Books

In what he has described as the "new East End"--Caribbean and African and Asian people, but also a lot of the old white community who have extended families the same way that we always had"--Benjamin Zephaniah is something of a poet hero: a "black spokesman and political poet" according to critic, John Walsh. Set in this East End of fish and chips and curry, rap clubs and racism--"Many of the shops had metal shutters on their windows and doors to protect them fro... less info

In what he has described as the "new East End"--Caribbean and African and Asian people, but also a lot of the old white community who have extended families the same way that we always ha... more info

As any reader of The Mosquito Coast knows, men who drag their families to far-off climes in pursuit of an Idea seldom come to any good, while those familiar with At Play in the Fields of the Lord or Kalimantaan understand that the minute a missionary sets foot on the fictional stage, all hell is about to break loose. So when Barbara Kingsolver sends missionary Nathan Price along with his wife and four daughters off to Africa in The Poisonwood Bible, you can be sure that salvation is the one t... less info

As any reader of The Mosquito Coast knows, men who drag their families to far-off climes in pursuit of an Idea seldom come to any good, while those familiar with At Play in the Fields of the Lord o... more info

If you're an admirer of American crime writing, have you ever stopped to realise just how lucky you are at present? Although the Grim Reaper has recently taken such great names in the field as James Crumley and Donald Westlake, there are (happily) several major talents still at work producing some marvellous work. There is, of course, the holy trinity of James Lee Burke, Elmore Leonard and James Ellroy. But let's not forget Robert Crais. And let's certainly not forget the subject of this piec... less info

If you're an admirer of American crime writing, have you ever stopped to realise just how lucky you are at present? Although the Grim Reaper has recently taken such great names in the field as Jame... more info

802.11 Wireless Networks: The Definitive Guide aims to codify the body of knowledge needed to design and maintain wireless local area networks (LANs). Among network designers and administrators, wired Ethernet is a known quantity. Plenty is known about how to build good twisted-pair network infrastructures, how to keep them secure, and how to monitor their excess capacity. Not so for the wireless Ethernet networks (built around the IEEE 802.11x standards)--these hold much more mystery for eve... less info

802.11 Wireless Networks: The Definitive Guide aims to codify the body of knowledge needed to design and maintain wireless local area networks (LANs). Among network designers and administrators, wi... more info

Canadian writer Mary Lawson's debut novel is a beautifully crafted and shimmering tale of love, death and redemption set in the eponymous Crow Lake, an isolated rural community where time has stood still. Narrated by 26-year-old Kate Morrison, we dive in and out of the troubled woman's childhood memories over the passage of a year--when she was seven and her parents were killed in a motoring accident, leaving Kate, her younger sister Bo and two older brothers Matt and Luke orphaned. The prove... less info

Canadian writer Mary Lawson's debut novel is a beautifully crafted and shimmering tale of love, death and redemption set in the eponymous Crow Lake, an isolated rural community where time has stood... more info

The Network+ Study Guide explains all you need to know about computer networking in order to pass CompTIA's Network+ exam. The book covers the fundamentals of local-area networks (LANs), the seven-layer Open Systems Interconnect (OSI) network model and network operating systems (including NetWare, Windows NT and, to a lesser degree, Unix variants). Readers will find considerable coverage of the TCP/IP protocol suite, including some of the utility programs used to configure it locally and remo... less info

The Network+ Study Guide explains all you need to know about computer networking in order to pass CompTIA's Network+ exam. The book covers the fundamentals of local-area networks (LANs), the seven-... more info

The risk Mark Minasi takes in Mastering Windows XP Professional is attempting to cover a shockingly broad swathe of knowledge. He begins with instructions for manipulating (maximising, minimising and closing) windows and concludes with making static entries in the Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) cache for speedier routing. That's like writing a manual for an automobile that begins with opening the passenger-side door, goes all the way through driving, routine maintenance and concludes with ... less info

The risk Mark Minasi takes in Mastering Windows XP Professional is attempting to cover a shockingly broad swathe of knowledge. He begins with instructions for manipulating (maximising, minimising a... more info

Mark Reid has produced another invaluable "Inn Way" guide, this time to Black Sheep Pubs. (For those not in the know, Black Sheep is a fine real ale brewed in the Yorkshire Dales). This book comprises 20 fine circular walks in the beautiful and often underrated Yorkshire Dales, calling at traditional pubs that serve Black Sheep's fine ales. Detailed route descriptions are included, as are maps to guide you round the many picturesque areas--Swaledale, for example, famous for its shee... less info

Mark Reid has produced another invaluable "Inn Way" guide, this time to Black Sheep Pubs. (For those not in the know, Black Sheep is a fine real ale brewed in the Yorkshire Dales). This b... more info

You have never read a novel like this one. Winner of the 1991 Booker Prize for fiction, The Famished Road tells the story of Azaro, a spirit-child. Though spirit-children rarely stay long in the painful world of the living, when Azaro is born he chooses to fight death: "I wanted", he says, "to make happy the bruised face of the woman who would become my mother." Survival in his chaotic African village is a struggle, though. Azaro and his family must contend with hunger, di... less info

You have never read a novel like this one. Winner of the 1991 Booker Prize for fiction, The Famished Road tells the story of Azaro, a spirit-child. Though spirit-children rarely stay long in the pa... more info

Paperless office, paperless schmoffice: If you can't get your document to look right on paper, you might as well not waste time creating it at all. For administrators, printing across a local area network (LAN) was hard enough when everyone was running the same operating system. Now, with at least three widespread versions of Windows, several Mac OS flavours, and Linux servers making inroads all the time, printing can be hairier than ever. Network Printing aims to clarify the mechanisms by wh... less info

Paperless office, paperless schmoffice: If you can't get your document to look right on paper, you might as well not waste time creating it at all. For administrators, printing across a local area ... more info

Penelope Fitzgerald's books are small, perfect devastations of human hope and inhuman (ie, all-too-human) behaviour. The Bookshop unfolds in a tiny Sussex seaside town, which by 1959 is virtually cut off from the outside English world. Post-war peace and plenty having passed it by, Hardborough is defined chiefly by what it doesn't have. It does have, however, plenty of observant inhabitants, most of whom are keen to see Florence Green's new bookshop fail. But rising damp will not stop Floren... less info

Penelope Fitzgerald's books are small, perfect devastations of human hope and inhuman (ie, all-too-human) behaviour. The Bookshop unfolds in a tiny Sussex seaside town, which by 1959 is virtually c... more info

Describing himself as an "amateur historian" Alistair Moffat delves into the history of his local area in lowland Scotland and discovers a possible new identity for the man behind the legends of King Arthur. He asserts that although Arthur's person and influence did reach southern Britain his base of power was in fact in the Scottish Borders. Arthur becomes crucial to the shaping of the Britain we know today and to the creation of a powerful Scotland which remained a nation for 1000... less info

Describing himself as an "amateur historian" Alistair Moffat delves into the history of his local area in lowland Scotland and discovers a possible new identity for the man behind the leg... more info

Ripe for the Picking shows how much life there is left in that perennial theme, the English Abroad. Travel books are popular, but classics such as My Family and Other Animals and A Year in Provence prove that books about English people actually living abroad are just as entertaining. Annie Hawes is an Englishwoman who has lived in a tumbledown cottage in the Ligurian hills in Italy for about a decade. In Ripe for the Picking she picks up the story of her book Extra Virgin to recount more of ... less info

Ripe for the Picking shows how much life there is left in that perennial theme, the English Abroad. Travel books are popular, but classics such as My Family and Other Animals and A Year in Provence... more info

"The first sign of trouble at Krishnapur came with a mysterious distribution of chapatis, made of coarse flour and about the size and thickness of a biscuit; towards the end of February 1857, they swept the countryside like an epidemic." Students of history will recognise 1857 as the year of the Sepoy rebellion in India--an uprising of native soldiers against the British, brought on by Hindu and Muslim recruits' belief that the rifle cartridges with which they were provided had bee... less info

"The first sign of trouble at Krishnapur came with a mysterious distribution of chapatis, made of coarse flour and about the size and thickness of a biscuit; towards the end of February 1857, ... more info

Penzler Pick, December 1999: As the editor of an annual series for Houghton Mifflin titled Best American Mystery Stories, I read scores, if not hundreds, of little magazines in search of the best crime fiction published that year. One story that came to light from the Texas Review was "Poachers" by Tom Franklin, which was easily the most original and memorable tale of 1998. It went on to win the Edgar Allan Poe Award from the Mystery Writers of America and became the title of Frankl... less info

Penzler Pick, December 1999: As the editor of an annual series for Houghton Mifflin titled Best American Mystery Stories, I read scores, if not hundreds, of little magazines in search of the best c... more info

In what he has described as the "new East End"--Caribbean and African and Asian people, but also a lot of the old white community who have extended families the same way that we always had"--Benjamin Zephaniah is something of a poet hero: a "black spokesman and political poet" according to critic, John Walsh. Set in this East End of fish and chips and curry, rap clubs and racism--"Many of the shops had metal shutters on their windows and doors to protect them fro... less info

In what he has described as the "new East End"--Caribbean and African and Asian people, but also a lot of the old white community who have extended families the same way that we always ha... more info

Administering a Linux system isn't much like administering a Windows machine. Though the goals are similar and comparable problems arise under both environments, they each require administrators to adopt a certain way of thinking about processes and data. Linux Administration: A Beginner's Guide helps readers adapt their Windows experience to Linux work.Author Steve Shah does a great job of clueing Linux newcomers into the environment. His explanations are clear, patient, accurate and useful,... less info

Administering a Linux system isn't much like administering a Windows machine. Though the goals are similar and comparable problems arise under both environments, they each require administrators to... more info

In what he has described as the "new East End"--Caribbean and African and Asian people, but also a lot of the old white community who have extended families the same way that we always had"--Benjamin Zephaniah is something of a poet hero: a "black spokesman and political poet" according to critic, John Walsh. Set in this East End of fish and chips and curry, rap clubs and racism--"Many of the shops had metal shutters on their windows and doors to protect them fro... less info

In what he has described as the "new East End"--Caribbean and African and Asian people, but also a lot of the old white community who have extended families the same way that we always ha... more info

Consider the humble jar of nutmeg pushed to the back of your kitchen cupboard, among all the other spices that you hardly ever use. Would you believe that nutmeg formed the basis for one of the most bitter international conflicts of the 17th century, and was also intimately connected to the rise to global pre-eminence of New York City? Strange but true; nutmeg was one of the most prized commodities in Renaissance Europe, and its fascinating story is told in Giles Milton's delightful book Nath... less info

Consider the humble jar of nutmeg pushed to the back of your kitchen cupboard, among all the other spices that you hardly ever use. Would you believe that nutmeg formed the basis for one of the mos... more info

The Pretender is the second book in Jane Stevenson's trilogy which began with Astraea, the story of Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia (daughter of James I) and her secret marriage to an exiled African prince. While The Pretender continues the theme of 17th- century royal and political intrigue, Elizabeth and her prince are now dead and the couple's only son, Balthazar, is making his living as a doctor, an early surgeon in fact, in a world well removed from the court. Having been brought up in secre... less info

The Pretender is the second book in Jane Stevenson's trilogy which began with Astraea, the story of Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia (daughter of James I) and her secret marriage to an exiled African pr... more info