The extraordinary drama of Malta's WWII victory against impossible odds told through the eyes of the people who were there. In March and April 1942, more explosives were dropped on the tiny Mediterranean island of Malta - smaller than the Isle of Wight - than on the whole of Britain during the first year of the Blitz. Malta had become one of the most strategically important places in the world. From there, the Allies could attack Axis supply lines to North Africa; without it, Rommel would be able to march unchecked into Egypt, Suez and the Middle East. For the Allies this would have been catastrophic. As Churchill said, Malta had to be held 'at all costs'. FORTRESS MALTA follows the story through the eyes of those who were there: young men such as twenty-year-old fighter pilot Raoul Daddo-Langlois, anti-aircraft gunner Ken Griffiths, American Art Roscoe and submariner Tubby Crawford - who served on the most successful Allied submarine of the Second World War; cabaret dancer-turned RAF plotter Christina Ratcliffe, and her lover, the brilliant and irrepressible reconnaissance pilot, Adrian Warburton. Their stories and others provide extraordinary first-hand accounts of heroism, resilience, love, and loss, highlighting one of the most remarkable stories of World War II.

Fortress Malta : An Island Under Siege@@ 1940-1943

History

JAMES HOLLAND

Europe

Phoenix Paperbacks

When an accident with an open oil lantern set the American clipper Hornet alight in 1866, the 31 passengers and crew were forced to abandon ship. Cast adrift in three small lifeboats, they had less than 10 days rations to share between them. They were over 1000 miles from the nearest island. Over the next six weeks they were to encounter every danger the Pacific could throw at them. They were attacked by sharks and swordfish. They endured storms, and even tornadoes. Their hunger became so intense that they resorted to eating their clothes, and later, half-mad from the effects of drinking sea-water, were driven to the edge of cannibalism. A FURNACE AFLOAT tells the story of their 4000-mile voyage through the eyes of three men, who kept journals throughout their ordeal. It is one of the rare, great historical survival stories, and yet it also transcends its genre: the boatful of castaways becomes a microcosm of 1866 America - a diverse mix of immigrants struggling to overcome class divisions, and to recover from the recent Civil War.

A Furnace Afloat : The Wreck of the 'Hornet' and the 4,300-Mile Voyage of Its Survivors

Joe Jackson

Sports & Outdoors

Half of Paradise

Toussaint Boudreaux, a docker – hardworking and looking for a break – earns extra cash as a prize fighter. But the only break he gets lands him in gaol and then on a chain gang. Avery Broussard, wayward son of an old plantation family, loses his freedom for a cartload of Prohibition moonshine and finds himself attached to the same work camp as Boudreaux. Neither would have chosen the life – blood, sweat and tears come with the territory – but each is determined to make the best of it or find a way out. 
HALF OF PARADISE is a powerful novel of people from very different backgrounds who find their destinies tragically intertwined.

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

JAMES LEE BURKE

Mystery

It is the summer of 1969 - the hottest, sweatiest summer in history, the American summer in the American year in the American century - the USA is about to land a man on the moon and the Vietnam War is ripping the country to pieces, setting sons against fathers, fathers against sons. The Woodstock festival is in full swing and Norman Mailer is standing as candidate for Mayor of New York. Against this backdrop, second-rate detective Turner Raines finds himself investigating a series of murders that begin with the death of his best friend, a reporter on the Village Voice. It's a case which takes him back to his Western childhood, to the unresolved issues of his own divided family, on a bloody trail of secrets . . .

Sweet Sunday

Lawton, John

In August 1945, the first of 732 child survivors of the Holocaust reached Britain. First settled in the Lake District, they formed a tightly knit group of friends whose terrible shared experience is almost beyond imagining. This is their story, which begins in the lost communities of pre-World War II central Europe, moves through ghetto, concentration camp and death march, to liberation, survival, and finally, fifty years later, a deeply moving reunion. Martin Gilbert has brought together the recollections of this remarkable group of survivors. With magisterial narration, he tells their astonishing stories. The Boys bears witness to the human spirit, enduring the depths, and bearing hopefully the burden and challenge of survival. 'Martin Gilbert is to be congratulated on producing a masterly and deeply moving tribute to those who had the courage and luck to survive' Literary Review

The Boys : Triumph over Adversity

Martin. Gilbert

Biographies & Memoirs

Tiem and again, small numbers of Germans, civilian nad military, noble and ignoble, scheme to topple the Fuhrer, and on several occasions they came within minutes - or inches - of succeeding. Fest explores why they tried, why they found so little support either in Germany or outside it, and why they failed.

Plotting Hitler's Death: The German Resistance to Hitler, 1933-45

Joachim Fest

What kinds of minds are there, and how do we know? The first question is about what exists and the second is about our knowledge. The aim of Kinds of Minds is to answer these questions, in general outline, and to show why these two questions have to be answered together. What exists is one thing. What we can know about is something else. But we know enough about minds, Dennett argues, to know that one of the things that makes them different from everything else in the universe is the way we know about them. 'Provoking but clarifying ...Daniel Dennett's book is a memorable and stimulating work of popular scientific explanation. It thoroughly readjusts the reader's mental image of what the mind is and how it got there but leaves one surprised that the explanation can be ultimately so simple when the implications are so vast' Anthony Smith, Observer

Kinds of Minds: The Origins Of Consciousness (Science Masters) by Dennett, Daniel C. (1997) Paperback

Dennett, Daniel C.

Translated from the original Welsh, AUTOBIOGRAPHIES is a collection of the most personal writings of one of this century's most important poets.

Autobiographies

R.S. Thomas

Norton, the hero, travels through London's underbelly trapped in space but not in time. He is present to witness dark deeds from Deptford at the time of Marlowe's death and in the East Endduring the sixties watching the murder of Jack th Hat McVitie. Bizarre and phantasmagoric, the book draws on images of the city from the Rennaissance to the deacy of Thatcher's london.

Slow Chocolate Autopsy

ian-sinclair

Science Fiction & Fantasy

Why are humans one of the few species to have sex in private? Why do humans have sex any day of the month or year ' including when the female is pregnant, beyond her reproductive years, or between her fertile cycles? Why are human females one of the few mammals to go through menopause? Human sexuality seems normal to us but it is bizarre by the standards of other animals. Jared Diamond argues that our strange sex lives were as crucial to our rise to human status as were our large brains. He also describes the battle of the sexes in the human and animal world over parental care, and why sex differences in the genetic value of parental care provide a biological basis for the all-too-familiar different attitudes of men and women towards extramarital sex.

Why Is Sex Fun? : The Evolution of Human Sexuality

Politics & Social Sciences

JARED DIAMOND

Anthropology

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