`I have spent too long on plants & animals. Now it is time for human beings.` This haunting novel is based on the life of Anders Sparrman, the Swedish naturalist, who in the second half of the eighteenth century, became the last & youngest disciple of the scientist Carl Linnaeus. In his quest for new animal & plant specimens, Sparrman sailed to China at seventeen, joined Captain Cook on his second voyage to Antarctica & Tahiti, & made a pioneering journey on foot into the South African interior. In South Africa Sparrman witnessed the terrible cruelties of slavery, which made him a staunch abolitionist for the rest of his life. Wastberg uses his own extensive knowledge of South Africa & Sweden to create a strange, almost mystical narrative, that weaves passages from Sparrman`s letters & journals into his own spare prose. As he follows Sparrman from innocent student to sceptical adventurer to dedicated botanist to militant abolitionist, he evokes the beauty of the Swedish countryside, the squalid conditions on board ship, the dangers & geographical wonders of Africa &, finally, the late flowering passion that overtakes Sparrman`s life. In this magical, poetic novel, set between the end of the Enlightenment & the dawn of Romanticism, Wastberg`s narrative combines intellectual precision with emotional power. ...

`I value my garden more for being full of blackbirds than of cherries, & very frankly give them fruit for their songs.` Joseph ...

This pocket-sized miscellany, packed with tips on equipment, food, surviving bad weather & finding the right campsite, & with facts & stories from the world of camping, is perfect for anyone who knows the incomparable joy & adventure of pitching their tent under an open sky. ...

Ralph Storer`s highly entertaining exploration of the lure of the hills is underpinned by hard-won experience
- he has climbed
...

Embrace the process of writing & the rich potential of conscious creativity & mindfulness with this enlightening insight into mindful writing. Exploring how writing mindfully can create deeper connections with your words, your characters, & yourself, this carefully crafted manual invites you to embrace the writing process as much as the completed work; plotting out sparkling stories with a Zen-like awareness. Through meditative exercises, engaging anecdotes, & astute notes on perception, imagination, & focus, author helps you to to flow, flourish & lose yourself in writing. Containing 20 mindful writing exercises, this unique guide explores how conscious writing creates mindful awareness, offering a fresh angle on shifting writer`s block. ...

The Joy of Sheds is a shed miscellany that chronicles man`s need for a small space on his own. It`s a humorous look at every aspect of the shed experience, mixed with shed facts & some practical information too. Many famous people have created in sheds. Inventor Trevor Baylis thought up the clockwork radio in a shed, George Bernard Shaw wrote Pygmalian in one & Dylan Thomas would compose poetry in his. The average UK male does not tend to devote his shed to poetry, though. Along with chapters on how to customize your shed into an exotic creation, ” Pimp Your Shed”, there are ” Shed Facts”: Almost a fifth of men have had an accident in a shed, it`s the single most dangerous place in the home after the kitchen. Other chapters include ” Shed Vision”, on the typical items stored in sheds, & ” The Genus Shed”, which places the shed in the Linnaean order of buildings. ” Shed Experience” pulls in shed stories from around the world, but particularly Australia, & there are also tales of the ” Euro-Shed”. There are chapters on ” Sheds in Literature” (Lady Chatterly`s Lover & Cold Comfort Farm), ” Sheds at the Movies”, & ” Sheds in Music”. ...

This pocket-sized miscellany, packed with fascinating facts, handy hints & captivating stories "es from the world of walking, is perfect for anyone who knows the incomparable joy & freedom of lacing up your hiking boots & heading for the hills. ...

As well as being the most celebrated diarist of all time, Samuel Pepys was also a hearty drinker, eater & connoisseur of epicurean delights, who indulged in every pleasure seventeenth-century London had to offer. Whether he is feasting on barrels of oysters, braces of carps, larks' tongues & copious amounts of wine, merrymaking in taverns until the early hours, attending formal dinners with lords & ladies or entertaining guests at home with his young wife, these irresistible selections from Pepys' diaries provide a frank, high-spirited & vivid picture of the joys of over-indulgence
- & the side-effects afterwards.
...

A genre-bending mystery recalling the work of Alain Robbe-Grillet & anticipating the postmodern fictions of Paul Auster & other contemporary neo-noir novelists. Inspector Barlach forgoes the arrest of a murderer in order to manipulate him into killing another, more elusive criminal. This is a thriller that brings existential philosophy & the detective genre into dazzling convergence. ...

It is 1942 & the island of Malta is under siege by the dominant German air force. Out of the smoke & magnesium glare of bomb blast steps Rocco Raven, native of Brooklyn, New York, apprentice radioman & expert secondhand car dealer. His only contact is an American secret serviceman, Fingerley, whose rank upgrades with their every meeting & whose purpose is known to no-one but himself. Far from finding a role for Rocco, Fingerley leaves him to face the chaos alone. On only his second day there, his billet, on the top floor of a brothel, is blown to pieces. Without contacts or belongings, Rocco is left to wander the devastated streets of Valetta in a bewildered daze until he sees an apparition, a beautiful, ethereal woman. She is Melita, the Jukebox Queen of Malta, who spends her time delivering the jukeboxes wrought by her cousin from old automobile & gramophone parts to the bars & restaurants which must accommodate the beleagured civilian & military populations. It is the beginning of an extraordinary relationship that is at once passionate & guarded, which flourishes as the island`s fortunes decline. Under the threat of starvation & in a world populated by the eccentrics of war, Rocco`s seems to be the lone voice of sanity, until he too is affected by the madness around him & succumbs to the voluntary thrill of danger... The Jukebox Queen of Malta is an extraordinary novel of passion & intrigue set in a world which seems perilously balanced between what is real & what is not. It is a magnificently evocative piece of storytelling, where the bizarre & heady atmosphere of a society under siege masks the uneasy truce between the Allied occupiers & the Maltese natives, & where the physical beauty is only tainted by the sense of mystery desecrated. ...