Molly Bennett & Nellie Mc Donough are as close as can be. They sort out all the neighbours' problems care for seven children between them & still have time for a giggle & a gossip. So imagine the excitement when Nellie's son Steve proposes to Molly's daughter Jill. But it's not long before unsettling events turn their attention again to friends in need. The Bradley family who have moved in up the street are a bad lot & Molly & Nellie find their hands full with sorting out the troubles that ensue. Meanwhile Molly's teenage daughter Doreen has fallen head over heels in love with a young lad named Philip. She hasn't been with anyone quite like him before & she's in for a terrible shock when she finds out whose family he comes from... ...

These sumptuous new hardback editions mark the 70th anniversary of Fitzgeralds death. Their eyes met & tangled. For an instant they made love as no one ever dares to do after. Their glance was slower than an embrace more urgent than a call. A novel of the glittering decadence of Hollywood in its heyday this was Fitzgeralds last work & he died without completing it. The novels tragic tycoon hero is Stahr. Caught in the crossfire of his own effortless cynicism & his silent secret vulnerability Stahr inhabits a world dominated by business alcohol & promiscuity. If there is a moral or social necessity to film-making in this West Coast never-never land Stahr does not always believe in it. If there is love he does not always see it. The sharpness of Fitzgeralds prose the steely simplicity of his style give a cutting edge to this study of Hollywood in the thirties from which Fitzgerald draws a painfully bitter-sweet love affair & bids his own poignant farewell to the Great American Dream. ...

Unfinished at the time of his death F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Last Tycoon" is a story of doomed love set against the extravagance of America's booming film industry. This " Penguin Modern Classics" edition is edited with an introduction by Edmund Wilson. The studio lot looks like 'thirty acres of fairyland' the night that a mysterious woman stands & smiles at Monroe Stahr the last of the great Hollywood princes. Enchanted by one another they begin a passionate but hopeless love affair starting with a fast-moving seduction as slick as a scene from one of Stahr's pictures. The romance unfolds frame by frame watched by Cecilia a thoroughly modern girl who has taken her lessons in sentiment & cynicism from all the movies she has seen. Her buoyant humour & satirical eye perfectly complement Fitzgerald's panorama of Hollywood at its most lavish & bewitching. F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) has acquired a mythical status in American literary history & his masterwork " The Great Gatsby" is considered by many to be the 'great American novel'. In 1920 he married Zelda Sayre dubbed 'the first American Flapper' & their traumatic marriage & Zelda's gradual descent into insanity became the leading influence on his writing. As well as many short stories Fitzgerald wrote five novels " This Side of Paradise" " The Great Gatsby" " The Beautiful & the Damned" " Tender is the Night" & incomplete at the time of his death " The Last Tycoon". After his death " The New York Times" said of him that 'in fact & in the literary sense he created a "generation"'. If you enjoyed " The Last Tycoon" you might enjoy Fitzgerald's " The Beautiful & the Damned" also available in " Penguin Classics". " Wonderful...a novel about Hollywood written from the inside". (Helen Dunmore " Sunday Times")." ...

William D. Cohans The Last Tycoons: The Secret History of Lazard Freres & Co." is the astonishing story of the worlds most elite & legendary investment bank
- & the men who reigned over it all. For over 150 years Lazard Freres had stood apart from other Wall Street firms by offering ultra-wealthy clients the wisdom of its Great Men: from Felix Rohatyn the escapee from Nazi-occupied France turned financial genius to Michel David-Weill the inscrutable French billionaire Sun King; from Steve Rattner the boy wonder from Long Island who clashed violently with the old guard to larger-than-life CEO Bruce Wasserstein Bid-Em-Up-Bruce who broke with the banks traditions & made himself billions in the process. They amassed unimaginable fortunes & would stop at nothing to make a deal until their titanic egos started to jeopardize everything. In " The Last Tycoons" William Cohan himself a former high-level Wall Street banker takes us into their mysterious & secretive world telling a story of ruthless ambition whispered advice explosive feuds glamorous mistresses decadent excesses & unimaginable wealth. " Spellbinding". (" Financial Times"). "A definitive account.. .it lives up to the billing". (" The Times"). " Has sent a jolt through Lazard & the rest of Wall Street". (" Wall Street Journal"). William D. Cohan was an award-winning investigative journalist before embarking on a seventeen-year career as an investment banker on Wall Street. His first book " The Last Tycoons" about Lazard won the 2007 Financial Times/ Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award & was a " New York Times" bestseller. His second book " House of Cards" also a bestseller is an account of the last days of Bear Stearns & Co. He is also the author of " Money & Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World"."
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Human rights offer a vision of international justice that todays idealistic millions hold dear. Yet the very concept on which the movement is based became familiar only a few decades ago when it profoundly reshaped our hopes for an enhanced humanity. In this pioneering book Samuel Moyn elevates that extraordinary transformation to center stage & asks what it reveals about the ideals troubled present & uncertain future. For some human rights stretch back to the dawn of Western civilization the age of the American & French Revolutions or the post-World War II moment when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was framed. Revisiting these episodes in a dramatic tour of humanitys moral history The Last Utopia" shows that it was in the decade after 1968 that human rights began to make sense to broad communities of people as the proper cause of justice. Across eastern & western Europe as well as throughout the United States & Latin America human rights crystallized in a few short years as social activism & political rhetoric moved it from the hallways of the United Nations to the global forefront. It was on the ruins of earlier political utopias Moyn argues that human rights achieved contemporary prominence. The morality of individual rights substituted for the soiled political dreams of revolutionary communism & nationalism as international law became an alternative to popular struggle & bloody violence. But as the ideal of human rights enters into rival political agendas it requires more vigilance & scrutiny than when it became the watchword of our hopes." ...

One hundred years have passed since Robert Falcon Scotts beleagured expeditionary team arrived at the South Pole only to find that they had been beaten by the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen. The most feted explorer of his generation Amundsen counted the discovery of the Northwest Passage in 1905 as well as the North Pole amongst his greatest achievements. In the golden age of polar exploration Amundsen whose revolutionary approach to technology transcends polar & nautical significance was a titan among men. However until now his story has rarely featured as more than a footnote to Scotts tragic failure. Reviled for defeating Scott but worshipped by his men Amundsen was pursued by women & creditors throughout his life before disappearing on a rescue mission for the Italian Fascist who had set off in an airship to claim the North Pole for Mussolini. The Last Viking is the life of a visionary & a showman who brought the era of Shackleton to an end put the newly independent Norway on the map & was the twentieth centurys brightest trailblazing explorer. Against the backdrop of the race to conquer the most inhospitable corners of the earth The Last Viking stands alongside The Worst Journey in the World for its grim immediacy of heroism & hardship. Bestriding the generation defined by adventure & the unquenchable desire for discovery it is the mesmerising story of courage misery friendship & the ultimate price paid for immortality. ...

While on holiday in Scotland visiting a macabre tourist attraction The Dungeons of Edinburgh a young Russian tourist is murdered. As the police grapples with the fact that the cause of the young mans death was a massive loss of blood the Watches are immediately aware that there is a renegade vampire on the loose. Anton
- the hero of The Night Watch & The Day Watch
- is detailed to this seemingly mundane investigation but on arriving in Scotland begins to realise that there is much more to the story than a wildcat vampire & a single murder. Aided by Thomas the head of Edinburghs Night Watch Anton investigates & ruminates & becomes aware that a team of unlicensed Others are hunting for a fabled magical treasure hidden in the sixth level of the Twilight by Merlin himself.

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For two centuries Jacob Marlowe has wandered the world enslaved by his lunatic appetites & tormented by the memory of his first & most monstrous crime. Now the last of his kind he knows he cant go on. But as Jake counts down to suicide a violent murder & an extraordinary meeting plunge him straight back into the desperate pursuit of life. ...

For two centuries Jacob Marlowe has wandered the world enslaved by his lunatic appetites & tormented by the memory of his first & most monstrous crime. Now the last of his kind he knows he cant go on. But as Jake counts down to suicide a violent murder & an extraordinary meeting plunge him straight back into the desperate pursuit of life. ...

This is a brilliant new interpretation of one of the most dramatic periods of British history. The Wars of the Roses" didn't end at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485. Despite the death of Richard III & Henry VII's victory it continued underground into the following century with plots pretenders & subterfuge by the ousted white rose faction. In a brand new interpretation of this turning point in history well known historian Desmond Seward reviews the story of the Tudors' seizure of the throne & shows that for many years they were far from secure. He challenges the way we look at the reigns of Henry VII & Henry VIII explaining why there were so many Yorkist pretenders & conspiracies & why the new dynasty had such difficulty establishing itself. King Richard's nephews the Earl of Warwick & the little known de la Pole brothers all had the support of dangerous enemies overseas while England was split when the lowly Perkin Warbeck skilfully impersonated one of the princes in the tower in order to claim the right to the throne. Warwick's surviving sister Margaret also became the desperate focus of hopes that the White Rose would be reborn. The book also offers a new perspective on why Henry VIII constantly threatened by treachery real or imagined & desperate to secure his power with a male heir became a tyrant. Praise for Desmond Seward's "A Brief History of the War of the Roses": " It is hard to imagine a historian more in command of his subject... The result is history as compelling as any novel". (" Independent"). " This is a splendidly & vividly written book." (" Evening Standard"). A Brief History of the Hundred Years Wars: "A well-written narrative beautifully illustrated & which takes into account most recent scholarship. It is also a good read." (Richard Cobb " New Statesman")." ...