Canterbury Tales Guesthouse

[Daveo]

Carabanchel: The Last Brit in Europe's Hellhole Prison

by Christopher Chance.

 

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Christopher Chance was the last Brit to be shackled and hauled out of that infamous Spanish hellhole before it closed its gates on decades of disgraceful cruelty.

Along with the rest of the remaining inmates, he was transferred to another prison when the authorities slid back the bolts for the last time.

Chance's story begins on the day he entered the jail and encountered the innate racism of the prison staff and inmates. Intimidation and constant bullying by Spanish gypsies, gangsters, and heroin dealers forced Chance to become ultra violent, while psychotic prison officers peddled booze and drugs and performed barbaric acts on inmates.

In Carabanchel, Chance tells how he forged a band of international brothers from the chaotic human rubble in order to survive.

[Daveo]

Why I Left Goldman Sachs: A Wall Street Story

by Greg Smith

 

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On March 14, 2012, more than three million people read Greg Smith's bombshell Op-Ed,titled "Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs."

The column immediately went viral, became a worldwide trending topic on Twitter, and drew passionate responses from former Fed chairman Paul Volcker, legendary General Electric CEO Jack Welch, and New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg. Mostly, though, it hit a nerve among the general public who question the role of Wall Street in society and the callous "take the money and run" mentality that brought the world economy to its knees a few short years ago.

Smith now picks up where his Op-Ed left off.

 

His story begins in the summer of 2000, when an idealistic 21 year old arrives as an intern at Goldman Sachs and learns about the firm's Business Principle #1: Our clients' interests always come first.

This remains Smith's mantra as he rises from intern to analyst to sales trader, with clients controlling assets of more than a trillion dollars.

 

From the shenanigans of his summer internship during the technology bubble to Las Vegas hot tubs and the excesses of the real estate boom; from the career lifeline he received from an NFL Hall of Famer during the bear market to the day Warren Buffett came to save Goldman Sachs from extinction Smith will take the reader on his personal journey through the firm, and bring us inside the world's most powerful bank.

 

Smith describes in page turning detail how the most storied investment bank on Wall Street went from taking iconic companies like Ford, Sears, and Microsoft public to becoming a "vampire squid" that referred to its clients as "muppets" and paid the government a record half billion dollars to settle SEC charges.

He shows the evolution of Wall Street into an industry riddled with conflicts of interest and a profit at all costs mentality: a perfectly rigged game at the expense of the economy and the society at large.

 

After conversations with nine Goldman Sachs partners over a twelve month period proved fruitless, Smith came to believe that the only way the system would ever change was for an insider to finally speak out publicly.

He walked away from his career and took matters into his own hands. This is his story.

[Daveo]

The Howard Marks Book of Dope Stories

 

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Since the Stone Age, drugs have been sniffed to induce sleep, mixed to cure ills, swallowed to stimulate creativity, snorted to increase sexuality, popped for the hell of it and smoked to see God.

 

Natural or synthesized, they have been smuggled for all kinds of reasons from saving the world to becoming stinking rich. Blamed for deaths, wars, suicides, collapses of governments, multiple crashes, individual crises, anarchy and chaos, they have also been praised for opening minds and expanding consciousness.

 

Worshipped and demonised, venerated and chastised, force-fed and forbidden.

Every society has had its intoxicant, be it sacrament or scourge.

They have also become irreversibly interwoven with politics, sex, business, religion, and rock and roll, providing writers, whether emerging from the ancient classical world or the street laboratory of today, with both inspiration and challenge.

 

An unforgettable, once in a lifetime trip, The Howard Marks Book of Dope Stories includes his favourite drugs writings from Alexandre Dumas to Aleister Crowley via Hunter S. Thompson and Charles Baudelaire, as well as unpublished works and many new and compelling pieces from Mr Nice himself.

[Daveo]

Heads in Beds by Jacob Tomsky.

 

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Jacob Tomsky has worked in hotels for more than a decade, doing everything from valet parking to manning the front desk. He’s checked you in, checked you out, separated your white panties from the white bed sheets, tasted your room service, cleaned your toilet, denied you a late check out, laughed at your jokes, and taken your money.

And in Heads in Beds, he pulls back the curtain on the hospitality business, revealing the crazy yet compelling reality of an industry we think we know.

Prepare to be amused, shocked, and amazed as he spills the unwritten code of the bellhops, the antics that go on the valet parking garage, and the housekeeping department’s dirty little Secrets.

 

Heads in Beds is more than just a memoir.

Jake explains the Secrets of the industry, offering easy and legal ways to get what you need from your hotel without any hassle, from scoring late check ins and upgrades to getting that pay per view charge knocked off your bill.

This book will give you the knowledge you need to get the very best service from any hotel or property, from any business that makes its money from putting heads in beds.

Or, at the very least, it will keep the bellhops from taking your luggage into the camera free back office and stomping the hell out of it.

[Daveo]

Unexpected Freedom by Ajahn Munindo.

 

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“So often we are trying to follow the Buddha’s teaching with the idea of becoming free from something, free from our desires, our personality, our anger, our suffering.

It might then come as quite a surprise, when suddenly, in the middle of our striving to attain or get rid of something, we find our heart opening like a window, revealing to us the spacious vista of an unexpected kind of freedom: the freedom to fully meet ourselves as we are right now; the freedom to fully experience all the situations and emotions that seem to be obstacles to our happiness, without having to believe in or follow their apparent messages.”

[Daveo]

Beware of the Dog: Rugby's Hard Man Reveals All

by Brian Moore

 

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Brian Moore, or "Pitbull" as he came to be known during nearly a decade at the heart of the England rugby team's pack, established himself as one of the game's original hard men at a time when rugby was still an amateur sport.

Since his retirement, he has earned a reputation as an equally uncompromising commentator, never afraid to tell it as he sees it and lash out at the money men and professionals that have made rugby into such a different beast.

Yet, for all his bullishness on and off the pitch, there also appears a more unconventional, complicated side to the man. A solicitor by trade, Moore's love of fine wine, career experience as a manicurist, and preference for reading Shakespeare in the dressing room before games, mark him out as anything but the stereotypical rugby player and in Beware of the Dog Moore lays open with astounding frankness the shocking events, both personal and professional, that have gone towards shaping him over the years.

Presenting an unparalleled insight into the mind of one of British rugby's greatest players and characters, Beware of the Dog is a uniquely engaging and upfront sporting memoir.

[Daveo]

The Long Firm 1st book of the Long Firm Trilogy, by Jake Arnott.

 

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Harry Starks, club owner, racketeer and porn king, is trying to jump the queue into legitimacy.

This swinging sixties novel reveals the seedier side of London where the low life met the high life in the city's dark underbelly.

[Daveo]

The Feather Men by Ranulph Fiennes

 

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The Feather Men is the riveting story of the efforts by a private British vigilance committee to eliminate a band of coldblooded contract killers.

From 1977 to 1990, three hired assassins known as the Clinic tracked down and murdered four former British soldiers, one at a time.

Each of the assassinations was carried out in such an ingenious fashion that there would be no hint of foul play, but one clue these killings had in common was that all four victims had fought in the Arabian desert.

Throughout those fourteen years the Feather Men, so known because "our touch is light" were never far behind the hit team.

Finally, in the autumn of 1990, on a quiet English country lane, the Feather Men achieved a form of justice.

Then, for reasons disclosed in these pages, they asked Ranulph Fiennes to reveal their spellbinding story.

For many months, The Feather Men has been a number one best seller in England.

It is a fascinating account of a tenacious double manhunt: the assassins stalking their victims and the Feather Men pursuing the assassins.

It is perhaps the ultimate vigilante story, a tale that combines the white knuckled tension of The Day of the Jackal and the revelatory drama of Spycatcher.

And, at its heart, this shocking and intriguing real life adventure raises the moral question of whether private citizens should take the law into their own hands.

"However, I for one," says the author, "am truly glad that the Feather Men exist, or existed.

As to my reasons...the reader will learn in what follows.

[Daveo]

Race to Dakar by Charley Boorman, Ewan McGregor.

 

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In January 2006, 230 people raced in trucks, cars, and motorbikes from Lisbon to Dakar in the 28th annual Dakar rally, the most challenging race in existence.

Taking part was a team of three bikers, Matt Hall, Simon Pavey, and actor and bike nut Charley Boorman.

After his celebrated trip round the world with Ewan McGregor, documented in Long Way Round, Charley was keen for another challenge.

Racing in the Dakar had always been a dream of his, and so it was the obvious choice for a new adventure.

Supported by Australian champion biker Simon Pavey and experienced British biker Matt Hall, Charley attempted to do what many professional bikers have failed to do, to successfully compete in the Dakar rally.

His book details his extraordinary adventures and those of his fellow bikers, and also explores the history of this most dramatic and romantic of races.

From Portugal through Morocco, Western Sahara, Mauritania, Mali, Guinea, and Senegal, it also provides a unique look at the countries hosting the rally. It is an exhilarating and fitting sequel to Long Way Round.

[Daveo]

Zone 22 by Tig Hague

 

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When Tig Hague kissed goodbye to his girlfriend Lucy, he was already thinking of his return.

The couple were going house hunting, looking for their first home together.

Tig was only going to be gone a few days on a routine business trip, the annual highlight of an otherwise unglamorous job working on the Russian desk of a London bank.

But just hours later something went wrong at Moscow airport. Very wrong.

 

Misunderstanding a request from customs for a backhander to speed his progress into the country, Tig was pulled to one side to have his bag searched.

A deliberate inconvenience, he thought.

 

But Tig's world was about to implode with dizzying, terrifying speed.

A tiny lump of hashish, nothing more than detritus from a recent stag weekend, was discovered in the pocket of an old pair of jeans.

Too small to warrant anything more than a slapped wrist back home, he hadn't even known it was there.

 

Tig was in Moscow's notorious Piet Centrale jail by nightfall, and that was just a stepping stone on his way to prison camp Zone 22 in the bleak, remote wastes of Mordovia.

 

He wouldn't be returning home for years.

[Daveo]

Arias and Raspberries - The Autobiography of Harry Secombe.

 

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The comedian and singer recounts his childhood in Swansea, his first job as a pay clerk cum tea boy at a colliery, his army days and one his more traumatic wartime experiences, his historic meeting with one Sgt. T.A. (Spike) Milligan.

His account of the Windmill Theatre, touring in post war Britain, a rich cast of larger than life characters are a delight, as are his memories of Michael Bentine, Peter Sellers and the first Goon Shows.

[Daveo]

Taken on Trust: An Autobiography by Terry Waite

 

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In his prison cell in Beirut, where he spent 1,460 days in solitary confinement.

Terry Waite wrote his autobiography in his head. Here he reveals the inner strength that helped him endure the savage treatment he received, his constant struggle to maintain his faith, and his resolve to have no regrets, no false sentimentality, no self-pity.

[Daveo]

Shay Elliott, by Graham Healy.

 

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Before the Foreign Legion there was the era of the pioneers. Among their ranks was Ireland's Séamus 'Shay' Elliott: the first rider from the English speaking nations to win stages in all three Grand Tours; the first to make the podium in a Grand Tour; and the first to win an important one day race, the Omloop Het Volk.

This is his story.

 

[Daveo]

Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle by Dervla Murphy

 

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Based on her daily diary, this is Dervla Murphy’s account of her ride, in 1963, across frozen Europe and through Persia and Afghanistan, over the Himalayas to Pakistan and into India, during one of the worst winters in memory.

She has written other travel books, including In Ethiopia with a Mule.

[Daveo]

Screwed by Eoin Colfer

 

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The second crime novel by internationally bestselling writer Eoin Colfer is a gritty and utterly compelling follow up to the critically acclaimed Plugged In Screwed.

Colfer adds and entirely new chapter to the adventures and misadventures of Daniel McEvoy, the down on his luck Irish bouncer at a seedy New Jersey bar who, with the help of a motley crew of unlikely characters, solved a bizarre string of murders, including the one of the girl he loved.

But people around him continue to die mysteriously, and Daniel is called into action once again.

Colfer, beloved by millions for his Artemis Fowl series, has written a riveting and relentlessly paced sequel.

[Daveo]

Goodbye, Dearest Holly by Kevin Wells

 

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New and updated, the paperback edition of the bestselling true story of the murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, told with heart rending honesty by Holly's father Kevin.

Some tragedies become part of our national history.

On August 4, 2002 Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman disappeared.

For the next thirteen days their families, the police, and the local community searched for them, while the nation watched in horrific suspense.

Almost two weeks after Holly and Jessica went missing, their bodies were found.

Two days later Ian Huntley was charged with their murders.

In the terrible weeks that followed Kevin started to make notes, fearful that he might forget important details.

 

GOODBYE, DEAREST HOLLY tells the story of the nightmare that began on August 4th, from the moment it became clear that Holly and Jessica were missing, through the long investigation and its aftermath.

An unflinching tale of surviving tragedy, Kevin's diaries tell of battles with the media, police bureaucracy and the legal system.

The book also includes a gripping account of the trial and convictions of Huntley and Maxine Carr.

Above all, GOODBYE, DEAREST HOLLY is a loving act of fatherhood.

[Daveo]

The Flamboya Tree: Memories of a Family's War Time Courage, by Clara Olink Kelly

 

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“The Flamboya Tree is a fascinating story that will leave the reader informed about a missing piece of the World War II experience, and in awe of one family’s survival.”

It is a well known fact that war, any war, is senseless and degrading.

When innocent people are brought into that war because they happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, it becomes incomprehensible.

Java, 1942, was such a place and time, and we were those innocent people.”

 

Fifty years after the end of World War II, Clara Olink Kelly sat down to write a memoir that is both a fierce and enduring testament to a mother’s courage and a poignant record of an often overlooked chapter of the war.

 

As the fighting in the Pacific spread, four year old Clara Olink and her family found their tranquil, pampered lives on the beautiful island of Java torn apart by the invasion of Japanese troops. Clara’s father was taken away, forced to work on the Burma railroad.

For Clara, her mother, and her two brothers, the younger one only six weeks old, an insistent knock on the door ended all hope of escaping internment in a concentration camp.

For nearly four years, they endured starvation, filth-ridden living conditions, sickness, and the danger of violence from their prison guards.

Clara credits her mother with their survival: Even in the most perilous of situations, Clara’s mother never compromised her beliefs, never admitted defeat, and never lost her courage. Her resilience sustained her three children through their frightening years in the camp.

 

Told through the eyes of a young Clara, who was eight at the end of her family’s ordeal, The Flamboya Tree portrays her mother’s tenacity, the power of hope and humor, and the buoyancy of a child’s spirit.

A painting of a flamboya tree a treasured possession of the family’s former life miraculously survived the surprise searches by the often brutal Japanese soldiers and every last-minute flight.

Just as her mother carried this painting through the years of imprisonment and the life that followed, so Clara carries her mother’s unvanquished spirit through all of her experiences and into the reader’s heart.

[Daveo]

Rascals in Paradise & Return to Paradise

By James A Michener.

 

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In a thrilling collection of nonfiction adventure stories, James A. Michener returns to the most dazzling place on Earth: the islands that inspired Tales of the South Pacific.

Co-written with A. Grove Day, Rascals in Paradise offers portraits of ten scandalous men and women, some infamous and some overlooked, including Sam Comstock, a mutinous sailor whose delusions of grandeur became a nightmare; Will Mariner, a golden haired youth who used his charm to win over his captors; and William Bligh, the notorious HMS Bounty captain who may not have been the monster history remembers him as.

From lifelong buccaneers to lapsed noblemen, in Michener and Day’s capable hands these rogues become the stuff of legend.

[Daveo]

The Wolves by Alex Berenson.

 

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The latest thriller from author of Twelve Days, Alex Berenson.

John Wells has just barely managed to stop an operation designed to drive the United States and Iran into war, but the instigator himself disappeared behind an impenetrable war of security.

Now it’s time for him to pay, and Wells has made it his personal mission.

There are plenty of crosscurrents at work, though.

The White House doesn’t want anybody stirring the pot; his old CIA bosses have their own agendas; other countries are starting to sniff around, sensing something unusual.

It is when Russia and China enter the mix, however, that the whole affair is set to combust.

With alarming speed, Wells is once again on his own and the wolves are closing in.

[Daveo]

Killer Clown: The John Wayne Gacy Murders

by Terry Sullivan, Peter T. Maiken

 

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Who was John Wayne Gacy?

The model citizen whose business skills were admired by his peers?

The hospital volunteer whose sweet-faced clowning lightened the patients' days?

The member of the Jaycees who was a civic-minded friend of the community?

The depraved maniac who sodomized, tortured, and killed thirty-three young men and boys?

 

Shortly before Christmas of 1978, a teenage boy disappeared from the drugstore where he worked.

He would be the final victim of John Wayne Gacy's horrifying compulsion.

 

Then, ten days after the boy's disappearance.

Detectives, finding a human bone in the crawlspace of Gacy's house, dug into the lime covered ground.

With mounting horror, they pulled bone after bone from Gacy's suburban home until finally they had gathered the remains of twenty eight more youths who had fallen prey to the killer clown.

 

 

16 Pages of Shocking Photos!

[Daveo]

Havana Red by Leonardo Padura.

 

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The first of the Havana quartet featuring Inspector Mario Conde, a tropical Marlowe.

A young transvestite in a beautiful red dress is found strangled in a Havana park.

Conde’s investigation into a violent murder exposes a stifling, corrupt society, a Cuban reality where nothing is what it seems.

A dark and fascinating world of men and women born in the revolution who live without dreaming of exile and seek their identity in the midst of disaster.....

 

Leonardo Padura lives in Cuba.

He is a novelist, essayist, journalist and scriptwriter.

Havana Red has won numerous literary prizes, including the Hammett prize in Spain.

[Daveo]

To the Devil a Daughter by Dennis Wheatley

 

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Beneath the azure sky of the French Riviera, Christina Mordant looks and behaves like any other attractive girl.

But each night as darkness falls, the demon within her betrays its presence.

 

A thousand miles away, deep in the Essex marshes, a priest of Satan is about to achieve his life's ambition: Canon Copely-Syle of Bentford Priory prepares for the virgin sacrifice which will give breath to the foul abomination he has created.

[Daveo]

Sas Sniper The World Of An Elite Australian Marksman

by Rob Maylor, Robert Macklin.

 

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Here Rob Maylor tells the no holds barred story of his years on the front lines, from his early service with the Royal Marine in Northern Ireland, then from 2003 in the elite Australian SAS.

 

As one of Australia's most highly trained and successful combat marksmen, he saw action in East Timor, Iraq and most recently in Afghanistan where he won medals for gallantry in some of the heaviest fighting in the conflict.

He tells of his near death experience in the Blackhawk helicopter that crashed off Fiji, killing two of his mates.

He was also in the personal security detail of the East Timorese President, Xanana Gusmao and the Chief of the Australian Defence Force, Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston.

 

Rob Maylor tells of his dedication to the dark art of sniping' and touches on the history of the great snipers who came before him.

It is filled with the rough humour and the almost religious sense of mateship of the SAS regiment.

 

SAS SNIPER covers Rob's two tours of Afghanistan in 2007 and 2008, where he was repeatedly in action and where his comrades were killed and wounded.

It was there that he took part in the action that saw his mate Mark Donaldson awarded the VC; and Rob himself was wounded and won his own medal for gallantry under fire.

[Daveo]

Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier

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Her mother's dying request takes Mary Yellan on a sad journey across the bleak moorland of Cornwall to reach Jamaica Inn, the home of her Aunt Patience. 
With the coachman's warning echoing in her memory, Mary arrives at a dismal place to find Patience a changed woman, cowering from her overbearing husband, Joss Merlyn.

Affected by the Inn's brooding power, Mary is thwarted in her attention to reform her aunt, and unwillingly drawn into the dark deeds of Joss and his accomplices. 
And, as she struggles with events beyond her control, Mary is further thrown by her feelings for a man she dare not trust....

[Daveo]

Gazza : My Story by Paul Gascoigne & Hunter Davies

 

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Almost as soon as Gazza burst on to the scene at Newcastle United, the young Geordie was the centre of attention: Vinnie Jones's notorious ball handling showed the lengths people would go to try to stop him.

Then, with England on the verge of possibly reaching the World Cup final in 1990, came Gazza's tears, the moment that brought a whole new audience to the sport and helped set the football boom of the 1990's on its way.

But then came a career threatening injury, mental health problems, self confessed alcoholism and family disputes, as life in the full glare of the media spotlight became too much.

Now, at the end of his top flight playing career, Gazza is ready to confront his demons.

The result is quite simply the most remarkable footballing story you'll ever read: what it's like being Paul Gascoigne, in his own words.