This handbook offers an inspirational resource for those who want to discover more about the thousands of miles of Scotland`s spectacular coastline
- from its stunning geology & diverse marine & bird life to its coastal culture, with its fishing ports, fresh cuisine, arts communities, ancient monuments & colourful local traditions. Featuring achingly beautiful pristine coves & beaches, quirky highlights of island life & sites for exploring our history or spotting wildlife, this handbook is for beachcombers, rockpoolers, wild swimmers, birdwatchers, hikers, history buffs, sailors, walkers, dreamers...
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The Essential Guide to Scottish History. Scotland has more history than you can shake a spurtle at, or a shinty stick, or a sporran
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Updated edition. This concise yet comprehensive handbook, compiled with the expertise of Reforesting Scotland`s editors, covers trees commonly found in Scotl&. From seed provenance & propagation to the history & lore of each species, this single source contains all the information you need to select the right trees for your site & grow them successfully. Whether you are an owner of (or volunteer at) a small woodl&, a gardener looking to incorporate the most appropriate trees into your space, or simply a lover of woodland walks & trees, this invaluable reference will be your one essential guide. ...

Taking its title from T S Eliot`s modernist poem The Waste L&, Evelyn Waugh`s A Handful of Dust is a chronicle of Britain`s decadence & social disintegration between the First & Second World Wars. This Penguin Modern Classics edition is edited with an introduction & notes by Robert Murray Davis. After seven years of marriage, the beautiful Lady Brenda Last is bored with life at Hetton Abbey, the Gothic mansion that is the pride & joy of her husb&, Tony. She drifts into an affair with the shallow socialite John Beaver & forsakes Tony for the Belgravia set. Brilliantly combining tragedy, comedy & savage irony, A Handful of Dust captures the irresponsible mood of the `crazy & sterile generation` between the wars. This breakdown of the Last marriage is a painful, comic re-working of Waugh`s own divorce, & a symbol of the disintegration of society. If you enjouyed A Handful of Dust, you might like Waugh`s Vile Bodies, also available in Penguin Modern Classics. ” One of the twentieth century`s most chilling & bitter novels; & one of its best.” (Nicholas Lezard, Guardian). ” One of the most distinguished novels of the century.” (Frank Kermode).” This is a masterpiece of stylish satire, & is funny, too...a marvellous book.” (John Banville, Irish Times). ...

Aiming to track down a small oasis town deep in the Sahara, some of whose generous inhabitants came to her rescue on a black day in her adolescence, Annie Hawes leaves her home in the olive groves of Italy & sets off along the south coast of the Mediterranean. Travelling through Morocco & Algeria she eats pigeon pie with a family of cannabis farmers, & learns about the habits of djinns; she encounters citizens whose protest against the tyrannical King Hassan takes the form of attaching colanders to their television aerials
- a practice he soon outlaws
- & comes across a stone-age method of making olive-oil, still going strong. She allows a ten-year-old to lead her into the fundamentalist strongholds of the suburbs of Algiers
- where she makes a good friend. Plunging southwards, regardless, into the desert, she at last shares a lunch of salt-cured Saharan haggis with her old friends, in a green & pleasant palm grove perfumed by flowering henna: once, it seems, the favourite scent of the Prophet Mohammed. She discovers at journey`s end that life in a date-farming oasis, haunting though its songs may be, is not so simple & uncomplicated as she has imagined. Annie Hawes has legions of fans. Her writing has the well-built flow of fiction & the self-effacing honesty of a journal.


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We seeo you. Now we are you. No real witch would casually step out of their body, leaving it empty. Tiffany Aching does. & there`s something just waiting for a handy body to take over. Something ancient & horrible, which can`t die. To deal with it, Tiffany has to go to the very heart of what makes her a witch...” Fantastically inventive.” (Sunday Times). ...

A Haunting Place explores both mysterious & ghostly encounters in locations around the world. Glen Williams talks to the people who swear they have been visited by the dead; he visits the places of these confrontations with the supernatural to uncover the story of the `ghosts` & the people & places they haunt. He interviews teams of ghost busters using technology to solve the mystery of ghosts & talks to film makers who can`t leave the theme of hauntings alone. The author visits houses, hotels, schools, castles, hospitals, cellars, sheds, stables & all manner of buildings
- ghostly apparitions run rampant in the seemingly normal everyday. Eerie locations such as old mills, windswept quarantine stations, run-down & abandoned mental hospitals, derelict pubs, lonely roads & empty houses reveal their terrifying secrets. Why is it that people are so fascinated with the unknown? The mysterious? The supernatural? Our captivation With the paranormal & the unexplained is never ending. The thought of ghosts floating about within our existence arouses fear, a sense of wonder & the longing for logical explanations that never quite make sense.A 2005 Gallup survey revealed three out of four Americans profess at least one paranormal belief. The most popular belief is extrasensory perception (ESP) mentioned by 41%, followed closely by belief in haunted houses (37%) & that ghosts/spirits of dead people can come back in certain places/ situations (32%). Supernatural ideology exists in many different cultures & a belief in ghosts is one of the most common; this, in part, relates to a belief, or hope in the afterlife, a tenet of most major religions.
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”A Heart so White” is the breathtaking international bestseller & IMPAC Award-winning masterpiece by Javier Marias, whose highly-anticipated new novel ” The Infatuations” is published in 2013. This Penguin Modern Classics edition features a new Introduction by Jonathan Coe. ”A Heart so White” begins as, In the middle of a family lunch Teresa, just married, goes to the bathroom, unbuttons her blouse & shoots herself in the heart. What made her kill herself immediately after her honeymoon? Years later, this mystery fascinates the young newlywed Juan, whose father was married to Teresa before he married Juan`s mother. As Juan edges closer to the truth, he begins to question his own relationships, & whether he really wants to know what happened. Haunting & unsettling, ”A Heart So White” is a breathtaking portrayal of two generations, two marriages, the relentless power of the past & the terrible price of knowledge. ...

What happens when you reach the threshold of life & death
- & come back? As long as humans have lived on the planet, there have
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Jay Mc Inerney, internationally celebrated author of Bright Lights, Big City, turns his hand here to his lifelong love affair with wine. Peals of wisdom are offered on the subjects of the best wine for romantics, the parallels between Californian wines & floundering Hollywood stars, the choice of wine for the author`s own debauched forty-eighth birthday party, the `high-testosterone grape` that is Colin Farrell, absinthe, `the wild green fairy`, & what wine is best drunk with chocolate. At the same time Mc Inerney is a genuine connoisseur, taking the reader on a tour through the wine regions of the world & imparting tried & tested advice on grapes & vintages, bouquets, noses & finishes. ...