Thailand books

[Daveo]

Long Way Down by Ewan McGregor - Charley Boorman & Jeff Gulvin

It started as a daydream. Poring over a map of the world at home one quiet Saturday afternoon, Ewan McGregor - actor and self-confessed bike nut - noticed that it was possible to ride all the way round the world, with just one short hop across the Bering Strait from Russia to Alaska.

It was a revelation he couldn’t get out of his head. So he picked up the phone and called Charley Boorman, his best friend, fellow actor and bike enthusiast. ‘Charley,’ he said. ‘I think you ought to come over for dinner…’ From London to New York, Ewan and Charley chased their shadows through Europe, the Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Mongolia and Russia, across the Pacific to Alaska, then down through Canada and America. But as the miles slipped beneath the tyres of their big BMWs, their troubles started.

Exhaustion, injury and accidents tested their strength. Treacherous roads, unpredictable weather and turbulent politics challenged their stamina. They were chased by Paparazzi in Kazakhstan, courted by men with very large guns in the Ukraine, hassled by the police, and given bulls’ testicles for supper by Mongolian nomads. And yet despite all these obstacles they managed to ride over twenty thousand miles in four months, changing their lives forever in the process.

As they travelled they documented their trip, taking photographs, and writing diaries by the campfire. Long Way Round is the result of their adventures - a fascinating, frank and highly entertaining travel book about two friends riding round the world together and, against all the odds, realising their dream.

[Daveo]

The Root of Evil

(INSPECTOR BARBAROTTI #2)

by Håkan Nesser

Godfather of Swedish Crime' (Metro), Hakan Nesser, is back with the second installment in the Inspector Barbarotti series, The Root of Evil.

July 2007. A letter arrives on Inspector Barbarotti’s doorstep detailing a murder that is about to take place in his own quiet Swedish town. By the time the police track down the subject of the letter, he is already dead.

So when a second letter arrives, then a third, and a fourth, it’s a game of cat and mouse to stop the killer before he can make good on all of his promises.

Meanwhile, an anonymous diary is unearthed depicting the incidents of a two week holiday in France five years earlier, and it doesn’t take Barbarotti long to realize the people populating the diary are the ones whose lives are now in the balance . . .

[Daveo]

The Killing Habit

BY MARK BILLINGHAM

From “one of the most consistently entertaining, insightful crime writers working today” (Gillian Flynn), The Killing Habit again brings together favorite wild-card detective Tom Thorne and straight-laced DI Nicola Tanner on a pair of lethally high-stakes cases. While DI Nicola Tanner investigates the deadly spread of a dangerous new drug, Tom Thorne is handed a case that he doesn’t take too seriously, until a spate of animal killings points to the work of a serial killer.

When the two cases come together in a way that neither could have foreseen, both Thorne and Tanner must risk everything to catch two very different killers.

[Daveo]

The Chestnut Man

BY SØREN SVEISTRUP,

The heart-pounding debut from the creator of the hit Scandinavian television show The Killing. If you find one, he’s already found you. A psychopath is terrorizing Copenhagen. His calling card is a “chestnut man”- a handmade doll made of matchsticks and two chestnuts - which he leaves at each bloody crime scene.

Examining the dolls, forensics makes a shocking discovery—a fingerprint belonging to a young girl, a government minister’s daughter who had been kidnapped and murdered a year ago. A tragic coincidence - or something more twisted? To save innocent lives, a pair of detectives must put aside their differences to piece together the Chestnut Man’s gruesome clues. Because it’s clear that the madman is on a mission that is far from over. And no one is safe.

[Daveo]

The Underworld Captain: From Gangland Goodfella To Army Officer by

David Leslie

Alexander Shannon escaped a shady past to enjoy a glittering career in the army, only to end up back in the thick of criminal activity. Shannon's time as a soldier saw him posted to the Falklands, Northern Ireland and war-torn Bosnia. The rigours of army life took their toll and he found himself drawn into a series of ruthless gang wars.

He used the skills he'd learned in the forces to hide weapons, work for drugs racketeers and plot a massacre, and he was offered a fortune to work as a Mafia-style contract assassin. He was questioned over brutal killings and accused of a triple murder attempt, yet his dedication and determination to succeed in the army brought him accolades and a series of promotions.

In The Underworld Captain, Shannon explains how he managed to combine a successful army career with dangerous gangland dealings for so long and how he finally broke free for good.

[Daveo]

Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe

(BRYSON AND KATZ #1)

by Bill Bryson

Bill Bryson's first travel book, The Lost Continent, was unanimously acclaimed as one of the funniest books in years. In Neither Here nor There he brings his unique brand of humour to bear on Europe as he shoulders his backpack, keeps a tight hold on his wallet, and journeys from Hammerfest, the northernmost town on the continent, to Istanbul on the cusp of Asia.

Fluent in, oh, at least one language, he retraces his travels as a student twenty years before. Whether braving the homicidal motorist of Paris, being robbed by gypsies in Florence, attempting not to order tripe and eyeballs in a German restaurant, window-shopping in the sex shops of the Reeperbahn or disputing his hotel bill in Copenhagen, Bryson takes in the sights, dissects the culture and illuminates each place and person with his hilariously caustic observations. He even goes to Liechtenstein.

[Daveo]

Honey and Dust: Travels in Search of Sweetness by Piers Ede..

After being seriously injured in a hit and run, Piers Moore Ede went to work and recuperate on an organic farm in Italy. There he met a beekeeper, Gunter, who showed him, for the first time, the wonders and magic of the beehive.

Battling depression and afraid to face the future, Piers finds a renewed sense of purpose through his work with the bees. Up close amongst the highly organised life of a hive, he realises that somehow honey might be the salve that can help him.

Back in England Piers, still only in his mid twenties, decides upon a quest to seek the most wondrous honeys in the world. From the terracotta bee jars of the Lebanon to the clay cylinders of Syria, slowly his personal tribulations dwindle into perspective against the backdrop of the fast-shrinking traditions of the honey-farmers. Hunting wild honey from cliffs with Gurung tribesman in Nepal, and in vast Jungle trees with Veddah tribesmen in Sri Lanka, Piers draws close to the very origins of life.

But honey itself is the real luminary of Honey and Dust - honey, the wonderful invigorating golden manna that Virgil believed was of divine origin. Honey and Dust is about the world's oldest and purest food.

But it also a personal quest of healing, an attempt to regain a sense of place in the world. Meditative, and keenly observant, it is a book about the joy of being alive, and of the regenerative powers of wild nature.

[Daveo]

Collected Ghost Stories

BYM.R. JAMES

M. R. James is widely regarded as the father of the modern ghost story, and his tales have influenced horror writers from H. P. Lovecraft to Stephen King.

First published in the early 1900s, they have never been out of print, and are recognized as classics of the genre.

This collection contains some of his most chilling tales, including A View from a Hill, Rats, A School Story, The Ash Tree, and The Story of a Disappearance and an Appearance. Read by BAFTA and Emmy-award winning actor Derek Jacobi, and with haunting and evocative music, these tales cannot fail to send a shiver down your spine.

[Daveo]

Apache Dawn

BY DAMIEN LEWIS

The Apache attack helicopter is one of the world's most awe - some weapons systems. Deployed for the first time in Afghanistan, it has already passed into legend.

The only thing more incre - dible than the Apache itself are the pilots that fly her. For the first time, "Apache Dawn "tells their story - and their baptism of fire in the unforgiving battle of Helmand Province.

Their call-sign was "Ugly"- and there was no better word for the grueling 100-day deployment they endured. Day after day, four of England's Army Air Corps' finest pilots flew right into the heart of battle, testing their aircraft to the very limit.

"Apache Dawn "takes the reader with them on a series of unrelenting and brutally intense combat missions, from daring, edge-ofthe- seat rescues to dramatic close-air support in the white heat of battle.

Bestselling author Damien Lewis has been given unprece - dented access to these heroic aircrews and to the men on the ground whose lives they saved. It is an astounding story of bravery, skill and resilience in the face of unbelievable odds. And it is the story of the Apache itself - the ultimate fighting machine.

[Daveo]

Cambodia's Curse: The Modern History of a Troubled Land

BY JOEL BRINKLEY

A generation after the Khmer Rouge, Cambodia shows every sign of having overcome its history -the streets of Phnom Penh are paved; skyscrapers dot the skyline. But under this façade lies a country still haunted by its years of terror.

Joel Brinkley won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting in Cambodia on the fall of the Khmer Rouge regime that killed one quarter of the nation's population during its years in power.

In 1992, the world came together to help pull the small nation out of the mire. Cambodia became a United Nations protectorate - the first and only time the UN tried something so ambitious. What did the new, democratically-elected government do with this unprecedented gift? In 2008 and 2009, Brinkley returned to Cambodia to find out. He discovered a population in the grip of a venal government. He learned that one-third to one-half of Cambodians who lived through the Khmer Rouge era have P.T.S.D. and its afflictions are being passed to the next generation. His extensive close-up reporting in Cambodia's Curse illuminates the country, its people, and the deep historical roots of its modern-day behavior.

[Daveo]

Derailed in Uncle Ho's Victory Garden: Return to Vietnam and Cambodia

BY TIM PAGE

Follows Page's odyssey - 20 years after the liberation of Vietnam - through the land that dominated his life as a war photographer. His job used to be to record the horror, now he can tell of the country's supreme beauty, and mourn the agony of the killing fields.

[Daveo]

A Man Named Dave by Dave Pelzer..

'I don't blame others for my problems. I stand on my own. And one day, you'll see, I'm going to make something of myself.'

These words were eighteen-year-old Dave Pelzer's declaration of independence to his mother, a woman who had abused him with shocking brutality. But even years after he was rescued, his life remained a continual struggle. Dave felt rootless and awkward, an outcast haunted by memories of his years as the bruised, cowering 'It' locked in his mother's basement.

Dave's dramatic reunion with his dying father and the shocking confrontation with his mother led to his ultimate calling: mentor to others struggling with personal hardships. From a difficult marriage to the birth of his son, from an unfulfilling career to an enduring friendship, Dave was finally able to break the chains of his past, learning to trust, to love, and to live.

[Daveo]

A Horse Walks into a Bar: A novel - David Grossman..

The award-winning and internationally acclaimed author of the To the End of the Land now gives us a searing short novel about the life of a stand-up comic, as revealed in the course of one evening’s performance. In the dance between comic and audience, with barbs flying back and forth, a deeper story begins to take shape - one that will alter the lives of many of those in attendance. In a little dive in a small Israeli city, Dov Greenstein, a comedian a bit past his prime, is doing a night of stand-up. In the audience is a district court justice, Avishai Lazar, whom Dov knew as a boy, along with a few others who remember Dov as an awkward, scrawny kid who walked on his hands to confound the neighborhood bullies. Gradually, as it teeters between hilarity and hysteria, Dov’s patter becomes a kind of memoir, taking us back into the terrors of his childhood: we meet his beautiful flower of a mother, a Holocaust survivor in need of constant monitoring, and his punishing father, a striver who had little understanding of his creative son.

Finally, recalling his week at a military camp for youth - where Lazar witnessed what would become the central event of Dov’s childhood-Dov describes the indescribable while Lazar wrestles with his own part in the comedian’s story of loss and survival. Continuing his investigations into how people confront life’s capricious battering, and how art may blossom from it, Grossman delivers a stunning performance in this memorable one-night engagement (jokes in questionable taste included).

[Daveo]

Dispatches From The Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival

BY ANDERSON COOPER

In 2005, two tragedies - the Asian tsunami and Hurricane Katrina -turned CNN reporter Anderson Cooper into a media celebrity. Dispatches from the Edge, Cooper's memoir of "war, disasters and survival," is a brief but powerful chronicle of Cooper's ascent to stardom and his struggle with his own tragedies and demons. Cooper was 10 years old when his father, Wyatt Cooper, died during heart bypass surgery.

He was 20 when his beloved older brother, Carter, committed suicide by jumping off his mother's penthouse balcony (his mother, by the way, being Gloria Vanderbilt).

The losses profoundly affected Cooper, who fled home after college to work as a freelance journalist for Channel One, the classroom news service. Covering tragedies in far-flung places like Burma, Vietnam, and Somalia, Cooper quickly learned that "as a journalist, no matter ... how respectful you are, part of your brain remains focused on how to capture the horror you see, how to package it, present it to others."

Cooper's description of these horrors, from war-ravaged Baghdad to famine-wracked Niger, is poignant but surprisingly unsentimental. In Niger, Cooper writes, he is chagrined, then resigned, when he catches himself looking for the "worst cases" to commit to film.

"They die, I live. It's the way of the world," he writes. In the final section of Dispatches, Cooper describes covering Hurricane Katrina, the story that made him famous. The transcript of his showdown with Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu (in which Cooper tells Landrieu people in New Orleans are "ashamed of what is happening in this country right now") is worth the price of admission on its own. Cooper's memoir leaves some questions unanswered - there's frustratingly little about his personal life, for example - but remains a vivid, modest self-portrait by a man who is proving himself to be an admirable, courageous leader in a medium that could use more like him.

[Daveo]

Zero K

BY DON DELILLO

The wisest, richest, funniest, and most moving novel in years from Don DeLillo, one of the great American novelists of our time - an ode to language, at the heart of our humanity, a meditation on death, and an embrace of life. Jeffrey Lockhart’s father, Ross, is a billionaire in his sixties, with a younger wife, Artis Martineau, whose health is failing. Ross is the primary investor in a remote and secret compound where death is exquisitely controlled and bodies are preserved until a future time when biomedical advances and new technologies can return them to a life of transcendent promise. Jeff joins Ross and Artis at the compound to say “an uncertain farewell” to her as she surrenders her body. “We are born without choosing to be. Should we have to die in the same manner? Isn’t it a human glory to refuse to accept a certain fate?” These are the questions that haunt the novel and its memorable characters, and it is Ross Lockhart, most particularly, who feels a deep need to enter another dimension and awake to a new world. For his son, this is indefensible.

Jeff, the book’s narrator, is committed to living, to experiencing “the mingled astonishments of our time, here, on earth.” Don DeLillo’s seductive, spectacularly observed and brilliant new novel weighs the darkness of the world - terrorism, floods, fires, famine, plague - against the beauty and humanity of everyday life; love, awe, “the intimate touch of earth and sun.”

[Daveo]

Wittgenstein's Poker: The Story of a Ten-Minute Argument Between Two Great Philosophers

BY DAVID EDMONDS & JOHN EIDINOW.....

On October 25, 1946, in a crowded room in Cambridge, England, the great twentieth-century philosophers Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper came face to face for the first and only time.

The meeting - which lasted ten minutes - did not go well. Their loud and aggressive confrontation became the stuff of instant legend, but precisely what happened during that brief confrontation remained for decades the subject of intense disagreement. An engaging mix of philosophy, history, biography, and literary detection, Wittgenstein's Poker explores, through the Popper/Wittgenstein confrontation, the history of philosophy in the twentieth century.

It evokes the tumult of fin-de-siécle Vienna, Wittgentein's and Popper's birthplace; the tragedy of the Nazi takeover of Austria; and postwar Cambridge University, with its eccentric set of philosophy dons, including Bertrand Russell.

At the center of the story stand the two giants of philosophy themselves - proud, irascible, larger than life - and spoiling for a fight.

[Daveo]

You'll Never Walk

by Andy Grant ...

When Andy Grant s eyes blinked open from a 10-day coma in February 2009 he was alone in a hospital bed in Birmingham.

He had a broken sternum, two broken legs, a broken elbow and shrapnel lodged in both forearms.

He had a severed femoral artery, while sustaining nerve damage to his hands and feet as well as facial injuries.

He had been blown up during a routine foot patrol in Afghanistan.

Within days of coming to his senses, a doctor told Andy that because of the blast he would no longer be able to have children. You'll Never Walk is his story.

[Daveo]

The Flag of Freedom

(Nathan Peake #5)

by Seth Hunter

1797: Britain stands alone against the forces of Revolutionary France. A victorious French Army, led by the youthful Napoleon Bonaparte, is poised to invade Britain. And in his country's darkest hour, Captain Nathan Peake finds himself imprisoned by his own side on the Rock of Gibraltar - charged with treason. To prove his innocence Nathan must uncover the great deception that masks the French war aims. Is the great armada being assembled in Toulon bound for the shores of Great Britain - or Egypt? His secret mission to discover the truth about Napoleon's invasion plans will hurl him into two of the greatest battles of the 18th century.

[Daveo]

The "Unknown" Reality, Vol. 1: A Seth Book

BY JANE ROBERTS - SETH (SPIRIT),

Robert F. Butts (Contributor)

Explores the concept of probable realities, the relationship between physical health and inner reality, and the purpose and fulfillment of dreams.

[Daveo]

To Kill a Mockingbird

(TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD)

by Harper Lee

The unforgettable novel of a childhood in a sleepy Southern town and the crisis of conscience that rocked it.

"To Kill A Mockingbird" became both an instant bestseller and a critical success when it was first published in 1960.

It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and was later made into an Academy Award-winning film, also a classic. Compassionate, dramatic, and deeply moving, "To Kill A Mockingbird" takes readers to the roots of human behavior - to innocence and experience, kindness and cruelty, love and hatred, humor and pathos.

Now with over 18 million copies in print and translated into forty languages, this regional story by a young Alabama woman claims universal appeal.

Harper Lee always considered her book to be a simple love story. Today it is regarded as a masterpiece of American literature.

[Daveo]

Morning Star (Red Rising Series Book 3) Pierce Brown..

Darrow would have lived in peace, but his enemies brought him war. The Gold overlords demanded his obedience, hanged his wife, and enslaved his people. But Darrow is determined to fight back. Risking everything to transform himself and breach Gold society, Darrow has battled to survive the cutthroat rivalries that breed Society’s mightiest warriors, climbed the ranks, and waited patiently to unleash the revolution that will tear the hierarchy apart from within. Finally, the time has come. But devotion to honor and hunger for vengeance run deep on both sides. Darrow and his comrades-in-arms face powerful enemies without scruple or mercy. Among them are some Darrow once considered friends. To win, Darrow will need to inspire those shackled in darkness to break their chains, unmake the world their cruel masters have built, and claim a destiny too long denied—and too glorious to surrender.

[Daveo]

Clarkson - Look Who's Back: The Unauthorised Biography - by Gwen Russell

THERE WAS A NATIONAL OUTCRY IN 2015 WHEN THE BBC ANNOUNCED THAT THEY WERE PARTING WAYS WITH JEREMY CLARKSON. HOWEVER, ONE THING WAS CLEAR; HE WAS NEVER GOING TO BE AWAY FROM OUR SCREENS FOR LONG...

During his time on Top Gear, Jeremy Clarkson established himself as the nation's favourite motoring aficionado but also an unlikely political commentator with a knack for telling it like it is (and putting his foot in it).

However, his 'gaffes' only made the nation love him more. Whilst the Beeb tried to revive Top Gear after the departure of Clarkson, May and Hammond with an all-star line-up including Chris Evans and Matt LeBlanc, something just wasn't right. They soon learned to their cost that there's no one quite like Clarkson.

From scandals over 'feckless Mexicans' and infamous punch-ups to his escapades on The Grand Tour, this is the true story of his extraordinary life and career. This entertaining and fully up-to-date biography charts Clarkson's rise and fall (and rise again) along with the uncensored views and hilarious anecdotes that have made him a national treasure.

[Daveo]

American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis ..

In American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis imaginatively explores the incomprehensible depths of madness and captures the insanity of violence in our time or any other. Patrick Bateman moves among the young and trendy in 1980s Manhattan. Young, handsome, and well educated, Bateman earns his fortune on Wall Street by day while spending his nights in ways we cannot begin to fathom. Expressing his true self through torture and murder, Bateman prefigures an apocalyptic horror that no society could bear to confront.

[Daveo]

Siam Streetfighter by Ian Quartermaine ..

The Story: A tale of one man’s journey from the depths of despair in an American penitentiary at the start of the twentieth century, to life as a bare-knuckle streetfighter on the docks of Old Siam. Offered the chance of a high-risk escape through snake infested swamp and Jungle, whence if caught a flogging maybe to death could be the punishment, James Johnson’s luck is in and he manages to break free. But after further brushes with the law, he is forced to flee the country.

He hires on as a crew member on a cargo boat heading out from San Francisco. His ship is bound for Siam, and on his journey half way round the world, James Johnson, a muscular white man brought up by Native American Indians, finds friendship, a new family, and himself.

He discovers that the harshness of the life he has left behind in America, is equally present at sea, and in trying to protect a young cabin boy from the sadistic ship’s captain, retribution is promised. Retribution is executed as soon as the ship docks in old Bangkok, when a gang of European and Asian thugs in the pay of the ship’s master, beat him almost to death.

Bleeding badly, barely conscious, and about to be savaged by a pack of feral dogs, his life is saved by a young Siamese boy armed only with his courage and a stick. Although culturally frowned upon for a Siamese woman to consort with a farang (white foreigner), the boy’s mother nurses him back to health. In the process, a relationship develops between the farang (white foreigner) and the young Siamese boy - who looks upon him as a surrogate father. Soon after, he is drawn into the brutal world of streetfighting.

An odyssey of one man’s retreat from his past and the moral decisions that face us all, and which determine our destiny in this life and any future incarnations; the love of a young boy who comes to regards him as his surrogate father; the culturally forbidden but gently growing love with a Siamese girl; plus brutal fights and the inscrutable and sometimes harsh aspects of life in old Siam, create an original and powerful story.

Drawing on the works of Dickens (Charles) and Conrad (Joseph) to some degree, combine with an action adventure based in an exotic location and a picturesque time period. Watch out for the movie. NB. ‘Siam Streetfighter’ contains scenes of considerable brutality, a reality in correctional facilities in times past, and on the back streets of most big cities. Do not purchase if you are of a sensitive disposition or emanate from a sheltered personal background.

[Daveo]

The Sword Saint by C.F. Iggulden

Cities have been broken. Empires have fallen.

And darkness is coming. Success has drawn a cold gaze. A false king seeks dominion. His soldiers will bring desolation and despair to Darien. With treachery on all sides, the ancient capital looks set to fall. Yet within the walls of that great city, a small team gathers.

Tellius knows each one: a hunter, a gambler, a dead man, a wielder of threads - and the sword saint of Shiang. When Darien herself is threatened, Tellius will ask them to stand. A city is worth more than the lives of those within. Darien's streets and courts and homes and taverns are a bonfire on the hill, a beacon of life and light in the world.

That is why they will die to save her.