Canterbury Tales Guesthouse

[Daveo]

Michael Parkinson on Football by Michael Parkinson.

 

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Michael Parkinson takes a detailed look at the game of football as a whole, from its grassiest roots to the superpowers of world football.

From the premier league to players' behaviour, penalty shoot-outs to the role of the media, wage demands, the national team and much, much more.

In this fascinating and often hilarious volume Parkinson gives his views on most aspects of the modern game, whilst also casting his mind back to a time when newspapers didn't care whether footballers wore their wives knickers or not.

He pays tribute to some of the great names of the past such as Stanley Matthews and Bobby Moore, and offers opinions on more recent headline makers like Paul Gascoigne and Eric Cantona.

Other players such as George Best and David Beckham are also discussed, with one of the most respected observers of both sport and celebrity bringing his unique personal insight to bear.

[Daveo]

Human Traces by Sebastian Faulks.

 

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As young boys both Jacques Rebière and Thomas Midwinter become fascinated with trying to understand the human mind. As psychiatrists, their quest takes them from the squalor of the Victorian lunatic asylum to the crowded lecture halls of the renowned Professor Charcot in Paris; from the heights of the Sierra Madre in California to the plains of unexplored Africa.

 

As the concerns of the old century fade and the First World War divides Europe, the two men's volatile relationship develops and changes, but is always tempered by one exceptional woman; Thomas's sister Sonia.

 

Moving and challenging in equal measure, Human Traces explores the question of what kind of beings men and women really are.

[Daveo]

Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield; by Jeremy Scahill.

 

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In Dirty Wars, Jeremy Scahill, author of the bestseller Blackwater, takes us inside America’s new covert wars.

The foot soldiers in these battles operate globally and inside the United States with orders from the White House to do whatever is necessary to hunt down, capture or kill individuals designated by the president as enemies.

Drawn from the ranks of the Navy SEALs, Delta Force, former Blackwater and other private security contractors, the CIA’s Special Activities Division and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), these elite soldiers operate worldwide, with thousands of secret commandos working in more than one hundred countries.

Funded through black budgets, Special Operations Forces conduct missions in denied areas, engage in targeted killings, snatch and grab individuals and direct drone, AC-130 and cruise missile strikes.

While the Bush administration deployed these ghost militias, President Barack Obama has expanded their operations and given them new scope and legitimacy.

Dirty Wars follows the consequences of the declaration that "the world is a battlefield,” as Scahill uncovers the most important foreign policy story of our time.

From Afghanistan to Yemen, Somalia and beyond, Scahill reports from the frontlines in this high stakes investigation and explores the depths of America’s global killing machine.

He goes beneath the surface of these covert wars, conducted in the shadows, outside the range of the press, without effective congressional oversight or public debate.

And, based on unprecedented access, Scahill tells the chilling story of an American citizen marked for assassination by his own government.

As US leaders draw the country deeper into conflicts across the globe, setting the world stage for enormous destabilization and blowback, Americans are not only at greater risk, we are changing as a nation.

Scahill unmasks the shadow warriors who prosecute these secret wars and puts a human face on the casualties of unaccountable violence that is now official policy: victims of night raids, secret prisons, cruise missile attacks and drone strikes, and whole classes of people branded as suspected militants. Through his brave reporting, Scahill exposes the true nature of the dirty wars the United States government struggles to keep hidden.

[Daveo]

Treasure Caches Can Be Found by Charles Garrett.

 

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Reader review;

Very interesting book.

Tells of places I would never have thought about, and gives many ideas about where to go and what to look for. Highly informative

[Daveo]

Tai chi chuan mindfulness in motion/ Chow Kam Thye.

 

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Mindfulness in motion a meditative Martial art.

[Daveo]

My Russia by Peter Ustinov.

 

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Reader review:

This is colorful and fun, more like one of those old Time Life books than a serious scholarly volume.

It is meant as entertainment first and foremost, and in that sense it succeeds. Is it revelatory or even perfectly accurate? I am not qualified to judge.

[Daveo]

Great North Road by Peter F. Hamilton.

 

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A century from now, thanks to a technology allowing instantaneous travel across light-years, humanity has solved its energy shortages, cleaned up the environment, and created far-flung colony worlds.

The keys to this empire belong to the powerful North family

composed of successive generations of clones.

Yet these clones are not identical.

For one thing, genetic errors have crept in with each generation. For another, the original three clone "brothers" have gone their separate ways, and the branches of the family are now friendly rivals more than allies.

 

Or maybe not so friendly.

At least that's what the murder of a North clone in the English city of Newcastle suggests to Detective Sidney Hurst.

Sid is a solid investigator who'd like nothing better than to hand off this hot potato of a case.

The way he figures it, whether he solves the crime or not, he'll make enough enemies to ruin his career.

Yet Sid's case is about to take an unexpected turn: Because the circumstances of the murder bear an uncanny resemblance to a killing that took place years ago on the planet St. Libra, where a North clone and his entire household were slaughtered in cold blood.

 

The convicted slayer, Angela Tramelo, has always claimed her innocence.

And now it seems she may have been right, because only the St. Libra killer could have committed the Newcastle crime. Problem is, Angela also claims that the murderer was an alien monster.

 

Now Sid must navigate through a Byzantine minefield of competing interests within the police department and the world's political and economic elite...all the while hunting down a brutal killer poised to strike again.

And on St. Libra, Angela, newly released from prison, joins a mission to hunt down the elusive alien, only to learn that the line between hunter and hunted is a thin one.

[Daveo]

From The Dead by Mark Billingham.

 

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It has been a decade since Alan Langford's charred remains were discovered in his burnt-out car.

His wife Donna was found guilty of conspiracy to murder her husband and served ten years in prison.

 

But just before she is released, Donna receives a nasty shock: an anonymous letter containing a photo of her husband.

The man she hates with every fibre of her being, the man she paid to have murdered, seems very much alive and well.

 

How is it possible that her husband is still alive?

Where is he?

Who sent the photo, and why?

 

DI Tom Thorne becomes involved in a case where nothing and no one are what they seem.

It will take him much further from his London beat than he has ever been before and closer to a killer who will do anything to protect his new life.

[Daveo]

Dead Man's Time by Peter James.

 

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In Dead Man's Time, the latest from international bestselling author Peter James, Roy Grace finds himself up against that most dangerous of all adversaries, a man with fury in his heart who has nothing to lose.

 

New York, 1922. Five year-old Gavin Daly and his seven-year-old sister, Aileen, are boarding the SS Mauretania to Dublin and safety.

Their mother has been shot and their Irish mobster father abducted.

Suddenly, a messenger hands Gavin a piece of paper on which are written four names and eleven numbers, a cryptic message that will haunt him all his life, and his father's pocket watch.

As the ship sails, Gavin watches Manhattan fade into the dusk and makes a promise, that one day he will return and find his father.

Brighton, 2012. Detective Superintendent Roy Grace investigates a savage burglary in Brighton, in which an old lady is murdered and £10m of antiques have been taken, including a rare vintage watch.

To Grace's surprise, the antiques are unimportant to her family, it is the watch they want back.

As his investigation probes deeper, he realizes he has kicked over a hornets nest of new and ancient hatreds.

At its heart is one man, Gavin Daly, the dead woman's ninety-five year old brother.

He has a score to settle and a promise to keep, both of which lead to a murderous trail linking the antiques world of Brighton, the crime fraternity of Spain's Marbella, and New York.

 

Roy Grace, in a race against the clock to stop another killing, has met his most dangerous adversary yet.

[Daveo]

The Good Girl by Fiona Neill.

 

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Scratch the surface of any family hard enough and you'll draw blood . . .

No one can believe it when straight A student Romy Field finds herself at the centre of a scandal, least of all her mother Ailsa who is also the head of her new school.

Ailsa is quick to hold Romy's new boyfriend and his parents responsible for what has happened.

But as mother and daughter reveal their very different version of events, a much darker truth emerges.

It soon becomes apparent that Romy isn't the only member of her family harbouring Secrets and her disgrace becomes the catalyst for the unravelling of all those around her.

It takes a split second to make a decision that can alter the course of your life.

And a lifetime to undo the consequences.

Bestselling author Fiona Neill is back with The Good Girl, a dark, compelling and controversial novel of one family's darkest Secrets.

[Daveo]

Night School by Lee Child.

 

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It’s 1996, and Reacher is still in the army. In the morning they give him a medal, and in the afternoon they send him back to school.

That night he’s off the grid.

Out of sight, out of mind.

 

Two other men are in the classroom, an FBI agent and a CIA analyst.

Each is a first rate operator, each is fresh off a big win, and each is wondering what the hell they are doing there.

 

Then they find out: A Jihadist sleeper cell in Hamburg, Germany, has received an unexpected visitor, a Saudi courier, seeking safe haven while waiting to rendezvous with persons unknown. A CIA asset, undercover inside the cell, has overheard the courier whisper a chilling message:

“The American wants a hundred million dollars.”

 

For what? And who from? Reacher and his two new friends are told to find the American.

 

Reacher recruits the best soldier he has ever worked with: Sergeant Frances Neagley. Their mission heats up in more ways than one, while always keeping their eyes on the prize: If they don’t get their man, the world will suffer an epic act of terrorism.

 

From Langley to Hamburg, Jalalabad to Kiev, Night School moves like a bullet through a treacherous landscape of double crosses, faked identities, and new and terrible enemies, as Reacher maneuvers inside the game and outside the law.

[Daveo]

His Bloody Project Graeme Macrae Burnet.

 

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A brutal triple murder in a remote Scottish farming community in 1869 leads to the arrest of 17-year-old Roderick Macrae.

There is no question that Macrae committed this terrible act. What would lead such a shy and intelligent boy down this bloody path?

 

Presented as a collection of documents, His Bloody Project opens with a series of police statements taken from the villagers, which offer conflicting impressions, throwing Macrae's motive and his sanity into question.

[Daveo]

Before It's Too Late (Detective Inspector Will Jackman #1)

by Jane Isaac.

 

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I concentrated hard, desperately listening for something familiar, the sound of life.

I heard nothing.

Just my own breaths and the wind, whistling through branches above...

The thought made me shiver.

I am buried alive.

 

Following an argument with her British boyfriend, Chinese student Min Li is abducted whilst walking the dark streets of picturesque Stratford-upon-Avon alone.

Trapped in a dark pit, Min is at the mercy of her captor.

 

Detective Inspector Will Jackman is tasked with solving the case and in his search for answers discovers that the truth is buried deeper than he ever expected.

But, as another student vanishes and Min grows ever weaker, time is running out.

Can Jackman track down the kidnapper, before it's too late?

[Daveo]

Zero K by Don DeLillo.

 

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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.”

 

Zero K is glorious.

[Daveo]

What it is Like to Go to War by Karl Marlantes.

 

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In 1968, at the age of 22, Karl Marlantes abandoned his Oxford University scholarship to sign up for active service with the US Marine Corps in Vietnam.

Pitched into a war that had no defined military objective other than kill ratios and body counts, what he experienced over the next thirteen months in the jungles of South East Asia shook him to the core.

But what happened when he came home covered with medals was almost worse.

It took Karl four decades to come to terms with what had really happened, during the course of which he painstakingly constructed a fictionalized version of his war, MATTERHORN, which has subsequently been hailed as the definitive Vietnam novel.

WHAT IT IS LIKE TO GO TO WAR takes us back to Vietnam, but this time there is no fictional veil.

Here are the hard won truths that underpin MATTERHORN: the author's real life experiences behind the book's indelible scenes. But it is much more than this.

It is part exorcism of Karl's own experiences of combat, part confession, part philosophical primer for the young man about to enter combat.

It It is also a devastatingly frank answer to the questions 'What is it like to be a soldier?' What is it like to face death?' and 'What is it like to kill someone?'

[Daveo]

The Battle of the Atlantic: How the Allies Won the War

by Jonathan Dimbleby.

 

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A gripping tale that transforms our understanding of the Second World War

 

The Battle of the Atlantic was, though often overlooked, crucial to victory in the Second World War.

If the German U-boats had prevailed, the maritime artery across the Atlantic would have been severed.

Mass hunger would have consumed Britain, and the Allied armies would have been prevented from joining in the invasion of Europe.

There would have been no D-Day.

 

Through fascinating contemporary diaries and letters, from the leaders and from the sailors on all sides, Jonathan Dimbleby creates a thrilling narrative that uniquely places the campaign in the context of the entire Second World War.

Challenging conventional wisdom on the use of intelligence and on Churchill's bombing campaign, The Battle of the Atlantic tells the epic story of the decisions that led to victory, and the horror and humanity of life on those perilous seas.

[Daveo]

Escape: The Past: by David McMillan.

 

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In this gripping prequel to ‘Escape’, drug smuggler turned bestselling author David McMillan starts from the beginning and tells how he made his first million dealing drugs by age 21.

He details his plans to smuggle marijuana by Learjet, befriend drug dealing pimps in Bangkok brothels and transport Liquid heroin in glass statues.

Learn the tricks of the smuggling trade as McMillan arms his couriers with dozens of passports that frustrate border guards for years.

[Daveo]

Miss Bangkok: Memoirs of a Thai Working girl by Bua Boonmee.

 

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Miss Bangkok is a vivid, powerful and moving memoir of a life spent in prostitution in Thailand.

Poor and uneducated, Bua Boonmee escaped an abusive marriage only to end up in the go-go bars of Patpong.

There, in the notorious red-light district of Bangkok, she succumbed to prostitution in an effort to support her family. Bua's story is one of resilience and courage in the face of abuse and poverty.

Her confessions will make you laugh and cry, cringe and applaud.

She will change your perception of prostitution forever.

[Daveo]

Siam Society Journal Volume 102 - 2014 & Volume 103 - 2015

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The Siam Society, under Royal Patronage, is one of Thailand’s oldest and most active learned organization. The object of the Society is to investigate and to encourage the arts and sciences in Thailand and neighbouring countries.
Vol 104, 2016

Contents
Since the Society established its Journal in 1904, it has become one of the leading scholarly publications in South-East Asia. The Journal is international in outlook, carrying original articles of enduring value in English.

[Daveo]

Asia Pacific Reef Guide; by Helmut Debelius.

 

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Today the coral reefs of South East Asia harbor the greatest species diversity of all oceans.

 

This is true not only for fishes, but also for invertebrates, because the species from the coral world radiated from the triangle of the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia.

 

20,000 islands and innumerable coral reefs are located in that region where still many new species are discovered.

 

This book focuses on the coastal fauna, which most divers and snorkellers see first.

 

With over 1,200 color photos, this book is a dream for the divers and hobbyists alike. 321 pages, hardcover.

[Daveo]

The Pianist: The Extraordinary Story of One Man's Survival in Warsaw, 1939-45 by Wladyslaw Szpilman.

 

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We are drawn in to share his surprise and then disbelief at the horrifying progress of events, all conveyed with an understated intimacy and dailiness that render them painfully close.

 

On September 23, 1939, Wladyslaw Szpilman played Chopin's Nocturne in C sharp minor live on the radio as shells exploded outside, so loudly that he couldn't hear his piano.

It was the last live music broadcast from Warsaw: That day, a German bomb hit the station, and Polish Radio went off the air.

 

Though he lost his entire family, Szpilman survived in hiding.

In the end, his life was saved by a German officer who heard him play the same Chopin Nocturne on a piano found among the rubble.

Written immediately after the war and suppressed for decades, THE PIANIST is a stunning testament to human endurance and the redemptive power of fellow feeling.

[Daveo]

[Daveo]

Story of the Eye by Georges Bataille.

 

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In 1928, Georges Bataille published this first novel under a pseudonym, a legendary shocker that uncovers the dark side of the erotic by means of forbidden obsessive fantasies of excess and sexual extremes.

A classic of pornographic literature, Story of the Eye finds the parallels in Sade and Nietzsche and in the investigations of contemporary psychology; it also forecasts Bataille's own theories of ecstasy, death and transgression which he developed in later work.

[Daveo]

ourney Into Darkness by John E. Douglas & Mark Olshaker.

 

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In the #1 bestseller "Mindhunter," John Douglas, who headed the FBI's elite Investigative Support Unit, told the story of his brilliant and terrifying career tracking down some of the most heinous criminals in history.

Using behavioral profiling and criminal investigative analysis to get into the head and psyche of both the criminal and victim, to feel what they felt at the critical moment, Douglas helped crack many high profile cases, including the Trailside Killer, the Atlanta child murders, and the Tylenol murders.

Now, working again with his co-author Mark Olshaker, Douglas delves further into the criminal mind with a series of chilling new cases in "Journey into Darkness" Follow the FBI's premier investigative profiler as he penetrates the minds and motives of the most terrifying serial killers.

In "Journey into Darkness," Douglas profiles vicious serial killers, rapists, and child molesters.

He is straightforward, blunt, often irreverent, and outspoken, but takes pains not to glorify any of these murderers.

Some of the unique cases Douglas discusses include:

 

The Clairemont killer, Six women were found stabbed to death in San Diego, three in the same apartment complex.

In each case, the killer entered through an unlocked door or window in the late morning to early afternoon.

A suspect was in custody, tied to one of the murders through a DNA match.

Douglas was called upon to use his profiling techniques to link the other five murders to the suspect.

Douglas looked at the "signature" of the killer, and found that all the murders were committed by the same man.

The prosecution used the profile to force the jury to find the defendant guilty of all six murders, if they felt he was guilty of the one murder.

Cleophus Prince was found guilty on all counts.

The schoolgirl murders, What became Canada's "trial of the century." Several schoolgirls disappeared in 1992; their bodies were dumped several weeks later, beaten and sexually attacked. Canadian police agencies contacted the FBI for help on the case and to get a profile on the killer and, according to witnesses, his accomplice.

Following the advice of the Investigative Support Unit in Quantico, Canada aired a television special entitled "The Abduction of Kristin French," allowing agent Gregg McCrary to describe the killer's profile on air. Knowing that the murderer and his accomplice would be watching, he planned to confront the unknown killer, assuring him he would be caught.

Paul Bernardo was arrested on February 17, 1993, turned in by his wife and partner in crime, Karla Leanne Homolka..

The profile was dead on the money.

 

Richmond's First Serial Murderer, In 1987, Richmond, Virginia, was struck by a serial rapist/murderer.

The Richmond police called upon the Investigative Support Unit in Quantico to make up a profile of the perpetrator.

The crimes and profile beared a remarkable resemblance to a string of burglaries, rapes and murders in Alexandria, Virginia, several years before.

Agent Steve Mardigian then formulated a complex strategy that caught the killer who fit the profile to a tee.

In the process he helped free a wrongly convicted man, who due to his low intelligence level, had become confused and confessed to the crime.

 

The brutal and sadistic murder of Suzanne Marie Collins, a beautiful young Marine on the verge of a brilliant career.

The culprit was caught and confessed to her killing, but his story was very different than what really happened.

By delving into Sedley Alley's mind, Douglas helped bring the murderer to justice, recreating the evening from the perspective of a sadistic and angry man.

Suzanne Collins' horrifying end haunts Douglas to this day.

 

Douglas delves into other cases, including Polly Klaas' abduction and murder by Richard Allen Davis, the tragedy that lead to the creation of Megan's Law; the abduction and murder of six-year-old Cassandra Lynn Hansen, who was snatched from an evening church service; and the vicious murder and sexual assault of Nancy Newman and her two daughters, eight-year-old Melissa and three-year-old Angie in Anchorage, Alaska.

He also explores the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, focusing on the double homicide purely from a behavioral perspective.

Douglas examines what the facts at and surrounding the crime scene told about the killer from a behavioral point of view.

From Douglas's profile, the only viable suspect to date is O.J. Simpson.

With "Journey into Darkness, " Douglas provides more than a glimpse into the minds of serial killers; he demonstrates what a powerful weapon behavioral science has become.

Profiling criminals helps not only to capture them, but also helps society understand how these predators work and what can be done to prevent them from striking again.

Douglas focuses especially on pedophiles and child abductors, fully explaining what drives them, and how to keep children away from them.

As he points out, "The best way to protect your children is to know your enemy."

He includes eight rules for safety, a list of steps parents can take to prevent child abduction and exploitation, tips on how to detect sexual exploitation, basic rules of safety for children, and a chart, based on age, which details the safety skills children should have to protect themselves.

 

In his review for "Mindhunter" Dean Koontz said, "Because of his insights and the power of the material, he leaves us shaken, gripped by a quiet grief for the innocent victims and anguished by the human condition."

Journey into Darkness continues this perilous trip into the psyche of the serial killer, but also offers a glimmer of hope that profiling may enable law enforcement to see the indicators of a serial killer's mind and intervene before he kills, or kills again.

[Daveo]

Zoo Station by David Downing.

 

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Englishman John Russell is a member of the foreign press corps in Berlin and a first-hand witness to the brutal machinations of Hitler and the Nazi party in the build-up to war during the early months of 1939.

 

When an old acquaintance turns up at his lodging house, Russell's life begins to change.

Gradually he is persuaded by a combination of threats, financial need and appeals to his conscience to become a spy, first for the Soviet Union and then, simultaneously, for the British.

 

The grim streets, the constant fear and the skin-deep glitter of pre war Berlin, with excursions to Prague, Danzig, London and the Baltic seashore, form a rich backdrop as Russell, a reluctant hero and a saviour for some, treads an ever narrowing line between the Russians, the British and the Gestapo.