Recommended Reads
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Hotels to Home
What if you could live the luxury hotel experience at home, every day? Hotels to Home answers that question by creating a new lifestyle template that bridges the gap between your fondest hotel memories and everyday living.
Imagine stepping into your entryway with the eager anticipation as when entering your favorite hotel lobby, defining your family’s hotel brand as a lifestyle strategy, finely orchestrating room service for your household, or celebrating the end of each day with personalized turndown service. Taking what might have once been considered ordinary homelife and making your address a highly coveted destination.
Less memoir, more guidebook. Peek into the author’s travel essays and enjoy prompts to excavate your own vacation preferences that reveal a holiday lifestyle at home. Welcome to the Hotels to Home lifestyle!£9.99 -
Hottentot Venus – The Story of Saartjie Baartman
Step into the captivating life of Saartjie Baartman, an ordinary and curious 18-year-old whose dreams led her from the familiar shores of Cape Town to the distant lands of England and Paris. Little did she know that her voyage would take a tragic turn, transforming her life into a harrowing tale of exploitation and dehumanization.
In this powerful biography, Saartjie’s true story is finally given a voice, allowing her to recount her experiences firsthand. From the initial promise of work as a nursery maid to the shocking reality of being displayed as an object of desire in London and Paris, her journey is one of heartbreak, resilience, and survival.
As you delve into Saartjie’s own words, you will bear witness to the fear and anguish of a displaced soul in foreign lands. Her poignant narrative sheds light on the struggles faced by countless individuals torn from their homelands, forced to navigate the trials of being foreign nationals in strange and unwelcoming territories.
Supported by meticulous research and accurate references, this book also draws a striking parallel to the present day, where the erosion of human rights continues to fuel the alarming rise of human trafficking and bonded labor. Saartjie’s story serves as a timeless reminder of the enduring fight for justice and equality, resonating even more powerfully in a world that grapples with these same issues two centuries later.
Hottentot Venus is a tribute to a remarkable woman who suffered the indignities of exploitation, but whose legacy fuels the ongoing struggle for dignity and human rights. Her voice, once silenced, now echoes through these pages, urging us to confront our past, understand our present, and forge a more compassionate future.
£9.99 -
How Have I Cheated Death? A Short and Merry Life With Cystic Fibrosis
Cystic fibrosis (CF) is one of the UK's most common life-threatening diseases, affecting over 10,000 people. There's currently no cure.
Not all that long ago, a CF diagnosis meant an early death. Tim Wotton is one such sufferer, who was told from an early age that he would not live beyond his 17th birthday. One of the oldest survivors of this crippling disease, How Have I Cheated Death? is a diary of his 39th year, a countdown to the illusive 40.
A story of triumph over adversity, this compelling chronicle, the first book written by a CF sufferer at 40, offers hope and inspiration, demonstrating what cannot be cured needs to be endured. Written with great honesty and humour with an enlightening Foreword by the actress Jenny Agutter, this profound account is a testament to the daily dedication required to deal with CF and recently diagnosed diabetes while managing a normal family life.£7.99 -
How the Universe Operates
Why do the heavenly bodies behave in a contrary fashion to what we are familiar with on earth?
Before a wheel can turn, we must ensure rim is joined to axle; before a couple can dance in circle, their hands must be joined. In contrast, the planets circle the sun and the moons circle the planets without any securing mechanism, and so precisely that their movements can be predicted to a millisecond. Again, why is it that, released from the effects of gravity, emollient matter like water or molten lead forms spontaneously into tiny globes, copying the form found in stars, planets and the sun? Are the tides satisfactorily explained by the thesis of gravitational ‘pull’ of moon and sun? If so, why does modern science have such difficulty reconciling the relative influences of these two bodies? What sort of reality is light, and why is the speed of light fixed and not infinite, at least in space?
Answers to these and other questions may be found through recourse to the philosophy of Aristotle. The thinkers of the Enlightenment chose to discard Aristotle’s limited natural science. That was understandable. But they chose to discard his philosophy as well. This was unwise, as fresh study of Aristotle’s thinking will show.£8.99 -
How to BE the Change We Need
Why doesn’t our politics ‘do what it says on the tin’? What on earth happened to ‘Truth’, ‘Responsibility’, ‘Honesty’ and ‘Trust’? The words and concepts have long been familiar. They are all ‘on the tin’, so to speak. But not much sign, anywhere, of putting them into practice!
So what actually needs to change? Not just our values or our ideas but, surely, our behaviour, our habits. We don’t just need a description of the changes we want to see, but an understanding of how we can BE those changes. And this is where meditation comes in.
Meditation not just as thinking, but as actions that we practise until they become habits. To enable us not only to think differently about politics but to develop forms of awareness that enable us to respond more effectively – with greater self-knowledge, imagination and sensitivity.
So this is a book for us to practise with, and the final section is a practical guide to meditation methods.
The details of the meditation practices are derived largely from the philosophical and psychological teachings of Buddhism, but the book is intended for those of any faith (or none) or of any political persuasion.
So enjoy: perhaps this book will make all the difference!
£8.99 -
How to do Christmas with Paul Dart
Looking for inspiration to transform your home for Christmas? Decorations that will excite and exhilarate family and friends?
Take a peek into the home of a designer who knows from years of practice the easy way to achieve stunning seasonal decorations that will have you creating new and exciting ways of filling your house and garden with the joys of Christmas. Full of practical tips, from tackling the perennial task of dressing the tree, on how to plan the colour scheme, how to tackle the question of ‘taste’ at this time of year and, most of all, how to enjoy the the task of transforming your home into a moment of visual wonder and delight for all of your friends and family.
£24.99 -
I Am a Christian
The author is a scientist and not a Bible scholar or teacher. His conversion from a churchgoing Christian to real Christian lasted years, if not decades. The transformation was completed in 1983 when he bought NIV Bible for £4.50. In the 1990s, he was impacted by many Christian TV channels that he regularly watched, in addition to regular Christian literature. On 7 October 1992, he started reading his Bible from cover to cover and cycle after cycle. The fruit of that transformation is his first book about the Christian faith. It is a book for everyone, Christians and the ones on the road to become Christian. In this book, he talks about Christianity and what it means to be a Christian. He highlights the core Hebrew Bible and Jesus Christ’s ministry. Many quotations about the Christian faith are given in addition to a large section of Christian dictionary to define every aspect related to a Christian person.
£7.99 -
I Am Therian
Mina Michaels wakes up at Clandestine Arts Academy only to realise it’s a place she’s all too familiar with but not what the brochure makes it out to be. Persuaded to enrol, she learns this place holds the key to her forgotten past. Enthralled by a world of spirit walkers, royals and alphas, her journey becomes a race against time to unleash her inner spirit and bring calm to a world breaking out in chaos whilst in the midst of finding true love. You too can join the main protagonist in escaping reality to discover the mysterious world that exists parallel to the one you know.
£8.99 -
I Found a Poo
Mr Marmalade is a very cross cat! Somebody has left a poo! Was it you?
Mr Marmalade goes on poo patrol to find the villain. Will he find the culprit?
It had better not be you!
£9.99 -
I Need Re-Wired
Beep is a cute little robot who loves nothing more than playing with his friends. They have lots of fun together, but Beep sometimes feels he doesn’t fit in. You see, Beep has autism, and he views the world slightly differently from his friends, making it harder for him to join in their games. In this heart-warming story, it shows the obstacles Beep must face every day and his struggle to be accepted. It shows how he can find it hard to interact with his friends and how it makes him feel. Luckily, Mum is there to explain and help him understand that being different is not a bad thing, and it can even have its advantages.The next day at nursery, Beep gets to prove this when his friend Roar can’t complete a puzzle that he finds too difficult. Beep steps in and helps him finish it as puzzles are easy for him. His friends tell Beep how they are happy that he is there to help them, and they think he is very clever – which he is! They wish they were as clever as him.So, follow little Beep on his journey to find understanding and acceptance in a world that can appear scary and overwhelming for a little robot with autism.
£8.99 -
I Want to be So So Beautiful
It’s a beautiful Saturday morning, the sun is shining bright, the birds are chirping beautifully, quite a rare occurrence at this time of the year in Warwickshire.
It’s going to be a beautiful day for sure.
Darcey is your typical girly girl, loves dressing up. Princess dresses, shoes, handbags, jewellery, you name it, this princess has it all.
A princess must always look her best, right?
What if pretty dresses and fancy shoes are just not enough?
Surely there is more to beauty than just looking pretty.
The sun does not just look pretty in the sky, neither does the moon nor the stars.
Join Darcey on her magical adventure to discover the beauty within.
£8.99 -
I Was a London Firefighter
What is a firefighter?
They are the person next door…
They are like you and me with warts and worries and unfulfilled dreams.
Yet they stand taller than most of us.
The latest book from author and retired fireman David Pike, I Was a London Firefighter is an anthology of factual narratives and fictional tales loosely based around the personal experiences of individual members of the London Fire Brigade. Ranging from the mid-19th century to the present day, the book includes direct reminiscences by former firefighters alongside descriptions of key historical figures like Massey Shaw, Sidney Gamble and Joe Milner. It takes in such subjects as the IRA’s 20'year bombing campaign in London and the changing status of female firefighters.
Running through the book is a series of gripping historical narratives subtitled ‘Yesteryear’s Fires’, depicting the heroic professionalism of firefighters confronted by truly harrowing disasters. Some of these remain all-too-familiar, such as the King’s Cross fire of 1987 which claimed the lives of 31 people; others, no less terrible, have faded into distant memory. The book ends with a fresh and compelling description of a horrifying tragedy that no one can have forgotten: 2017’s Grenfell Tower fire.
I Was a London Firefighter shares with David’s previous works – Beyond the Flames, London Firefighters and Fire-Floats and Fireboats – a careful and comprehensive approach to historical research, an eye for striking and unusual narrative details and an understated humour. Above all, it shows an unwavering appreciation of and empathy for the concerns and drives of the ordinary firefighter, born of David’s own experiences as a fireman.£14.99
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