Welcome paperback reprint of a book first published in 1980 under the title 'The Zoo Quest Expedition: Travels in Guyana, Indonesia and Paraguay.' In 1954 a young David Attenborough had the opportunity of a lifetime, to travel the world finding rare and elusive animals for London Zoo's collection, and to film the expedition for the BBC in a new show called Zoo Quest. This is his story written in his inimitable voice of these travels. Staying with local tribes while searching for giant anteaters, Komodo Dragons in Indonesia and armadillos in Paraguay, he battles with cannibal fish, aggressive tree porcupines and escape-artist wild pigs to record the incredible beauty and biodiversity of these regions. The methods may be outdated now, but the fascination and respect for wildlife, the people and the environment are not. Now we can all travel vicariously with the old-fashioned adventurer and Britain's favourite naturalist who is an elegant and gently funny writer. See also the follow up 90905 Journeys to the Other Side of the World. 398pp in paperback reprint with 90 archive photos, three in colour.

A companion to 90904 Adventures of A Young Naturalist, the book was first published in 1981 under the title 'Journeys to the Past: Travels in New Guinea, Madagascar, and the Northern Territory of Australia', and in paperback in 2018 under the title 'Two Roads'. With some 90 photos, many colour plates and maps, we can travel vicariously with the pioneering naturalist Sir David Attenborough in his early days. Following the success of the original Zoo Quest expeditions in the late 1950s onwards the young David Attenborough embarked on further travels. From the land divers of Pentecost Island and the Sing-Sings of New Guinea to a Royal Kava ceremony on Tonga and the ancient art of the Northern Territory, this is a journey like no other. Alongside these remarkable creatures, Sir David encounters paradise birds, chameleons, Sifakas, pygmies and dancing birds, flamingos, tenrecs and mouse lemurs, the dog-headed man, babakoto, geese and goannas, painted caves and buffaloes, and the hermits of Borroloola. 'Every year for a decade, between 1954 and 1964, it was my great luck to go to the tropics and make natural history films.' 'I have left the accounts of these places and events essentially as I wrote them.' Written with his usual charm and generosity, he allows us to go along for the ride. 413pp, paperback. 90 illus. including colour plates.

'A quietly radical, three-dimensional view of issues such as reproduction, birth, death and disability that has the power, at times, to make you stop mid-sentence and carefully reassess some of your most basic assumptions.' - Scotsman. In a deft mix of the clinical and the lyrical, Francis moves skilfully between the scientific and aesthetic, anatomical fact and emotional consequence in his beautifully written and elegant series of essays. Drawing on his experiences as a doctor, he blends stories from the clinic with reflections on the way the body has been imagined and understood over millennia, offering new perspectives on everything from the ribbed surface of the brain to the unique engineering of the foot. His chapters are headed Brain, Head, Chest, Upper Limb, Abdomen and Pelvis, Lower Limb and cover Neurosurgery of the Soul, Seizures, Sanctity and Psychiatry, The Eye: A Renaissance of Vision, Face: Beautiful Palsy, Inner Ear: Voodoo and Vertigo, Heart: On Seagull Murmurs, Ebb and Flow, Shoulder: Arms and Armour, Wrist and Hand: Punched, Cut and Crucified, Kidney: The Ultimate Gift and Large Bowel and Rectum: A Magnificent Work of Art among them. From the threshold of life and death of the womb, to tips of our feet and toes, this is an extraordinary journey through the most intimate landscape of all - our own bodies. Index, 252pp, illustrated paperback.

From the bestselling author of 'Cathedral of the Sea'. Moors and Christians have been enemies for centuries, but can one man bring their conflict to an end? Snared between two cultures and two loves, one man is forced to choose. 1564 in the Kingdom of Granada and after years of Christian oppression, the Moors take arms and daub the white houses of Sierra Nevada with the blood of their victims. Amidst the conflict is young Hernando, the son of an Arab woman and the Christian priest who raped her. He is despised and regularly beaten by his own stepfather for his 'tainted' heritage. Fuelled with the love of the beautiful Fatima, Hernando hatches a plan to unite the two warring faiths, and the two halves of his identity. The award-winning author is a practicing lawyer in Barcelona and this is his most recent European blockbuster, selling millions. A big chunky paperback at a great price, rich in historical detail. A thumping 972pp.

Ravi Shankar became a household name when the Beatles started promoting his music in 1968, but he was already a prominent figure in the American West Coast scene, with David Crosby of The Byrds pronouncing him one of the finest musicians on the planet. By 1967, when Shankar had settled in California, Indian music was linked with the psychedelic experience, though Ravi denied taking drugs himself and was horrified by a visit to Haight-Ashbury, centre of San Francisco's hippie scene. The Monterey Pop Festival was initially built round Shankar's performance, and although the Festival was ruthlessly taken over and reorganised by The Mamas and the Papas, Ravi's own performance was widely hailed as a profound religious experience. Shankar had the good fortune to be born in Benares, centre of Hindi pilgrimage. His early career was spent on tour as a dancer, including a visit to Weimar Germany as Hitler was rising to power, and he had meetings with Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore. But it was his change to concentrate on the sitar that brought him world fame as he introduced audiences to the two key elements of Indian classical music, the raga or melody and the tala, the time or rhythm. Shankar first visited America in 1956, and he moved to California in time for the Summer of Love, performing at Woodstock as well as Monterey. His international fame increased as he became associated with conductors such as Zubin Mehta and Yehudi Menuhin and he was nominated for an Academy Award for the musical score of the film Gandhi. This comprehensive biography by an author who knew him personally includes not only Shankar's career but also his personal life including many love affairs. 658pp, photos in black and white and colour.

By the fearless and funny writer, a novel exploring the underbelly of erotic fulfilment and spiritual yearning. Every two years the international art world descends on Venice for the opening of the Biennale. Among them is Jeff Atman, a jaded journalist whose dedication to the cause of Bellini-fuelled party-going is only intermittently disturbed by the obligation to file a story. He is not expecting to meet the spellbinding Laura who will completely transform his few days in the city. Rejuvenated and ecstatic, their romance blossoms quickly, but is it destined to disappear just as rapidly? Every day thousands of pilgrims head to the banks of the Ganges at Varanasi, the holiest Hindu city in India. Among their number is a narrator who may or may not be the Atman previously seen in Venice. Intending to visit only a few days, he ends up staying for months. In a romance he can only observe, he sees a reflection of the kind of pleasures that, willingly or not, he has renounced. In the process, two ancient and watery cities become versions of each other but could they actually be one and the same story? This story of spiritual yearning reaches its conclusion amidst the ghats of Varanasi. 'Dead-on in evocation of place, longing, and the possibility of neurotic enlightenment.' 'Very funny, full of nerve, gutsy and delicious.' - Michael Ondaatje. Paperback, 305pp.

A poignant testimony to the power of fiction, the New Yorker writer revisits George Eliot's classic which she has read every five years since the age of 17. Published when George Eliot was 51, Middlemarch has at its centre one of literature's most compelling and ill-fated marriages, and some of the most tenderly drawn characters, incorporating their ordinary lives and their most intimate struggles. Mead explores how the ambitions, dreams and attachments of its characters teach us to value the limitations of our everyday lives and she interweaves readings with an investigation into the author's unconventional, inspiring life and Mead's reflection on her own youth, relationships and marriage. A winning blend of personal memoir and literary biography which will send you scampering eagerly back to the classic novel. Luckily we have it in stock in Wordsworth Classic code 23796. Paperback, 304pp.

Western culture has a popular tradition of women who dressed as men and joined the military, often immortalised in books or on stage and screen. Julie Wheelwright soon discovered many of these accounts are highly fictionalised and the real experience of warrior women was frequently one of isolation as they strove to maintain their disguise or, latterly, having to prove their worth against the men in a mixed regiment. 'She brings their temperaments, talents, fancies, and foibles to life.' - Professor Joanna Bourke, Birkbeck, University of London. Sisters in Arms charts the evolution of women in combat, from the Scythian warriors who inspired the Amazonian myth, to the passing soldiers and sailors of the eighteenth century, and on to the re-emergence of women as official members of the armed forces in the twentieth century. The female warrior often endured judgement and poverty and although some managed to fight for a pension, make a living from memoirs or settle back into domestic life, the majority faced hardship, obscurity and worse. Wheelwright uses verifiable official documents, diaries, letters and memoirs from the mid-18th century on as she follows the evolution of women in combat, both clandestine and as recognised soldiers, and shows us shocking parallels between the two experiences, such as the fight for acceptance, for equal pay and against the threat of sexual assault, which both how much and how little things have changed. 16 pages of excellent b/w plates, 320pp.

Shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger 2011, and also for the Man Booker Prize in the same year, this is an intense psychological drama that echoes sophisticated entertainments like Gorky Park and The Talented Mr Ripley. Nick Platt is a British lawyer working in Moscow in the early 2000s, a place where the cascade of oil money, the tightening grip of the government, the jostling of the oligarchs, and the loosening of Soviet social mores have led to a culture where corruption, decadence, violence and betrayal define everyday life. Nick doesn't ask too many questions about the shady deals he's working on and is too busy enjoying the exotic, surreally sinful nightlife Moscow has to offer. One day in the subway he rescues two willowy sisters, Masha and Katya, from a would-be purse snatcher. Soon Nick, the seductive Masha, and the long-limbed Katya are cruising the seamy glamour spots of the city, the electric nightclubs and intimate dachas. Nick begins to feel something for Masha and he is pleased to think is love. Then the sisters ask Nick to help their aged aunt Tatiana find a new apartment. The twists in the story take it far beyond its noirish frame and the sordid and vivid portrayal of Moscow serves as a backdrop for a book that examines the irresistible allure of sin, featuring characters whose hearts are as cold as the Russian winter. Written by the Economist magazine's Moscow correspondent. 273pp, paperback.

"Stories are what connect us, and remind us that hope is always possible" - the words of Heather Morris, bestselling author and extraordinary storyteller of tales about survival, resilience and hope. Working in a public hospital in Melbourne in 2003, she was introduced to Lale Sokolov, an elderly gentleman whose life would be the basis for her novel The Tattooist of Auschwitz which has sold six million copies. This is a companion to that beloved book, a series of accounts from remarkable people she has met, whether that is the section about listening to the wisdom of our elders, to that of Lale, to our children, or to ourselves. Transport yourself with Morris to her gramps' memories, travelling across South Africa with Field Marshal Kitchener as a 16-year-old boy. She shares heartening stories such as one encounter when, at the hospital where she worked, she learned that a teenage boy with a terminal illness had completed every level on his games, so she rang the company who sent a young man - a game designer - to deliver them which ended with the two becoming profound friends. Learn more about Cilka Klein, a figure in Lale Sokolov's history, who Morris then wrote about in her second book: Cilka's Journey, and how Morris sought all the details she could (including her birth record) in the town hall of Sabnov in Slovakia. Glimpse the mind of Ian (Morris' brother) who left the Navy, listening to his gut instinct, and spurned the idea of becoming a local friendly police officer in favour of carving out his own life which included living in several countries, a successful business career and a family. The end of each chapter also includes tips on how readers can be active listeners for different people, whether that is using a physical stimulus, simple questions or the ritual of a cup of tea to encourage elders to open up, or learning that the secret to listening to a child is time, giving them the time to speak so they know how important they are. For the eager reader of Morris' other work, there is also insight into how she constructed Lale's story through the sharing of a table she used when writing Lale's anecdotes up, with columns dedicated to what she did, how she felt, what Lale said and how Lale felt. This is an intimate and touching behind the scenes look at how stories are forged, celebrated and made immortal through sharing them. Signed by the author, black and white illustrations, 314pp.