Will Elliott is out of a job. The lighthouse he's been manning on Prince Albert Rock off the wild Cornish coast is about to become automated. So Will decides to fulfil his lifelong ambition
- to sail round the coastline of Britain. Determined to continue his solitary existence Will begins his preparations for his epic voyage. But before he has time to so much as paint his hull he meets Amy Finn
- a beautiful artist & fellow loner. & as if that isn't distraction enough suddenly his sleepy Cornish village is rocked by the biggest scandal to hit Cornwall since Guenevere ran off with Launcelot. It seems as if Will will never get away & even if he does will his journey be solo or is there hope that he & Amy could be embarking on a two-man voyage of discovery?

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The Last Man is Mary Shelleys apocalyptic fantasy of the end of human civilisation. Set in the late twenty-first century the novel unfolds a sombre & pessimistic vision of mankind confronting inevitable destruction. Interwoven with her futuristic theme Mary Shelley incorporates idealised portraits of Shelley & Byron yet rejects Romanticism & its faith in art & nature. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851) was the only daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft author of Vindication of the Rights of Woman & the radical philosopher William Godwin. Her mother died ten days after her birth & the young child was educated through contact with her fathers intellectual circle & her own reading. She met Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1812; they eloped in July 1814. In the summer of 1816 she began her first & most famous novel Frankenstein. Three of her children died in early infancy & in 1822 her husband was drowned. Mary returned to England with her surviving son & wrote novels short stories & accounts of her travels; she was the first editor of P.B. Shelleys poetry & verse. ...

The four dead guards didnt concern Mitch Rapp as much as the absence of the man theyd been paid to protect. Joe Rickman wasnt just another foot soldier. For the last eight years Rickman had run the CIAs clandestine operations in Afghanistan. It was a murky job that involved working with virtually every disreputable figure in the Islamic Republic. More than a quarter billion dollars in cash had passed through Rickmans hands during his tenure as the master of black ops & no one with a shred of sense wanted to know the details of how that money had been spent. At first glance it looks as if Rickman has been kidnapped but Rapp knows certain things about his old friend that cause him to wonder if something more disturbing isnt afoot. Irene Kennedy the director of the CIA has ordered Rapp to find Rickman at all costs. Rapp must navigate the ever-shifting landscape of Afghanistan as the Taliban Iranians Pakistanis & Russians all plot to claim their piece of the war torn state. With Afghanistan crumbling around him Rapp must be as ruthless as his enemies & as deceitful as people in his own government if he has any hopes of completing his mission. ...

A hero can't always be good.. . Joe Rickman head of clandestine operations in the Middle East has been kidnapped & with him top secret CIA information that could prove disastrous in the wrong hands. Mitch Rapp must find Rickman at all costs. But something doesn't add up & he soon suspects something even more sinister is afoot. With elements inside his own government working against him Rapp will have to make to make a tough call between playing the hero & playing nice. Or will he be stopped dead before he can succeed? ...

From Oliver Bullough the acclaimed author of the Orwell Prize-shortlisted Let Our Fame Be Great a study
- part travelogue part
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As a small boy in Epping Forest Jack Straw could never have imagined that one day he would become Britains Lord Chancellor. As one of five children of divorced parents he was bright enough to get a scholarship to a direct-grant school but spent his holidays as a plumbers mate for his uncles to bring in some much-needed extra income. Yet he spent 13 years & 11 days in government including long & influential spells as Home Secretary & Foreign Secretary. This is the story of how he got there. His memoirs offer a unique insight into the complex sometimes self-serving but always fascinating world of British politics & reveals the toll that high office takes but more importantly the enormous satisfaction & extraordinary privilege of serving both your constituents & your country. Straws has been a very public life but he reveals the private face too & offers readers a vivid & authoritative insight into the Blair/ Brown era & indeed the last forty years of British politics. ...

It hardly seems credible today that a nineteenyear- old boy just commissioned into the Seaforth Highlanders could lead a platoon of men into the carnage of the Battle of the Somme. Or that as the machine gun bullets whistled past & shells exploded he could maintain his own morale to lead a platoon keeping its discipline & cohesion in spite of desperate losses. Norman Collins the author of this superb memoir was this remarkable man. Using Normans own words Last Man Standing follows him from his childhood in Hartlepool to his subsequent service in France. The book also covers such shattering events as the German naval assault on Hartlepool in December 1914 when as a seventeen-year-old Norman was subjected to as big a bombardment as any occurring on the Western Front at that time. Normans love for & devotion to the men under his command shine out in this book & his stories are gripping & deeply moving. They are illustrated by a rare collection of private photographs taken at or near the front by Norman himself although the use of a camera was strictly proscribed by the Army. Most of the images have never been published before. ...

As a small boy in Epping Forest Jack Straw could never have imagined that one day he would become Britain's Lord Chancellor. As one of five children of divorced parents he was bright enough to get a scholarship to a direct-grant school but spent his holidays as a plumbers' mate for his uncles to bring in some much-needed extra income. Yet he spent 13 years & 11 days in government including long & influential spells as Home Secretary & Foreign Secretary. This is the story of how he got there. His memoirs offer a unique insight into the complex sometimes self-serving but always fascinating world of British politics & reveals the toll that high office takes but more importantly the enormous satisfaction & extraordinary privilege of serving both your constituents & your country. Straw's has been a very public life but he reveals the private face too & offers readers a vivid & authoritative insight into the Blair/ Brown era & indeed the last forty years of British politics. ...

The Rough Diamonds are a close knit team. Kev Mc Govern their captain makes sure they work hard & play hard. Right now John OHara feels hes on the verge of losing everything. His family is about to break up. Hes dumbstruck when he finds out that his Mum is seeing his teacher & Dad...well the less said the better. John feels lonely & insecure; none of this is helping his street cred with the lads & worse still his form on the pitch is really suffering. ...

No one has given the extraordinary Thomas Young the all-round examination he so richly deserves
- until now. Celebrated biographer
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