1799, Dejima in Nagasaki Harbor. Jacob de Zoet, a devout and resourceful young clerk, has a chance encounter with Orito Aibagawa, the disfigured daughter of a samurai doctor and midwife to the city's powerful magistrate. The borders between propriety, profit, and pleasure blur until Jacob finds his vision clouded, one rash promise made and then fatefully broken--the consequences of which will extend beyond Jacob's worst imaginings.

"Cloud Atlas begins in 1850 with Adam Ewing, an American notary voyaging from the Chatham Isles to his home in California. Along the way, Ewing is befriended by a physician, Dr. Goose, who begins to treat him for a rare species of brain parasite. Abruptly, the action jumps to Belgium in 1931, where Robert Frobisher, a disinherited bisexual composer, inveigles his way into the household of an infirm maestro who has a beguiling wife and a nubile daughter....

From the author of Cloud Atlas, now a major motion picture starring Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Susan Sarandon, and Hugh Grant, and directed by Lana and Andy Wachowski and Tom Tykwer Number9Dream is the international literary sensation from a writer with astonishing range and imaginative energy-- an intoxicating ride through Tokyo' s dark underworlds and the even more mysterious landscapes of our collective dreams. David Mitchell follows his eerily precocious,...

A practical step-by-step guide to creating and flying 25 amazing paper planes. Whether you fly them indoors or outdoors, the pleasure of building and flying a paper plane appeals to all ages. Paper Planes contains everything you need to know about how to fold and fly a squadron of custom-designed paper aircraft. A practical step-by-step guide to creating and flying 25 amazing paper planes. Whether you fly them indoors or outdoors, the pleasure of...

This book shows the reader how to make a range of robust polyhedra from ordinary printer paper using a technique known as modular origami. Modular origami designs are made by first folding several, or sometimes many, sheets of paper into simple individual modules and then by putting these modules together, normally without the help of any kind of adhesive, to create a finished polyhedral form. Modular origami design has moved on since the hugely popular...

David Mitchell, who you may know for his inappropriate anger on every TV panel show except Never Mind the Buzzcocks, his look of permanent discomfort on C4 sex comedy Peep Show, his online commenter-baiting in The Observer or just for wearing a stick-on moustache in That Mitchell and Webb Look, has written a book about his life. As well as giving a specific account of every single time he's scored some smack, this disgusting memoir also details: •...

In this hilarious book that takes history seriously, a British actor and comedian introduces England's earliest kings and queens, who were mostly as silly and weird in real life as they appear today in their portraits, revealing a story of narcissists, inadequate self-control, excessive beheadings, uncivil wars and more.

Thirteen-year-old Jason Taylor comes of age in 1982 in what is for him the sleepiest village in Worcestershire, experiencing first cigarettes, first kisses, and first deaths.

Many scholars disagree about what was meant by Jesus's intriguing self-designation the Son of Man. This book attempts to find some clarity by working through every example of the phrase in the Gospel of Mark to determine how the phrase functions and what it means in that narrative. While every use of the phrase is self-referential and describes Jesus and his ministry, the analysis yields three main distinctions in use of the phrase as well as three...

Create a healthy relationship with your adult child through clear boundaries and expectations. As your child becomes a young adult, your role must evolve to meet their ongoing, changing needs. But what exactly are these new needs and how have they changed? How can you support them fully while still protecting yourself? What are the rules when they are living in the family home? That's where this book comes in. It's your resource for deeply connecting...