Böcker utgivna av Marion Boyars Publishers Ltd

A dramatic and original biography of a married couple, each violated in different ways but bound together by their suffering, their mutual understanding and love, and a desperate struggle for renewal. These twin biographies are brought to life by an imaginary exchange of letters in which, nevertheless, the events described are completely factual. Dita was an inmate of Auschwitz as a young girl - she and her father were the only surviving members of her Czech-Hungarian family. Ronald, a Londoner, was the victim of a dangerous and unnecessary prefrontal leucotomy, against his will, in the knife-happy days when this operation was common and left a pathetic trail of zombies vegetating in the asylums. To say simply that Ronald 'survived', to become a composer and scholar of international repute, is to gloss over the long and painful path of recovery he describes. Dita trod a parallel path, although the trauma each suffered was of a different nature. Auschwitz does not ever relinquish its victims: it remained a perpetual assassin in the wings, and even Dita's death from cancer, nearly forty years later, was perhaps its final victory. This imaginary correspondence is remarkable for the vivid picture it paints of a living death inside Auschwitz as well as the fearful existence of a patient inside a mental hospital in mid-century Britain. Above all, the intimate letters reveal a deep commitment and compassion between two people, a love-story intertwined with the horrific historical events of our time.

A book about the music the hurricane couldn't destroy.

Briefings is a new series of short books to explain and clarify complex contemporary subjects, written for non-specialists by experts in their fields. Themes and topics covered will include Feminism, Education, Cosmology, Medical Ethics, Structuralism, Quantum Physics and Comparative Religion among others. Before the Beginning is a radical attempt to explain and redefine the origins and purpose of creation. Professor Ellis deals clearly and authoritatively with new scientific theories explaining how things began and elucidates the laws which control the operation of the universe. In addition he describes the complex mechanism by which the laws of physics appear to govern and facilitate, as well as to sustain human life. His conclusions about the very meaning of life are often unexpected, but the process by which he reaches them is illuminating and scientifically sound, as would be expected from one of the world's foremost cosmologists.

In his remand cell, a small-time petty criminal surrenders himself to the sadistic fantasties of hatred, rage and despair that are trapped inside him. This terrifying, claustrophobic descent into the isolated mind of a man locked away from society becomes, in Selby's compassionate literary tour de force, a challeging vision of a world deprived of love. The blistering follow-up to Selby's best-selling cult classic Last Exit to Brooklyn, The Room still has the power to provoke, to chill and to disturb

Asher takes us inside the warped and perverted mind of an eighteen year-old school boy, obsessed with sex, drugs, power and lies, in a hard-hitting expose of today's corrupt culture: selfish, anguished, superficial, confused about morality and evoking nastiness and despair.

In an intentionally light-hearted style, Fritz Spiegl has researched the lives and loves of the great composers through the ages. In an alphabetically arranged panorama of biographical portraits, he humorously uncovers hitherto unknown aspects of the composers' personalities that are, at best, discreetly ignored by serious musical analysts or, at worst, have never made the history books at all. He also includes some of the female composers, such as Augusta Holmes and Maria Szymanowska, who are only just becoming appreciated for their contributions to music. Fritz Spiegl's treatment and disclosures, however, are not just idle gossip. His concise use of biographical details gives a clear picture of each composer's musical career, revealing how his emotional life came to influence his music and, in some cases, vice versa. This volume alo features a special section which contains Spiegl's extensive researches into some of the pets of the great composers.

A languid but often hilarious and rich-as-cream Irish comedy about three elderly women and a greedy innkeeper who get hoodwinked by a crafty Englishman. It's June 1933, and the peaceful southern Irish town of Bridgeford is both shocked and amused when a snooty Englishman, Mr. Hector Slyne, arrives, puts up at the local hotel, and spreads the word that he's offering 60 pounds an acre for certain parcels of marshland on the banks of the River Shannon - the poor fool, apparently unaware that the Shannon floods half the year, wants to build holiday cottages in the bogs. The chief benefactors of this crazy Englishman are three elderly and impoverished women: the eccentric Mrs. Hosannah Braiden; Miss Sarah Jane McLurry, owner of the local sweet shop; and the astonishing Miss Pig, the town's aptly named purveyor of crubeens, or pig's feet. Acting as a middleman for the women (and a landowner himself) is innkeeper Benny O'Farrell. The four don't enlighten Slyne as to the Shannon's watery extravagances, and make their deal happily - but not before the hated Slyne ups and marries the prize catch of the town, the beauteous Maud Daly, daughter of the local hotel-keeper. It's only much later, when the townsfolk learn that there are plans afoot to drain the Shannon's low-lying areas, that the four former landowners realize all is not as it seems. Irish writer Broderick (The Rose Tree, A Prayer for Fair Weather) is wonderfully, wittily, and wisely at home in this crafty/folksy comic milieu. The narrative is a little slow at the start, the dialect a little heavy, but one does meet a delightful cast of characters, including ace cook Mrs. Flaherty Flynn, the only woman in Ireland who can "make dead meat rise again." (Kirkus Reviews)