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Orion Books
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A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder
Автор: Eric Abrahamson Жанр: Orion Books Издательство: Orion Books Год: 2007 Страниц: 336 Дата загрузки: 15 июня 20092010-09-27
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Like the bestselling Freakonomics or Blink, here is a book that combines a professor's expertise with stories from everyday life to provide a striking new view of how our world works. Ever since Einstein's study of Brownian Motion, scientists have understood that a little disorder actually makes systems more effective. But most people still shun disorder, or suffer guilt over the mess they can't avoid. No longer! With a spectacular array of anecdotes and case studies of the useful role mess can play, here is an antidote to the accepted wisdom that tight schedules, neatness and consistency are the keys to success. Drawing on examples from business, parenting, cooking, the war on terrorism, retail and even the meteoric career of Arnold Schwarzenegger, co-authors Abrahamson and Freedman demonstrate that moderately messy systems use resources more efficiently, yield better solutions and are harder to break than neat ones. A PERFECT MESS will help readers assess what the right amount of disorder is for a given system, and how to apply these ideas on to a large scale — government or society — and on a small scale — (in your attic, kitchen or office). A PERFECT MESS will forever change the way we think about those unruly heaps of paper on our desks.
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Our Island Story
Автор: H.E. Marshall Жанр: Разное Издательство: Orion Books Год: 2007 Страниц: 496 Дата загрузки: 15 августа 20092010-04-29
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Just over a century ago, Our Island Story entranced a nation's children by telling their history in stories. Short, simply written chapters, packed with living characters and thrilling action — and illustrated with vivid colour pictures — illuminate all the main events from Britain's earliest days to the end of Victoria's reign. And its glorious fusion of myth and legend with sober fact — Canute and King Arthur with Cromwell and the Indian Mutiny — is as seductive now as it ever was.
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The Reader
Автор: Bernhard Schlink Жанр: Orion Books Издательство: Orion Books Год: 2008 Страниц: 240 Дата загрузки: 22 марта 20112011-02-19
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For 15-year-old Michael Berg, a chance meeting with an older woman leads to far more than he ever imagined. The woman in question is Hanna, and before long they embark on a passionate, clandestine love affair which leaves Michael both euphoric and confused. For Hanna is not all she seems. Years later, as a law student observing a trial in Germany, Michael is shocked to realize that the person in the dock is Hanna. The woman he had loved is a criminal. Much about her behaviour during the trial does not make sense. But then suddenly, and terribly, it does — Hanna is not only obliged to answer for a horrible crime, she is also desperately concealing an even deeper secret.
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Bad Men: Guantanamo Bay and the Secret Prisons
Автор: Clive Stafford Smith Жанр: Orion Books Издательство: Orion Books Год: 2008 Страниц: 336 Дата загрузки: 15 июня 20102011-09-27
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Clive Stafford Smith is the 46-year-old human-rights lawyer who has famously — some would say notoriously — spent more than twenty years in the United States representing prisoners on Death Row. His clients include many detainees in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, and he established the London-based charity Reprieve, developed to defending human rights in 1999. His book is quite simply, devastating, and many will laugh and cry reading it: laugh in disbelief, and cry in despair at the utter inhumanity and lack of imagination wrapped up in hypocrisy so enormous that it beggars understanding. Yet even in the face of insurmountable odds, Clive Stafford Smith remains an optimist. Few could maintain his capacity for work and his commitment to his clients if he allowed frustration or despair to divert him. His experiences, graphically recounted in this book, have enabled him to shine a bright, unblinking light into the darkest corners of illegality that are being justified by governments in the name of the War on Terror.
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Young Stalin
Автор: Simon Sebag Montefiore Жанр: Orion Books Издательство: Orion Books Год: 2008 Страниц: 480 Дата загрузки: 12 мая 20112012-03-18
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Stalin remains one of the creators of our world — like Hitler, the personification of evil. Yet Stalin hid his past and remains mysterious. This enthralling biography that reads like a thriller finally unveils the secret but extraordinary journey of the Georgian cobbler's son who became the Red Tsar. What forms such a merciless psychopath and consummate politician? Was he illegitimate? Did he owe everything to his mother — was she whore or saint? Was he a Tsarist agent or Lenin's chief gangster? Was he to blame for his wife's premature death? If he really missed the 1917 Revolution, how did he emerge so powerful? Born in poverty, exceptional in his studies, this charismatic but dangerous boy was hailed as a romantic poet, trained as a priest, but found his mission as fanatical revolutionary. The secret world of Joseph Conrad-style terrorism was Stalin's natural habitat, where he charmed his future courtiers, made the enemies he later liquidated, and abandoned his many mistresses and children. Montefiore shows how the murderous paranoia and gangsterism of the criminal underworld, combined with pitiless ideology, taught Stalin how to triumph in the Kremlin.
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The Indian Mutiny
Автор: Julian Spilsbury Жанр: Orion Books Издательство: Orion Books Год: 2008 Страниц: 400 Дата загрузки: 15 апреля 20122009-06-21
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The Indian Mutiny is a real page-turner, an epic story with surprising modern parallels. Fomer army officer-turned-TV scriptwriter, Julian Spilsbury is the ideal author to take us back to the desperate summer of 1857 when thousands of Indian soldiers mutinied. They murdered their officers, hunted down the women and children and burned and slaughtered their way to Delhi. The tiny British garrison at Lucknow held out against all odds; the one at Cawnpore surrendered only to be betrayed and massacred. Modern Indian accounts call this 'the first war of liberation', but as Julian Spilsbury reveals, 80 per cent of the so-called 'British' forces were from the sub-continent. Sikhs, Gurkhas and Afghans fought alongside small numbers of British soldiers. Together, they faced terrible odds and won. In the process they created a new army that would play a vital role in the Allied forces in both World Wars. Julian Spilsbury weaves the story together from some of the most vivid eyewitness accounts ever written. From the women and children hiding from blood-crazed mobs, to the epic battles that decided the campaign, to the grisly revenge exacted by the British forces, this is a gripping recreation of the greatest crisis of Empire.
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On the Edge: My Story
Автор: Richard Hammond Жанр: Orion Books Издательство: Orion Books Год: 2008 Страниц: 320 Дата загрузки: 19 апреля 20122011-09-12
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Richard Hammond is one of our most in-demand and best-loved television presenters. In September 2006, he suffered a serious brain injury following a high-speed car crash. «On the Edge» is his compelling account of life before and after the accident and an honest description of his recovery, full of drama and incident. An adrenalin junkie long before his association with Top Gear, Richard tells the story of his life, from the small boy showing off with ridiculous stunts on his bicycle to the adolescent with a near-obsessive attraction to speed and the smell of petrol. After a series of jobs in local radio, he graduated to television and eventually to Top Gear. His insights into the personalities, the camaraderie and the stunts for which Top Gear has become famous, make compulsive reading. It was whilst filming for Top Gear that Richard was involved in a high speed crash, driving a jet-powered dragster. His wife Mindy tells the story of the anxious hours and days of watching and waiting until he finally emerged from his coma. In an extraordinarily powerful piece of writing, she and Richard then piece together the stages of his recovery as his shattered mind slowly reformed. The final chapter recounts his return home and his triumphant reappearance in front of the cameras.
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Revolution 1989: The Fall of the Soviet Empire
Автор: Victor Sebestyen Жанр: Orion Books Издательство: Orion Books Год: 2010 Страниц: 451 Дата загрузки: 11 августа 20122013-09-30
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For more than 40 years after the Second World War the Iron Curtain divided Europe physically, with 300 km of walls and barbed wire fences; ideologically, between communism and capitalism; psychologically, between people imprisoned under totalitarian dictatorships and their neighbours enjoying democratic freedoms; and militarily, by two mighty, distrustful power blocs, still fighting the cold war. East-West rivalry and a cruelly divided continent seemed to be unalterable facts of life. Few statesmen, diplomats, soldiers or thinkers imagined these certainties would change in their lifetimes. At the start of 1989, ten European nations were still Soviet vassal states. By the end of the year, one after another, they had thrown off communism, declared national independence, and embarked on the road to democracy. One of history's most brutal empires was on its knees. Poets who had been languishing in jails became vice presidents. When the Berlin Wall fell on a chilly November night it seemed as though the open wounds of the cruel twentieth century would at last begin to heal. The Year of Revolutions appeared as a beacon of hope for oppressed people elsewhere who dared to dream that they too could free themselves. In a dizzying few months of almost entirely peaceful revolutions the people's will triumphed over tyranny. An entire way of life was swept away along with a half dozen incompetent, corrupt and at times vicious dictatorships. It happened with little violence, apart from a few days in Romania. Now, twenty years on, Victor Sebestyen reassesses this decisive moment in modern history.
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Liquidate Paris
Автор: Sven Hassel Жанр: Orion Books Издательство: Orion Books Год: 2004 Страниц: 320 Дата загрузки: 18 июня 20092007-02-09
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From the wartorn steppes of Russia, from the slopes of Monte Cassino, the stunned, bloody remnants of Hitler's armies were gathered to fight the last battle of the German Reich — the battle of the Western Front. And as the Allies advanced upon Paris, the war erupted into its most ruthless, most savage and cruel phase. Across the scarred, corpse-strewn landscape of northern France, the men of the Panzer tank corps retreated — fighting a suicide action as they went...
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The Second Book of Lankhmar
Автор: Fritz Leiber Жанр: Orion Books Издательство: Orion Books Год: 2001 Страниц: 704 Дата загрузки: 12 марта 20092003-05-24
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After their legendary adventures in the northern wastes and beyond, Fafhrd, the giant barbarian warrior, and the Gray Mouser, master thief, novice wizard and expert swordsman, are back home in Lankhmar again, and looking for an easy time. But Lankhmar is under attack from a strange horde of invaders, including a two-headed dragon and an army of miniature wanderers... Once those threats are seen off, a quest to the farthest reaches of Nehwon is in prospect. And then, in the last book of their adventures, Fafhrd goes sailing through the clouds, and the Mouser takes to the seas, before we finally bid a fond, if sad, farewell to Lankhmar. «The Second Book of Lankhmar» includes the last three volumes of the hugely enjoyable series.
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Gloriana
Автор: Michael Moorcock Жанр: Orion Books Издательство: Orion Books Год: 2001 Страниц: 368 Дата загрузки: 26 мая 20092005-03-18
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Gloriana rules an Albion whose empire embraces America and most of Asia. A new Golden Age of peace, enlightenment and prosperity has dawned. Gloriana is Albion and Albion is Gloriana; if one falls, so too will the other. And Gloriana is oppressed by the burden this places upon her — and by the fact that she remains incapable of orgasm. The maintenance of the delicate balance that keeps Albion and Gloriana thriving depends of Montfallcon, Gloriana's Chancellor, and on his network of spies and assassins — in particular on Quire, cold hearted seducer of virtue and murderer of innocence. When Quire falls out with Montfallcon, he forms an alliance with his greatest enemy and conceives a plan to ruin Gloriana, destroy Albion, the empire and the Golden Age itself. But even the utterly ruthless Quire does not fully understand what he has set in motion when he persuades the Queen to fall in love with him... Moorcock's masterly evocation of Gloriana's strange and secretive palace and of a vibrant London make this one of his most powerful and memorable novels.
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The Broken Sword
Автор: Poul Anderson Жанр: Orion Books Издательство: Orion Books Год: 2002 Страниц: 288 Дата загрузки: 12 марта 20092005-04-22
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Thor has broken the sword Tyrfing so that it cannot strike at the roots of Yggdrasil, the tree that binds together earth, heaven and hell. But now the mighty sword is needed again to save the elves in their war against the trolls, and only Scafloc, a human child kidnapped and raised by the elves, can hope to persuade Bolverk the ice-giant to make Tyrfing whole again. But Scafloc must also confront his shadow self, Valgard the changeling who has taken his place in the world of men.
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The Simulacra
Автор: Philip K. Dick Жанр: Orion Books Издательство: Orion Books Год: 2004 Страниц: 224 Дата загрузки: 08 марта 20092006-05-28
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A few years from now the President of the USA will be an android and his entire government a fraud. Everyone in the country is maladjusted. Doesn't seem possible, does it? Welcome to the world of Dr. Superb, the sole remaining psychotherapist. Philip K. Dick tells a story of desperate love, lethal body odour and an attempted fascistic takeover of the USA and shows that there is always another layer of conspiracy beneath the one we see.
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Galactic Pot-Healer
Автор: Philip K. Dick Жанр: Orion Books Издательство: Orion Books Год: 2005 Страниц: 192 Дата загрузки: 15 августа 20092007-05-15
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Joe Fernwright works as a pot-healer, a repairer of ceramics, in a dull future where there isn't much call for his skills. He's broke and bored when the offer from the Glimmung comes along. It might just be the answer to both his financial and spiritual problems, even if it does mean working on a strange project on Plowman's Planet with other assorted odd creatures. The only thing is that the Glimmung may just be divine and ask for more than Joe's commitment to the job...
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The Zap Gun
Автор: Philip K. Dick Жанр: Orion Books Издательство: Orion Books Год: 2006 Страниц: 256 Дата загрузки: 25 июня 20082010-03-28
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Scaldingly sarcastic yet enduringly empathetic, The Zap Gun is Dick's remarkable novel depicting the insanity of the arms race. Lars Powderdry and Lilo Topchev are counterpart weapons fashion designers for a world divided into two factions-Wes-bloc and Peep-East. Since the Plowshare Protocols of 2002, their job has been to invent elaborate weapons that only seem massively lethal. But when alien satellites hostile to both sides appear in the sky, the two are brought together in the dire hope that they can create a weapon to save the world, a task made all the more difficult by Lars falling in love with Lilo even as he knows she's trying to kill him.
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Flow, My Tears, Policeman Said
Автор: Philip K. Dick Жанр: Orion Books Издательство: Orion Books Год: 2007 Страниц: 256 Дата загрузки: 25 июня 20092010-02-29
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Jason Taverner is a Six, the result of top secret government experiments forty years before which produced a handful of unnaturally bright and beautiful people — and he's the prime-time idol of millions until, inexplicably, all record of him is wiped from the data banks of Earth. Suddenly he's a nobody in a police state where nobody is allowed to be a nobody. Will he ever be rich and famous again? Was he, in fact, ever rich and famous?
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Human Is? A Philip K: Dick Reader
Автор: Philip K. Dick Жанр: Orion Books Издательство: Orion Books Год: 2007 Страниц: 448 Дата загрузки: 20 декабря 20092009-05-25
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Drawn from the five volumes of his complete short stories (also published by Gollancz) this volume represents the very cream of Philip K. Dick's output. It serves both as a celebration of his work, in the 25th year since his death, and as the ideal introduction to his unique take on the world for new readers. As our culture becomes ever more fluid, as fact is fictionalised, as documentary gives way to reality-TV, as our identities are digitised, as globalism runs wild, as drugs become ever more ubiquitous the world is finally catching up with even the most bizarre of Philip K. Dick's imaginings. 25 years after his death we are living in Philip K. Dick's world, this new authoratitive collection of his best short fiction shows us why.
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Before They Are Hanged: The First Law: Book Two
Автор: Joe Abercrombie Жанр: Orion Books Издательство: Orion Books Год: 2008 Страниц: 592 Дата загрузки: 13 октрября 20112011-09-12
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Bitter and merciless war is coming to the frozen north. It's bloody and dangerous and the Union army, split by politics and hamstrung by incompetence, is utterly unprepared for the slaughter that's coming. Lacking experience, training, and in some cases even weapons the army is scarcely equipped to repel Bethod's scouts, let alone the cream of his forces. In the heat-ravaged south the Gurkish are massing to assault the city of Dagoska, defended by Inquisitor Glokta. The city is braced for the inevitable defeat and massacre to come, preparations are made to make the Gurkish pay for every inch of land... but a plot is festering to hand the city to its beseigers without a fight, and the previous Inquisitor of Dagoska vanished without trace. Threatened from within and without the city, Glokta needs answers, and he needs them soon. And to the east a small band of malefactors travel to the edge of the world to reclaim a device from history — a Seed, hidden for generations — with tremendous destructive potential. A device which could put a end to war, to the army of Eaters in the South, to the invasion of Shanka from the North — but only if it can be found, and only if its power can be controlled...
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Necrophenia
Автор: Robert Rankin Жанр: Orion Books Издательство: Orion Books Год: 2009 Страниц: 400 Дата загрузки: 15 апреля 20132011-05-22
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It is a matter of historical record that during the latter part of World War II, England's top-secret Ministry of Serendipity enlisted the services of arch-magician Aleister Crowley to create a Homunculus. Why? Well that's a long story, spanning almost seven decades as it follows the life and career of Tyler, rock star, private eye — and notable for the fact that he almost saved Mankind. The cast of millions also includes ukulele maestro George Formby, Mick Jagger, Mama Cass, Elvis Presley and Lazlo Woodbine. And Tyler's brother, Andy, who impersonates animals (and who single-handedly brought about the Swinging Sixties). And a lady named Clara from Croydon, who unlocked the meta-phenomena of the Multiverse. And a corner shopkeeper from Brentford, who created a sitting room for God. And a great many living dead. Oh yes, and it also involves a monster in human form whose intention it is to turn the Earth into a Necrosphere, a planet totally devoid of life...
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Chronicles of Amber
Автор: Roger Zelazny Жанр: Orion Books Издательство: Orion Books Год: 2008 Страниц: 800 Дата загрузки: 15 июля 20092009-12-30
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Amber is the one real world, casting infinite reflections of itself — Shadow worlds, that can be manipulated by those of royal Amberite blood. But the royal family is torn apart by jealousies and suspicion; the disappearance of the Patriach Oberon has intensified the internal conflict by leaving the throne apparently up for grabs. In a hospital on the Shadow Earth, a young man is recovering from a freak car accident; amnesia has robbed him of all his memory, even the fact that he is Corwin, Crown Prince of Amber, rightful heir to the throne — and he is in deadly peril... The five books, Nine Princes in Amber, The Guns of Avalon, Sign of the Unicorn, The Hand of Oberon and The Courts of Chaos, together make up The Chronicles of Amber, Roger Zelazny's finest work of fantasy and an undisputed classic of the genre.
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