A book of wisdom and life. Welcome to Alice Taylor's garden: 'Just inside the gate, hand-painted on a rickety piece of timber, is a little sign: Miracles only grow where you plant them. I saw it in a garden centre and could not resist it. This garden is full of my lack of resistance. I have no in-depth gardening knowledge and I work on impulse. 'My gardening expertise, acquired through trial and error, is nurtured by the unbelievable pleasure that I have discovered in simply digging the earth. Where does that satisfaction come from? Maybe buried deep in each of us is the secret need to cultivate the soil. Digging the earth breathes life back into us.' A reflective and uplifting account by Alice Taylor of her love of nature and gardening.

When Tash, daughter of a Russian oligarch, is sent to an English boarding school, she is new to the strange rituals of the girls there. Theirs is a world of strict pecking orders, eating disorders and Instagram angst. While she spends her time with the other girls at the lake and the stables, a hand-picked few are invited to join the Headmaster at his house for extra lessons. Then her friend Bianca mysteriously vanishes, and quickly the routines of her dorm-mates seem darker and more alien than ever before. Oligarchy is the fierce new novel about power, privilege and peer pressure from the bestselling author of The End of Mr. Y.

Seventy-two-year-old August Brill is recovering from a car accident at his daughter's house in Vermont. When sleep refuses to come, he lies in bed and tells himself stories, struggling to push back thoughts about things he would prefer to forget-his wife's recent death and the horrific murder of his granddaughter's boyfriend, Titus. The retired book critic imagines a parallel world in which America is not at war with Iraq but with itself. In this other America the twin towers did not fall and the 2000 election results led to secession, as state after state pulled away from the Union and a bloody civil war ensued. As the night progresses, Brill's story grows increasingly intense, and what he is so desperately trying to avoid insists on being told. Passionate and shocking, Man in the dark is a novel of our moment-one that forces us to confront the blackness of night even as it celebrates the ordinary joys of everyday life.

He is the deadliest American sniper ever, called "the devil" by the enemies he hunted and "the legend" by his Navy SEAL brothers . . . From 1999 to 2009, U.S. Navy SEAL Chris Kyle recorded the most career sniper kills in United States military history. The Pentagon has officially confirmed more than 150 of Kyle's kills (the previous American record was 109), but it has declined to verify the astonishing total number for this book. Iraqi insurgents feared him so much they placed a bounty on his head. Kyle earned legendary status among his fellow U.S. warriors, whom he protected with deadly accuracy from rooftops and stealth positions. Gripping and unforgettable, Kyle's masterful account of his extraordinary battlefield experiences ranks as one of the great war memoirs of all time.

The Romans have abandoned Britain, leaving it open to the twin threats of civil war and Saxon invasion. When his home and all he loves are destroyed, Aquila endures years of torment before deciding to put some meaning back into his life.

Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times national correspondent Timothy Egan turns to fiction with The Winemaker's Daughter, a lyrical and gripping novel about the harsh realities and ecological challenges of turning water into wine.When Brunella Cartolano visits her father on the family vineyard in the basin of the Cascade Mountains, she's shocked by the devastation caused by a four-year drought. Passionate about the Pacific Northwest ecology, Brunella, a cultural impact analyst, is embroiled in a battle to save the Seattle waterfront from redevelopment and to preserve a fisherman's livelihood. But when a tragedy among fire-jumpers results from a failure of the water supply–her brother Niccolo is among those lost—Brunella finds herself with another mission: to find out who is sabotaging the area's water supply. Joining forces with a Native American Forest Ranger, she discovers deep rifts rooted in the region's complicated history, and tries to save her...

This book contains Haiku and selected poems, some are based on direct observation of the natural world, others are philosophical and some are of a lighter nature. The author has been published a number of times in the World Haiku Review and the United Haiku and Tanka Society Journal.The book covers mostly the anthropological and political side of Hegel thought, as contained and explained in the lessons around the “Phenomenology of Spirit” held by Alexandre Kojeve in the 1930s at the “Ecole de Hautes Etudes” in Paris. The course gives a lot of background for granted, namely the historical context as well as the philosophical one, being targeted at classes of philosophy students.In order to highlight Hegel core themes, I deliberately removed all the references of Hegel to other philosopher and key themes of his time (that is, Hegel position with respect to Kant on, say, the theory of intellect and knowledge, or his position with respect to Descartes on the concept of idea etc.) while I added two chapters to briefly show how Hegel ideas actually influenced much of the thinking after him and still provide a lot of the conceptual framework we use today.Chapter 1 provides a very essential biography of Hegel, to cast him in the key events that shaped his life and thinking.Chapter 2 gives a view on the task of philosophy as conceived by Hegel and the novel approach he introduced into looking at the development of ideas.Chapter 3 introduces the Master-Slave dialectic, according to Hegel the key mechanism that creates at once culture, society and history, as well as his vision of man and his action in the World.Chapter 4 expands on Hegel vision of History as it derives from his basic understanding of man and then how this evolves into his vision of Society and State.Chapter 5 moves eventually into the most abstract part of Hegel with a brief description of the main change he brought to the concept of idea and how ideas relate to time and history.Chapters 6 and 7 provide a short overview of the main concepts inherited from Hegel by some major thinkers and how they tried to differentiate themselves from such a legacy. I warn my readers that the disclaimer still applies, so I might be even more inaccurate here than I have been in previous chapters. I broadly classify these thinkers in two categories, the “fond adopters” and the “strong opponents” dedicating one chapter to each category.Chapter 8 tries eventually to draw some conclusion by figuring out what we can still be tremendously grateful to Hegel in our global 21st century, after that in the 20th century the darkest side of the philosopher thinking shaped in the bloodiest way the fate of entire countries through the rise and fall of totalitarian regimes across Europe and the world.

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Paris Wife comes an atmospheric novel of intertwined destinies and heart-wrenching suspense: A detective hiding away from the world. A series of disappearances that reach into her past. Can solving them help her heal?“[An] absolutely incredible literary thriller.”—Good Morning America online “A powerhouse of a novel that is guaranteed to keep the reader up all night.”—Kristin Hannah, author of The Four WindsAnna Hart is a seasoned missing persons detective in San Francisco with far too much knowledge of the darkest side of human nature. When tragedy strikes her personal life, Anna, desperate and numb, flees to the Northern California village of Mendocino to grieve. She lived there as a child with her beloved foster parents, and now she believes it might be the only place left for her. Yet the day she arrives,...

WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY IAN RANKIN. In a small continental country civil war is raging. Once a lecturer in medieval French, now a confidential agent, D is a scarred stranger in a seemingly casual England, sent on a mission to buy coal at any price. Initially, this seems to be a matter of straightforward negotiation, but soon, implicated in murder, accused of possessing false documents and theft, held responsible for the death of a young woman, D becomes a hunted man, tormented by allegiances, doubts and the love of others.

Deep in a shadowy castle dwells timeless evil and gruesome creepiness. Can Ergo save the universe again or will these dire threats prove too devastatingly terrible and leave our unfortunate hero… drained?Ergo is a misunderstood human-puppet hybrid wanting little more than to fit in at his pharmaceutically-driven indoctrination center (public school), when his day is suddenly turned upside-down by a bizarre series of events leading him to a mysterious thrift shop, an abrupt flight with unexpected allies to a secretive village in Transylvania, and ultimately deep into a shadowy castle rife with timeless evil and gruesome creepiness. Can Ergo save the universe again or will these dire threats prove too devastatingly terrible and leave our unfortunate hero… drained?

Part autobiography, part fiction, this early work by the author of The Master and Margarita shows a master at the dawn of his craft, and a nation divided by centuries of unequal progress. In 1916 a 25-year-old, newly qualified doctor named Mikhail Bulgakov was posted to the remote Russian countryside. He brought to his position a diploma and a complete lack of field experience. And the challenges he faced didn’t end there: he was assigned to cover a vast and sprawling territory that was as yet unvisited by modern conveniences such as the motor car, the telephone, and electric lights. The stories in A Country Doctor’s Notebook are based on this two-year window in the life of the great modernist. Bulgakov candidly speaks of his own feelings of inadequacy, and warmly and wittily conjures episodes such as peasants applying medicine to their outer clothing rather than their skin, and finding himself charged with delivering a baby—having only read about the procedure in text books. Not yet marked by the dark fantasy of his later writing, this early work features a realistic and wonderfully engaging narrative voice—the voice, indeed, of twentieth century Russia’s greatest writer. From the Trade Paperback edition.

A master of twentieth century fiction, Graham Greene looks back on his life. This volume also includes several key interviews from throughout his long, fruitful career.Graham Greene led one of the most extraordinary lives of the twentieth century. The son of a Hertfordshire headmaster, he quickly discovered a love for writing, beginning a career that would last a lifetime. Greene's fascination with global politics took him around the world, to places that would become the settings for many of his most famous novels: Mexico (The Power and the Glory), Sierra Leone (The Heart of the Matter), and Haiti (The Comedians) - among dozens of other far-flung locations. He produced masterpieces throughout his life, many of which now stand as indisputably canonical: Brighton Rock, The End of the Affair, and The Quiet American to name but a few.

Miracles do happen, and they do not discriminate the bad from the good. And in Victor’s case, the miracle was Maria.When cornered by the unforgiving claws of death, Victor was left with no choice but to call upon the help of a Man he never believed in his entire life -- God. But just when he thought everything was over and just when he had accepted defeat, he found himself dropped into the careMiracles do happen, and they do not discriminate the bad from the good. And in Victor’s case, the miracle was Maria.When cornered by the unforgiving claws of death, Victor was left with no choice but to call upon the help of a Man he never believed in his entire life -- God. But just when he thought everything was over and just when he had accepted defeat, he found himself dropped into the care of loving Maria -- an emphatic veterinarian with a strong personality and deep faith in the Lord.As their involvement with each other gets deeper, Victor begins to encounter feelings and emotions he had never felt before -- the ones that will ultimately save him from the bad man that he was. Despite his willing efforts to change, however, his past kept knocking on his door, rattling the peace he was beginning to crave for.

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work. --This text refers to the Paperback edition. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.