Category Archives: Travel Guides
The Time Traveler`s Wife
The Time Traveler’s Wife became an international best seller for author Audrey Niffenegger. The themes of love, loss and identity are centred on Clare and Henry, a couple who, quite literally never know who or where they are. Periodically and suddenly Henry’s genetic clock resets itself and he is pulled into his past or future;
Fugitives and Refugees
Clearly, the first questions any potential visitor to Portland will have are: “Where do Chuck Palahniuk`s tonsils currently reside?”, “Where can I find a naked mannequin to hide in my kitchen cabinets?”, and of course “What goes on at the Scum Center?”.Fortunately, Chuck Palahniuk, the author of Fight Club, has taken pity on those travelling
The Road To Somewhere
Celebrating the wonder, comedy and adventure to be found in the most unlikely places, best-selling author James Dodson takes his young son Jack on a once-in-lifetime trip through the great cities and eccentric byways of Europe. There are two kinds of travel, someone once said: first class and with children. During the summer of 2001,
The Godfather – The Lost Years
`The bloody victory of the Corleone Family was not complete,` begins the final chapter of Mario Puzo`s “The Godfather”, `until a year of delicate manoeuvring established Michael Corleone as the most powerful Family chief in the United States.` “The Godfather: The Lost Years” takes place in the years 1955-65, but it is built upon the
These Old Shades
Under the reign of Louis XV, corruption and intrigue have been allowed to blossom in France, and Justin Alastair, the notorious Duke of Avon and proud of his soubriquet `Satanas`, flourishes as well. Then, from a dark Parisian back alley, he plucks L-on, a red-headed urchin with strangely familiar looks, just in time for his
The Old Devils
Malcolm, Peter and Charlie and their Soave-sodden wives have one main ambition left in life: to drink Wales dry. But their routine is both shaken and stirred when they are joined by professional Welshman Alun Weaver (CBE) and his wife, Rhiannon.
Trainspotting
A collection of short stories, set in the dark recesses of Edinburgh`s low-life in the late 1980’s, telling a trippy tale of a group of friends who use heroin, and of relationships they develop among themselves, with friends and with people who engage in other destructive behaviours. The collection describes the lives of the leading
Moab is My Washpot
Moab is My Washpot is in turns funny, shocking, tender, delicious, sad, lyrical, bruisingly frank and addictively readable. Stephen Fry`s bestselling memoir tells how, sent to a boarding school 200 miles from home at the age of seven, he survived beatings, misery, love, ecstasy, carnal violation, expulsion, imprisonment, criminal conviction, probation and catastrophe to emerge,
The Liar
Stephen Fry`s breathtakingly outrageous debut novel, by turns eccentric, shocking, brilliantly comic and achingly romantic. Adrian Healey is magnificently unprepared for the long littleness of life; unprepared too for the afternoon in Salzburg when he will witness the savage murder of a Hungarian violinist; unprepared to learn about the Mendax device; unprepared for more murders
Making History
Michael Young is a brilliant young history student whose life is changed when he meets Leo Zuckerman, an ageing physicist with a theory that can change worlds. Together they realise that they have the power to alter history and eradicate a great evil. But tinkering with timelines is more dangerous than they can imagine and
A Week in December
It was London, the week before Christmas, 2007. Over seven days we follow the lives of seven major characters: a hedge fund manager trying to bring off the biggest trade of his career; a professional footballer recently arrived from Poland; a young lawyer with little work and too much time to speculate; a student who
An Indian Odyssey
The Ramayana – the Journey of Rama – is India`s best-loved book, an inspiration to school-children, monks and moviemakers, yet it is virtually unknown in the Western world. The story of Rama, an exiled prince searching savage jungles for his kidnapped wife, it mixes Homer`s Odyssey with Conrad`s Heart of Darkness. It is an ancient
Our Horses In Egypt
Philomena is requisitioned from a Dorset field in the summer of 1914, and serves with the yeomanry in Egypt and Palestine until the end of the First World War. But she doesn`t come back to England: thousands of British Army horses are sold off locally. Faint news of her reaches Griselda Romney, her old owner.
The Lost Heart of Asia
Winner of the 2019 Edward Stanford Travel Writing Award`s Outstanding Contribution to Travel WritingIn 1993 Colin Thubron set out to explore the The Lost Heart of Asia – the Moslem republics of the former Soviet Union. He visited the magical cities of Bukhara, Samarkand and Tashkent and travelled the Kazakh steppes, the barren desert of
Among the Russians
Winner of the 2019 Edward Stanford Travel Writing Award`s Outstanding Contribution to Travel WritingAmong the Russians is a marvellous account of Colin Thubron`s solitary journey by car from St Petersburg and the Baltic states, south to Georgia and Armenia. A gifted writer and intrepid traveller, Thubron grapples with the complexities of Russian identity and relays
Behind the Wall
Winner of the 2019 Edward Stanford Travel Writing Award`s Outstanding Contribution to Travel WritingHaving learned mandarin, and travelling alone by foot, bicycle and train, Colin Thubron set off on a 10,000-mile journey from Beijing to Tibet, starting from a tropical paradise near the Burmese border to the windswept wastes of the Gobi desert and the
La Belle Saison
How often have you eaten a mushroom that you picked yourself that morning? Or sat on a boat opening and eating oysters as you lift them from the sea? Or partaken of a seven course feast of game to celebrate the success of the chasse? When Patricia Atkinson – bestselling author of The Ripening Sun
The Atom Station
When the Americans make an offer to buy land in Iceland to build a NATO airbase after World War II, a storm of protest is provoked throughout the country. The airbase provides Laxness with the catalyst for his astonishing and powerful satire. Narrated by a country girl from the north, the novel follows her experiences
Spoken Here – Travels Among Threatened Languages
Half the world`s languages are threatened with extinction over the next century, as English and the rest of the world`s top twenty languages drive all before them. What ways of looking at the world will die along with them, what cultural riches, what experiences, histories and memories? And how does it feel to be one
The Chronicler of the Winds
One night Jose hears gunfire from the deserted theatre next door to his bakery. He races to the theatre`s uppermost gallery, and there beneath him on a spotlit stage lies the wounded body of Nelio, a street urchin renowned for living on his wits. Gasping, the wounded boy asks to be taken to the roof
