Virgin Books

Surfacing from the literary underground, Bukowski's wild and immortal stories have become cult favourites. This collection of anecdotal short stories demonstrates Bukowski's compelling semi-autobiographical style and his mastery of visceral language and the depiction of seamy underworlds. Focusing on themes that recur throughout his work, from Los Angeles and bar culture to alcoholism, gambling, sex and violence, these pieces also introduce unexpected elements of fantasy and surrealism.

Inspired by DH Lawrence, Chekhov and Hemingway, Bukowski's writing is passionate, extreme and has attracted a cult following, while his life was as weird and wild as the tales he wrote. This collection of short stories gives an insight into the dark, dangerous lowlife of Los Angeles that Bukowski inhabited. From prostitutes to classical music, Bukowski ingeniously mixes high and low culture in his 'tales of ordinary madness'. These are angry yet tender, humorous and haunting portrayals of life in the underbelly of Los Angeles.

Beginning in 1967, Bukowski wrote the column Notes of A Dirty Old Man" for the underground newspaper "Open City". Perennially drunk, broke and in search of a woman, Bukowski takes on the guise of a wise fool as he ventures through America's seedy lowlife. Peopled by Kerouac, Burroughs and other much less salubrious characters, his exploits provoke humour and despair, whilst highlighting the inherent beauty and futility of life."

Low life writer and alcoholic Henry Chinaski was born to survive. Now, at the age of fifty, he is living the life of a rock star, running three hundred hangovers a year and a sex life that would cripple Casanova. Women" is a riotous and uncompromisingly vivid account of life on the edge."

Henry Chinaski is a lowlife loser with a hand-to-mouth existence. His menial post office day job supports a life of beer, one-night stands and racetracks. Lurid, uncompromising and hilarious, Post Office" is a landmark in American literature. The new edition is augmented with an anecdotal introduction by the modern Welsh cult-literary author, Niall Griffiths - a writer who was working in a British post office when he first read Bukowski's "Post Office"."

'Fear makes me a writer, fear and a lack of confidence'. Charles Bukowski chronicled the seedy underside of the city in which he spent most of his life, Los Angeles. His heroes were the panhandlers and hustlers, the drunks and the hookers, his beat the racetracks and strip joints and his inspiration a series of dead-end jobs in warehouses, offices and factories. It was in the evenings that he would put on a classical record, open a beer and begin to type...Brought up by a violent father, Bukowski suffered childhood beatings before developing horrific acne and withdrawing into a moody adolescence.Much of his young life epitomised the style of the Beat generation - riding Greyhound buses, bumming around and drinking himself into a stupor. During his lifetime he published more than forty-five books of poetry and prose, including the novels "Post Office", "Factotum", "Women and Pulp". His novels sold millions of copies worldwide in dozens of languages. In this definitive biography Barry Miles, celebrated author of "Jack Kerouac: King of the Beats", turns his attention to the exploits of this hard-drinking, belligerent wild man of literature.

Nicky Belane, private detective and career alcoholic, is a troubled man. He is plagued by broads, booze, lack of cash and a raging ego, and by the surreal jobs he's been hired to do. He has been hired to track down French classical author Celine - who's meant to be dead - and supposed to find the elusive Red Sparrow - which may or may not be real.Upozornenie: Vzhľadom na častejšie obmeny vydaní tejto knihy v zahraničí, kus, ktorý vám zašleme, nemusí mať rovnakú obálku ako je zobrazená tu. Zob razená obálka môže byť iba ilustračná. Obsah knihy aj cena budú však identické, bez ohľadu na obálku.

Diversion features over 150 cryptic puzzles, games, quests, codes, mysteries and tricks to help you use your brain to divert yourself.

Today - six years after it was created in a Harvard dorm room - over 500 million people use Facebook regularly, in just about every country on earth. That a company this powerful and influential was started as a lark by a couple of 19-year-olds makes it a fascinating and surprising tale. That one of them, the visionary Mark Zuckerberg, had the maturity, strategic smarts and luck to keep his company ahead of its rivals anchors the tale. With exclusive inside access to all the company's leaders David Kirkpatrick tells of the vision, the tenacity, the refusal to compromise, and the vision Zuckerberg has to remake the internet. Zuckerberg has consistently focused on growth and not on profit and has remained resolute that Facebook will transform how people communicate. By all evidence it is now succeeding - spectacularly - on a global level. A brilliant and fascinating cast of characters created Facebook and Kirkpatrick has interviewed all of them. Never before have Zuckerberg and his closest colleagues told what really happened as they built their dynamo while eating fast food, staying up all night, and thumbing their noses at how things are usually done.

Decision Points is the extraordinary memoir of America’s 43rd president. Shattering the conventions of political autobiography, George W. Bush offers a strikingly candid journey through the defining decisions of his life. In gripping, never-before-heard detail, President Bush brings readers inside the Texas Governor’s Mansion on the night of the hotly contested 2000 election; aboard Air Force One on 9/11, in the hours after America’s most devastating attack since Pearl Harbour; at the head of the table in the Situation Room in the moments before launching the war in Iraq; and behind the Oval Office desk for his historic and controversial decisions on the financial crisis, Hurricane Katrina, Afghanistan, Iran, and other issues that have shaped the first decade of the 21st century. President Bush writes honestly and directly about his flaws and mistakes, as well as his accomplishments reforming education, treating HIV/AIDS in Africa, and safeguarding the country amid chilling warnings of additional terrorist attacks. He also offers intimate new details on his decision to quit drinking, discovery of faith, and relationship with his family. A groundbreaking new brand of memoir, Decision Points will captivate supporters, surprise critics, and change perspectives on one of the most consequential eras in American history – and the man at the centre of events.

Tracing its beginnings as an underground society which sprang up six hundred years ago in Sicily, to the Mob which went on to run organised crime throughout Italy and America, "The Mafia: The First 100 Years" tells the gripping story of the most myth ical and misunderstood criminal organisation. How did the Mob evolve from a gang of bumbling killers into the smooth-running international 'corporation' of today? Drawing on nearly two decades of research, William Balsamo - great-nephew of the origin al godfather - and George Carpozi Jr. reveal the Mafia's coalescence into an organisation whose insidious influence reached across the Atlantic and into a presidential administration. Delving behind the headlines to uncover the true extent of the Maf ia's influence, "The Mafia: The First 100 Years" reads like the most compelling crime fiction, yet is the terrifying, deadly truth.

Crime detection has gone to the dogs and squirrels are being busted for espionage. If you've never wondered about the new direction of 'intelligence-led policing' in our society, now is the time to start. It was a chance encounter with a police sniffer-dog that drew criminal lawyer Amber Marks into the hidden world of the science of smell and its law-enforcement applications. Soon she stumbled into a wonderland of contemporary surveillance, where the spying skills of bees, dolphins and myriad other critters were being harnessed to build a 'secure world' of bio-intelligence. From the businesses, scientists and military departments developing new smell-based surveillance technologies, to good old-fashioned police dogs, Amber discovered a secret world of security forces, where animals and scent are as important as intelligence agents and CCTV. Part polemical exploration of our burgeoning surveillance society, part humorous memoir, this intriguing book will capture your imagination and get you wondering: just who stands to benefit from all this 'security'?

We are the safest humans who ever lived - the statistics prove it. And yet the media tells a different story with its warnings and scare stories. How is it possible that anxiety has become the stuff of daily life?In this ground-breaking, compulsively readable book, Dan Gardner shows how our flawed strategies for perceiving risk influence our lives, often with unforseen and sometimes-tragic consequences. He throws light on our paranoia about everything from paedophiles to terrorism and reveals that the most significant threats are actually the mundane risks to which we pay little attention.Speaking to psychologists and scientists, as well as looking at the influence of the media, Gardner uncovers one of the central puzzles of our time: why are the safest people in history living in a culture of fear?

The state of the global economy affects every single one of us. With economic growth threatened by financial regulation and the East and West at competitive odds, the real solutions to global recession can only come through international co-operation. Featuring World leaders, Nobel Prize-winning economists, award-winning writers and opinion formers The Future of Money brings together the finest thinking to suggest solutions to this global predicament.

Today - six years after it was created in a Harvard dorm room - over 500 million people use Facebook regularly, in just about every country on earth. That a company this powerful and influential was started as a lark by a couple of 19-year-olds makes it a fascinating and surprising tale.

"Decision Points" is the extraordinary memoir of America's 43rd president. Shattering the conventions of political autobiography, George W. Bush offers a strikingly candid journey through the defining decisions of his life. In gripping, never-before- heard detail, President Bush brings readers inside the Texas Governor's Mansion on the night of the hotly contested 2000 election; aboard Air Force One on 9/11, in the hours after America's most devastating attack since Pearl Harbour; at the head of the table in the Situation Room in the moments before launching the war in Iraq; and, behind the Oval Office desk for his historic and controversial decisions on the financial crisis, Hurricane Katrina, Afghanistan, Iran, and other issues that have s haped the first decade of the 21st century. President Bush writes honestly and directly about his flaws and mistakes, as well as his accomplishments reforming education, treating HIV/AIDS in Africa, and safeguarding the country amid chilling warnings of additional terrorist attacks. He also offers intimate new details on his decision to quit drinking, discovery of faith, and relationship with his family. A groundbreaking new brand of memoir, "Decision Points" will captivate supporters, surprise critics, and change perspectives on one of the most consequential eras in American history - and the man at the centre of events.