Just over a decade into the new millennium America is beset by a sense of crisis. The seismic shifts that occurred in the space of a generation have created a country of winners & losers leaving the social contract in pieces. In The Unwinding" George Packer narrates the story of America over the past three decades bringing to the task his empathy with people facing difficult challenges his sharp eye for detail & a gift for weaving together engaging narratives. " The Unwinding" moves deftly back & forth through the lives of half a dozen characters including Dean Price the son of tobacco farmers who becomes an evangelist for a new economy in the rural South; Tammy Thomas a factory worker in the industrial Midwest trying to survive the collapse of her city; Jeff Connaughton a Washington careerist; & Peter Thiel a Silicon Valley billionaire. The narrative alternates these intimately told stories with biographical sketches of the era's leading public figures from Oprah Winfrey to Steve Jobs capturing the year-by-year flow of events. " The Unwinding" portrays a superpower coming apart at the seams its elites & institutions no longer working leaving ordinary people to improvise their own schemes for salvation." ...

In this much-anticipated sequel to the internationally best-selling picture book Lost & Found we revisit the boy & the penguin after their trip to the South Pole... The boy & the penguin still enjoy spending all their time together... That is until the penguin starts to dream of flying ignoring the boys advice that it is impossible. Running away the penguin visits place after place searching for a chance to get his feet off the ground. But will flying be everything he had hoped? & is the boy missing him as much as he is missing the boy? A heart-warming story about friendship love & reaching for your dreams from highly-regarded multi-award-winning author-illustrator Oliver Jeffers. ...

From the Sunday Times" bestselling author Gervase Phinn comes a fourth book of reminiscences about life as a Yorkshire Dales school inspector that will continue to delight & charm fans across the globe. Life for the Gervase Phinn is about to become not unlike the rambling hills of the Dales themselves
- up & down & all over the place. After a routine school inspection
- & a rather brutal report
- culminates with a teacher being forced into early retirement Gervase is left feeling his year hasnt exactly begun on the right foot. Then the news that his local school is closing down the accidental demolishment of an historical church (disguised as a disused barn in his backyard) & an injured knee which puts him into hospital. & still Gervase manages to gallantly retain his sense of humour throughout making this a delightful charming & thoroughly entertaining read."


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Country houses were reliant on an intricate hierarchy of servants each of whom provided an essential skill. Up & Down Stairs brings to life this hierarchy & shows how large numbers of people lived together under strict segregation & how sometimes this segregation was broken as with the famous marriage of a squire to his dairymaid at Uppark. Jeremy Musson captures the voices of the servants who ran these vast houses & made them work. From unpublished memoirs to letters wages newspaper articles he pieces together their daily lives from the Middle Ages through to the twentieth century. The story of domestic servants is inseparable from the story of the country house as an icon of power civilisation & luxury. This is particularly true with the great estates such as Chatsworth Hatfield Burghley & Wilton. Jeremy Musson looks at how these grand houses were for centuries admired & imitated around the world. ...

Mike Pannett once of the Metropolitan Police is back in Yorkshire policing one of the largest rural beats in Engl&. Mike is called to investigate a series of burglaries which are sending shock waves through the area. Remote farmhouses appear to be the targets which stretches Mike's small team to the limits. Then as winter sets in two dogs are found running loose
- Mike fears the owner has gone missing in the dreadful weather & is forced to call on a full-scale search. Throw in a night-time operation in an empty museum & the harrowing business of taking three children into care against their mother's wishes & it's quite a case-load for the author of Now Then Lad You're Coming With Me Lad Not On My Patch Lad & Just the Job Lad.
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Bailey Wingates scheming adult stepchildren are surprised when their fathers will leaves Bailey in control of their fortune & war ensues. A year later while flying from Seattle to Denver in a small plane Bailey nearly dies herself when the engine sputters
- & then fails. Cam Justice her sexy Texan pilot manages to crash-land the aircraft. Stranded in the wilderness & struggling to douse her feelings for the ruggedly handsome man by her side Bailey begins to wonder whether this was a mere accident. Who tampered with their plane? Whos trying to reunite Bailey & her husband in the afterlife? Cut off from the world & with little hope of rescue Bailey must trust her life-and heart-to Cam as they battle the harsh elements to find a way out of the unforgiving wilds & back to civilization.. .where a killer may be waiting to finish the job.
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Having taken to the lifestyle of a middle-aged civilian the last thing Paul Brenner wanted to do was return to work for the Army's Criminal Investigation Division the agency that thanked him for years of life-risking service by forcing him into early retirement. But when an old friend calls in a career's worth of favours Paul finds himself moonlighting for the Army as he investigates a puzzling murder that took place thirty years before in the midst of the Vietnam war. Forced to return to the country that haunts him & work for the people who cast him aside Paul must engage in the battle of his life as he attempts to find justice in a world of staggering corruption. ...

Elderly Daisy cant keep up with Arthur any more & then one day she wakes up to find herself in heaven! How marvellous
- now she
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New York 1961: the dawn of the commercial Jet Age & a golden era of air travel. Betty Riegel spent her early childhood hiding in air-raid shelters as bombs dropped all around. From humble working-class roots growing up with a mother who struggled to make ends meet & a father away at war she had always dreamed of bigger things. After responding to an advert in the local newspaper she secured herself an interview for the Pan Am training programme & at just 22-years-old was selected from thousands of eager young British women to begin a career that would change the course of her life. Betty said goodbye to everything she knew & boarded a plane to New York a city full of noise towering skyscrapers & promise. Under the watchful eye of her 'housemother' Dottie Betty mastered the art of being the perfect Pan Am stewardess; everything from faultless etiquette geography & safety to seamless make-up application how to charm influential passengers & preparing five-course Parisian cuisine at 37 000 feet. But no amount of training could have prepared her for the rollercoaster of life in the air. Up in the Air charts the gruelling yet fabulous life aboard the most iconic airline there has ever been & how a young woman from Essex opened her eyes to the world & lived her dream. ...

The master of a journalistic style long vanished
- urbane lucid courteous...A masterpiece of observation & storytelling".
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