North is the point we look for on a map to orient ourselves. It is also the direction taken throughout history by the adventurous, the curious, the solitary, and the foolhardy. Based in the North himself, Peter Davidson, in The Idea of North, explores the very concept of "north" through its many manifestations in painting, legend, and literature.Tracing a northbound route from rural England—whose mild climate keeps it from being truly northern—to the wind-shorn highlands o...

On March 25, 2001, the nude body of Michelle Lewis, a 39-year-old nun, was discovered in her sleeping quarters at South Florida’s Holy Cross Academy. She had been stabbed 92 times. It wasn’t long before homicide detectives zeroed in on her killer: a young apprentice monk and former Holy Cross student, Mykhaylo Kofel. Under questioning, he confessed to the crime.But Kofel’s disturbing defense would not only rock the future of the upscale Dade County academy, it would also sound an a...

The true story of an undercover cop who went under the covers with a wiseguy.She was a married organized crime detective. He was the Mafia wiseguy she was trailing. Their affair would shake the very foundation of Miami's criminal underworld-and end in murder.

Including Homage to Catalonia'Spain not only defined Orwell as an individual, it also gave him his first glimpse of totalitarianism' D. J. Taylor, GuardianGeorge Orwell's experience of the Spanish Civil War had a transformative effect on his life and work. This volume brings together his complete writings on the war, including Homage to Catalonia, his searing memoir of fighting in the conflict and the bitter betrayal that followed...

IT BEGAN WITH A DISAPPEARANCEOn a balmy May night in Miami, Frank Griga and his girlfriend, Krisztina Furton, vanished from the face of the earth. Frank had made a fortune in the adult hotline business and had met Krisztina, an exotic dancer, while searching for models for his advertisements. Three weeks later, their torsos were found inside metal drums sunk in a murky canal.IT ENDED IN MURDERSo began the unraveling of the most diab...

This is a mighty book of Norths: northern geographies, histories, lights; a place of definition, frost and cold. There is an unfaltering Recusant spirit about these poems, a survival through defeat and a sense of underlying permanences. Each poem has an occasion: some of the occasions are personal meetings, conversations, which unlock shared scenes and themes; some are historical in origin, their past often one of early Christian faith or religious conflict. The poems abound in art, in spe...

An authoritative pocket guide to the birds of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia are becoming increasingly popular with all kinds of visitors, not least birdwatchers, who can visit many national parks and reserves harbouring a bounty of amazing species. The three countries are home to about 1,000 species of birds including such rarities as Bengal Florican, Giant Ibis, Green Peafowl and Vietnamese Cutia. This concise and easy-to-use guide features...

This ambitious account of the arts of the evening, now available in paperback, deftly combines prose-poetry, memoir, philosophy and art history. Intertwining personal, cultural and artistic histories, it is a richly rewarding book written in a unique voice.

Old Mortality (1816), which many consider the finest of Scott's Waverley novels, is a swift-moving historical romance that places an anachronistically liberal hero against the forces of fanaticism in seventeenth-century Scotland, in the period infamous as the `killing time'. Its central character, Henry Morton, joins the rebels in order to fight Scotland's royalist oppressors, little as he shares the Covenanters' extreme religious beliefs. He is torn between his love for ...

This is a book about remoteness: a memoir of places observed in solitude, of the texture of life through the quiet course of the seasons in the far north of Scotland. It is a book grounded in the singularity of one place - a house in northern Aberdeenshire - and threaded through with an unshowy commitment to the lost and the forgotten. In these painterly essays Davidson reflects on art, place, history and landscape. Distance and Memory is his testament to the cold, clear beauty of the nort...

Following in the successful nature-writing style of Robert MacFarlane and Gillian Clarke, Distance and Memory is a book about remoteness: a memoir of places observed in solitude, of the texture of life through the quiet course of the seasons in the far north of Scotland. It is a book grounded in the singularity of one place—a house in northern Aberdeenshire—and threaded through with an unshowy commitment to the lost and the forgotten. In these painterly essays Peter Davidson provi...

'The finest, most representative instance of what Shakespeare can do' Harold BloomPrince Hal, the son of King Henry IV, spends his time in idle pleasure with dissolute friends, among them the roguish Sir John Falstaff. But when the kingdom is threatened by rebellious forces, the prince must abandon his feckless ways. Ranging from taverns and brothels to the royal court and the battlefield, Shakespeare's masterful drama shows a prodigal son rising to meet his destiny as a ruler of m...