Do you remember Melba chocolate, spud guns, Embassy records, pick 'n' mix, broken biscuits, Homemaker china, Californian Poppy perfume, and Ladybird children's clothes? Then you will love the book that brings these, and many other memories, flooding back. The Wonder of Woolies is a celebration of that great British store - Woolworth's - in the words of people who worked and shopped there. In addition to memories from every corner of Britain, the book describes the rise of the '3d and 6d st...

As human beings, we have an innate disposition to care about our well-being. We all care about staying alive, as well as about avoiding disease, physical pain, bodily harm, disability and assaults on our dignity. Adequate nourishment, water, shelter, security, satisfying work, autonomy, relationships with others and self-esteem are essential to human life and functioning. This illuminating study compares well-being across civic status, economic standing and gender during Amsterdam’s Golden...

Gothic Horror brings specific images to mind—crumbling castles, dark Parisian alleyways, mad wives in attics, dark and lonely moors, cathedrals where more evil than good exists. Georgia Gothic replaces those locations with antebellum plantations, creatures hidden in backyard sheds, rural folks who might or might not be making pacts with a variety of terrors because that's how it's always been done, city folks hiding their secrets in the trunks of their cars or in their correspondence, hous...

Just when the clamor over "traditional" marriage couldn’t get any louder, along comes this groundbreaking book to ask, "What tradition?" In Marriage, a History, historian and marriage expert Stephanie Coontz takes readers from the marital intrigues of ancient Babylon to the torments of Victorian lovers to demonstrate how recent the idea of marrying for love is—and how absurd it would have seemed to most of our ancestors. It was when marriage moved into the emotional sphere...

New York Times bestselling author Lee Child and the International Thriller Writers, Inc. present a collection of remarkable stories in First Thrills. Showcasing many of the organization's bestselling authors as well as rising stars in the genre, here are twenty-five brand-new, never-before published, stories packed with murder, mystery, and mayhem.*A cunning criminal thinks he can use a child to take the rap for his crimes.*A hospital intern turned body-snat...

Lee Smith is a "teller of tales for tale tellers to admire and envy . . . [and] a reader’s dream" (Houston Chronicle). A celebrated and bestselling writer with a dozen novels under her name, including Fair and Tender Ladies, Oral History, and The Last Girls, she is just as widely recognized for her exceptional short stories. Here, in Mrs. Darcy and the Blue-Eyed Stranger, Smith collects seven brand-new stories along with seven of her favorites f...

How standards of living have skyrocketed since 1800, and the political philosophy that made it possible: "Persuasive…richly detailed and erudite."— Financial TimesThere's little doubt that most humans today are better off than their forebears. Stunningly so, the economist and historian Deirdre McCloskey argues in this concluding volume of her trilogy celebrating the oft-derided virtues of the bourgeoisie. The poorest of humanity, McCloskey shows, will soon...

Inspiration for the Netflix Limited Series, Tales of the CityThe seventh novel in the beloved Tales of the City series, Armistead Maupin’s best-selling San Francisco saga.Nearly two decades after ending his groundbreaking Tales of the City saga of San Francisco life, Armistead Maupin revisits his all-too-human hero Michael Tolliver—the fifty-five-year-old sweet-spirited gardener and survivor of the plague that too...

The houses of history is a clear, jargon-free introduction to the major theoretical approaches employed by historians. This innovative critical reader provides accessible introductions to fourteen schools of thought, from the empiricist to the postcolonial, including chapters on Marxist history, Freud and psychohistory, the Annales, historical sociology, narrative, gender, public history and the history of the emotions. Each chapter begins with a succinct description of t...

Some SecretsWhen Liv Dugan ducks out of work for lunch, it's just an ordinary day. When she returns, she stumbles onto a massacre. All her colleagues at Zuma Software have been shot. Only luck has left Liv unscathed, and that might be running out. . .Will Follow YouLiv suspects the shootings are tied to her past--and to the package she recently received from her long-dead adoptive mother. Sensing she's being followed, Liv jumps into...

From bookstores to libraries, mischief and murder is on the rise.Follow 30 sleuths as they tackle the ultimate case, to catch a bookworm red-handed.Will their love of books solve the case before it's too late?Spend the next month solving a mystery a day from the best cozy mystery authors in the industry.In Order of Appearance:Murder in the Stacks by Verena DeLucaBlood Orange Latte by NAK Baldron (Paranormal)De...

A beautiful reporter. A secret ritual in a graveyard. A disembodied hand on the side of the road. Mike Hammer returns in one of the most shocking cases of his storied career.Private Investigator Mike Hammer may be getting older, but he hasn’t lost his step. So when he spots a brutally destroyed corpse on the side of the road in upstate New York, unrecognizable as human except for the disembodied hand lying next to it, there’s no question of him not taking the case....