From the critically acclaimed Andrea Levy Orange Prize winning author of SMALL ISLAND comes this breathtaking hauntingly beautiful heartbreaking & unputdownable novel shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize & longlisted for the Orange Prize. You do not know me yet. My son Thomas who is publishing this book tells me it is customary at this place in a novel to give the reader a little taste of the story that is held within these pages. As your storyteller I am to convey that this tale is set in Jamaica during the last turbulent years of slavery & the early years of freedom that followed. July is a slave girl who lives upon a sugar plantation named Amity & it is her life that is the subject of this tale. She was there when the Baptist War raged in 1831 & she was present when slavery was declared no more. My son says I must convey how the story tells also of Julys mama Kitty of the negroes that worked the plantation land of Caroline Mortimer the white woman who owned the plantation & many more persons besides
- far too many for me to list here. But what befalls them all is carefully chronicled upon these pages for you to peruse. Perhaps my son suggests I might write that it is a thrilling journey through that time in the company of people who lived it. All this he wishes me to pen so the reader can decide if this is a novel they might care to consider. Cha I tell my son what fuss-fuss. Come let them just read it for themselves.
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What happens when there is almost unlimited choice? When everything becomes available to everyone? & when the combined value ...

Long Time No See introduces us to the unforgettable world of Mister Psyche. In the isolated coastal townland of Ballintra in the Northwest of Ireland Recent school-leaver occasional worker full-time companion & Malibu-provider to Uncle Joe-Joe & his friend The Blackbird Psyche is a boy on the cusp of adulthood undone by a recent traumatic event. Hanging out with men some forty-plus years his senior proves hazardous for Mister Psyche when the appearance of a bullet-hole in Uncle Joe-Joes window draws him into a series of (mis)-adventures which unsettle & bemuse. Perhaps The Blackbird is losing it? Or perhaps The General has decided to act on a decades-old grudge? Whichever way as the paranoia grabs a creeping hold of Uncle Joe-Joe his fragile world threatens to collapse. & it is Mister Psyche who must digest this & acknowledge the new world taking shape in the old.. . An epic in miniature peopled by a cast of innocents & broken misfits Long Time No Sees lyrical power casts a miraculous literary spell. ...

Eldritch Swan is a dead man. Or at least that is what his nephew Stephen has always been told. Until one day Eldritch walks back into his life after 36 years in an Irish prison. He wont reveal any of the details of his incarceration insisting only that he is innocent of any crime. His return should be of interest to no-one. But the visit of a solicitor with a mysterious request will take Eldritch & his sceptical nephew from sleepy seaside Paignton to London where an exhibition of Picasso paintings from the prestigious Brownlow collection proves to be the starting point on a journey that will transport them back to the Second World War & the mystery behind Eldritchs imprisonment. In 1940 he was personal assistant to a wealthy diamond dealer in Antwerp whose collection of modern art was the envy of many. The subsequent disappearance of those paintings began a trail of murder & intrigue which was to have a catastrophic effect on Eldritchs life. But untangling the web of murky secrets family ties & old betrayals that conceals the truth will prove to be a dangerous pursuit for Eldritch & Stephen. Before long a mysterious enemy is doing everything possible to stop the truth emerging
- at whatever cost...
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This is one of the world's greatest stories of adventure survival & escape. Slavomir Rawicz was a young Polish cavalry officer. On 9th November 1939 he was arrested by the Russians & after brutal interrogation in Moscow's infamous Lubyanka prison & a farce of a trial he was sentenced to 25 years' hard labour in the Gulags for 'spying'. After a three-month journey to Siberia in the depths of winter he escaped with six companions realising that to stay in the camp meant almost certain death. In June 1941 they crossed the trans-Siberian railway & headed south climbing into Tibet & finally freedom nine months later in March 1942 after travelling on foot for 4 000 miles through some of the harshest regions in the world including the Gobi Desert. By the end he weighed just five stone & 3 of the 7 had died. ...

This is the story of how over a period of one hundred & ninety-two days I was torn away from the life I knew & loved & dragged down to the depths of despair; of how I endured enforced isolation & near-starvation at the hands of Somali pirates; & of how I made a choice to survive by any & all means that I could muster. In September 2011 Judith Tebbutt & her husband David set out on an adventurous holiday to Kenya. A couple for thirty-three years they had first met in Zambia: Africa had played a major part in their life together. After a joyous week on safari in the Masai Mara they flew on to a beach resort forty kilometres south of Somalia. & there in the early hours of 11 September tragedy struck them. Judith was torn away from David by a band of armed pirates dragged over sea & land to a village in the arid heart of lawless Somalia & there held hostage in a squalid room a ransom on her head. There too she learned the terrible truth that the responsibility of securing her release now rested with her son Ollie. But though she was isolated intimidated & near-starved Judith resolved to survive
- walking endless circuits of her nine-foot prison trying to make her captors see her as a human being keeping her faith at all times in Ollie. Powerful moving & at times quite devastating this is Judith Tebbutt's story in her own words. It is a memoir of the life she shared with her beloved husband an unflinching account of the ordeal that overturned her world & a testament to the inner resilience & familial love that sustained her through captivity. There is nothing so bad in life as to have no hope
- to believe you have been defeated to give in to that. Now that I found myself in confinement four thousand miles from home under a hostile sky I would not accept that fate for myself.

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At the peak of her fast-paced career as a news presenter & interviewer Selina Scott bought a house in the Tramuntana hills of Mallorca. It was a ramshackle old farmhouse without even mains electricity but the beauty & peace of the surroundings promised an idyllic escape from her high-pressure job. After several years of commuting between continents she decided to settle there & spend time renovating the house properly. Along the way a new rhythm & peaceful way of life would surely emerge? It was then that the adventure really began. In this funny elegantly written account of her Spanish years Selina tells us about the house that captured her heart the neighbours that became friends & those that didnt the hills & wildlife that enchanted her the building work that nearly broke her & crucially the dog that found her & changed every single one of her best laid plans! This title presents an uplifting story of escape change & friendship. ...

The riveting memoirs of the outstanding moral & political leader of our time A LONG WALK TO FREEDOM brilliantly re-creates the drama of the experiences that helped shape Nelson Mandela's destiny. Emotive compelling & uplifting A LONG WALK TO FREEDOM is the exhilarating story of an epic life; a story of hardship resilience & ultimate triumph told with the clarity & eloquence of a born leader. ' Burns with the luminosity of faith in the invincible nature of human hope & dignity.. . Unforgettable' Andre Brink ' Enthralling.. . Mandela emulates the few great political leaders such as Lincoln & Gandhi who go beyond mere consensus & move out ahead of their followers to break new ground' Donald Woods in the SUNDAY TIMES ...

A generation after the events of The Long Earth mankind has spread across the new worlds opened up by Stepping. Where Joshua & Lobsang once pioneered now fleets of airships link the stepwise Americas with trade & culture. Mankind is shaping the Long Earth
- but in turn the Long Earth is shaping mankind.. .A new ' America' called Valhalla is emerging more than a million steps from Datum Earth with core American values restated in the plentiful environment of the Long Earth
- & Valhalla is growing restless under the control of the Datum government... Meanwhile the Long Earth is suffused by the song of the trolls graceful hive-mind humanoids. But the trolls are beginning to react to humanity's thoughtless exploitation.. . Joshua now a married man is summoned by Lobsang to deal with a gathering multiple crisis that threatens to plunge the Long Earth into a war unlike any mankind has waged before.

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After their fantastic trip round the world in 2004 fellow actors & bike fanatics Ewan Mc Gregor & Charley Boorman couldn't shake the travel bug. & after an inspirational UNICEF visit to Africa they knew they had to go back & experience this extraordinary continent in more depth. & so they set off on their 15 000-mile adventure experiencing some of the toughest terrain in the world
- & meeting some of the friendliest people. Containing over one hundred exclusive photographs
- including some taken by Ewan & Charley & many more by internationally renowned photographer Julian Broad
- this beautifully illustrated edition vividly documents a trip of a lifetime.


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