In the New Year of 1936 Gwen Purdy aged 21 leaves her home to become a schoolteacher in a poor area of Birmingham. Her parents are horrified but she has the support of her fiance a recently ordained clergyman. Her early weeks in Birmingham are an eye-opener: at the school she faces a class of 52 children some of whose homes are among Birminghams very poorest. One of the teachers the elderly Miss Drysdale proves an inspiration & Gwen begins to understand the appalling hardships endured by the children as she is drawn into their lives. Little Lucy Fernandez is a cripple & an epileptic. Through her Gwen meets Daniel Fernandez the elder brother in a fatherless household. The family has roots in a Wales small Spanish community & Daniel is a young man as fierce & passionate in his emotions as in his social concerns. Gwen falls in love & is quickly engaged in his battle to win rights for the working classes. As the Brigades are mobilized to fight the Spanish Civil War Gwen has to face the fact that Daniel has secrets in his past which she would rather not face up to... ...

Leys Physical Training College was famous for its excellent discipline & Miss. Lucy Pym was pleased & flattered to be invited to give a psychology lecture there. But she had to admit that the health & vibrant beauty of the students made her feel just a little inadequate. Then there was a nasty accident
- & suddenly Miss. Pym was forced to apply her agile intellect to the unpleasant fact that among all those impressively healthy bodies someone had a very sick mind...
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This story will appeal to those who still believe that an Englishmans home is his castle & to those who have a soft spot for indomitable old women Daily Telegraph The hardback edition of this book published in 2009 under the title A Lifetime in the Building saw its extraordinary story featured not only in the Daily Mail but also Hello magazine
- & quickly sold out two printings. Now it is re-launched in paperback under a new title to highlight its appeal as the tale of an extraordinary maverick woman & her even more remarkable achievement. May Savidge lived in a half-timbered house in Hertfordshire. When the council served her with a compulsory purchase notice to make way for a roundabout May decided she had to move
- but so did the house. So she had the whole thing dismantled & shipped to the North Norfolk coast...and then spent the rest of her life rebuilding it single-handed. Her fame spread around the world. Antiques Roadshow broadcast unprecedentedly two features about her house. Now her niece Christine Adams who inherited Mays house & completed it
- at the cost of her own marriage
- tells her aunts life story from the voluminous diaries & letters she left behind. Christine Adams now runs a Bed & Breakfast in May Savidges old house in Norfolk. Michael Mc Mahon is also the co-author of My Friend the Enemy (978 1 84513 316 0).



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In 1954 Shirley Bassey was seventeen years old. She had just returned from a cheesy revue tour called Hot from Harlem. Depressed disillusioned & four months pregnant she decided that her dream of being a professional singer was over. A mere ten years later she was one of the biggest stars in the world. She had sold more records than any other British singer of the day & was poised to conquer America. Her latest hit Goldfinger was the theme tune to the years blockbuster film. No longer the two-bit jazz singer from Cardiff she was by now an international sex siren as glamorous & unreal as Bond himself. Miss Shirley Bassey explores this remarkable transformation both of an individual & of the British society & British psyche that made it possible. From the vibrant multicultural oasis of Tiger Bay in the Cardiff docklands through the club-lands of Soho & Las Vegas to New Yorks Carnegie Hall it is a journey from mere mortal to international icon. Along the way she would encounter homosexual husbands predatory managers newspaper scandals & a range of friends & acquaintances from Sammy Davis Jr to Reggie Kray. John L. Williams draws on original research & interviews to provide a portrait of a young woman on the cusp of stardom whose rise to fame was in many ways symbolic of a changing world. Brilliantly written non-fiction in the style of David Peaces The Damned Utd or Nick Tosches Dino this is the story of a woman who set out to be extraordinary &
- against all the odds
- succeeded.

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One snowy day in Copenhagen six-year-old Isaiah falls to his death from a city rooftop. The police pronounce it an accident. But Isaiahs neighbour Smilla an expert in the ways of snow & ice suspects murder. She embarks on a dangerous quest to find the truth following a path of clues as clear to her as footsteps in the snow. 21 years after its first UK publication Vintage" are reissuing this classic Scandinavian crime novel for a whole new audience." ...

Jenny Shepherd is twelve years old & missing... Her teacher Sarah Finch knows better than most that the chances of finding her alive are diminishing with every day she is gone. As a little girl her older brother had gone out to play one day & never returned. The strain of never knowing what has happened to Charlie had ripped Sarah's family apart. Now in her early twenties she is back living at home trapped with a mother who drinks too much & keeps her brother's bedroom as a shrine to his memory. Then horrifically it is Sarah who finds Jenny's body beaten & abandoned in the woods near her home. As she's drawn into the police investigation & the heart of a media storm Sarah's presence arouses suspicion too. But it not just the police who are watching her... ...

The Missing" is the first instalment in Chris Mooneys fantastic " Darby Mc Cormick" series. The woman missing for five years. The Crime Scene Investigator who finds her. & the serial killer who wants them both dead... When Boston CSI Darby Mc Cormick finds a raving & emaciated woman hiding at the scene of a violent kidnap she runs a DNA search to identify the Jane Doe. The result confirms she was abducted five years earlier & has somehow managed to escape from the dungeon in which shes been caged. With a teenage couple also missing & Jane Doe seriously ill the clock is ticking for Darby as she hunts for the dungeon before anyone else disappears or dies. & when the FBI takes over the investigation it becomes clear that a sadistic serial killer has been on the prowl for decades
- & is poised to strike again at any moment. A killer with links to horrors that Darby has desperately tried to bury in her past... Fans of Tess Gerritsen Karin Slaughter & Michael Connelly will be glued to " The Missing". Mooney weaves a shocking narrative as Darby Mc Cormick navigates the twists & turns of this complex case. Subsequent titles in the series include " The Dead Room" & " The Secret Friend". Praise for Chris Mooney: " If you want a thriller that will chill your blood break your heart & make your pulse race Chris Mooney is your man". (Mark Billingham). "A scary breakneck ride". (Tess Gerritsen). "A wonderful writer... Compelling thrilling & touching". (Michael Connelly). " Harrowing gripping haunting gut-wrenching & beautifully written". (Harlan Coben). " It will keep you up past your bedtime". (Karin Slaughter). Chris Mooney is the author of seven previous thrillers of which Remembering Sarah was nominated for the prestigious Edgar Award for Best Novel. " The Missing" " The Secret Friend" & " The Soul Collectors" are available as Penguin paperbacks. Chris lives in Boston with his wife & son."
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It's an early autumn day like any other as Miles Avery drives his wife Jacqueline to the station. Nothing remarkable crops up in conversation nor do either of them appear anything other than their normal selves. At the station Jacqueline gets out takes an overnight bag from the back seat then turns towards the platforms. This is the last anyone sees of her. Three weeks later Miles calls the police. Enquiries are made but there is no evidence of her boarding a train or even entering the station. Very soon the finger of suspicion starts to turn towards Miles & as dark secrets from the past begin to merge with those of the present the great love he has been trying to protect is not only revealed but thrown into terrible jeopardy. ...

This play based on the true story of Dan Nolan a teenage boy who went missing on the 1st January 2002 is written in the same documentary style as Too Much Punch for Judy. During 2003 it has been shown at various Drama Festivals & has won awards & commendations at every one. ...

The wisest & wittiest argument imaginable for the preservation of handwriting. I have learnt so much & by it have been so happily entertained that I am compelled to recommend it to everyone. Diana Athill The simple pleasure of picking up a pen & writing is a skill that has existed for thousands of years
- but that skill is slowly dying. Where once we would have reached for a pen & paper to commit our innermost thoughts to a diary to send a letter home or to slip a note to a loved one instead we now stare at tiny screens typing with our thumbs. & all that typing looks the same. The Missing Ink is a book about the characters who shaped our handwriting & how it in turn shaped us. From Victorian idealists preaching the moral worth of italic copperplate to great modern educational reformists such as Marion Richardson throughout history the style in which we write has influence the way we learn behave & communicate. But this is also a book about the physical act itself: about the pots of ink treasured pens & chewable Biros that we used to take for granted & whether the style of our writing really does reveal anything about our true selves. Hugely entertaining witty & thought-provoking The Missing Ink is itself a love letter to the warmest of technologies & the place it still has in our lives.
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