This is a compilation of the most annoying English cliches around today; those expressions that you hear time and time again and that make you cringe with irritation when you do hear them, but which - even more annoyingly! - you find yourself using out of sheer habit.Examples featured include: by and large, to be honest, a categorical denial, courtesy call, these things happen, kill two birds with one stone, it's not the end of the world... and many more.

Entertaining and informative, this collection of clichés really is the best thing since sliced bread ...

This is the one guide that anyone who writes--whether student, business person, or professional writer--should put on the desk beside pencil, pen, typewriter, or word processor. Filled with professional tips and a wealth of instructive examples, this valuable, easy-to-use handbook can help you solve any and all writing problems.

Draws on interviews with forty leading contemporary authors to discuss the importance of individual style on literature, citing the distinguishing practices of today's top writers while making recommendations to serious readers and aspiring writers.

Meetings, partings, loves and losses in rural France are dissected with compassion. The late wedding guest isn't your cousin but a drunken chancer. The driver who gives you a lift isn't going anywhere but off the road. Snow settles on your car in summer and the sequins found between the pages of a borrowed novel will make your fortune. Pagano's stories weave together the mad, the mysterious and the dispossessed of a rural French community with honesty and humour. A superb, cumulative collection from a unique French voice. Why Peirene chose to publish this book: This is a spellbinding web of stories about people on the periphery. Pagano makes rural France her subject matter. She invokes the closeness of a local community and the links between the inhabitants' lives. But then she reminds us how little we know of each other. 'Devastatingly beautiful.' Le Soir, Belgium 'A treasure hunt that you can follow from title to title...fine-tipped drawings of little bits of the world that attach themselves to each other imperceptibly.' Xavier Houssin, Le Monde 'Pagano succeeds because of the range of her insight and the skill with which she shifts register: from wistfulness to blunt force, or from fantasy to naturalism.' Chris Power, The Guardian 'Endlessly beautiful and poignant.' Le Monde books of the year 2012 'With animal writing, Emmanuelle Pagano invites herself to the side of rebels and solitaries.' Marine Landrot, Télérama

For fans of Jennifer Niven’s All the Bright Places and Meg Wolitzer’s Belzhar comes an emotionally thrilling tale of a friendship between a girl who feels too much and a boy who feels too little, as they discover that maybe pain can bring people together and not just tear them apart. Samantha Herring has been in constant pain ever since the car accident that injured her leg and killed her mother. After pushing her friends away, Sam has receded into a fog of depression until she meets Eliot, a carefree, impulsive loner who, is unable to feel any pain at all. At first, Sam is jealous. She would give anything to not feel the pain she’s felt for the past year. But the more she learns about Eliot’s medical condition, the more she notices his self-destructive tendencies. In fact, Eliot doesn’t seem to care about anything—except Sam. And as they grow closer, they begin to confront Sam’s painful memories of the accident, memories that hold a startling truth about what really happened that day.

"In this book, Jeremy Butterfield mines the Oxford Corpus, a vast collection of electronically-held texts used for compiling Oxford's world-famous dictionaries. He uncovers a wealth of fascinating facts and figures across the whole spectrum of English - from vocabulary size and word origins to spelling and meaning, from word groupings and idiomatic phrases to grammar and usage." "Whether you are happy to give the language free rein (free reign?), or whether you are more straight-laced (strait-laced?) when it comes to change, you will be amazed at what is revealed when the English language goes buck naked. (Or should that be butt naked?)"--BOOK JACKET.

"A masterfully crafted, brutally compelling Norse-inspired epic." —Anthony Ryan THE GREATEST SAGAS ARE WRITTEN IN BLOOD. A century has passed since the gods fought and drove themselves to extinction. Now only their bones remain, promising great power to those brave enough to seek them out. As whispers of war echo across the land of Vigrid, fate follows in the footsteps of three warriors: a huntress on a dangerous quest, a noblewoman pursuing battle fame, and a thrall seeking vengeance among the mercenaries known as the Bloodsworn. All three will shape the fate of the world as it once more falls under the shadow of the gods. Set in a brand-new, Norse-inspired world, and packed with myth, magic, and vengeance, The Shadow of the Gods begins an epic new fantasy saga from bestselling author John Gwynne.

Informed by Erik Erikson's concept of the formation of ego identity, this book, which first appreared in 1961, is an analysis of the experiences of fifteen Chinese citizens and twenty-five Westerners who underwent "brainwashing" by the Communist Chinese government. Robert Lifton constructs these case histories through personal interviews and outlines a thematic pattern of death and rebirth, accompanied by feelings of guilt, that characterizes the process of "thought reform." In a new preface, Lifton addresses the implications of his model for the study of American religious cults.