Category Archives: Travel Guides
Lois On The Loose
Young and beautiful, Lois Pryce was a rising star at the BBC. Unbeknownst to her co-workers, Lois lived a parallel life as a biker babe with an overwhelming sense of wanderlust. So she packed in her career to ride her motorcycle on her own from the northernmost tip of Alaska to the southernmost tip of
House of Meetings
There were conjugal visits in the slave camps of the USSR. Valiant women would travel continental distances, over weeks and months, in the hope of spending a night, with their particular enemy of the people, in the House of Meetings. The consequences of these liaisons were almost invariably tragic. House of Meetings is about one
In Gallant Company
The tenth Richard Bolitho novel in Alexander Kent`s spectacularly successful series deals with Bolitho`s life as a young lieutenant aboard the Trojan, an eighty-gun ship of the line. The year is 1777 when the revolution in America has erupted into a full-scale war. The navy`s main task is to prevent military supplies from reaching Washington`s
The Pregnant Widow
Summer, 1970. Sex is very much on everyone`s mind. The girls are acting like boys and the boys are going on acting like boys. Keith Nearing – a bookish twenty-year-old, in that much disputed territory between five foot six and five foot seven – is on holiday and struggling to twist feminism towards his own
Le Bal
Le Bal is a sharp, brittle story of a girl who sets out to ruin the mother she hates. The Kampfs have risen swiftly up the ranks of 1930s Parisian society. Painfully aware of her working-class roots, and desperate to win acceptance, Madame Kampf decides to throw a huge ball to announce her arrival to
Suite Francaise
In 1941, Irene Nemirovsky sat down to write a book that would convey the magnitude of what she was living through by evoking the domestic lives and personal trials of the ordinary citizens of France. Nemirovsky`s death in Auschwitz in 1942 prevented her from seeing the day, sixty-five years later, that the existing two sections
The Courilof Affair
In 1903 Leon M – the son of two Russian revolutionaries – is given the responsibility of `liquidating` Valerian Alexandrovitch Courilof, the notoriously brutal and cold-blooded Russian Minister of Education, by the Revolutionary Committee. The assassination, he is told, must take place in public and be carried out in the most grandiose manner possible in
Flawed Angel
Once upon a time in a Middle Eastern land, a fat, sweet-natured little boy grows up as the son of an important ruler. His older brother was apparently still-born and so he is the heir to his father`s kingdom. But far away from the royal palace a lonely prospector happens across a wild creature, half
Nonviolence
The conventional history of nations, even continents, is a history of warfare. According to this view, all the important ideas and significant changes of humankind occured as part of an effort to win one violent, bloody conflict or another. But there have always been a few who refused to fight. Following the grand sweep of
Praying Mantis
In his early years, growing up on a Dutch farm in the deep interior of the southern African Cape, Cupido Cockroach became the greatest drinker, liar, fornicator and fighter of his region. Coming under the spell of a woman, the soap-boiler Anna, and the great Dr Johannes Theodorus van der Kemp of the London Missionary
Garlic And Sapphires
`Garlic and Sapphires` is Ruth Reichl`s riotous account of the many disguises she employs to dine undetected when she takes on the much coveted and highly prestigious job of New York Times restaurant critic.Reichl knows that to be a good critic she has to be anonymous – but her picture is posted in every four-star,
Dancing to The Precipice
Lucie de la Tour du Pin was the Pepys of her generation. She witnessed, participated in, and wrote diaries detailing one of the most tumultuous periods of history. From life in the Court of Versailles, through the French Revolution to Napoleon`s rule, Lucie survived extraordinary times with great spirit. She recorded people, politics and intrigue,
The Great Psychedelic Armadillo Picnic
From the charismatic, eccentric Kinky Friedman comes ‘The Great Psychedelic Armadillo Picnic”, a celebration of the sights, sounds & spirit of Austin, Texas. The original, inimitable Jewish cowboy and aspirant Governor of Texas – who hopes to reduce speeding limits to $54.95 – takes us on a near-spiritual walk through the town, covering everything from
John Aubrey: My Own Life
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2015 COSTA BIOGRAPHY AWARD. This is the autobiography that John Aubrey never wrote. You may not know his name. Aubrey was a modest man, a gentleman-scholar who cared far more for the preservation of history than for his own legacy. But he was a passionate collector, an early archaeologist and the inventor
Perfect Hostage:Aung San Suu Kyi,Burma & the Generals
Like Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela, Aung San Suu Kyi is an iconic figure, and the best-known prisoner of conscience alive today. Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, at great personal cost she has steadfastly opposed Burma`s brutal military regime since 1988, when she emerged as the leader of the Burmese
Like Heaven
“Like Heaven” is a vivid and evocative portrait of an Indian family in Port of Spain, Trinidad. Ved Saran is forced to leave his childhood behind when he takes on the family business, sacrificing his own personal desires to make it a success. As he prospers, he is pulled further away from the ramshackle carnival
The Accordionist`s Son
The Accordionist`s Son is a remarkably powerful and accomplished novel, exploring the life of David Imaz, a former inhabitant of the Basque village of Obaba, now living in exile and ill-health on a ranch in California. As a young man, David divides his time between his uncle`s ranch and his life in the village, where
Hell`s Gorge – The Battle to Build the Panama Canal
“Hell`s Gorge” traces a heroic dream that spanned four centuries: to build a canal linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The human cost was immense: in appalling working conditions and amid epidemics of fever, tens of thousands perished fighting the jungle, swamps and mountains of Panama, a scale of attrition comparable to many great battles.
The Road Home
The Road Home by Rose Tremain is a wise and witty novel centred on Lev, a middle aged Polish man who has come to London as a migrant worker, ostensibly to earn a little money to send to his mother and daughter, but in reality running from unspoken problems within himself and at home, and
The President`s Last Love
Moscow, 2013. Bunin, the Ukrainian President, has joined other heads of state in an open air swimming pool to drink vodka and celebrate with Putin. During his rise to power Bunin has juggled with formidable and eccentric political and personal challenges. His troubles with his family and his women combine with his difficulties with corrupt
