Clive James is one of our finest critics and best-loved cultural voices. He is also a prize-winning poet. Since he was first enthralled by the mysterious power of poetry, he has been a dedicated student. In fact, for Clive, poetry has been nothing less than the occupation of a lifetime, and in this book he presents a distillation of all he's learned about the art form that matters to him most.With his customary wit, delightfully lucid prose style and wide-ranging knowledge, Clive explains the difference between the innocuous stuff that often passes for poetry today and a real poem: the latter being a work of unity that insists on being heard entire and threatens never to leave the memory. A committed formalist and an astute commentator, Clive offers close and careful readings of individual poems and poets (from Shakespeare to Larkin, Keats to Pound), and in some case second readings or re-readings late in life - just to be sure he wasn't wrong the first time! Whether...

A literary cause célèbre when first published more than fifty years ago, Gore Vidal's now-classic The City and the Pillar stands as a landmark novel of the gay experience.Jim, a handsome, all-American athlete, has always been shy around girls. But when he and his best friend, Bob, partake in "awful kid stuff," the experience forms Jim's ideal of spiritual completion. Defying his parents' expectations, Jim strikes out on his own, hoping to find Bob and rekindle their amorous friendship. Along the way he struggles with what he feels is his unique bond with Bob and with his persistent attraction to other men. Upon finally encountering Bob years later, the force of his hopes for a life together leads to a devastating climax. The first novel of its kind to appear on the American literary landscape, The City and the Pillar remains a forthright and uncompromising portrayal of sexual relationships between men.

Agatha Christie—the Queen of Crime—travels to the breathtaking Canary Islands to investigate the mysterious death of a British agent in this riveting sequel to the "twisty thriller" (Publishers Weekly) A Talent for Murder.Two months after the events of A Talent for Murder, during which Agatha Christie "disappeared," the famed mystery writer's remarkable talent for detection has captured the attention of British Special Agent Davison. Now, at his behest, she is traveling to the beautiful Canary Islands to investigate the strange and gruesome death of Douglas Kirk, an agent of the British Secret Intelligence Service. As she embarks on a glamorous cruise ship to her destination, she suddenly hears a scream. Rushing over to the stern of the liner, she witnesses a woman fling herself over the side of the ship to her death. After this shocking experience, she makes it to the Grand Hotel in a lush valley on the islands. There, she...

Two Turtle Doves is the story of a life spent making things. Growing up in 1970s Suffolk in a crumbling giant of a house with wild, tangled gardens, Alex Monroe was left to wreak havoc by invention. Without visible parental influence, but with sisters to love him and brothers to fight for him, he made nature into his world. Creation became a compulsion, whether it was go-carts and guns, cross-bows and booby-traps, boats, bikes or scooters. And then, it was jewellery. From full-out warfare waged against the local schoolboys to the freedom found in daredevil Raleigh bike antics to the delicacies of dress-making and the most intricate designs for jewellery, Two Turtle Doves traces the intimate journey of how an idea is transformed from a fleeting thought into an exquisite piece of jewellery. It is about where we find our creativity, how we remember and why we make the things we do.

In an epic narrative sweeping from 1437 to the first decade of the seventeenth century, Tudor: the Family Story traces the rise and rule of the Tudor dynasty. Brutal political instability dominated England during this infamous time, and Leanda de Lisle reveals the personalities, passions, and obsessions of the men and women at its epicenter to rediscover the true significances of previously overlooked figures: from the remarkable women, so wholly devoted to securing the line of succession, to the Princes in the Tower, whose disappearances have remained a mystery for centuries.This groundbreaking story opens at the unlikely beginning of the Tudor dynasty—with Owen Tudor, a handsome Welsh commoner who, with a pirouette and a trip, landed squarely in the lap of the English Monarchy. The struggle of Owen's grandson Henry VII and his heirs to secure the line of succession—and the hopes, loves, and losses of the claimants—are the focus of this book....

"WE WANT TO HEAR THE MUSIC BEFORE HIS THROAT IS SLIT." Those were Nick Carter's orders. Translated, they meant that Nick had to find Rico Corelli before the Syndicate killers did. Corelli had been controlling the international drug chain from Corsica for years. But when the Mob found that their profits were slipping and Corelli's were mounting, the heat was on and Corelli was on the run. If Killmaster got to him first, Corelli could be made to talk and the drug chain would drop in AXE's lap. If the Mafia did, there'd be one more bloody name on the Mob's death list. Armed only with a beautiful female narc and a flimsy cover, AXE's chief agent begins the hunt. But the Mafia's enforcers are with him all the way. And the first corpse is a ringer for the man Nick Carter is supposed to impersonate… In a tense, bloody race against time, Killmaster stalks a man he's never seen, a ruthless unphotographed killer running for his life from the men who know him best!

When Alexander McQueen committed suicide in February 2010, aged just 40, a shocked world mourned the loss of its most visionary fashion designer. McQueen had risen from humble beginnings as the youngest child of an East London taxi driver to scale the heights of fame, fortune and glamour. He designed clothes for the world's most beautiful women including Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell. In business he created a multi-million pound luxury brand that became a favourite with both celebrities and royalty, most famously the Duchess of Cambridge who wore a McQueen dress on her wedding day. But behind the confident facade and bad-boy image, lay a sensitive soul who struggled to survive in the ruthless world of fashion. As the pressures of work intensified, so McQueen became increasingly dependent on the drugs that contributed to his tragic end. Meanwhile, in his private life, his failure to find lasting love with a string of boyfriends only added to his despair. And then there were...

This epic story opens at the hour the Greatest Generation went to war on December 7, 1941, and follows four U.S. Navy ships and their crews in the Pacific until their day of reckoning three years later with a far different enemy: a deadly typhoon. In December 1944, while supporting General MacArthur's invasion of the Philippines, Admiral William "Bull" Halsey neglected the Law of Storms—the unofficial bible of all seamen since the days of sail—placing the mighty U.S. Third Fleet in harm's way.Drawing on extensive interviews with nearly every living survivor and rescuer, many families of lost sailors, transcripts and other records from two naval courts of inquiry, ships' logs and action reports, personal letters, and diaries, Bruce Henderson offers the most thorough and riveting account to date of one of the greatest naval dramas of World War II.

Everest, the major motion picture from Universal Pictures, is set for wide release on September 18, 2015. Read The Climb, Anatoli Boukreev (portrayed by Ingvar Sigurðsson in the film) and G. Weston DeWalt's compelling account of those fateful events on Everest.In May 1996 three expeditions attempted to climb Mount Everest on the Southeast Ridge route pioneered by Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in 1953. Crowded conditions slowed their progress. Late in the day twenty-three men and women-including expedition leaders Scott Fischer and Rob Hall-were caught in a ferocious blizzard. Disoriented and out of oxygen, climbers struggled to find their way down the mountain as darkness approached. Alone and climbing blind, Anatoli Boukreev brought climbers back from the edge of certain death. This new edition includes a transcript of the Mountain Madness expedition debriefing recorded five days after the tragedy, as well as G. Weston DeWalt's response to Into...

ISLANDS OF DEATH! Nicarxa and Apalca — idyllic island republics in the Caribbean. Until Don Carlos Italla, monk turned warlord and guerilla leader, chooses one of them for a hideout. In a bizarre struggle for power and influence in the Americas, Nick Carter, AXE agent N3, has to ferret out the guerillas — and fend off the Cuban marine forces. All without the official recognition of the U.S. government! Deep in the tropical mountains, Alto Arete stands, an impregnable fortress. Nick Carter's job is to conquer it and Don Carlos's crazed army of «monks» before peace in the Western Hemisphere becomes no more than a fond memory!

On a hill above the Italian village of Ravello sits the Villa Cimbrone, a place of fantasy and make-believe. The characters that move through Michael Holroyd's new book are destined never to meet, yet the Villa Cimbrone unites them all.A Book of Secrets is a treasure trove of hidden lives, uncelebrated achievements, and family mysteries. With grace and tender imagination, Holroyd brings a company of unknown women into the light. From Alice Keppel, the mistress of both the second Lord Grimthorpe and the Prince of Wales; to Eve Fairfax, a muse of Auguste Rodin; to the novelist Violet Trefusis, the lover of Vita Sackville-West--these women are always on the periphery of the respectable world.Also on the margins is the elusive biographer, who on occasion turns an appraising eye upon himself as part of his investigations in the maze of biography. In this extraordinary book, Holroyd gives voice to fragile human connections and the mystery of...