Canterbury Tales Guesthouse

[Daveo]

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[Daveo]

The Burning by Jane Casey....

 

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A determined young police constable goes it alone against an enigmatic killer and her bosses in a series debut for fans of Sophie Hannah and Tana French

 

The Burning Man.

It's the name the media has given a brutal murderer who has beaten four young women to death before setting their bodies ablaze in secluded areas of London's parks.

And now there's a fifth.

 

Maeve Kerrigan is an ambitious detective constable, keen to make her mark on the murder task force.

Her male colleagues believe Maeve's empathy makes her weak, but the more she learns about the latest victim, Rebecca Haworth, from her grieving friends and family, the more determined Maeve becomes to bring her murderer to justice.

But how do you catch a killer no one has seen when so much of the evidence has gone up in smoke?

 

Maeve's frenetic hunt for a killer in Jane Casey's gripping series debut will entrance even the most jaded suspense readers.

[Daveo]

The Ends of the Earth: A Journey to the Frontiers of Anarchy
by Robert D. Kaplan...

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Author of Balkan Ghosts, Robert D. Kaplan now travels from West Africa to Southeast Asia to report on a world of disintegrating nation-states, warring nationalities, metastasizing populations, and dwindling resources. 
He emerges with a gritty tour de force of travel writing and political journalism. 
Whether he is walking through a shantytown in the Ivory Coast or a death camp in Cambodia, talking with refugees, border guards, or Iranian revolutionaries, Kaplan travels under the most arduous conditions and purveys the most startling truths. Intimate and intrepid, erudite and visceral, The Ends of the Earth is an unflinching look at the places and peoples that will make tomorrow's headlines and the history of the next millennium.

[Daveo]

Attack State Red by Richard Kemp & Chris Hughes...

 

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Green: Enter without explosives or firing unless enemy targets are identified.

 

Amber: Enter firing. No explosive entry.

 

Red: Explosive entry using a grenade or charge. Enter firing at will.

 

What happened in Helmand Sangin Valley in the spring of 2007 was nothing short of extraordinary.

After the last gasp defence of the platoon houses by the Paras that preceded them in theatre, the soldiers of the Royal Anglian Regiment arrived in Afghanistan charged with taking the battle to the enemy.

Despite brutal, debilitating conditions, the tour that followed became a bloody lesson in how to conduct offensive infantry warfare.

Over a six-month tour of duty, the 'Vikings' battlegroup unleashed hell in heavy, relentless fighting that saw teenage soldiers battle toe to toe against hardcore Al Qaeda and Taliban warriors at unprecedented levels of ferocity.

 

The stories that emerged from the Sangin Valley, defined by bravery, comradeship, endurance and, above all, aggression, are remarkable.

So much so that Sandhurst manuals were re-written to incorporate the lessons of the campaign, but the fight was far from one-sided. May 2007 saw the Anglians suffer the highest number of British military casualties in any single month since the end of World War II.

And those that did return home came back changed by the intensity of the experience.

 

In Attack State Red, Colonel Richard Kemp, a former Commanding Office of 1st Battalion, The Royal Anglian Regiment, and Chris Hughes, a security correspondent, tell the story of the Royal Anglian deployment for the first time.

Combining the strategic insight of 3 Para with the adrenaline charge of Sniper One, they have produced the most dynamic, substantial and visceral account of the war in Afghanistan that's ever been written.

[Daveo]

The Informer by Sean O'Callaghan....

 

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In 1988 IRA terrorist Sean O'Callaghan walked into a police station and gave himself up.

Sentenced to 539 years' imprisonment for IRA crimes including two murders and many terrorist attacks, O'Callaghan served six of those years before being released by royal prerogative.

 

The reason? For the previous sixteen years O'Callaghan had been the most highly placed informer within the ranks of the IRA and had fed the Irish Garda with countless pieces of invaluable information.

He prevented the assassination of the Prince and Princess of Wales at a London theatre; he sabotaged operations, explained strategy and caused the arrests of many IRA members.

He has done more than any individual to unlock the code of silence which governs the IRA's members, and in effect made it possible to fight the war against the terrorists.

 

The Informer is the story of a courageous life lived under the constant threat of discovery and its fatal consequences.

It is the story of a very modern hero, who is not without sin but who has done and is doing everything in his power, and at whatever personal cost, to atone for the past.

[Daveo]

Spies in the Garden: A Novel of War and Espionage

by Bob Bergin.....

 

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Set in Burma and southern China, this story follows the Japanese invasion and the disasters that befall the British Army.

The American Volunteer Group (AVG) Flying Tigers play a key role in the defense of Burma and the beginning of American espionage efforts in Asia that become known as the Office of Strategic Services (OSS).

Journalist Harry Ross is sent to Rangoon to establish an espionage network and monitor the effectiveness of the Flying Tigers.

[Daveo]

The Lost Heart of Asia by Colin Thubron

 

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A land of enormous proportions, countless Secrets, and incredible history, Central Asia, the heart of the great Mongol empire of Tamerlane, site of the legendary Silk Route and scene of Stalin's cruelest deportations, is a remote and fascinating region.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of newly independent republics, Central Asia, containing the magical cities of Bukhara and Samarkand, and terrain as diverse as the Kazakh steppes, the Karakum desert, and the Pamir mountains, has been in a constant state of transition. The Lost Heart of Asia takes readers into the very heart of this little visited, yet increasingly important region, delivering a rare and moving portrayal of a world in the midst of change.

[Daveo]

Beat Depression with St. John's Wort by Steven Bratman..

 

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Looking for a safe, reliable treatment for depression? Then you should know about St. John's wort.

This amazing herb is comparable to Prozac and other prescription drugs in treating mild to moderate depression without the drugs' drastic side effects.

 

In this easily readable yet solidly researched book, Steven Bratman, M.D., describes the experiences of his own patients and the results of clinical studies worldwide - he explains:

 

• What St. John's wort is and how it helps fight depression

• Its record of success without dangerous side effects

• How to determine if it may be effective for you

• Where to buy it and what to look for on the label

 

This is the one book you need on nature's strongest weapon in the fight against depression.

[Daveo]

Hunting El Chapo: The Inside Story of the American Lawman Who Captured the World's Most Wanted Drug-Lord

by Andrew Hogan & Douglas Century....

 

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A blend of Manhunt, Killing Pablo, and Zero Dark Thirty, Andrew Hogan and Douglas Century’s sensational investigative high-tech thriller, soon to be a major motion picture, chronicles a riveting chapter in the twentieth-century drug wars: the exclusive inside story of the American lawman and his dangerous eight-year hunt that captured El Chapo the world’s most wanted drug kingpin who evaded the law for more than a decade.

 

Every generation has a larger-than-life criminal: Jesse James, Billy the Kid, John Dillinger, Al Capone, John Gotti, Pablo Escobar. But each of these notorious lawbreakers had a "white hat" in pursuit: Wyatt Earp, Pat Garrett, Eliot Ness, Steve Murphy.

For notorious drug lord Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán-Loera, El Chapo, that lawman is former Drug Enforcement Administration Special Agent Andrew Hogan.

 

In 2006, fresh out of the D.E.A. Academy, Hogan heads west to Arizona where he immediately plunges into a series of gripping undercover adventures, all unknowingly placing him on the trail of Guzmán, the leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, a Forbes billionaire and Public Enemy No. 1 in the United States.

Six years later, as head of the D.E.A.’s Sinaloa Cartel desk in Mexico City, Hogan finds his life and Chapo’s are ironically, on parallel paths: they’re both obsessed with the details.

 

In a recasting of the classic American Western on the global stage, Hunting El Chapo takes us on Hogan’s quest to achieve the seemingly impossible, from infiltrating El Chapo’s inner circle to leading a white-knuckle manhunt with an elite brigade of trusted Mexican Marines, racing door-to-door through the cartel’s stronghold and ultimately bringing the elusive and murderous king-pin to justice.

 

This cinematic crime story following the relentless investigative work of Hogan and his team unfolds at breakneck speed, taking the reader behind the scenes of one of the most sophisticated and dangerous counter-narcotics operations in the history of the United States and Mexico.

[Daveo]

Raconteur’s Pattaya Tales by Geoffrey Franklin.

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Somewhere between an international fantasy world and one of harsh reality, the characters in these varied stories become involved in humourous, dangerous, sometimes violent adventures, set against a colourful backdrop of flora and fauna, festivals, arcane beliefs and ghosts. 
Here, dreams are often perceived as future indicators and reincarnation is seldom, if ever questioned. 
Nothing is forever, or quite as it seems to be. 
The only certainty is life is never dull or grey, these stories are fictional, but truth is often is often stranger than fiction and every good yarn has an essential thread of truth within it. Many of the events in these stories often involved or were witnessed by the author.
Geoffrey Franklin is an English Artist / Writer who studied Art and Design at the Birmingham and Royal College of Art, London. 
A Pattaya resident he has painted many of the delights of Southeast Asia, Angkor Wat, Cambodia in particular.

[Daveo]

Cyber Girl by Neville Allen..

 

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Nittaya Siriwadana's life takes a whole new course when a friend introduces her to the intriguing, seductive world of the 21st Century Cyber Girl.

Suddenly, this naive, out-of-work university graduate smells a small fortune.

And all she needs do to reap the rewards is invest an hour or two each day snaring lonely, unsuspecting western men by email.

It isn't long before Nid, as she is known, outshines her mentor but her new-found wealth doesn't come without a price. Excitement and suspense enter Nid's life as she is forced to balance time between western lovers and Kwan, her new Thai boyfriend.

Kwan's criminal activities shatter Nid's dreams, exposing her to Bangkok's vicious underbelly of drugs, murder and revenge. Nid ultimately finds true love only to have its promise snatched away as her life hangs by a thread in a violent, action-filled ending to an emotion-packed story.

[Daveo]

Ju-Jitsu Self-Defence. The Bruce Sutherland System. A Selection Of Ju-Jitsu And Other Secret Holds, Locks And Throws by W. Bruce Sutherland...

 

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This is a very early Jujitsu text written by William Bruce Sutherland a Scottish physical education specialist. Sutherland was part of the second generation of European jiu jitsu instructors.

By 1915, he was teaching classes for the Special Constables and the 17th Royal Scots Battalion (Rosebery Bantam Battalion).

He is known to have advocated jiu jitsu training for the Boys Brigade, the Cadet Corps, Junior Officers' Training Corps, Scottish police, and the 12th Company City of Edinburgh Boy Scouts.

This very early text captures a particular time period in the UK when jiujitsu was beginning to develop outside of Japan.

Well worth reading for martial artists, historians, or collectors.

[Daveo]

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell..

 

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In 2007, Time magazine named him one of the most influential novelists in the world.

He has twice been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.

Now David Mitchell lends fresh credence to the claim that “each of his books seems entirely different from that which preceded it.”

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is a stunning departure for this brilliant, restless, and wildly ambitious author, a giant leap forward by even his own high standards.

A bold and epic novel of a rarely visited point in history, it is a work as exquisitely rendered as it is irresistibly readable.

 

The year is 1799, the place Dejima in Nagasaki Harbor, the “high-walled, fan-shaped artificial island” that is the Japanese Empire’s single port and sole window onto the world, designed to keep the West at bay; the farthest outpost of the war-ravaged Dutch East Indies Company; and a de facto prison for the dozen foreigners permitted to live and work there.

To this place of devious merchants, deceitful interpreters, costly courtesans, earthquakes, and typhoons comes Jacob de Zoet, a devout and resourceful young clerk who has five years in the East to earn a fortune of sufficient size to win the hand of his wealthy fiancée back in Holland.

 

But Jacob’s original intentions are eclipsed after a chance encounter with Orito Aibagawa, the disfigured daughter of a samurai doctor and midwife to the city’s powerful magistrate. The borders between proprietary, profit, and pleasure blur until Jacob finds his vision clouded, one rash promise made and then fatefully broken.

The consequences will extend beyond Jacob’s worst imaginings.

As one cynical colleague asks, “Who ain’t a gambler in the glorious Orient, with his very life?”

 

A magnificent mix of luminous writing, prodigious research, and heedless imagination, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is the most impressive achievement of its eminent author.

[Daveo]

Witness to War: An American Doctor in El Salvador

by Charles Clements...

 

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A war story that is so very human that it will shock you out of your comfort zone.

It's one man's account of the suffering he witnessed in El Salvador, but it's also a story about the motives behind this peasant uprising and the deadly manner in which it was crushed in the name of democracy.

Black and white photos.

[Daveo]

The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje.....

 

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With ravishing beauty and unsettling intelligence, Michael Ondaatje's Booker Prize-winning novel traces the intersection of four damaged lives in an Italian villa at the end of World War II.

Hana, the exhausted nurse; the maimed thief, Caravaggio; the wary sapper, Kip: each is haunted by the riddle of the English patient, the nameless, burned man who lies in an upstairs room and whose memories of passion, betrayal, and rescue illuminate this book like flashes of heat lightning.

[Daveo]

Secret Armies by James Adams....

 

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Trained to fight in any climate or terrain, the best of the best.

Special forces are in the vanguard of modern warfare.

The names of their battlegrounds are familiar.

Vietnam - Mogadishu - Kabul - The Iranian Embassy - Banjul - The Falklands - Grenada.

 

Surgical strike or counter-terrorist operation, training guerrillas or quashing coups, time has proven that even the smallest number of these highly-trained operatives can achieve what an army cannot.

But not every mission has been successful, and nor has support for them been constant.

 

These deadly armies lie hidden from public scrutiny.

Who recruits and trains these secret soldiers?

How effective are they?

and who controls them?

 

In this chilling analysis James Adams unveils the secret world of the SAS, Delta Force and Spetsnaz.

 

Adams also reveals the workings of West Germany’s GSG 9, France’s GIGN, Egypt’s Force 777 and Israel’s Unit 269.

 

Secret Armies is a sobering yet gripping study of special forces and their military and political role, in an ever-changing world.

[Daveo]

The Axe Factor by Colin Cotterill....

 

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Since Jimm Juree moved, under duress, with her family to a rural village on the coast of Southern Thailand, she misses the bright lights of Chiang Mai.

Most of all, she's missed her career as a journalist, which was just getting started.

In Chiang Mai, she was covering substantial stories and major crimes, but here in Maprao, Jimm has to scrape assignments from the local online journal, the Chumphon Gazette and be happy about it when she gets one.

This time they are sending her out to interview a local farang (European) writer, a man in his late fifties, originally from England, who writes award-winning crime novels, one Conrad Coralbank.

 

At the same time, several local women have left town without a word to anyone, leaving their possessions behind.

These include the local doctor, Dr. Sumlak, who never returned from a conference, and the Thai wife of that farang writer, the aforementioned Conrad Coralbank.

All of which looks a little suspicious, especially to Jimm's grandfather, an ex-cop, who notices Coralbank's interest in Jimm with a very jaundiced eye.

With a major storm headed their way and a potential serial killer on the loose, it looks like Jimm Juree, her eccentric family, and the whole town of Maprao is in for some major changes.

 

The Axe Factor is a Jimm Juree mystery from Colin Cotterill.

[Daveo]

Great Northern? A Scottish Adventure of Swallows & Amazons by Arthur Ransome...

 

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Finally! Here is the twelfth, and final, book in Arthur Ransome's acclaimed Swallows and Amazons series.

People familiar with his earlier work will recognize the pattern: children set out on an adventure (this one off the coast of Scotland) with a minimum of parental advice and interference. Here, the story centers on a desperate race to thwart the efforts of pernicious egg collectors threatening the survival of a pair of rare birds not previously known to nest in British waters (actually, the bird is the handsome North American "Great Northern Diver," more commonly called a loon).

[Daveo]

SEAL Target Geronimo: The Inside Story of the Mission to Kill Osama bin Laden by Chuck Pfarrer.....

 

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The true story of the killing of bin Laden by author and former U.S. Navy SEAL Chuck Pfarrer.

 

On May 2, 2011, at 1:03 a.m. a satellite uplink was sent from Pakistan crackling into the situation room of the White House: "Geronimo, Echo, KIA." These words, spoken by a Navy SEAL, ended Osama bin Laden's reign of terror.

SEAL Target Geronimo is the story of Neptune's Spear from the men who were there.

After talking to members of the SEAL team involved in the raid, Pfarrer shares never-before-revealed details in an exclusive account of what happened as he takes readers inside the walls of Bin Laden's compound penetrating deep into the terrorist's lair to reach the exact spot where the Al Qaeda leader was cowering when the bullet entered his head. SEAL Target Geronimo is an explosive story of unparalleled valor and clockwork military precision carried out by the most elite fighting force in the world, the U.S. Navy's SEAL Team Six.

[Daveo]

Set of four Faber Gallery Art Portfolios.

 

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[Daveo]

Roots: The Saga of an American Family by Alex Haley...

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When he was a boy in Henning, Tennessee, Alex Haley's grandmother used to tell him stories about their family, stories that went back to her grandparents, and their grandparents, down through the generations all the way to a man she called "the African." 
She said he had lived across the ocean near what he called the "Kamby Bolongo" and had been out in the forest one day chopping wood to make a drum when he was set upon by four men, beaten, chained and dragged aboard a slave ship bound for Colonial America.

Still vividly remembering the stories after he grew up and became a writer, Haley began to search for documentation that might authenticate the narrative.
It took ten years and a half a million miles of travel across three continents to find it, but finally, in an astonishing feat of genealogical detective work, he discovered not only the name of "the African" Kunta Kinte, but the precise location of Juffure, the very village in The Gambia, West Africa, from which he was abducted in 1767 at the age of sixteen and taken on the Lord Ligonier to Maryland and sold to a Virginia planter.

Haley has talked in Juffure with his own African sixth cousins. On September 29, 1967, he stood on the dock in Annapolis where his great-great-great-great-grandfather was taken ashore on September 29, 1767. 
Now he has written the monumental two-century drama of Kunta Kinte and the six generations who came after him, slaves and freedmen, farmers and blacksmiths, lumber mill workers and Pullman porters, lawyers and architects and one author.

But Haley has done more than recapture the history of his own family. As the first black American writer to trace his origins back to their roots, he has told the story of 25,000,000 Americans of African descent. 
He has rediscovered for an entire people a rich cultural heritage that slavery took away from them, along with their names and their identities. 
But Roots speaks, finally, not just to blacks, or to whites, but to all people and all races everywhere, for the story it tells is one of the most eloquent testimonials ever written to the indomitability of the human spirit.

[Daveo]

Exodus by Leon Uris.....

 

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Exodus is an international publishing phenomenon, the towering novel of the twentieth century's most dramatic geopolitical event.

Leon Uris magnificently portrays the birth of a new nation in the midst of enemies, the beginning of an earthshaking struggle for power.

Here is the tale that swept the world with its fury: the story of an American nurse, an Israeli freedom fighter caught up in a glorious, heartbreaking, triumphant era.

[Daveo]

Falling Leaves: The Memoir of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter by Adeline Yen Mah...

 

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Born in 1937 in a port city a thousand miles north of Shanghai, Adeline Yen Mah was the youngest child of an affluent Chinese family who enjoyed rare privileges during a time of political and cultural upheaval.

But wealth and position could not shield Adeline from a childhood of appalling emotional abuse at the hands of a cruel and manipulative Eurasian stepmother.

Determined to survive through her enduring faith in family unity, Adeline struggled for independence as she moved from Hong Kong to England and eventually to the United States to become a physician and writer.

 

A compelling, painful, and ultimately triumphant story of a girl's journey into adulthood, Adeline's story is a testament to the most basic of human needs: acceptance, love, and understanding.

With a powerful voice that speaks of the harsh realities of growing up female in a family and society that kept girls in emotional chains, Falling Leaves is a work of heartfelt intimacy and a rare authentic portrait of twentieth-century China.

[Daveo]

The Org: The Underlying Logic of the Office
by Ray Fisman & Tim Sullivan....

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We create organizations because we need to get a job done, something we couldn't do alone and join them because we're inspired by their missions (and our paycheck). 
But once we're inside, these organizations rarely feel inspirational. 
Instead, we're often baffled by what we encounter: clueless managers, a lack of clear objectives, a seeming disregard for data, and the vast gulf between HR proclamations and our experience in the cubicle.
So where did it all go wrong?
In THE ORG, Ray Fisman and Tim Sullivan explain the tradeoffs that every organization faces, arguing that this everyday dysfunction is actually inherent to the very nature of orgs. 
THE ORG diagnoses the root causes of that malfunction, beginning with the economic logic of why organizations exist in the first place, then working its way up through the org's structure from the lowly cubicle to the CEO's office.

Woven throughout with fascinating case studies-including McDonald's, al Qaeda, the Baltimore City Police Department, Procter and Gamble, the island nation of Samoa, and Google--THE ORG reveals why the give-and-take nature of organizations, while infuriating, nonetheless provides the best way to get the job done.

You'll learn:
The purpose of meetings and why they will never go away
Why even members of al Qaeda are required to submit Travel & Expense reports.
What managers are good for.
How the army and other orgs balance marching in lockstep with fostering innovation.
Why it's the hospital administration-not the heart surgeon-who is more likely to save your life.
That CEOs often spend over 80% of their time in meetings-and why that's exactly where they should be (and why they get paid so much)

Looking at life behind the red tape, THE ORG shows why the path from workshop to corporate behemoth is pockmarked with tradeoffs and competing incentives, but above all, demonstrates why organizations are central to human achievement.

 

[Daveo]

The Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean M. Auel

 

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This novel of awesome beauty and power is a moving saga about people, relationships, and the boundaries of love. Through Jean M. Auel's magnificent storytelling we are taken back to the dawn of modern humans, and with a girl named Ayla we are swept up in the harsh and beautiful Ice Age world they shared with the ones who called themselves the Clan of the Cave Bear.

 

A natural disaster leaves the young girl wandering alone in an unfamiliar and dangerous land until she is found by a woman of the Clan, people very different from her own kind.

To them, blond, blue-eyed Ayla looks peculiar and ugly, she is one of the Others, those who have moved into their ancient homeland; but Iza cannot leave the girl to die and takes her with them.

Iza and Creb, the old Mog-ur, grow to love her, and as Ayla learns the ways of the Clan and Iza's way of healing, most come to accept her.

But the brutal and proud youth who is destined to become their next leader sees her differences as a threat to his authority.

He develops a deep and abiding hatred for the strange girl of the Others who lives in their midst, and is determined to get his revenge.