Layken's father died suddenly leaving her to gather every ounce of strength to be a pillar for her family in order to prevent their world from falling apart. Now her life is taking another unexpected turn… Layken's mother gets a job which leads to an unwanted move across country. However a new home means new neighbours… & Layken's new neighbour is the very attractive Will Cooper. Will has an intriguing passion for slam poetry & a matching passion for life. The two feel an irresistible attraction but are rocked to the core when a shocking revelation brings their romance to a screeching halt. Layken & Will must find a way to fight the forces that threaten to tear them apart… or learn to live without each other. ...

Set in London & Monmouth in the late 1700s this is an extraordinary novel about Mary Saunders the young daughter of a poor seamstress. Mary hungers greedily for fine clothes & ribbons as people of her class do for food & warmth. Its a hunger that lures her into prostitution at the age of thirteen. Mary is thrown out by her distraught mother when she gets pregnant & almost dies on the dangerous streets of London. Her saviour is Doll
- a prostitute. Mary roams London freely with Doll selling her body to all manner of cullies dressed whorishly in colourful gaudy dresses with a painted red smile. Faced with bad debts & threats upon her life she eventually flees to Monmouth her mothers hometown where she attempts to start a new life as a maid in Mrs Joness house. But Mary soon discovers that she cant escape her past & just how dearly people like her pay for yearnings not fitting to their class in society...
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It seems excessive...but that doesn't mean it didn't happen. The mass of black curls. The top hat. The cigarette dangling from pouty lips. These are the trademarks of one of the world's greatest & most revered guitarists a celebrity musician known by one name: Slash. Saul Slash" Hudson was born in Hampstead to a Jewish father & a black American mother who created David Bowie's look in The Man Who Fell to Earth. He was raised in Stoke until he was 11 when he & his mother moved to LA. Frequent visitors to the house were David Bowie Joni Mitchell Ronnie Wood & Iggy Pop. At this time Slash got into BMX bikes & would eventually turn professional winning major awards & money but at 15 his grandmother gave him his first guitar. Sessions with numerous local LA rock bands followed until a fateful meeting with singer W Axl Rose...and the rest was rock history. Guns N' Roses spent two years builiding their reputation before Appetite for Destruction was unleashed on an unsuspecting world. Chart success & global domination followed but with it came the inevitable fall
- addicted to heroin booze & cigarettes the band imploded in a rift between Axl & Slash that is as deep today as ever. But with a new wife kids & new band Velvet Revolver Slash is back on track. As raucous & edgy as his music Slash sets the record straight & tells the real story as only Slash can."
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A human cartoon of hair super-strength cigarettes & the rock worlds most famous top hat Slash is one of the most iconic guitarists in recent memory. Although born in Stoke-on-Trent this one-off guitarist came to prominence through the debauchery & stellar chart success of the American west coasts Guns N Roses; Slashs highly productive but volatile relationship with lead singer Axl Rose led to a perhaps inevitable split in the mid-90s. Moving on first to his own Snakepit project then a blues band then on to a career as one of the worlds most sought after soloists Slashs profile has finally returned to its highest peak with the formation of the outrageous & hugely successful Velvet Revolver a super-group of rock stars that lives life as hard as his former b&-mates ever did. His story is inevitably one of massive rock & roll excess exhausting & famous live shows fiery confrontations with other musicians but also of incredible discipline a unique natural musical gift & of course
- through Sweet Child O Mine" & " Paradise City" to name but a few
- the creation of some of rock musics most legendary songs."

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Dr Siris bagged himself a holiday: an all-expenses-paid trip to the northern mountains of Laos. Whats more through a bit of skilful bartering (well blackmail) he has wangled it so that his nearest & dearest may accompany him. They are to assist a US-funded search for a lost CIA pilot
- Boyd Bowry
- missing since his aircraft was downed in 1968. But Siris not taking the search too seriously as he strongly suspects that when the helicopter exploded the pilot followed suit. However just hours into the trip it becomes apparent that ulterior motives are at work within the group. & Siris suspicions are confirmed when those associated with the airman start dropping like the insects that frequent his country. Siri & co are caught up in something big: something that goes way back & way over their heads. & if this wasnt bad enough a psychic of unquestionable repute then informs Siri that he will shortly die: in a day or two to be precise.

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Once again theres death on her doorstep
- Thea throws herself into house-sitting for Babs & Cedric Angell in Lower Slaughter following
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At 07.30 hours on 1 July 1916 the devastating cacophony of the Allied artillery fell silent along the front on the Somme. The ear-splitting explosions were replaced by the shrill sound of hundreds of whistles being blown. At that moment tens of thousands of British soldiers climbed out from the trenches on their part of the Western Front & began to make their way steadily towards the German lines opposite. It was the first day of the Battle of the Somme. By the end of the day a number of the battalions involved had met with some degree of success; others had suffered heavy losses for no gain whilst a few quite literally ceased to exist. That day the old infantry tactics of the British Army clashed head-on with the reality of modern warfare. On what is generally accepted as the worst day in the British Army's history there were more than 60 000 casualties
- a third of them fatal. In this publication the authors have drawn together for the first time ever all the War Diary entries for those battalions that went over the top" that day
- a day which even now still touches so many families both in the United Kingdom & around the world. The result is a vital work of reference to the events of 1 July 1916 a valuable information source for not only for those interested in military history but genealogists & historians alike."

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Prisoner of war optometrist time-traveller
- these are the life roles of Billy Pilgrim hero of this miraculously moving bitter
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Mende Nazers happy childhood was cruelly cut short at the age of twelve when the Mujahidin rode into her village in the remote Nuba mountains of Sudan. They hacked down terrified villagers raped the women & abducted the children. Mende was them. She was taken & sold to an Arab woman in Khartoum. She was stripped of her name & her freedom. For seven long years she was kept as a domestic slave an abid without any pay or a single day off. Her food was the leftover scraps & her bed was the floor of the locked-up garden shed. She endured this harsh & lonely existence without knowing whether her family was alive or dead for seven long years. Passed on by her master like a parcel to a relative in London Mende eventually managed to escape to freedom. Slave is a shocking first-person insight into the modern day slave trade. It is also a fascinating memoir of an African childhood & a moving testimony to a young girls indomitable spirit in the face of adversity. ...

Sarah Forsyth has spent most of her life in fear. Born in Newcastle in 1976 from the age of three the very people who were meant to be looking after & protecting her were sexually abusing her. Somehow overcoming the hurt & heartbreak of this horrific childhood Sarah managed to build a new & happy life for herself as a nursery nurse. Then one day Sarah spotted a newspaper advert for a job in a creche in Amsterdam. Thrilled by the prospect of a fresh start away from Newcastle & all the memories it held she eagerly signed up. But within minutes of stepping off the plan in Amsterdam her life began to fall apart. There was no creche & no job: Sarah was a victim of sex-trafficking. That night a just twenty-one years of age her life
- her real life her life as Sarah Forsyth
- ended. Fed cocaine & cannabis & forced at gunpoint to work as a prostitute in the Red Light District of Amsterdam Sarah was turned from a young innocent English girl into a desperate & terrified crack whore. Riddled with fear about what her pimps would do to her if they caught her trying to run away it took Sarah almost a year to find the strength to fight back & escape. But unlike many of the girls that she was forced to live & work beside she did get away. Sarah Forsyth is a survivor. This is her heart-rending story.

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