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Moscow Diary is thediary kept by Marjorie Farquharson during the period in which she establishedAmnesty International’s Information Office in Moscow, a unique venture during afascinating period of change. In 1991, Marjorie was the first westerner working on human rights with apermanent base. It was particularly important because for years the USSR hadconsidered Amnesty an anti-Soviet organisation - “a nest of spies” so to speak.

Marjorie’s role together with her penetrating perceptionsand her entertaining style of writing make this a very interesting accountwhich combines insights into the politics of human rights and into theunusually wide range of people Marjorie encountered. Most westerners in Moscowlived a life apart with access to foreign currency shops and good-quality food.Marjorie chose instead to live as an ordinary Muscovite, in one room with asmall kitchen, even when, in 1992, the inflation rate in Russia soared to morethan 2000%.

The fact that the diary was written 25 years ago doesn’t inany way undermine the author’s efforts to help Russia become “a normal country”,nor does it hide the author’s true passion for the Russian people. A gem of abook capturing a moment in time by a truly humble, self-sacrificing woman.

Note: A newer 10th anniversary edition of Seeing That Frees is now available. This revised edition includes a new foreword by Yahel Avigur as well as previously unpublished reflections from Rob Burbea.

In this ground-breaking and seminal work, esteemed Buddhist teacher Rob Burbea lays out an original and comprehensive approach to deepening insight. Starting from simple and easily accessible understandings of emptiness, Burbea presents a unique conception of the path along which he escorts the practitioner gradually, through the careful structure of the work, into ever more mystical levels of insight. Through its precise instructions, illuminating exercises and discussions that address the subtleties of both practice and understanding, Seeing That Frees opens up for the committed meditator all the profundity of the Buddha’s radical teachings on emptiness. This is a book that will take time to digest and will serve as a lifelong companion on the path, leading the reader, as it does, progressively deeper into the territory of liberation. From the Foreword by Joseph Goldstein: “Rob Burbea, in this remarkable book, proves to be a wonderfully skilled guide in exploring the understanding of emptiness as the key insight in transforming our lives... It is rare to find a book that explores so deeply the philosophical underpinnings of awakening at the same time as offering the practical means to realize it.”

Set in Britain and America during a Presidential election year in the very near future, Bear in the Woods explores some of the darker and more dangerous connections within our two societies.

A group of London friends find themselves at the epicentre of a murderous struggle reaching to the highest seats of power. It starts when one of their number, Bryn, begins to suspect that someone, inexplicably, may be trying to kill him. Two attempts on his life, however, are dismissed by his friends as near-miss accidents. When he goes on a winter trip to the USA to fan the embers of an old flame, a professional assassin pursues him from Chicago to Detroit, to Salt Lake City and across the snow-laden mountains of Utah. He escapes and returns to England, but finds he is no longer the target.

Months pass and it seems that the threat – conceivably the result of mistaken identity or a terrible misunderstanding – has passed. But when Bryn travels once again to America, the nightmare starts all over again, this time in New York.

The puddle in the road seemed like the perfect place for Tommy the mouse to test out his latest get-rich-quick scheme. However, just as he and his cousins had rowed the raft to the centre of the water, a passing vehicle splashed through it, barely missing them but creating a wave that shoved the raft and its passengers into an old drainage slot.

Having fallen down the drain, the companions find themselves at the mercy of the raging currents in the sewerage system. The raft is carried deeper and deeper through a confusing maze of passageways and grottos in which fire and a wisecracking piranha put the mice in constant peril.

Eventually the craft enters an old coal mine, where a bullfrog named Abner appears and tells the companions he knows of a route he can guide them along that will take them back up to the surface.

But with swashbuckling trouble chasing them and other dangers to be faced directly ahead, will the companions end their days in the sewer, or finally escape from below.

Robin Duval’s follow-up to Bear in the Woods is a heart-in-mouth tale of international conspiracy, self-discovery and romance.

One summer evening in Bavaria, fortyish history professor Bryn Williams – more Frasier than Bond – falls simultaneously into love and mortal danger. He becomes a target for MI6, Mossad and an American hit man. Oblivious to his predicament, he continues his holiday in America. Walking alone in a National Park, he stumbles on a newly dead body. He is arrested for murder, and released only when evidence of a third party emerges. But when he discovers the identity of the killer, and reports it to the San Francisco police, his motel room is blown up. With no-one to turn to, he flees north.

He is intercepted in the mountains by a cousin, who works for MI6. And by the woman he fell in love with in Bavaria. They persuade him – against his better judgment – to help frustrate a plot to destroy the American President. He is drawn into a web of conspiracy and deceit whose true nature only gradually becomes apparent.

As the narrative races towards its unexpected and shocking climax, the hero discovers untapped reserves of talent – as lover and as man of action.

This is also a tale about the underbelly of American and international politics. About the secret forces that drive people and nations towards destruction

Sometimes terrorism works.....

In the 1880s terrorism, as we understand it today, became a reality when a group of Russian idealists, the People’s Will, decided to sacrifice everything for a single goal: a fair and free society.

Their plan, driven by Sonya Perovskaya, was to assassinate the Tsar. Once he was gone, they believed, some form of democracy must follow. And the plan succeeded – despite legions of secret police protecting the Tsar’s every movement, Sonya and her little band hounded him to death.

But in every other respect they failed. Repression – not freedom – followed the assassination. In destroying the Tsar they destroyed themselves, their lives, their integrity, their very ideals.

Saturn’s Daughters is the story of this failure. The birth of a movement, the death of dictator and the self-destruction of the women and men who were first to call themselves terrorists. They began as idealists, they ended as psychopaths.

Sometimes terrorism works. Mostly it leads to disaster.

Set in Italy during the Napoleonic Wars, The Causeway confronts the reality of religious barbarity, revolutionary violence and the frustration endured by women seeking to determine their own destiny.

A young Scottish girl, Marion, is sent to the convent of Santa Maria della Consolazione on the island of Ischia, the fate of many unwanted daughters of Catholic families. The convent is a death-factory where novices and nuns are cynically exposed to disease, physical abuse and privation. Few survive. The convent itself survives on the postulant dowry paid by each girl’s family. (The convent is today a hotel.)

Threatened with starvation, merciless flogging and mental torture at the hands of her confessor, Marion has no way out. An older nun, Sister Teresa, feels compassion for the young victim so, on Christmas night 1798, she snatches Marion from a whipping in the punishment cell, and the two women escape. Beyond the convent walls, Ischia is in turmoil: the Jacobin revolution in Naples is boiling, and Nelson’s fleet has just abandoned Naples to mob violence. The women are trapped on the island. As they learn to trust each other, an enduring bond forms between them.

Marion’s Jacobite spirit is drawn to the revolutionaries led by Carlo, and to the deserters from the British navy who fight alongside them. Marion and Carlo embark on a tentative love affair, while Teresa becomes close to one of the deserters, Bart. But none of this is to bear fruit. During a raid against Ischia by Captain Foote of the Seahorse, the two women finally escape the island, their lives now united by a profound and abiding love.

In terms of your place in the world, it is your actions that define you. Every moment of your life you are always, necessarily doing something. And so the question is – why do you do what you do?

A young man travels on a one-way ticket to South East Asia in search of freedom and everything that comes with it. Free from responsibility, free from others, free from himself. That way he’ll really learn what makes him tick.

He discovers paradise islands, beautiful mountains and electric cities; gets hooked on crazy liquor, cheap pills, loose women and easy living. He has various run-ins on motorbikes and in the jungle, with butterflies and ladyboys, socio-narcotic minefields, hustlers, mafia, mad men and mystics. All the while surfing the fine line between East and West, imagination and reality, sanity and madness, life and death; as he follows the crazy, impossible dream to go everywhere, meet everyone and do everything.

On his quest to discover the meaning of freedom, he also goes on an intellectual journey through various areas of philosophy, history and science, in order to discover whether or not we are truly masters of our own will; and if we are, then how do we control ourselves? His quest takes us to the very core of human consciousness.

At turns beautiful and ugly, hilarious and horrifying, exalted and base, I of the Sun takes the reader on an epic journey following the Sun around South East Asia and into the heart of what it means to be human, on a young man’s literary and philosophical tour deforce.

Ayub Shaikh is a renowned trainer, famous for having brought credibility, confidence and industry knowledge to over 5,000 IT recruitment consultants, HR professionals and resourcers through his training courses around the world. In the past Ayub himself was an accomplished IT recruiter in the financial heart of London and is now a mentor to some of the world''s largest IT recruitment consultancies. His company Holistica Consulting is the world''s only training company dedicated purely to teaching IT recruiters and resourcers all they need to know about the various IT vertical markets such as SAP, JAVA, C#, and Telecoms. Without doubt there is nobody more suited to writing the world''s first ''survival guide'' for the IT Recruitment industry.

Each chapter is written with recruitment relevance in mind, and includes Interview questions and further techniques to help match candidates to jobs.

This is a hugely significant work for the IT recruitment industry, but do not be daunted (those of you who are squeamish about IT jargon and terminology). Those who have attended Ayub''s training will immediately relate to the uniquely simple, passionate and even humorous ways in which he puts across very complex IT concepts and principals. And his now famous easy-to-understand teaching style continues into this ground breaking book. IT knowledge is delivered in a reassuring and relaxed way; and the stories, trivia, and anecdotes flow throughout.

This is an instruction manual like no other. With The Complete IT Recruitment Survival Guide you have a constant, easy-to-understand yet knowledgeable companion as you tackle the murky waters of the world of IT recruitment.

This a collection of short stories, written over ten years. They range from the supernatural to human relationships; from childhood to extreme old age; from fantasy to satire.

They deal with reincarnation, loss, shattered dreams, guilt, love and other aspects of the human condition. There is the plain spinster, who lives in a secret fantasy world through her writings; there is the baby snatcher; there is the ghost of a wronged woman at her own funeral. The man at the supermarket checkout exacts his own revenge on his tormentors; the teacher is summarily suspended on the word of one of his pupils. Undelivered telegrams change lives; a stone statue plays a central part in a boy’s life.

Other stories take place in post War Berlin, before the removal of the Wall, and in Venice, where a coupling leads to years of guilt and uncertainty. There is a satirical fairy story, mocking the modern world; there is an inept counsellor, seeking the help of her “friends.” The mystery of the meaning of life is examined in a story of reincarnation, which centres on the idea that at the moment of birth, a baby knows all her previous existences, and desperately wants to return to the womb. A common theme is deception, hence the title “Where the Truth Lies.”

Assariyah will stop at nothing to get what she wants, regardless of who she hurts.Her spoilt nature has come from a harsh past. Having experienced an impoverished life after the death of her father and dealing with broke guys, she refuses to settle for anyone who cannot provide her with the materialistic things she craves.

Money, sex, drugs, fast cars, labels and even more money controls Assariyah’s life, leading her to a downward spiral. As her story unfolds, we see her softer, vulnerable side – the side of her that just wants to be loved, love and start a family. But secrets from her childhood have left her deeply scarred and unable to commit fully to a relationship.

Will Assariyah learn that the most valuable things in the world come without a price tag, before it is too late? A fast-paced, dramatic novel that will appeal to chick-lit fans, Assariyah: Money Over Everything will keep you guessing until the end.

Never Mind the Botox is a series about four professional women all working on the sale of high-profile cosmetic surgery business the Beau Street Group. Each book reveals how the women cope with one of the most glamorous but challenging deals of their careers, and the dramatic impact it has on their personal lives. With a briefcase in one hand and a glass of wine in the other, can they navigate their way through a surreal world of boob jobs by day and intrigue by night and still keep their own love lives on track?

Rachel Altman is a corporate financier with a prestigious accounting firm who''s desperately trying to keep on the straight and narrow. Hopelessly led astray by her bar-diving boyfriend, she gets the chance to turn things around when her boss gives her the break she''s been waiting for. But when the deal doesn''t go as planned Rachel panics, sparking off a chain of betrayal and lies that threatens to ruin both her love life and career.

The series can be read in any order.

If you want to communicate effectively with people - especially if you want to persuade them to act - you need to start from where they are, not from where you are. The failure to do this lies at the root of many communications damp squibs, disasters and social conflicts.

Knowing about the Three Worlds gives you a head start in getting it right. These invisible ‘Worlds’ can only be truly revealed by large scale detailed surveys which identify the connections and correlations between attitudes and beliefs. These sets of attitudes and beliefs create three different versions of ‘common sense’, three distinct ways of seeing the world and of evaluating any offer or ask, any campaign or political idea, any past-time, hobby, social opportunity, any purchase, product or service. Because our place in one world or another is determined by meeting, or not yet having met, unconscious needs – of safety and security or identity, or for esteem of others or self esteem, or for things beyond that such as new ideas, innovations or ethics – we are not ordinarily aware that these worlds exist.

This book details, for the first time, how the values mapping system developed by Cultural Dynamics Strategy and Marketing (CDSM), enables us to look beneath the fog of argument and opinion, and cut through the confusion of behaviours being undertaken for different reasons, to lay bare the ‘social DNA’ which lies beneath and drives much of our individual behaviour, relationships, politics and social dynamics. Based on a hugely detailed model of the UK population, the CDSM model has been statistically calibrated to fit the internationally validated values measurements of Prof Shalom Schwartz at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

The Three Worlds exist in all countries, and with this book the reader will be able to recognize Settlers, Prospectors and Pioneers wherever they live. Companies and campaigners, from Greenpeace to Shell, from the National Trust to Unilever, from the US Marines to the BBC and from McDonald’s to Arsenal Football Club, have used the Three Worlds insights to build strategies that work, in marketing, in environmental change campaigns, in team building and in communications. This book gives examples, principles and guidelines to enable anyone to do likewise.