Category Archives: Travel Guides
The Devonshires: The Story of a Family and a Nation
William Cavendish, the father of the first Earl, dissolved monasteries for Henry VIII. Bess, his second wife, was gaoler-companion to Mary Queen of Scots during her long imprisonment in England. Arbella Stuart, their granddaughter, was a heartbeat away from the throne of England and their grandson, Lord General of the North, fought to save the
Chinaman
Where is Pradeep S. Mathew – spin bowler extraordinaire and `the greatest cricketer to walk the earth`? Retired sportswriter W. G. Karunasena is dying, and he wants to know. W.G. will spend his final months drinking arrack, making his wife unhappy, ignoring his son and tracking down the mysterious Pradeep. On his quest he will
Anil`s Ghost
Anil`s Ghost transports us to Sri Lanka, a country steeped in centuries of tradition, now forced into the late twentieth century by the ravages of a bloody civil war. Enter Anil Tissera, a young woman and forensic anthropologist born in Sri Lanka but educted in the West, sent by an international human rights group to
The Rainborowes
The Rainborowes bridges two generations and two worlds, weaving together the lives of the Rainborowe clan as they struggle to forge a better life for themselves and a better future for humankind in the New World. Starting with William Rainborowe, a prominent merchant-mariner and shipmaster, and his equally formidable sons and daughters between 1630 and
The Map and the Territory
Artist Jed Martin emerges from a ten-year hiatus with good news. It has nothing to do with his broken boiler, the approach of another lamentably awkward Christmas dinner with his father or the memory of his doomed love affair with the beautiful Olga. It is that, for his new exhibition, he has secured the involvement
A Strange Kind of Paradise: India Through Foreign Eyes
A Strange Kind of Paradise is an exploration of India`s past and present, from the perspective of a foreigner who has lived in India for many years. Sam Miller investigates how the ancient Greeks, the Romans, the Chinese, Arabs, Africans, Europeans and Americans – everyone really, except for Indians themselves – came to imagine India.
Village of Secrets
This is a Sunday Times Top Five Bestseller Shortlisted For The Samuel Johnson Prize 2014. From the author of the New York Times bestseller A Train in Winter comes the extraordinary story of a French village that helped save thousands who were pursued by the Gestapo during World War II. High up in the mountains
Murder On The Thirty-first Floor
In an unnamed country, in an unnamed year sometime in the future, Chief Inspector Jensen of the Sixteenth Division is called in after the publishers controlling the entire country`s newspapers and magazines receive a threat to blow up their building, in retaliation for a murder they are accused of committing. The building is evacuated, but
At the Existentialist Cafe: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails
Paris, near the turn of 1932-3. Three young friends meet over apricot cocktails at the Bec-de-Gaz bar on the rue Montparnasse. They are Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and their friend Raymond Aron, who opens their eyes to a radical new way of thinking…”It`s not often that you miss your bus stop because you`re so
Ashland & Vine
Kate, a grieving, semi-alcoholic film student, invites an elderly woman to take part in an oral-history documentary. Jean declines, but makes her a bizarre counter-offer: if Kate can stay sober for four days, she will tell her a story. If she can stay sober beyond that, there will be another, and then another, amounting to
First Crusade
“The First Crusade” is one of the best-known and most written-about events in history but in this new book Dr Peter Frankopan asks vital questions that have never been posed before. This is the only book to address the history of the “First Crusade” from the perspective of the east, examining the role of the
A Man In Love: My Struggle Book 2
“It`s unbelievable. I just read 200 pages of it and I need the next volume like crack. It`s completely blown my mind” Zadie SmithShortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2014. This is a book about leaving your wife and everything you know. It is about fresh starts, about love, about friendship. It is also
The Secret Works of T.S Spivet
T.S. Spivet is a genius mapmaker who lives on a ranch in Montana. His father is a silent cowboy and his mother is a scientist who for the last twenty years has been looking for a mythical species of beetle. His brother has gone, his sister seems normal but might not be, and his dog
Submergence
In a room with no windows on the eastern coast of Africa, an Englishman, James More, is held captive by jihadist fighters. Thousands of miles away on the Greenland Sea, Danielle Flinders prepares to dive in a submersive to the ocean floor. In their confines they are drawn back to the Christmas of the previous
The Blue Book
You are crossing the Atlantic on a liner with your boyfriend who may or may not be planning to propose. You are fleeing the past – your ex-lover Arthur, the man who helped you dupe the vulnerable into believing loved ones were trying to make contact from beyond the grave. But there`s a secret you`ve
HHhH
Two men have been enlisted to kill the head of the Gestapo. This is Operation Anthropoid, Prague, 1942: two Czechoslovakian parachutists sent on a daring mission by London to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich – chief of the Nazi secret services, `the hangman of Prague`, `the blond beast`, `the most dangerous man in the Third Reich`. His
Priscilla: The Hidden Life of an Englishwoman in Wartime France
This is the astonishing true story of a young woman`s adventures, and misadventures, in the dangerous world of Nazi-occupied France. For Priscilla, pre-war Paris was an exciting carousel of suitors, soirees and heartbreak, and eventually a lavish wedding to a French aristocrat. But the arrival of the Nazi tanks signalled the end of life as
Outrage
Reykjavik, Saturday night. He offered her another margarita, and, as he returned from the bar, he carefully slid the pill into her glass. They were getting along fine, and he was sure she would give him no trouble…48 hours later, a young man is found dead in a pool of blood. There is no sign
Thin Paths
Shortlisted for the 2011 Costa Biography Award and the 2012 Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize Julia Blackburn and her husband moved to a little house in the mountains of northern Italy in 1999. She arrived as a stranger but a series of events brought her close to the old people of the village and
Where My Heart Used to Beat
A haunting tale of war, love and loss from the author of Birdsong and A Week in December. The Sunday Times bestseller. On a small island off the south coast of France, Robert Hendricks – an English doctor who has seen the best and the worst the twentieth century had to offer – is forced
