A frosty December night in Stockholm. A thousand guests attend the prestigious Nobel Prizewinners' dinner. The evening is one of prestige & glamour. Until wo shots are fired on the dance floor. Crime reporter Annika Bengtzon is there covering the event for the Evening Post". As the police realize she caught a glimpse of the suspect she is far more interested in getting back to the newsroom. But as more brutal murders follow Annika finds herself in the middle of something far larger than she had anticipated. No longer just a reporter but also a vulnerable key witness she begins to close up the gaps linking these crimes just as the suspect starts closing the net on Annika herself." ...

Geralt is a witcher a man whose magic powers enhanced by long training & a mysterious elixir have made him a brilliant fighter & a merciless assassin. Yet he is no ordinary murderer: his targets are the multifarious monsters & vile fiends that ravage the land & attack the innocent. He roams the country seeking assignments but gradually comes to realise that while some of his quarry are unremittingly vile vicious grotesques others are the victims of sin evil or simple naivety. One reviewer said: This book is a sheer delight. It is beautifully written full of vitality & endlessly inventive: its format with half a dozen episodes & intervening rest periods for both the hero & the reader allows for a huge range of characters scenarios & action. Its thought-provoking without being in the least dogmatic witty without descending to farce & packed with swordfights without being derivative. The dialogue sparkles; characters morph almost imperceptibly from semi-cliche to completely original; nothing is as it first seems. Sapkowski succeeds in seamlessly welding familiar ideas unique settings & delicious twists of originality: his Beauty wants to rip the throat out of a sensitive Beast; his Snow White seeks vengeance on all & sundry his elves are embittered & vindictive. Its easily one of the best things Ive read in ages. ...

Evil Sees You
- Three years ago William Bantling was put on death row by Florida's Assistant State Attorney CJ Townsend
- for

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Michael Morpurgo has created a sweeping & dramatic story in the time of Bonnie Prince Charlie. This spellbinding tale is complemented perfectly by Michael Foreman's illustrations. Robbie Mc Leod & a wolf cub both orphaned venture far from their birthplace a land of rebellious fighters & vicious redcoats. There is little constancy in Robbie's adventurous life save for the companionship of his wolf. But when at last Robbie finds a place where he can peacefully make his home he knows in his heart that the wolf must find his own natural home too... ...

Alan Maund lived in Worcestershire all his life & had an enthusiasm for steam. He travelled extensively in Britain & built up a large railway photographic archive from the late 1950s onwards. This book is made up entirely of Alan's collection of photographs from across the Midlands. It will appeal to railway enthusiasts modellers & those with an interest in local history. Alan started using colour film in 1959 & colour slides make up the majority of the photographs. Many enthusiasts in this era had a policy of filming steam only & ignoring the new diesel interlopers but not Alan; they do make appearances even including some early electric classes. A particular passion of Alan's was small industrial steam locomotives & he restored a Kerr Stuart ' Wren' class 0-4-0 to working order between 1959 & 1961. So in addition to larger British Railways locomotives their smaller relations are also seen across the Midlands. Alan passed on in 1982 & his widow Wendy gave Alan's collection of railway photographs to film-maker & author Michael Clemens whose late father was a friend of Alan's. Alan's collection lives on today at film shows around the country & now in this book. ...

Although the Spitfire is undoubtedly best known for its exploits against the Luftwaffe during the Battle of Britain its later war service with Fighter Command on all fronts against the Axis alliance was equally as important. This volume features the exploits of pilots who turned the tide against the Luftwaffe on the Western European & Mediterranean fronts as well as the Japanese in the Far East flying Spitfire Mk VIs VIIs VIIIs IXs XIIs & XIVs. Names like Johnnie Johnson Neville Duke & Donald Kingaby plus a myriad of lesser known British Polish Canadian American Australian Czech Free French New Zealand & Norwegian pilots & their aircraft are all covered in this book. ...

This book focuses on a crucial but hitherto neglected part of Raphaels oeuvre: the work he & his pupils executed in Rome during the seven years from 1513 to the artists death in 1520. Nearly ninety works including paintings such as Saint Cecile" & " Portrait of Baldassere Castiglione" as well as many significant drawings illustrate the ways in which Raphael employed an astonishing range of technical devices many of which were highly novel & enjoyed considerable subsequent influence: Raphaels workshop methods eventually became a model for the great artistic enterprises of the seventeenth century notably those of Rubens Bernini & Pietro da Cortona. The book also clarifies & focuses on the work of his two most important pupils Gianfrancesco Penni & Giulio Romano. The text surveys Raphaels late paintings in chronological order explores his range of styles & investigates the role of his workshop in the design & production of his pictures. The essayists words & the sublime works of art that accompany them will provide a deeper knowledge of one of the masters with Leonardo & Michelangelo of High Renaissance art." ...

Examining a series of El Nino-induced droughts & the famines that they spawned around the globe in the last third of the 19th century Mike Davis discloses the intimate baleful relationship between imperial arrogance & natural incident that combined to produce some of the worst tragedies in human history & to sow the seeds of underdevelopment in what later became known as the third world. ...

Ammianus Marcellinus was the last great Roman historian & his writings rank alongside those of Livy & Tacitus. The Later Roman Empire chronicles a period of twenty-five years during Marcellinus' own lifetime covering the reigns of Constantius Julian Jovian Valentinian I & Valens & providing eyewitness accounts of significant military events including the Battle of Strasbourg & the Goth's Revolt. Portraying a time of rapid & dramatic change Marcellinus describes an Empire exhausted by excessive taxation corruption the financial ruin of the middle classes & the progressive decline in the morale of the army. In this magisterial depiction of the closing decades of the Roman Empire we can see the seeds of events that were to lead to the fall of the city just twenty years after Marcellinus' death. ...

The classic work about improving creativity from world-renowned writer & philosopher Edward de Bono. In schools we are taught to meet problems head-on: what Edward de Bono calls 'vertical thinking'. This works well in simple situations
- but we are at a loss when this approach fails. What then? Lateral thinking is all about freeing up your imagination. Through a series of special techniques in groups or working alone Edward de Bono shows how to stimulate the mind in new & exciting ways. Soon you will be looking at problems from a variety of angles & offering up solutions that are as ingenious as they are effective. You will become much more productive & a formidable thinker in your own right. If more bankers & traders had read " Lateral Thinking" & applied the ideas of Edward de Bono to their own narrow definitions of risk reward & human expectations I suspect we would be in much better shape than we are". (Sir Richard Branson). Edward de Bono invented the concept of lateral thinking. A world-renowned writer & philosopher he is the leading authority in the field of creative thinking & the direct teaching of thinking as a skill. Dr de Bono has written more than 60 books in 40 languages with people now teaching his methods worldwide. He has chaired a special summit of Nobel Prize laureates & been hailed as one of the 250 people who have contributed most to mankind. Dr de Bono's titles include classic bestsellers such as " Six Thinking Hats" " Lateral Thinking" "I Am Right You Are Wrong" " Teach Yourself How To Think" " Teach Your Child How To Think" & " Simplicity"
- all now re-issued by Penguin."

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