Living or visiting Thailand should be a dream come true. Right? Book number one - Not Far Enough From Worries. A drug lord fathers his lesbian niece’s child, but not in the usual way! Set in Thailand late 1980s. Action, fun, romance, and tears. Breathtaking violence and tender moments add to a fast-paced read. Two young and gullible Englishmen move to Hua Hin to start a new life in the tropical heat. Along the way, they meet a dodgy Dutch ship's engineer, two lovely French girls who are more interested in dogs than romance. A tall Welsh man with a chequered history of drug abuse, but a unique skill of mixing things to make other things. This talent gets the attention of seriously evil people. A lesbian newspaper reporter rides a powerful motorbike has an important family secret. The whole story unfolds in an action-packed finale.

“There's no writer alive like de Botton” (Chicago Tribune), and now this internationally heralded author turns his attention to the insatiable human quest for status—a quest that has less to do with material comfort than love. Anyone who’s ever lost sleep over an unreturned phone call or the neighbor’s Lexus had better read Alain de Botton’s irresistibly clear-headed new book, immediately. For in its pages, a master explicator of our civilization and its discontents explores the notion that our pursuit of status is actually a pursuit of love, ranging through Western history and thought from St. Augustine to Andrew Carnegie and Machiavelli to Anthony Robbins. Whether it’s assessing the class-consciousness of Christianity or the convulsions of consumer capitalism, dueling or home-furnishing, Status Anxiety is infallibly entertaining. And when it examines the virtues of informed misanthropy, art appreciation, or walking a lobster on a leash, it is not only wise but helpful.