Showing results by author "Roy" in All Categories

In 1939 the Nazis invade Lodz, Poland, forcing four-year-old Syvia Perlmutter and 270,000 other Jews into a ghetto surrounded by barbed wire and guarded by armed men. Scared and confused, Syvia and the others have no idea how terrible their lives will soon be.

Why does a bad impression last longer than a good one? Why does losing money affect us more than gaining it? What makes phobias so hard to shake? The answer is the negativity bias - or in other words, the power of bad. As John Tierney and Roy F. Baumeister show, we are wired to react to bad over good. It makes sense in evolutionary terms, but in our modern world the lure of bad is, well, bad. It governs people's moods, drives marketing and dominates our news. It can explain everything from why wars start or couples divorce to why we mess up job interviews or feud with neighbours.

Cedric Willow is a middle-aged journalist and senior warden at St. Bartholomew by the Lake, a small Episcopal parish in Minneapolis. St. Bart's church is a widely admired icon of mid-century modern architecture, but its congregation is aging and attendance is on the decline. When the incumbent rector resigns, Cedric forms a search committee—a "discernment" committee, in Episcopal parlance—and embarks on a nine-month search for a new spiritual leader.

Jackie Kashian takes you to Los Angeles, a beautiful city that's known for its pollution, broken dreams, and must-see freeways.

In this unfolding adventure, Rev. Peter's life is turned upside down. A Southern pastor in midlife, he finds himself facing a daily struggle with fatigue, disillusionment, doubt, and cynicism. His hopes shrink, relationships contract, dreams fall apart, and transformative faith shrivels into a small, old box of institutionalism. As he encounters "the Others", his experiences with them are...unexpected. And their reality is challenging everything he knows to be "true". The journey may save his faith—if it doesn't destroy him first!

Late one night, Lynne Anderson reveals to her lover that she has something to tell him. And it’s not just pillow talk. But before she can spill her shocking secrets, a shooter silences her and her lover for ever. Meanwhile, her husband Kevin Anderson has disappeared, leaving behind only a partial report on the ancient tower houses he and Arnold Landon are reviewing. Arnold is left trying to puzzle out Kevin’s skimpy notes. But the deeper he gets the more he fears for his missing coworker.

One night, Elango has a dream that consumes him, driving him to give it shape. The potter is determined to create a terracotta horse whose beauty will be reason enough for its existence. Yet he cannot pin down from where it has galloped into his mind. The Mahabharata? The Trojan horse legend? His anonymous potter-ancestors? Once it’s finished, he does not know where his creation will belong. In a temple compound? Gracing a hotel lobby? Or should he gift it to Zohra, the woman he loves, yet despairs of ever marrying.

For pharmaceutical process engineer Harold Newman and his family, sailing was a hobby and an escape from everyday life. When the recession hits and Harold is laid off, the family decides to take this opportunity to cruise south through the Intra-Coastal Waterway and explore some Caribbean Islands rather than engage in a frustrating job search during the coming recession. As they head south, sailing becomes their means of survival as the recession worsens and the economy and even society itself continue to unwind.

London, 1946. Struggling to cope with the idea of raising her daughter in a hostile environment, African Caribbean nurse Hope makes the difficult decision to entrust her precious baby to her best friend, Eunice, to take back home to Antigua. But their plan goes disastrously wrong. In the decades that follow, all of them will witness - and play a part in - the seismic changes rocking the British Isles, as the old establishment crumbles, immigration builds and the country adjusts to the realities of a post-war, post-colonial future.

With a host of animal and human characters, some of whom will be familiar to listeners of the highly praised collection A Month of Bedtime Stories and some of whom are completely new, these humorous and imaginative tales feature space-faring puppies, Kung Fu Grasshoppers, time-traveling slugs, undersea bee explorers, Viking goats, boogie woogie monkeys, disco-dancing Romans, and tiddlywinking cockroaches, to name a few. Ideal for bedtime listening.

Arriving at the port of New York in 1882, a 27-year-old Oscar Wilde quipped he had "nothing to declare but my genius." But as this sparkling narrative reveals, Wilde was, rarely for him, underselling himself. A chronicle of his sensational eleven-month speaking tour of America, Declaring His Genius offers an indelible portrait of both Oscar Wilde and the Gilded Age. Neither Wilde nor America would ever be the same.

Three men who have a way with the ladies struggle to keep their heads when each finds that love is more important than sex.

An elderly man believes he will die if his grandfather clock stops ticking - and when the clock is given away; he must stop at nothing to keep it wound.

This Hardman Brothers box set includes four mini instalove romances: Her Protector, Her Bad Boy, Her Professor, and Her Boss. Each story is a super-short, sweet, steamy instalove romance featuring an alpha older male and a younger woman. No cliff-hangers, no cheating, just a satisfying HEA!

Auf einem Friedhof in der Altstadt von Delhi wird ein handgeknüpfter Teppich ausgerollt. Auf einem Bürgersteig taucht plötzlich ein Baby auf. In einem verschneiten Tal schreibt ein Vater einen Brief an seine fünfjährige Tochter über die vielen Menschen, die zu ihrer Beerdigung kamen. Im Jannat Guest House umarmen sich im Schlaf zwei Menschen, als ob sie sich eben erst getroffen hätten - aber sie kennen sich schon ein Leben lang.

Mike Black and his wife, Shy, are trying, again, to put that life behind them, raise their children, and spend the rest of their lives loving one another in peace. That peace is shattered when Elias Colton, a prominent member of the Black Business Association and close associate of New York City gangster Mike Black, is murdered. The detectives assigned to the case believe that they have a suspect, and the motive is sex, money, or both.

A thriving law practice and a happy marriage are almost enough to convince solicitor Eric Ward he has overcome his painful past and started a new life. All it takes is the wrong client for it all to unravel. An investigative journalist beaten to a pulp. A crooked Newcastle businessman living the high life in France. A woman from a half-forgotten past. Former police officer-turned-solicitor Eric Ward represents Eddie Stevens, an investigative reporter on the trail of a hot story.

The food we eat today, high in sugar and easily digestible carbohydrates, is not only making us fat but is putting us at risk of type 2 diabetes, strokes, dementia, cancer and a lifetime on medication. More than a third of adults in the UK now have raised blood sugar levels and most don’t know it. In this timely book, Dr Mosley explains why we pile on dangerous abdominal fat and shows us how to shed it - fast.

Michelle Cameron’s name is associated with the most abhorrent of crimes. A child who lured a younger child away from her parents and to her death, she is known as the black girl who murdered a little white girl; evil incarnate according to the media. As the book opens, she has done her time, and has been released as a young woman with a new identity to start her life again. When another shocking death occurs, Michelle is the first in the frame.

A sandstorm uncovers a long buried secret in the Iraqi desert, an ancient Sumerian temple dating back at least 6,000 years to the beginning of civilization. An American army patrol sent to investigate the ruins is trapped inside the temple's eroded walls, first by an insurgent ambush and then by another, even more powerful sandstorm. When an enemy mortar shell blasts an opening into a hidden burial chamber, Captain Adam Cadman and his soldiers take refuge deep in the ruins. What they find hidden inside threatens to destroy every belief about the beginnings of mankind.