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The Irish Gardener's
Handbook,Michael Brenock Want to get into gardening?
Wondering how to get started? Anxious that
you won’t know what to do? Have given up before, want to get started
again? Want to improve your growing, yields and practices? This is the
book for you.
It takes you through all the most commonly grown vegetables and fruits in the context of Irish conditions. Learn from a gardener who has worked a garden since the 1940s as a child on his father’s market garden, then as an adult home gardener and horticulturist, currently as an allotment advisor. This book combines the old and most recent knowledge in one easy-to-follow text. It’s a book you’ll consult over and over, through the wayward Irish seasons. ![]() ![]() The
Spirit
Level,Kate Pickett & Richard Wilkinson Why do we mistrust people more in the UK than in Japan? Why do Americans have higher rates of teenage pregnancy than the French? What makes the Swedish thinner than the Greeks? The answer: inequality. This groundbreaking book, based on years of research, provides hard evidence to show: - How almost everything - from life expectancy to depression levels, violence to illiteracy - is affected not by how wealthy a society is, but how equal it is - That societies with a bigger gap between rich and poor are bad for everyone in them - including the well-off - How we can find positive solutions and move towards a happier, fairer future Urgent, provocative and genuinely uplifting, The Spirit Level has been heralded as providing a new way of thinking about ourselves and our communities, and could change the way you see the world. ![]() ![]() ![]() Stones Into Schools,Greg Mortenson In this dramatic first-person
narrative, Greg Mortenson picks up where
Three Cups of Tea left off in 2003, recounting his relentless,
ongoing efforts to establish schools for girls in Afghanistan; his
extensive work in Azad Kashmir and Pakistan after a massive earthquake
hit the region in 2005; and the unique ways he has built relationships
with Islamic clerics, militia commanders, and tribal leaders even as he
was dodging shootouts with feuding Afghan warlords and surviving an
eight-day armed abduction by the Taliban.
He shares for the first time his broader vision to promote peace through education and literacy, as well as touching on military matters, Islam, and women - all woven together with the many rich personal stories of the people who have been involved in this remarkable two-decade humanitarian effort. ![]() ![]() ![]() The Spirit Level,Kate Pickett & Richard Wilkinson Why do we mistrust people more in the UK than in Japan? Why do Americans have higher rates of teenage pregnancy than the French? What makes the Swedish thinner than the Greeks? The answer: inequality. This groundbreaking book, based on years of research, provides hard evidence to show: - How almost everything - from life expectancy to depression levels, violence to illiteracy - is affected not by how wealthy a society is, but how equal it is - That societies with a bigger gap between rich and poor are bad for everyone in them - including the well-off - How we can find positive solutions and move towards a happier, fairer future Urgent, provocative and genuinely uplifting, The Spirit Level has been heralded as providing a new way of thinking about ourselves and our communities, and could change the way you see the world. ![]() ![]() ![]() Frances Stonor Saunders 7 April 1926: on the steps of
the Capitol in Rome, surrounded by
chanting Fascists, the Honourable Violet Gibson raises her revolver and
fires at the Italian head of state, the poster-boy of the European
Right and darling of the British ruling class. The bullet narrowly
misses the dictator’s bald head, hitting him in the nose. Of all his
would-be assassins, she came closest to changing the course of history.
What had brought her to this moment? She was the daughter of an important Anglo-Irish peer, born to privilege and ease. Her family was Protestant, Unionist and conservative. She should have married into the aristocracy and lived the life that women of her milieu were expected to lead. Yet terrible unhappiness lurked beneath that glittering surface. She was a serious-minded young woman in an age when girls were meant to think as little as possible and to avoid intellectual or political excitement. Her spiritual quest brought her to a kind of left-wing Catholicism and to sympathy for Irish nationalism, to the horror of her family who exacted a severe emotional cost from her for her rebellion. And she fell in love with Italy, and watched as Mussolini’s thugs took it into the moral cesspit of Fascism. She felt she had to act. But Violet Gibson, unlike Hitler’s attempted assassins, never received the smallest recognition for her gesture. She was merely a ‘mad woman’, or judged to be so by a world that then thought Mussolini perfectly sane. She was confined to a lunatic asylum after a ten-minute interview with a society doctor, condemned without trial to a whole-life sentence without parole. She died in 1956. Her letters to friends languished unsent, and she never had a chance of being released, even after Mussolini declared war on Britain. Frances Stonor Saunders’ unforgettable and compulsively readable book rescues this gentle, driven woman from a silent void and restores her dignity and purpose. Read The Guardian review ![]() ![]() ![]() Paul Strathern In the autumn of 1502 three giants of the Renaissance period – Cesare Borgia, Leonardo da Vinci and Niccolo Machiavelli – set out on one of the most treacherous military campaigns of the period. Cesare Borgia was a ferocious military leader whose name was synonymous with brutality and whose reputation was marred with the suspicion of incest. Niccolo Machiavelli was a witty and subversive intellectual, more suited to the silken diplomacy of royal courts than the sodden encampments of a military campaign. And Leonardo da Vinci was a visionary master and the most talented military engineer in Italy. What led him to work for the monstrous Borgia? And what attracted him to the cunning Machiavelli? In his extraordinary new book acclaimed historian Paul Strathern ingeniously focuses on this improbable collusion of three iconic figures of the Italian Renaissance to unite three mighty strands of the period - war, politics and art. As each man’s life unfolds, so does the Italian Renaissance. ![]() ![]() ![]() Kenan Malik When a thousand Muslim
protestors paraded through a British town with a
copy of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses before
ceremoniously burning the book, it was an act motivated by anger and
offence as well as one calculated to shock and offend. It did more than
that: the image of the burning book became an icon of the Muslim anger.
Sent around the globe by photographers and TV cameras, the image
announced a new world. Twenty years later, the questions raised by the
Rushdie affair – Islam’s relationship to the West, the meaning of
multiculturalism, the limits of tolerance in a liberal society – have
become some of the defining issues of our time.
Taking the Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa as his starting point, Kenan Malik examines how radical Islam has gained hold in Muslim communities, how multiculturalism contributed to this, and how the Rushdie affair transformed the very nature of the debate on tolerance and free speech. Malik’s important contribution to the current discourse is informative, fresh and very readable ~ Rory Tevlin, The Irish Times review ![]() ![]() ![]() The Shaking Woman,Siri Hustvedt While speaking at a memorial
event for her father, Siri
Hustvedt
suffered a violent seizure from the neck down. She managed to finish
her talk and the paroxysms stopped, but not for good. Again and again
she found herself a victim of the shudders. What had happened?
Chronicling
her search for the shaking woman, Hustvedt takes the reader on a
journey into contemporary psychiatry, neurology and psychoanalysis. She
unearths stories and theories from the annals of medical history,
literature and philosophy, and delves into her own past. In the
process, she raises fundamental questions: what is the relationship
between mind and body? How do we remember? What is the self?
In a
seamless synthesis of personal experience and extensive research,
Hustvedt conveys the often frightening mysteries of illness and the
complexities of diagnosis. As engaging as it is thought-provoking, The
Shaking
Woman brilliantly illuminates the age-old dilemma of the
mental and the physical, and what it means to be human.
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The Unnamed,Joshua Ferris Tim
Farnsworth
is a handsome, healthy man, ageing with the grace of
a matinée idol. He loves his work. He loves his family. He loves
his
kitchen. And then one day he stands up and walks out on all of it. He
cannot stop walking. And, as his body propels him relentlessly forward,
deep into the unfamiliar outer reaches of the city, he begins to
realise he is moving further and further from his old self, seemingly
unable to turn back and retrieve what he has lost.
In his extraordinary novel Joshua Ferris delineates with great tenderness and a rare and inimitable wit the devastating story of a life taken for granted and what happens when that life is torn away without explanation or warning. The Unnamed is no less than a shimmering reflection of our times, of the lives we aspire to and the terrifying realisation of what is beyond our control. In Ferris's remarkable second novel, a life of privilege comes to ruin as a result of a strange and mysterious illness. Attorney Tim Farnsworth thought he had recovered from a disorder that compels him to walk to the point of exhaustion. But now his walking disease has returned and shows no sign of going into remission. His wife, Jane, supportive beyond measure, does everything she can to keep Tim safe during his walks, including making routine midnight trips to pick him up. As the disorder takes increasing control over their lives, however, the sacrifices they make for each other drive them further apart. Ferris manages to inject a bizarre whimsy into a devastatingly sad story, with each of Tim's outings revealing a new aspect of his marriage. The novel's circular aspects, with would-be happy endings spiraling back into chaos and then descending further, integrate Ferris's themes of family, sickness, and the uncertain division between body and mind into a vastly satisfying and original book. ~ Publishers Weekly ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Horns,Joe Hill Ignatius
Perrish
spent the night drunk and doing terrible things. He
woke up the next morning with one hell of a hangover, a raging headache
. . . and a pair of horns growing from his temples.
Once, Ig lived the life of the blessed: born into privilege, the second son of a renowned American musician, and the younger brother of a rising late-night TV star, Ig had security and wealth and a place in his community. Ig had it all, and more - he had the love of Merrin Williams, a love founded on shared daydreams, mutual daring, and unlikely midsummer magic. Then beautiful, vivacious Merrin was gone - raped and murdered, under inexplicable circumstances - with Ig the only suspect. He was never tried for the crime, but in the court of public opinion, Ig was and always would be guilty. Now Ig is possessed with a terrible new power to go with his terrible new look, and he means to use it to find the man who killed Merrin and destroyed his life. Being good and praying for the best got him nowhere. It's time for a little revenge; it's time the devil had his due. Released in Ireland/U.K. March 16th ![]() ![]() ![]() J.M.G. Le Clézio Young Nour is a North African
desert tribesman. It is 1909, and as the
First World War looms Nour’s tribe – the Blue Men – are forced from
their lands by French colonial invaders. Spurred on by thirst, hunger,
suffering, they seek guidance from a great spiritual leader. The holy
man sends them even further from home, on an epic journey northward, in
the hope of finding a land in which they can again be free.
Decades later, an orphaned descendant of the Blue Men – a girl called Lalla – is living in a shantytown on the coast of Morocco. Lalla has inherited both the pride and the resilience of her tribe – and she will need them, as she makes a bid to escape her forced marriage to a wealthy older man. She flees to Marseilles, where she experiences both the hardships of immigrant life – as a hotel maid – and the material prosperity of those who succeed – when she becomes a successful model. And yet Lalla does not betray the legacy of her ancestors. In these two narratives set in counterpoint, Nobel Prize-winning novelist J. M. G. Le Clézio tells – powerfully and movingly – the story of the ‘last free men’ and of Europe’s colonial legacy – a story of war and exile and of the endurance of the human spirit. a book one must admire for its profound seriousness, for its scorched-earth poetics and for its rendering of a lost world ~ Douglas Kennedy, The Times review ![]() ![]() ![]() Chris Bohjalian "There,"
says
Alice
Hayward
to
Reverend
Stephen
Drew,
just
after
her
baptism.
Twelve
hours
later,
she
suffers a violent death at the hands
of her husband who will kills shoots himself. But when the medical
examiner autopsies the two bodies, what appeared to be a
straightforward case of domestic abuse, turns out to be far more
complex. Given the angle of the bullet and the amount of blood
spattered around the room, he can only conclude that someone other than
George Hayward fired the gun.
Told through the eyes of four narrators, Secrets Of Eden is full of twists and turns, making you question the innocence of each character. Stephen Drew goes first and wins our trust as he draws us into his world, describing his shock at the violence that hit this small, sleepy town, and his sudden loss of faith which ultimately will make him flee. But Catherine Benincasa, the tough State Attorney, has her suspicions about Drew. Following is Heather Laurent, whose appearance in the town on the day after the killings is curious in itself; she is a bestselling author of national fame, far removed from this local community. And yet she herself lost her parents in similar circumstances and easily identifies with Alice's 15-year-old daughter, Katie, who was safely at a rock concert with her best friend the evening her parents died, well away from the killer's reach... ![]() ![]() ![]() Point Omega,Don DeLillo In the middle of a desert ‘somewhere south of nowhere’, to a forlorn house made of metal and clapboard, a secret war adviser has gone in search of space and time. Richard Elster, seventy-three, was a scholar – an outsider – when he was called to a meeting with government war planners. For two years he tried to make intellectual sense of the troop deployments, counterinsurgency, orders for rendition. He was to map the reality these men were trying to create. At the end of his service, Elster retreats to the desert, where he is joined by a young filmmaker intent on documenting his experience. Jim Finley wants to make a one-take film, Elster its single character – ‘Just a man against a wall.’ The two men sit on the deck, drinking and talking. Finley makes the case for his film. Weeks go by. And then Elster’s daughter Jessie visits – an ‘otherworldly’ woman from New York – who dramatically alters the dynamic of the story. When a devastating event follows, all the men’s talk, the accumulated meaning of conversation and isolation, is thrown into question. What is left is loss, fierce and incomprehensible. ![]() ![]() ![]() Little Hands Clapping,Dan Rhodes In a room above a bizarre
German museum, and far from the prying eyes
of strangers, lives the Old Man. Caretaker of the museum by day, by
night he enjoys the sound of silence, broken by the occasional crunch
of a spider between his blackened teeth. Little Hands Clapping brings
together the Old Man with the respectable Doctor Ernst Frohlicher, his
greedy dog Hans and a cast of grotesque and hilarious townsfolk, all of
whose lives are thrown together as the town uncovers a crime so
outrageous that it will shock the world. From its sinister opening to
its explosive denouement, Little
Hands Clapping blends lavishly
entertaining storytelling with Rhodes's macabre imagination, entrancing
originality and magical touch.
![]() ![]() ![]() Skippy Dies,Paul Murray Ruprecht Van Doren is an
overweight genius whose hobbies include
very difficult maths and the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence.
Daniel 'Skippy' Juster is his roommate. In the grand old Dublin
institution that is Seabrook College for Boys, nobody pays either of
them much attention. But when Skippy falls for Lori, the
Frisbee-playing Siren from the girls' school next door, suddenly all
kinds of people take an interest - including Carl, part-time
drug-dealer and official school psychopath.
While his teachers battle over modernisation, and Ruprecht attempts to open a portal into a parallel universe, Skippy, in the name of love, is heading for a showdown - in the form of a fatal doughnut-eating race that only one person will survive. This unlikely tragedy will explode Seabrook's century-old complacency and bring all kinds of secrets into the light, until teachers and pupils alike discover that the fragile lines dividing past from present, love from betrayal - and even life from death - have become almost impossible to read… |
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