Terrified a young prisoner in the Second World War closes his eyes & pictures himself going out to bat on a sunlit cricket ground in Hampshire. Across the courtyard in a Victorian workhouse a father too ashamed to acknowledge his son. A skinny girl steps out of a Chevy with a guitar; her voice sends shivers through the skull. Soldiers & lovers parents & children scientists & musicians risk their bodies & hearts in search of connection
- some key to understanding what makes us the people we become. Provocative & profound Sebastian Faulks' dazzling novel journeys across continents & time to explore the chaos created by love separation & missed opportunities. From the pain & drama of these highly particular lives emerges a mysterious consolation: the chance to feel your heart beat in someone else's life.
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Patrick OBrians Aubrey-Maturin tales are widely acknowledged to be the greatest series of historical novels ever written. Patrick OBrian is regarded by many as the greatest historical novelist now writing. Post Captain the second novel in his remarkable Aubrey/ Maturin series led Mary Renault to write: Master & Commander raised dangerously high expectations; Post Captain triumphantly surpasses them. This tale begins with Jack Aubrey arriving home from his exploits in the Mediterranean to find England at peace following the Treaty of Amiens. He & his friend Stephen Maturin surgeon & secret agent begin to live the lives of country gentlemen hunting entertaining & enjoying more amorous adventures. Their comfortable existence however is cut short when Jack is overnight reduced to a pauper with enough debts to keep him in prison for life. He flees to the continent to seek refuge: instead he finds himself a hunted fugitive as Napoleon has ordered the internment of all Englishmen in France. Aubreys adventures in escaping from France & the debtors prison will grip the reader as fast as his unequalled actions at sea. ...

Henry Chinaski is a lowlife loser with a h&-to-mouth existence. His menial post office day job supports a life of beer one-night stands & racetracks. Lurid uncompromising & hilarious Post Office is a landmark in American literature & over 1 million copies have been sold worldwide. The new edition is augmented with an anecdotal introduction by the modern Welsh cult-literary author Niall Griffiths
- a writer who was working in a British post office when he first read Bukowskis Post Office.
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Cinderella meets Bonnie & Clyde in this 1930s tale of the boom & bust of capitalism by one of Europe's most revered authors. Like Neil Tennant we were bowled over by this deeply humane story about a post office girl offered a fleeting taste of unimaginable wealth
- only to have it snatched away...A young Austrian woman Christine toils away in a provincial post office when out of the blue a telegram arrives inviting her to join an American aunt she's never known in a fashionable Swiss resort. She accepts & is swept up into a world of almost inconceivable wealth & unleashed desire. She feels herself utterly transformed. Then just as abruptly her aunt cuts her loose & she has to return to the post office where
- yes
- nothing will ever be the same. Christine meets Ferdinand a bitter war veteran & disappointed architect forced to work on construction sites. They are drawn to each other just as they are crushed by a sense of deprivation anger & shame. Inevitably their attempts at love look set to flounder until in one desperate & decisive act they find a way to remake their world from within.


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The new novel from the Orange Prize winning author of We Need to Talk About Kevin It all hinges on one kiss. Whether Irina Mc Govern does or does not lean in to a specific pair of lips in London will determine whether she stays with her disciplined intellectual partner Lawrence or runs off with Ramsey a hard-living snooker player. Using a parallel universe structure we follow Irinas life as it unfolds under the influence of two drastically different men. Lawrence is Irinas partner of nearly ten years. Ramsey is the ex-husband of a sometime friend a once-a-year acquaintance to whom Irina has never paid a great deal of attention. Where Lawrence is supportive & devoted; Ramsey is flighty & spontaneous. Lawrence is emotionally withdrawn to the point of repression; Ramsey is fiery & passionate but volatile. The contrasts between the two men have ramifications for Irinas relationships with friends & family for her career as an illustrator & more importantly for the texture of her daily life. This love is about trade-offs. Both men in Irinas dual future are worthy of her affection but deeply flawed. The answer is that there is no perfect answer: one of the things that draws us to our mates is what is wrong with them. The Post-Birthday World is written with all the subtlety perceptiveness & drama that made We Need to Talk About Kevin an international bestseller. ...

In the decades around 1900 postcards were Twitter e-mail Flickr & Facebook all wrapped into one. A postcard craze swept the globe wreaking havoc on international postal systems & giving rise to anecdotes about overburdened postmen who had to leave bags of cards undelivered. Many of these cards were thrown away after they had served their purpose. But not all as the craze for buying & sending postcards was married to a craze for collecting them. Millions upon millions of postcards were never posted; instead they were tucked into boxes & albums unused & in mint condition. Drawing on one of the finest & most comprehensive collections of postcards anywhere The Postcard Age" traces how big historical & cultural themes of the modern era played out on the postcards tiny canvas. Taken together the almost 400 postcards represented in this book provide a vivid picture of the concerns trends & pastimes of another era as well as a sampler of the artistic & historical riches offered by these messengers of the modern age." ...

WATFORD has witnessed an unprecedented number of changes over the years. The nineteenth & early twentieth centuries saw a great industrial & residential expansion which was followed by the Blitz the reconstruction & the changes of the 1960s & 1970s to accommodate the growing traffic. Watford has been fortunate in having a number of dedicated photographers to record the developments as they happened. This informative & interesting volume places an emphasis on the people of Watford
- where they worked how they travelled & what they did to relax & enjoy themselves. This brand new selection of images from John Cooper is sure to surprise & delight anyone who knows & loves this area.
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From around 1880 for almost 100 years shipowners commissioned a wealth of paintings that depicted as well as their magnificent liners the routes they travelled their exotic destinations & life on board. These paintings rich in imagination & atmosphere appeared on posters & postcards to advertise the companies & their ships; & so was born a whole genre that produced tens of thousands of images that form a wonderful record of the great era of the passenger liner. Here bought vividly to life in more than 500 colourful postcards are the ships in which so many of our predecessors sailed as emigrants soldiers or administrators in distant lands or simply as tourists. These cards
- now highly collectible
- show how the ships developed over the years & are also a fine tribute to the artists who painted them. A glossary of some 170 illustrators forms an important reference section in the book; the author also gives useful advice on collecting. This new paperback edition will be sought after by postcard collectors as well as liner enthusiasts & by all those with an interest in the vanished world of elegant travel on the finest ships of their day. An evocative story of the vanished world of elegant ships & leisurely travel.. .sumptuous. Western Morning News This is a really fabulous book. Ocean Liner Society

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NYPD detective Jacob Kanon is on a tour of Europes most gorgeous cities. But the sights arent what draw him
- he sees each museum
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This is story of Loyal Blood a man who spends a lifetime on the run from a crime so terrible that it renders him forever incapable of touching a woman. The odyssey begins on a freezing Vermont hillside in 1944 & propels Blood across the American West for forty years. Denied love & unable to settle he lives a hundred different lives: mining gold growing beans hunting fossils trapping prospecting for uranium & ranching. His only contact with his past is through a series of postcards he sends home
- not realising that in his absence disaster has befallen his family & their deep-rooted connection with the land has been severed with devastating consequences...' Postcards' was Annie Proulx's first novel which received huge acclaim & marked the launch of an outstanding literary career. Her works include short story collections ' Bad Dirt' ' Close Range' (featuring ' Brokeback Mountain') & novels such as ' The Shipping News' & ' Accordion Crimes'.
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