Falling Upwards tells the story of the enigmatic group of men & women who first risked their lives to take to the air & so discovered a new dimension of human experience. Why they did it what their contemporaries thought of them & how their flights revealed the secrets of our planet in wholly unexpected ways is its subject. In this heart-lifting book the Romantic biographer Richard Holmes floats across the world following the pioneer generation of balloon aeronauts from the first heroic experiments of the Montgolfiers in 1780s to the tragic attempt to fly a balloon to the North Pole in the 1890s. It is a compelling adventure story of the kind that only Holmes could tell. Dramatic sequences move from the early Anglo-French balloon rivalries the crazy firework flights of beautiful Sophie Blanchard; the revelatory ascents over the great Victorian cities & sprawling industrial towns of Northern Europe; & the astonishing long-distance voyages of the American entrepreneur John Wise & the French photographer Felix Nadar. Later we find balloons used to observe the horrors of modern battle during the American Civil War (including a memorable flight by General Custer); the legendary tale of sixty balloons that escaped Paris during the Prussian siege of 1870; & the terrifying high-altitude flights of James Glaisher FRS who rose above seven miles without oxygen helping to establish the new science of meteorology as well as the environmental notion
- so important to us today
- of a 'fragile' planet. Besides the aeronauts themselves readers will also discover the many writers & dreamers
- from Mary Shelley to Edgar Alan Poe from Charles Dickens to Jules Verne
- who felt the imaginative impact of flight & allowed it to soar in their work. Through all these adventures the narrative continually lifts off in unexpected literary & scientific directions exploring the interplay between technology & science fiction the understanding of the biosphere & the metaphysics of flight itself. Most of all through the strange allure of the great balloonists Holmes offers another of his subtle portraits of human endeavour recklessness & vision.



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The clock is still ticking... The Shackleton Building has been turned into a concentration camp & the last free people in Phoenix have been forced into hiding. Unless Jordan & the others can figure out where the Co-operative is keeping Tobias everythin theyve fought for will be for nothing. & as Peter spins further out of control can Jordan find a way to save Lukes life or is history doomed to repeat itself? With only weeks left until Tabitha is released Phoenixs biggest secrets are still yet to be revealed. There are 35 days until the end of the world. ...

A student has gone missing in Edinburgh. Shes not just any student though but the daughter of well-to-do & influential bankers. Theres almost nothing to go on until DI John Rebus gets an unmistakable gut feeling that theres more to this than just another runaway spaced out on unaccustomed freedom. Two leads emerge: a carved wooden doll in a toy coffin found in the students home village & an internet role-playing game. The ancient & the modern brought together by uncomfortable circumstance... ...

OS Explorer Map is the Ordnance Surveys most detailed map & is recommended for anyone enjoying outdoor activities such as walking horse riding & off-road cycling. The series provides complete GB coverage & can now be used in all weathers thanks to OS Explorer Map
- Active a tough versatile version of the OS Explorer Map.
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OS Explorer Map is the Ordnance Survey's most detailed folding map & is recommended for anyone enjoying outdoor activities including walking horse riding & off-road cycling. Providing complete GB coverage the OS Explorer map series details information essential in the great outdoors including youth hostels pubs & visitor information. Rights of way fences permissive paths & bridleways are clearly shown ensuring you have the best information to get the most out of your time in the countryside. ...

In the midst of the current financial crisis John Gray revisits his brilliant polemic against the forces of global capitalism & deregulation. Written over ten years ago False Dawn" is a remarkably prescient book sharply criticising the greed & unsustainable economic practices which have proved to be the seeds of a world-wide recession. In a substantial new chapter Gray will consider how the economic landscape has shifted in a decade & ask the crucial question: where do we go from here?" ...

The ninth book in the bestselling Dan Spider Shepherd series. The most wanted man in the world is dead. Now those loyal to him seek revenge. When Navy Seals track down & kill Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan its obvious there was a traitor on the inside. After the false friends are revealed to be two British students Malik & Chaudhry
- former Islamic fundamentalists recruited by MI5
- they become targets themselves. Dan Spider Shepherd must teach the pair how to survive undercover with al-Qaeda closing in. But Spider is not used to playing the handler. & with the line between mentor & friend beginning to blur & a terrorist plot putting thousands of lives at stake can he protect everyone before its too late?

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The ninth book in the bestselling Dan ' Spider' Shepherd series. The most wanted man in the world is dead. Now those loyal to him seek revenge. When Navy Seals track down & kill Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan it's obvious there was a traitor on the inside. After the false friends are revealed to be two British students Malik & Chaudhry
- former Islamic fundamentalists recruited by MI5
- they become targets themselves. Dan ' Spider' Shepherd must teach the pair how to survive undercover with al-Qaeda closing in. But Spider is not used to playing the handler. & with the line between mentor & friend beginning to blur & a terrorist plot putting thousands of lives at stake can he protect everyone before it's too late?

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Vespasian is serving as a military officer on the outskirts of the Roman Empire suppressing local troubles & defending the Roman way. But political events in Rome
- Tiberius's increasingly insane debauchery the escalating grain crisis
- draw him back to the city. When Caligula becomes Emperor Vespasian believes that things will improve. Instead he watches the young emperor deteriorate from Rome's shining star to a blood-crazed incestuous all-powerful profligate madman. Lavish building projects endless games public displays of his relationship with his sister Drusilla & a terrified senate are nothing to Caligula's most ambitious plan: to bridge the bay of Neapolis & ride over it wearing Alexander's breastplate. & it falls to Vespasian to travel to Alexandria & fetch it from Alexander's mausoleum. Vespasian's mission will lead to violence mayhem & theft
- & in the end to an act of ultimate betrayal.", 8.96"


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Jeffrey Archer one of the greatest popular novelists of our generation delivers a truly page-turning thriller. When an aristocratic old lady is brutally murdered in her country home the night before 9/11 it takes all the resources of the FBI & Interpol to work out the connection between her & the possible motive for her death -- a priceless Van Gogh painting. Its a young woman in the North Tower when the first plane crashed into the building who has the courage & determination to take on both sides of the law & avenge the old ladys death. Anna Petrescu is missing presumed dead after 9/11 & she uses her new status to escape from America only to be pursued across the world from Toronto to London to Hong Kong Tokyo & Bucharest but it is only when she returns to New York that the mystery unfolds. Why are so many people willing to risk their own lives & others to own the Van Gogh Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear? ...