L'ispettore Alan Banks della polizia dello Yorkshire sta dando la caccia al Camaleonte, un maniaco responsabile della scomparsa di cinque ragazzine. Il mistero sembra risolto quando una pattuglia della polizia si presenta a una tranquilla coppia borghese, dopo la telefonata di una vicina che ha segnalato una lite coniugale. La cantina della casa rivela una scena raccapricciante: un'adolescente violentata e uccisa, materiale pornografico, tracce di riti satanici. Il caso sembra chiuso, ma proprio qui comincia l'indagine dell'ispettore Banks che dovrà scavare, in un crescendo di brividi e suspense, tra le ombre del passato e gli incubi che popolano le oscure profondità dell'animo umano.

There's more than blood and bone beneath the skin ...

The victim, a nondescript 'numbers cruncher,' died horribly just yards away from his terrified wife and daughter, murdered by men who clearly enjoyed their work. The crime scene is one that could chill the blood of even the most seasoned police officer. But the strange revelations about an ordinary accountant's extraordinary secret life are what truly set Chief Inspector Alan Banks off -- as lies breed further deceptions and blood begets blood, unleashing a policeman's dark passions ... and a violent rage that, when freed, might be impossible to control.

On a balmy June night, Kirsten, a young university student, is strolling home through a silent moonlit park when she is viciously attacked.

When she awakes in the hospital, she has no recollection of that brutal night. But then slowly, painfully, details reveal themselves -- dreams of two figures, one white and one black, hovering over her; snatches of a strange and haunting song; the unfamiliar texture of a rough and deadly hand ...

In another part of the country, Martha Browne arrives in a Yorkshire seaside town, posing as an author doing research for a book. But her research is of a particularly macabre variety. Who is she hunting with such deadly determination? And why?

The First Cut is a vivid and compelling psychological thriller, from the author of the critically acclaimed Inspector Banks series.

In 1982, as a young man, Peter Robinson was hired as a speechwriter in the Reagan White House. During the six years that followed, he was one of a core group of writers who became informal experts on Reagan, absorbing not just his political positions but his personality, manner, and way of carrying himself. And the example Reagan set - as a confident, passionate, principled, generous-spirited older man - molded Robinson's outlook just as he was coming into his own. 'Hard work. A good marriage. A certain lightness of touch,' he writes. 'The longer I studied Ronald Reagan, the more lessons I learned.'
At the core of How Ronald Reagan Changed My Life are ten of the life lessons Robinson learned from the fortieth President - principles that have guided his own life ever since. But it also offers a warm and unforgettable portrait of a great yet ordinary man who touched the individuals around him as surely as he did his millions of admirers around the world.
Drawing on journal entries from his days at the White House, as well as interviews with those who knew the President best, Robinson etches his portrait with fresh observations, telling detail, and that 'certain lightness of touch' the recalls the master himself.

Steadily, inexorably, Peter Robinson has been building a rock-solid following for his highly accomplished crime novels--and it's not hard to see why. Books like his latest, Caedmon's Song, have all the requisite page-turning compulsiveness, but Robinson freights in a layer of psychological penetration that many in the genre strive for but few achieve.

There are human bones buried in an open field, the remains of a lost teenaged boy whose disappearance devastated a community more than thirty-five years ago ... and scarred a guilt-ridden friend forever.

A long-hidden horror has been unearthed, dragging a tormented policeman back into a past he could never truly forget no matter how desperately he tried. A heinous crime that occurred too close to home still has its grip on Chief Inspector Alan Banks -- and it's leading him into a dark place where evil still dwells. Because the secrets that doomed young Graham Marshall back in 1965 remain alive and lethal -- and disturbing them could cost Banks much more than he ever imagined.

Per il lettore sarà certo fonte di sorpresa scoprire che i luoghi e le figure privilegiate di questo libro sono in gran parte legati al nostro paesaggio e alla nostra storia culturale. Il fatto è che Robinson, ora professore di letteratura inglese in Giappone, ha vissuto a lungo nel nostro paese, traducendo alcuni dei migliori poeti italiani del nostro Novecento (da Montale a Sereni, dalla Spaziani a Luciano Erba). Ma sarà ancora più singolare, su questo sfondo per noi domestico, rintracciare verso per verso la raffinata trama dei pensieri, delle sensazioni e delle citazioni che attraversano i nomi, le stanze, gli oggetti di questa questa poesia certo non naturalistica, ma nutrita di una quotidianità a volte cruda e petrosa.

No one dreamed something so hideous could grow in so beautiful a place . . .

Many who visit the valley are overwhelmed by its majesty. Some wish they never had to leave. One didn't, a hiker whose decomposing corpse is discovered by an unsuspecting tourist. But this strange, incomprehensible murder is only the edge of the darkness that hovers over a small rural village and its tight-lipped residents who guard shattering secrets of sordid pasts and private shames. Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks knows that both the grim truth and a cold-blooded killer are hiding here, far from the city, the noise, and safety. And he's determined to walk into the valley of death to expose them both.

When two social workers, investigating reports of child abuse, appear at Brenda Scupham's door, her fear of authority leads her to comply meekly with their requests. Even when they say they must take her seven-year old daughter away for tests.

The way we think about health and health care is changing. Two factors driving this change are that we recognise the importance of the social consequences of disease and secondly, we acknowledge that health care aims to increase both the quantity and quality of survival. For these reasons, health care focusses more and more on 'quality of life'.

Measuring quality of life brings many challenges. What do we mean by 'quality of life'? Who should measure it? How can we measure it? What can we use the information for?

This book provides an accessible but up to date and authoritative overview of the measurement of quality of life in health care. It brings together the work of authors from Medicine, Palliative Care, Nursing, Ethics, Dentistry, Assistive Technology, Sociology, Epidemiology and Statistics.

The nude photo of a teenage runaway shows up on a pornographic website, and the girl's father turns to Detective Chief Inspector Alan banks for help. But these are typical circumstances, for the runaway is the daughter of a man who's determined to destroy the dedicated Yorkshire policeman's career and good name. Still it is a case that strikes painfully home, one that Banks—a father himself—dares not ignore as he follows it's squalid trail into teeming London, and into a world of drugs, sex, and crime. But murder follows soon after—gruesome ,sensational, and, more than once—pulling Banks in a direction that he dearly does not wish to go: into the past and private world of his most powerful enemy, Chief Constable Jimmy Riddle.

Now in its second edition,Climatology continues to provide an up-to-date stimulating and comprehensive guide to the nature of the earth's climate. It presents a synthesis of contemporary scientific ideas about atmospheric circulation.

Topics covered include:
-Energy systems-The hydrological cycle-General circulation, local and regional climate-Application of climate information-Use of satellite observations
 

A dedicated man is dead in the Yorkshire dales -- a former university professor, wealthy historian and archaeologist who loved his adopted village. It is a particularly heinous slaying, considering the esteem in which the victim, Harry Steadman, was held by his neighbors and colleagues -- by everyone, it seems, except the one person who bludgeoned the life out of the respected scholar and left him half-buried in a farmer's field.

Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks left the violence of London behind for what he hoped would be the peaceful life of a country policeman. But the brutality of Steadman's murder only reinforces one ugly, indisputable truth: that evil can flourish in even the most bucolic of settings. There are dangerous secrets hidden in the history of this remote Yorkshire community that have already led to one death. And Banks will have to plumb a dark and shocking local past to find his way to a killer before yesterday's sins cause more blood to be shed.