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Paul B Thompson

Alliances

Elven Exiles

Meanwhile, Kerianseray, the Lioness, Kagonesti general and wife of Speaker Gilthas, finds herself magically transported from certain death in Khur to equally dire straits in her former homeland. As Gilthas leads the elves across the trackless desert in search of a new home, the Lioness fights ruthless slavers and crosses paths with the mysterious masked revolutionary of Qualinesti.

Paul B Thompson

Destiny

Elven Exiles

Meanwhile, Kerianseray is finally reunited with her husband, bringing her band of soldiers and their griffons to the aid of the refugees. Gilthas insists the fate of the elves lies among the damp mists and wandering ghosts of the lost valley, but no one knows if he is right, or if he and the Lioness are gambling—with the lives of their people as the stakes.

Paul B Thompson

Sanctuary

Elven Exiles

Into this inhospitable land the exiled elven nations have come, driven from their marble halls and green forests by powerful enemies. Uniting around Gilthas, joint ruler now of the Qualinesti and Silvanesti, and his warrior wife Kerianseray the Lioness, the elves coexist uneasily with surrounding tribes under the walls of Khuri-Khan.

Chance puts an ancient map in Gilthas's hands. Where the desert meets the mountains appears to lie a secret valley. This misty vale, taboo for centuries, could be the new sanctuary of the elven race.

Or will secret forces at work make it their final tomb?

Paul Theroux

The Great Railway Bazaar

Paul Theroux is a vocal proponent of rail travel over air travel, which he likens to traveling by submarine for all that goes unseen and not experienced by its adherents. The Great Railway Bazaar, his 1975 account of a four month railroad journey through Europe and Asia begins, "I sought trains, I found passengers." It is certainly the individuals that Theroux meets along the way, rather than the cities, buildings, or sites of touristic import, to which he devotes his most generous descriptions.

Beginning in Victoria Station with Duffill, an older man with a tweed cap, ill-fitting clothes, and mysterious business in Istanbul (Duffill's name later becomes synonymous with being left behind at a railway station), Theroux's journeys brim with a huge cast of colorful characters. From ashram-bound hippies to devout Kali-worshiping Tamils to Vassily Prokofyevich, the drunken Russian dining car manager on the Trans-Siberian Express, Theroux richly details his varied encounters, paying particular attention to the bizarre along the bazaar.

In Calcutta, "a city of mutilated people (where) only the truly monstrous looked odd," the author encounters "the hopping man," who with only one muscular leg, hops himself through the urban detritus; on the Saigon to Bien Hoa train, a Vietnamese woman thrusts an American baby upon him, expecting Theroux to keep and raise the child; and in Japan, where the cleanliness, efficiency, and quiet of the passenger trains provide striking contrast to what the author had up until that point become accustomed to, he finds the cultural undercurrent of sadistic pornography disturbingly unquestioned.

Paul Theroux had already established himself as a novelist at the time of his four month journey; The Great Railway Bazaar, today a travel writing classic, was preceded by ten books, six of which were novels. In fact, his four month long excursion seems to have been funded or at least justified, by the lecture engagements the author had arranged all along his route.

The first of many in this genre from Theroux, including Dark Star Safari (2002) and Ghost Train to the Eastern Star (2008), The Great Railway Bazaar is at once a timeless narrative of humans and travel and a distinctly historical slice of global affairs as viewed by one decidedly motion-bound writer.

The journey however is a long one and while masterfully wrought, it is often the incidental passage of time in a railway compartment that is thus rendered, and by the end of it even Theroux has tired of his travels. Snippets of brilliance exist throughout, but they are intermittent as you might expect, as when viewed from a passing train.

Paul Torday

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

This is the story of Dr Alfred Jones, a fisheries scientist-for whom diary notable events include the acquisition of a new electric toothbrush and getting his article on caddis fly larvae published in ‘Trout and Salmon’-who finds himself reluctantly involved in a project to bring salmon fishing to the Highlands of the Yemen…a project that will change his life, and the course of British political history forever. With a wickedly wonderful cast of characters-including a visionary Sheikh, a weasely spin doctor, Fred’s devilish wife and a few thousand transplanted salmon-Salmon Fishing in the Yemen is a novel about hypocrisy and bureaucracy, dreams and deniability, and the transforming power of faith and love.

Paul Tough

How Children Succeed

The story we usually tell about childhood and success is the one about intelligence: success comes to those who score highest on tests, from preschool admissions to SATs.

But in , Paul Tough argues that the qualities that matter most have more to do with character: skills like perseverance, curiosity, conscientiousness, optimism, and self-control.

Early adversity, scientists have come to understand, can not only affect the conditions of children’s lives, it can alter the physical development of their brains as well. But now educators and doctors around the country are using that knowledge to develop innovative interventions that allow children to overcome the constraints of poverty. And with the help of these new strategies, as Tough’s extraordinary reporting makes clear, children who grow up in the most painful circumstances can go on to achieve amazing things.

This provocative and profoundly hopeful book has the potential to change how we raise our children, how we run our schools, and how we construct our social safety net. It will not only inspire and engage readers, it will also change our understanding of childhood itself.

Peter Temple

Black Tide

Jack Irish – gambler, lawyer, finder of missing people – is recovering from a foray into the criminal underworld when he agrees to look for the missing son of Des Connors, the last living link to Jack's father.

It's an offer he soon regrets. As Jack begins his search, he discovers that prodigal sons sometimes go missing for a reason. Gary Connors was a man with something to hide, and his trail leads Jack to millionaire and political kingmaker Steven Levesque, a man harboring a deep and deadly secret.

Black Tide, the second book in Peter Temple's celebrated Jack Irish series, takes us back into a brilliantly evoked world of pubs, racetracks, and sports – not to mention intrigue, corruption, and violence.

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