Uncle Tom's Cabin is the most popular influential & controversial book written by an American. Stowe's rich panoramic novel passionately dramatises why the whole of America is implicated in & responsible for the sin of slavery & resoundingly concludes that only 'repentance justice & mercy' will prevent the onset of 'the wrath of Almighty God!'. ...

R.S. Thomas (1913-2000) is a major writer of our time one of the finest religious poets in the English language & one of Wales's greatest poets. His output was prolific: over six decades he published some 25 individual collections of poems as well as several volumes of prose. A substantial number of his poems however have hitherto remained uncollected & often elusive
- poems published in newspapers magazines & journals (many of them obscure) as well as in private or limited editions. Uncollected Poems
- published to mark the centenary of Thomas's birth
- brings together for the first time a rigorous selection of the best of these. The fruit of several years' research by Tony Brown & Jason Walford Davies the volume makes available work which spans the whole of Thomas's career
- from an early sonnet to his first wife M.E. Eldridge (included in his first unpublished collection Spindrift in the late 1930s) & an early Iago Prytherch poem published in the Dublin Magazine to poems which are powerful expressions of the metaphysical meditations of his later years. R.S. Thomas's Uncollected Poems takes its place alongside Collected Poems 1945-1990 (Dent 1993; Phoenix 2000) Selected Poems (Penguin 2003) & Collected Later Poems 1988-2000 (Bloodaxe Books 2004). It gives readers of R.S. Thomas's work access to much new & fascinating material. Uncollected Poems is a companion volume to R.S. Thomas's Collected Later Poems 1988-2000 (Bloodaxe Books 2004) the sequel to Collected Poems 1945-1990 (Dent 1993; Phoenix Press 2000) which only covers his collections up to Experimenting with an Amen (1986). Collected Later Poems 1988-2000 reprints in full the contents of R.S. Thomas's last five collections The Echoes Return Slow (Macmillan 1988: unavailable for many years) & Bloodaxe's Counterpoint (1990) Mass for Hard Times (1992) No Truce with the Furies (1995) & the posthumously published Residues (2002). There is no overlap between the two Bloodaxe editions: none of the poems in Residues uncollected at the time of his death in 2000 is included in Uncollected Poems.



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In alternating chapters enigmatic Zapatista leader Subcomandante Marcos & crime writer Paco Ignacio Taibo II create an uproarious murder mystery with intersecting storylines. Those chapters written by the famously masked Marcos originate in the mountains of Chiapas Mexico where amid a hallucinatory blend of different voices we meet Elias a Zapatista detective tasked with locating missing people. Taibo's chapters star his Coca-Cola-&-cigarette-consuming series detective Hector Belascoaran Shayne: a PI specialising in cases stranger than reality. The two stories collide absurdly & dramatically in the sprawl of Mexico City. The ugly history of the city's political violence rears its head & both detectives find themselves in an unlikely dance of death with forces at once criminal historical & political. ...

As a mother wife employer & editor of the Review of Applied Ethics Isabel Dalhousie is aware that to be human is to be responsible. So when a neighbour brings her a new & potentially dangerous puzzle to solve once again Isabel feels she has no option but to shoulder the burden. A masterpiece painting has been stolen from Duncan Munrowe old-fashioned philanthropist father to two discontented children & a very wealthy man. As Isabel enters into negotiations with the shadowy figures who are in search of a ransom a case where heroes & villains should be clearly defined turns murky: the list of those who desire the painting
- or the money
- lengthens & hasty judgement must be avoided at all cost. Morals it turns out are like Scottish clouds: complex changeable & tricky to get a firm grip on; they require a sharp observational eye a philosophical mindset & the habit of kindness. Fortunately for those around her Isabel Dalhousie is in possession of all three.

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Katarina Bishop has worn a lot of labels in her short life: Friend. Niece. Daughter. Thief. But for the last two months she's simply been known as the girl who ran the crew that robbed the greatest museum in the world. That's why Kat isn't surprised when she's asked to steal the infamous Cleopatra Emerald so it can be returned to its rightful owners. There are only three problems. First the gem hasn't been seen in public in thirty years. Second since the fall of the Egyptian empire & the suicide of Cleopatra no one who holds the emerald keeps it for long
- & in Kat's world history almost always repeats itself. But it's the third problem that makes Kat's crew the most nervous & that is...the emerald is cursed. Kat might be in way over her head but she's not going down without a fight. After all she has her best friend -- the gorgeous Hale
- & the rest of her crew with her as they chase the Cleopatra around the globe dodging curses & realizing that the same tricks & cons her family has used for centuries are useless for this heist. This time Kat's going to have to make up her own rules...

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From a prison cell in which he has been held on suspicion of breaking the Official Secrets Act Charles Thoroughgood awaits not only his bail but also the reappearance of the woman whom all the major roads in his life have led back to. After his years in the army & then with MI6 Charles has begun a new chapter in his life with the Secret Intelligence Agency shadowing the movements of a suspected double agent. Charles knows that he has nothing to hide & as he casts his mind over the course of recent events he begins to suspect a more sinister motivation both personally & politically behind his incarceration... ...

From a prison cell in which he has been held on suspicion of breaking the Official Secrets Act Charles Thoroughgood awaits not only his bail but also the reappearance of the woman whom all the major roads in his life have led back to. After his years in the army & then with MI6 Charles has begun a new chapter in his life with the Secret Intelligence Agency shadowing the movements of a suspected double agent. Charles knows that he has nothing to hide & as he casts his mind over the course of recent events he begins to suspect a more sinister motivation both personally & politically behind his incarceration... ...

The Uncommon Reader" is none other than HM the Queen who drifts accidentally into reading when her corgis stray into a mobile library parked at Buckingham Palace. She reads widely (JR Ackerley Jean Genet Ivy Compton Burnett & the classics) & intelligently. Her reading naturally changes her world view & her relationship with people like the oleaginous prime minister & his repellent advisers. She comes to question the prescribed order of the world & loses patience with much that she has to do. In short her reading is subversive. The consequence is of course surprising mildly shocking & very funny." ...

What would happen if the Queen became a reader of taste & discernment rather than of Dick Francis? The answer is a perfect story. The Uncommon Reader is none other than HM the Queen who drifts accidentally into reading when her corgis stray into a mobile library parked at Buckingham Palace. She reads widely (JR Ackerley Jean Genet Ivy Compton Burnett & the classics) & intelligently. Her reading naturally changes her world view & her relationship with people like the oleaginous prime minister & his repellent advisers. She comes to question the prescribed order of the world & loses patience with much that she has to do. In short her reading is subversive. The consequence is of course surprising mildly shocking & very funny. ...

In this new book from Australia's foremost investigative journalist Chris Masters turns his attention to the modern Australian soldier. Moving away from the ongoing fascination with the Anzac story he looks at the rich & illuminating present to write a character study of the modern Australian soldier
- war fighter peacekeeper street-level diplomat & aid worker. Having been taken into their ranks in a way rarely before afforded an outsider Masters gives heart & shape to the contemporary digger: how they are selected how they are led & how they are transformed from civilians to disciplined professional soldiers. & in asking if they are unique he examines what it is that allows these young Australians to lend moral authority to communities teetering on the precipice of violence in places such as Iraq & Afghanistan. By sharing the experiences of the young men & women who make up the Australian army Masters puts under severe challenge the notion that soldiering is the province of dumb grunts. In doing so he argues that the best measure of Australia's military legend is found in the present. Uncommon Soldier is a rare & powerful work.
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