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  The Turkish Embasy Letters

  Mary Wortley Montagu

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  In 1716, Mary Wortley Montagu travelled across Europe to take up residence in Istanbul as the wife of the British ambassador. For two years she lovingly observed the Ottoman society around her with an astonishing lack of prejudice. Her wide-ranging letters – about the life of Turkish women behind the veil, Arabic poetry, contemporary medical practices such as inoculation – remain as fresh as the day they were penned. A self-educated intellectual, a free spirit, a radical and a feminist as well as an aristocrat, she was one of the first modern travel writers, studying and recording the culture around her on its own terms and through its own language.

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  Great British Cycling Legends

  Chris Sidwells

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  The biggest annual sports event in the world is the Tour de France. In the wake of its overwhelming popularity, it’s easy to forget that there is much more to cycling than whoever gets to wear the yellow jersey. Cycling is rich with legends and pioneers, and it is their stories which light up this compelling account of the sport. 
  This is the story of British cycling as told through the lives of the people who built it. From the first recorded race in a Paris park in 1868 to the present day, Great British Cycling Legends profiles the true originals. Follow the most glorious exponents of road and track cycling, the mountain bikers and the cyclo-cross riders. 
  There were the Victorians such as George-Pilkington Mills, a multi long-distance record holder, including that of Land’s End to John O’Groats on a penny farthing bicycle. Then there have been the significant firsts. Dave Marsh was the first British road-race world champion in 1922 and Maurice Burton was the first black British cycling champion in the 1970s. Eileen Sheridan was one of the first female professional cyclists and a major record-breaker into the 1950s. 
  Great British Cycling Legends examines the personalities and their background of the key cyclists, to show what makes each of them legendary. All of them have, in their own ways, shown why cycling continues to exert such an extraordinary grip on the popular imagination.

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  Lonely Planet: Spirits of the...

  Marcel Theroux

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  Tales of the supernatural abound in the coastal plains of South Carolina and Georgia, USA, whose haunting landscapes can unsettle even the most sceptical visitor.

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  Coasting - An Expanded Guide to...

  Judy Barnes, Laurel Wilson,...

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  "For me, it captures the character of the western North Carolina mountains." -Winston Groom, author of Forrest GumpCentering on Asheville and trekking out for sixty miles in all directions, this lighthearted, personal guide focuses on all the attractions of the region. Western North Carolina, bordering Virginia, Tennessee, and Georgia, attracts five million visitors annually.This region offers the tourist and resident breathtaking natural beauty, charming shops, restaurants, and accommodations that range from rustic to elegant.The authors point out that many books have been written about this area's waterfalls, parks, biking, rafting, and camping in great detail, but Coasting the Mountains covers what they liked best about everything.ABOUT THE AUTHORS Judy Barnes, Jolane Edwards, Carolyn Lee Goodloe, and Laurel Wilson are all good friends who spend a great deal of their time traveling, so they can attest to the information being provided to their readers. They are also the authors of Coasting: An Expanded Guide to the Northern Gulf Coast . They live in Point Clear, Alabama.

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  The Upgrade - A Cautionary Tale...

  Paul Carr

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  “An uproarious and brilliant story of friendship, alcoholism and itinerancy, penned by an adorably self-obsessed attention-seeker.”—Wired UK   Bored, broke and struggling to survive in one of the most expensive cities on earth, Paul Carr comes to the surprising realization that it would actually be cheaper to live in a luxury hotel in Manhattan than in his tiny one-bedroom apartment. Inspired by that possibility, he decides to sell most of his possessions, abandon his old life and spend a year living entirely without commitments, as a modern-day nomad.   Thanks to Paul’s ability to talk his way into increasingly ridiculous situations, what begins as a one-year experiment soon becomes a permanent lifestyle—a life lived in luxury hotels and mountain-top villas. A life of fast cars, Hollywood actresses and Icelandic rock stars. Of 6,000-mile booty calls, of partying with 800 female hairdressers dressed only in bedsheets, and of nearly dying at the hands of Spanish drug dealers. And, most bizarrely of all, a life that still costs less than his surviving on cold pizza in his old apartment.   Yet, as word of Paul’s exploits starts to spread—first online, then through a national newspaper column and eventually a book deal—he finds himself forced constantly to up the stakes in order to keep things interesting. With his behavior spiraling to dangerous—and sometimes criminal—levels, he is forced to ask the question: is there such a thing as too much freedom? “There’s no denying that he’s an idiotic, irresponsible chancer—qualities that make him an unpredictable travel companion, but put his story-telling skills in first class.”—Daily Record

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  Karachi Vice - Life and Death in...

  Samira Shackle

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  Karachi. Pakistan’s largest city is a sprawling metropolis of twenty million people, twice the size of New York City. It is a place of political turbulence in which those who have power wield it with brutal and partisan force. It takes an insider to know where is safe, whom to trust, and what makes Karachi tick. In this powerful debut, Samira Shackle explores the city of her mother’s birth in the company of a handful of Karachiites. Among them is Safdar, the ambulance driver who knows the city’s streets and shortcuts intimately and will stop at nothing to help his fellow citizens. There is Parveen, the activist whose outspoken views on injustice repeatedly lead her towards danger. And there is Zille, the hardened journalist whose commitment to getting the best scoops puts him at increasing risk. Their individual experiences unfold and converge as Shackle tells the bigger story of Karachi over the past decade as it endures a terrifying crime wave: a period in which the Taliban arrive in Pakistan, adding to its residents’ daily perils and pushing the city into international spotlight.Writing with intimate local knowledge and a global perspective, Shackle paints a vivid portrait of one of the most complex and compelling cities in the world, a city where the borders blur between politicians and gangsters and between lawful and unlawful and dangerous new forces of violent extremism are pitted against old networks of power.

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