Continuing the epic saga of Alexander the Great, Alexander: The Sands of Ammon brilliantly describes Alexander's quest to conquer Asia, the limitless domain ruled by the Great King of the Persians. In a seemingly impossible venture, Alexander & his men storm Persian fortresses & harbours, crippling King Darius' domain of land & sea. Even the legendary Halicarnassus is defeated by the Macedonian armies. Ruthlessly, Alexander's war machine moves ever onward taking him up into the snow-covered Anatolian highlands. But there is danger ahead. Despite the defeat of Darius, the Island City of Tyre & the Towers of Gaza prove to be formidable obstacles. Undeterred, Alexander surges forth over land & sea to the mysterious land of Egypt. & there, in the sands, lies the Oracle of Ammon, waiting to reveal an amazing truth to Alexander. One that will change his already amazing life. ...

Who could have been born to conquer the world other than a god? Mesmeric beauty, consuming desires, an insatiable hunger. Then premature death. This is the story of a boy, born to a great king
- Philip of Macedon
- & his sensuous queen, Olympias. It tells of the stern discipline of Philip & the wild passions of Olympias, & how, together, they formed Alexander, a young man of immense, unfathomable potential, capable of subjugating the known world to his power, & thought of by his contemporaries as a god. Alexander's swift ascent to manhood, as a protege of Aristotle & close friend of Ptolemy & Hephiaston, & the start of his great adventure to conquer the civilised world is recounted in this awe-inspiring novel. This is a wonderful evocation of the far-off & fascinating civilisation of ancient Greece, revealed in vibrant tones & scholarly detail.

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Alexander's epic quest continues into the heart of Asia & on towards the mystery of India. The Macedonian Army march ever onward in search of glory, crushing resistance at every turn. The culture & beauty of Babylon is quickly ravaged & the Palace of Persepolis burnt to ashes & cinder. An empire is destroyed & a new & bloody era begins. But there are other things on Alexander's mind. An ambitious project to unite the peoples of the empire under one homel&, begins to obsess him. There are rebellions & bloodshed, but the curious beauty of Queen Roxanna gives Alexander the strength to fulfil his destiny... This is a truly compelling, romantic & exciting book, & a fitting conclusion to the bestselling Alexander trilogy. ...

To many he was a god. To others he was a monster. The truth is even more extraordinary. As a boy, Alexander dreamed of matching the heroic feats of Achilles. At eighteen he led the Macedonian cavalry to a stunning victory against the Greeks. By twenty-five he had crushed the Persians in three monumental battles & was the master of the greatest empire the world had ever seen. Men began to call him a god. But behind the legend was another, more complex story. Narrated by his boyhood friend Ptolemy, this is the story of Alexander as you have never heard it before: raw, intimate, thrilling
- a story of extraordinary daring & unimaginable endurance; of wanton destruction & murderous intrigue
- the epic tragedy of a man who aimed to be more than human.

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Who could have been born to conquer the world other than a god? Mesmeric beauty, consuming desires, an insatiable hunger. Then premature death. This is the story of a boy, born to a great king
- Philip of Macedon
- & his sensuous queen, Olympias. It tells of the stern discipline of Philip & the wild passions of Olympias, & how, together, they formed Alexander, a young man of immense, unfathomable potential, capable of subjugating the known world to his power, & thought of by his contemporaries as a god. Alexander's swift ascent to manhood, as a protege of Aristotle & close friend of Ptolemy & Hephiaston, & the start of his great adventure to conquer the civilised world is recounted in this awe-inspiring novel. This is a wonderful evocation of the far-off & fascinating civilisation of ancient Greece, revealed in vibrant tones & scholarly detail.

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Everyone loves Willy the wind-up mouse, while Alexander the real mouse is chased away with brooms & mousetraps. Wouldn't it be wonderful to be loved & cuddled, thinks Alexander, & he wishes he could be a wind-up mouse too. In this gentle fable about a real mouse & a mechanical mouse, Leo Lionni explores the magic of friendship. ...

Whatever became of Alexander after that famously bad day? & did you know that Judith Viorst is his mother? & what happens to her passion for household neatness & orderliness, her deep devotion to schedules, her compulsive yearning to offer helpful advice when Alexander -- now grown up, married, & the father of three -- moves his family into his parents' house? What happens is controlled, & sometimes not so controlled, chaos, as lives & routines are turned upside down & the house is overrun with scattered toys, pacifiers, baby bottles, sippy cups, pink-sequined flip-flops, jigsaw puzzles, & fishy crackers.

With her characteristic sparkle & wit, Viorst relates her efforts to (graciously) share space, to become (if only a little bit) more flexible, to (sort of) keep her opinions to herself, & even to eventually figure out how to unlock the safety locks of the baby's (expletives deleted) bouncy seat. She describes how she & her husb&, while sometimes longing for the former peace & tranquillity of unravished rooms & quiet dinners for two unaccompanied by cries of " Oh, yuck!" survived & relished the extended visit of the Alexander Five. She also opens our eyes to the joys of multigenerational family living & to the unexpected opportunities to grow that life presents -- even under the most unlikely circumstances.
Several generations of readers surely will relate to this funny & loving book, enhanced throughout by Laura Gibson's delightful two-color drawings.


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When his father dies, & he is reduced at a stroke from prosperity to penury, Euxenus decides to leave Athens & seek his fortune elsewhere. As a philosopher & intellectual of some note, he has no difficulty getting a job as tutor to a young prince in the wealthy but utterly provincial court of King Philip of Macedon. The young prince is called Alexander, & the rest is history. Or is it? Alexander conquered Greece, Egypt & the Persian Empire in the course of eight years, amassing a huge army along the way, & leaving behind him the foundations of countless new cities named after him. He proclaimed himself a deity, & died at the age of 33. In ALEXANDER AT THE WORLD'S END, Tom Holt tells the story of two remarkable men, one of whom conquered empires & one of whom struggled to overcome the drainage problems of a small village. It is a story of two men whose paths crossed only briefly, but whose encounter changed both their lives for ever. & it is a story which throws an extraordinary new light on the man who became Alexander the Great. ...

In 1961 Scotland's biggest bus company, W Alexander & Sons of Falkirk, was divided into three separate businesses. A new Midland company took over what had been the southern area of the business, & retained Alexander's blue livery & its Falkirk head office. It operated local services to the north & east of Glasgow, & in Stirling, Falkirk, Alloa, Perth & Oban. It also operated inter-urban services throughout this area, & to Edinburgh & Dundee. Operations in Fife passed to a new Fife company, with local services throughout the region, & long-distance services to Glasgow. The Fife company had around 500 buses & adopted a new livery of Ayres red. It established its head office in Kirkcaldy. Alexander's northern region became the new Northern company. Its operations covered the east of Scotland from Dundee to the Moray Firth. As well as a comprehensive network of services throughout the area, it had limited local operations in Dundee & Aberdeen, & ran long-distance services south to Glasgow & east to Inverness. For the following 24 years the three companies' operating territories remained largely unchanged. Each of them acquired many of the small number of independent bus operators in their areas as the 1960s progressed. The Scottish Bus Group was reorganised in June 1985 & this affected two of the Alexander companies. Midland lost its Glasgow area operations to a new company, Kelvin, while its operations in Perthshire went to another new company, Strathtay. Northern lost its operations in & around Tayside to the new Strathtay business, reducing the Northern fleet from 320 to 250 buses. Fife was unaffected by the changes. They were privatised in 1990-91 when Midland was sold to GRT Holdings & continues today as part of First Group. Northern & Fife were sold to Stagecoach, which would later also acquire Strathtay. This book outlines the Alexander story in its early years, then examines the effect of the split in the company in 1961, & the following years up to privatisation. It also

Includes:: a postscript, looking briefly at the vehicles inherited by Stagecoach & First, & at the former Alexander operations as they are today. Alongside various colour photographs, the book will also features tables showing a summary by vehicle type of the three fleets in 1961, 1985 & at the time of privatisation & a map copied from a 1960s timetable to illustrate the extent of the three companies' operating areas.

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The first major retrospective of the work of Alexander Calder (1898-1976) in the UK for twenty years opens at Tate Modern in November 2015. Calder was one of the most popular American artists of the 20th century. He is known for his invention of the mobile &, as a pioneer of kinetic sculpture, played an essential role in reshaping the history of modernism. Alexander Calder: Performing Sculpture will explore the notion of performance as a driving force in Calder's sculpture & his use of other media including drawing, design, film & theatre. It traces the evolution of his kinetic vocabulary, from his initial years entertaining the artistic bohemia of inter-war Paris with performances of his Circus, to his later life, when he became hugely popular for his mobile & stabile sculptures. Focusing on this aspect of performance in Calder's work, the catalogue will feature new research from a panel of expert writers, & will draw on the relationship between gallery presentation & the interpretation of Calder's work, considering the theatricality of sculpture within the gallery space. ...