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The Falcon Thief: A True Tale of Adventure, Treachery, and the Hunt for the Perfect Bird
By Joshua Hammer. 2020
A rollicking true-crime adventure about a rogue who trades in rare birds and their eggs—and the wildlife detective determined to…
stop him.On May 3, 2010, an Irish national named Jeffrey Lendrum was apprehended at Britain&’s Birmingham International Airport with a suspicious parcel strapped to his stomach. Inside were fourteen rare peregrine falcon eggs snatched from a remote cliffside in Wales. So begins a tale almost too bizarre to believe, following the parallel lives of a globe-trotting smuggler who spent two decades capturing endangered raptors worth millions of dollars as race champions—and Detective Andy McWilliam of the United Kingdom&’s National Wildlife Crime Unit, who&’s hell bent on protecting the world&’s birds of prey. The Falcon Thief whisks readers from the volcanoes of Patagonia to Zimbabwe&’s Matobo National Park, and from the frigid tundra near the Arctic Circle to luxurious aviaries in the deserts of Dubai, all in pursuit of a man who is reckless, arrogant, and gripped by a destructive compulsion to make the most beautiful creatures in nature his own. It&’s a story that&’s part true-crime narrative, part epic adventure—and wholly unputdownable until the very last page.Gangsters vs. Nazis: How Jewish Mobsters Battled Nazis in WW2 Era America
By Michael Benson. 2022
The stunning true story of the rise of Nazism in America in the years leading to WWII—and the fearless Jewish…
gangsters and crime families who joined forces to fight back. With an intense cinematic style, acclaimed nonfiction crime author Michael Benson reveals the thrilling role of Jewish mobsters like Bugsy Siegel in stomping out the terrifying tide of Nazi sympathizers during the 1930s and 1940s. Goodreads Top Nonfiction of 2022 As Adolph Hitler rose to power in 1930s Germany, a growing wave of fascism began to take root on American soil. Nazi activists started to gather in major American cities, and by 1933, there were more than one-hundred anti-Semitic groups operating openly in the United States. Few Americans dared to speak out or fight back—until an organized resistance of notorious mobsters waged their own personal war against the Nazis in their midst. Gangland-style. . . . In this thrilling blow-by-blow account, acclaimed crime writer Michael Benson uncovers the shocking truth about the insidious rise of Nazism in America—and the Jewish mobsters who stomped it out. Learn about: * Nazi Town, USA: How one Long Island community named a street after Hitler, decorated buildings with swastikas, and set up a camp to teach US citizens how to goosestep. * Meyer Lansky and Murder Inc.: How a Jewish mob accountant led fifteen goons on a joint family mission to bust heads at a Brown Shirt rally in Manhattan. * Fritz Kuhn, &“The Vest-Pocket Hitler&”: How a German immigrant spread Nazi propaganda through the American Bund in New York City—with 70 branches across the US. * Newark Nazis vs The Minutemen: How a Jewish resistance group, led by a prize fighter and bootlegger for the mob, waged war on the Bund in the streets of Newark. * Hitler in Hollywoodland: How Sunset Strip kingpin Mickey Cohen knocked two Brown Shirters&’ heads together—and became the West Coast champion in the mob&’s war on Nazis. Packed with surprising, little-known facts, graphic details, and unforgettable personalities, Gangsters vs. Nazis chronicles the mob&’s most ruthless tactics in taking down fascism—inspiring ordinary Americans to join them in their fight. The book culminates in one of the most infamous events of the pre-war era—the 1939 Nazi rally in Madison Square Garden—in which law-abiding citizens stood alongside hardened criminals to fight for the soul of a nation. This is the story of the mob that&’s rarely told—one of the most fascinating chapters in American history and American organized crime.Regrets of the Dying: Stories and Wisdom That Remind Us How to Live
By Georgina Scull. 2022
'A beautiful and moving reminder to appreciate life' Roxie Nafousi, author of Manifest'This book may on first glance appear to…
be about death and regrets, but is in reality about life and choices. It is warmly life-affirming ... A magnificent read that will inspire. I loved it' Sue Black 'So beautiful ... Perfectly written and judged ... A wonderful book that made me grasp life a little more firmly' Dr Chris van Tulleken A powerful, moving and hopeful book exploring what people regret most when they are dying and how this can help us lead a better life. If you were told you were going to die tomorrow, what would you regret?Ten years ago, without time to think or prepare, Georgina Scull ruptured internally. The doctors told her she could have died and, as Georgina recovered, she began to consider the life she had led and what she would have left behind.Paralysed by a fear of wasting what seemed like precious time but also fully ready to learn how to spend her second chance, Georgina set out to meet others who had faced their own mortality or had the end in sight.Escarpolette (Rose)
By Sylvie Drapeau. 2022
Depuis le grave accident qui l’a plongée dans le coma, la mère de Rose ne bouge plus, ne parle plus.…
Ses yeux restent toujours fermés. Mais le docteur Chevalier croit que, peut-être, elle peut entendre. Alors Rose lui lit à voix haute des pages entières de son journal intime. Elle lui raconte tout : son école, ses peurs, ses peines, ses défis. Un soir, pour lui changer les idées, le père de Rose l’emmène au théâtre voir Le petit chaperon rouge. Rose est émerveillée. C’est le plus beau spectacle au monde! Soudain, la vie retrouve ses couleurs. C’est décidé, elle fera du théâtre! Sylvie Drapeau est une grande comédienne et une auteure. Avec Escarpolette, elle signe son premier roman pour la jeunesse.Jackson Hole (Images of America)
By Mr Scott Morris. 2024
The broad valley of Jackson Hole and the ridges and slopes around what would become Jackson, Wyoming, had long been…
a crossroads to the region's Indigenous peoples when fur trappers arrived in the early decades of the 19th century and made Jackson Hole a lynchpin of their continental commerce. Many came and went, but some stayed, with a settlement taking form near the banks of Flat Creek at the base of East Gros Ventre Butte. Small-scale cattle ranching formed the first economic base of this frontier town, but before long, the valley's incomparable elk herds drew market hunters, game wardens, and hunting guides. Jackson became a ski town with turn-of-the-20th-century cross-country skiing, the 1920s and 1930s development of Mount Snow King, and the 1960s opening of Jackson Hole Mountain Resort. These years saw the development of an authentic Western skiing culture and demonstrated Jackson's pivot from sleepy frontier town to major logistical hub for recreational visitors. Two beloved national parks just to the north added to the flow of visitors as postwar prosperity funded new road trips and mountain vacations.The Complete Angler: A Connecticut Yankee Follows in the Footsteps of Walton
By James Prosek. 1999
James Prosek has been called "the Audubon of the fishing world" by the New York Times. A passionate fisherman and…
talented artist from a young age, he published two illustrated books on fish and fishing while still an undergraduate at Yale. After winning a traveling fellowship to follow in the footsteps of Izaak Walton, The Compleat Angler became his obsession. He was fascinated by Walton, a humble man who won the friendship of kings, and he was intrigued by the book's philosophies concerning the timelessness and immortality that could be achieved by fishing. Although Walton was sixty when The Compleat Angler was published and Prosek only twenty when he set off to visit England, they each had traits in common: a love of fishing and an extraordinary ability to make friends.This is the story of a young man's pilgrimage through England, fishing the waters that are now privately held. Along with wonderful stories about good times, great fishing, and fine eating, this trip becomes an exploration of Waltonian ideals: how to live with humor, wisdom, contentment, and simplicity.The original watercolors complementing the text are wonderful. Like Walton's book, The Complete Angler is not about fishing but about life. Or rather, it is about fishing—but fishing is life.Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube: Chasing Fear and Finding Home in the Great White North
By Blair Braverman. 2016
A rich and revelatory memoir of a young woman reclaiming her courage in the stark landscapes of the north.By the…
time Blair Braverman was eighteen, she had left her home in California, moved to arctic Norway to learn to drive sled dogs, and found work as a tour guide on a glacier in Alaska. Determined to carve out a life as a “tough girl”—a young woman who confronts danger without apology—she slowly developed the strength and resilience the landscape demanded of her. By turns funny and sobering, bold and tender, Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube brilliantly recounts Braverman’s adventures in Norway and Alaska. Settling into her new surroundings, Braverman was often terrified that she would lose control of her dog team and crash her sled, or be attacked by a polar bear, or get lost on the tundra. Above all, she worried that, unlike the other, gutsier people alongside her, she wasn’t cut out for life on the frontier. But no matter how out of place she felt, one thing was clear: she was hooked on the North. On the brink of adulthood, Braverman was determined to prove that her fears did not define her—and so she resolved to embrace the wilderness and make it her own. Assured, honest, and lyrical, Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube paints a powerful portrait of self-reliance in the face of extraordinary circumstance. Braverman endures physical exhaustion, survives being buried alive in an ice cave, and drives her dogs through a whiteout blizzard to escape crooked police. Through it all, she grapples with love and violence—navigating a grievous relationship with a fellow musher, and adapting to the expectations of her Norwegian neighbors—as she negotiates the complex demands of being a young woman in a man’s land.Weaving fast-paced adventure writing and ethnographic journalism with elegantly wrought reflections on identity, Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube captures the triumphs and the perils of Braverman’s journey to self-discovery and independence in a landscape that is as beautiful as it is unforgiving.Murder in Sin City: Death of a Casino Boss
By Jeff German. 2001
The reckless heir to the Horseshoe Club fortune, fifty-five-year-old Vegas casino boss Ted Binionlived the high life constantly teetering on…
the edge—surrounding himself with guns, heroin, cash, babes and mobsters. But it was a beautiful ex-stripper and her new lover who gave him the final, fatal push over the side. The gripping true story of the fall of a powerful man that culminated in the most publicized murder in Las Vegas history—an almost perfect crime undone by the unbelievable greed of its perpetrators—Jeff German's Murder in Sin City is a stunning account of human deterioration and depravity, a neon-tinged view of the poisonous rot that festers beneath the Vegas glitter. Now a Lifetime original movie, Sex and Lies in Sin City.Winged Obsession: The Pursuit of the World's Most Notorious Butterfly Smuggler
By Jessica Speart. 2011
One of the world's most beautiful endangered species, butterflies are as lucrative as gorillas, pandas, and rhinos on the black…
market. In this cutthroat $200 million business, no one was more successful—or posed a greater ecological danger—than Yoshi Kojima, the kingpin of butterfly smugglers.In Winged Obsession, author Jessica Speart tells the riveting true story of rookie U.S. Fish and Wildlife Agent Ed Newcomer's determined crusade to halt the career of a brazen and ingenious criminal with an almost supernatural sixth sense for survival. But the story doesn't end there. Speart chronicles her own attempts, while researching the book, to befriend Kojima before betraying him—unaware that the cagey smuggler had his own plans to make the writer a player in his illegal butterfly trade.Honor Thy Father
By Gay Talese. 2009
A classic masterwork newly updatedThe electrifying true story of the rise and fall of New York's notorious Bonanno crime familyOn…
New York's Park Avenue on a rainy Tuesday night in October 1964, the famous Mafia chieftain Joseph Bonanno was kidnapped by two mobsters and reported by the police as dead on the following morning. More than a year later, Bonanno mysteriously reappeared, setting off a bloody mob feud that came to be known as the “Banana War.”In this monumental work—packed with intimate details and brilliant reporting—bestselling author Gay Talese first brought to the American consciousness a world and a life previously known to only a few. No other book has done more to acquaint readers with the secrets, structure, wars, power plays, family lives, and fascinating, frightening personalities of the Mafia.Written in Blood
By Mike Silverman, Tony Thompson. 2014
As one of the UK’s leading forensic scientists, Mike Silverman has helped to identify and convict dozens of murderers, rapists,…
armed robbers, burglars and muggers, thanks to the evidence they – or their victims – unwittingly left behind at the scenes of their crimes. Mike Silverman started his career in the days when fingerprints were still kept on card files and DNA profiling was just a pipe dream, so Written in Blood is more than just a casebook – it is also a definitive history of the development of forensic science over the course of the past thirty-five years.From collecting blood samples at gangland executions to investigating forensic science failings, including in the murders of Rachel Nickell and Damilola Taylor, Mike Silverman’s unique career provides a fascinating insight into the ways forensic science is used to help solve real-life crimes. Packed with genuine crime scene photographs and original sketches, Written in Blood is the ultimate insider’s account of the fascinating world of forensic science.The Wilderness Family
By Kobie Kruger. 2001
When Kobie Krüger, her game-ranger husband and their three young daughters moved to one of the most isolated corners of…
the world - a remote ranger station in the Mahlangeni region of South Africa's vast Kruger National Park - she might have worried that she would become engulfed with loneliness and boredom. Yet, for Kobie and her family, the seventeen years spent in this spectacularly beautiful park proved to be the most magical - and occasionally the most hair-raising - of their lives.Kobie recounts their enchanting adventures and extraordinary experiences in this vast reserve - a place where, bathed in golden sunlight, hippos basked in the glittering waters of the Letaba River, storks and herons perched along the shoreline, and fruit bats hung in the sausage trees.But as the Krugers settled in, they discovered that not all was peace and harmony. They soon became accustomed to living with the unexpected: the sneaky hyenas who stole blankets and cooking pots, the sinister-looking pythons that slithered into the house, and the usually placid elephants who grew foul-tempered in the violent heat of the summer. And one terrible day, a lion attacked Kobus in the bush and nearly killed him.Yet nothing prepared the Krugers for their greatest adventure of all, the raising of an orphaned prince, a lion cub who, when they found him, was only a few days old and on the verge of death. Reared on a cocktail of love and bottles of fat-enriched milk, Leo soon became an affectionate, rambunctious and adored member of the fmaily. It is the rearing of this young king, and the hilarious endeavours to teach him to become a 'real' lion who could survive with his own kind in the wild, that lie at the heart of this endearing memoir. It is a memoir of a magical place and time that can never be recaptured.Wild Thing: The True Story of Britain's Rightful Guv'nor
By Bernard O'Mahoney, Lew Yates. 2007
Everybody in the unlicensed fight game knows that only one man has the honour of being titled 'Guv'nor' - and…
that man is Lew 'Wild Thing' Yates. Yates began boxing at the age of six, and as an adult he was ruthless in pursuit of his dream of becoming world heavyweight champion. But when his licence was revoked following an assault on a referee, he turned to unlicensed boxing.By day, Yates pounded punchbags and the streets in an effort to reach the peak of physical fitness as he prepared for his epic battle with Roy 'Pretty Boy' Shaw. At night, he pounded gangsters and drug dealers foolish enough to take him on in the nightclubs where he worked.Wild Thing documents how Yates rose to the top of his bloody profession. When it comes to his fighting ability, he doesn't need to boast, brag or exaggerate. With Lew Yates, what you see is what you hope you're never going to get. This is his remarkable story.Wild London: Urban Escapes in and around the City
By Sam Hodges, Sophie Hodges. 2019
From the authors of London for Lovers, this is an inspiring and comprehensive guide to London’s wild side. From exploring…
secret gardens, parks, farmers markets and city farms, to discovering the best spots for urban bee-keeping, foraging, open-air swimming and mudlarking, Wild London is packed with ideas for how to make the most of London’s hidden natural wonder. Separated by season, and filled with stunning photographs, this is a must-have, practical and eye-opening guide to alternative London for city-dwellers and visitors alike.Wicked World! (Puffin Poetry)
By Benjamin Zephaniah. 2000
Welcome to the wild and wicked words of Benjamin Zephaniah. You'll find loads of cool people who make up our…
world in this rapping, happening hip-hop collection. From the South Pole to Mongolia and the Himalayas, this is a real world tour of poems about people and places, cultures and nationalities across our planet.Includes poems about Inuits, Celts, the history of Britain, Maories, the Dalai Lama, the North and South Poles, and much more - a rhyming round-the-world trip.Poems that bounce up from the page and demand to be read, rapped, sung and hip-hopped aloud - Independent on SundayVanessa: A Portrait of Evil
By Wensley Clarkson. 2011
The compelling and disturbing true story of Vanessa George and the evil abuse she doled out upon the children of…
more than 300 families.As a nursery worker, wife and mother, she was a figure to place trust in. Yet her adulterous relationship and sick love triangle with Colin Blanchard and Angela Allen drew her into a dark world of violence and sexual abuse. To compete for Blanchard's attention she would do everything in her power to impress him, even if this meant committing unspeakable acts of sexual violence on children as young as two years old.What could have driven a mother to betray not only her daughters and loving husband, but the very families who entrusted her with their children? How could a seemingly caring women become engaged in a sordid and vile love triangle with a man and woman she had never met? Were there events in her own childhood that pushed her to commit these acts?True crime expert Wensley Clarkson pieces together the events surrounding the case as well as new investigative research to compile a fascinating yet disturbing account of a case which shocked a nation.We may never know the full extent of Vanessa George's cruelty, but the horror of her story will remain as a chilling memory for generations.Venice: Four Seasons of Home Cooking
By Russell Norman. 2018
A beautifully designed cookbook with easy, seasonal Italian recipes - perfect for any foodie!Russell Norman returns to Venice - the…
city that inspired POLPO - to immerse himself in the authentic flavours of the Veneto and the culinary traditions of the city. His rustic kitchen - in the residential quarter of the city where washing hangs across the narrow streets and neighbours don't bother to lock their doors - provides the perfect backdrop for this adventure, and for the 130 lip-smacking, easy Italian family recipes showcasing the simple but exquisite flavours of Venice.The book also affords us a rare and intimate glimpse into the life of the city, its hidden architectural gems, its secret places, the embedded history, the colour and vitality of daily life, and the food merchants and growers who make Venice so surprisingly vibrant.'Russell Norman is among the brightest stars of the British food scene' Esquire'Offers a rare insight into the beating heart of the city' iWhen Kids Kill
By Jonathan Paul. 2003
Jonathan Paul goes behind the sensationalist headlines of 'child killers' to investigate why these crimes happen. He examines child homicide…
in today's violent, confusing world and contextualises it against the cruel unforgiving retribution of yesterday.Children are increasingly experimenting with drugs and committing offences, but there are those who commit the worst possible crimes: to end another person's life before their own could properly have begun. The cases are shocking but sometimes the path towards them is even more so. This is a fascinating exploration of disturbing events aimed at discovering what happens when childhood is trodden underfoot, and when and why kids kill.Urne-Burial (Penguin Great Ideas #Vol. 32)
By Thomas Browne. 2005
Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other.…
They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives - and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are.Written after the discovery of over forty Bronze Age burial urns in seventeenth-century Norfolk, Sir Thomas Browne's profound consideration of the inevitability of death remains one of the most fascinating and poignant of all reflections upon the vanity of mankind's lust for immortality.The Venetian Empire: A Sea Voyage
By Jan Morris. 1980
For six centuries the Republic of Venice was a maritime empire, its sovereign power extending throughout much of the eastern…
Mediterranean – an empire of coasts, islands and isolated fortresses by which, as Wordsworth wrote, the mercantile Venetians 'held the gorgeous east in fee'. Jan Morris reconstructs the whole of this glittering dominion in the form of a sea-voyage, travelling along the historic Venetian trade routes from Venice itself to Greece, Crete and Cyprus. It is a traveller's book, geographically arranged but wandering at will from the past to the present, evoking not only contemporary landscapes and sensations but also the characters, the emotions and the tumultuous events of the past. The first such work ever written about the Venetian ‘Stato da Mar’, it is an invaluable historical companion for visitors to Venice itself and for travellers through the lands the Doges once ruled.