Turkey, the historic bridge between Europe and the East, excites the imagination. In a collection of ten short stories Rob Walters provides a fascinating glimpse into the culture and characters of this special country. The tales embrace everything from ants to fireflies, ferocious dogs to rutting bulls and natural aphrodisiacs to underground cities; all based within this secular, Islamic nation. Though firmly based on the author’s experience of the country each tale has an imaginative and sometimes shocking twist. This is not a travelogue, though the backcloth moves across the entire breadth of Turkey embracing the account of a young woman stranded in an alien culture, the stoning of a less than generous tourist and the mystery of a vanishing minaret. Many of the stories are written from the traveller's viewpoint; others slip inside the skin of the modern day Turk. In this unique compilation you will get a glimpse into the mind of a Turkish tourist tout, experience an echo of the Ottoman society, face the danger of taking a lift with strangers, enjoy the delight of slipping into a welcoming community, share the fun of debunking local myths and the dangers of avoiding honey traps. This collection will make you think. It may also persuade you to visit Turkey – or maybe not.

Rogues in the Gallery exposes it all: the cozy insurance ransom racket, the professional gangs of art thieves, the specialists, the connections with the international drug racket and the Mafia. Hugh McLeave has researched the whys and wherefores of the question for years, drawing on resources available to him through agencies such as Interpol, the FBI, the French Sret(r), and Scotland Yard. Rogues in the Gallery is a lively and informed account of the causesOCoand limited curesOCoof this epidemic. It charts the classic outbreaks, portrays the rich gallery of protagonists, and defines what means there are to combat the disease. But even with sophisticated computers and Interpol, the total elimination of art theft is unlikely. As long as auction prices continue to rise and inflation devalues savings, the theft of precious objects will flourish. The lure of easy money is at the root. This is a serious book on an urgent problem, especially for those who collect art. For an author bio, photo, and a sample read visit bosonbooks.com"

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Sir Richard Burton is best known as an explorer and translator of Arabian and Indian books, many of them sexually explicit. He was known as “Ruffian Dick” and led a life well beyond the pale of the typical Victorian. Richard Burton was a very famous actor with a brilliant voice and the looks to accompany it. Sometimes known as “Beer Burton”, he married Elizabeth Taylor twice and led a life which was often as dramatic as the characters that he played. Howard Marks became famous as a cannabis smuggler. He used the alias “Mr Nice” and adopted this as the title of a book that describes his exploits and ultimate incarceration in an American jail. Each of these men has a roguish streak to their character, but they also have a number of other things in common – one of which is that they each began their adult life at Oxford University. In fact they attended three colleges which stand, cheek by jowl on Oxford’s Broad Street: Exeter, Balliol and Trinity. Each was a master of disguise, though for rather different ends. Each was a great traveller, Howard for the drug trafficking, Richard for the film sets and Sir Richard for exploration and consular duties. They were all writers. Two of them were Welsh, two shared a name, two are dead, and all three are famous in their different ways. Finally they were all iconoclasts, mould breakers in different times and in different worlds. This book illuminates the fascinating lives of each of these interesting men, but also speculates on how they might react to each other. It recreates the Oxford that bred them, traces their subsequent lives, and then leads them back to the city so that they can meet and discourse upon: American hegemony, the freedom to consume drugs, the role of feminism and the value of education. These topics are exposed to the soaring intellectuality and conservatism of the older Burton, the articulation of the younger Burton and the liberality of Marks. The results are sometimes shocking, always interesting, and often edifying.

This book is about an unusual journey: a unique journey through everyday surroundings. Rob Walters decided to become a shoeshine boy. He stowed his shoeshine kit, a tent, and a few items of clothing in a trailer, connected the trailer to his push bike and set off from Oxford to visit the old shoe-making cities of middle England. Along the way he polished many shoes, met lots of interesting people, pedalled many miles, and gained a fascinating insight into his own country from a rather unique perspective.Rejected by some, welcomed by many, he polished shoes in shopping centres, solicitor's offices, a kite festival, railway stations, campsites, street corners, and a bewildering selection of pubs. He polished the shoes of dossers, company directors, criminals, Morris dancers, publicans, bikers, policemen, schoolboys, reporters, a bowling green groundsman, an Icelander, and a Latvian - to name just a few. He slept in fields, in woods, and on the edge of golf courses. He was ejected from the Norfolk Show and welcomed into the offices of lawyers and fruit importers.During his journey he met members of the Household Cavalry, topless protestors, a homeless joss stick seller, a man who stole baths in hotels, a submariner, a beaten housewife, a disenchanted solicitor, a rubber recycler, a toyshop owner, and two ghost guides - amongst others. All of them had a story to tell: some sad, some amusing. It is their tales and Rob's own incisive observations that are related in this unusual book. Reading it will transport you to Northampton, the centre of the English shoe making tradition; then through the Fens to East Anglia; back across the country to the Midlands; down along the River Severn to Gloucester; and then over the Cotswolds to Oxford. Progress is at a comfortable cycling pace along the country roads and through the sleepy villages, yet interrupted regularly by diversions into the vibrancy of the cities.

A fascinating set of fiction from fact conversations between two extraordinary women. Margaret Thatcher is known to all. Dorothy Hodgkin should be: she is Britain's only female scientific Nobel Prize winner, a reward for her groundbreaking work in determining the structure of penicillin and vitamin B12. It is difficult to imagine women more different in character and political beliefs, yet their lives were closely linked: Dorothy was Margaret's tutor when the younger woman studied chemistry at Oxford University; Margaret, as Prime Minister, invited her old tutor to lunch at Chequers. The setting for the conversations is Margaret's fourth year at Oxford while she carried out research work in Dorothy's crystallography lab. They range widely over topics from socialism to sexual freedom. No one knows exactly what they did discuss, but the conversations are soundly based in the factual world of post war Britain and reflect the characters of these two very interesting women.

Shaken by China is a pacey novel based in modern China. It is eventful, thoughtful, and provides an intriguing insight into the modern republic. Very briefly Shaken by China is the story of a young man who escapes his overpowering problems at home by taking a teaching job in the rapidly changing world of modern China. It is targeted at readers who like a fast moving story based in exotic surroundings. The novel has a strong beginning in a Xian hospital where Keith Hackett, the main character, twice attempts suicide. The reader is rapidly hooked into the tale: why is Keith in China, what has he done that he is so ashamed of, and how was he reduced to the very depths of depression? We next launch into Keith’s story: his teaching experience with Mary, his friendship with Peter, their ‘minder’ at the school, his observations of the joy and misery of the impoverished people who live around the school. Then suddenly, mysteriously, Mary disappears and Keith’s life starts to unravel as he becomes entangled with a pretty student. Realising his own stupidity he ends the relationship and slips into less passionate friendships. However, this new found contentment is fragile and is quickly dashed when the affair with his student rebounds with chilling repercussions. The story then develops around Keith’s ignominious escape from the school, his long march across the mountains of Shaanxi province, and his debilitating life as a forced labourer in an illicit brick factory. It ends in the hospital where Keith confronts his failings and reunites with the love he left in fleeing to China. The novel is based around the author’s own experience of living and teaching in China and draws on true accounts of slavery and corruption that have occurred in the republic.