This is a simple yet comprehensive guide to using the ancient Chinese system of horoscopes in order to do your own readings. Much more is involved than just the twelve famous animal signs. The author shows how the animal year sign cycle is enmeshed with a repeating cycle of the five elements, yielding a 60-year birth year cycle (5 x 12); and this in turn is modified by an hour of birth cycle, which uses the animal signs in a different way. Yin and yang forces also play a part in the system, which has a classic beauty of design, yet is supple enough to embrace the multiplicity of human experience. The book includes extensive year charts, followed by a 14-page section for each animal sign, covering personality and aptitude traits, as well as tendencies and potential outcomes with regard to leisure, career, health, money and family life. A separate section covers the relationship potential for each sign, giving helpful scores for every possible combination, with an ingenious graphic chart offering an at-a-glance summary. The last major section enables you to work out upcoming astrological influences for years to come, helping you to make decisions, deal with change, and cope with other life challenges.

An Irish literary parody, set on an Irish island where the rain hasn't stopped since the isle was part of the empire of Atlantis, six thousand years ago. The island has developed its own unique flora, fauna and population; every inhabitant is a fanatical writer or knitter. Even the procreative apparatus of Inishovians has its own peculiar form. Into this dripping world of saints, seers and literary deviants arrives Captain Flaherty. But who is trying to blow him up, and why is everyone so interested in his private parts? Irish author Gerry Maguire Thompson is a comedian and author of over a dozen books published with several hundred thousand copies sold in ten languages. Here is some of the praise heaped on Gerry's writings by press and literary celebrities... "Great swing and relish" - Seamus Heaney, Nobel prizewinner for poetry "Loved it - very funny" - Sue Townsend, author of the Adrian Mole books "A hilarious parody!" - Hilary Boyd, The Express, London