In the months before she died Florence Ballard the spunky teenager who founded the most successful female vocal group in history -- the Supremes -- told her own side of the story. Recorded on tape Flo shed light on all areas of her life including the surprising identity of the man by whom she was raped prior to her entering the music business the details of her love-hate relationship with Motown Records czar Berry Gordy her drinking problem & pleas for help a never-ending desire to be the Supremes lead singer & her attempts to get her life back on track after being brutally expelled from the group. This is a tumultuous & heartbreaking story of a world-famous performer whose life ended at the age of 32 as a lonely mother of three who had only recently recovered from years of poverty & despair. ...

The Capitol Building Washington DC: Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon believes he is here to give a lecture. He is wrong. Within minutes of his arrival a shocking object is discovered. It is a gruesome invitation into an ancient world of hidden wisdom. When Langdon's mentor Peter Solomon
- prominent mason & philanthropist
- is kidnapped Langdon realizes that his only hope of saving his friend's life is to accept this mysterious summons. It is to take him on a breathless chase through Washington's dark history. All that was familiar is changed into a shadowy mythical world in which Masonic secrets & never-before-seen revelations seem to be leading him to a single impossible & inconceivable truth...

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What was lost will be found... Harvard professor Robert Langdon is summoned to deliver an evening lecture in the Capitol Building Washington DC. But within minutes of his arrival a gruesome & disturbing discovery is made at the epicentre of the Rotunda. Langdon recognizes it as an ancient invitation beckoning its recipient towards a long-lost world of hidden wisdom. & when Langdons revered mentor is brutally kidnapped he realizes his only chance to save his old friend is to accept this sinister summons... All that was familiar is transformed into a shadowy clandestine world in which Masonic secrets & never-before-seen revelations seem to be leading him to a single impossible & inconceivable truth. As Langdon will discover there is nothing more extraordinary or shocking than the secret which hides in plain sight...A brilliantly composed tapestry of veiled histories arcane icons & enigmatic codes The Lost Symbol" is an intelligent lightning-paced thriller that offers surprises at every turn. This exclusive edition features over 250 photographs & illustrations allowing the reader to explore the rich historical research from which Dan Brown drew his inspiration & uniquely complementing the reading experience." ...

WHAT WAS LOST WILL BE FOUND... Washington DC: Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is summoned at the last minute to deliver an evening lecture in the Capitol Building. Within moments of his arrival however a disturbing object
- gruesomely encoded with five symbols
- is discovered at the epicentre of the Rotunda. It is he recognises an ancient invitation meant to beckon its recipient towards a long-lost world of hidden esoteric wisdom. When Langdons revered mentor Peter Solomon
- philanthropist & prominent mason
- is brutally kidnapped Langdon realizes that his only hope of saving his friends life is to accept this mysterious summons & follow wherever it leads him. Langdon finds himself quickly swept behind the facade of Americas most historic city into the unseen chambers temples & tunnels which exist there. All that was familiar is transformed into a shadowy clandestine world of an artfully concealed past in which Masonic secrets & never-before-seen revelations seem to be leading him to a single impossible & inconceivable truth. A brilliantly composed tapestry of veiled histories arcane icons & enigmatic codes The Lost Symbol is an intelligent lightning-paced thriller that offers surprises at every turn. For as Robert Langdon will discover there is nothing more extraordinary or shocking than the secret which hides in plain sight...



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When Professor Robert Langdons mentor is brutally kidnapped he realises the only hope of saving his friend is to follow the clues hidden in an ancient invitation. He is then plunged into a deadly race against time as he battles through a clandestine world of Masonic secrets codes & hidden truths all leading towards a shocking & unthinkable finale. This recording is unabridged. Typically abridged audiobooks are not more than 60 per cent of the authors work & as low as 30 per cent with characters & plotlines removed. ...

Hewn into the towering cliffs of central Greece the Meteora monasteries are all but inacessible. The Holy Trinity is the most isolated its sacred brotherhood the guardians of a long-forgotten secret. In the dead of night the sanctity of the holy retreat is shattered by an elite group of warriors carrying ancient weapons. One by one they hurl the silent monks from the cliff-top
- the holy men taking their secret to their rocky graves. Halfway across Europe a terrified academic fears for his life. Richard Byrd has nearly uncovered the location of one of the Seven Ancient Wonders
- the statue of Zeus & his mighty throne. But Byrds search has also uncovered a forbidden conspiracy & there are those who would do anything to conceal its dark agenda...

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The publication commanded four reprints & inspired two major street reunions. A hugely popular history course based on the title led to the formation of an Everton Historic Society. It is not surprising that author Ken Rogers has responded to the clamour for a second book by collating the memories sent to him by an army of ' Lost Tribe' members who were part of a remarkable exodus in the 1960's when a controversial slum clearance programme forced over 125 000 people to leave their spiritual home for new towns & sink estates on the outer limits of Liverpool. Those families never forgot the open door heartland they left behind & their personal stories form the basis of the author's new book entitled ' Lost Tribe: The People's Memories'. You will read about the sights sounds & smells of the original & world famous Scotland Road with a pub on every street corner; the romantic world of the old inner city cinemas; the local seaside paradise that drew hundreds of thousands to the far banks of the River Mersey; & the bomb sites that held deadly Second World War secrets. You will meet a highly respected doctor who drove a Morris 8 car down a Liverpool hospital corridor & find out who had the longest name ever given on a Liverpool birth certificate. The book also reveals what happened when a circus elephant & a lion were kept overnight in an inner city stable block. You couldn't make it up but that is what inspired so many people to buy the original ' Lost Tribe of Everton & Scottie Road' publication. ' Lost Tribe: The People's Memories' will be published behind a major community series in the Liverpool Echo newspaper that will spark huge interest in the title across Merseyside. ...

These days it seems obvious that stupendous constructions like St Pancras Station should be preserved & restored. But as recently as the 1970s Glasgows superb St Enochs Hotel made way for a shopping centre & in the 1960s St Pancras itself was also earmarked for demolition. Victorian was a term of abuse. Add in wartime bombing by the Luftwaffe & town planners eager for ring roads & multi-storeys & the destruction is shocking. This poignant angry book full of stunning images chronicles the catastrophic swathe cut through our architectural heritage by the twentieth centurys sustained antipathy to the nineteenth entirely through buildings that have disappeared. Of the 200 notable examples of Victorian architecture illustrated in this book from the magnificent Imperial Institute in Kensington to the vast country house of Eaton Hall not one still exists. A photograph is all we have left. As well as architectural causes celebres like the Euston Arch & Londons Coal Exchange Gavin Stamp turns up many lesser-known Victorian buildings like the extraordinary Gothic battlements of Columbia Market in East London or Chatsworths soaring glasshouse streamlined like a spaceship. Surprising chastening but also uplifting Lost Victorian Britain is a memorable journey back into a world we should never have lost. ...

There on her forearm next to a small brown birthmark were six tattooed numbers. ' Do you remember me now?' he asked trembling. She looked at him again as if giving weight & bone to a ghost. ' Lenka it's me ' he said. ' Josef. Your husb&.' During the last moments of calm in prewar Prague Lenka a young art student falls in love with Josef. They marry
- but soon like so many others they are torn apart by the currents of war. In America Josef becomes a successful obstetrician & raises a family though he never forgets the wife he thinks died in the camps. But in the Nazi ghetto of Terez?n
- & later in Auschwitz
- Lenka has survived relying on her skills as an artist & the memories of a husband she believes she will never see again. Now decades later an unexpected encounter in New York brings Lenka & Josef back together. From the comfort of life in Prague before the occupation to the horrors of Nazi Europe The Lost Wife explores the endurance of first love the resilience of the human spirit & our capacity to remember.


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Philip Howards legendary Lost Words column has been appearing weekly in The Times newspaper for many years regularly & wittily illuminating for readers on the meanings of some of the obscurer more esoteric words the English language has to offer. This unique collection finally brings together the very best of Howards columns. Only here can we learn the significance of words such as maritality; charientism; sardonian; janiform & faticidal
- words which enrich the English language & which would otherwise have been lost to it forever.
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