Engelska

<strong>'Entertaining and vivid... This is a gripping account of an intriguing and little-known Cold War moment' <em>OBSERVER</em></strong> <br/><br/> <strong>'Reads like a thriller'<em> THE SUN</em></strong> <br/><br/> <strong>The astonishing story of the ten million books that were smuggled across the Iron Curtain during the Cold War.</strong> <br/><br/>For almost five decades after the Second World War, Europe was divided by the longest and most heavily guarded border on earth. The Iron Curtain, a near-impenetrable barrier of wire and wall, tank traps, minefields, watchtowers and men with dogs, stretched for 4,300 miles from the Arctic to the Black Sea. No physical combat would take place along this frontier: the risk of nuclear annihilation was too high for that. Instead, the conflict would be fought in the psychological sphere. It was a battle for hearts, minds and intellects. <br/><br/>No one understood this more clearly than George Minden, the head of a covert intelligence operation known as the 'CIA books programme', which aimed to win the Cold War with literature. <br/><br/>From its Manhattan headquarters, Minden's global CIA 'book club' would infiltrate millions of banned titles into the Eastern Bloc, written by a vast and eclectic list of authors, including Hannah Arendt and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, George Orwell and Agatha Christie. Volumes were smuggled on trucks and aboard yachts, dropped from balloons, and hidden in the luggage of hundreds of thousands of individual travellers. Once inside Soviet bloc, each book would circulate secretly among dozens of like-minded readers, quietly turning them into dissidents. Latterly, underground print shops began to reproduce the books, too. By the late 1980s, illicit literature in Poland was so pervasive that the system of communist censorship broke down, and the Iron Curtain soon followed. <br/><br/>Charlie English tells this true story of spycraft, smuggling and secret printing operations for the first time, highlighting the work of a handful of extraordinary people who risked their lives to stand up to the intellectual strait-jacket Stalin created. People like Miroslaw Chojecki, an underground Polish publisher who endured beatings, force-feeding and exile in service of this mission. And Minden, the CIA's mastermind, who didn't waver in his belief that truth, culture, and diversity of thought could help free the 'captive nations' of Eastern Europe. This is a story about the power of the printed word as a means of resistance and liberation. Books, it shows, can set you free.

As the anime casts its spell across the world, it's the perfect time to step into the lush and inspiring world of this landmark fantasy series. This collector's box set contains the first six volumes of the series, plus an exclusive set of art cards. <br/><br/> <br/><br/>In a world where everyone takes wonders like magic spells and dragons for granted, Coco is a girl with a simple dream: She wants to be a witch. But everybody knows witches are born, not made, and Coco was not born with a gift for magic. Resigned to her un-magical life, Coco is about to give up on her dream to become a witch...until the day she meets Qifrey, a mysterious, traveling witch. After secretly seeing Qifrey perform magic in a way she's never seen before, Coco soon learns what everybody "knows" might not be the truth, and discovers that her magical dream may not be as far away as it may seem...

<b>The number 1 rule of junk journaling is there are no rules.</b><br/><br/>This is a companion to your journaling journey, with 52 weekly prompts and ideas encouraging you to tap into your creative side.<br/>Whether you're brand new to junk journaling or already hoard paper scraps and washi tape, this book will gently guide you through a year of playful, imperfect creativity:<br/><br/><ul><li><b>COLLECT</b> everything that inspires you or reminds you of something you want to remember</li><li><b>REFLECT</b> to take a mindful moment for yourself to pause and think about what you are creating </li><li><b>CREATE</b> with practical steps to try new crafty techniques in your junk journal</li></ul><br/><br/><br/>You'll find heaps of fun, original ideas for what to include in your scrapbook, as well as tips on how to brainstorm and source materials. The 52 projects are built to inspire you - you'll create a portrait of you, celebrate your favourite snacks, play with textures and colour palettes, send yourself future notes, reflect on meaningful holidays and be encouraged to use your precious sticker stash...<br/><br/>Embrace imperfection, expand your creativity, preserve your memories and get stuck in!

<b>The <i>Sunday Times</i> bestselling author concludes her compelling Lost Bride trilogy as two women - one dead, one alive - prepare for a terrifying final showdown...<br/></b><br/>Long ago, Arthur Poole built a grand house overlooking the turbulent ocean, in a Maine village that bore his name. Today, Sonya MacTavish lives in that house-a manor that has been cursed for generations. Within its walls, she has witnessed the deaths of seven brides and the thefts of seven wedding rings.<br/><br/>Determined to bring light to this haunted place-to fill it with people, with life and hope, once again - Sonya decides it is time to break the curse and banish a malevolent spirit once and for all.<br/><br/>But the enemy in the black dress continues to hover, to come at her in frightening forms. They may be illusions-but illusions can be powerful enough to wound, even kill. This dark-hearted witch wants to be mistress of Poole Manor, at any cost. And Sonya will need to fight a battle across two realms to finally take possession of the house on the clifftop-and of her own future...

Dragon Cursed [Bok / Inbunden]

<strong>Piece together Music Cats 500 Piece Family Puzzle from Mudpuppy to reveal feline portraits inspired by the world's greatest musical meowsters! </strong> <br/><br/>This amusing illustration is a great family activity for adults and children to enjoy together. Puzzle pieces come packaged in a sturdy and easy-to-wrap box, perfect for gifting, reuse, and storage.<br/> * 500pc puzzle: 20 x 20", 51 x 51 cm<br/> * Box: 8 x 8 x 2", 20 x 20 x 5 cm<br/> * Ages 8-99<br/> * Puzzle greyboard contains 90% recycled paper. Packaging contains 70% recycled paper. Printed with nontoxic inks.<br/> * All Mudpuppy products adhere to CPSIA, ASTM, and CE Safety Regulations

From the No. 1 bestselling author of What If? - the man who created xkcd and explained the laws of science with cartoons - comes a series of brilliantly simple diagrams ('blueprints' if you want to be complicated about it) that show how important things work: from the nuclear bomb to the biro. It's good to know what the parts of a thing are called, but it's much more interesting to know what they do. Richard Feynman once said that if you can't explain something to a first-year student, you don't really get it. In Thing Explainer, Randall Munroe takes a quantum leap past this: he explains things using only drawings and a vocabulary of just our 1,000 (or the ten hundred) most common words. Many of the things we use every day - like our food-heating radio boxes ('microwaves'), our very tall roads ('bridges'), and our computer rooms ('datacentres') - are strange to us. So are the other worlds around our sun (the solar system), the big flat rocks we live on (tectonic plates), and even the stuff inside us (cells). Where do these things come from? How do they work? What do they look like if you open them up? And what would happen if we heated them up, cooled them down, pointed them in a different direction, or pressed this button? In Thing Explainer, Munroe gives us the answers to these questions and many, many more. Funny, interesting, and always understandable, this book is for anyone -- age 5 to 105 -- who has ever wondered how things work, and why.