Built by the Ming emperor in the fifteenth century as the earthly reflection of the realm of the Jade Emperor
- whose court was
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The Forbidden City in Beijing is one of the greatest royal palaces in the world: & was the sacred centre of the Chinese empire. Despite political upheaval & social change in the rest of China, the life of rigid protocol & ritual in the Forbidden City remained unaltered, frozen in time, until the day when the modern world entered its long-closed gates & changed it for ever. This account is an insight into five centuries of Chinese history, from the beginnings of the palace in 1405 to its modern function as a museum. ...

To Luca Matthews the dangers of the high mountain peaks are the air upon which he thrives. In the ruthless pursuit of his goals he would sacrifice anything
- even another climber`s life. His friends & family know & fear it. So when he sights a virgin peak in the Himalayas that exists on no map, no one is surprised when he becomes obsessed with being the first to scale it. Together with his climbing partner, Bill Taylor, they set off into a region of Tibet highly restricted by the Chinese. But a freak accident puts one of their team in mortal danger & it is left to a local Tibetan girl to lead them to Geltang, a monastery that has been hidden from the outside world since the Chinese Cultural Revolution, when most of the monasteries were pillaged & burned. When the Chinese secret police get wind of them, Luca & Bill find themselves embroiled in an age-old struggle, not for their lives but to protect the precious secret that Geltang hides, & the legacy of Tibet itself.
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A cinematic epic as explosive, powerful, & unforgettable as The Wire. Everyone can be bought. At the right price... Detective Sergeant Denny Malone leads an elite unit to fight gangs, drugs & guns in New York. For eighteen years he`s been on the front lines, doing whatever it takes to survive in a city built by ambition & corruption, where no one is clean. What only a few know is that Denny Malone himself is dirty: he & his partners have stolen millions of dollars in drugs & cash. Now he`s caught in a trap & being squeezed by the FBI. He must walk a thin line of betrayal, while the city teeters on the brink of a racial conflagration that could destroy them all. Review: Praise for The Force: ` This stands out by a mile.. . fresher, faster, funnier & truer.. . bursting with life, lousy with death, it is because it tells the truth, in all its ugliness, that this novel is so exhilarating` Daily Telegraph ` Hard-hitting.. . one of the great works of fiction about the police.. . superbly chronicled` The Times ` There won`t be a better cop novel this year than The Force by Don Winslow. Not next year, or the year after that, either` Linwood Barclay ` Stephen King, James Ellroy & Lee Child see Don Winslow as one of their number, & he confirms his right to belong in this elite with The Force.. . a panoramic picture of a criminal justice system permeated by corruption, cronyism & lies` Sunday Times, Thriller of the Month ` Sprawling & visceral` Financial Times, Crime Books of the Year ` Breathtaking. Think of TV series The Sopranos.. . told in majestic prose.. . this is without question among the finest ever police novels` Daily Mail, Books of the Year `A brutal, gut-punching story` Independent, Books of the Year ` Almost Shakespearean` Spectator, Books of the Year ` Shocking & shockingly convincing.. . sinewy, flexible, raw & full of wit. This novel is as entertaining as the best crime fiction must be, but it is also moving` TLS ` Don Winslow`s magnificent novels have positioned him as the next big-hitter of crime writing.. . Gripping` Metro ` Intensely human in its tragic details, positively Shakespearian in its epic sweep
- probably the best cop novel ever written` Lee Child ` Mesmerizing, a triumph. Think The Godfather, only with cops. It`s that good` Stephen King ` Nobody understands the disaster of corruption better than Don Winslow. The Force exposes the dawning horror of how it eats into the best intentions` Val Mc Dermid, No.1 bestselling author of Out of Bounds `A stunner of a cop novel with dialogue, gritty New York setting & moral pincers all in the service of a devastating plot` New York Times, Crime Books of the Year Author Biography: Don Winslow is the author of nineteen acclaimed, award-winning, international bestsellers
- including the No. 1 international bestseller The Cartel, winner of the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award, The Power of the Dog, Savages, & The Winter of Frankie Machine
- several of which have been made into movies or are in development. A former investigator, anti-terrorist trainer, & trial consultant, Winslow lives in Southern California.


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The greatness of Italy`s culture & way of life have had a powerful attraction for many generations of visitors. This has created an overwhelming sense that Italy is a fundamentally benign & easy going country. ” The Force of Destiny”, Christopher Duggan`s immensely enjoyable new book, lays waste to this idea. While sharing everyone`s enthusiasm for Italy as a place, he strongly distinguishes this from its political role over the past two centuries, which has been both vicious & ruinous for Europe as a whole. ...

Tientsin in north-eastern China was known as ` The Ford of Heaven` as it gave travellers access to the Celestial City of Peking & the Emperor of Heaven eighty miles to the west. It was also a `concession port` in the 1920s & 1930s, occupied by the foreign powers of Britain, France, Russia, America & Japan in the wake of the Opium War of 1860. This memoir evokes a childhood spent in this strange & exotic place. The world that Power evokes is a microcosm of the complexity & ferment that was China before the Second World War, yet seen through the fresh eyes of a sensitive child attuned to the people around him. This new edition of The Ford of Heaven (first published in 1984) contains a new foreword by Frances Wood, Curator of the British Library`s Chinese Collection, as well as a postscript & inclusion of extensive additional material. ...

Richard Sennett has spent an intellectual lifetime exploring how humans live in cities. In this pair of essays he visits two of the world`s greatest cities at crucial moments in their history to meditate on the condition of exile in both geographical & psychic space: the Jewish Ghetto of Renaissance Venice, where state-imposed outsiderdom was translated into a rich community identity; & nineteenth-century Paris, a magnet for political exiles, where the experience of displacement seeped into the city`s culture at large. ...

During the First World War, just behind the eastern front, there was a forest, where Austrians & Hungarians used to hang deserters. To this place came Apostol Bologa, a young Romanian officer eager to serve his country. Born in a Romanian region of Transylvania which was then under Hungarian rule, he had naturally enough joined the Austro-Hungarian army. But soon Romania itself entered the war, & Bologa found himself fighting his own people. The Forest of the Hanged asks a fundamental question about war: namely, why does a man fight? Apostol condemns an officer to death for desertion & attempting to give information to the enemy. He watches the execution of the officer with satisfaction until he witnesses a fellow soldier`s grief & pity for the dead man. At this point his world shifts. His growing self-doubt & uncertainty lead him to question beliefs he once held without question. Unprepared for his own reaction when he is once again called to sit on a court martial, he finds that he too must go to the forest. This very rare, richly descriptive novel lays bare the inner conflict engendered by a total war, yet seldom expressed. ...

Colin Turnbull lived among the Pygmies as their friend for three years. He writes about their hunting parties, their nomadic camps, their quarrels & love affairs, their music & their ceremonies. His is a magnificent account of an earthly paradise & of a legendary & utterly delightful people. ...

The Forest People is an astonishingly intimate & life-enhancing account of a hunter
- gatherer tribe living in harmony with nature
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