A group of soldiers travel by train across the United States in the aftermath of the First World War. One of them is horribly scarred, blind and almost entirely mute. Moved by his condition, a few civilian fellow travellers decided to see him home to Georgia, to a family who believed him dead, and a fiancee who grew tired of waiting.

It is 1969 and James Bond is about to go solo, recklessly motivated by revenge. A seasoned veteran of the service, 007 is sent to single-handedly stop a civil war in the small West African nation of Zanzarim. Bond's renegade action leads him to Washington, D C, where he discovers a web of intrigue and witnesses fresh horrors.

Takes us into the lives of men and women trapped in marriage, ensnared by drink, diminished by disappointment; all kinds of women, all kinds of men - lonely, unfaithful, dying - driving empty roads at night.

Yvonne believes there's more to life than marriage to Sam, the young man who's courting her. But when she tries to have fun, she gets caught up in a fracas in a bar. Sam's idea of "something special" meanwhile is to take her to St Stephen's Green later that night to show her a ghostly tree!

Petra's romantic life has always been a car-crash, and even in her sixties she's still capable of getting it disastrously wrong. But then she falls in love with Jeremy, an old chum, visiting from abroad. The fatal catch? Jeremy is her best friend's husband.

How do you make a song a global smash hit that is guaranteed to make $millions? In this book, the author dissects the workings of this machine, travelling the world to reveal its hidden formulas, and interview its geniuses - 'the hitmakers' - at the centre of it all.

Presenting an American epic poem, and a catalogue of nineteenth-century American life of all ages and races, this volume features rhythms and images, and its inclusive, praiseful joy.