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Collection of riveting tales of the sea including the story that launched his writing career, the account of the epic battle to sink the German battle ship, Bismarck, and two new stories collected here for the first time. Views: 51
As our approach to mental illness has oscillated from biological to psychoanalytical and back again, so have our treatments. With the rise of psychopharmacology, an ever-increasing number of people throughout the globe are taking a psychotropic drug, yet nearly seventy years after doctors first began prescribing them, we still don't really know exactly how or why they work – or don't work – on what ails our brains. In The Drugs that Changed Our Minds, Lauren Slater offers an explosive account not just of the science but of the people – inventors, detractors and consumers – behind our narcotics, from the earliest, Thorazine and Lithium, up through Prozac, Ecstasy, 'magic mushrooms', the most cutting-edge memory drugs and neural implants. In so doing, she narrates the history of psychiatry itself and illuminates the signature its colorful little capsules have left on millions of brains worldwide, and how these wonder drugs may heal us or hurt us. Views: 50
SUMMARY:
Newly elected Prime Minister Francis Urquhart takes on the new King, in the controversial No 1 bestselling second volume in the Francis Urquhart trilogy a?? now reissued in a new cover. After scheming his way to power in a??House of Cardsa??, Francis Urquhart made a triumphant return in a??To Play the Kinga?? a?? a Sunday Times No 1 bestseller that became a hugely successful BBC TV series, with Ian Richardson resuming his award-winning role as Francis Urquhart. Its highly controversial and uncannily topical storyline a?? in which the role of the monarchy in modern Britain comes under scrutiny as Prime Minister Francis Urquhart threatens to expose Royal secrets when his plans are blocked by the idealistic new King a?? coincided with a huge increase in public interest in the future of the Royal Family following a series of Royal scandals. Views: 50
Faber and Faber - Faber and Faber Views: 50
In “The Naked Soul of Iceberg Slim,” the fierce and lyrical icon for criminal reformation describes himself as “ill…from America’s fake façade of justice and democracy.” For Iceberg Slim — who IS Robert Beck — the illness may have been a detriment, but for us, it’s a gift. His tales serve as a chilling reminder that we are all still inmates of one prison or another, and the time to break free has arrived. Iceberg Slim's story is now depicted in a major motion picture distributed worldwide. Iceberg Slim: Portrait of a Pimp shows Slim's transformation from pimp to the author of 7 classic books.While bringing brutal and difficult-to-swallow tales from the underground, this book exposes the author’s inner workings unlike any of Iceberg Slim’s other works. His tough exterior evolves into a straight-out, heartfelt confession. As if Iceberg Slim’s captivating, rough words weren’t enough to evoke the... Views: 50
Mama Black Widow tells the tragic story of Otis Tilson, a stunning black drag queen trapped in a cruel queer ghetto underworld. In hopes of escaping the racial bigotry and economic injustice of the South, Otis' family journeys north from their plantation to an urban promised land. Once in Chicago Otis and his brother and sisters become prisoners to a wasteland of violence, crime, prostitution and rape. This is the gut-wrenching tale of the destruction of a family and the truest portrayal of homosexuality in the ghetto ever told. Views: 50
Gaspard Winckler, master forger, is trapped in a basement studio on the outskirts of Paris, with his paymaster's blood on his hands. The motive for this murder? A perversion of artistic ambition. After a lifetime lived in the shadows, he has strayed too close to the sun.Fittingly for such an enigmatic writer, Portrait of a Man is both Perec's first novel and his last. Frustrated in his efforts to find a publisher, he put it aside, telling a friend: 'I'll go back to it in ten years when it'll turn into a masterpiece, or else I'll wait in my grave until one of my faithful exegetes comes across it in an old trunk.'An apt coda to one of the brightest literary careers of the twentieth century, it is—in the words of David Bellos, the 'faithful exegete' who brought it to light—'connected by a hundred threads to every part of the literary universe that Perec went on to create—but it's not like anything else that he wrote. Views: 50
The Way Begins . . . Sergei was three when the soldiers took him. At fifteen he fled into the wilderness, with nothing to cling to but the memories of a grandfather who called him Socrates and the promise of a gift buried near St. Petersburg. Thus begins The Journeys of Socrates -- an odyssey that forged the character of Sergei Ivanov, whose story would one day change the lives of millions of readers worldwide. This saga of courage and faith, of love and loss, reveals the arts of war and the path to peace. Ultimately, it speaks to the quest we all share for a meaningful life in a challenging world. Views: 50
The perks of being an émigré wallflowerJupiter was born in Russia, but he's getting quite an education in America. He sees everything slightly askew - but in a way that's endearing to (most) of his fellow students. A popular girl takes him under her wing. He falls for her. A bully sets him as a target. But Jupiter disarms him in an unexpected way. His best friend ends up hanging with a posse of science geeks. Jupiter feels left out. With dead-on deadpan humor, Matthue Roth makes everything illuminated about American teen life - like Borat as directed by John Hughes. Views: 50
James A. Michener’s masterly chronicle of South Africa is an epic tale of adventurers, scoundrels, and ministers, the best and worst of two continents who carve an empire out of a vast wilderness. From the Java-born Van Doorn family tree springs two great branches: one nurtures lush vineyards, the other settles the interior to become the first Trekboers and Afrikaners. The Nxumalos, inhabitants of a peaceful village unchanged for centuries, unite warrior tribes into the powerful Zulu nation. And the wealthy Saltwoods are missionaries and settlers who join the masses to influence the wars and politics that ravage a nation. Rivalries and passions spill across the land of The Covenant, a story of courage and heroism, love and loyalty, and cruelty and betrayal, as generations fight to forge a new world. Views: 50
In the late 1630s, lured by the promise of the New World, Andrea Stuart's earliest known maternal ancestor, George Ashby, set sail from England to settle in Barbados. He fell into the life of a sugar plantation owner by mere chance, but by the time he harvested his first crop, a revolution was fully under way: the farming of sugar cane, and the swiftly increasing demands for sugar worldwide, would not only lift George Ashby from abject poverty and shape the lives of his descendants, but it would also bind together ambitious white entrepreneurs and enslaved black workers in a strangling embrace. Stuart uses her own family story--from the seventeenth century through the present--as the pivot for this epic tale of migration, settlement, survival, slavery and the making of the Americas. As it grew, the sugar trade enriched Europe as never before, financing the Industrial Revolution and fuelling the Enlightenment. And, as well, it became the basis of many economies in South... Views: 50
Welcome to Parr's Landing, Population 1,528 . . . and shrinking.The year is 1972. Widowed Christina Parr, her daughter Morgan, and her brother-in-law Jeremy have returned to the remote northern Ontario mining town of Parr’s Landing, the place from which Christina fled before Morgan was born, seeking refuge. Dr. Billy Lightning has also returned in search of answers to the mystery of his father’s brutal murder. All will find some part of what they seek—and more.Built on the site of a decimated 17th-century Jesuit mission to the Ojibwa, Parr’s Landing is a town with secrets of its own buried in the caves around Bradley Lake. A three-hundred-year-old horror slumbers there, calling out to the insane and the murderous for centuries, begging for release—an invitation that has finally been answered.One man is following that voice, cutting a swath of violence across the country, bent on a terrible resurrection of the ancient evil, plunging the town and all its people into an endless night. Views: 50
