Norman Douglas one of the 20th centurys great travellers in Italy was for most of his life inextricably passionately connected to the Bay of Naples. This breathtaking sweep of sea & coastline
- dominated by Vesuvius & with Pozzuoli & Sorrento standing sentinel
- was Douglas first experience of Italy. It was here on the island of Capri that he died some 55 years after first buying a villa in Naples. Siren Land" Douglas first travel book is a homage to a part of the world that captivated him more than any other. Weaving the myths of the Sirens into the landscape & history of the region Douglas writes with knowledge & an irrepressible exuberance of the past & the present of legends & archaeology folklore & daily life patron saints local ghosts wine & the wind. As the summer draws to a close Douglas prose becomes suffused with a melancholy tinged with excitement at what still remains to be discovered: relics of Roman rule of old Hellas or medieval romance... These are the delights of Siren Land. What makes " Siren Land" exceptional is the quality of the telling. Weaving scholarship impressions fact & fantasy into an intricate fabric as enchantingly entertaining & full of human interest as the best of fairy tales or ancient myths. One of the most memorable books of its genre
- Mark Holloway in his introduction to " Siren Land"."


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Mystery & adventure for four young detectives in Ancient Roman times... It's summer in the Bay of Naples
- time for fun & relaxation.
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When Winston Niles Rumfoord flies his spaceship into a chrono-synclastic infundibulum he is converted into pure energy & only materializes when his waveforms intercept Earth or some other planet. As a result he only gets home to Newport Rhode Island once every fifty-nine days & then only for an hour. But at least as a consolation he now knows everything that has ever happened & everything that ever will be. He knows for instance that his wife is going to Mars to mate with Malachi Constant the richest man in the world. He also knows that on Titan -- one of Saturn's moons -- is an alien from the planet Tralfamadore who has been waiting 200 000 years for a spare part for his grounded spacecraft... ...

A fascinating account from award-winning author Adam Nicolson of the history of Nicolsons own national treasure his family home: Sissinghurst. Sissinghurst is world-famous as a place of calm & beauty a garden slipped into the ruins of a rose-pink Elizabethan palace. But is it entirely what its creators intended? Has its success over the last thirty years come at a price? Is Sissinghurst everything it could be? The story of this piece of land an estate in the Weald of Kent is told here for the first time from the very beginning. Adam Nicolson who now lives there has uncovered remarkable new findings about its history as a medieval manor & great sixteenth-century house from the days of its decline as an eighteenth-century prison to a flourishing Victorian farm & on to the creation by his grandparents Vita Sackville-West & Harold Nicolson of a garden in a weed-strewn wreck. Alongside his recovery of the past Adam Nicolson wanted something else: for the land at Sissinghurst to live again to become the landscape of orchards cattle fruit & sheep he remembered from his boyhood. Could that living frame of a mixed farm be brought back to what had turned into monochrome fields of chemicalised wheat & oilseed rape? Against the odds he was going to try. This paperback edition will be fully updated to cover the first year of Adam Nicolsons endeavour to revive the estate & return it to the glories of its past. More than just a personal biography of a place this book is the story of taking an inheritance & steering it in a new direction just as an entrepreneur might take hold of a company or just as all of us might want to take our dreams & make them real. ...

Nothing can break the bond between sisters.. . When Beatrice gets a frantic call in the middle of Sunday lunch to say that her younger sister Tess is missing she boards the first flight home to London. But as she learns about the circumstances surrounding her sister's disappearance she is stunned to discover how little she actually knows of her sister's life
- & unprepared for the terrifying truths she must now face. The police Beatrice's fiance & even their mother accept they have lost Tess but Beatrice refuses to give up on her. So she embarks on a dangerous journey to discover the truth no matter the cost.
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It's two years after the events of Girl Missing & life is not getting any easier for sixteen-year-old Lauren as exam pressure & a recent family tragedy take their toll. Lauren's birth mother takes Lauren & her two sisters on holiday in the hope that some time together will help but a few days into the holiday one of the sisters disappears under circumstances very similar to those in which Lauren was taken years before. Can Lauren save her sister & stop the nightmare happening all over again? ...

Daughters of the formidable Isabella & Ferdinand of Spain Katherine & Juana were born in to a world of privilege & luxury that ...

They'd give up everything to dance on stage but could they lose each other? London's East End 1934. Eighteen-year-old twins Marie & Vesta Haskins work at the local shoe factory to bring in a few pennies for the family but they've never given up on their dream of treading the boards in the West End. When a brand new East End club opens its doors the girls audition for the show & are over the moon to land two nights a week with their cabaret act. But little do they realise that the villainous Scoresby brothers are using the club as a front for a very different line of business. Seeing what is going on behind the smoke & lights of the stage sensible Marie vows to leave her job at the club before it is too late but headstrong Vesta has fallen for the Scoresby's handsome right-hand man Teddy & unwittingly leads her whole family into the Scoresby's clutches. Will Marie be able to save her family from disaster? Or will Vesta's determination to become a star tear the Haskins family apart? ...

We all have a dark side... Elizabeth Greene is devastated when her boyfriend of ten years leaves her for someone else. After a night of drowning her sorrows leads to an unexpected one-night stand Elizabeth finds herself pregnant alone & vulnerable. Helen has just discovered she has a sister she didn't know she had. Bored with her privileged life in France & driven by a need to gain her parents' approval Helen sets out to find her sister & reunite her with her long-lost mother. When her search leads her to Elizabeth the two women become closely linked. But their connection to one another is founded on a dark deception with the truth having extreme consequences... ...

It is 83 years after the last of the thinking machines were destroyed in the Battle of Corrin after Faykan Butler established himself as the first Emperor of a new imperium. War hero Vorian Atreides has turned his back on Salusa Secundus flying off to parts unknown. Abulurd Harkonnen convicted of cowardice was sent away to live on gloomy Lankiveil & his descendants continue to blame Vor for the downfall of their fortunes. Raquella Berto-Anirul has formed the Bene Gesserit School as the first Reverend Mother. Descendants of Aurelius Venport & Norma Cenva have built a powerful transportation company using mutated Navigators who fly spacefolder ships". Gilbertus Albans has established a school on bucolic Lampadas teaching humans to become Mentats. Even so decades after the defeat of the thinking machines anti-technology fervor continues to sweep across the human-settled planets with powerful fanatical groups imposing violent purges..." ...