This collection of historic horrid happenings from across the country demonstrates that Christmas is not necessarily a time of peace, joy & goodwill to all men. Festive tragedies include the avalanche in Lewes, which destroyed several cottages in 1836, killing eight of the occupants & injuring many more, & the fall of a chimney in Bradford in 1882, which claimed fifty-four lives. There are fatal rail crashes in Oxfordshire, Bedfordshire, Cheshire, Cumbria & Scotland; freak weather conditions & devastating fires, such as the Christmas Eve fire in Glasgow that cost the lives of four firemen in 1927. The holiday season has witnessed a plethora of almost unbelievable accidents, such as the amateur mechanic who died with his head stuck in a car engine, the footballer who leaped into a quarry to retrieve a lost ball, & the Christmas party guest who fell down a flight of stairs & broke his neck. Among the chilling crimes featured here is that of Nottinghamshire man Edward Kesteven, who killed his wife on Christmas Day 1894, & the murder of Thirza Kelly in Norfolk by a local teenager on Christmas Eve 1900. Full of merry madness & hearty heartache, A Horrid History of Christmas will make you want to bypass the festivities altogether! ...

Maggie wants a house with lots of light. I need one with character. & what we do have in common doesn`t help either
- we`re both
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The setting is a comedy club in a small Israeli town. An audience that has come expecting an evening of amusement instead sees a comedian falling apart on stage; an act of disintegration, a man crumbling, as a matter of choice, before their eyes. They could get up & leave, or boo & whistle & drive him from the stage, if they were not so drawn to glimpse his personal hell. Dovaleh G, a veteran st&-up comic
- charming, erratic, repellent
- exposes a wound he has been living with for years: a fateful & gruesome choice he had to make between the two people who were dearest to him.A Horse Walks into a Bar is a shocking & breathtaking read. Betrayals between lovers, the treachery of friends, guilt demanding redress. Flaying alive both himself & the people watching him, Dovaleh G provokes both revulsion & empathy from an audience that doesn`t know whether to laugh or cry
- & all this in the presence of a former childhood friend who is trying to understand why he`s been summoned to this performance.


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`A work of great comic power qualified with firm & unsentimental compassion.`
- Anthony Burgess A House for Mr Biswas is V. S.
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Born the `wrong way` & thrust into a world that greeted him with little more than a bad omen, Mohun Biswas has spent his forty-six years of life striving for independence. But his determined efforts have met only with calamity. Shuttled from one residence to another after the drowning of his father, for which he is inadvertently responsible, Mr Biswas yearns for a place he can call home. He marries into the domineering Tulsi family, on whom he becomes indignantly dependent, but rebels & takes on a succession of occupations in an arduous struggle to weaken their hold over him & purchase a house of his own. Heartrending & darkly comic, A House for Mr Biswas has been hailed as one of the twentieth century`s finest novels & this triumph of resilience, persistence & dignity masterfully evokes a man`s quest for autonomy against the backdrop of post-colonial Trinidad. ...

When Suzanna Clarke & her husband bought a dilapidated house in the Moroccan town of Fez, their friends thought they were mad. Located in a maze of donkey-trod alleyways, the house
- a traditional riad
- was beautiful but in desperate need of repair. Walls were in danger of collapse, the plumbing non-existent. While neither Suzanna nor her husband spoke Arabic, & had only a smattering of French, they were determined to restore the building to its original splendour, using only traditional craftsmen & handmade materials. But they soon found that trying to do business in Fez was like being transported back several centuries in time & so began the remarkable experience that veered between frustration, hilarity & moments of pure exhilaration. But restoring the riad was only part of their immersion in the rich & colourful life of this ancient city.”A House in Fez” is a journey into Moroccan culture, revealing its day-to-day rhythms, its customs & festivals; its history, Islam, & Sufi rituals; the lore of djinns & spirits; the vibrant life-filled market places & the irresistible Moroccan cuisine. And above all, into the lives of the people
- warm, friendly, & hospitable. Beautifully descriptive & infused with an extraordinary sense of place, this is a compelling account of one couple`s adventures in ancient Morocco.


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Near Mount Etna in Sicily lies Casa Cuseni, a beautiful house built in golden stone
- & the home which Daphne Phelps was astonished
...

An intimate portrait of Stephen Spender`s extraordinary life written by Matthew Spender, shifting between memoir & biography, with new insights drawn from personal recollections & his father`s copious unpublished archives. Stephen Spender`s life is a vivid snapshot of the twentieth century. Making friends with Auden & Isherwood while at Oxford, together they enjoyed adventures in Europe, becoming early opponents of the rise of fascism. Whilst pioneering modern poetry, Stephen later produced propaganda for the war effort
- establishing an enduring reputation for mysterious activity. Despite marrying Natasha Litvin, an ambitious young concert pianist, Stephen was often entangled with young men & never able to reveal his secrets, leaving her to introspective questions, as the artistic world of London circled them. In this elegant memoir, his son Matthew offers an intimate portrait of a father, a marriage & an extraordinary life.
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I was warned by all those who knew me that to take on a project like this was madness.` At the peak of her fast-paced career, presenter & interviewer Selina Scott bought a house in the Tramuntana hills of Mallorca. It was a dilapidated old farmhouse without even mains electricity or water, but she had fallen in love with the beauty & peace of the surroundings, & the promise of an escape from her high-pressured job & unwelcome tabloid attention. Selina begins to settle into Mediterranean life & spends time renovating the house. However, she soon realises that making the old house her home is going to be more difficult than she thought. From the unwelcome wildlife that insists on sharing her house, to dubious building work, locals both friendly & hostile, & a forest fire that threatens the whole valley, Selina`s new life is full of unexpected challenges. In this funny, elegantly written account of her Spanish years Selina tells us about the house that captured her heart, the neighbours that became friends, & those that didn`t, the hills & wildlife that enchanted her, the building work that nearly broke her &, crucially, the dog that found her, & changed every single one of her best laid plans! An uplifting story of escape, change & friendship. `A terrific read, beautifully written` Richard Madeley. ...

A House in the Sky is the dramatic & redemptive memoir of Amanda Lindhout, a woman whose curiosity led her to the world`s most beautiful & remote places, its most imperiled & perilous countries, & then into fifteen months of harrowing captivity
- an exquisitely written story of courage, resilience, & grace. As a child, Amanda Lindhout escaped a violent household by paging through issues of National Geographic & imagining herself in its exotic locales. At the age of nineteen, working as a cocktail waitress, she began saving her tips so she could travel the globe. Aspiring to understand the world & live a significant life, she backpacked through Latin America, Laos, Bangladesh, & India, & emboldened by each adventure, went on to Sudan, Syria, & Pakistan. In war-ridden Afghanistan & Iraq she carved out a fledgling career as a television reporter. & then, in August 2008, she traveled to Somalia
- ”the most dangerous place on earth.” On her fourth day, she was abducted by a group of masked men along a dusty road. Held hostage for 460 days, Amanda converts to Islam as a survival tactic, receives ”wife lessons” from one of her captors, & risks a daring escape. Moved between a series of abandoned houses in the desert, she survives on memory
- every lush detail of the world she experienced in her life before captivity
- & on strategy, fortitude, & hope. When she is most desperate, she visits a house in the sky, high above the woman kept in chains, in the dark, being tortured. Vivid & suspenseful, as artfully written as the finest novel, A House in the Sky is the searingly intimate story of an intrepid young woman & her search for compassion in the face of unimaginable adversity. For fans of the award-winning blockbuster Captain Phillips & readers of Kate Mc Cann`s Madeleine, Natasha Kampusch`s 3, 096 Days & Greg Mortenson`s Three Cups of Tea. Amanda Lindhout is the founder of the Global Enrichment Foundation, a non-profit organization that supports development, aid & education initiatives in Somalia & Kenya. Sara Corbett is a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine. Her work has also appeared in National Geographic; Elle; Outside; O, the Oprah magazine; Esquire; & Mother Jones.



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