Category Archives: Travel Guides
Wave Me Goodbye: Stories of the Second World War
This collection of short stories written by women when war was a way of life includes some of the finest women writers of that generation. War had traditionally been seen as a masculine occupation but these stories show how women were equal if different participants. Here, war is less about progress on the frontline of
Outsiders; Five women writers who changed the world
An exciting and provocative look at the women who wrote the novels that changed the literary world.In five chapters – `Prodigy`, `Spinster`, `Visionary`, `Outcast`, `Dreamer`, Lyndall Gordon will look into the connections between creativity and outsiders in particular lives – the lives of Mary Shelley, Emily Brontรซ, George Eliot, Olive Schreiner and Virginia Woolf.
This Hostel Life
This Hostel Life tells the stories of migrant women in a hidden Ireland. From a day in the life of women queuing for basic supplies in an Irish direct provision hostel to a young black woman`s depiction of everyday racism in Ireland, Melatu Uche Okorie`s nuanced writing shines a light on the injustice of the
Between the Stops: The View of My Life from the Top of the Number 12 Bus
This long-awaited memoir from one of Britain`s best-loved celebrities – a writer, broadcaster, activist, comic on stage, screen and radio for nearly forty years, presenter of QI and Great British Bake Off star – is an autobiography with a difference: as only Sandi Toksvig can tell it.”`Between the Stops` is a sort of a memoir,
The Street
With a new introduction by Tayari Jones, author of `An American Marriage` and winner of the Women`s Prize for Fiction 2019.”Ann Petry`s first novel, `The Street`, was a literary event in 1946, praised and translated around the world – the first book by a black woman to sell more than a million copies… Her work
Alias Grace
Sometimes I whisper it over to myself: Murderess. Murderess. It rustles, like a taffeta skirt along the floor.` Grace Marks. Female fiend? Femme fatale? Or weak and unwilling victim? Around the true story of one of the most enigmatic and notorious women of the 1840s, Margaret Atwood has created an extraordinarily potent tale of sexuality,
Early One Morning
A grey dawn in 1943: on a street in Rome, two young women, complete strangers to each other, lock eyes for a single moment. One of the women, Chiara Ravello, is about to flee the occupied city for the safety of her grandparents` house in the hills. The other has been herded on to a
Owls Do Cry
Owls Do Cry is the story of the Withers family: Francie, soon to leave school to start work at the woollen mills; Toby, whose days are marred by the velvet cloak of epilepsy; Chicks, the baby of the family; and Daphne, whose rich, poetic imagination condemns her to a life in institutions. `Janet Frame`s first
The Talented Mr Ripley: A Virago Modern Classic
A stunning hardback edition of one of the most influential, groundbreaking crime novels ever written.`I`m a huge Highsmith fan. If there`s one book I wish I`d written, it`s The Talented Mr Ripley` Sarah WatersTom Ripley travels to Italy with a commission to coax a prodigal young American back to his wealthy father. But Ripley finds
The Suffragettes: The Fight for Votes for Women
Queen Victoria is most anxious to enlist everyone who can speak or write to join in checking this mad wicked folly of women`s rights, with all its attendant horrors, on which her poor sex is bent` – 1870 It was a bloody and dangerous war lasting several decades, won finally by sheer will and determination
Turning: A Swimming Memoir
`The water slips over me like cool silk. The intimacy of touch uninhibited, rising around my legs, over my waist, up to my collarbone. When I throw back my head and relax, the lake runs into my ears. The sound of it is a muffled roar, the vibration of the body amplified by water, every
Heat & Dust
The beautiful, spoiled and bored Olivia, married to a civil servant, outrages society in the tiny, suffocating town of Satipur by eloping with an Indian prince. Fifty years later, her step-granddaughter goes back to the heat, the dust and the squalor of the bazaars to solve the enigma of Olivia`s scandal. `A superb book. A
Last Friends
`It`s a cliche to compare novelists to Jane Austen, but in the case of Jane Gardam it happens to be true. Her diamond-like prose, her understanding of the human heart, her formal inventiveness and her sense of what it is to be alive – young, old, lonely, in love – never fades` Amanda Craig`Her work,
Crazy River
No-one travels like the renowned writer-adventurer Richard Grant and, really, no-one should. Having narrowly escaped death at the hands of Mexican drug barons in Bandit Roads, he now plunges with his trademark recklessness and curiosity into Africa. Setting out to make the first descent of a previously unexplored river in Tanzania, he gets waylaid by
This Is Not A Love Story
Kitty dreams of a beautiful life, but that`s impossible in suburban London where her family is haunted by her father`s unexpected death. So when her mum suggests moving to Amsterdam to try a new life, Kitty doesn`t take much persuading. Will this be her opportunity to make her life picture perfect? In Amsterdam she meets
Stranger
Astor, Ontario. 1904.A boy staggers out of the forest covered in blood and collapses at the feet of 16-year-old Emmy. While others are suspicious and afraid, Emmy is drawn to him. Is he really the monster the townsfolk say he is?Astor, Ontario. 1994. Megan arrives from London for her great grandmother Emmy`s 105th birthday. It
The Paying Guests
`There came the splash of water and the rub of heels as Mrs Barber stepped into the tub. After that there was a silence, broken only by the occasional echoey plink of drips from the tap…`Frances had been picturing her lodgers in purely mercenary terms – as something like two great waddling shillings. But this,
Cycling Home From Siberia
`It is late October, and the temperature is already -40C…My thoughts are filled with frozen rivers that may or may not hold my weight; empty, forgotten valleys haunted by emaciated ghosts and packs of ravenous, merciless wolves.`In 2004 Rob Lilwall arrived in Siberia equipped only with a bike and a healthy dose of fear. CYCLING
Lab Girl
Lab Girl is a book about work and about love, and the mountains that can be moved when those two things come together. It is told through Jahren`s remarkable stories: about the discoveries she has made in her lab, as well as her struggle to get there; about her childhood playing in her father`s laboratory;
The Accidental Pilgrim
Pilgrimage has been an important practice in Christianity since the fourth century, but most people`s notion of pilgrimage is one of travelling to the site of an apparition, in search of inspiration or miracles. THE ACCIDENTAL PILGRIM shows that pilgrimage is not just a relic of Catholic history, but can remain a significant practice for
