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Lorimer Black may suffer from a serious sleep disorder and an obsession with the labyrinths of the British class system, but he is the star insurance adjuster of London's Fortress Sure plc., unkindly known as 'The Fort'. On a bleak January morning one of his cases has apparently chosen to kill himself rather than talk. Unwittingly Black becomes a pawn in a darker world - a side of business where corruption, greed and snobbery prevail.

Management Teaching use: This text flags up two different issues. The first concerns customers' expectations of 'combative' personnel such as insurance loss adjusters and is a services marketing topic. How does their job differ from other services agents and how much does their relationship with the customer, the 'investigated', rely on trust or on fear? Their loyalty clearly lies with the insurance company, but their behaviour clouds the customer's image of the insurance company. Another question is one of corporate governance, and should the business community condemn or admire the kind of close-to-the-wind strategies that the organisations in this text employ?

A story set in Africa and seen through the eyes of a young woman who is working on a field study of chimpanzees. The author also wrote 'A Good Man in Africa', 'An Ice-Cream War', 'Stars and Bars', 'The New Confessions' and 'On the Yankee Station'.

This is William Boyd's third volume of short stories following his acclaimed collections On the Yankee Station (1981) and The Destiny of Nathalie X (1995). Described as 'the finest storyteller of his generation', Boyd shows his mastery of the form as these stories range widely through time and space. In a brilliant array of styles and narratives we move from 1930s Germany to Los Angeles in the Second World War, from contemporary Oxford to 19th century Russia. Whether in London or Amsterdam. Eastbourne or a Normandy village these stories explore and expose the fraught, funny, absurd, poignant and lovelorn lives of their many and varied characters.

The outrageous, extraordinary, hilarious and heartbreaking autobiography of John James Todd, a Scotsman born in 1899 and one of the great self-appointed (and failed) genuises of the twentieth century.