The Reluctant Mariner is the story of a couple's circumnavigation of the world in a 12.2 meter yacht, told from the wife's perspective. Far from simply stopping off in each port, the Hacketts made a point of exploring inland and actually seeing as much as they had time to in every country they visited. The trip took them seven years to complete and they spent many months in several of the destinations they visited. This makes her account more than simply another "sailing around the world" book. Joanna describes their adventures, the people they met, the places they visited -- over 37 countries, many of them not on the usual circumnavigation route -- recounting the good as well as the bad experiences. The Reluctant Mariner also describes what it was like for a middle-aged, female landlubber to leave the comforts of home and family and sail off around the world. Initially a very reluctant sailor, Joanna eventually found herself swept along by her husband's vision and quest for adventure. This is the humorous tale of how she adapted and the experiences she had along the way.

From the author of the award-winning Moth Smoke comes a perspective on love, prejudice, and the war on terror that has never been seen in North American literature. At a café table in Lahore, a bearded Pakistani man converses with a suspicious, and possibly armed, American stranger. As dusk deepens to night, he begins the tale that has brought them to this fateful meeting. . . Changez is living an immigrant’s dream of America. At the top of his class at Princeton, he is snapped up by Underwood Samson, an elite firm that specializes in the “valuation” of companies ripe for acquisition. He thrives on the energy of New York and the intensity of his work, and his infatuation with regal Erica promises entrée into Manhattan society at the same exalted level once occupied by his own family back in Lahore. For a time, it seems as though nothing will stand in the way of Changez’s meteoric rise to personal and professional success. But in the wake of September 11, he finds his position in his adopted city suddenly overturned, and his budding relationship with Erica eclipsed by the reawakened ghosts of her past. And Changez’s own identity is in seismic shift as well, unearthing allegiances more fundamental than money, power, and perhaps even love. Elegant and compelling, Mohsin Hamid’s second novel is a devastating exploration of our divided and yet ultimately indivisible world. “Excuse me, sir, but may I be of assistance? Ah, I see I have alarmed you. Do not be frightened by my beard: I am a lover of America. I noticed that you were looking for something; more than looking, in fact you seemed to be on a mission, and since I am both a native of this city and a speaker of your language, I thought I might offer you my services as a bridge.” —from The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Gleaned from more than thirty years of sailing and working as a sailing chief engineer, author A.K. Girisam shares the stories of his life and on the seas—the joy, the fun, parties, and laughter as well as the tensions, anxiety, and worries. In Merry Mariner, Girisam narrates a host of real-life adventures, near-miss incidents, and heart-stopping experiences. He tells about the time a ship was cruising in the Suez Canal and the steering failed, when the engine room flooded with sea water on a ship loaded with 250,000 tons of iron ore, and when a fully loaded ship ran aground and jagged rocks ripped open the ship’s plate. In addition, Girisam relates memorable, and hilarious events from his college days, his fun filled days as a junior engineer on his first ship, and many rib ticking stories (The Reluctant Cupid, My daughter’s musical adventures etc) about his family and friends. Merry Mariner also offers a collection of his thoughts and opinions on a variety of topics in a lighter vein (Hammer Master’s club, Amnesia, boon or bane? Etc)

As the only person with a camera attending the first Sex Pistols gig outside London at the Lesser Free Trade Hall in Manchester on Friday June 4th 1976, I unwittingly captured a piece of musical history which still intrigues people to this day. I was covering the event for the magazine that I was producing at the time entitled Penetration.Today those photographs, as well as many others taken by me during that period, are selling around the world courtesy of Getty Images appearing in books and magazines as well as featuring in a number of TV and film documentariesI was born in Manchester when music first went 'pop' and the teenager made its first appearance in society. I left school at the earliest opportunity without any qualifications and very little interest in education or even reading. I worked in a photographic studio for one year before joining my father as a window cleaner which I worked at for the next ten years. I fell in love with rock music at an early age and regardless of my lack of education produced two magazines. 'Purple Smoke' an arts magazine and the aforementioned 'Penetration Rock Magazine' as a consequence of this and my association with the music scene I quickly took the alcohol, drugs and backstage pass route to oblivion.When people would be talking about whether their glass was half empty or half full I didn't need to ponder the question as I'd be at the bar getting a top up. Along the way with the help of several girlfriends and a large dose of realisation I decided to try and educate myself and improve myself as a person in general. I later became interested in comedy and spent fifteen years writing sketches for popular TV shows both in the UK and in Germany.With this book the music and comedy blend together to create a style far removed from other books covering similar events and periods in time. It takes us all the way from my earliest recollections to today, in my late fifties, attending hardcore raves.With anecdotes about the music scene and tales from behind the stage door with amongst others Motorhead, Hawkwind, Steve Peregrine Took And the Damned, through to my time living in the next room to Mick Hucknall and later as a neighbour of Richard Madeley, Judy Finnegan and Tony Wilson. There are also tales from the church of Dirty Dick the Swinging Vic to a prostitute by the name of Tenpenny cabbage, from a glass collector in Cornwall called Rat Spew to a rugby player I accompanied to Paris by the name of Black Man's Bum. An unusual journey through psychedelic music, rock music, punk, metal, techno, trance and finally happy hardcore, from the Pink Fairies to the Russ Abbot Show, Wayne County to the Jonathan Ross Show and with lots of previously unseen photographs and associated visuals.The first page of the book features the song title 'Life's What You Make It' by talk talk and my story is of somebody who against the odds created a decent life for himself after such an unpromising start. My school reports said that I was a daydreamer who they expected would be a failure however one thing is certain with this book you can always expect the unexpected.

Detective Inspector Tom Mariner's troubled past is about to catch up with him in this intriguing mystery Grieving the death of his ex-lover, Detective Inspector Tom Mariner has taken two weeks' leave to recuperate, seeking peace and solitude in a remote corner of Wales. The last thing he imagined was to find himself caught up in a murder investigation - with himself as the prime suspect. But when his walking holiday is interrupted by the discovery of a dead body, Tom discovers that there are a number of disturbing secrets being kept behind the closed doors of the ancient stone farmhouses that populate the region.

A riveting account of the only mutiny in the history of the United States Navy—a little-known event that cost three innocent young men their lives—part murder mystery, part courtroom drama, and as propulsive and dramatic as the bestselling novels of Patrick O’Brian. On December 16, 1842, the US brig-of-war Somers dropped anchor in Brooklyn Harbor at the end of a cruise intended to teach a group of adolescents the rudiments of naval life. But this seemingly harmless exercise ended in catastrophe. Commander Alexander Slidell Mackenzie came ashore saying he had narrowly prevented a mutiny that would have left him and his officers dead. Some of the thwarted mutineers were being held under guard, but three had been hanged: Boatswain’s Mate Samuel Cromwell, Seaman Elisha Small, and Acting Midshipman Philip Spencer, whose father was the secretary of war, John Spencer. Eighteen-year-old Philip Spencer, according to Mackenzie, had been the ringleader who encouraged the crew to seize the ship and become pirates, raping and pillaging their way across the old Spanish Main. And while the young man might have been a rebel fascinated by pirates, it soon became clear the order that condemned the three men had no legal basis. And worse, that perhaps a mutiny had never really occurred, and that the ship might instead have been seized by a creeping hysteria that ended in the sacrifice of three innocents. Months of accusations and counteraccusations were followed by a highly public court martial which put Mackenzie on trial for his life, and a storm of anti-Navy sentiment drew the attention of the leading writers of the day (Washington Irving thought Mackenzie a hero; James Fenimore Cooper damned him with a ferocity that still stings). But some good did come out of it: public disgust with Mackenzie’s training cruise gave birth to Annapolis, the place that within a century, would produce the greatest navy the world had ever known. Vividly told and filled with tense action based on court martial transcripts, Snow’s masterly account of this all-but-forgotten episode is naval history at its finest.