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Give And Take
The New York Times bestseller'Brimming with life-changing insights' Susan Cain, author of Quiet'Excellent' Financial TimesEverybody knows that hard work, luck and talent each plays a role in our working lives. In his landmark book, Adam Grant illuminates the importance of a fourth, increasingly critical factor - that the best way to get to the top is to focus on bringing others with you.Give and Take changes our fundamental understanding of why we succeed, offering a new model for our relationships with colleagues, clients and competitors. Using his own cutting-edge research as a professor at Wharton Business School, as well as success stories from Hollywood to history, Grant shows that nice guys need not finish last. He demonstrates how smart givers avoid becoming doormats, and why this kind of success has the power to transform not just individuals and groups, but entire organisations and communities.
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Mountbatten:The Official Biography
Ziegler presents a rounded, sympathetic and yet wholly undeceived portrait of the man and the many facets of his character. From his christening - which Queen Victoria attended - to his days as Supreme Commander in South-East Asia during World War II, to India where he oversaw the move to independence, to the Suez crisis, we discover a man who, for all the glitter and the gold, was nothing if not human.
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Goddess:The Secret Lives Of Marilyn Monroe
More than half a century after her death, Marilyn Monroe is arguably still one of the most famous people in the world. Her life was a contrast of public brilliance and private misery, her death a tragedy suffused by dark questions - about her relations with President John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert. Drawing on more than 600 first-hand interviews, Anthony Summers offers the classic, definitive biography of a woman who captivated the world. Marilyn's tragic story is clouded by gossip-reporting more than almost any other. GODDESS, however, delivers new, fully documented yet exciting fact. 'Gets as near to the heart of the mystery as anyone ever will' Guardian 'The fullest factual account of Monroe's life and death we're likely to get' Evening Standard 'The definitive story of the legend' Irish Times 'A remarkable performance...The ghost of Marilyn Monroe cries out in these pages' New York Times
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The Maidens
We all keep secrets. Even from ourselves. 'A thrilling, heart-in-throat ride' STEPHEN FRY 'An absolute jaw-dropper' LUCY FOLEY From the author of the global #1 bestselling debut The Silent Patient comes a spellbinding literary thriller weaving together Greek mythology, psychology, and murder... * * * * * St Christopher's College, Cambridge, is a closed world to most. For Mariana Andros - a group therapist struggling through her private grief - it's where she met her late husband. For her niece, Zoe, it's the tragic scene of her best friend's murder. As memory and mystery entangle Mariana, she finds a society full of secrets, which has been shocked to its core by the murder of one of its own. Because behind its idyllic beauty is a web of jealousy and rage which emanates from an exclusive set of students known only as The Maidens. A group under the sinister influence of the enigmatic professor Edward Fosca. A man who seems to know more than anyone about the murders - and the victims. And the man who will become the prime suspect in Mariana's investigation - an obsession which will unravel everything... The Maidens is a story of love, and of grief - of what makes us who we are, and what makes us kill. * * * * * 'Elegant, sinister, stylish and thrilling, The Maidens answers the weighty question, how do you go about following one of the biggest thrillers of the past decade? You write something even better.' CHRIS WHITAKER, bestselling author of WE BEGIN AT THE END 'Grips from intriguing start to horrifying finish ... A brilliant achievement.' HARRIET TYCE 'A page-turner of the first order' DAVID BALDACCI 'The greatest campus novel since The Secret History by Donna Tartt ... with a climatic twist that you will NEVER see coming.' TONY PARSONS 'A stunning psychological thriller ... Michaelides is on a roll.' PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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To Win At Bridge Have You Got What It Takes
The world of bridge has winners and also-rans. What would you rather be? Winning might not be everything, but it is much better than finishing second or third, and way ahead of being out of place. This book examines the attributes and skills you need to be on the winner's dais more often, not only the personal qualities and psychological requirements, but also the methods you are using and the standard of card play required. TO WIN AT BRIDGE is a challenge full of tips and telling advice, which if followed will produce a positive lift to your game.
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Napoleon and Josephine An Improbable Marriage
No rags to riches story can compare with that of Napoleon and Josephine, two outsiders who rose to become Emperor and Empress of the French Republic. This joint biography embraces the lives not only of the two central figures, but of all the vital personalities of the revolutionary era Josephine's career led her into the world of powerful political salons and into prisons where she narrowly escaped the guillotine. Napoleon's fierce ambition raised him to prominence from the time of his first meeting with the reluctant Josephine. As his wife she was to meet the implacable hostility of the Bonaparte clan whose intigues against her provided a savage backdrop to her marriage.
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Secrets of the Code
Readers of Dan Brown's extraordinary bestseller The Da Vinci Code are fascinated by the questions raised in the novel. Was Jesus actually married to Mary Magdalene? Was she one of his disciples and did she write her own gospel? Did they have a child together? Did some geniuses of art and science, people like Leonardo da Vinci and Isaac Newton, belong to secret societies that had the most compelling insider information in history, and did Leonardo convey some of these ideas in The Last Supper and other paintings? Secrets of the Code is the definitive guide to the novel and provides the curious reader with authoritative explorations into the major themes within The Da Vinci Code. Dan Burstein has distilled the views of the experts - archaeologists, theologians, art historians, philosophers and scientists - to sort out fact, informed speculation and fiction. Secrets of the Code: The Unauthorised Guide to the Mysteries Behind The Da Vinci Code will delight and engage everyone who finished The Da Vinci Code thinking, 'I need to know more about this book.'
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As You Do : Adventures with Evel, Oliver, and the
The wry, honest and often hilarious chronicles of a very brave and clever TV presenter, Arctic explorer, and general drawer of the Short Straw. Moving quickly on from the devastating crash that nearly killed him he ranges widely over his life and times--a visit to Glastonbury with James May reminds of him of his early years of playing in a band and how and why he never quite made it as a rock star; the stunts and other perils that come his way like the "TopGear "North Pole race (why is it Richard who is out in the howling elements in a dog sled while the others are in the heated cab of an all-terrain vehicle?), Africa where he falls in love with and repatriates a stray car, and the U.S. (once to be chased by rednecks in middle America, the other in pursuit of his hero Evel Knievel); his passion for cars, what he owns and why, and although he loves his wife why it is a toss-up whether he says hello to the wife or the cars first. Balancing home and family with a crazy, peripatetic working life (or not, sometimes), the hamster is well and truly back on the wheel.
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That\'s Another Story: The Autobiography
Julie Walters has been described as the nation's most popular actress and comedienne. She has been delighting us on screen and on stage for over 25 years and we have taken her to our hearts. Now she tells us her own story, in her own words. She was born in fifties Birmingham, daughter of an austere Irish Catholic mother. She was sent to school in a convent and from a young age always wanted to be an actress but to appease her mother she first went into nursing. This didn't last for long though and she soon went to join the Everyman Theatre in Liverpool. West End success followed, and she quickly replicated her success on film, earning an Academy Award nomination for her role opposite Michael Caine in Educating Rita. Julie's collaborations with her close friend Victoria Wood have given us, among others, the unforgettable character 'Mrs Overall' in Acorn Antiques and Petula in 'dinnerladies', and she's recently charmed a new generation of fans playing Mrs Weasley in the Harry Potter films and alongside Meryl Streep in 'Mamma Mia!', as well as co-starring with Helen Mirren in Calendar Girls. The winner of countless awards, Julie has continued to be in some of Britain's best TV drama and was awarded a CBE for her services to the theatre. A natural writer with an instinctive sense of timing, Julie's memoirs are warm, moving, painfully felt, fiercely intelligent - and totally entertaining.
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The Blue Note Book
THE BLUE NOTEBOOK, James A. Levine's first novel, tells the haunting story of Batuk, a 15-year old girl whose family, living in the Indian countryside, is in such poverty and debt that she is sold into sexual slavery and lives in a cage on the streets of Mumbai. Batuk is just one of many girls forced into prostitution, but against the odds, she manages to put pen to paper, writing stories of her life that help her transcend and make a certain sense of her daily existence. The novel is powerfully told in Batuk's voice, through the words she writes in her journal. Searing, moving, and surprisingly hopeful, THE BLUE NOTEBOOK explores how people, in the most difficult of circumstances, can use stories to understand and give meaning to their lives.