Strange Meetings" provides a highly original account of the War Poets of 1914-1918 written through a series of actual encounters or near-encounters from Siegfried Sassoons first blushing meeting with Rupert Brooke over kidneys & bacon at Eddie Marshs breakfasts before the war through famous moments like Sassoons encouragement of Owen when both are in hospital at the same time; on to the poignant meeting between Edward Thomas widow & Ivor Gurney in 1932; & the last strange lunch & longish talk of Sassoon & David Jones in 1964 half a century after the great war began. Among the other poets & writers we encounter are Vera Brittain Roland Leighton Robert Graves Isaac Rosenberg Robert Nichols & Edmund Blunden. Ricketts unusual approach allows him to follow their relationships marking their responses to each others work & showing how these affected their own poetry
- one potent strand for example is the profound influence of Brooke both as a model to follow & a burden to reject. The stories become intensely personal & vivid
- we come to know each of the poets their family & intellectual backgrounds & their very different personalities. & while the accounts of individual lives achieve the imaginative vividness of a novel they also give us an entirely fresh sense of Georgian poetry conveying all the excitement & frustration of poetic creation & demonstrating how the whole notion of what poetry should be about became fractured & changed for ever by the terrible experiences of the war."

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Strange Meetings provides a highly original account of the War Poets of 1914-1918 written through a series of actual encounters or near-encounters from Siegfried Sassoons first blushing meeting with Rupert Brooke over kidneys & bacon at Eddie Marshs breakfasts before the war through famous moments like Sassoons encouragement of Owen when both are in hospital at the same time; on to the poignant meeting between Edward Thomass widow & Ivor Gurney in 1932; & the last strange lunch & longish talk of Sassoon & David Jones in 1964 half a century after the great war began. Among the other poets & writers we encounter are Vera Brittain Roland Leighton Robert Graves Isaac Rosenberg Robert Nichols & Edmund Blunden. Rickettss unusual approach allows him to follow their relationships marking their responses to each others work & showing how these affected their own poetry
- one potent strand for example is the profound influence of Brooke both as a model to follow & a burden to reject. The stories become intensely personal & vivid
- we come to know each of the poets their family & intellectual backgrounds & their very different personalities. & while the accounts of individual lives achieve the imaginative vividness of a novel they also give us an entirely fresh sense of Georgian poetry conveying all the excitement & frustration of poetic creation & demonstrating how the whole notion of what poetry should be about became fractured & changed for ever by the terrible experiences of the war.

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For over thirty years John Simpson has travelled the world to report on the most significant events of our time. From being punched in the stomach by Harold Wilson on one of his first days as a reporter to escaping summary execution in Beirut flying into Teheran with the returning Ayatollah Khomeini & narrowly avoiding entrapment by a beautiful Czech secret agent Simpson has had an astonishingly eventful career. In 1989 he witnessed the Tiananmen Square massacre the fall of the Berlin Wall & the collapse of Communism throughout Eastern Europe & only weeks later in South Africa the release of Nelson Mandela. With Simpsons uncanny knack of being in the right place at the right time this autobiography is a ring-side seat at every major event in recent global history. So vivid I could feel my heart beating Jonathan Mirsky Spectator great stories sometimes harrowing sometimes hilarious.
- Daily Telegraph"."
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To avoid disappointment please note this novel was previously titled THE GALLOWS BIRD. Scandinavian crime sensation & No. 1 international bestseller Camilla Lackberg's fourth psychological thriller
- for fans of Stieg Larsson & Jo Nesbo A local woman is killed in a tragic car crash. It's a strange accident
- the victim's blood contains high alcohol levels but she rarely drank a drop. The case marks the end of a quiet winter for Detective Patrik Hedstrom. Meanwhile a reality TV show begins shooting in the town & as cameras shadow the stars' every move tempers start to flare. When a drunken party ends with an unpopular contestant's murder all eyes turn to the cast & crew
- could there be a murderer among them? The ratings spike as the country tunes in to a real life murder mystery. Under the unforgiving media spotlight Patrik tackles his toughest investigation yet...


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' It's hard to admit but you're not the son I once knew...' The obliterated battlefields of Spain are a world away from the privileged life of James Montague. Only nurse Catalina Moreno eases the deafening roar of mortar fire-and in a crumbling chapel by candlelight they make their vows. But before the sheets cool from their scorching wedding night Jamie has to leave on a brutally dangerous mission... Two years later believing her husband dead Catalina is shocked to see a man who looks & sounds like her Jamie at Castonbury-but where once there was warmth & charm now unflinching torment lies in the gaze of the man she barely recognises... ...

Ann Rule was a writer working on the biggest story of her life tracking down a brutal mass-murderer. Little did she know that the young man who was her close friend was the savage slayer she was hunting. Ted Bundy was everyone's picture of a natural 'winner'
- handsome charming brilliant in law school successful with women on the verge of a dazzling career. On January 24 1989 Ted Bundy was executed for the murders of three young women; he subsequently confessed to taking the lives of a least thirty-five more young women coast to coast. This is his story
- the story of his magnetic power his unholy compulsion his demonic double life & his string of helpless victims. It was written by a woman who thought she knew Ted Bundy until she began to put all the evidence together & the whole terrifying picture emerged...

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The Stranger I Married
- the classic erotic romance
- by Sylvia Day
- author of the sensational international bestselling


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Epic ambitious & entertaining Stranger in a Strange Land" caused controversy & uproar when it was first published. Still topical & challenging today the story of Valentine Michael Smith the first man from Mars to visit Earth is in the great tradition of stories that endure through the power of the author's imagination that stretches from Gulliver's Travels to 1984." ...

Like the rest of the nation the Burracombe villagers are shocked when King George the Sixth dies suddenly in 1952. But in the midst of their grief the arrival of a stranger in the village on the very same day goes almost unnoticed as the villagers have their own concerns... Farmers daughter Val needs to find a home before she can marry her sweetheart; Hilary is struggling to come to terms with her new responsibilities & Stella is still getting to know the sister she thought she had lost during the war. While the children at the village school are as lively & inquisitive as ever there are still conflicts & feuds amongst the long-standing residents of Burracombe. Then a search for a family draws the whole village together & more than one person is led to question their own ideas about families & what they mean. ...

Jesse Stone is an ex LA cop who has taken the job of police chief in Paradise Massachusetts. His drinking & his damaged relationship with his wife define him as much as his supreme skill at policing his patch. When Crow an Apache hitman turns up in Jesse Stones office he is intrigued & very much on his guard. Ten years before Crow was part of a gang that had taken a woman in the town hostage when a bank raid went wrong. The hostages were released unharmed thanks to Crows moral view that you didnt kill women but he also got away with enough money not to have to work again. So why is Crow back in town? Why has he come to see Jesse? & why has he taken a job of kidnapping a young girl & her mother? All questions to which Jesse has to find answers as things start to go badly wrong in Paradise. ...