| Bookshelf: Watching the detective Robert
B Parker has just published his latest thriller Cold Service in which
Spenser and Hawk come up againt the Ukrainian mob. Rí-rá looks at the
latest adventure for the detective and his ally and also reviews the best
of the rest.
 When Spenser’s closest
ally Hawk is brutally injured and left for dead while protecting bookie
Luther Gillespie, he embarks on an epic journey to rehabilitate his friend
in body and soul.
Hawk, always proud, has never been dependent on anyone. Now he is forced
to make connections: To accept the medical technology that will ensure
his physical recovery and to reinforce the tenuous emotional ties he has
to those around him.
Spenser quickly learns that the Ukrainian mob is responsible for the hit
but finding a way into their tightly knit circle is not nearly so simple.
Their total control of the town of Marshport, from the bodegas to the
police force to the mayor’s office, isn’t just a sign of rampant
corruption — it’s a form of arrogance that only serves to
ignite Hawk’s desire to get even.
As the body count rises Spenser is forced to employ some questionable
techniques and even more questionable hired guns while redefining his
friendship with Hawk in the name of vengeance.
Robert B Parker is the best-selling author of over 40 books including
Small Vices, Sudden Mischief, Hush Money, Hugger Mugger, Potshot, Widows
Walk, Night Passage, Trouble in Paradise, Death in Paradise, Family Honor,
Perish Twice, Shrink Rap, Back Story and Bad Business.
Cold Service by Robert B. Parker is published by No Exit Press, £16.99.
Amir D’Aczel
Chance
 Chance and time are intimately
linked in our universe. Every day chance occurrences take place that present
us with new opportunities, challenges and perils. To make the best of
them requires a knowledge of how to make decisions in sequence.
Does the bus always seem to take longer than average to arrive? There’s
a mathematical reason for this.
Let’s say in your lifetime you could date 100 people — how
many should you go out with before settling down and marrying?
Have you invested in property or bought shares in a company? What type
of return can you expect?
How do political polls work and what is a margin of error?
What’s the best way to bluff at poker or count cards in blackjack?
If you absolutely had to gamble, which strategy ensures the highest probability
of success?
Find out the answers to these and many more questions in Chance.
In Chance celebrated mathematician Amir D. Aczel turns his sights on probability
theory — the branch of mathematics that measures the likelihood
of a random event. He explains probability in clear, layperson’s
terms and shows its practical applications.
What is commonly called luck has mathematical roots and in Chance you’ll
learn to increase your odds of success in everything from true love to
the stock market.
For thousands of years the twin forces of chance and mischance have beguiled
hamanity like none other. Why does fortune smile on some people and smirk
on others? What is luck and why does it so often visit the undeserving?
How can we predict the random events happening around us — even
better how can we manipulate them?
In this delightful and lucid voyage through the realm of the random, Dr.
Aczel makes higher mathematics intelligible to us.
Among many other books he is the author of Entanglement: The Greatest
Mystery in Physics, The Mystery of the Alwph: Mathematics, the Kabbalah
and the Search for iNfinity and Fermat’s Last Theorem: Unlocking
the Secret of an Ancient Mathematical Problem.
Leo McKinstry
Rosebery Statesman in Turmoil
 The fifth Earl of Rosebery
was the most glamorous Liberal politician of the late Victorian age.
Charismatic, enlightened, wealthy and intellectually brilliant he captivated
the masses with his soaring oratory and charmed colleagues with his scintillating
wit.
As a young man he said that he had three ambitions: To marry an heiress,
win the Derby and become Prime Minister.
By his mid-40s he had achieved all three. With his public following and
unrivalled political gifts, he was the natural successor to the premiership
when Gladstone retired in 1894.
Although his spell in Downing Street was brief, he remained a glittering
political star into his old age — never losing his appeal as an
imperial statesman.
Using a wealth of archival material, award-winning author Leo McKinstry
reveals the contradictory personality that lay behind the public figure.
For all Rosebery’s magnetism he was tortured by self-doubt, extreme
sensitivity, loneliness and insomnia. Every aspect of his compelling story
is covered, including his devotion to horse-racing, his literary achievements
and his complex, often anguished, private life.
Adored by society beauties and even a princess he never remarried after
the tragic early death of his wife prompting continual gossip about his
sexual inclinations.
Through original research Leo McKinstry provides a host of fresh insights
not only into Rosebery himself, but also his involvement in some of the
most controversial episodes of the era from the Jameson Raid to the trial
of Oscar Wilde. With its fluent style and strength of analysis, this is
a gripping portrait of he last Liberal peer in Number 10.
Journalist and author Leo McKinstry writes regularly for the Daily Mail,
the Sunday Telegraph and the Spectator.
Born in Belfast in 1962 he was educated in Ireland and at Sidney Sussex
College, Cambridge, where he read history. Before becoming a writer, he
was a Labour councillor in Islington and an aide to Harriet Harman. He
is married and lives in Essex.
Jeffrey Meyers
Married To Genius
 Jeffrey Meyers
Married To Genius considers the emotional and artistic commitment in the
marriages of nine modern writers: Tolstoy, Shaw, Conrad, Joyce, Virginia
Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, D.H Lawrence, Hemingway and Scott Fitzgerald.
Each of them acknowledged the claims of ordinary life and believed that
marriage provided their most profound personal relationship.
They found in marriage a stronghold of affection that encouraged and tested
their capacity, an antidote to the modern fear of alienation and a strengthening
bond that was deeply valuable in a struggle of psychic survival.
For the very first time author Jeffrey Meyers uses personal diaries, letters,
memoirs, essays and autobiographical fiction to draw candid portraits
fo the unseen married lives of our leading literary geniuses — the
sexual indulgence and philandering, the egos and the arguments, the alcoholism,
self-destruction and madness.
But we also see in their relationships the unswerving devotion, love and
passion, vulnerability, loyalty and sacrifice.
The lives of all nine of these writers reveal the strains of modern marriage
and their creative impulse were directly inspired by their emotional and
intellectual conflicts.
Married To Genius concerns the way these major writers attempted to
integrate life and art and to resolve the conflict between domestic and
creative fulfilment.
Jeffrey Meyers is an eclectic writer and one of the foremost literary
biographers of Hemingway, Conrad, Orwell, Katherine Mansfield, D.H. Lawrence,
Humphrey Bogart and Robert Frost. |
