Award winning photographer Art Wolfe has worked in hundreds of locations and this is THE book of his career recording with great sensitivity a rapidly vanishing natural world. He has taken an estimated two million images in his lifetime and travels nearly nine months out of the year photographing new projects and giving inspirational presentations to educational, conservation and spiritual groups. In 1978 he published his first book 'Indian Baskets of the Northwest Coast' and worked for the world's top magazines such as National Geographic, Smithsonian, Audubon, GEO and Terre Sauvage. Magazines all over the world publish his photographs and stories and he is known for having the broadest range of excellence of any nature photographer. His wildlife portraits show cormorants sitting being petted by Chinese men on a gaslit raft at night, the Milky Way in spectacular colour behind two boulders and the colourful beads and rainbow colours of the costumes worn by the Maasai Mara tribespeople. An adult male lion stares vacantly into his camera, a plains zebra amidst white bearded wildebeest, greater and lesser flamingos pictured in Kenya and gemsbok African elephant, springbok and zebras all pictured together in the Etosha National Park, Namibia. There are colourful carpets, Dogon hunters and a spectacular series of gatefold pages including Moroccan architecture and women husking corn, landscapes of unbelievable beauty such as the Antarctic Peninsula, blue glaciers in Iceland, colourful wild flowers and snowy owlets in Alaska, a penguin stranded on a small iceberg, Arctic wolves in Canada, polar bears and cubs in Manitoba Canada. The book is organised by Mountain, Polar and Subpolar, Desert and Savannah, Ocean and Island and Tropical and Subtropical. Wolfe's images take us through the world's ecosystems and geographical regions in a vivid display of the fragility and interconnectivity of life on Earth and the book is undeniably breathtaking, an elegantly crafted masterpiece that will thrill collectors of nature photography. 396 enormous pages with dozens of gatefold pullouts, 28 x 3.8 x 35.5cm, spectacular colour.
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French flower painter Pierre-Joseph Redouté (1759-1840) devoted himself exclusively to capturing the diversity of flowering plants in watercolour paintings which were then published as copper engravings, with careful botanical descriptions. The darling of wealthy Parisian patrons including Napoleon's wife Josephine, he was dubbed "the Raphael of flowers," and is regarded to this day as a master of botanical illustration. His illustrations of the Botanical Alphabets of D. N. Guillamain were a landmark in flower painting and he was an innovator in the techniques of printing including 'stipple-engraving'. This glorious and completely faithful reproduction includes Roses from 1817-1824 following The Lilies 1802-1816 and Selection of the Most Beautiful Flowers, each exquisite botanical illustration afforded one full page in colour. Quality heavyweight paper, stitched binding, one for all lovers of nature and art. Beautiful colour artworks, new from Taschen, superheavyweight luxury hardback. This collection brings Taschen's best-selling XL-sized edition to a smaller, more convenient format, still gathering some of the finest colour engravings from Redouté's illustrations of Roses, Lilies, and Choix des plus belles fleurs et quelques branches des plus beaux fruits (Selection of the Most Beautiful Blooms and Branches with the Finest Fruits). Offering a vibrant overview of Redouté's mixture of accuracy and beauty, it is also a privileged glimpse into the magnificent gardens and greenhouses of a bygone Paris. Text in English, Italian and Spanish. 16 x 22cm, rich with colour, 512 pages. New from Taschen.

An intelligent and perceptive word-picture of the lives of early criminals, written by a former police officer fascinated by historical stories of murder and justice. She studies nine historic crimes - and one familiar obsession. Murder truly was most foul in early modern Britain. Pamphlets littered the streets titillating audiences with exceedingly gruesome tales. Trials were gossipy events packed to the rafters with noisome spectators. Executions were public proceedings which promised not only gore, but desperate confessions and the grandest, most righteous human drama. The book unfolds true stories of murder, criminal investigation, early forensic techniques and high court trials pieced together from original research using coroner's inquests, court records, parish archives, letters, diaries and the cheap street pamphlets that proliferated to satisfy a voracious public. The historical laws and attitudes may strike us as exceptionally cruel, yet many aspects of public reaction to the criminal justice system have remained unchanged. We are still fascinated by narratives of murder and true crime, and trials continue to be grand public spectacles. Chapters include The Trial of Spencer Cowper, The Mutilation of Francis Marshall, The Bloody Midwife of Poplar and The Honourable Drowning of John Temple. 296pp.

This is an informal and now rare 1993 illustrated guide about mechanical development in coal plants. The equipment was introduced in 1942 as an emergency measure to ease a shortfall in deep mined coal supplies. The story begins with Albert Newby Braithwaite was an MP for Buckrose in Yorkshire and director of the well-established construction company, Sir Lindsay Parkinson & Co. It was his efforts that pushed for the equipment to be developed, convincing the government of the viability of this way of recovering much needed additional coal for assisting the war effort. Without the method, the coal would have been unobtainable. This book shares a history of the development through photos with accompanying details. See the rigid dump truck created by the Euclid Road Machinery Company of which the first purpose-built models were designed to replace the traditional rail car system in mines and quarries during the mid-1930s. Learn that it became normal for machines to travel short distances before legal and environmental laws in the run up to the 1960s. Discover the impressive history of Derek Crouch Ltd. including its 25th anniversary in 1969 when they were producing 1.5 million tons of coal annually and the company ran a site area of 800 hectares. The book also notes historical moments for the industry at large, such as noting on 1st May 1973 that residents of Widdrington village faced a sleepless night as a machine called 'Big Georgie' with 56ft by 10ft 'shoes' went 'walkies', crossing the A1068 road at a walking speed of 0.16mph. The reader will also understand the sustainability within the industry as trucks that are no longer economically viable to operate gained a further lease of life by conversion into water bowsers. This is an informative, imaginative explanation into the history of opencast equipment in coal plants. 7.9" x 10.8", colour and black and white images, 80pp.

The networks of canals stretching from the coast at Gravelines through St-Omer follows the approximate boundary between Artois and Flanders and was in 1940 the defence line established on the Western Edge of the so-called Dunkerque Corridor designed by Lord Gort to provide an evacuation route to the Channel coast. Even before events on the line of the Escaut Line had concluded with yet another Allied withdrawal, Lord Gort was diverting units to bolster the Canal Line defences. This was probably the first occasion that fighting along the Canal Line has been looked at in detail in this book. Overlooked by the inevitable withdrawal towards the Channel coast, the units deployed along the canal faced some of the stiffest fighting in the whole 1940 campaign. Whole battalions particularly those of the 2nd Division were sacrificed as units were thrown into battle in an attempt to slow down the German advance. The book looks at the ad hoc nature of the Usherforce and Polforce units, the units of the independent 25 Brigade, and the vicious fighting that enveloped the 2nd Division. Time is given also to the notorious massacre of the Royal Norfolk's at Louis Creton's Farm near Le Paradis. With over 100 contemporary and modern photographs, five car tours and three walks to give the tourist greater access and information about the battlefields. 205 page paperback.

The award-winning historian sub-titles his book 'A Year In the Life of Plantagenet England', and it is a new beautifully illustrated edition of Realm Divided. 1215 was not just a year of Magna Carta and King John's war with his barons, but a year of crusading and church reform, foreign wars and dramatic sieges, trade and treachery. It was a year in which England was invaded by a French army, and London was stormed by angry barons, and the supposedly impregnable castle at Rochester was brought down with burning pig fat. But for most people life just went on. The book throws open a window onto everyday life - home and church, love and marriage, education and agriculture, outlawry and hunting, food and clothing from royal court to peasant weddings. It is medieval life in the round and an exhilarating and revelatory exploration of politics, warfare, religion, feudalism and the law during this transformative year in English history. Chapters include Crowns, Gowns and Slippers, Justice, Law and Outlaws, Wisdom, Health and Beauty, Runnymede, Widows, Wives and Children, Birds, Beasts and Blood Sports. Lavishly illustrated with full page colour plates on almost every other page, 360 beautifully designed and decorated pages with medieval ornamentation and facsimile images from illuminated manuscripts and capitals. A real page turner to stop you in your tracks.

Daily Telegraph Book of the Year, this atmospheric thriller introduces a Scandi-noir Tuva Moodyson Mystery. Eyes missing, two bodies lie deep in the forest near a remote Swedish town. Tuva Moodyson, a deaf reporter on a small-time local paper, is looking for the story that could make her career. Can she outwit the killer before she becomes the final victim? She would like to think so, but first she must face her demons and venture far into the deep dark woods if she wants to stand any chance of getting the hell out of small-time Gavrik. Five villagers, 600 square kilometres of Swedish forest. One reporter. Two bodies... A novel loaded with atmosphere, the tension is unrelenting right from the highly tense opening when Tuva comes face to face (or truck to face) with a charging stag; there is an ominous feeling of dread seeping from every page. Written by a British graduate who lives in Sweden who must have seen the troll sculptures he includes in his book. Stickered, 339pp, paperback.

The survival of manuscripts is often random. Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales survive in 92 manuscripts because Chaucer was a well-connected diplomat. By contrast, no medieval manuscript survives of Julian of Norwich's Revelations of Divine Love, nowadays considered a great religious classic. Julian was a woman, and her radical theology was sometimes at odds with church teaching. In other chapters, the author discusses the Paston Letters, the Lindisfarne Gospel, the artists of the colourful Winchester Bible, Canterbury Pilgrims, the artist Tamaris pictured at work, the only surviving Beowulf manuscript singed at its edges and other books which have survived fires and floods, the personal prayer book of Henry VIII, and the work of hidden writers such as the Saxon nun Hugeburc, who lived in Germany and wrote the lives of saints Willibald and Wynnebald, coding her name into the text. The world of manuscripts is full of breathtaking, can't-believe-it discoveries, and in this fascinating book the author starts with three manuscript discoveries that not only made headlines but changed our understanding of history. In 1934 a house party in search of ping-pong balls found a cache of old books. Luckily one of the guests was a keeper at the Victoria and Albert Museum with an instinct for a find. In fact it was the lost Book of Margery Kempe, the first autobiographical work in English, from the early 14th century. Kempe had 14 children, suffered from post-natal depression, went abroad on pilgrimages and had visions, all of which she described in colourful style. In the same year there was another astonishing discovery, the original manuscript of Thomas Malory's great Arthurian epic, Le Morte D'Arthur, an exploration of the 15th century culture of chivalry. It also confirmed the identity of the author, which had been contested on the grounds that Malory was something of a career criminal unlikely to have penned the refined classic. In fact he wrote it in prison. The author's third dramatic discovery was made in the 12th century, when the monks of Durham Cathedral opened the coffin of St Cuthbert and found the Cuthbert gospel, the earliest intact European book. Created in the early 8th century, it subsequently travelled round the north of England as the monks of Lindisfarne sought to preserve Cuthbert's remains from the marauding Vikings. 340 pages, gorgeous gleaming-with-gold decoration and colour decoration and capitals in reproductions. Please note contents same as Hidden Hands: The Lives of Manuscripts and Their Makers.