Category Archives: Travel Guides
Fifty Shades Of Grey
The first title in the popular Fifty Shades series, ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ tells the story of Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey. Literature student Anastasia meets Christian Grey, a successful entrepreneur and is immediately drawn to him, fascinated by his dark nature. Starting up a passionate affair, Ana discovers Grey’s dark secrets and inner turmoil
The White Road: A Journey Into Obsession
This is a Sunday Times Top Ten Bestseller. “Other things in the world are white but for me porcelain comes first”. A handful of clay from a Chinese hillside carries a promise: that mixed with the right materials, it might survive the fire of the kiln, and fuse into porcelain – translucent, luminous, white. Acclaimed
The Promised Land
From the detention centre on Ellis Island, Ludwig Somner looks across a small stretch of water to the glittering towers of New York, which whisper seductively of freedom after so many years of wandering through a perlious, suffering Europe. Remarque`s final novel, left unfinished at his death, tells of the precarious life of the refugee
Picnic at Hanging Rock
It was a cloudless summer day in the year nineteen hundred. Everyone at Appleyard College for Young Ladies agreed it was just right for a picnic at Hanging Rock. After lunch, a group of three of the girls climbed into the blaze of the afternoon sun, pressing on through the scrub into the shadows of
Midnight`s Children
Midnight’s Children” is another standout work from Salman Rushdie, that although isn’t nearly of the infamy or fame (delete where applicable) as ‘The Satanic Verses”, is very much just as superb. Born at the stroke of midnight at the exact moment of India’s independence, Saleem Sinai is a special child. However, this coincidence of birth
Haunts of the Black Masseur
“Haunts of the Black Masseur” is a dazzling introduction to the great swimming heroes: Byron leaping into the surf at Shelley`s beach funeral, Hart Crane, swallow-diving to his death in the Bay of Mexico, Ulysses, Leander, Weismuller and many more. In lively prose bursting with anecdote, Charles Sprawson leads us into a watery world populated
The Merde Factor
Englishman Paul West is living the Parisian dream, and doing his best not to annoy the French. But recently things have been going tres wrong: He`s stuck in an apartment so small that he has to cut his baguettes in two to fit them in the kitchen. His research into authentic French cuisine is about
Dirty Bertie: an English King Made in France
This is the entertaining biography of Edward VII and his playboy lifestyle, by Stephen Clarke, author of 1000 Years of Annoying the French and A Year in the Merde. Despite fierce opposition from his mother, Queen Victoria, Edward VII was always passionately in love with France. He had affairs with the most famous Parisian actresses,
Firefly
On a secluded hillside in Jamaica lies Firefly, Noel Coward`s peaceful retreat. Here, between sundowners and sunsets, brandies and cigarettes, the seventy-one-year-old Coward whiles away his days – a comforting, frustrating pattern of unwanted breakfasts, reluctant walks, graceless dips in the pool – in the company of his manservant Patrice. Both of them dream of
A Sting in the Tale
This is a Sunday Times bestseller. It is shortlisted for the 2013 Samuel Johnson Prize. Dave Goulson has always been obsessed with wildlife, from his childhood menagerie of exotic pets and dabbling in experimental taxidermy to his groundbreaking research into the mysterious ways of the bumblebee and his mission to protect our rarest bees. Once
The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal and the Real Count of Monte Cristo
“Completely absorbing”. (Amanda Foreman). “Enthralling”. (Guardian). “The Three Musketeers! The Count of Monte Cristo! The stories of course are fiction. But here a prize-winning author shows us that the inspiration for the swashbuckling stories was, in fact, Dumas` own father, Alex – the son of a marquis and a black slave…He achieved a giddy ascent
The Mouseproof Kitchen
Anna knows that if you want something really badly, you have to plan it. After all, she`s a chef. To make a bechamel sauce, you need the right ingredients in the right quantities, at the right time. So when she gets pregnant, she plans a perfect new life in Provence for her perfect new baby.
Faceless Killers
Faceless Killers is the first book in Henning Mankell`s superb Inspector Wallander Mysteries series. It begins one frozen January morning at 5am, Inspector Wallander responds to what he believes is a routine call out. When he reaches the isolated farmhouse he discovers a bloodbath. An old man has been tortured and beaten to death, his
H is for Hawk
This is a book about memory, nature and nation, and how it might be possible to reconcile death with life and love.As a child, Helen Macdonald was determined to become a falconer, learning the arcane terminology and reading all the classic books. Years later, when her father died and she was struck deeply by grief,
One Step Behind
It is Midsummer`s Eve. Three young friends meet in a wood to act out an elaborate masque. But, unknown to them, they are being watched. Each is killed by a single bullet. Soon afterwards, one of Inspector Wallander`s colleagues is found murdered. Is it the same killer, and what could the connection be? In this
Vesper Flights: The Sunday Times Bestseller from the author of `H Is For Hawk`
“Thrilling dispatches from a vanishing world” ObserverAnimals don`t exist to teach us things, but that is what they have always done, and most of what they teach us is what we think we know about ourselves.From the bestselling author of `H is for Hawk` comes `Vesper Flights`, a transcendent collection of essays about the human
Firewall
Stopping to use a cash machine one evening, a man falls to the ground: dead. A taxi driver is brutally murdered by two teenage girls who demonstrate a complete lack of remorse. One girl escapes police custody and disappears without trace. Soon afterwards, a blackout covers half the country. When an engineer arrives at the
The Invention of Angela Carter: A Biography
WINNER OF THE SOMERSET MAUGHAM AWARDSelected as a Book of the Year 2016 in The Sunday Times, Daily Telegraph, Guardian, Financial Times, Spectator and ObserverAngela Carter`s life was as unconventional as anything in her fiction. Through her fearlessly original and inventive books, including The Bloody Chamber and Nights at the Circus, she became an icon
The Devils` Alliance: Hitler`s Pact with Stalin, 1939-1941
For nearly two years the two most infamous dictators in history actively collaborated with one another. The Nazi-Soviet Pact stunned the world when it was announced, the Second World War was launched under its auspices with the invasion and division of Poland, and its eventual collapse led to the war`s defining and deciding clash. It
The Devil is White
It is 1792 and a group of English gentlemen is recruiting settlers for a new world. Anti-slavers, they foresee the shining vision of a free colony in Africa where all races and classes can live together in harmony. More than a hundred men, women and children set sail from London bound for Muranda, an island
