Britain is in the depths of recession. A left-leaning young Oxford academic & his barrister girlfriend take an off-peak holiday on the Caribbean island of Antigua. By seeming chance they bump into a Russian millionaire called Dima who owns a peninsula & a diamond-encrusted gold watch. He also has a tattoo on his right thumb & wants a game of tennis. What else he wants propels the young lovers on a tortuous journey through Paris to a safe house in the Swiss Alps to the murkiest cloisters of the City of London & its unholy alliance with Britain's Intelligence Establishment. ...

Arriving home from a pilgrim voyage Sister Fidelma hears that her faithful Saxon companion Brother Eadulf is under sentence of death for murder. She hastens to the capital of Laigin where he is being held determined to appeal against the sentence. The crime took place at the abbey of Fearna where Fidelma clashes with the sinister Abbess Fainder. The evidence against Eadulf seems overwhelming
- can he actually be guilty? Will Fidelmas emotional involvement blind her in her desperate search for the truth?
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Lady Rose Summer prides herself on not being a jealous woman
- & she knows her engagement to Captain Harry Cathcart is only a ruse
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At just twenty years old Claire Mc Mullen is the new owner of the Seabourne Hotel. Shes a mystery to everyone around her
- & thats
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Lizzie Kershaw is an independent spirit; ever since her fathers death she has had to be a survivor. She makes an ill-advised marriage in order to escape her harsh home life. However she quickly discovers that she has married a selfish & violent man. His beatings are ceaseless & she finds herself compelled to run away. With the help of some suffragettes she escapes to Manchester where she finds work in a munitions factory for a while. Sam manages to find her & drags her home. It is only when his violence causes her to lose their unborn baby that Lizzie really finds the strength to make things change & to find happiness with a man who loves her. ...

If you think you know Ireland this book will make you think again. Each year on St Patrick's Day the eighty million people around the world claiming Irish ancestry celebrate their spiritual homel&. Millions more don leprechaun hats & swallow pints of Guinness in an annual global high-fiving of all things Irish. Charlie Connelly was one of them. As a Londoner claiming Irish roots he thought he knew what Ireland was all about. Then when he was least expecting it he went to live there. Our Man In Hibernia follows Charlie's adventures living among the Irish. In an engaging & frequently hilarious tale
- we learn how a tree stump can draw legions of visitors from across the land & why being on a pig's back is a desirable thing
- Charlie contrasts the cliched shamrock-strewn image with the reality of life in modern Irel&.

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Mary Ann is illegitimate & life in 1905 is hard. It rapidly becomes worse when her new stepfather begins to interfere with her. Sent away at fifteen to bear his child she meets Gabriel Clough who helps her escape to Blackpool after the birth. The Great War brings Mary Ann many new opportunities & brings Gabriel back into her life. But circumstances mean they can never be together. It is not until her mother dies that Mary Ann returns to Lancashire determined to uncover the secrets of her past. Then danger threatens both her & the child she thought shed lost forever.. . Will history repeat itself or will Mary Anns courage win her the happiness she deserves? ...

Our Mutual Friend Dickens last complete novel gives one of his most comprehensive & penetrating accounts of Victorian society. Its vision of a culture stifled by materialistic values emerges not just through its central narratives but through its apparently incidental characters & scenes. The chief of its several plots centres on John Harmon who returns to England as his fathers heir. He is believed drowned under suspicious circumstances
- a situation convenient to his wish for anonymity until he can evaluate Bella Wilfer whom he must marry to secure his inheritance. The story is filled with colourful characters & incidents
- the faded aristocrats & parvenus gathered at the Veneerings dinner table Betty Higden & her terror of the workhouse & the greedy plottings of Silas Wegg.

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Our Necessary Shadow is the first attempt in a generation to explain the whole subject of psychiatry from the UK's leading expert Tom Burns A lot is written about psychiatry & the things it deals with but very little that describes psychiatry itself. Why should there be such a need? There isn't a raft of books explaining all the other branches of medicine. But for good or ill psychiatry is a polemical battleground critcised on the one hand as an instrument of social control or a barbaric practice while on the other the latest developments in neuroscience are trumpeted as offering lasting solutions to mental illness. Which of these strikingly contrasting positions should we believe? This is the first attempt in a generation to explain the whole subject of psychiatry. In this deeply thoughtful descriptive & sympathetic book Tom Burns reviews the historical development of psychiatry the places where there is much agreement on treatment & where there is not throughout alert to where psychiatry helps & where it is imperfect. What is clear is that mental illnesses are intimately tied to what makes us human in the first place. & the drive to relieve the suffering they cause is even more human. Psychiatry for all its flaws currently represents our best attempts to discharge this most human of impulses. It is not something we can just ignore. It is our necessary shadow. Tom Burns is Professor of Social Psychiatry at Oxford University. From the late 1980s he has conducted research in addition his clinical & teaching work & has produced nearly 200 peer-reviewed scientific articles. ...

An inventive interactive book that shows how a baby grows inside its mother's tummy over the nine months of pregnancy. Each of the 9 months is explored over a double-page section using an ingenious half-page flap to reveal what is going on inside a mum's tum & clearly showing how a baby develops. The lively but detailed illustrations the clear friendly text & the gentle humour make this book perfect to share with a child to explore where they came from or to discuss what is happening when a new baby is on its way. ...