Category Archives: Travel Guides
The Snake Stone
It is Istanbul, 1838, and Lefevre, a French archaeologist, has arrived in Istanbul determined to uncover a lost Byzantine treasure. Yashim is hired to investigate him, but when the man turns up dead, there is only one suspect: Yashim himself. Once again, the investigator finds himself in a race against time to uncover the startling
Travels with a Typewriter
`All writers of fiction should be required by law to go out and do a bit of reporting from time to time, just to remind them how different the real world in front of their eyes is from the invented world behind them`. This is what Frayn did in mid-career, when he took up his
The Street Sweeper
On the crowded streets of New York City there are even more stories than there are people passing each other every day …only some of these stories survive to become history. Lamont Williams, recently released from prison and working as a hospital janitor, strikes up an unlikely friendship with a patient, an elderly Jewish Holocaust
The Story of a Marriage
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of `Less`.”A riveting and fascinating novel full of stunning observations and brilliant moments of truth and sympathy.” Colm ToibinIt is 1953, and in San Francisco Pearlie, a dutiful housewife, finds herself caring for both her husband`s fragile health and her polio-afflicted son. Then one morning someone from her husband`s past
Fanny and Stella: The Young Men Who Shocked Victorian England
28th April 1870. The flamboyantly dressed Miss Fanny Park and Miss Stella Boulton are causing a stir in the Strand Theatre. All eyes are riveted upon their lascivious oglings of the gentlemen in the stalls. Moments later they are led away by the police. What followed was a scandal that shocked and titillated Victorian England
Tokyo Year Zero
Tokyo Year Zero, the first in David Peace’s fictional Tokyo trilogy, is an urban historical-murder-thriller. It is August 1946 and one year on from surrender, Tokyo lies broken and bleeding at the feet of the American victors ‘“ its police force is in chaos and various factions are fighting for control of the city’s black
Occupied City
Occupied City is the second novel in David Peace’s Tokyo trilogy, based on the notorious true story of the Teikoku bank massacre. As the third year of US occupation begins in 1948, a man, claiming to be a doctor, enters a downtown bank. He says he has been sent by the authorities to deal with
Europe – An Intimate Journey
Winner of the 2018 Edward Stanford Travel Writing Award`s Outstanding Contribution to Travel WritingIncluding a personal appreciation, fuelled by five decades of journeying, the author presents a magisterial portrait of the continent.
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
Barbara Kingsolver opens her home to us, as she and her family attempt a year of eating only local food, much of it from their own garden. With characteristic warmth, Kingsolver shows us how to put food back at the centre of the political and family agenda. “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” is part memoir, part journalistic
The Bad Girl
Ricardo Somocurcio is in love with a bad girl. He loves her as a teenager known as `Lily` in Lima in 1950, where she claims to be from Chile but vanishes the moment her claim is exposed as fiction. He loves her next in Paris as `Comrade Arlette`, an activist en route to Cuba, an
Allegorizings
`Almost nothing in life is only what it seems.`Soldier, journalist, historian, author of forty books, Jan Morris led an extraordinary life, witnessing such seminal moments as the first ascent of Everest, the Suez Canal Crisis, the Eichmann Trial, The Cuban Revolution and so much more. Now, in Allegorizings, published posthumously as was her wish, Morris
Apostle: Travels Among the Tombs of the Twelve
Peter, Matthew, Thomas, John: who were these men and their fellow Apostles? What was their relationship to Jesus? Tom Bissell gives us rich answers to these ancient and surprisingly enigmatic questions in an unusual, erudite and fascinating book. By visiting holy sites around the world, and examining how the Apostles` identities took shape over the
West End Front: : The Wartime Secrets of London`s Grand Hotels
The Ritz, the Savoy, the Dorchester and Claridge`s – during the Second World War they teemed with spies, con-artists, deposed royals and the exiled governments of Europe.Meet the girl from MI5 who had the gravy browning licked from her legs by Dylan Thomas; the barman who was appointed the keeper of Churchill`s private bottle of
Trickster Travels – In Search of Leo Africanus
Acclaimed historian Natalie Zemon Davis`s accessible and dramatic biography was widely hailed as a masterpiece and tells the story of Leo Africanus, a sixteenth-century Moroccan who embodies the rich and complex exchanges between Europe and Africa during the Renaissance. “Trickster Travels” offers a virtuoso study of the fragmentary, partial and often contradictory traces that al-Hasan
Strange Telescopes
When Daniel Kalder, acclaimed author of Lost Cosmonaut, descended into the sewers of Moscow in pursuit of the mythical lost city of tramps, he didn`t realise that he was embarking on a bizarre, year-long odyssey that would lead him thousands of miles across Russia to the Arctic Circle via the heart of Asia. After exploring
Catherine of Aragon
The image of Catherine of Aragon has always suffered in comparison to the vivacious eroticism of Anne Boleyn. But when Henry VIII married Catherine, she was an auburn-haired beauty in her 20s with a passion she had inherited from her parents, Isabella and Ferdinand, the joint-rulers of Spain who had driven the Moors from their
The Kaiser`s Holocaust
On 12 May 1883, the German flag was raised on the coast of South-West Africa, modern Namibia – the beginnings of Germany`s African Empire. As colonial forces moved in , their ruthless punitive raids became an open war of extermination. Thousands of the indigenous people were killed or driven out into the desert to die.
1606: Shakespeare and the Year of Lear
1606: William Shakespeare and the Year of Lear traces Shakespeare`s life and times from the autumn of 1605, when he took an old and anonymous Elizabethan play, The Chronicle History of King Leir, and transformed it into his most searing tragedy, King Lear. 1606 proved to be an especially grim year for England, which witnessed
Theft – A Love Story
Narrated by the twin voices of the artist Butcher Bones, and his `damaged two-hundred-and-twenty-pound brother` Hugh, Theft: A Love Story once again displays Peter Carey`s extraordinary flair for language. Ranging from the rural wilds of Australia to Manhattan via Tokyo, it is a brilliant and moving exploration of art, fraud, responsibility and redemption.
Food for All Seasons
This is a story of seasonal food throughout the year, this is a touching and informative culinary journey exploring the way our lives and our food are intertwined. It`s a book of recipes, but more than that it`s a book about food, and a book about an extraordinary chef whose career spans nearly two decades.
