This lavishly produced hardback book is the perfect keepsake gift to treasure. Fully illustrated in colour throughout by acclaimed illustrator Tony Ross, The Nights Before Christmas has twenty-four classic festive tales, songs & stories to read throughout Advent or keep as a family Christmas anthology. There are festive extracts from much-loved books including A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, Little Women by Louisa May Alcott & The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame; yuletide poems (`A Visit from St. Nicholas`) & carols (` Good King Wenceslas`), together with traditional tales from Hans Christian Andersen & the Brothers Grimm. This is the ultimate gift for Christmas. ...

This accessible volume looks at the centrality of the Nile to Egyptian history
- how the people of Egypt have relied on it for
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The Nile in the Step by Step series by Insight Guides focuses on providing tailor made walks & tours around the city. The guide features eighteen route recommendations that link up better known sights & take you off of the more beaten track; they are written by local experts who have personally selected places to eat & drink en-route & who offer insider tips on culture, shopping & nightlife. The guide has an array of colour photographs which help bring to life the background & descriptive information provided for destinations & attractions. An overview chapter opens the guide & reviews geography, customs & culture, history, food & drink, shopping, culture & entertainment. Next feature the selected itineraries for walks and/or tours, each of which have a good amount of accompanying information & come with a simple route plan. A user friendly alphabetical directory lists practical information to do with day to day basics & listings of h&-picked hotels & restaurants are provided to suit different budgets & tastes. The publisher ...

From Herodotus`s day to the present political upheavals, the steady flow of the Nile has been Egypt`s heartbeat. It has shaped its geography, controlled its economy & moulded its civilisation. The same stretch of water which conveyed Pharaonic battleships, Ptolemaic grain ships, Roman troop-carriers & Victorian steamers today carries modern-day tourists past bankside settlements in which rural life
- fishing, farming, flooding
- continues much as it has for millennia. At this most critical juncture in the country`s history, foremost Egyptologist Toby Wilkinson takes us on a journey up the Nile, north from Lake Victoria, from Cataract to Cataract, past the Aswan Dam, to the delta. The country is a palimpsest, every age has left its trace: as we pass the Nilometer on the island of Elephantine which since the days of the Pharaohs has measured the height of Nile floodwaters to predict the following season`s agricultural yield & set the parameters for the entire Egyptian economy, the wonders of Giza which bear the scars of assault by nineteenth-century archaeologists & the modern-day unbridled urban expansion of Cairo
- & in Egypt`s earliest art (prehistoric images of fish-traps carved into cliffs) & the Arab Spring (fought on the bridges of Cairo)
- the Nile is our guide to understanding the past & present of this unique, chaotic, vital, conservative yet rapidly changing l&.



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`A spectacular book with a wide range of insights to the 17th century` Terry Jones Four hundred years ago, every barrister had to dance
- because dancing put them in harmony with the universe. John Ogilby`s first job, in 1612, was to teach them. By the 1670s, he was Charles II`s Royal Cosmographer, creating beautiful measured drawings that placed roads on maps for the first time. During the intervening years, Ogilby had travelled through fire & plague, war & shipwreck; had been an impresario in Dublin, a poet in London, a soldier & sea captain, as well as a secret agent, publisher & scientific geographer. The world of his youth had been blown up & turned upside down. Beset by danger, he carefully concealed his biography in codes & cyphers, which meant that the truth about his life has remained unknown until today. In this book, Alan Ereira brings a fascinating hidden history to light, & reveals that Ogilby`s celebrated Britannia is far more than a harmless road atlas: it is, rather, filled with secrets designed to serve Charles II`s sinister purpose... The Nine Lives of John Ogilby is the story of a remarkable man, & of a covert journey which gave birth to the modern world.
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” Spies should be glamorous
- James Bond in a Savile Row suit rather than Harry Palmer in a grubby mac.. . In those terms, Otto
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Look past the legends & learn about the REAL ninjas of feudal Japan with this entertaining, illustrated ninjutsu guide. Ninjutsu, the least understood of the Japanese martial arts, is an ancient fighting style emphasising natural movement, responsiveness to adversaries, & absolute practicality. In feudal Japan, ninja were feared for their skill in espionage &, particularly, assassination. Masters of weaponry, stealth, & martial techniques, ninja were credited with supernatural powers because of the near-invincibility of their unique & deadly art. In The Ninja & Their Secret Fighting Art, Black Belt Hall of Fame member, Stephen K. Hayes, reveals the secrets that lead to the perception of the ninja as warriors of almost sorcerous skill the art of invisibility, special tools & weapons, & psychological training enabling the ninja to gain advantage in any situation. Chapters include: Perspective Origin; Organization; Training; At the Height of Power; The Decline; Ninjutsu in the Modern World Search for the Ninja Unarmed Combat The Ninja Fists; Fighting Postures; Other Factors Weaponry Chains & Cords; Sticks & Staffs; Canes with Concealed Weapons; The Ninja Sword; Throwing Blades The Way of Invisibility Sense Deception; Phantom Steps; Reconnaissance; Blending with the Night; Attacking the Eyes; The Art of Disguise Shadow Warriors Espionage; Commando Tactics The Realm of the Spirit Psychological Warfare; The Force of the Killer; The Great Harmony ...

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2017 KIRKUS PRIZEFrom the National Book Award-winning author comes a luminous, deeply humane novel about three generations of an Irish immigrant family in 1940s & 1950s Brooklyn
- for fans of Anne Tyler, Anne Enright & Colm Toibin On a gloomy February afternoon, Jim sends his wife Annie out to do the shopping before dark falls. He seals their meagre apartment, unhooks the gas tube inside the oven, & inhales. Sister St. Saviour, a Little Nursing Sister of the Sick Poor, catches the scent of fire doused with water & hurries to the scene: a gathered crowd, firemen, & the distraught young widow. Moved by the girl`s plight, & her unborn child, the wise nun finds Annie work in the convent`s laundry
- where, in turn, her daughter will grow up amidst the crank of the wringer & the hiss of the iron. In Catholic Brooklyn in the early part of the twentieth century, decorum, superstition & shame collude to erase Jim`s brief existence; & yet his suicide, although never mentioned, reverberates through many generations
- testing the limits of love & sacrifice, of forgiveness & forgetfulness. In prose of startling radiance & precision, Alice Mc Dermott tells a story that is at once wholly individual & universal in its understanding of the human condition. Rendered with remarkable lucidity & intelligence, The Ninth Hour is the crowning achievement of one of today`s finest writers.


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` The best new writer of fiction in America. The best.` John Irving Meet Samuel: stalled writer, bored teacher at a local college, obsessive player of online video games. He hasn`t seen his mother, Faye, in decades, not since she abandoned her family when he was a boy. Now she has suddenly reappeared, having committed an absurd politically motivated crime that electrifies the nightly news, beguiles the Internet, & inflames a divided America. The media paints Faye as a radical hippie with a sordid past, but as far as Samuel knows, his mother was an ordinary girl who married her high-school sweetheart. Which version of his mother is true? Two facts are certain: she`s facing some serious charges, & she needs Samuel`s help. As Samuel begins to excavate his mother`s
- & his country`s
- history, the story moves from the rural Midwest of the 1960s, to New York City during Occupy Wall Street, back to Chicago in 1968 &, finally, to wartime Norway, home of the mysterious Nix. Samuel will unexpectedly find that he has to rethink everything he ever knew about his mother
- a woman with an epic story of her own, a story she has kept hidden from the world.


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Meet Samuel: stalled writer, bored teacher at a local college, obsessive player of online video games. He hasn`t seen his mother, Faye, in decades, not since she abandoned her family when he was a boy. Now she has suddenly reappeared, having committed an absurd politically motivated crime that electrifies the nightly news, beguiles the Internet, & inflames a divided America. The media paints Faye as a radical hippie with a sordid past, but as far as Samuel knows, his mother was an ordinary girl who married her high-school sweetheart. Which version of his mother is true? Two facts are certain: she`s facing some serious charges, & she needs Samuel`s help. As Samuel begins to excavate his mother`s
- & his country`s
- history, Nathan Hill`s The Nix moves from the rural Midwest of the 1960s, to New York City during Occupy Wall Street, back to Chicago in 1968. Finally we arrive in wartime Norway: home of the mysterious Nix. Samuel will unexpectedly find that he has to rethink everything he ever knew about his mother
- a woman with an epic story of her own, a story she has kept hidden from the world.


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