Written by a journalist Dreamland provides a fascinating cornucopia of facts and ideas about that part of our lives which occupies a third of our time – sleep. As entertaining as it is informative this is well worth devoting some of your other time. ISBN 978-0393080209
Christopher Brookmyre is frequently compared to Carl Hiasson, Florida’s merchant of the comic-crime caper. The back yard of Jack Parlabane is our own dear rain soaked West of Scotland. He’s an investigative journalist who is not averse to breaking the law for the sake of a good story, and has finally been hoisted on the
“With enough determination, any bloody idiot can get up this hill,” observed Rob Hall, the leader of a commercial expedition, on his eighth tour of Mount Everest. ”The trick is to get back down alive.” The particular descent ahead of those on the ”hill” on May 10, 1996, resulted in the greatest loss of life
Josephine Cox hails from Blackburn and she has built a career as a highly successful novelist, frequently being cited as one of the top three most borrowed authors from public libraries. In this story from 2012 eight-year-old Casey’s mother Ruth is a cruel woman, with an appetite for other women’s husbands. His father is quiet
No less than a panorama of post-war US history from the 50s to the 90s. Through fragments and interlaced stories—including those of highway killers, artists, celebrities, conspiracists, gangsters, nuns, and sundry others—DeLillo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeLillo) creates a fragile web of connected experience, a communal Zeitgeist that encompasses the messy whole of five decades of American life. A huge, baggy
In this novel of 1935 two children, strangers, wait in a well appointed house in Paris: Leopold for his mother, whom he has never seen, and Henrietta for a train. Upstairs an old woman lies dying and her daughter flutters round her. Little does Henrietta know what fascinations this Fisher house contains. There are secrets that have the potential
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Aldous Huxley spares no one in his ironic, piercing portrayal of a group gathered in an Italian palace by the socially ambitious and self-professed lover of art, Mrs. Aldwinkle. Here, Mrs. Aldwinkle yearns to recapture the glories of the Italian Renaissance, but her guests ultimately fail to fulfill her naive expectations. Among her entourage are:
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Andrew Marr (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Marr) is a much admired journalist, author and broadcaster with a talent for making serious subjects accessible. Happily, as of April 2013, he is recovering from a heart attack, and has appeared back on our television screens. When it comes to a history of modern Britain he is shrewd enough to know that yet another irenic
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From its source in The Lowther Hills to the sea the River Clyde runs through 109 miles in three distinct areas: Clydesdale, The Clyde Valley and ‘Clydeside’. This volume (1999) deals with first of these. Moving from prehistoric and Roman through medieval and Covenanting to industrial and modern times, the book offers an account of
