Monday, 30 September 2019
Sunday, 29 September 2019
Saturday, 28 September 2019
Friday, 27 September 2019
East of Croydon: Travels through India and South East Asia by Sue Perkins
Paperback: 'A few years ago I was asked if I'd like to make a documentary on the Mekong River, travelling from the vast delta in Vietnam to the remote and snowy peaks of Tibet.
Up until that point, the farthest East I'd been was Torremolinos, in the Costa Del Sol.
Here's the thing:
I am scared of flying.
I have zero practical skills.
I can't survive if I am more than a three minute walk from a supermarket.
For the last seven years I have suffered with crippling anxiety.
I bolt when panicked.
I cannot bear to witness humans or animals in distress.
I have no ability to learn languages.
I am a terrible hypochondriac.
Oh, and I am no good with boats.
So I said yes.'
East of Croydon (2018) is a part-memoir part-travel-guide inspired by her BBC 1 documentary series 'The Ganges with Sue Perkins' and has been shortlisted for Autobiography of the Year at the National Book Awards 2018.
About the author: Sue Perkins is perhaps best known for being one half of double act Mel and Sue, where she plays the part of Mel. Together, the pair have bounced, shouted and gurned their way through countless hours of television, most memorably Light Lunch and its later counterpart, the imaginatively titled Late Lunch. Over the years, Sue has worked on a wide range of solo projects, including documentaries on art, popular fiction and history. In 2008 she appeared on the BBC show Maestro, culminating in her conducting at the Last Night of the Proms. She has also collaborated with food-critic Giles Coren on the Supersizers series, where the duo power-ate their way through five centuries of lungs, livers and testicles whilst half-cut on sherry. Sue hosts the panel show, Insert Name Here, as well as being a regular contributor to Just A Minute, QI and The Last Leg. She is also the presenter of the Game of Thrones companion show, Thronecast.
East of Croydon is Sue's second book. Her first, Spectacles, was a Sunday Times bestseller. Oh, and she used to do a cake show on BBC1.
Thursday, 26 September 2019
100 Letters For You by Saint Pio of Pietrelcina
Paperback: In 100 Letters For You (2010, 2015), there are 100 letters of Padre Pio taken from the different volumes of his correspondence (I, II and III) to his spiritual directors and spiritual children.
These letters presented to you to read are not to be taken as a curiosity in the life of an extraordinary saint, nor even as a collection of sublime writings only to be admired, but as an aid in what must be for all of us a continuous quest, sometimes difficult and other times delightful, for God, in the company of a champion of the spirit who made this journey himself, spiritually and physically and with his whole mind and heart.
The image of Padre Pio who comes across in these 100 letters, is of a very intimate and elevated mystical figure. The profile of this dearly loved and suffering "stigmatic of Our Lord," grows in one's mind and memory and the unique journey of Padre Pio becomes, page by page, almost one's own outside of space and time, and rather than becoming remote because of all his greatness, his person unfolds in one's soul and unites himself to us.
And while you find yourself tremble with love and suffering with him, one has the feeling that one has always known him as if reflected in a clear and luminous mirror, and without any of those distortions that come from one's own ever pressing needs.
Padre Pio unveils a fascinating world.
100 Letters For You is a book that restores the spirit. It is a book to be read, meditated upon and absorbed in one's very being.
(By Father Francesco D Colacelli, who also edited 100 Letters For You)
About the author/saint: Saint Pio (Pius) of Pietrelcina was a Capuchin Catholic priest from Italy, who is venerated as a saint. During his lifetime, he became known for bearing the stigmata (wounds of Christ). Padre Pio was born Francesco Forgione on 25 May 1887, in Pietrelcina, in Campania, southern Italy.
Wednesday, 25 September 2019
Holy Men, Holy Women: A Journey Into the Faiths of Malaysians and Other Essays by Dina Zaman
Paperback: Needing a break from her first book I Am Muslim (2007), Dina Zaman embarked on a two-year journey around Malaysia - the length of the peninsula as well as Sabah and Sarawak. She met people of many faiths. And from these encounters she has woven together a tapestry of vital stories: of nuns and shamans, of silat practitioners who she inadvertently offended, of pilgrims and ustaz, of hijabis who pole dance, and she ended up in Memali to discover that tragic tale.
This collection of essays - animated, engaging and provocative - opens a window on the sometimes troubled terrain of religious beliefs and practices. The accounts are personal and intimate, and at the same time throw light on some of the most pressing issues that confront society today: mindfulness and worldliness, interfaith relations and lifestyle choices, class and conviction, identity and religiosity.
This is Malaysia, peopled by holy men and holy women of all stripes, and Dina Zaman is your compelling guide.
‘Holy Men, Holy Women (2018) gives a valuable and rare insight into the people of faith that we revere and are too afraid or respectful to know more. They appear holier than thou. But Dina Zaman goes behind the superficial to show the human side of those who seem closer to the Almighty than the rest of us in this mortal coil.’ - Jahabar Sadiq, founder of The Malaysian Insight, media veteran and former Reuters journalist
About the author: Dina Zaman is a journalist, writer and co-founder of IMAN Research, whose aim is to examine the connections between society, religion and perception in order to strengthen community resilience. For many years, she worked in the media, as an editor and columnist at Malaysiakini, the Malaysian Insider and the Malay Mail Online. Her first book, I Am Muslim (2007), brought together some of these essays in a study of Islamic religious life as it is lived by Muslims themselves. Her short-story collection King of the Sea (2012) explores themes of love, loss and longing.
Tuesday, 24 September 2019
Monday, 23 September 2019
Sunday, 22 September 2019
Saturday, 21 September 2019
Friday, 20 September 2019
Thursday, 19 September 2019
Far Side Of The Night (Rising Dragon Series) by Jan-Philipp Sendker
Paperback: During a trip to China, Paul and Christine experience the nightmare of every parent: their four year old son is kidnapped. They are reunited after a few hours but the kidnappers, very powerful people in today’s China with close contacts to the police, dearly want the child back. The only safe place for the family is the US embassy in Beijing, but they are two thousand miles away, with the police searching frantically for them, and all airports, train stations and major roads under surveillance. They will have no chance without help from strangers, but who will be willing to risk their lives for them?
Whom can they trust?
The Far Side of the Night (2019) is a powerful, transporting novel about the struggle to maintain humanity in an impossible situation and is the third and latest book in the Rising Dragon Series.
The Far Side of the Night is also available in eBook from the iBookstore.
About the author: Jan-Philipp Sendker, born in Hamburg in 1960, and, longing to travel the world, became the American correspondent for Stern from 1990 to 1995, and its Asian correspondent from 1995 to 1999. In 2000, he published Cracks in the Great Wall, a nonfiction book about China.
The Art of Hearing Heartbeats is his first novel, and since then, he has written 3 further novels, including a sequel to The Art of Hearing Heartbeats, A Well-Tempered Heart. In 2013, he received The Indies Choice Honour Award in the category Adult Fiction for The Art of Hearing Heartbeats, which became an international bestseller.
He lives in Potsdam with his family and has recently released his third instalment in his China-trilogy, The Far Side of the Night (2019).
About the translator: Christine Lo is an editor in book publishing in London. She has also worked as a translator in Frankfurt and translated books by Juli Zeh and Senait Mehari from German into English. Her most recent translation is Atlas of Remote Islands by Judith Schalansky. She serves as one of the judges of the Schlegel-Tieck Prize for German translation.
Rating: 5/5
Wednesday, 18 September 2019
Tuesday, 17 September 2019
Monday, 16 September 2019
Portrait Of A Spy (Gabriel Allon Series) by Daniel Silva
Paperback: Gabriel Allon has been hailed as the most compelling creation since 'Ian Fleming put down his martini and invented James Bond' (Rocky Mountain News). A man with a deep appreciation for all that is beautiful, Gabriel is also an angel of vengeance, an international operative who will stop at nothing to see justice done. Sometimes he must journey far in search of evil. And sometimes evil comes to him.
In a dangerous world, one extraordinary woman can mean the difference between life and death.
For Gabriel and his wife, Chiara, it was supposed to be the start of a pleasant weekend in London - a visit to a gallery in St James's to authenticate a newly discovered painting by Titian, followed by a quiet lunch. But a pair of deadly bombings in Paris and Copenhagen has already marred this autumn day. And while walking toward Covent Garden, Gabriel notices a man he believes is about to carry out a third attack. Before Gabriel can draw his weapon, he is knocked to the pavement and can only watch as the nightmare unfolds.
Haunted by his failure to stop the massacre of innocents, Gabriel returns to his isolated cottage on the cliffs of Cornwall, until a summons brings him to Washington and he is drawn into a confrontation with the new face of global terror. At the centre of the threat is an American-born cleric in Yemen to whom Allah has granted 'a beautiful and seductive tongue.' A gifted deceiver, who was once a paid CIA asset, the mastermind is plotting a new wave of attacks.
Gabriel and his team devise a daring plan to destroy the network of death from the inside, a gambit fraught with risk, both personal and professional. To succeed, Gabriel must reach into his violent past. A woman waits there - a reclusive heiress and art collector who can traverse the murky divide between Islam and the West. She is the daughter of an old enemy, a woman joined to Gabriel by a trail of blood.
Set against the disparate worlds of art and intelligence, Portrait of a Spy (2011) - the eleventh book in the Gabriel Allon series - moves swiftly from the corridors of power in Washington to the glamorous auction houses of New York and London to the unforgiving landscape of the Saudi desert. Featuring a climax that will leave readers haunted long after they turn the final page, this deeply entertaining story is also a breathtaking portrait of courage in the face of unspeakable evil - and Daniel Silva's most extraordinary novel to date.
About the author: Daniel Silva was born in Michigan in 1960 and raised in California where he received his BA from Fresno State. Silva began his writing career as a journalist for United Press International (UPI), traveling in the Middle East and covering the Iran-Iraq war, terrorism and political conflicts. From UPI he moved to CNN, where he eventually became executive producer of its Washington-based public policy programming. In 1994, he began work on his first novel, The Unlikely Spy, a surprise best seller that won critical acclaim. He turned to writing full time in 1997 and all of his books have been New York Times/national best sellers, translated into 25 languages and published across Europe and the world. He lives in Washington, DC.
Rating: 5/5
Sunday, 15 September 2019
In Conversation With God: Daily Meditations Volume Five, Ordinary Time (Weeks 24-34) by Francis Fernandez
Paperback: In Conversation with God: Daily Mediations Volume 5, Ordinary Time (Weeks 24-34) (2015) consists of 105 meditations. It is part of the series which offers a meditation for each day of the year.
Man's highest aspiration is to be able to converse with Jesus - to pray.
In Conversation With God helps the reader to pray with piety and confidence. It is aimed not at the 'specialist' but is for the ordinary person - for the housewife, for the teacher, for the secretary, for the shop assistant and so on.
Following the thread of the Liturgy, this book gives many practical hints for deepening in one's relationship with God and those around one, improving one's character in and through daily work and family life. The author has clearly succeeded in not creating a straitjacket; rather the book, rich as it is in quotations from spiritual writers throughout the ages, is a source of open suggestions for daily meditation on every aspect of Christian life. Sales of this series, running to several hundred thousand copies in all the main languages, are a testimony to its popularity.
In Conversation With God is a translation of Hablar con Dios - Vol V first published in 1989 by Ediciones Palabra, Madrid, and in 1991 by Scepter with ecclesiastical approval.
About the author: Francis Fernández-Carvajal was born in Granada in 1938. A graduate in History from the University of Navarre, he also holds a doctorate in Canon Law from the Angelicum in Rome. He is a priest of the Opus Dei Prelature. Since his ordination in 1964, much of his pastoral ministry has been with university students. For more than ten years, he has been Editor of the monthly magazine PALABRA. Among his published works are an Anthology of texts (with more than 600 quotations from spiritual writers throughout the ages), Lukewarmness - the Devil in Disguise, and Commentaries on the Gospels of St Matthew and St Luke.
Saturday, 14 September 2019
Friday, 13 September 2019
Sins Of The Tongue Or Jealousy In Woman's Life (Christian Ethics) by Monseigneur Landriot, Archbishop of Rheims
Paperback: Monseigneur Landriot, formerly Archbishop of Rheims, is the author of an earlier Loreto title, The Valiant Woman. That book was so well received that we have decided to republish another of the good Archbishop's powerful spiritual works.
This book consists of fifteen discourses four on Sins of the Tongue, three on Envy and Jealousy, two on Rash Judgments, two on Christian Patience, and four on Grace) that were originally talks given to laywomen of his diocese in the late 19th century.
At the beginning, the good Archbishop says, "I propose, my children, to give you some instructions on the tongue, and the faults which it causes us to commit. I shall commence today by speaking of the power and beauty of that organ, of the noble use which ought to be made of it, and of the many advantages we may derive from it." Only then does he begin to enumerate the sins and give prescriptions for their remedy.
During these discourses, Monseigneur Landriot shows that he is no stranger to the world and its ways. His wisdom has penetrated the deepest secrets of the human psyche and its entanglements with the world and he lays bare the inner workings of souls strongly under the influence of grace and also of those habituated to vice.
Precise descriptions of certain sins and their consequences enable the reader to clarify in their own mind the dangers and the necessary precautions that must be taken to avoid them.
Quoting extensively from holy Scripture and many of the great doctors and moral theologians of the Church, the Archbishop never fails to delight us with his penetrating analysis of human nature, at once showing us the depravity it is capable of and the great power it has to overcome our evil tendencies through the effects of divine grace. To seek diligently to possess a "well formed conscience" is the duty of every Christian. There is precious little teaching on the topics covered in these instructions which is accessible to the average man and woman of today. The power of the tongue for good or evil is out of all proportion to its size. Ignorance of this power and failure to properly identify and discipline that enormous potential is one of the great scourges of our world today.
A doctor of souls such as Monseigneur Landriot once guided many women (and men) to greater knowledge, wisdom, and sanctity through the dissemination of his conferences in France. May it please God that this new English edition enjoy a wide circulation and produce similar results today and for many years to come.
Sins of the Tongue or Jealousy in Woman's Life is translated from the French by Helena Lyons with a preface by David, the Bishop of Kerry in Killarney on 28 November 1872.
About the author: Landriot, Mgr (Jean François Anne Thomas), 1816-1874.
Thursday, 12 September 2019
A Daughter's Deadly Deception: The Jennifer Pan Story (Crime, Justice) by Jeremy Grimaldi
Paperback: A sinister plot by a young woman left her mother dead and her father riddled with bullets. The crime took place at the Pan residence in Unionville, Markham, Ontario, in the Greater Toronto Area on 8 November 2010.
From the outside looking in, twenty-four-year-old Jennifer Pan, a Vietnamese-Canadian woman of Chinese-Vietnamese ancestry, seemed like a model daughter living a perfect life. The ideal child, the one her immigrant parents saw, was studying to become a pharmacist at the University of Toronto.
But there was a dark, deceptive side to the angelic young woman.
In reality, Jennifer spent her days in the arms of her high school sweetheart, Daniel. In an attempt to lead the life she dreamed of, she would do almost anything: lie about her whereabouts, forge school documents, and invent fake jobs and a fictitious apartment. For many years she led this double life.
But when her father discovered her web of lies, his ultimatum was severe.
And so, too, was her revenge: a plan that culminated in cold-blooded murder. And it almost worked, except for one bad shot.
The story of Jennifer Pan is one of all-consuming love and devious betrayal that led to a cold-hearted plan hatched by a group of youths who thought they could pull off the perfect crime. Jeremy Grimaldi, a journalist of the Markham Economist & Sun and the author of A Daughter's Deadly Deception: The Jennifer Pan Story, stated that the affair "captivated many, if for nothing else than the sheer intrigue of a case involving matricide, a rarity in Canada."
A Daughter's Deadly Deception (2016) is the winner of the 2017 Arthur Ellis Award in the Best Nonfiction Book category.
About the author: Jeremy Grimaldi is a journalist who has travelled through forty countries and worked in both Canada and the UK. He is currently the Crime and Justice Reporter for YorkRegion.com and its sister papers. While working as a court reporter, he covered the Jennifer Pan story for ten months. He lives in Toronto. He is on Twitter.
Wednesday, 11 September 2019
We, The Survivors by Tash Aw
Hardback: Lee Hock Lye - known to his friends as Ah Hock - is a young man with vague ideas of living in a better place than the Malaysian village he is born into, where families harvest cockles from the polluted mudflats. He follows the rules and strives to improve himself in a country that promises riches and security to everyone, but in reality delivers them only to a chosen few. With Asian society changing around him, Ah Hock remains trapped in a world of poorly paid jobs that just about allow him to keep his head above water.
But what leads Ah Hock to kill a man?
We, the Survivors (2019) is a vivid and compelling description of the years building up to a shocking act of violence, a confession told over several days to a local journalist whose life has taken a very different course. Devastating and poignant, it is a portrait of an outsider like no other, an anti-nostalgic view of human life and the ravages of hope.
About the author: Tash Aw was born in Taipei to Malaysian parents. He grew up in Kuala Lumpur before moving to Britain to attend university. He is the author of three critically acclaimed novels – The Harmony Silk Factory (2005), which won the Whitbread First Novel Award and a regional Commonwealth Writers’ Prize; Map of the Invisible World (2009) and Five Star Billionaire (2013) – and a work of non-fiction, The Face: Strangers on a Pier (2016), finalist for the LA Times Book Prize. His novels have twice been longlisted for the MAN Booker prize and been translated into 23 languages.
His work has won an O Henry Prize and been published in The New Yorker, the London Review of Books, A Public Space and the landmark Granta 100, amongst others. He is also a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times.
Rating: 5/5
Monday, 9 September 2019
The Peppermint Tea Chronicles (44 Scotland Street Series) by Alexander McCall Smith
Hardback: To everything there is a season and a time for every purpose; it is summer in Scotland Street (as it always is) and for the habitués of Edinburgh's favourite street some extraordinary adventures lie in waiting.
For the impossibly vain Bruce Anderson - he of the clove-scented hair gel - it may finally be time to settle down, and surely it can only be a question of picking the lucky winner from the hordes of his admirers.
The Duke of Johannesburg is keen to take his flight of fancy, a microlite seaplane, from the drawing board to the skies.
Big Lou is delighted to discover that her young foster son has a surprising gift for dance but she is faced with big decisions to make on his and her futures.
And with Irene now away to pursue her research in Aberdeen, her husband, Stuart, and infinitely long-suffering son, Bertie, are free to play.
Stuart rekindles an old friendship over peppermint tea whilst Bertie and his friend Ranald Braveheart Macpherson get more they bargained for from their trip to the circus.
And that is just the start!
Take a few minutes to relax with a cup of tea of your favourite tea and savour the affairs of the world in microcosm, teeming with life's loves and challenges. The Peppermint Tea Chronicles (2019), the latest and thirteenth book in the captivating 44 Scotland Street series - is made up of little dramas writ large by the master chronicler of modern life and manners.
About the author: Alexander McCall Smith, often referred to as ‘Sandy’, is one of the world’s most prolific and best-loved authors. His various series of books have been translated into forty-six languages and become bestsellers throughout the world. These include the highly successful The No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, the popular 44 Scotland Street novels, the Isabel Dalhousie novels, the von Igelfeld series and the new Detective Varg novels. He also writes stand-alone novels, children's fiction and libretti for short operas.
Alexander has received numerous awards for his writing and holds twelve honorary doctorates from universities in Europe and North America. In 2007, he received a CBE for services to literature and in 2011 was honoured by the President of Botswana for services through literature to the country. In 2015, he received the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction and in 2017, The National Arts Club (of America) Medal of Honour for Achievement in Literature.
Rating: 5/5
Sunday, 8 September 2019
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