"Each of us has dreams that we inherit. The work of life is discovering our own. Author Julie Catterson Lindahl reflects on an unexpected decade spent raising her young family on a small isolated island in the north and the dream she found there. Through her story of breaking with a corporate career and a cosmopolitan life, an inherited dream, and pursuing an existence in the often harsh Nordic wilderness, Lindahl captures the very essence of the greatest personal challenge that each of us meets: to discover that there is no blueprint for living and that the great work of life is to grow your own rose out of the sand. Using the eight seasons of the indigenous peoples of the north as her guide, the author takes us on an intimate personal journey in which she sees the world and herself anew through the fine detail of her extraordinary environment. For anyone who has ever felt trapped by preconceptions about themselves, Lindahl opens the door."

A tense, thrilling read from Sunday Times bestselling author Dorothy Koomson Is it an affair . . . or something much worse? Tami's husband, Scott, has just been arrested for a terrible crime - and his accuser is her closest friend. Who should Tami believe? The father of her two daughters? Or her trusted best friend? Torn and desperate to find out the truth, Tami makes her choice - with shocking consequences . . . SHORTLISTED FOR THE SPECSAVERS NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR POPULAR FICITON 2012 Readers love Dorothy Koomson: 'Cleverly told by three female narrators, this is a complex tale of a terrible crime . . . I was gripped from the start and desperate to uncover the truth' Woman 'If you only do one this weekend, read this book. It's another utterly brilliant psychological thriller' Sun

Many people around the world accept the possibility of telepathy or clairvoyance. Very rarely, however, has anyone been able to demonstrate these psychic faculties with enough accuracy and reliability to produce significant results in repeated experimentation. An exception to this was the Polish engineer and industrialist Stefan Ossowiecki. Ossowiecki (1877-1944) is perhaps the most gifted psychic ever to come under the scrutiny of researchers. He demonstrated a range and quality of clairvoyance that no one has exceeded, at least under experimental controls. Equally important, he was eager to learn more about his talent and allowed a variety of researchers to use him in experiments. Anecdotal accounts of his talent abounded, but it was the controlled observations of investigators in experiments conducted in Paris and Warsaw that confirmed his gift. For the first time, this book brings to English-speaking researchers and the public detailed accounts of the crucial experiments carried out with Ossowiecki, which produced compelling evidence of paranormal cognition.

Legend has it that a magical spring lies dormant in the heart of the Khuzar desert. Said to be a gift from the gods, the spring holds the cure to all mortal woes. As mercenaries from everywhere try in vain to find the mystical spring, 17-yearold Desert Rose is on the run after her chieftain father is overthrown and captured by rebel clans. Now out for revenge, she sets out alone to the Oasis Capital to assassinate the person instigating the rebellion: the corrupt Emperor Zhao, who will stop at nothing to possess the elixir of life from the spring. To infiltrate the Imperial Guard, Desert Rose must pass a series of trials to test her wit, mettle, and her loyalty. But the real test lies in navigating the cut throat court politics with no ally but a rogue prince and a latent magic stirring in her - magic that can bring a kingdom to its knees or destroy her from within.

Isabella Lilias Trotter (1853-1928) was an artist and a missionary for over 38 years to the Muslims of Algeria. John Ruskin, the famous art critic, didn't believe that ladies could paint before he met Lilias. He changed his mind after he met her and believed that if she would give her life to painting she could become the greatest painter of the nineteenth century. Ruskin believed that if she would devote herself to art "she would be the greatest living painter and do things that would be immortal. " He was unhappy that she was spending so much time on the streets of London, helping with the YWCA, when he thought she ought to be painting. Lilias, however, decided to give up her career in art in order to serve God. She always remained a good friend of Ruskin's though, and they wrote many letters when she was in Algeria. She also wrote several books - beautifully illustrated by herself, including: Parables of the Cross (1894), Parables of the Christ-Life (1899), and a book for Sufi Muslims, The Way of the Sevenfold Secret.

Winner of the 2023 Gifkins Prize, A House Built on Sand is the vivid and gripping story of a mother–daughter relationship and the secrets that threaten to shatter their world

Sandian heroines swirl around men in their sororal and sartorial disguises like moths around candle flames. However, as Disguise in George Sand's Novels illustrates, the disguise is not an instrument to seduce men but rather to assert the heroines' true selves. The portrayal of female and androgynous protagonists in Rose et Blanche (1831), Indiana (1832), Lélia (1833/39), Gabriel (1839), Consuelo (1842), and La Comtesse de Rudolstadt (1844) is a metaphor to demonstrate the continuity of identities before and after the disguise as George Sand stipulates in her theory of the ménechme. Disguise in George Sand's Novels explores the maturation process of Romantic and artistically inclined heroines and highlights the spiritual meaning of the disguise as a rite of passage for the birth of a new type of protagonist: spiritual, self-assertive, and dedicated to erasing gender inequality and helping the poor.

“A magnificent romance redolent of ancient wisdom and rich with melancholy, loss, and love” from the bestselling author of The Elegance of the Hedgehog (Le Monde). Rose has just turned forty when she gets a call from a lawyer asking her to come to Kyoto for the reading of her estranged father’s will. And so for the first time in her life she finds herself in Japan, where Paul, her father’s assistant, is waiting to greet her. As Paul guides Rose along a mysterious itinerary designed by her deceased father, her bitterness and anger are soothed by the stones and the trees in the Zen gardens they move through. During their walks, Rose encounters acquaintances of her father—including a potter and poet, an old lady friend, his housekeeper and chauffeur—whose interactions help her to slowly begin to accept a part of herself that she has never before acknowledged. As the reading of the will gets closer, Rose’s father finally, posthumously, opens his heart to his daughter, offering her a poignant understanding of his love and a way to accept all she has lost. “Interspersed with aphoristic Japanese tales from various periods, as melancholy is gradually transmuted into joy.” —The New Yorker “[A] luminous meditation on grief.” —Booklist “With elegant and careful prose, [Barbery] offers descriptions of Kyoto and Japanese culture that transcend the genre of a travelogue. This novel will appeal to readers who long for happy endings and escape.” —Library Journal “The novel balances lush, cultivated gardens and weighted symbolism with mischievous foxes, matcha, sliced eel, and sushi, all forming ‘one happy chaos’ and a fascinating maze of emotional release.” —Foreword Reviews