patients. It is a captivating personal account of a life spent helping others. ...