Liam Lynch joined the Irish Volunteers after the Easter Rising of 1916 & quickly rose through its ranks. He reorganised the Cork Brigade in 1919 & in 1921 became the commanding officer of the First Southern Division which controlled all the Volunteer Brigades in the south of the country. A prominant opponent of the Treaty of 1921 he became chief of staff of the anti-Treaty IRA leading the fight against the pro-Treaty forces until his death in 1923. With the aid of Liam Lynchs personal letters private documents & historical records Liam Lynch: The Real Chief traces the turbulent career of one of Irelands greatest guerrilla commanders from his birth in 1893 until his death twenty-nine years later in the Civil War when he was killed in action on the Knockmealdown mountains. This book demonstrates Liam Lynchs importance in Irish history including his efforts with Michael Collins Richard Mulcahy & others to avoid a civil war & his unwavering efforts to achieve a thirty-two county republic rather than a partitioned state. Part of the Irish Revolutionaries series being published in the run-up to the centenary of the 1916 Rising. ...

Stephen Frys breathtakingly outrageous debut novel by turns eccentric shocking brilliantly comic & achingly romantic. Adrian Healey is magnificently unprepared for the long littleness of life; unprepared too for the afternoon in Salzburg when he will witness the savage murder of a Hungarian violinist; unprepared to learn about the Mendax device; unprepared for more murders & wholly unprepared for the truth. ...

Georges (the s is silent) has a lot going on. Hes having trouble with some boys at school his dad lost his job & so his mum has started working all the time
- & they had to sell their house & move into an apartment. But moving into the apartment block does bring one good thing
- Safer an unusual boy who lives on the top floor. He runs a spy club & is determined to teach Georges everything he knows. Their current case is to spy on the mysterious Mr X in the apartment above Georges. But as Georges & Safer go deeper into their Mr X plan the line between games lies & reality begin to blur.

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When you have to take on the White House theres only one woman to call
- Jo Beckett. When a rock singer is killed onstage during
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From mere trainee to lowly geek to triumphal Big Swinging Dick: that was Michael Lewis' pell-mell progress through the dealing rooms of Salomon Brothers in New York & London during the heady mid-1980s when they were probably the world's most powerful & profitable merchant bank. A true-life Bonfire of the Vanities funny frightening breathless & heartless his is a tale of hysterical greed & ambition set in an obsessed enclosed world. ...

He was a traitor a rabble-leader a rebel a liar & a pretender to the throne. We have tried to forget him here. For fans of The Good Man Jesus & the Scoundrel Christ" by Phillip Pulman Naomi Aldermans " The Liars Gospel" is the story of a Jewish man Yehoshuah who wandered Roman-occupied Judea giving sermons & healing the sick. Now a year after his death four people tell their stories. His mother flashes between grief & rage while trouble brews between her village & the occupying soldiers. Iehuda who was once Yehoshuahs friend recalls how he came to lose his faith & find a place among the Romans. Caiaphas the High Priest at the great Temple in Jerusalem tries to hold the peace between Rome & Judea. Bar-Avo a rebel strives to bring that peace tumbling down. " The Liars Gospel" makes the oldest story entirely new. Viscerally powerful in its depictions of the realities of the period: massacres & riots animal sacrifice & human betrayal it finds echoes of the present in the past. It was a time of political power-play & brutal tyranny & occupation. Young men & women took to the streets to protest. Dictators put them down with iron force. Rumours spread from mouth to mouth. Rebels attacked the greatest Empire the world has ever known. The Empire gathered its forces to make those rebels pay. & in the midst of all of that one inconsequential preacher died. & either something miraculous happened or someone lied. " Remarkable. Alderman is a supremely talented writer". (Joanne Harris). "A glittering style a compulsive pleasure". (" Metro"). " Witty dark & compelling". (Charlotte Mendelson). Naomi Alderman grew up in the Orthodox Jewish community in northwest London. Her first novel " Disobedience" was published in 10 languages & won the Orange Award for New Writers & the " Sunday Times" Young Writer of the Year prize. Like her second novel " The Lessons" it was broadcast as Radio 4s " Book at Bedtime". She is a frequent radio broadcaster & a regular contributor to the " Guardian" & " Prospect". She lives in London." ...

In this critical intervention against those liberal commentators who fervently beat the war drums
- from Christopher Hitchens to
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A liberal society seeks not to impose a single way of life but to leave its citizens as free as possible to choose their own values & ends. It therefore must govern by principles of justice that do not presuppose any particular vision of the good life. But can any such principles be found? & if not what are the consequences for justice as a moral & political ideal? These are the questions Michael Sandel takes up in this penetrating critique of contemporary liberalism. Sandel locates modern liberalism in the tradition of Kant & focuses on its most influential recent expression in the work of John Rawls. In the most important challenge yet to Rawls' theory of justice Sandel traces the limits of liberalism to the conception of the person that underlies it & argues for a deeper understanding of community than liberalism allows. ...

Danielle Strickland contends that women everywhere remain subjugated by cultural norms that tell them to conform hold back & turn aside from Gods call upon their lives. Consequently many women fail to play a full part in the healing & restoration of society. The church should take the lead. In this prophetic book Danielle observes: We should be the ones who model an alternative approach to leadership. We are the ones with the Bible & the witness of the Holy Spirit who through Scripture reason tradition & experience has shown over & over again His heart for the release of women to exercise their gifts." The book covers: The current situation (exploitation or subjugation); the historical situation (feminism & the Christian tradition); key biblical material; justice (the feminization of poverty); what does the future offer & what should the church do?" ...

A slip of a wild boy: with quick silver eyes as Virginia Woolf saw him in the 1930s Christopher Isherwood journeyed & changed with his century until by the 1980s he was celebrated as the finest prose writer in English & the Grand Old Man of Gay Liberation. In this final volume of his diaries capstone of a million-word masterwork he greets advancing age with poignant humour & an unquenchable appetite for the new; aches illnesses & diminishing powers are clues to a predicament still unfathomed. The mainstays of his mature contentment his Hindu guru Swami Prabhavananda & his long term companion Don Bachardy draw from him an unexpected high tide of joy & love. Around his private religious & domestic routines orbit gifted friends both anonymous & infamous. Bachardys burgeoning career pulled Isherwood into the 1970s art scene in Los Angeles New York & London where we meet Rauschenberg Ruscha & Warhol (serving foetid meat for lunch) as well as Hockney (adored) & Kitaj. Collaborating with Bachardy on scripts for their prize-winning Frankenstein & their Broadway fiasco A Meeting by the River" extended ties in Hollywood & the theatre world. John Huston Merchant & Ivory John Travolta John Voight Elton John David Bowie Joan Didion Armistead Maupin each take a turn through Isherwoods densely populated human comedy sketched with both ruthlessness & benevolence against the background of the Vietnam War the Energy Crisis the Nixon Carter & Reagan White Houses. In his first book of this period Kathleen & Frank Isherwood unearthed the family demons that haunted his fugitive youth. When contemporaries began to die he responded in " Christopher & His Kind" & " My Guru & His Disciple" with startling fresh truths about shared experiences. These are the most concrete & the most mysterious of his diaries candidly revealing the fear of death that crowded in past Isherwoods fame & showing how his life-long immersion in the day-to-day lifted him paradoxically towards transcendence." ...