A naked woman in red high-heeled shoes is perched on the edge of Clifton Suspension Bridge with her back pressed to the safety fence weeping into a mobile phone. Clinical psychologist Joseph O' Loughlin is only feet away desperately trying to talk her down. She whispers 'you don't understand ' & jumps. Later Joe has a visitor
- the woman's teenage daughter a runaway from boarding school. She refuses to believe that her mother would have jumped off the bridge
- not only would she not commit suicide she is terrified of heights. Joe wants to believe her but what would drive a woman to such a desperate act? Whose voice? What evil?

...

The Number One bestseller from the award-winning Stuart Mac Bride. The seventh DS Logan Mc Rae thriller is a gripping page-turner in which fame & fortune crash head-on with crime & punishment. No suspects. No clues. No rest for the wicked. ' You will raise money for the safe return of Alison & Jenny Mc Gregor. If you raise enough money within fourteen days they will be released. If not Jenny will be killed.' Alison & Jenny Mc Gregor
- Aberdeen's own mother-daughter singing sensation
- are through to the semi-finals of TV smash-hit Britain's Next Big Star. They're in all the gossip magazines they've got millions of You Tube hits everyone loves them. But their reality-TV dream has turned into a real-life nightmare. The ransom demand appears in all the papers on the TV & the internet telling the nation to dig deep if they want to keep Alison & Jenny alive. The media want action; the public displays of grief & anger are reaching fever-pitch. Time is running out but DS Logan Mc Rae & his colleagues have nothing to go on: the kidnappers haven't left a single piece of forensic evidence. The investigation is going nowhere. It looks as if the price of fame just got a lot higher...

...

A chilling novel from bestseller Dean Koontz. It starts as a kids game to while away the long drive across country. It ends in a grotesque nightmare of death & destruction. Theyre travelling three thousand miles to a golden city & a golden girl. Shes Colins adored sister Alexs ravishing new wife. But she could cost them their lives. Someones out to get them. To destroy their dreams. To plunge them into a paranoid world where every sound could be the last thing they ever hear! ...

When jockey Martin Stukely dies following a fall at Cheltenham races he accidentally embroils his friend Gerard Logan in a perilous search for a stolen video tape. Logan is a glass-blower on the verge of widespread acclaim for the ingenuity of his work. Long accustomed to the frightful dangers inherent in molten glass & in maintaining a furnace at never less than 1 800F he is suddenly faced with a series of terrifying threats to his business & to his life. But the chilling race to find the tape throws more hazards in Logan's way than his dead jockey friend could ever have imagined. ...

Shattered Lives" bears witness to the lives of children who have experienced abuse & neglect & highlights the effects of early traumatic episodes. Chapters take the form of letters to a child capturing their life experiences hugely impacted by sexual abuse parental substance misuse & loss leading to feelings of shame rejection & worthlessness. Batmanghelidjh offers understanding for those baffled by these hard-to-reach children & warns against stigmatizing them for their problem behaviour. In her critique of existing structures she exposes the plight of children who are overlooked by the authorities & denounces those who value bureaucracy over the welfare of the individual child. Society's failure to acknowledge the truth of their experiences & act to change the environment in which such mistreatment can flourish is she strongly argues leading to the death of childhood. The book is a clarion call for change." ...

My empire is of the imagination. These are the words of Ayesha the mysterious white queen of a Central African tribe whose dread title She-who-must-be-obeyed testifies to her undying beauty & magical powers; but they serve equally well to describe the hold of her author Henry Rider Haggard on generations of readers. Writing at white heat & in the flush of success after the publication of King Solomons Mines Haggard drew again on his knowledge of Africa & of ancient legends but also on something deeper & more disturbing. To the Englishmen who journey through shipwreck fever & cannibals to her hidden realm She is the goal of a quest bequeathed to them two thousand years before; to Haggards readers She is the embodiment of one of the most potent & ambivalent figures of Western mythology a female who is both monstrous & desirable
- & without question deadlier than the male. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford Worlds Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxfords commitment to scholarship providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features including expert introductions by leading authorities helpful notes to clarify the text up-to-date bibliographies for further study & much more.
...

On the night of the 22 September 1943 Pearl Witherington a twenty-nine-year-old British secretary & agent of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) was parachuted from a Halifax bomber into Occupied France. Like Sebastian Faulks heroine Charlotte Gray Pearl had a dual mission: in her case to fight for her beloved broken France & to find her lost love. Pearls lover was a Parisian parfumier turned soldier Henri Cornioley who had been taken prisoner while serving in the French Logistics Corps & subsequently escaped from his German POW camp. Agent Pearl Witheringtons wartime record is unique & heroic. As the only woman agent in the history of SOEs in France to have run a network she became a fearless & legendary guerrilla leader organising arming & training 3 800 Resistance fighters. Probably the greatest female organiser of armed maquisards in France the woman whom her young troops called Ma M?re Pearl lit the fires of Resistance in Central France so that Churchills famous order to set Europe ablaze which had brought SOE into being finally came to pass. Pearls story takes us from her harsh impoverished childhood in Paris to the lonely forests & farmhouses of the Loir-et-Cher where she would become a true warrior queen. Shortly before Pearls death in 2008 the Queen presented her with a CBE in Paris. While male agents & Special Force Jedburghs received the DSO or Military Cross an ungrateful country had forgotten Pearl. She had been offered a civilian decoration in 1945 which she refused saying There was nothing civil about what I did. But what pleased her most was to receive her Parachute Wings for which she had waited over 60 years. Two RAF officers travelled to her old peoples home & she was finally able to pin the coveted wings on her lapel. Pearl died in February 2008 aged 93. ...

When Emma Brockes was ten years old her mother said ' One day I will tell you the story of my life & you will be amazed.' Growing up in a tranquil English village Emma knew very little of her mother's life before her. She knew Paula had grown up in South Africa & had seven siblings. She had been told stories about deadly snakes & hailstones the size of golf balls. There was mention once of a trial. But most of the past was a mystery. When her mother dies of cancer Emma
- by then a successful journalist at the Guardian
- is free to investigate the untold story. Her search begins in the Colindale library but then takes her to South Africa to the extended family she has never met & their accounts of a childhood so different to her own. She encounters versions of the life her mother chose to leave behind
- & realises what a gift her mother gave her. Part investigation part travelogue part elegy She Left Me the Gun" is a gripping funny & clear-eyed account of a writer's search for her mother's story."


...

Theres been rising concern in Moscow over a wave of suicides among the citys young bohemians. An intrepid newspaper reporter Zhemailo begins to uncover the truth behind the phenomenon
- that the victims are linked by a secret society the Lovers of Death. But Zhemailo is not the only investigator hot on the heels of these disciples of the occult. Little do they realise that the latest convert to their secret society assuming the alias of a Japanese prince is none other than Erast Fandorin. But when a young & naive provincial woman Masha Mironova becomes embroiled in the society & Zhemalio dies a mysterious death Fandorin must do more than merely infiltrate & observe. Especially when the spin of the Russian roulette wheel decrees that our dashing hero be the next to die by his own h&. Can Fandorin fake his own demise all while outwitting the cults dastardly leader?
...

The best-loved English comedy of the 18-century mocks the snobbery of London through the manipulations of the country embodied in Tony Lumpkin. She Stoops to Conquer" also celebrates the virtues of "laughing comedy " which Goldsmith advocated over the prevalent sentimental forms of his contemporaries. Regularly revived on stage." ...