In this thoroughly researched & piercingly intelligent book physicist Mark Buchanan shows how a simple feedback loop can lead to major consequences the kind predictable by mathematical models but hard for most people to anticipate. From his unique perspective Buchanan argues that our basic assumptions about economic markets
- that they are for the most part stable with occasional interruptions
- are simply wrong. Markets really act more like weather: a brief heat wave can become a massive storm in a matter of a few days or even hours. Forecast re-imagines the basics of the financial world with consequences that affect everyone.

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Economies evolve & are subject to sudden shifts precipitated by legislative changes economic policy major discoveries & political turmoil. Macroeconometric models are a very imperfect tool for forecasting this highly complicated & changing process. Ignoring these factors leads to a wide discrepancy between theory & practice. In their second book on economic forecasting Michael P. Clements & David F. Hendry ask why some practices seem to work empirically despite a lack of formal support from theory. After reviewing the conventional approach to economic forecasting they look at the implications for causal modeling present a taxonomy of forecast errors & delineate the sources of forecast failure. They show that forecast-period shifts in deterministic factors--interacting with model misspecification collinearity & inconsistent estimation--are the dominant source of systematic failure. They then consider various approaches for avoiding systematic forecasting errors including intercept corrections differencing co-breaking & modeling regime shifts; they emphasize the distinction between equilibrium correction (based on cointegration) & error correction (automatically offsetting past errors). Finally they present three applications to test the implications of their framework. Their results on forecasting have wider implications for the conduct of empirical econometric research model formulation the testing of economic hypotheses & model-based policy analyses. ...

The collapse of her brief marriage has stalled Bea Nightingales life leaving her middle-aged & alone teaching in an impoverished borough of 1950s New York. A plea from her estranged brother gives Bea the excuse to escape by leaving for Paris to retrieve a nephew she barely knows; but the siren call of Europe threatens to deafen Bea to the dangers of entangling herself in the lives of her brothers family. By one of Americas great living writers Foreign Bodies is a truly virtuosic novel. The story of Beas travails on the continent is a fierce & heartbreaking insight into the curious nature of love: how it can be commanded & abused; earned & cherished; or even lost altogether. ...

By 1939 thousands of Italian intellectuals teachers & lawyers journalists & scientists had fled Mussolinis fascist government & found refuge in Paris. There amidst the poverty & difficulty of emigre life they joined the Italian resistance founding an underground press that smuggled news & encouragement back to their lost homel&. In Paris in the winter of 1939 a murder/suicide at a lovers hotel hits the tabloid press. But this is not a romantic tragedy it is the work of OVRA Mussolinis fascist secret police & meant to eliminate the editor of Liberazione a clandestine newspaper published by Italian emigres. Carlo Weisz who has fled from Trieste & found work as a foreign correspondent for the Reuters bureau becomes the new editor. Weisz is at that moment in Spain reporting on the tragic end of the Spanish civil war but as soon as he returns to Paris he is pursued by the French Surete by agents of OVRA & by officers of the British Secret Intelligence Service. In the desperate politics of Europe on the edge of war a foreign correspondent is a pawn worth surveillance or blackmail or murder. The Foreign Correspondent is the story of Carlo Weisz & a handful of anti-fascists -- the army officer known as Colonel Ferrara who fights for a lost cause in Spain Arturo Salamone the shrewd leader of a resistance group in Paris & the woman who becomes the love of his Weiszs life herself involved in a doomed resistance underground in Berlin at the heart of Hitlers Nazi empire. ...

Winner of the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger 2012 for Best Thriller of the Year. Perfect for fans of John le Carre a gripping & suspenseful spy thriller from the master of the modern spy thriller (Mail on Sunday) Six weeks before she is due to take up her position as the first female head of MI6 Amelia Levene vanishes without a trace. Her disappearance is the gravest crisis MI6 has faced for more than a decade. There has been no ransom demand no word from foreign intelligence services no hint of a defection. Should news of Levenes disappearance leak out the consequences would be catastrophic. But for disgraced MI6 officer Thomas Kell the crisis offers a chance for redemption. He is approached by his former employers & ordered to find her. Kells search takes him first to France then North Africa where he discovers an extraordinary secret hidden deep in Levenes past. it is a secret that could fatally compromise Britains national security
- & for which Kell could pay with his life. This is another first-rate intelligent thriller which will cement Cummings reputation as one of the most engaging British novelists writing today.
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The Silk Road which linked imperial Rome & distant China was once the greatest thoroughfare on earth. Along it travelled precious cargoes of silk gold & ivory as well as revolutionary new ideas. Its oasis towns blossomed into thriving centres of Buddhist art & learning. In time it began to decline. The traffic slowed the merchants left & finally its towns vanished beneath the desert sands to be forgotten for a thousand years. But legends grew up of lost cities filled with treasures & guarded by demons. In the early years of the last century foreign explorers began to investigate these legends & very soon an international race began for the art treasures of the Silk Road. Huge wall paintings sculptures & priceless manuscripts were carried away literally by the ton & are today scattered through the museums of a dozen countries. Peter Hopkirk tells the story of the intrepid men who at great personal risk led these long-range archaeological raids incurring the undying wrath of the Chinese. ...

A wartime romance survival saga & murder mystery set in rural France during the First World War from the bestselling author of Operation Mincemeat & Agent Zig-Zag. Four young British soldiers find themselves trapped behind enemy lines at the height of the fighting on the Western Front in August 1914. Unable to get back to their units they shelter in the tiny French village of Villeret where they are fed clothed & protected by the villagers including the local matriarch Madame Dessenne the baker & his wife. The self-styled leader of the band of fugitives Private Robert Digby falls in love with the 20-year-old-daughter of one of his protectors & in November 1915 she gives birth to a baby girl. The child is just six months old when someone betrays the men to the Germans. They are captured tried as spies & summarily condemned to death. Using the testimonies of the daughter the villagers detailed town hall records & most movingly the soldiers last letters Ben Macintyre reconstructs an extraordinary story of love duplicity & shame
- ultimately seeking to discover through decades of village rumour the answer to the question Who betrayed Private Digby & his men? In this new updated edition the mystery is finally solved.
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It's 1917 & the Allies are determined to finally defeat a weakened Germany
- everything is building up to the summer's Big Push.
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From the bestselling author of Me Before You & two-time winner of the RNA Novel of the Year award. In the 1950s seaside town of Merham everyone knows their place. Lottie Swift an evacuee living with the respectable Holden family loves it while the Holdens' daughter Celia opposes its constraints. When a group of bohemians move into Arcadia a grand Art Deco house on the seafront Lottie & Celia are tempted into their alternative lifestyle. What ensues at the house has tragic & long-lasting consequences for all. Now almost fifty years on Arcadia & its past secrets return to life prompting the question: can you ever leave your past behind? ...

No airforce in the Second World War would make more use of captured planes than the Luftwaffe. With this in mind Jean-Louis Roba has undergone a considerable amount of work in tracking down hundreds of aircraft used by the Luftwaffe & illustrating their uses careers & eventual fates. The book examines the full history of foreign planes in the Luftwaffe from its inception in the prewar years to the end of the Second World War. More than just an account of the Luftwaffes use of captured aircraft the book debunks myths about how prepared the Germans were for war in 1939 & shows how important even such an unreliable source of supplies as captured planes would become to the Luftwaffe. Translated into English for the first time Robas investigative work is supported by over a hundred pictures of the planes themselves & gives a rare opportunity to see British & American planes repainted in German colours & symbols. ...