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Assume nothing, question everything. This is the message at the heart of ‘Freakonomics’, Levitt and Dubner’s rule-breaking, iconoclastic book about crack dealers, cheating teachers and bizarre baby names that turned everyone’s view of the world upside-down and became an international multi-million-copy-selling phenomenon.
The stories in Paul Theroux’s ‘The Vanishing Point’ are both exotic and domestic, their settings ranging from Hawaii to Africa and New England. Each focuses on life’s vanishing points – a moment when seemingly all lines running through one’s life converge, and one can see no farther, yet must deal with the implications. With the insight, subtlety, and empathy that has long characterized his work, Theroux has written deeply moving stories about memory, longing, and the passing of time, reclaiming his status, once again, as a master of the form.
In the chaos following WWII, many of Germany’s remaining resources were divvied up among allied forces. Some of the greatest spoils were the Third Reich’s scientific minds. The United States secretly decided that the value of these former Nazis’ forbidden knowledge outweighed their crimes, and the government formed a covert organization called Operation Paperclip to allow them to work without the knowledge of the American public. In this book, Annie Jacobsen follows more than a dozen German scientists through their postwar lives and into one of the most complex, nefarious, and jealously guarded government secrets of the 20th century.
Saying Toby Klein is an unlikely cheerleader is the understatement of the year – but the squad at Bayport High aren’t your average cheerleaders. They’re elite undercover government operatives. And word on the street is that something’s about to go down in Bayport. But if the spy business doesn’t kill Toby, it’s starting to look like Brooke, the team captain, might. The nominations are in for homecoming court, and rumour has it that Toby is the front-runner for queen. Tensions are high and Toby’s budding feelings for the most popular and infuriatingly handsome guy in Bayport High aren’t helping, either. Terrorist threat? Mission gone wrong? Disastrous Homecoming Court? Bring it on.
What’s your dream? It’s a simple question, but one which very few of us ever really think about. From early on, we are taught that there’s only one path to getting ahead: do well at school, get a certain kind of job, and avoid failure at all costs. We’re so busy trying to follow these rules that we never stop and ask ourselves: What’s my purpose? What do I really want? Do I have the power to make it happen? Simon Squibb is on a mission to change people’s lives for the better. Here, he shares the hard-won life lessons from his years in the business world plus his own personal life, from facing homelessness as a teenager to selling a multi-million pound business, and now inspiring a new generation of budding entrepreneurs. Simon will empower readers to identify their own meaningful goals, to remove the barriers that stand in the way, and ultimately to build a richer life.
On a backstreet in Tokyo lies a pawnshop, but not everyone can find it. Most will see only a cosy ramen restaurant. And just the chosen ones – those who are lost – will find a place to pawn their life choices and deepest regrets. Hana Ishikawa wakes on her first morning as the pawnshop’s new owner to find it ransacked, the shop’s most precious acquisition stolen and her father missing. And then into the shop stumbles a charming stranger, quite unlike other customers. For he offers help, instead of seeking it. Together, they must journey through a mystical world to find Hana’s father and the stolen choice – through rain puddles, hitching rides on paper cranes, across the bridge between midnight and morning and through a night market in the clouds. But as they get closer to the truth, Hana must reveal a secret of her own – and risk making a choice she will never be able to take back.
Richard of Bordeaux & Henry Bolingbroke were first cousins, born just three months apart. Their two lives were from the beginning entwined. When they were still children, Richard was crowned King Richard II with Henry at his side, carrying the sword of state: a ten-year-old lord in the service of his ten-year-old king. Yet, as the animals on their heraldic badges showed, they grew up to be opposites: Richard was the white hart, a narcissist, & Henry the eagle, a chivalric hero, a leader who inspired loyalty where Richard inspired only fear. Henry had all the qualities Richard lacked, all the qualities a sovereign needed, bar one: birth right. Increasingly threatened by his cousin, Richard became consumed by the need for total power, in a time of constant conspiracies, rebellions & reprisals. When he banished Henry into exile, the stage was set for a final confrontation, as Richard became the tyrant & Henry his usurper.
When Phyl, a young literature graduate, moves back home with her parents, she soon finds herself frustrated by the narrow horizons of English country life. But the chance discovery of a forgotten novelist from the 1980s stirs her into action, as does a visit from a family friend, Chris – especially when he tells her that he’s working on a political story that could put his life in danger. Chris has been following the progress of an opaque think-tank, founded at Cambridge University in the 1980s, which has been steadily pushing the British government in a more extreme direction. After years in the political wilderness, they are finally poised to put their ideas into action. As Britain finds itself under the leadership of a new Prime Minister whose tenure will only last for seven weeks, Chris pursues his story to a conference being held deep in the Cotswolds, where events take a sinister turn.
When aspiring travel writer Chloé Campbell is invited aboard a luxury airship flying to the North Pole, she thinks she’s bagged the opportunity of a lifetime. But she hasn’t had long to admire the dazzling icy views before a fellow passenger is found dead in their cabin. Trapped at the top of the world, the group agrees a tragic accident has occurred. But as the hours tick by, fear turns to doubt. It seems everyone’s a suspect. And it isn’t long before the passengers begin to turn on each other.
Chloe Roberts is on top of the world at Morton Academy. She’s a shoo-in for Head Girl and the lead spot in the school’s secret society: Jewel and Bone. But then her best friend, Nikhita Patel, betrays her, and life comes crashing down. Things take a darker turn when Chloe stumbles upon the Book of Crime and Punishment – a record of every misdeed committed by Morton students and the fitting penalty. And it’s not long before entries in the book start to match up with murders of Jewel and Bone members. Anyone could be a suspect. Can Chloe get to the bottom of this twisted game before she’s next on the killer’s hit list?
Why did so many Germans take part in the crimes of Nazi Germany? How did they come to support Hitler and follow him almost to the very end? For too long, the Nazis have been presented as little more than psychopaths or criminals. In his book, historian Richard J. Evans makes use of a mass of recently unearthed new evidence to strip away the veneer of myth and legend from the faces of the Third Reich and present a more realistic view of Nazi perpetrators as human beings who were disturbingly like us.
The Scottish island of Eris is largely unreachable from the mainland. Cut off by the tide for twelve hours each day. No way in. No way out. The island’s only house is home to Grace – content in her own isolation, guarding the island’s past. But when a shocking discovery is made in an art gallery in London, Grace receives an unexpected visitor. And the secrets of Eris threaten to emerge. Suddenly, this is a very dangerous time to be alone.
Sharing food is one of the purest human acts. Food has always been an integral part of Stanley Tucci’s life: from stracciatella soup served in the shadow of the Pantheon, to marinara sauce cooked between scene rehearsals and costume fittings, to home-made pizza eaten with his children before bedtime. Now, in ‘What I Ate In One Year’, Tucci records 12 months of eating, in restaurants, kitchens, film sets, press junkets, at home and abroad, with friends, with family, with strangers, and occasionally just by himself. Ranging from the mouth-wateringly memorable, to the comfortingly domestic, to the infuriatingly inedible, the meals memorialised in this diary are a prism for him to reflect on the ways his life, and his family, are constantly evolving. Through food he marks – and mourns – the passing of time, the loss of loved ones, and steels himself for what is to come.
The first rule of nuclear war is that there are no rules. Up to now, no one outside of official circles has known exactly what would happen if a rogue state launched a nuclear missile at the Pentagon. Second by second and minute by minute, these are the real-life protocols that choreograph the end of civilisation as we know it. If a single nuclear missile is launched, it provokes two dozen in return. Frantic calls over secure lines work to confirm the worst as armoured helicopters are scrambled outside. Decisions over hundreds of millions of lives need to be made within six minutes, based on partial information, knowing that once launched, nothing is capable of halting the destruction. Because the plans for General Nuclear War are among the most classified secrets held by the United States government, this book takes the reader up to the razor’s edge of what can legally be known.
Follow Odysseus after he leaves the fallen city of Troy and takes ten long dramatic years – battling monsters, the temptations of goddesses and suffering the curse of Poseidon – to voyage home to his wife Penelope on the island of Ithaca.
In theory, we all know what works and doesn’t work for our bodies; we know that we should eat more vegetables, consume less refined sugar and saturated fat, avoid ultra-processed foods. We know that what we choose to eat has a direct consequence on our health and our happiness. But we have lost touch with our food; it’s produced far away from our day to day lives and often arrives prepared and pre-packed to our homes, our desks and our supermarkets. We have built a food environment that is based on food marketing and arbitrary targets, instead of responding to our biology and nourishing ourselves as individuals. Dr Amati explains how to make the most beneficial decisions for maintaining good health at every stage of life. This book combines nutrition, medical science and public health advice to create a simple guide to what we should all know about our food and how it affects us.
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