Patrick Deeley`s train journey home to rural East Galway in autumn 1978 was a pilgrimage of grief: his giant of a father had been felled, the hurley-making workshop silenced. From this moment, Patrick unfolds his childhood as a series of evocative moments, from the intricate workings of the timber workshop run by his father to the slow taking apart of an old tractor & the physical burial of a steam engine; from his mother`s steady work on an old Singer sewing machine to his father`s vertiginous quickstep on the roof of their house. There are many wonderful descriptions of the natural world & delightful cameos of characters & incidents from a not-so-long-ago country childhood. In a style reminiscent of John Mc Gahern`s Memoir, Deeley`s beautifully paced prose captures the rhythms, struggles & rough edges of a rural life that was already dying even as he grew. This is an enchanting, beautifully written account of family, love, loss, & the unstoppable march of time. ...

The Marquis de Montespan & his new wife, Athenais, are a true love-match
- a rarity amongst the nobility of seventeenth-century
...

Towards the end of the nineteenth century & for the first few years of the twentieth, a strange invasion took place in Britain. The citadel of power, privilege & breeding in which the titled, l&-owning governing class had barricaded itself for so long was breached. The incomers were a group of young women who, fifty years earlier, would have been looked on as the alien denizens of another world
- the New World, to be precise. From 1874
- the year that Jennie Jerome, the first known ` Dollar Princess`, married Randolph Churchill
- to 1905, dozens of young American heiresses married into the British peerage, bringing with them all the fabulous wealth, glamour & sophistication of the Gilded Age. Anne de Courcy sets the stories of these young women & their families in the context of their times. Based on extensive first-hand research, drawing on diaries, memoirs & letters, this richly entertaining group biography reveals what they thought of their new lives in England
- & what England thought of them.



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Read the number one Scandinavian crime bestseller taking the world by storm Karolinska Hospital, Stockholm. Detective Inspector Joona Linna is faced with a boy who witnessed the gruesome murder of his family. He`s suffered more than one hundred knife wounds & is comatose with shock. Linna`s running out of time. The killer`s on the run &, seemingly, there are no clues. Desperate for information, Linna enlists disgraced specialist Dr Erik Maria Bark, a hypnotist who vowed never to practice again. As the hypnosis begins, a long & terrifying chain of events unfurls with reverberations far beyond Linna`s case. ...

An electrifying story of friendship, power & betrayal by the bestselling, Baileys-prize shortlisted author of The Bees. It`s the day after tomorrow & the Arctic sea ice has melted. While global business carves up the new frontier, cruise ships race each other to ever-rarer wildlife sightings. The passengers of the Vanir have come seeking a polar bear. What they find is even more astonishing: a dead body. It is Tom Harding, lost in an accident three years ago & now revealed by the melting ice of Midgard glacier. Tom had come to Midgard to help launch the new venture of his best friend of thirty years, Sean Cawson, a man whose business relies on discretion & powerful connections
- & who was the last person to see him alive. Their friendship had been forged by a shared obsession with Arctic exploration. & although Tom`s need to save the world often clashed with Sean`s desire to conquer it, Sean has always believed that underneath it all, they shared the same goals. But as the inquest into Tom`s death begins, the choices made by both men
- in love & in life
- are put on the st&. And when cracks appear in the foundations of Sean`s glamorous world, he is forced to question what price he has really paid for a seat at the establishment`s table. Just how deep do the lies go?


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The story of the only person to attempt to reach the North Pole by balloon, & the golden age of Polar Exploration. In August 1930 a Norwegian sloop sailing in the Arctic Ocean moored at a remote isl&. Here, the crew members found a body leaning against a rock. When they saw a large monogram `A` on the body`s jacket, they realized who the unfortunate adventurer had been: S. A. Andree, the Swede who, in 1897, set off to discover the North Pole, one of the last unmapped places on earth. The Ice Balloon is the story of the heroic era of polar exploration, & the dream of conquering one of the most inhumane landscapes on earth. In this golden age of discovery, Andree`s ambition was the most original & remarkable. For, of the thousand or so people who had gone looking for the Pole, most of whom perished on the way, only Andree used a balloon. ...

An enchanting tale of courage & sacrifice for young readers & adults by the wildly popular George R.R. Martin, author of A Song of Ice & Fire, the series that inspired HBO`s Emmy Award-winning GAME OF THRONES. Lavish illustrations by acclaimed artist Luis Royo enrich this captivating & heartwarming story of a young girl & her dragon. From ancient times the ice dragon was a creature of legend & fear, for no man had ever tamed one. When it flew overhead, it left in its wake desolate cold & frozen l&. But Adara was not afraid. For Adara was a winter child, born during the worst freeze that anyone, even the Old Ones, could remember. Adara could not remember the first time she had seen the ice dragon. It seemed that it had always been in her life, glimpsed from afar as she played in the frigid snow long after the other children had fled the cold. In her fourth year she touched it, & in her fifth year she rode upon its broad, chilled back for the first time. Then, in her seventh year, on a calm summer day, fiery dragons from the North swooped down upon the peaceful farm that was Adara`s home. And only a winter child-and the ice dragon who loved her-could save her world from utter destruction. ...

The Ice Lands by Steinar Bragi is set against Iceland`s volcanic hinterlands, where four thirty-somethings from Reykjavik
- the
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In 1913, what was to have been the grandest & most elaborate Arctic expedition in history ended just six weeks later with the HMCS Karluk trapped by polar ice. Five months later, hopelessly off course & still encased in ice, the captain gives the order to abandon ship. With nothing but half the ship's store of supplies, twenty-one men, an Eskimo woman & her two small daughters, nineteen dogs & one pet cat were hopelessly shipwrecked in the middle of the Arctic Ocean. Nine months later, twelve survivors were rescued by a small whaling schooner & brought back to civilisation. In this incredible book, Jennifer Niven tells the spellbinding story of the doomed 1913 voyage of the Karluk drawing on previously unpublished letters & journals. ...

The Ice Museum provides an intriguing exploration of the northern-most tips of Europe in search of the legendary lost kingdom of Thule. This ice-laden kingdom was first explored by Pytheas in the fourth century BC & Joanna Kavenna provides part history-part travelogue as she sets about trying to locate its exact position. Along the way the author provides both beautiful descriptions of the harsh unforgiving landscapes of the Shetlands & Icel&, synopses of Greenland & Estonian society, a history of Aryan supremacy & a damning report on man`s devastating impact on the environment. ...