Jim Francis has finally found the perfect life
- & is now unrecognisable, even to himself. A successful painter & sculptor, he
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He had always been scared of flying. Now, the fear is real. A plane crash. The water is rising over his mouth. In his nostrils. Lungs. As Daniel gasps, he swallows; & punches at his seat-belt. Nancy, the woman he loves, is trapped in her seat. He clambers over her, pushing her face into the headrest. It is a reflex, visceral action made without rational thought... But Daniel Kennedy did it. & already we have judged him from the comfort of our own lives. Almost a hundred years earlier, Daniel`s great-grandfather goes over the top at Passchendaele. A shell explodes, & he wakes up alone & lost in the hell of no-man`s-l&. Where are the others? Has he been left behind? & if he doesn`t find his unit, is he a deserter? Love; cowardice; trust; forgiveness. How will any of us behave when we are pushed to extremes? ...

The digital age. An age of isolation, warped communication, disintegrating community. Where unfiltered & unregulated information pours relentlessly into our lives, destroying what it means to be human. Or an age of marvels. Where there is a world of wonder at our fingertips. Where we can communicate across the globe, learn in the blink of an eye, pull down the barriers that divide us & move forward together. Whatever your reaction to technological culture, the speed with which our world is changing is both mesmerising & challenging. In The Blind Giant, novelist & tech blogger Nick Harkaway draws together fascinating & disparate ideas to challenge the notion that digital culture is the source of all our modern ills, while at the same time showing where the dangers are real & suggesting how they can be combated. Ultimately, the choice is ours: engage with the machines that we have created, or risk creating a world which is designed for corporations & computers rather than people. This is an essential handbook for everyone trying to be human in a digital age. ...

A drug dealer is found battered to death in the outskirts of Oslo. A young Dutchman, walking aimlessly in central Oslo covered in blood, is taken into custody but refuses to talk. When he is informed that the woman who discovered the body, Karen Borg, is a lawyer, the young Dutchman demands her as his defender: he will speak to Karen Borg & to her alone. A couple of days later, Hansa Larsen, a lawyer of the shadiest kind is found shot to death. Very soon, police officers Hakon Sand & Hanne Wilhelmsen establish a link between the two killings. They also find a message in code hidden in the murdered lawyer's apartment. The reason why the young Dutchman insisted on having Karen Borg as a defender slowly dawns upon them: since she was the one to find & report the body, she is the only Oslo lawyer that cannot be implicated in this business. But the tentacles of this conspiracy reach much higher than a corrupt lawyer & a small-time dealer. There are political movers & shakers in the frame. Hanne must work against time to uncover the truth
- but she is in more danger than she knows. This is the first instalment in the Hanne Wilhelmsen series.
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` From the moment I watched a documentary of Chris Bonington & Tom Patey climb the perpendicular flanks of the Old Man of Hoy I knew that my life would not be complete until I had followed in their footholds. That was in 1983 when I was thirteen. Within months I was tackling my first crags & dreaming of standing atop Europe`s tallest sea stack with the Atlantic pounding 450 feet below. Those dreams went dark at nineteen when I learned I was going blind. I hung up my harness for twenty years & tried to ignore the twinge of desire I felt every time The Old Man appeared on TV.` Middle aged, by now a family man, crime novelist & occasional radio personality, Red Szell`s life nonetheless felt incomplete. He was still climbing, but only indoors until he shared his old, unforgotten, dream with his buddies, Matthew & Andres, & it became obvious that an attempt had to be made. With the help of mountain guides Martin Moran & Nick Carter, & adventure cameraman Keith Partridge, supported by family & an ever growing following, Red set out to confront the Orcadian giant. ...

Originally written in Persian, The Blind Owl is predominantly a love story, an unconventional love story that elicits visions & nightmare reveries from the depths of the reader`s subconscious. A young man, an old man & a beautiful young girl perform, as if framed within a Persian miniature, a ritual of destruction as gradually the narrator, & the reader, discover the meaning hidden within the dreams. This unforgettable story contains a unique blend of the mystery of the Arabian Nights & an acutely contemporary sense of panic & hallucination. ...

From the author of ” The God Delusion”, Richard Dawkins` ” The Blind Watchmaker” has been acclaimed as the most influential work on evolution in the last hundred years. In 1802 the Rev. William Paleys argued in ” Natural Theology” that just as finding a watch would lead you to conclude that a watchmaker must exist, the complexity of living organisms proves that a Creator exists. Not so, says Richard Dawkins, & in this brilliant & controversial book, the acclaimed evolutionary biologist sets out to demonstrate that the theory of evolution by natural selection
- the unconscious, automatic, blind yet essentially non-random process discovered by Charles Darwin
- is the only answer to the biggest question of all: why do we exist? `I want to persuade the reader, not just that the Darwinian world-view happens to be true, but that it is the only known theory that could, in principle, solve the mystery of our existence`. To Dawkins, ” The Blind Watchmaker” is nature itself, gradually forming order from the very building-blocks of life: DNA. ” This might just be the most important evolution book since Darwin”. (John Gribbin). ” Richard Dawkins has updated evolution.. .his subject is nothing less than the meaning of life”. (” The Times”). ” Enchantingly witty & persusive.. .pleasurably intelligible to the scientifically illiterate”. (” Observer”). Richard Dawkins is a Fellow of both the Royal Society & the Royal Society of Literature, & Vice President of the British Humanist Association. He was first catapulted to fame with The Selfish Gene, which he followed with a string of bestselling books: ” The Extended Phenotype”, ” The Blind Watchmaker”, ” River Out of Eden”, ” Unweaving the Rainbow”, & an impassioned defence of atheism, ” The God Delusion”.

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Long before the momentous Iranian Revolution of 1979, which placed the country under strict religious rule, Shusha Guppy grew up in a Persia delicately balanced between traditional Islamic society & the transforming forces of westernisation. In this eloquent memoir, she recreates the lost world of her childhood before the oil boom & the eventual overthrow of the Shah. Her magical tales about relatives & friends, music & drama, religious holidays & celebrations are interwoven with myth & legend, poetry & anecdote & provide a rare & optimistic portrayal of Iran. This is an enlightening & moving testimony of a vanished world: a story as vibrant as Iran itself. ...

The second novel from the author of the Baileys Prize-winning The Glorious Heresies Like all twenty-year-olds, Ryan Cusack is trying to get his head around who he is. This is not a good time for his boss to exploit his dual heritage by opening a new black market route from Italy to Irel&. It is certainly not a good time for his adored girlfriend to decide he`s irreparably corrupted. & he really wishes he hadn`t accidentally caught the eye of an ornery grandmother who fancies herself his saviour. There may be a way clear of the chaos in the business proposals of music promoter Colm & in the attention of the charming, impulsive Natalie. But now that his boss`s ambitions have rattled the city, Ryan is about to find out what he`s made from, & it might be that chaos is in his blood. ...

Though the Greek & Roman crew members of the Argo II have made progress in their many quests, they still seem no closer to defeating the earth mother, Gaea. Her giants have risen
- all of them
- & they`re stronger than ever. The gods, still suffering from multiple personality disorder, are useless. How can a handful of young demigods hope to persevere against Gaea`s army of powerful giants? As dangerous as it is to head to Athens, they have no other option. They have sacrificed too much already. & if Gaea wakes, it is game over...

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