Agatha Christie revelled in the use of poison to kill off unfortunate victims in her books; indeed, she employed it more than any other murder method, with the poison itself often being a central part of the novel. Her choice of deadly substances was far from random
- the characteristics of each often provide vital clues to the discovery of the murderer. With gunshots or stabbings the cause of death is obvious, but this is not the case with poisons. How is it that some compounds prove so deadly, & in such tiny amounts? Christie`s extensive chemical knowledge provides the backdrop for A is for Arsenic, in which Kathryn Harkup investigates the poisons used by the murderer in fourteen classic Agatha Christie mysteries. It looks at why certain chemicals kill, how they interact with the body, the cases that may have inspired Christie, & the feasibility of obtaining, administering & detecting these poisons, both at the time the novel was written & today.A is for Arsenic is a celebration of the use of science by the undisputed Queen of Crime.
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Examining the popular heroes of Japanese films, comics, theatre & television, The Japanese Mirror looks at the dual status of women as both goddesses & she-devils, artificiality & transvestism, the role of the samurai & the gangster, & the modern father-figure as an object of ridicule. Both panoramic & intimate, A Japanese Mirror is a rich & surprising exploration of national identity. ...

` Whenever I find myself thinking in a brooding way, I must simply turn it off & think of something else. God forbid that I should become an eccentric.` Rachel Cameron is a shy, retiring schoolmistress, tethered to her overbearing invalid mother. Thirty-four & unmarried, she feels herself edging towards a lonely spinsterhood. But then she falls in love for the first time, & embarks upon an affair that will change her life in unforeseen ways. ...

A powerful, haunting, contemporary debut that steps seamlessly from the horrors of people-trafficking to the magic of African folklore, by an award-winning Ghanaian-British filmmaker. Sante was a baby when she was washed ashore in a sea-chest laden with treasure. It seems she is the sole survivor of the tragic sinking of a ship carrying migrants & refugees. Her people. Fourteen years on she`s a member of Mama Rose`s unique & dazzling circus. But, from their watery grave, the unquiet dead are calling Sante to avenge them: A bamboo flute. A golden bangle. A ripening mango which must not fall...if Sante is to tell their story & her own. Rich in the rhythms & colours of Africa & glittering circus days. Unflinching in its dark revelations about life. Yaba Badoe`s novel is beautiful & cruel & will linger long in the memory. ...

A powerful, haunting, contemporary debut that steps seamlessly from the horrors of people-trafficking to the magic of African folklore, by an award-winning Ghanaian-British filmmaker. Sante was a baby when she was washed ashore in a sea-chest laden with treasure. It seems she is the sole survivor of the tragic sinking of a ship carrying migrants & refugees. Her people. Fourteen years on she`s a member of Mama Rose`s unique & dazzling circus. But, from their watery grave, the unquiet dead are calling Sante to avenge them: A bamboo flute. A golden bangle. A ripening mango which must not fall..... . are these the missing pieces of the jigsaw which will tell Sante`s story? ...

Courland is an entity that no longer exists. With the Gulf of Riga to the north, the Baltic to the west & Lithuania at its southern border, & now part of modern Latvia, the region was occupied by Nazi Germany & returned to Soviet Russia after the war, remaining largely inaccessible until 1991. It is now a nowhere land of wide skies & forests, deserted beaches, ruined castles & ex-KGB prisons. For years Jean-Paul Kauffmann has been irresistibly drawn to this buffer between the Germanic & Slav worlds. His digressive travels at the wheel of a Skoda become an investigation into the whereabouts of a former lover, a search for an excavator of tombs, & a journey in the footsteps of Louis XVIII, for whom Courland was once a place of exile. ...

In 1997, Tony Blair won the biggest Labour victory in history to sweep the party to power & end eighteen years of Conservative government. He has been one of the most dynamic leaders of modern times; few British prime ministers have shaped the nation`s course as profoundly as Blair during his ten years in power, & his achievements & his legacy will be debated for years to come. Now his memoirs reveal in intimate detail this unique political & personal journey, providing an insight into the man, the politician & the statesman, & charting successes, controversies & disappointments with an extraordinary candour. ”A Journey” will prove essential & compulsive reading for anyone who wants to understand the complexities of our global world. As an account of the nature & uses of power, it will also have a readership that extends well beyond politics, to all those who want to understand the challenges of leadership today. ...

Immigration & the growing Latino population of the United States have become such contentious issues that it can be hard to have a civil conversation about how Latinoization is changing the face of America. So in the summer of 2007, Louis Mendoza set out to do just that. Starting from Santa Cruz, California, he bicycled 8, 500 miles around the entire perimeter of the country, talking to people in large cities & small towns about their experiences either as immigrants or as residents who have welcomed--or not--Latino immigrants into their communities. He presented their enlightening, sometimes surprising, firsthand accounts in Conversations Across Our America: Talking About Immigration & the Latinoization of the United States. Now, in A Journey Around Our America, Mendoza offers his own account of the visceral, emotional, intellectual, & spiritual

Dimensions of traveling the country in search of a deeper, broader understanding of what it means to be Latino in the United States in the twenty-first century. With a blend of first- & second-person narratives, blog entries, poetry, & excerpts from conversations he had along the way, Mendoza presents his own aspirations for & critique of social relations, political ruminations, personal experiences, & emotional vulnerability alongside the stories of people from all walks of life, including students, activists, manual laborers, & intellectuals. His conversations & his experiences as a Latino on the road reveal the multilayered complexity of Latino life today as no academic study or newspaper report ever could.

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”A Journey into Flaubert’s Normandy”, is a fascinating, lively, & informative book
- richly illustrated with 19th-century art,
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Shortlisted for the 2015 Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year. For the last ten years, journalist Jens Mühling has been traveling through Russia in search of stories that appear unbelievable: a hermit from the Taiga who only recently discovered there was a world beyond the woods; a mathematician who believes a thousand years of Russian history to be a fairy tale; a priest who ventures into the exclusion zone around Chernobyl to preach to those that stubbornly remain there. Mühling shows us a country whose customs, contradictions, absurdities, & attractions are still largely unknown beyond its borders. ...