In 1997 Andy Cave returned from the Himalayas having climbed the stupendous north face of Changabang but losing his friend & climbing partner in the process. Traumatized by the savage ordeal he must examine his relationship with the mountains that have defined his life so far. Will he have the courage to undertake such a challenge again? Does he want to? Thin White Line" charts his struggle towards finding an answer. It is as much a journey into the mind of an extreme mountaineer as it is into the wild landscapes through which he travels. In a nail biting narrative set in Patagonia Norway & Alaska Cave tackles the severest challenges modern Alpinism can pose. Juxtaposed with the stark beauty of the environment are the colourful characters populating his stories from the adventurers around him past & present to the pioneer aviators who get him & his kind to those impossibly remote places. He vividly recreates the joy & despair of climbing building the book to a desperate finale that lays bare the fragility of our carefully constructed convictions." ...

Thin Wire: A Mother's Journey Through her Daughter's Heroin Addiction is an honest & intimate account of heroin addiction told by both mother & daughter. Amber is introduced to drugs & becomes addicted without her mother's knowledge. She meets a dealer who feeds her habit. Whilst living together they are raided by the police. Bailed to her mother's address with a GBP200-a-day addiction Amber doesn't think her family will accept her back when they discover the truth. When she's charged by the police with dealing class A drugs & accepting stolen goods she fears she'll go to prison. Trying to feed her habit alone Amber meets a fellow addict who offers to introduce her to prostitution. The prospect terrifies her but will her mother help her? An unflinching story that looks at drug addiction from two different sides Thin Wire will appeal to a diverse range of readers in particular fans of autobiographies & memoirs & is remiscent of Melvin Burgess' Junk. The book's concluding section offers two sets of personal guidelines; one for addicts the other for parents or partners of addicts while the in-depth harrowing real life story vividly illustrates the difficulties of overcoming addiction. In a society where 50% of teenagers experiment with drugs Amber is every mother's child. She could be yours. ...

Having black button eyes a zig-zag mouth a stitched body the Thing
- he used to be Robbies best friend. Now hes his worst enemy...
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From the Orange Prize-winning author of ' Half of a Yellow Sun' come twelve dazzling stories that turn a penetrating eye on the ties that bind men & women parents & children Nigeria & the West. In 'A Private Experience' a medical student hides from a violent riot with a poor Muslim woman whose dignity & faith force her to confront the realities & fears she's been pushing away. In ' Tomorrow Is Too Far' a woman unlocks the devastating secret that surrounds her brother's death. The young mother at the centre of ' Imitation' finds her comfortable life threatened when she learns that her husband back in Lagos has moved his mistress into their home. & the title story depicts the choking loneliness of a Nigerian girl who moves to an America that turns out to be nothing like the country she expected; though falling in love brings her desires nearly within reach a death in her homeland forces her to re-examine them. Searing & profound suffused with beauty sorrow & longing this collection is a resounding confirmation of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's prodigious storytelling powers. ...

This book contains more weirdly creepy & unnerving tales to unsettle any reader. Lovecraft reinvented the horror genre in the twentieth century discarding ghosts & witches & instead envisioning mankind as a tiny outpost of dwindling sanity in a chaotic & malevolent universe. ...

Want to know what happened to unscrupulous tomb raiders if they were caught? How long it took to build the majestic pyramids? How embalmers removed the brain when making a gruesome mummy? Discover all these horrible facts & many many more in Top Ten Worst Things About Ancient Egypt a grim countdown all things terrible about life for the Ancient Egyptians. ...

Were the 70s & 80s all they were cracked up to be? Or have we never had it so good? Philip Glenister
- one of our best-loved actors
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Like bubonic plague & stone cladding no-one took Margaret Thatcher seriously until it was too late. Her first act as leader was to appear before the cameras & do a V for Victory sign the wrong way round. She was smiling & telling the British people to f*** off at the same time. It was something we would have to get used to.' Things Can Only Get Better is the personal account of a Labour supporter who survived eighteen miserable years of Conservative government. It is the heartbreaking & hilarious confessions of someone who has been actively involved in helping the Labour party lose elections at every level: school candidate: door-to-door canvasser: working for a Labour MP in the House of Commons; standing as a council candidate; & eventually writing jokes for a shadow cabinet minister. Along the way he slowly came to realise that Michael Foot would never be Prime Minister that vegetable quiche was not as tasty as chicken tikki masala & that the nuclear arms race was never going to be stopped by face painting alone. ...

This extraordinary book makes visible the inner complexity of some of the worlds most iconic products. Photographer Todd Mc Lellan disassembles mechanical relics such as the typewriter & modern gadgets such as the iPad before laying them out & photographing them in meticulously detailed arrangements or capturing them in an exploded form the individual pieces frozen in mid-air. Essays by people who work within the world of disassembly & restoration accompany each chapter. ...

A compelling story of one man's battle to protect his community against the forces of change the Penguin Classics edition of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart is introduced by Biyi Bandele. Okonkwo is the greatest wrestler & warrior alive & his fame spreads throughout West Africa like a bush-fire. But when he accidentally kills a clansman things begin to fall apart. Then Okonkwo returns from exile to find missionaries & colonial governors have arrived in the village. With his world thrown radically off-balance he can only hurtle towards tragedy. First published in 1958 Chinua Achebe's stark coolly ironic novel reshaped both African & world literature & has sold over ten million copies in forty-five languages. This arresting parable of a proud but powerless man witnessing the ruin of his people begins Achebe's landmark trilogy of works chronicling the fate of one African community continued in Arrow of God & No Longer at Ease. Chinua Achebe (b. 1930) was raised in the large village of Ogidi in Eastern Nigeria & graduated from University College Ibadan. The author of more than twenty books
- novels short stories essays & collections of poetry
- Achebe received numerous honours from around the world including honourary doctorates from more than thirty colleges & universities. He was also the recipient of Nigeria's highest award for intellectual achievement the Nigerian National Merit Award. In 2007 he won the Man Booker International Prize for Fiction. He died in 2013. If you enjoyed Things Fall Apart you might like Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness also available in Penguin Classics. A great book that bespeaks a great brave kind human spirit". (John Updike). " His courage & generosity are made manifest in the work". (Toni Morrison). " The writer in whose company the prison walls fell down". (Nelson Mandela)."

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