Alice has just returned to London from months of travelling abroad. She is late to hear the news that her father is dying & arrives at the family home only just in time to say goodbye. Daniel hasnt had a roof over his head for years but to him the city of London feels like home in a way that no bricks & mortar ever did. He spends every day searching for his daughter; the daughter he has never met. Until now.. . Heart-wrenching & life-affirming this is a unique story of love lost & found of rootlessness & homecoming & the power of the ties that bind. It is a story for fathers & daughters everywhere. ...

I dont know how old I was when I watched my mothers murder nor do I know how old I am today. The illegitimate daughter of a peasant & an American GI Elizabeth Kim spent her early years as a social outcast in her village in the Korean countryside. Ostracized by their family & neighbours she & her mother were regularly pelted with stones on their way home from the rice fields. Yet there was a tranquil happiness in the intense bond between mother & daughter until the day that Elizabeths grandfather & uncle came to punish her mother from the dishonour she had brought on the family & executed her in front of her daughter. Elizabeth was dumped in an orphanage in Seoul. After some time she was lucky enough to be adopted by an American couple. But when she arrived in America she found herself once again surrounded by fanaticism & prejudice. Elizabeths mother had always told her that life was made up of ten thousand joys as well as ten thousand sorrows & supported by her loving daughter & by a return to her Buddhist faith she finally found a way to savour those joys as well as the courage to exorcise the demons of her past. ...

A vivid gripping novel about corruption integrity & good intentions gone wrong set in an African country on the brink of civil war for fans of John le Carre Graham Greene & William Boyd. As Ed & Sarah Caines plane passes over the Ngozi hills & begins its descent into Kisuru Sarah is dazzled by the purity of unspoiled nature the perfect environment in which to raise their son. Ed meanwhile as Director of the Global Justice Alliance for East Africa looks forward to rolling up his sleeves & making a real difference in a country that seems to be developing fast. Below them in the sprawling Makera slum Stephen Odinga
- who has to find a way of making more money for his dying mother than they can earn through the family business selling fried bananas
- decides to try a more lucrative line of business. Meanwhile Joseph Kamunda a senior official in a government that for five years has been failing to deliver on its promise to end political corruption is feeling isolated & exposed while others around him covertly seek personal advantage out of International Aid programmes. & beyond the hills a rebel army seethes & waits poised to tip the country into civil war. Before he knows it the duplicity Ed thinks he has left behind in England will begin to infect his own family. Ten Weeks in Africa explores in urgent breathtaking prose the tensions between our ideals & our reality the deep rifts of cultural misunderstanding & the true cost of uninformed good intentions.

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' Yes it was be there or be square as clad in the slum chic of the hipster he issued the slang anthems of the zip age in the desperate esperanto of the bop. John Cooper Clarke: the name behind the hairstyle the words walk in the grooves hacking through the hi-fi paradise of true luxury.' Punk. Poet. Pioneer. The Bard of Salford's seminal collection is as scabrous wry & vivid now as it was when first published over 25 years ago. ' The godfather of British performance poetry' Daily Telegraph. ...

A controversial artist is found dead in her own art installation inside a riverside gallery with locked doors & windows
- the only
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This is the Penguin English Library Edition" of " The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" by Anne Bronte. ' She looked so like herself that I knew not how to bear it'. In this sensational hard-hitting & passionate tale of marital cruelty " The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" sees a mysterious tenant Helen Graham unmasked not as a 'wicked woman' as the local gossips would have it but as the estranged wife of a brutal alcoholic bully desperate to protect her son. Using her own experiences with her brother Branwell to depict the cruelty & debauchery from which Helen flees Anne Bronte wrote her masterpiece to reflect the fragile position of women in society & her belief in universal redemption but scandalized readers of the time. " The Penguin English Library" contains 100 editions of the best fiction in English from the eighteenth century & the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War." ...

Harper Collins is proud to present its range of best-loved essential classics. 'I see that a man cannot give himself up to drinking without being miserable one-half his days & mad the other.' When Helen flees from her alcoholic husband in order to protect her son she defies societal convention. Earning a living as an artist she becomes the mysterious tenant of Wildfell Hall as she hides herself away & uses her art to support her child. However the beautiful & reclusive young woman soon begins to stir up malicious gossip & speculation. Captivated & drawn to Helen Gilbert Markham becomes suspicious when he begins to hear these stories however it is only when he reads Helen's diary that he learns the full cruelty that her husband subjected her to in her previous life. Rejecting the societal norms surrounding marriage in Victorian Society Anne Bronte's novel said to be based on the experiences of her own brother Branwell shocked her readers at the time & still remains a scandalous read today. ...

The Penguin Classics" edition of Anne Bronte's " The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" her groundbreaking study of a woman's valiant struggle for independence from an abusive husband is edited with an introduction & notes by Stevie Davis. Gilbert Markham is deeply intrigued by Helen Graham a beautiful & secretive young woman who has moved into nearby Wildfell Hall with her young son. He is quick to offer Helen his friendship but when her reclusive behaviour becomes the subject of local gossip & speculation Gilbert begins to wonder whether his trust in her has been misplaced. It is only when she allows Gilbert to read her diary that the truth is revealed & the shocking details of the disastrous marriage she has left behind emerge. Told with great immediacy combined with wit & irony " The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" is a powerful depiction of a woman's fight for domestic independence & creative freedom. In her introduction Stevie Davies discusses " The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" as feminist testament inspired by Anne Bronte's experiences as a governess & by the death of her brother Branwell Bronte & examines the novel's language biblical references & narrative styles. Anne Bronte (1820-1849) youngest of the Bronte sisters was born at Thornton West Yorkshire. Her father was a curate & her mother died when she was a baby leaving five daughters & one son. After the death of her sisters Maria & Elizabeth from tuberculosis in 1825 the Bronte children were homeschooled & together they created fantasy worlds & kingdoms which they explored in writing. Anne worked as a governess between 1840 & 1845 after which she published " Agnes Grey" (1847) & " The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" (1848) under the pen-name Acton Bell. Anne Bronte died in 1849. If you enjoyed " The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" you might also like Edith Wharton's " The Age of Innocence" also available in " Penguin Classics"." ...

Each volume in the Collector's Library" series has a specially commissioned Afterword brief biography of the author & a further reading list. The Afterword for this edition of " The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" is by Kathryn White an established expert on the Bronte family & former Librarian of The Bronte Parsonage Museum at Haworth on the Yorkshire Moors." ...

When the mysterious & beautiful young widow Helen Graham becomes the new tenant at Wildfell Hall rumours immediately begin to swirl around her. As her neighbour Gilbert Markham comes to discover Helen has painful secrets buried in her past that even his love for her cannot easily overcome. ...