John Prebble's Books

The High Girders

The gripping true story of a Victorian dream that ended in tragedy

By: John Prebble

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The High Girders

The gripping true story of a Victorian dream that ended in tragedy

By: John Prebble

A tale of irresponsibility and inexperience' THE TIMES 'Graphically written with a sense of dramatic construction' SCOTSMAN On December 28th 1879, the night of the Great Storm, the Tay Bridge collapsed, along with the train that was crossing, and everyone on board... This is the true story of that disastrous night, told from multiple viewpoints: The station master waiting for the train to arrive - who sees the approaching lights simply vanish. The bored young boys watching from their bedroom window who witness the disaster. The dreamer who designed the bridge which eventually destroyed him. The old highlanders who professed the bridge doomed from the outset. The young woman on the ill-fated train, carrying a love letter from the man she hoped to marry... THE HIGH GIRDERS is a vivid, dramatic reconstruction of the ill-omened man-made catastrophe of the Tay Bridge disaster - and its grim aftermath.

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Page Count

224

Publisher

Weidenfeld & Nicolson

Published Date

ISBN 10

1474616194

ISBN 13

9781474616195

Edge of Darkness

By: John Prebble

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Edge of Darkness

By: John Prebble

The final offensives of the Second World War – Arnhem, the Rhine crossing and the invasion of Germany – provide war-shattered settings for John Prebble’s novel, The Edge of Darkness. In this, the most intimately experience of all his books, he records the feelings and reactions (seldom heroic) of five very different members of a front-line searchlight troop. But victory and vengeance breed anti-climax. In the rubble of post-war Hamburg, with its currency of cigarettes and its sinister black market, and in the brief, flickering affair between Ted Jones and a tragic German widow John Prebble faithfully portrays Germany in defeat. Like Culloden, his famous account of the Forty-five, The Edge of Darkness is neither cheerful nor glorious. It is a grim but just epitaph on war.

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Page Count

332

Publisher

Boxtree

Published Date

ISBN 10

1743545991

ISBN 13

9781743545997

The Brute Streets

By: John Prebble

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The Brute Streets

By: John Prebble

The enthralling story of a London office cleaner who learns that his Russian wife has been kidnapped in Moscow. Jimmy Yeo is concerned only with his love for dark-haired Nadia, but as events unfurl with mounting suspense, he learns that where the Cold War is concerned he is merely a cipher, helpless in the hands of merciless groups who see him only as a little man they can afford to knock around.

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Page Count

228

Publisher

Boxtree

Published Date

ISBN 10

1743545800

ISBN 13

9781743545805

The Darien Disaster

By: John Prebble

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The Darien Disaster

By: John Prebble

The word Darien is a scar on the memory of the Scots, and the hurt is still felt even where the cause of the wound is dimly understood. Three hundred years ago the Parliament of Scotland, in one of its last acts before the nation lost its political identity, defied the King and the persistent hostility of the English to establish a noble trading company, to settle a colony, and to recover its people from a century of despair, privation, famine and decay.The site of the colony, Darien on the Isthmus of Panama, was the enduring dream of William Paterson, the erratically brilliant Scot who had helped to found the Bank of England. He called it 'the door of the seas, and the key of the universe', and believed that it would become a bridge between East and West, an entrepot through which would pass the richest trade in the world.The first attempt to make the Company a joint Scots and English venture was crushed by the English Parliament. The Scots created it by themselves, in a wave of almost hysterical enthusiasm, subscribing half of the nation's capital. Three years later the 'noble undertaking', crippled by the quarrelsome stupidity of its leaders, deliberately obstructed by the English Government, and opposed in arms by Spain, had ended in stunning disaster. Nine fine ships owned by the Company had been sunk, burnt or abandoned. Over two thousand men, women and children who went to the fever-ridden colony never returned. It was a tragic curtain to the last act of Scotland's independence.John Prebble's book is the first detailed account of the Darien Settlement, drawn from original sources in the records of the Company, the journals, letters and memoirs of those who tried to turn William Paterson's dream into reality.

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366

Published Date

ISBN 10

0712668535

ISBN 13

9780712668538

The Pentatomoidea (Hemiptera) of Northeastern North America with Emphasis on the Fauna of Illinois

By: John Edwin McPherson

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The Pentatomoidea (Hemiptera) of Northeastern North America with Emphasis on the Fauna of Illinois

By: John Edwin McPherson

This comprehensive work introduces the reader to the well-represented pentatomoid fauna of northeastern North America. About 120 species and subspecies in five families are presently known to occur in this geographical area. The text begins with a closely defined classification of the Pentatomoidea within the order Hemiptera. A discussion of the history of the investigations of North American Pentatomoidea follows, with a list of selected faunistic surveys by state or province and a general discussion of the pentatomoid life cycle including overwintering stages, spring emergence and mating, oviposition and subsequent development to adults. Here the author also considers the scent glands and the possible functions of their secretions. This volume provides updated keys to the northeastern North American pentatomoids, illustrations, references to revisionary studies of families and genera, statements and maps of distribution, pertinent biological information regarding field life cycles, laboratory rearing, immature stages, host plants and prey, and parasites and predators. Unique within its field, this book was written for individuals interested in insects as well as those specializing in Hemiptera.

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Page Count

260

Publisher

SIU Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0809310406

ISBN 13

9780809310401

Not Quite Dead

By: John MacLachlan Gray

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Not Quite Dead

By: John MacLachlan Gray

On a rust-bucket cargo ship bound from Liverpool to the United States in 1848, an Irish stowaway named Devlin steals a suspicious package after witnessing it changing hands between two sea captains. All he finds is a seemingly worthless pile of papers marked "David Copperfield, Final Four Numbers, by Charles Dickens." Devlin is determined to see if he can somehow turn events to his advantage by paying a call on Dickens's American publisher. A year later, a newly admitted patient to a Baltimore hospital, a disreputable writer who goes by the name of Edgar Allan Poe, is clearly raving mad, which makes it easy to dismiss his claims to have information about the murder of an innocent woman. Meanwhile, the eminent English novelist Charles Dickens has embarked on a tour of America, where his views are not received as he would have wished. Dickens's growing discomfort reaches new heights of intensity when he finds himself sharing disreputable lodgings---and reluctantly collaborating with---none other than Edgar Allan Poe, who has gone into hiding after faking his own death in a desperate attempt to escape the Irish mob. Like White Stone Day, which The Washington Post hailed as "a Dickens of a thriller," this is a brilliantly imaginative tale in which crime and literature intersect in surprising ways.

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Page Count

316

Publisher

Minotaur Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

1429971916

ISBN 13

9781429971911

The Murder Artist

A Thriller

By: John Case

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The Murder Artist

A Thriller

By: John Case

The bestselling author of The Genesis Code and The Eighth Day now strikes his most harrowing chord, with a chilling novel that pushes suspense to nearly inhuman limits. As a television news correspondent, Alex Callahan has traveled to some of the most dangerous corners of the globe, covering famine, plague, and war. He’s seen more than his share of blood and death, and knows what it means to be afraid. But what he’s never known is the terror that grabs him when, on a tranquil summer afternoon, he ceases to be an observer of the dark side and, to his shock, becomes enmeshed in it. Separated from his wife, and struggling not to become a stranger to his six-year-old twin sons, Alex is logging some all-too-rare quality time with the boys, when they vanish without a trace amid the hurly-burly of a countryside Renaissance Fair. Then the phone call comes. A chilling silence; slow, steady breathing; and the familiar, plaintive voice of a child–“Daddy?”–complete the nightmare . . . and set in motion a juggernaut of frenzy and agony. The longer the police search, exhausting leads without success, the deeper Alex’s certainty grows that time is running out. And when, at last, telltale signs reveal a hidden pattern of bizarre and ghoulish abductions, Alex vows to use his own relentless investigative skills to rescue his children from the shadowy figure dubbed The Piper. Whoever this elusive stranger is, the profile that slowly emerges–from previous crimes involving twins, from the zealously secret world of professional magicians, and from the eerie culture of voodoo–suggests that The Piper is a predator unlike any other. A twisted soul hell-bent on fulfilling an unspeakably dark dream. A fiend with a terrifying true calling. What Alex Callahan is closing in on is a monster with a mission.

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Page Count

406

Publisher

Ballantine Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

0345480554

ISBN 13

9780345480552

John Key: Portrait of a Prime Minister

By: John Roughan

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John Key: Portrait of a Prime Minister

By: John Roughan

New Zealand’s most popular modern day Prime Minister, John Key shocked many with his decision to step down from office less than a year out from a general election. Rather than doing what most expected and seeking an historic fourth term, Key opted to quit while his approval rating was still high and before voters tired of him. ‘I always thought leaders overstay their welcome. They just start grating with people. All the things people liked about them they start not to like,’ Key tells journalist John Roughan in this updated edition of John Key: Portrait of a Prime Minister. A fascinating insight into Key’s early life, personality and motivations, Roughan’s account of John Key’s rise and rise examines how the twin ambitions of a boy in a state house ‘to make a million dollars and be Prime Minister’ were realised beyond his dreams. As popular as ever after eight years as Prime Minister, Key chose to leave the job he loved – and the voters who seemed certain to return him to office. But, as Roughan concludes, it’s perhaps not surprising that the instincts that served him so well as a currency trader, and which also informed his approach to politics, ultimately fuelled Key’s unprecedented decision to retire at the height of his power.

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281

Publisher

Penguin Random House New Zealand Limited

Published Date

ISBN 10

0143771191

ISBN 13

9780143771197

Old and New World Highland Bagpiping

By: John G. Gibson

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Old and New World Highland Bagpiping

By: John G. Gibson

The work is the result of over thirty years of oral fieldwork among the last Gaels in Cape Breton, for whom piping fit unself-consciously into community life, as well as an exhaustive synthesis of Scottish archival and secondary sources. Reflecting the invaluable memories of now-deceased new world Gaelic lore-bearers, John Gibson shows that traditional community piping in both the old and new world Gàihealtachlan was, and for a long time remained, the same, exposing the distortions introduced by the tendency to interpret the written record from the perspective of modern, post-eighteenth-century bagpiping. Following up the argument in his previous book, Traditional Gaelic Bagpiping, 1745-1945, Gibson traces the shift from tradition to modernism in the old world through detailed genealogies, focusing on how the social function of the Scottish piper changed and step-dance piping progressively disappeared. Old and New World Highland Bagpiping will stir controversy and debate in the piping world while providing reminders of the value of oral history and the importance of describing cultural phenomena with great care and detail.

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456

Publisher

McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP

Published Date

ISBN 10

0773569790

ISBN 13

9780773569799

A Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Film Noir

The Essential Reference Guide

By: John Grant

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A Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Film Noir

The Essential Reference Guide

By: John Grant

Featuring rumpled PIs, shyster lawyers, corrupt politicians, double-crossers, femmes fatales, and, of course, losers who find themselves down on their luck yet again, film noir is a perennially popular cinematic genre. This extensive encyclopedia describes movies from noir's earliest days – and even before, looking at some of noir's ancestors in US and European cinema – as well as noir's more recent offshoots, from neonoirs to erotic thrillers. Entries are arranged alphabetically, covering movies from all over the world – from every continent save Antarctica – with briefer details provided for several hundred additional movies within those entries. A copious appendix contains filmographies of prominent directors, actors, and writers. With coverage of blockbusters and program fillers from Going Straight (US 1916) to Broken City (US 2013) via Nora Inu (Japan 1949), O Anthropos tou Trainou (Greece 1958), El Less Wal Kilab (Egypt 1962), Reportaje a la Muerte (Peru 1993), Zift (Bulgaria 2008), and thousands more, A Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Film Noir is an engrossing and essential reference work that should be on the shelves of every cinephile.

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Page Count

830

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield

Published Date

ISBN 10

1493081659

ISBN 13

9781493081653

James II: King in Exile

King in Exile

By: John Callow

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James II: King in Exile

King in Exile

By: John Callow

James II was Britain’s last Catholic king. The spectacular collapse of his regime in 1688 and the seizure of his throne by his nephew William of Orange are the best-known events of his reign. But what of his life after this? What became of him during his final exile? John Callow’s groundbreaking study focuses on this hitherto neglected period of his life: the twelve years he spent attempting to recover his crown through war, diplomacy, assassination and subterfuge. This is the story of the genesis of Jacobitism; of the devotion of the fallen king’s followers, who shed their blood for him at the battle of the Boyne and the massacre at Glencoe, gave up estates and riches to follow him to France, and immortalised his name in artworks, print, and song. Yet, this first ‘King Over the Water’ was far more than a figurehead. A grim, inflexible warlord and a maladroit politician, he was also a man of undeniable principle, which he pursued regardless of the cost to either himself or his subjects. He was an author of considerable talent, and a monarch capable of successive reinventions. Denied his earthly kingdoms, he finally settled upon attaining a heavenly crown and was venerated by the Jacobites as a saint. This powerful, evocative and original book will appeal to anyone interested in Stuart history, politics, culture and military studies.

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Page Count

682

Publisher

The History Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0752479881

ISBN 13

9780752479880

Darien

A Journey in Search of Empire

By: John McKendrick

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Darien

A Journey in Search of Empire

By: John McKendrick

The Company of Scotland and its attempts to establish the colony of Caledonia on the inhospitable isthmus of Panama in the late seventeenth century is one of the most tragic moments of Scottish history. Devised by William Paterson, the stratagem was to create a major trading station between Europe and the East. It could have been a triumph, but inadequate preparation and organization ensured it was a catastrophe - of the 3000 settlers who set sail in 1688 and 1699, only a handful returned, the rest having succumbed to disease, and the enormous financial loss was a key factor in ensuring union with England in 1707. Based on archive research in the UK and Panama, as well as extensive travelling in Darien itself, John McKendrick explores this fascinating and seminal moment in Scottish history and uncovers fascinating new information from New World archives about the role of the English and Spanish, and about the identities of the settlers themselves.

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Page Count

378

Publisher

Birlinn

Published Date

ISBN 10

085790261X

ISBN 13

9780857902610

Scottish Battles

By: John Sadler

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Scottish Battles

By: John Sadler

Scottish history has been shaped and defined by a series of great battles. John Sadler gives the first full military history of Scotland for many years. From Mons Graupius to Culloden, he shows how terrain and politics shaped the campaigns and decisive engagements we still remember today. Each chapter also features sections on the development of warfare - its tactics, equipment and styles of fighting. For the military historian, Scotland is a fascinating example of how a small country can fight off domination by a far larger neighbour. From Celtic warfare to the feudal host to the professional armies of the eighteenth century, from guerrilla warfare to the pitched battle, from siege to Border Reiver, Scotland is unique in having had almost every major type of warfare taking place within its frontiers. Battles such as Bannockburn, Flodden, and Culloden, have a resonance and impact far beyond Scotland. John Sadler weaves chronicle, narrative and analysis together in a masterly way, recreating the drama and passion of centuries past.

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Page Count

417

Publisher

Birlinn

Published Date

ISBN 10

0857905120

ISBN 13

9780857905123

Scotland - Culture Smart!

The Essential Guide to Customs & Culture

By: John Scotney,Culture Smart!

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Scotland - Culture Smart!

The Essential Guide to Customs & Culture

By: John Scotney,Culture Smart!

Culture Smart! provides essential information on attitudes, beliefs and behavior in different countries, ensuring that you arrive at your destination aware of basic manners, common courtesies, and sensitive issues. These concise guides tell you what to expect, how to behave, and how to establish a rapport with your hosts. This inside knowledge will enable you to steer clear of embarrassing gaffes and mistakes, feel confident in unfamiliar situations, and develop trust, friendships, and successful business relationships. Culture Smart! offers illuminating insights into the culture and society of a particular country. It will help you to turn your visit-whether on business or for pleasure-into a memorable and enriching experience. Contents include: * customs, values, and traditions * historical, religious, and political background * life at home * leisure, social, and cultural life * eating and drinking * do's, don'ts, and taboos * business practices * communication, spoken and unspoken

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Page Count

176

Publisher

Kuperard

Published Date

ISBN 10

1857336216

ISBN 13

9781857336214

Public Enterprise and Local Place

New Perspectives on Theory and Practice

By: John Fenwick,Lorraine Johnston

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Public Enterprise and Local Place

New Perspectives on Theory and Practice

By: John Fenwick,Lorraine Johnston

This book presents the key interactions in local government and public enterprise, drawing together the challenges for local governance in the practice of public entrepreneurship and its response to collaboration, place and place making. Specifically, this book includes the impact of local partnerships and public entrepreneurs in local policy implementation. It is written by established authors bringing together their experience and practice of local partnerships and public entrepreneurship in place-based strategies, and will be of value to local government, new forms of enterprise partnerships, wider agencies and public entrepreneurship scholars as well as policymakers responsible for implementation of place-based regeneration. This text will be of key interest to students, scholars and practitioners in public administration, business administration, local government, entrepreneurship, public sector management and more broadly to those with interests in public policy, business and management, political science, economics, urban studies and geography.

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Page Count

219

Publisher

Routledge

Published Date

ISBN 10

1351110977

ISBN 13

9781351110976

Book's by John Prebble

The High Girders

The High Girders

Edge of Darkness

Edge of Darkness

The Brute Streets

The Brute Streets

The Darien Disaster

The Darien Disaster

The Pentatomoidea (Hemiptera) of Northeastern North America with Emphasis on the Fauna of Illinois

The Pentatomoidea (Hemiptera) of Northeastern North America with Emphasis on the Fauna of Illinois

Not Quite Dead

Not Quite Dead

The Murder Artist

The Murder Artist

John Key: Portrait of a Prime Minister

John Key: Portrait of a Prime Minister

Old and New World Highland Bagpiping

Old and New World Highland Bagpiping

A Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Film Noir

A Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Film Noir

James II: King in Exile

James II: King in Exile

Darien

Darien

Scottish Battles

Scottish Battles

Scotland - Culture Smart!

Scotland - Culture Smart!

Public Enterprise and Local Place

Public Enterprise and Local Place

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