I slept right through to the next day. Missed the funeral & everything. Mam said it was just as well. Would've been too upsetting. I think of him now though. Right at this moment. Here in this kitchen. & I wonder if it could've been different. Dublin 1984: Ireland is a divided country the Parish Priest remains a figure of immense authority & Jim Finnegan is thirteen years old the youngest in a family of five sisters. Life in Jim's world consists of dealing with the helter-skelter intensity of his rumbustious family taking breakneck bike rides with his best friend & quietly coveting the local girls from afar. But after a drunken yet delicate rendition of ' The Fields of Athenry' at the Donohues' raucous annual party Jim captures both the attention of the beautiful Saidhbh Donohue & the unwanted desires of the devious & dangerous Father Luke O' Culigeen. Bounced between his growing love for Saidhbh & his need to avoid the dreaded O' Culigeen Jim's life starts to unravel. He & Saidhbh take a ferry for a clandestine trip to London that has dark & difficult repercussions forcing Jim to look for the solution to all his problems in some very unusual places. The Fields is an unforgettable story of an extraordinary character: Jim's voice leaps off the page & straight into the reader's heart as he grapples with his unfairly interrupted adolescence. Lyrical funny profoundly original & endlessly inventive it is a brilliant debut from a remarkable new voice. ...

Rachel Gardner's family life is far from a happy one. Her father Stanhope is cold & remote & her mother Nellie seems to care for nothing but housework. Then one day Stanhope collapses in the street & dies
- & the facade he had built up carefully for so many years is revealed as a sham. Sad & confused Rachel leaves home & flees to the one place she has known parental kindness: the home of the rector's daughter Angela her school friend. As her feelings for Angela's elder brother David deepen into romance Rachel believes she has everything she ever desired. But after the outbreak of the Second World War David joins the RAF & returns horribly injured refusing to see her. Fate however gives Rachel another chance at love. & just as the pieces of her once-shattered life are falling into place a new disaster threatens everything she holds dear.
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The final title in bestselling author Simon Scarrow's Revolution series: a quartet of novels focusing on two giants of European history Wellington & Napoleon. It's 1810 & both Viscount Wellington & Emperor Napoleon have made great names for themselves as outstanding military commanders. Wellington expands his achievements in Spain but knows his most challenging test will be to face Napoleon's mighty army. But when Wellington invades France in 1814 he gains a swift victory. He indulges in a spell of self-congratulation at Vienna
- until news comes of Napoleon's triumphant return. Napoleon ambitious as ever embarks on a Russian campaign which ends in disaster & is then defeated at Leipzig in the biggest battle ever fought in Europe. With Napoleon's power waning at long last Wellington must seize the opportunity to crush the tyrant once & for all
- & so the two giants face each other for the final time at Waterloo...

...

Sooz a 13 yr old girl from Surrey has become the Dark Mistress of Dirks otherworldly kingdom the Darklands. Thanks to the Ring of Power given to her by Dirk his minions recognize her as their ruler. Sooz immediately sets about redecorating Dirks Dark Tower to the taste of a young girl. But Sooz has to face her toughest challenge when an army of fanatical paladins & orcs gather to march against her. Despite their centuries of hostility to each other they prefer to form an alliance rather than accept Soozs new regime. & what of Dirk? He continues on slaving away at school plotting ways to rescue Sooz. Eventually he is able to advise her on life in the Darklands & Sooz is able to hold back the fanatical paladins. ...

If youve missed Laymon youve missed a treat Stephen King Its only a trip to the movies but it turns into Martys worst nightmare when she sees the guy sitting behind her. Willy. The man who raped her ten years ago. Now hes out of jail
- & looking for Marty...
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Hire smart people... Hold people accountable... Focus on the client... For years these mantras have been blindly adopted by business leaders everywhere but as Susan Scott shows these so-called best practices are ineffectual cost companies vast sums & drive away the most valuable employees & customers. Yet they are so deeply ingrained in our organisational culture that no one has questioned them until now. Informed by over a decade of research & work with CEOs & senior executives of the worlds leading companies Susan Scott reveals why these established practices are so wrongheaded & shows you how to spot the signs that you are falling prey to them & why they are adversely affecting your business. She then in her direct no-nonsense style suggests a series of surprising & smart alternatives that you should put in their place. ...

Fifteen-year-old Finn Earls mother Liz is a thirty-two-year-old masseuse with a taste for cocaine. When Lizs habit forces them to flee the city they find protection under the wing of one of her clients ageing billionaire Mr Osborne. In Vlyvalle a golden playground for the super-rich Finn discovers a people who are stranger & more savage than any tribe in National Geographic. Offered a new life & new friends he falls in love & grows up fast. But on what should be the happiest night of his life on an island in the middle of a private lake naked & high with Osbornes bewitching granddaughter someone is watching him from the depths of the forest & laughing. ...

1771: the Colony of North Carolina stands in an uneasy balance with the rich colonial aristocracy on one side & the struggling pioneers of the backcountry on the other. Between them stands Jamie Fraser a man of honour a man of worth. Exiled from his beloved Scotland he is at last possessed of the land he has longed for. By his side his extraordinary wife Claire a woman out of time & out of place blessed with the uneasy gift of the knowledge of what is to come. In the past that knowledge has brought both danger & deliverance to Jamie & Claire. Now it could be a flickering torch that will light their way through the perilous years ahead
- or might ignite a conflagration that will leave their lives in ashes. The Fiery Cross" is by turns poignant page-turning meticulous in its historical detail & searingly passionate."
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Paris in the twenties: Pernod parties & expatriate Americans loose-living on money from home. Jake is wildly in love with Brett Ashley aristocratic & irresistibly beautiful but with an abandoned sensuous nature that she cannot change. When the couple drifts to Spain to the dazzle of the fiesta & the heady atmosphere of the bullfight their affair is strained by new passions new jealousies & Jake must finally learn that he will never possess the woman he loves. Powerful intense & magnificent Fiesta is the novel which established Ernest Hemingway as a writer of genius & set him on the way to being one of the greatest literary novelists of the twentieth century. ...

Fife Scottish was established in the 1960s as part of the Scottish Bus Group a state-owned company which operated bus services throughout Scotl&. It operated buses throughout the Kingdom of Fife serving towns such as Dunfermline St Andrews Glenrothes Leven & Kirkcaldy & did this with great success until privatisation came in the early 1990s. In this book Walter Burt himself a bus driver based in Fife takes us through the different buses used in the Kingdom starting in 1960 just before the Scottish Bus Group took over services & finishing just after privatisation when Fife became part of the Stagecoach Group. ...