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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Personal finance journalist, Michelle Mc Gagh, takes on a challenge to not spend money for a whole year in an engaging narrative that combines personal experience with accessible advice on money so you can learn to spend less & live more. Michelle Mc Gagh has been writing about money for over a decade but she was spending with abandon & ignoring bank statements. Just because she wasn`t in serious debt, apart from her massive London mortgage, she thought she was in control. She wasn`t. Michelle`s took a radical approach & set herself a challenge to not spend anything for an entire year. She paid her bills & she has a minimal budget for her weekly groceries but otherwise Michelle spent no money at all. She found creative ways to live have a social life & to travel for free. She has saved money but more importantly she is happier. Her relationship with money, with things, with time, with others has changed for the better. The No Spend Year is Michelle`s honestly written & personal account of her challenge. But it is more than that, it is also a tool for life. There are top tips for your own finances including easy to understand advice on interest, mortgages, savings, pensions & spending less to help you live a more financially secure life. ...

This completely new investigation of the fair trade phenomenon looks in depth at the emergence over the last two decades of a movement that aims to challenge the ethical foundations of the global market. While transnational corporations engage in a race to the bottom for the cheapest suppliers, the fair trade movement insists on a premium for the producers at the start of the chain
- for the coffee producer in Colombia, the cocoa farmer in Ghana or the olive grower in Palestine. Yet even as the fair trade movement has gained momentum it has hit problems of its own
- some have been angered by the granting of a Fairtrade mark to the biggest food corporations, worried that it is becoming just another kind of promotion. Sally Blundell uncovers the origins of fair trade, looks at examples from all over the world of how it is working & asks what it is likely to become.

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Wayne Roberts puts under the microscope a global food system that is under strain from climate change & from economic disaster. He shows how a world food system based on supermarkets & agribusiness corporations is unsustainable & looks at new models of producing healthy food from all over the world. ...

Who was the first black queen? How much do you know about China`s history? Most people`s knowledge of world history is hazy & incomplete at best. This No-Nonsense Guide gives a full picture, revealing the hidden histories & communities left out of conventional textbooks
- from the civilizations of Africa, Asia & Latin America to the history of women. The updated & revised edition of this best-selling No-Nonsense Guide will include a new chapter from the perspective of the end of the first decade of the 21st century &

Includes:: material on the financial crisis, the world response to climate change, 9/11, the Iraq war, corporate power & China`s headlong growth fit into the broader patterns of world history.


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Population has always been an emotive topic. Understandably
- it`s about sex, birth & death. It`s about food, money, culture
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The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency by Alexander Mc Call Smith features wayward daughters, missing husbands, philandering partners & curious conmen. If you`ve got an apparently insoluble problem, then pay a visit to Precious Ramotswe, Botswana’s finest
- & only
- female private detective. Her methods may be unconventional but she`s got warmth, wit & canny intuition on her side, not to mention her friend Mr J. L. B. Matekoni, proprietor of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors. Precious is going to need them all as she sets out on the pitfall-strewn trail of a missing child.

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