Showing 25–36 of 75 resultsSorted by latest
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£9.99
By a riverbank in Africa, two lovers meet for the first time. They make a promise to meet again the next day, same time, same place, but only one of them shows up. This sounds like the beginning of a love story, but it’s more than that, for this breath-taking tale takes the reader into the heart of a vibrant world, a complex and intriguing civilisation of warriors and kings, philosophers and artists, parents and lovers. A world and culture which is about to end, for glimpsed on the horizon, seen but unsuspected, beautiful ships with white sails are waiting.
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£20.00
Three of the most important words in science are ‘I don’t know’. Not knowing implies a universe of opportunities – the possibility of discovery and surprise. Our understanding of cosmology has advanced immeasurably over the last five hundred years of modern science, yet many fundamental mysteries of existence persist. How did our Universe begin, if it even had a beginning? How big is it? What’s at the bottom of a black hole? How did life on Earth arise? Are we alone? Is time travel possible? These mysteries define the scientific forefront, the threshold of the unknown. To explore that threshold is to gain a deeper understanding of just how far science has progressed. In this book, theoretical physicist and science writer Lawrence Krauss explores cosmology’s greatest known unknowns.
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£27.99
The classicist Honor Cargill-Martin reappraises one of the most slandered and underestimated female figures of ancient history. Looking beyond the salacious anecdotes, she finds a woman battling to assert her position in the overwhelmingly male world of imperial Roman politics – and succeeding.
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£9.99
Ariel Price wakes up in Lisbon, alone. Her husband is gone – no warning, no note, not answering his phone. Something is wrong. She starts with hotel security, then the police, then the American embassy, at each confronting questions she can’t fully answer: What exactly is John doing in Lisbon? Why would he drag her along on his business trip? Who would want to harm him? And why does Ariel know so little about her new, much younger, husband? The clock is ticking. Ariel is increasingly frustrated and desperate, running out of time, and the one person in the world who can help is the one person she least wants to ask.
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£10.99
This is a passionate, highly accessible clarion call to a world dangerously threatened by irrational superstitions of all kinds. In country after country, conspiracy theories and religious dogmas that once seemed to have been overtaken by enlightened thought are helping to loft authoritarian leaders into power. The effects are being felt by women, ethnic minorities, teachers, scientists and students – and by the environment, the ultimate victim of climate change denial. We need clear thinking now more than ever. Christer Sturmark is a crusading secular humanist as well as a Swedish publisher and entrepreneur, and ‘The Flame of Reason’ is his manifesto for a better world. It provides a set of simple tools for clear thinking in the face of populist dogmas, anti-science attitudes and pseudo-philosophy, and suggestions for how we can move towards a new enlightenment.
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£9.99
Yorkshire, 1606. A man vanishes from a locked gatehouse in a remote village. 300 years later, it happens again. Rachel Savernake investigates a locked-room puzzle in this Gothic mystery.
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£27.99
Demonic temptresses – from siren-mermaids to Lilith – are well known today, and their mythology focuses around the seductive danger they pose to men. But the root of these figures can be traced back 4,000 years and in their earliest incarnations they were in fact demons worshipped and feared by women: like Lamashtu, the horrific talon-footed, serpentine monster, who strangled infants and murdered pregnant women, or the Gello, the ghost of a girl who had died a virgin and so killed expectant mothers and their babies out of jealousy. This history of a demonic tradition from ancient Mesopotamia to the present day – from Lamashtu and Gello, to Lamia and Lilith, and mermaids and vampires – shows how these demons were co-opted by a male-centred society, before being recast as symbols of women’s liberation.
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£10.99
Brunhild was a Visigothic princess, raised to be married off for the sake of alliance-building. Her sister-in-law Fredegund started out as a lowly palace slave. And yet – in sixth-century Merovingian France, where women were excluded from noble succession and royal politics was a blood sport – these two iron-willed strategists reigned over vast realms for decades, changing the face of Europe. The two queens commanded armies, developed taxation policies, established infrastructure and negotiated with emperors and popes, all the time fighting a gruelling forty-year civil war with each other. Yet after Brunhild and Fredegund’s deaths, their stories were rewritten, their names consigned to slander and legend.
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£9.99
A Syrian novel set in Aleppo during the early days of the civil war that followed the Arab Spring.
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£9.99
Amara has escaped her life as a slave in the town’s most notorious brothel, but now her existence depends on the affections of her patron: a man she might not know as well as she once thought. At night she dreams of the wolf den, still haunted by her past. Amara longs for the women she was forced to leave behind and worse, finds herself pursued by the man who once owned her. In order to be free, she will need to be as ruthless as he is. Amara knows her existence in Pompeii is subject to Venus, the goddess of love. Yet finding love may prove to be the most dangerous act of all.
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£12.99
Giles Tremlett traverses the rich and varied history of Spain, from prehistoric times to today, in a brief, accessible primer for visitors, curious readers, and hispanophiles. Spain’s position on Europe’s south-western corner has exposed it to cultural, political and actual winds blowing from all quadrants. Africa lies a mere nine miles to the south. The Mediterranean connects it to the civilizational currents of Phoenicians, Romans, Carthaginians, and Byzantines as well as the Arabic lands of the near east. Hordes from the Russian steppes were amongst the first to arrive. In ‘España’, Giles Tremlett argues that, in fact, that lack of a homogenous identity is Spain’s defining trait.
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£9.99
1981. Khalid Quraishi is one of the lucky ones. He works nights in the glitzy West End, and comes home every morning to his beautiful wife and daughter. He’s a world away from Karachi and the family he left behind. But Khalid likes to gamble, and he likes to win. 20 on the fruit machine, 50 on a sure-thing horse, 1000 on an investment that seems certain to pay out. Now he’s been offered a huge opportunity, a chance to get in early with a new bank, and it looks like he’ll finally have his big win. 2003. Alia Quraishi doesn’t really remember her dad. After her parents’ divorce she hardly saw him, and her mum refuses to talk about her charming ex-husband. So, when he died in what the police wrote off as a sad accident, Alia had no reason to believe there was more going on. Now almost 20 years have passed and she’s tired of only understanding half of who she is.