Canterbury Tales Guesthouse

[Daveo]

Crash n Carry is the astonishing true story of the rise and rise of the ramraider. In this startling investigation, top true crime writer Stephen Richards reveals the shocking truth. He shows that far from being just petty chancers, ramraiders are in fact part of highly organized gangs, masterminded by career criminals who systematically select and raid their targets. In these pages and in their own words, reformed ramraiders talk about how they pulled off some of the most audacious robberies in criminal history, what drove them to do it, and how they managed to evade the law for so long. Action-packed and told in Richards' inimitable style, this is the ultimate book about one of the most dangerous crime waves ever to sweep the country.

[Daveo]

Tragically I Was an Only Twin - The Complete Peter Cook by Peter Cook,

To his many friends as well as his legion of fans, Peter Cook was quite simply the funniest man ever.

His unique gifts and the way he led the transformation of British comedy (from music hall to perverse absurdity) and his clear comic influence on Monty Python's Flying Circus and every show since, has been much written about.

But never before has there been a collection of Cook's own writings. "Tragically, I Was an Only Twin" gathers the treasures of Cook's comic career, from school and university via Beyond the Fringe alongside Alan Bennett, Jonathan Miller, and Dudley Moore, to his sureal, satirical journalism for" Private Eye."

It includes his monologues, the cream of his irreverent essays, and highlights from his much celebrated partnerships with Dudley Moore as Pete & Dud and Derek & Clive.

Illustrated with his own drawings, this is the first, the only, and certainly the definitive collection of the transformative genius of comedy that was Peter Cook.

[Daveo]

[Daveo]

Dispatches

BY MICHAEL HERR

Written on the front lines in Vietnam, Dispatches became an immediate classic of war reportage when it was published in 1977. From its terrifying opening pages to its final eloquent words, Dispatches makes us see, in unforgettable and unflinching detail, the chaos and fervor of the war and the surreal insanity of life in that singular combat zone.

Michael Herr’s unsparing, unorthodox retellings of the day-to-day events in Vietnam take on the force of poetry, rendering clarity from one of the most incomprehensible and nightmarish events of our time. Dispatches is among the most blistering and compassionate accounts of war in our literature.

[Daveo]

Billy Wright by Norman Giller

Billy Wright captained England 90 times on the way to becoming the first footballer to win 100 international caps.

He was skipper of the all-conquering Wolves team that pioneered European football nights in the 1950's.

In a Hero for All Seasons, Norman Giller - who was a close friend - traces his life and times. Billy was the David Beckham of his time. When he married Joy Beverley of the Beverley Sisters in 1959, their wedding stopped the traffic.

It received almost as much publicity as the Posh Spice/Becks union 40 years later. A Hero for All Seasons is not only a story of a great sportsman, but also of an era of football that has disappeared from sight. Just one difference;

David Beckham earns in just one week more that Billy Wright picked up as a player throughout a 20-year career.

The author discusses the many other changes that have occurred to the game since Wright's time, while also exploring his career and his personal life as he rose from humble beginnings to become a folk-hero.

[Daveo]

Sukhumvit Road by David Young

Bami is Bangkok's #1 butterfly girl, fluttering from dream to dream and lover to lover.

Her life turns upside-down as former boyfriends and present beaus suddenly converge over one long weekend in the City of Angels. There's Nathan, a thoroughly deluded young Bachelor set on marrying her. Owen, an ex-minister hoping to erase his sins in forbidden love.

Frank, the broken-hearted bar owner whose life is spinning out of control, and Roley, an alcoholic writing the story of her life.

Filled with laughter and demons, the shocking and the hilarious, David Young weaves a no-holds barred tale of Bangkok that urban legend can't compete with.

And it all takes place on Sukhumvit Road.

[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]

The Lao Gender, Power, and Livelihood

by Carol Ireson-Doolittle & Geraldine Moreno-Black..

The Lao discusses culture and village life in Laos, exploring topics of kinship and family, gender relations, households, religion, livelihood strategies, and ethnicity.

In particular, the effects of recent development projects on the relative power of men and women in rural Lao society, and the responses of women to those changes, are highlighted.

Ireson-Doolittle and Moreno-Black not only provide a description of life on the ground but also explore how local affairs are connected to the wider world, and how the Lao people preserve traditions while also responding to change.

[Daveo]

Europe's backyard war: The war in the Balkans by Mark Almond..

Once, Sarajevo was the name associated with the outbreak of World War I.

Today it has become the shorthand for new horrors. The outbreak of war on the European Community's doorstep in the summer of 1991 confronted post-Cold War Europe with its first crisis.

The roots of today's war in the Balkans are complex and need to be understood if the crisis is to be mastered. Despite the internal reasons for the current fighting, the former Yugoslavia is far from unique.

A haunting doubt has begun to seep into the minds of Western leaders that the disintegration of Yugoslavia might be a model for future developments in other multi-national states, in particular the former Soviet Union.

In his attempt to piece together the tragedy of what is happening in the Balkans, the author examines the fighting on the ground in Yugoslavia, but also looks at the lessons to be learned from the fumbling inability of the West or the UN to forestall or halt the conflict.

[Daveo]

The Grapes of Wrath

BY JOHN STEINBECK

The Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression, a book that galvanized and sometimes outraged - millions of readers. First published in 1939, Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression chronicles the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930's and tells the story of one Oklahoma farm family, the Joads - driven from their homestead and forced to travel west to the promised land of California.

Out of their trials and their repeated collisions against the hard realities of an America divided into Haves and Have - Nots evolves a drama that is intensely human yet majestic in its scale and moral vision, elemental yet plainspoken, tragic but ultimately stirring in its human dignity.

A portrait of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless, of one man’s fierce reaction to injustice, and of one woman’s stoical strength, the novel captures the horrors of the Great Depression and probes into the very nature of equality and justice in America.

At once a naturalistic epic, captivity narrative, road novel, and transcendental gospel, Steinbeck’s powerful landmark novel is perhaps the most American of American Classics.

[Daveo]

The Force of Karma by Pira Sudham..

In churning childhood memories into captivating recollection of the lives of the Surins in impoverished Isan, in "Monsoon Country" (1954-1981), Pira Sudham did not stray far from the realities.

Being much concerned with rampant corruption he could no longer hide under the cloak of a public relations consultant in Bangkok when the saga has to cover the tumultuous years of 1981 to 2001 in "The Force of Karma".

Hence he decided to take Goliath and Company into the cauldron. Perceiving at close quarters a corruptive force and the cancerous rot, he projects: A tree, rotten at the core, falls of its own accord. The financial crash of 1997 is merely a rash.

The fall is yet to come - in the process, the life of an Isan pauper, Prem 'Primo' Surin fatefully entwines with those of the bibulous billionaire, Dani 'Danny' Pilakol, the winsome University of London graduate, Elizabeth 'Lizzie' Durham, the grandee of the old school art dealer, Charles Tregonning, the versatile hotelier, Karl Michael 'Micky' Wittenburg, the ambitious, Major General Ayumongkol 'Ayo' Mongkolkulthorn and the famous opera singer-composer-conductor, Wilhelm 'Willie' Hagenbach in Thailand, England and Germany.

Their fellowship, the Operation Norma, the inheritance and the force of destiny have all been intricately woven. 'Monsoon Country' and its sequel, The Force of Karma have become a most riveting and provocative saga out of the insurgency and suppression in the 1970's, the 1997 economic fiasco and the killing fields (the massacres in October 1973, October 1976 and May 1992) in Thailand.

[Daveo]

Smoking Poppy by Graham Joyce.....

Graham Joyce travels to an enthralling, suspense - charged landscape in this hallucinatory novel of a father's quest to save his daughter - without destroying himself.

Dan Innes has received shattering news from the British Embassy in Bangkok: his daughter, Charlie, whom he hasn't seen or spoken to in two years, has been imprisoned in a Thai jail for drug smuggling.

Angry, terrified, seething with reprimands and questions, Dan leaves for Thailand. But the jail at Chiang Mai marks the beginning of his search rather than the end.

Following the faintest of trails up into the lawless, dangerous mountain region near Myanmar, where opium grows abundantly, Dan must retrace Charlie's steps and brave the same traps that have swallowed her. . .on a terrifying mission of self-discovery, blind faith, and salvation.

[Daveo]

The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific by J. Maarten Troost..

At the age of twenty-six, Maarten Troost who had been pushing the snooze button on the alarm clock of life by racking up useless graduate degrees and muddling through a series of temp jobs decided to pack up his flip-flops and move to Tarawa, a remote South Pacific island in the Republic of Kiribati.

He was restless and lacked direction, and the idea of dropping everything and moving to the ends of the Earth was irresistibly romantic - he should have known better.

The Sex Lives of Cannibals tells the hilarious story of what happens when Troost discovers that Tarawa is not the island paradise he dreamed of.

Falling into one amusing misadventure after another, Troost struggles through relentless, stifling heat, a variety of deadly bacteria, polluted seas, toxic fish, and worst of all, no television or coffee.

And that's just the first day - sunburned, emaciated, and stinging with sea lice, Troost spends the next two years battling incompetent government officials, alarmingly large critters, erratic electricity, and a paucity of food options.

He contends with a cast of bizarre local characters, including "Half-Dead Fred" and the self-proclaimed Poet Laureate of Tarawa (a British drunkard who's never written a poem in his life), and eventually settles into the ebb and flow of island life, just before his return to the culture shock of civilization.

With the rollicking wit of Bill Bryson, the brilliant travel exposition of Paul Theroux, and a hipster edge that is entirely Troost's own, The Sex Lives of Cannibals is the ultimate vicarious adventure. Readers may never long to set foot on Tarawa, but they'll want to travel with Troost time and time again.

[Daveo]

Novel without a Name by Duong Thu Huong.....

Twenty-eight-year-old Quan has been fighting for the Communist cause in North Vietnam for a decade.

Filled with idealism and hope when he first left his village, he now spends his days and nights dodging stray bullets and bombs, foraging scraps of food to feed himself and his men.

Quan seeks comfort in childhood memories as he tries to sort out his conflicting feelings of patriotism and disillusionment. Then, given the chance to return to his home, Quan undertakes a physical and mental journey that brings him face to face with figures from his past - his angry father, his childhood sweetheart, his boyhood friends now maimed or dead and ultimately to the shattering reality that his innocence has been irretrievably lost in the wake of the war.

In a voice both lyrical and stark, Duong Thu Huong, one of Vietnam’s most beloved writers, powerfully conveys the conflict that spiritually destroyed her generation.

[Daveo]

The Seven Daughters of Eve: The Science That Reveals Our Genetic Ancestry Illustrated Edition by Bryan Sykes..

In 1994 Bryan Sykes was called in as an expert to examine the frozen remains of a man trapped in glacial ice in northern Italy for over 5000 years - the Ice Man.

Sykes succeeded in extracting DNA from the Ice Man, but even more important, writes Science News, was his "ability to directly link that DNA to Europeans living today."

In this groundbreaking book, Sykes reveals how the identification of a particular strand of DNA that passes unbroken through the maternal line allows scientists to trace our genetic makeup all the way back to prehistoric times - to seven primeval women, the "seven daughters of Eve."

[RandyJohnson]

Interesting - dude had 61 tattoos

Pattaya Addicts: Hold my beer

Edited January 22, 2021 by RandyJohnson

[Daveo]

Sweet Song of the Siren: And Other Short Stories by William Peskett..

In his third collection of short stories, Thailand-based author William Peskett introduces us to a murderer who sees himself carved in stone, a writer whose dead wife returns to him through time, a robot community waiting for their saviour, a man who falls in love with part of his own body, a woman dying slowly of dementia and a troupe of wise-cracking monkeys.

Humour and melancholy, comfort and suspense, this collection possesses all of these qualities, sometimes within the same story. Most are set in Thailand and provide insights into the lives of the varied populations of that exotic land; others could have happened anywhere. But what marks them out is the diversity of the storylines, the quality of the writing, and engagement with interesting characters who have something to say.

[Daveo]

 

[Daveo]

Miracles and Massacres: True and Untold Stories of the Making of America by Glenn Beck..

HISTORY AS IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE TOLD: TRUE AND THRILLING. History is about so much more than memorizing facts. It is, as more than half of the word suggests, about the story.

And, told in the right way, it is the greatest one ever written: Good and evil, triumph and tragedy, despicable acts of barbarism and courageous acts of heroism. The things you've never learned about our past will shock you. The reason why gun control is so important to government elites can be found in a story about Athens that no one dares teach.

Not the city in ancient Greece, but the one in 1946 Tennessee. The power of an individual who trusts his gut can be found in the story of the man who stopped the twentieth hijacker from being part of 9/11.

And a lesson on what happens when an all-powerful president is in need of positive headlines is revealed in a story about eight saboteurs who invaded America during World War II. Miracles and Massacres is history as you've never heard it told. It's incredible events that you never knew existed. And it's stories so important and relevant to today that you won't have to ask, Why didn't they teach me this? You will instantly know.

If the truth shall set you free, then your freedom begins on page one of this book. By the end, your understanding of the lies and half-truths you've been taught may change, but your perception of who we are as Americans and where our country is headed definitely will.

[Daveo]

Elephants on Acid: And Other Bizarre Experiments by Alex Boese

When Tusko the Elephant woke in his pen at the Lincoln Park Zoo on the morning of August 3, 1962, little did he know that he was about to become the test subject in an experiment to determine what happens to an elephant given a massive dose of LSD.

In Elephants on Acid, Alex Boese reveals to readers the results of not only this scientific trial but of scores of other outrageous, amusing, and provocative experiments found in the files of modern science. Why can’t people tickle themselves? Would the average dog summon help in an emergency? Will babies instinctually pick a well-balanced diet? Is it possible to restore life to the dead? Read Elephants on Acid and find out.

[Daveo]

[Daveo]

Who's the B*****d in the Black? by Jeff Winter..

During his career in the Premiership, Jeff Winter became one of our most high-profile referees - regularly called upon to take action while 40,000 fans screamed abuse at him.

Since breaking ties with the FA, Jeff is now free to reveal the true referee experience with utter candidness: his dealings with the most controversial and volatile players, and his famous bust-ups with Sir Alex Ferguson, Sam Allardyce and others.

It is a sensational tale, packed with insight and laced with wry humour.

It is also the story of how Jeff transformed himself from terrace boot-boy to lawman on the pitch: a journey of hard knocks and comic episodes as he progressed through the lower leagues to the very top. It is quite simply the most honest account of refereeing ever written.

'Back to your usual self, Jeff, fucking useless' Sir Alex Ferguson

'He drives me nuts. An absolute prat - and you can print that as well' Steve Bruce

'I'll get the sack soon enough. Perhaps I'll send Jeff a note when the P45 arrives' Martin O'Neill...

[Daveo]

Culture Warrior by Bill O'Reilly.....

Bill O’Reilly is the very embodiment of the idea of a Culture Warrior and in this book, he lives up to the title brilliantly, with all the brashness and forthrightness at his command.

He sees that America is in the midst of a fierce culture war between those who embrace traditional values and those who want to change America into a “secular-progressive” country.

This is a conflict that differs in many ways from the usual liberal/conservative divide, but it is no less heated, and the stakes are even higher. In Culture Warrior, Bill O’Reilly defines this war and analyzes the competing philosophies of the traditionalist and secular-progressive camps.

He examines why the nation’s motto “E Pluribus Unum” (“From Many, One”) might change to “What About Me?”; dissects the forces driving the secular-progressive agenda in the media and behind the scenes, including George Soros, George Lakoff, and the ACLU; and dives into matters of race, education, and the war on terror.

He also shows how the culture war has played out in such high-profile instances as The Passion of the Christ, Fahrenheit 9/11, the abuse epidemic (child and otherwise), and the embattled place of religion in public life - with special emphasis on the war against Christmas.

Whatever controversies are roiling the nation, he fearlessly confronts them and no one will be in the dark about which side he’s on. Culture Warrior showcases Bill O’Reilly at his most eloquent and impassioned.

He is an unrelenting fighter for the soul of America, and in this book, he fights the good fight for the traditional values that have served this country so well for so long.

[Daveo]

We ship books all over Thailand....

[Daveo]

Michael Collins: A Life

BY JAMES A. MACKAY

The most charismatic figure to emerge during the struggles for the independence of Ireland was undoubtedly Michael Collins.

This remarkable biography, which draws on much hitherto unpublished material, charts the dramatic rise of the country boy who became head of the Free State and the commander-in-chief of the army.