Lori Shepherd a été bercée toute son enfance par les histoires que sa mère lui racontait au sujet de tante Dimity. Mais, un jour, elle apprend que celle-ci a vraiment existé et lui a confié une mission avant de décéder : rassembler toutes ses histoires en vue de les publier. Lori se rend donc en Angleterre, dans un petit cottage des Cotswolds, où le fantôme de tante Dimity semble veiller sur elle. …

Ronnie Porter è un quarantaduenne ipocondriaco che vive a Bingham-on-Sea, minuscola cittadina sulla costa inglese. Lavora alla stazione degli autobus - decisamente sproporzionata rispetto all'afflusso di visitatori - e da qualche tempo si occupa dell'ufficio oggetti smarriti. Di giorno cataloga ombrelli, sciarpe e occhiali dimenticati e tenta senza grandi risultati di evitare la sua impicciona vicina ogni volta che rientra a casa.

Perché a Luceoli, nel cuore dell'Appennino, si celebri come tutti gli anni il Palio delle Rane, sono necessarie regole, passione, dedizione. E non solo per trasformare la gara in una manifestazione in costume, colorata e insaporita da piatti "degni della festa". Ci vuole qualcuno che abbia cura dei piccoli anfibi, che li nutra, che li prepari. E allora ecco, come in una fiaba bizzarra, crudele e dolcissima ci viene incontro la giovane Raniera, Gran Custode del Palio.

Afin d'apprendre l'anglais, Emmylou traverse la Manche pour être jeune fille au pair dans un domaine de la banlieue londonienne. Derrière les grilles de Hidden Grove, elle découvre cinq manoirs entourés d'arbres. Mais quand des événements étranges surviennent, elle réalise qu'elle est prisonnière de ce paradis trop bien protégé. …

This new edition provides a new preface to this highly popular book. The theme of the book is China's relations with the non-Chinese world, not only political and economic, but cultural, social and technological as well. It seeks to show that China's history is part of everyone's history. In particular it traces China's relationship since the thirteenth century to the emergent world order and the various world institutions of which that order is comprised. Each chapter discusses China's comparative place in the world, the avenues of contact between China and other civilizations, and who and what passed along these channels.

Volume 2 of the General History of the Caribbeancovers the evolution of Caribbean societies between 1492 and 1650 through the intrusion of Europeans and Africans. This volume examines the early mining and planting in Espaniola, privateers and contraband traders, plantation societies, extinction of indigenous populations, and the beginning of the slave trade.

Volume 3 looks at various aspects of slave societies in the region from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. Throughout the tortuous history of the Caribbean, nothing exceeded in fundamental importance the twin experiences of slavery and the plantation system, the defining episodes of Caribbean social reality. Topics addressed include: European 'settler colonies,' the sugar revolutions, forms of resistance, the influence of creolization and religious beliefs, and the place of the Maroon communities. Knight also examines the internal and external forces that led to the eventual collapse of the Caribbean slave system.

Exploring the history of the Persian Gulf from ancient times until the present day, leading authorities treat the internal history of the region and describe the role outsiders have played there. The book focuses on the unity and identity of Gulf society and how the Gulf historically has been part of a cosmopolitan Indian Ocean world.

Volume 5 provides an account and interpretation of the historical development of the region from around 1930 to the end of the twentieth century. Its wide ranging study of the economic, political, religious, social and cultural history of this period brings the series to the authorial present. Highlights include the 'turbulent thirties;' decolonization; the 'turn to the left' made in the 1970s by anglophone Caribbean countries; the Castro Revolution; and changes in social and demographic structures, including ethnicity and race consciousness and the role and status of women.

This study represents the unexpected outcome of an enquiry into the resources for the study of the medieval history of East Central Europe. While reading sources for a planned survey of medieval Poland, Bo­ hemia, Hungary, and Croatia, it became apparent to me that many current presentations of the history of Bohemia and Moravia were not based on viable evidence. Sources pertaining to the lives of Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius, as well as those for the study of Moravia, had been subjected to unwarranted interpretations or emendations, other sources of significance had been entirely omitted from considera­ tion, and finally, crucial formulations concerning Cyril and Methodius and Moravian history had been made in recent historiography without any basis in sources. Hen:e this study: an exercise in confronting the axioms of modern histori( 'graphy, philology and archaeology with the testimony of sources. My study is more of all introduction to the problems of Moravia's history than a set of fim 1 definitions and solutions. It will lead, ne­ cessarily, to a series of enquiries into the early history of several nations of East Central Europe, of the Church history of that region, and of various disciplines connected with the study of the Cyrillo-Methodian legacy.