Nothing prepares a man for war & Private Charles Waite of the 2/7th Queens Royal Regiment was certainly ill-prepared when his convoy carrying supplies of petrol & ammunition on its way to Dunkirk took a wrong turning near Abbeville. They met half a dozen German tanks on the road & saw hundreds of German soldiers marching across fields towards them. The day I was captured I had a rifle but no ammunition. Charles lost his freedom that day in May 1940 & didnt regain it until May 1945 when he was finally picked up by the Americans having walked 1600km from his prison camp attached to Stalag 20B in East Prussia. When I got back I couldnt tell anybody about what had happened during my years as a POW. I was ashamed. I hadnt won any medals; I had no stories of brave deeds. How could I be proud of breaking rocks for 12 hours day or pulling cabbages out of frozen ground at gunpoint? Would they have wanted to hear about the wounded soldiers dying in my arms of the acts of cruelty I witnessed & the terrible hunger & fatigue suffered on the Long March? Everybody wanted to forget the war & get on with rebuilding their lives. Silent for 70 years for the first time he has put his story on paper. He describes his first march from Abbeville to Trier & journey by cattle truck across Germany to the east; working in a stone quarry & years of farm labour; his period in solitary confinement for sabotage; & the Long March home in the one of the worst winters on record. His story is also about friendship of physical & mental resilience & of compassion for everyone who suffered. My book is for all who lie in foreign fields. Those in shallow graves the men we couldnt take with us. Its for those left behind. ...

Survivor on the River Kwai is the heartbreaking story of Reg Twigg one of the last men standing from a forgotten war. Called up in 1940 Reg expected to be fighting Germans. Instead he found himself caught up in the worst military defeat in modern British history
- the fall of Singapore to the Japanese. What followed were three years of hell moving from one camp to another along the Kwai river building the infamous Burma railway for the all-conquering Japanese Imperial Army. Some prisoners coped with the endless brutality of the code of Bushido by turning to God; others clung to whatever was left of the regimental structure. Reg made the deadly jungle with its malaria cholera swollen rivers lethal snakes & exhausting heat work for him. With an ingenuity that is astonishing he trapped & ate lizards harvested pumpkins from the canteen rubbish heap & with his homemade razor became camp barber. That Reg survived is testimony to his own courage & determination his will to beat the alien brutality of camp guards who had nothing but contempt for him & his fellow POWs. He was a risk taker whose survival strategies sometimes bordered on genius. Reg's story is unique. Reg Twigg was born at Wigston (Leicester) barracks on 16 December 1913 just a few months before the outbreak of the First World War. After the war Reg worked as a warehouseman until retirement cycling twenty miles daily to Leicester. He still lives in Leicester & with his family he visited the sites of the POW camps in Thailand in 2006.
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A virus has wiped out 95 per cent of the worlds population in just a few weeks leaving the remaining 5 per cent to stay alive in a world devoid of the most basic amenities
- electricity transport & medicine. The few survivors of the human race are forced to fall back on the most primitive skills in order to live & re-establish some semblance of law & order. Abby Grant widowed by the plague moves through this new dark age with determination sustained by hope that her son who fled his boarding school at the onset has survived. She knows she must relearn the skills on which civilisation was built. With others she founds a commune & the group return to the soil. But marauding bands threaten their existence. For Abby theres a chance for a new life & love when she encounters James Garland the fourteenth Earl of Woodhouse who is engaged in a desperate fight to save his ancestral home. But more important she must find her son.
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A lot can change in three months: wars can be decided nations can be forged...or entire species can be brought to the brink of annihilation. The Morningstar Virus an incredibly virulent disease has swept the face of the planet infecting billions. Its hosts rampage attacking anything that remains uninfected even death cant stop the virus. Scattered across the world embattled groups have persevered. For some surviving is the pinnacle of achievement. Others hoard goods & weapons. & still others leverage power over the remnants of humanity in the form of a mysterious cure for Morningstar. Francis Sherman & Anna Demilio want only a vaccine-but to find it they must cross countryside in ruins dodging not only the infected but also the lawless living. The bulk of the storm has passed over the world leaving echoing thunder & softly drifting ashes. But for the survivors the peril remains & the search for a cure is just beginning... ...

An awe-inspiring journey through the eons of time & across the globe in search of visible traces of evolution in living creatures which have survived from earliest times & whose stories speak to us of seminal events in the history of life. Reading Richard Fortey is always pure pleasure BILL BRYSON The history of life on Earth is far older -- & far odder -- than many of us realise. In this book acclaimed author Richard Fortey traces this history not through fossil records but in the living stories of organisms that have survived nearly unchanged for hundreds of millions of years & whose existence today affords us tantalising glimpses of landscapes long vanished. For evolution has not obliterated its tracks. Scattered across the globe strange & marvellous plants & animals have survived virtually unchanged since life first began. They range from humble algal mats dating back almost two billion years to hardy musk oxen which linger as the last vestiges of Ice Age fauna. Following in Forteys questing footsteps Survivors takes us on fascinating journey to these ancient worlds. On a moonlit beach in Delaware where the horseshoe crab shuffles its way through a violent romance we catch a glimpse of life 450 million years ago shortly after it diversified on the ocean floor. Along a stretch of Australian coastline we bear witness to the sights & sounds that would have greeted a Precambrian dawn. Finally in the dense rainforests of New Zealand where the secretive velvet worm burrows into the rotting timber of the jungle floor we marvel at a living fossil which has survived unchanged since before the dissolution of the Gondwana supercontinent. Written with Forteys customary sparkle & gusto this wonderfully engrossing exploration of the worlds oldest flora & fauna brilliantly combines the best science writing about the origins of life with an explorers sense of adventure & a poets wonder at the natural world. Utterly compelling eye-opening & awe-inspiring this is a book for anyone with an interest in evolution in nature in the remarkable scope of geological time & our own modest interaction with it -- in short in life itself. ...

An awe-inspiring journey through the eons & across the globe in search of visible traces of evolution in the living creatures that have survived from earlier times. In this groundbreaking book prize-winning science writer Richard Fortey chronicles lifes history not through the fossil record but through the stories of organisms that have survived almost unchanged through geological time. Fortey takes us on a journey to ancient worlds: on a moonlit beach in Delaware where the horseshoe crab shuffles its way through a violent romance we catch a glimpse of life 450 million years ago. Along a stretch of Australian coastline we bear witness to the sights & sounds that would have greeted a Precambrian dawn. & in the dense rainforests of New Zealand where the secretive velvet worm burrows into the rotting timber of the jungle floor we marvel at a living fossil which has survived unchanged since before the break-up of Gondwana the ancient supercontinent over 150 million years ago. Written with Forteys customary sparkle & gusto this wonderfully engrossing exploration of the worlds oldest flora & fauna brilliantly combines the best science writing about the origins of life with an explorers sense of adventure & a poets wonder at the natural world. ...

The brilliant standalone thriller from The Sunday Times & New York Times bestseller Lisa Gardner. REVENGE IS SWEET... Jillian Hayes Carol Rosen & Meg Pesaturo's lives changed forever in an instant when Eddie Como
- the College Hill Rapist
- came into their lives. But they refused to be victims; instead they chose to be survivors. Helping to put him away was one form of justice but they couldn't deny that secretly they wanted his life destroyed as he destroyed theirs. So when Eddie is shot down outside the courtroom on the eve of the trial they are both relieved & revenged. But now they're also prime suspects & surviving is about to get tougher still. Detective Roan Griffin thinks this was a professional hit & all that remains is to work out who ordered it. He knows that the women are key but when another woman is savagely attacked the situation gets a lot more complicated. For Griffin the hunt is on to find the person responsible before membership of the exclusive club grows...BUT IS IT WORTH THE PRICE YOU PAY?

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From that moment when Susan Boyle burst onto our screens on Britains Got Talent" she has became an unexpected phenomenon & has gone on to become the creator of the fastest selling female debut album of all time
- in the UK & worldwide
- hitting the number one spot in the US UK Australia New Zealand Canada & Irel&. Susans own personal dream has finally come true but the phenomenal success story doesnt end here
- Susan has arrived & shes here to stay. This book will be the first to tell the full story of Susans incredible journey from rags to riches from West Lothian to Times Square. Ever since her mesmerising historic performance on " Britains Got Talent" Susan has captured the heart of millions. Hers is a very modern fairytale that is at once uplifting & compelling. Bestselling biographer Alice Montgomery charts her meteoric rise from humble beginnings to global superstardom exploring the relationships events & people that have played a role in her astonishing story
- a 21st century fairytale that became reality."



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Here sushi is made easy. Healthy delicious modern
- everyone loves sushi. & its not hard to make yourself. Its delicious as a quick
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Japan is the pre-eminent food nation on earth. The creativity of the Japanese their dedication & ingenuity not to mention courage in the face of dishes such as cod sperm & octopus ice cream is only now beginning to be fully appreciated in the sushi-saturated West as are the remarkable health benefits of the traditional Japanese diet. Food & travel writer Michael Booth sets of to take the culinary pulse of contemporary Japan & he & his young family travel the length of the country
- from bear-infested beer-loving Hokkaido to snake-infested seaweed-loving Okinawa. What do the Japanese know about food? Perhaps more than anyone else on earth judging by this fascinating & funny journey through an extraordinary food-obsessed country. Winner of the Guild of Food Writers Kate Whiteman Award for the best book on food & travel.
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