' Here we drink three cups of tea to do business; the first you are a stranger the second you become a friend & the third you join our family & for our family we are prepared to do anything
- even die'
- Haji Ali Korphe Village Chief Karakoram mountains Pakistan. In 1993 after a terrifying & disastrous attempt to climb K2 a mountaineer called Greg Mortenson drifted cold & dehydrated into an impoverished Pakistan village in the Karakoram Mountains. Moved by the inhabitants' kindness he promised to return & build a school. Three Cups of Tea" is the story of that promise & its extraordinary outcome. Over the next decade Mortenson built not just one but fifty-five schools
- especially for girls
- in remote villages across the forbidding & breathtaking landscape of Pakistan & Afghanistan just as the Taliban rose to power. His story is at once a riveting adventure & a testament to the power of the humanitarian spirit."



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The classic plays of the quintessential Dublin playwright Three early plays by Sean OCasey--arguably his three greatest--demonstrate vividly OCaseys ability to convey the reality of life & the depth of human emotion specifically in Dublin before & during the Irish civil war of 1922-23 but truly throughout the known universe. In mirroring the lives of the Dublin poor from the tenement dwellers in The Shadow of a Gunman" & " Juno & the Paycock" to the bricklayer street vendor & charwoman in " The Plough & the Stars " Sean OCasey conveys with urgency & eloquence the tiny details that create a total character as well as the terrors large & small that the constant threat of political violence inevitably brings. As Seamus Heaney has written "OCaseys characters are both down to earth & larger than life... His democratic genius was at one with his tragic understanding & his recoil from tyranny & his compassion for the oppressed were an essential--as opposed to a moral & thematic--part of his art." A new production of " Juno & the Paycock" will transfer from the Donmar Theatre in London to New York in September 2000." ...

Thomas More: Utopia/ Francis Bacon: New Atlantis/ Henry Neville: The Isle of Pines With the publication of Utopia (1516) Thomas More introduced into the English language not only a new word but a new way of thinking about the gulf between what ought to be & what is. His Utopia is at once a scathing analysis of the shortcomings of his own society a realistic suggestion for an alternative mode of social organization & a satire on unrealistic idealism. Enormously influential it remains a challenging as well as a playful text. This edition reprints Ralph Robinsons 1556 translation from Mores original Latin together with letters & illustrations that accompanied early editions of Utopia. Utopia was only one of many early modern treatments of other worlds. This edition also

Includes:: two other hitherto less accessible utopian narratives. New Atlantis (1627) offers a fictional illustration of Francis Bacons visionary ideal of the role that science should play in the modern society. Henry Nevilles The Isle of Pines (1668) a precursor of Defoes Robinson Crusoe engages with some of the sexual racial & colonialist anxieties of the end of the early modern period. Together these texts illustrate the diversity of the early modern utopian imagination as well as the different purposes to which it could be put. 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.

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The Three Emperors" by Miranda Carter is the juicy funny story of the three dysfunctional rulers of Germany Russia & Great Britain at the turn of the last century combined with a study of the larger forces around them. Three cousins. Three Emperors. & the road to ruin. As cousins George V Kaiser Wilhelm II & the last Tsar Nicholas II should have been friends
- but they happened also to rule Europes three most powerful states. This potent combination together with their own destructive personalities
- petty insecure bullying absurdly obsessive (stamp collecting uniforms)
- led not only to their own dramatic fallouts & falls from grace but also to the outbreak of the First World War. Miranda Carters riveting account of how three men who should have known better helped bring down an entire world is a gripping story of abdication betrayal & murder. " Fascinating. A wonderfully fresh & beautifully choreographed work of history". (" Mail on Sunday"). " Miranda Carters story is full of vivid"ations...a romp though the palaces of Europe in their last decades before Armageddon". (" Sunday Times"). " Fascinating. Carter is a gifted storyteller & has written a very readable account". (" Independent"). " That these three absurd men could ever have held the fate of Europe in their hands is a fact as hilarious as it is terrifying. I havent enjoyed a historical biography this much since Lytton Stracheys Victoria". (Zadie Smith). Miranda Carters first book " Anthony Blunt: His Lives" won the Royal Society of Literature Award & the Orwell Prize & was shortlisted for the Whitbread Biography Prize the Guardian First Book Award the Duff Cooper Prize & the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. The book was named as one of the " New York Times" Book Reviews seven best books of 2002. Miranda lives in London with her husband & two sons."


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Nora Roberts
- the Worlds Greatest Storyteller Irish siblings Malachi Gideon & Rebecca Sullivan are on a mission. A precious family
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The fountain was not working. Nothing unusual in that... Marcus Didius Falco & his laddish friend Petronius find their local fountain has been blocked- by a gruesomely severed human h&. Soon other body parts are being found in the aqueducts & sewers. Public panic overcomes official indifference & the Aventine partners are commissioned to investigate. Women are bing abducted during festivals with the next Games only days away. As the heat rises in the Circus Maximus they face a race agaisnt time & a strong test of their friendship. They know the sadistic killer lurks somewhere on the festive streets of Rome- perparing to strike again. ...

As heard on BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week. ' There is always in our minds the hope that we may find again those golden unhastening days & wake up & dream' In this beautifully nostalgic memoir eminent author Angela Thirkell recalls in rich detail the three houses in which she grew up. Focusing first on ' The Grange' where her grandfather the celebrated painter Sir Edward Burne-Jones set the cultivated tone Thirkell also reminisces about her parents' home in Kensington Square & the Burne-Jones' seaside retreat where Angela's cousin Rudyard Kipling lived across the green. A tale of forbidden explorations Punch & Judy shows & adventures in the garden Three Houses is beautifully evocative of the innocent quality of childhood. From the busy literary centre of London to the English coast this stunning memoir is both reminiscent of the golden days of youth & an interesting vision of a writer & the early influences that informed her later work. ...

A major achievement". (Ronald Blythe author of Akenfield). A Cotswold vicarage. A former girls' boarding school in Surrey. A Jacobean house now buried in inner London. Three Houses Many Lives tells the stories not only of the houses themselves but of the lives of the many people who lived in them. From Eugenia Stanhope who sold Lord Chesterfield's scandalous letters to the autocratic vicar who held the same parish from age 28 to 82 from the just-literate wife of a parish clerk who wrote riddles in his registers to the cow-keeper who farmed 226 acres in Hornsey till he sold them profitably when the railways came through. Gillian Tindall is a master of miniaturist history making a particular place person or situation stand for a much larger picture." ...

Only since Victorian times has it been standard practice for mothers & fathers to send their babies to sleep alone away from the parental bed
- often in another room. This book reveals how babies who sleep with their parents benefit by getting virtually a full nights sleep. The author explains the advantages of this radical form of baby care including its benefits for breastfeeding mothers reviews the history of babies in the bed & through interviews with parents explores attitudes to the idea. The book also contains a fresh perspective on the tragedy of cot death as well as practical advice on how to sustain your sex life hints on safety in the bed answers to all the common objections & dealing with the moment when the baby leaves its parents bed.
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In this part historical part biographical volume eminent author Byron Rogers looks back over his life as a Welshman. He divides his memories into a series of three journeys taking in the experience of growing up in & leaving Wales. The first is into the old Welsh-speaking countryside of which his family were briefly a part of the second is their move from Bancyfelin to Carmarthen into an English-speaking part of the town where he was raised & the third is moving from Wales
- to Oxford & later Fleet Street
- & into the Welsh past which exile prompted. Part personal reminiscence part picture gallery part gazetteer Three Journeys sees Byron Rogers explore Wales past prompted by his own personal journeys.

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