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Books > Language & Literature > Biography & autobiography > General
The runaway international bestseller is now an American
must-read for lovers of adventure, travel writing, and romance.
Corinne Hofmann tells how she falls in love with an African warrior
while on holiday in Kenya. After overcoming severe obstacles, she
moves into a tiny hut with him and his mother, and spends four
years in his Kenyan village. Slowly but surely, the dream starts to
crumble, and she hatches a plan to return home with her daughter, a
baby born of the seemingly indestructible love between a white
European woman and a Masai. Compulsively readable, "The White
Masai" is at once a hopelessly romantic love story, a gripping
adventure yarn, and a fine piece of meticulously observed social
anthropology.
In Running from the Shadows Stephanie Hickey tells, in her own
words, how she survived abuse at the hands of a trusted family
member and of how running, a simple physical activity helped her
achieve mindfulness, but also to rediscover love and faith in her
body - to reclaim it. Charting her life growing up in the rolling
countryside of Waterford in the safety of her beloved family to the
moment her childhood was shattered, to the court case where she
waived her anonymity, to how she was able to reclaim a sense of
herself through the sport which became like a therapy, Running from
the Shadows is told with humour, strength and incredible courage --
a book that reveals how, even when things seem at their bleakest, a
run through the Irish countryside, can bring you back into the
light.
This action-packed true story begins as a privileged boy is born in
Hong Kong. He is the son of a Danish "Taipan," whose family has
links with the Far East going back generations. The book chronicles
John Jessen's early life in Hong Kong and his travels throughout
Asia, just before WWII broke out and one of his father's ships was
captured by Chinese pirates. After the death of his young brother
in the Red Sea, 9-year-old Jessen left his grandparents in
Switzerland to travel alone through Hitler's Germany and on to
Russia, where he boarded the Trans-Siberian Express to Manchuria.
His Japanese train was attacked by communist guerillas before he
reached Shanghai, to join his parents. Jessen witnessed the brutal
Japanese occupation there, offering a rare glimpse of Shanghai by a
Dane. The post-war years in crime-riddled Shanghai picture the
black market, rampant inflation, flirtations with Chinese
concubines, a visit to a luxurious brothel and horror tales from
survivors of Japanese prison camps. In his turbulent, hair-raising
life, Jessen worked in the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Denmark,
throughout Central and South America, Switzerland, North Africa,
the entire Middle East, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, China, Hong
Kong, Japan, Germany, the United States, Belgium and Spain, as he
worked for IOS and a major U.S. financial group. Jessen says, "In
this day of electronic mail, nobody will come across faded letters
buried in attics to bring the past alive. Come with me, let me
share with you a kaleidoscope of recent history." Publisher's
website: http://www.eloquentbooks.com/OnlyTreesNeedRoots.html
In 1997, Dr Marie Cassidy arrived in Dublin from Glasgow. There to
discuss a possible deputy state pathologist post with Professor
John Harbison, instead she was whisked by police escort to a
Grangegorman murder scene. There was no turning back. She became
Ireland's State Pathologist from 2004 until 2018, her image
synonymous with breaking news of high-profile cases - a trusted
figure in turbulent times. Here, with the scalpel-like precision
and calm authority of her trade, Marie shares her remarkable
personal journey from working-class Scotland into the world of
forensic pathology, describing in candid detail the intricate
processes central to solving modern crime. She recounts her work
following the tragic deaths of Rachel O'Reilly, Siobhan Kearney,
Robert Holohan, Tom O'Gorman and others - along with the Stardust
exhumations and lesser known cases from her long career - outlining
the subtle methods by which pathology and the justice system meet.
Beyond the Tape is a unique behind-the-scenes journey into the
mysteries of unexplained and sudden death - by turns poignant,
stark and deeply compelling.
The self-righteous, headstrong lawyering mother has a new and greater challenge. No longer seeking the approval of her successful mother, one of South Africa’s first women judges, Niki is out to find that elusive concept of the ‘work/life’ balance and some real, sustainable solutions.
Her journey takes her deep into feminist philosophies as she struggles to understand the unfolding media-driven drama of the Oscar Pistorius trial while researching issues of ethics in the legal profession. But in between life and children, Niki is also determined to navigate her own way around the new world of print and publishing and connect with her own identity as a writer. How is she going to survive all this?
Something In Between is a light-hearted non-fiction narrative about real issues in a changing world: issues of parenting and the legal profession, tertiary institutions and marriage institutions; issues about the old feminist debate and why it’s still unresolved and some lessons learnt about the world of books and book publishing. A memoir of her last three years and all of it absolutely true.
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Henry V
(Paperback)
Dan Jones
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R398
R369
Discovery Miles 3 690
Save R29 (7%)
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Ships in 9 - 17 working days
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Henry V reigned over England for only nine years and four months, and died at the age of just 35, but he looms over the landscape of the late Middle Ages and beyond. The victor of Agincourt was a model king for his successors. Shakespeare's version of Henry V saw his youthful folly redirected to sober statesmanship, and in the dark days of World War II, Henry's victories in France were recounted in British propaganda. Churchill called Henry 'a gleam of splendour in the dark, troubled story of medieval England', while for one modern medievalist, Henry was, quite simply, 'the greatest man who ever ruled England'. For Dan Jones, Henry is one of the most intriguing characters in all medieval history, but one of the hardest to pin down. He was a hardened, sometimes brutal, warrior, yet he was also creative and artistic, with a bookish temperament. He was a leader who made many mistakes, who misjudged his friends and family members, yet always seemed to triumph when it mattered. As king, he saved a shattered country from economic ruin, put down rebellions and secured England's borders; in foreign diplomacy, he made England a serious player once more. Yet through his conquests in northern France, he sowed the seeds for three generations of calamity at home, in the form of the Wars of the Roses. Dan Jones's life of Henry V provides unprecedented insight into the critical first 26 years of his life before he became king. Both a standalone biography and a completion of Dan's sequence of English medieval histories that began with The Plantagenets and The Hollow Crown, Henry V is a thrilling and unmissable life of England's greatest king from our best-selling medieval historian.
"Detour from Normal" is the gut-wrenching true story of a respected
engineer and devoted family man who, due to complications from
life-saving surgery and medications, is driven to insanity. After
he tragically loses touch with reality, a whirlwind of visits to
hospital emergency rooms and behavioral health facilities ensues.
His loving wife is ultimately forced to make the unthinkable
decision to commit him to a high-security psychiatric ward. There,
he is branded "persistently and acutely disabled" and "a danger to
himself and others." That man is author Ken Dickson, and this is
the fascinating story of his journey into and out of madness.
"Detour from Normal" is more than a sharing of the pitfalls of our
medical and mental health systems. It is a story of two people
deeply in love, but torn apart by fate. It is an eye opening
introduction to the stigma of mental illness. It is a personal
run-in with the poor, broken souls trapped in our mental health
system that at one moment provokes shock, and the next, laughter.
It is a rich and varied exploration of our humanity.
'No' is the first thing I ever said. It was actually the only thing
I said in my first speaking months. Like most children, I was born
with an innate ability to set boundaries for myself. 'No.' 'Mine.'
I intuitively knew how to practise self-care and self-preservation.
Then, at some point, just like my ability to shuffle across the
floor on my butt, I forgot how to say no... Traumatic childhood
sleepovers, stressful social occasions, unrealistic demands at
work, unwanted second dates and endless offers of cake, in her
memoir, award-winning writer Stefanie Preissner leaves no NO
unexplored. From the issue of consent, and what happens when a
whole country comes together to say Yes, Can I Say NO? is one
woman's honest and hilarious take on how re-learning one small word
can pave the way to saying YES to who you really are.
Kipling was one of the most popular writers in English, both prose
and verse, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Henry James
famously said of him: "Kipling strikes me personally as the most
complete man of genius (as distinct from fine intelligence) that I
have ever known." In 1907, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in
Literature.
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