From the creators of the original Twitter feed that started oneof the biggest cultural memes in recent history, a hilariouslyquotable companion book to the Shit Girls Say Twitter and YouTube sensation.I just love tiny things…I hate the word moist…I have so many stories for you…I’m so pale…I had such a good sleep…What’s your dog’s name?…Ice cream makes me cough.
June Thomson and Giselle Ross are inextricably linked by two unspeakable acts of evil. On the same day, a few miles apart, their estranged husbands slaughtered their children. The murders were not driven by rage, or committed in moments of madness. They were planned, and carried out with chilling precision, to inflict the worst pain imaginable.June and Giselle did not know each other. Tragedy is all that binds them; they were destined to come together as ‘sisters’, united by pain, grief and a sense of loss so immense that it would drive both to the brink of madness.June’s life with Rab Thomson had been a dark and turbulent existence, characterised by mental torture, physical violence and rape. Giselle’s relationship with Ashok Kalyanjee had been a strange and distant affair, of lives spent apart before, during and after marriage.But both relationships had produced two beautiful children, and the women believed that their misery was in the past. Both mothers believed it was important to allow the fathers’ access to their children. On that fateful Saturday in May 2008, neither could have conceived that the men they had once loved would do anything to harm their children. But they were wrong, so terribly wrong.Nothing can bring their children back. But June and Giselle have one solitary comfort: they are no longer alone. Their lives may have been torn apart, but they have each other. Together, they are stronger.This is the story of their parallel journeys: of the dreadful days before, during, and after the murders of their children. Told in their own words, with searing honesty of their pain, and guilt, it is a story of endurance, friendship, and survival against the odds. It is not a story for the faint hearted, but it is a story that must be told, for in the end, it is a testament to the human spirit.
‘Lives that Never Grow Old’ is a wonderful series– edited by Richard Holmes – that recovers the great classical tradition of English biography. Every book is a biographical masterpiece, still thrilling to read and vividly alive.Zélide lived in her father’s moated castle in Holland, like a fairytale princess in a tower. She was the clever, sexy, mercurial young Dutch blue-stocking with whom Boswell fell disastrously in love in 1764. The rest of Zélide’s story was unknown until the brilliant young Boswell scholar Geoffrey Scott pieced it together from her intimate letters and essays.Subsequent affairs with a cynical cavalry officer, a celebrated but vacillating writer (aptly named Benjamin Constant), and a thoroughly reliable music master, took her eventually to another fairytale mansion in Switzerland. This tender, funny, faintly salacious portrait of a ‘belle-esprit’ is one of the most exquisite biographical miniatures ever written.
A revealing look backstage at the hit TV show Downton Abbey. In-depth interviews give an exclusive insight into the actors’ experiences on set as well as the celebrated creative team behind the award-winning drama.A lavishly illustrated book full of images from the new series including those stunning 1920s costumes, which will delight the millions of devoted Downton fans. Step inside the props store or the hair and make-up truck and catch a glimpse of the never-before-seen secret backstage world. Expertly crafted with inside knowledge and facts, this book will delve into the inspiration behind the details seen on screen, the choice of locations, the music and much more.With a perspective from the director’s chair and rare insights into filming, this is the inside track on all aspects of the making of the show.
Commissioned by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois, these tales of dangerous women by the most stellar names in fiction are available for the first time in three-volume paperback.George R.R. Martin is the bestselling author of A Song of Ice and Fire, the inspiration for HBO’s hit series GAME OF THRONES.This third volume features an original short story by Joe Abercrombie. 'Some Desperado' centres on Shy South, the protagonist of Abercrombie’s novel RED COUNTRY. Having robbed a bank, Shy is carrying 2,000 silver pieces, and she's on the run when her horse catches an arrow. Marooned in a dusty ghost town, she faces up to a trio of murderous, flea-bitten criminals…This volume of stories about hard-living bad girls, killers and superheroes also includes contributions from worldwide bestselling authors Jim Butcher, Melinda Snodgrass and Pat Cadigan.DANGEROUS WOMEN 3Gardner Dozois’s introductionJoe Abercrombie, ‘Some Desperado’Diana Rowland, ‘City Lazarus’Sherlynn Kenyon, ‘Hell Hath No Fury’Melinda Snodgrass, ‘The Hands That Are Not There’Pat Cadigan, ‘Caretakers’Cecelia Holland, ‘Nora’s Song’Jim Butcher, ‘Bombshells’
Commissioned by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois, these tales of dangerous women by the most stellar names in fiction are available for the first time in three-volume paperback.George R.R. Martin is the bestselling author of A Song of Ice and Fire, the inspiration for HBO’s hit series GAME OF THRONES.This second volume features an original short story by Megan Lindholm (who also writes as Robin Hobb). In the bittersweet ‘Neighbors’ Sarah, a rather strange widow, lives isolated and alone, surrounded by young families. But is the old lady afflicted by dementia – or by something far more odd?Other contributors to this volume of stories of formidable women include worldwide bestselling authors Diana Gabaldon, with an Outlander story, Sharon Kay Penman and Lev Grossman.DANGEROUS WOMEN 2Gardner Dozois’s introductionMegan Lindholm, ‘Neighbors’Lev Grossman, ‘The Girl in the Mirror’Sharon Kay Penman, ‘A Queen in Exile’S. M. Stirling, ‘Pronouncing Doom’Caroline Spector, ‘Lies My Mother Told Me’Sam Sykes, ‘Name the Beast’Diana Gabaldon, ‘Virgins’
The much-loved children’s classic from the author of Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little, available in eBook for the very first time!Like the rest of his family, Louis is a trumpeter swan. But unlike his four brothers and sisters, Louis can't trumpet joyfully. In fact, he can't even make a sound. And since he can't trumpet his love, the beautiful swan Serena pays absolutely no attention to him.Louis tries everything he can think of to win Serena's affection;he even goes to school to learn to read and write. But nothing seems to work. Then his father steals him a real brass trumpet. Is a musical instrument the key to winning Louis his love?
One night in a Parisian nightclub and the aftermath of a marriage provide the stories for these two novels by Frederic Beigbeder, award-winning author of ‘Windows on the World’.In ‘Holiday in a Coma’, Marc Marronnier, a shallow, superficial, rich Parisian who works as an advertising executive, is invited by his old friend to the opening of a new nightclub called The Shitter (a satirical take on the famous Paris nightclub Les Bains Douche). Taking place over a single unforgettable night, the novel documents everything from the pit-bull bouncer on the door, to the drugs, cocktails and wannabes who frequent the club, and Marc’s attempts to seduce a catwalk model – any one will do. A catalogue of degeneracy, drugs, sex and decibels, ‘Holiday in a Coma’ is written with a fury and passion that reflect the author's own relationship with a world and he both loves and loathes.In ‘Love Lasts Three Years’, Marc Marronnier has just been divorced and – shallow opportunist that he is – has decided to write a book about it. He has a theory that love lasts no more than three years, and here – recounting the highs and lows of his marriage and taking us through brash nightclubs, vainglorious offices and soulless designer apartments – he brings to bear the theoretical and the empirical to prove his point. Both frightening and funny, the book reads like a diary: sometimes tender and real, sometimes fantastical and cruel, peppered with Beigbeder’s acerbic one-liners and trademark wit.
Where can you read about a monstrous cheese big enough to hold a girl of 13 inside? Or that the invention of the bicycle directly, and poorly, impacted sales of cheddar? Or that some of the first cheese makers hid gold coins inside their wheels of dairy as a sales tool?Brethren, the writer calls you this because he hopes that you are ‘cheese-minded’ like himself.This classic and charming book, a timeless love letter to English cheeses was first published in 1937, newly rediscovered and charmingly illustrated by EH Shepard. It is a treasure trove of wonderful anecdotes including the tale of the monstrous cheese big enough to hold a 13-year-old inside, the Stilton that purred like a cat and the famous cheesemaker in Manchester who selected which Cheshire cheese to sell based on where the mice had been nibbling ‘as they were the best judges of a good cheese’.Sir John Squire, a notable journalist of the time, collected together ‘a galaxy of talent’, with the aim of making this ‘one of the most delightful and entertaining gift books that has ever been published’. Each of the distinguished ten contributors champion an individual cheese, setting forward their passionate and compelling arguments, celebrating the differences and delights of each type. Through their explorations, the chequered beauties of the English landscape unfolds.It will certainly whet the appetite for English cheese, for that is ultimately what matters most, as after all ‘the only way to learn about cheese is to eat it.’
The perfect gift book for cat lovers everywhere! Assess your cat’s genius in a series of fun and easy tests and activities, in this follow-up to the best-selling TEST YOUR CAT.Cats are known for their intelligence, independence, and agility, always landing on their feet and able to find food and an unattended cat flap anywhere in the neighbourhood.Sure your cat is clever, but can he play you like a fiddlefor human food? How about work a remote control?Or fend off uninvited relatives?The all-new Test Your Cat: Genius Edition is full of fun tests and activities you can do with your cat to confirm whether the marvellous Master Monty really is a prodigy on four paws.