The Red Book

The daughter of a successful mystery writer and a P.I. with pizzazz, Regan Reilly is attending her class reunion at St. Polycarp's England, when the long-dead body of her former roommate turns up under the bushes. It's a case Regan would love to solve, but a prior commitment puts her on a transatlantic cruise. She shouldn't have fretted. The clues to the crime are following her on the Queen Guinevere. Here, on a ship awash with secret lovers, a fortune hunter, a jewel thief and an assassin, Regan is sailing home-and into the hands of a young girl's killer

Alzheimer's disease and age-related memory loss are on the increase. The burden this condition places on sufferers, their families and health care systems is immense. In this reassuring and practical book, top nutritionist and mental health expert Patrick Holford argues that memory decline and Alzheimer's disease can be arrested, and the risks of developing such diseases reduced significantly, if you take action early. THE ALZHEIMER'S PREVENTION PLAN is based on research into nutritional medicine from experts around the world, and features the latest scientific findings on how nutrition can help prevent this devastating condition. It features a specially formulated Alzheimer's prevention diet and a ten-step plan to enhance your memory, which includes a simple test to discover your risk, and reverse it in eight weeks; memory boosting vitamins and minerals; essential fats that help your brain think faster; and simple lifestyle changes and exercises to keep your mind young.

As onetime classmates meet over the course of a weekend for their high school's fortieth reunion, they discover things that will irrevocably affect the rest of their lives. For newly divorced Dorothy Shauman, it is the possibility to finally attract the attention of the class heartthrob, Pete Decker. For the ever self-reliant, ever left-out Mary Alice Mayhew, it's a chance to re-examine a painful past. For Lester Heseenpfeffer, a veterinarian and widower, it is the hope of talking shop with a fellow vet - or at least that's what he tells himself. For Candy Armstrong, the class beauty, it's the hope of finding friendship before it is too late.As Dorothy, Mary Alice, Lester, Candy, and the other classmates converge for the reunion dinner, four decades melt away: Desires and personalities from their youth re-emerge, and new discoveries are made. For so much has happened to them all. And so much can still happen.

This brilliant collection spans two worlds - the restless, aspiring society of New York's Upper East Side and the world of India's capital city, New Delhi, where the old India symbolized by Gandhi's spinning wheel is giving way to one powered by industry and property development. A rich cast of characters inhabits these stories - Indian businessmen and holy women, students, society hostesses and ambitious young politicians; New Yorkers preoccupied with money yet also in search of meaning - anxious and often manipulative parents, alienated children, men and women struggling with their longings and failures and their complicated sex lives. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's quiet but insistent probing goes to the very heart of her characters, showing us all their complexities and contradictions. In these absorbing stories, there is a feeling of ambivalence, a subtle sensuality and a poignant sense of time passing. Like all great storytellers, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala suggests many questions but supplies no easy answers. This is a fascinating and wonderfully readable collection which is also a literary event.

How Clarissa Burden Learned to Fly is the transcendent story of a young woman who, in a twenty-four hour period, journeys through startling moments of self-discovery that lead her to a courageous and life-altering decision.

The incomparable, indestructible Hal Needham broke 56 bones and his back - twice - as a stuntman in movies and TV shows like Mission Impossible and The French Connection. He hung upside down from an airplane in Spirit of St. Louis, jumped between galloping horses in Little Big Man and he taught John Wayne how to really throw a punch.When his stunt career working with the likes of Kirk Douglas and Steve McQueen was over, Needham's adventures continued. He directed the classics Smokey and the Bandit and Cannonball Run, starring his roommate Burt Reynolds. He owned the Skoal Bandit NASCAR team and the Budweiser Rocket Car, which broke the sound barrier. Needham shares all the outrageous stories that could only come from a man who earned a living risking his life.

As the wife of a Resistance member in German-occupied Belgium, Claire Daussois has grown used to hiding strange men in her attic. By the end of 1943, the tiny room has housed dozens of Allied airmen, soldiers and other refugees, whom Claire nurses and harbours from the perpetual threat of discovery by the Gestapo.The B-17 bomber that crash-lands outside Claire's village of Delahaut contains the man who will be both the last and the most significant of the attic's residents: US Air Force pilot Ted Brice. Ted is found severely wounded and semi-conscious by ten-year-old Jean Benoit minutes before the Germans begin their search for survivors. Knowing of Claire's connections with the Resistance, and desperate to atone for his father's shameful collaboration, Jean realises that Claire is the pilot's only hope of survival.The month that follows will stay with them both for the rest of their lives. A few weeks only, a handful of days, it is a period in which the war recedes in the face of more powerful forces - before imposing itself once more with shocking suddenness.

A young and successful journalist working in New York, Maureen English appears to have the perfect life and family. But Maureen's husband, a highly respected fellow reporter, has in private a tendency towards alcohol and violent abuse. When the situation at home becomes intolerable, Maureen takes her baby daughter and flees. In a Maine fishing town she assumes a new identity and spends six weeks battling sub-zero temperatures, the intrusive glare of the townsfolk - and her fears of discovery.Against the force of the wintry sea- the cawing of the gulls, the lobstermen hauling their catch, the press of waves against the rocks - Maureen settles into the rhythms of a new life. Two married men pursue her, and one captures her heart. But this calming respite ends suddenly, leaving in its wake a murder, a rape charge, a suicide and a helpless child.Nearly nineteen years later, a cache of documents regarding Maureen English - abused, accused and imprisoned - are given to her daughter by the journalist who made her name reporting the case. The truth should lie within them, but the papers raise far more questions than they answer...