Suddenly, dogs are everywhere. Dressed in designer couture, carried around in bicycle baskets and monogrammed handbags, they rule the stylish roost that is the new China. In the space of twenty-five years they have maneuvered themselves from hot pot to Hermès. How did they achieve this? By doing what dogs do best.Absolutely nothing.Aided by juicy dog snacks of wisdom from Confucius to Sun Tzu, Cherry Denman captures through beautiful pen-and-ink illustrations their laid-bac...

Cherry Denman has spent her life trailing husband Charlie round some of the world's most remote outposts and can ask for the lavatory in eleven languages. While some aspects of living abroad will always puzzle her - saunas, tofu and circumcision, to name just three - she wouldn't have missed it for anything. Lessons learnt range from the practical (possessions belong either in the suitcase or the skip: storage is for wimps), to the truly useful (how to avoid the drinks party bore) and the ...

London Book Festival Grand Prize Winner 2012‘I’d convinced her we should travel the world. She imagined posh flights and swanky hotels. Then I said the three words every girl longs to hear: Volkswagen camper van.’This frank and funny true story of a 'family gap year' like no other shows how the passing comment of a bored 9-year-old can snowball into an absurd expedition into strange lands, financial peril and some distinctly unsavoury living arrangements. With Stra...

A second collection of stories from the Booker Prize-winning author of Paddy Clarke Ha Ha HaRoddy Doyle has won acclaim for his wry wit, his uncanny ear, and his remarkable ability to fully capture the voices and hearts of his characters. Bullfighting, his second collection of stories, offers a series of bittersweet takes on men and middle age, revealing a panorama of Ireland today. Moving from classrooms to graveyards, from local pubs to bullring...

Way to Go brings together two epic motorcycle journeys, from Delhi to Belfast on a Royal Enfield, and from Chicago to LA on a Harley-Davidson.A thoughtful, hilarious, off-beat travelogue by award-winning journalist Geoff Hill.What the critics say about Geoff Hill’s travel writing‘Shift your arse Kerouac, Geoff Hill’s on the road. Faster, funnier, and still alive.’Colin Bateman‘…a distinctive brand of travel journalism that manages to combine side-spl...

'The pace of this kind of travel has not much changed since Fogg set out in 1872. Trains may be a little faster, but there are certainly no high-speed rail links yet across India, China or the USA. Passenger services have practically disappeared from the world's shipping lanes ... Recourse to air travel, even as a convenient means of escape, was not allowed.'Following the route taken by Phileas Fogg 115 years earlier, Michael Palin set out from the Reform Club to circumnavigate the...

The charming, funny successor to the hugely popular ‘Notes to my Mother-in-Law’, from the inimitable Phyllida Law.When her Uncle Arthur dies, actress Phyllida Law returns to the tiny Scottish village of Ardentinny to look after her ma, Mego. Mego’s always been deliciously dotty. She once put a new packet of tights in the fridge (and the bacon in her sock drawer). But Mego’s older now and becoming ever more muddled.So Phyllida devotes herself to looking after Mego, but not w...

A hilarious anthology of comic treasures written by Britain's "comic genius"—the former editor of Punch and beloved regular on BBC's Radio 4 ( The Times).Alan Coren was one of contemporary Britain's most prolific humorists. Over his forty-year career, Coren wrote comic and satirical pieces for The New Yorker, The Times, Observer, Tatler, Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, and Punch, and publi...

Two O levels. Three convictions for smash and grab in off licenses. Two for drunk driving. One for possession of amphetamine sulphate. General labouring and factory work.Attended charismatic Baptist church. Made girlfriend pregnant. Resigned from job as refuse collector, resigned church membership, returned library books, sold house, went to the Democratic Republic of Congo, then known as Zaire.Came back altered. Conscious decision to join bourgeoisie. Night classes for a y...

If you are thinking of going to China to teach or travel then don't – not until you have read this book. The book may entice you to go or it may persuade you to stay. Either way if you are interested in China and wish to advance far beyond the tourist guide view, then read this book.The author lived in one of the most famous cities in China, yet few in the West have heard of it. He also lived near the epicentre of the most damaging earthquake in recorded history, yet it is long for...

In Once I Was a Princess, Jacqueline Pascarl related the gripping story of her abusive childhood and her subsequent teen marriage to a prince. What should have been a fairy tale with a happy ending deteriorated into a nightmare of deceit and betrayal - ending in the kidnapping of her two small children by her former husband, who spirited them back to Malaysia.In Since I Was a Princess, Pascarl peels back the layers of her life after the abduction. She tells how sh...

"A winning blend of travelogue and literary biography" by a British journalist who travels the journey Agatha Christie once did from London to Iraq. ( Entertainment Weekly)With her marriage to her first husband over, Agatha Christie decided to take a much needed holiday; the Caribbean had been her intended destination, but a conversation at a dinner party with a couple who had just returned from Iraq changed her mind. Five days later she was off on a comple...