Category Archives: Travel Guides
The Silk Roads: A New History of the World
For centuries, fame and fortune were to be found in the west- in the New World of the Americas.Today, it is the east which calls out to those in search of riches and adventure. Sweeping right across Central Asia and deep into China and India, a region that once took centre stage is again rising
Umbrella
SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2012 For half a century Audrey Death has been in a state of semi-consciousness. Severed from the world of the living after falling victim to Encephalitis lethargica, she has languished in Friern Barnet Mental Hospital. Then, in 1971, maverick psychiatrist Dr Zack Busner arrives. Audrey`s experiences of a bygone
Guilty Thing: A Life of Thomas de Quincey
`Life for De Quincey was either angels ascending on vaults of cloud or vagrants shivering on the city streets.` Thomas De Quincey – opium-eater, celebrity journalist, and professional doppelganger – is embedded in our culture. Modelling his character on Coleridge and his sensibility on Wordsworth, De Quincey took over the poet`s former cottage in Grasmere
Darwin`s Ghosts
Soon after publication of On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin received a letter that deeply unsettled him. He had expected outrage and accusations of heresy, but this letter was different: it accused him of taking credit for a theory that wasn`t his. Yet when he tried to trace his intellectual forebears, he found that
Finding Casey
Glory Vigil, newly married, unexpectedly pregnant at 41, is nesting in the home she and her husband Joseph have just moved to in Santa Fe, a house that unknown to them is rumored to have a resident ghost. Their adopted daughter Juniper is home from college for Thanksgiving and in love for the very first
Ignorance
LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN`S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2013 Jeanne and Marie-Angele grow up, side by side yet apart, in the Catholic village of Ste Madeleine. Marie-Angele is the daughter of the grocer, inflated with ideas of her rightful place in society; Jeanne`s mother washes clothes for a living and used to be a Jew. When
John Saturnall`s Feast
In the remote village of Buckland, a mob chants of witchcraft. It is 1625, and John and his mother are running for their lives. Taking refuge among the trees of Buccla`s Wood, John`s mother opens her book and begins to tell her son of an ancient Feast kept in secret down the generations. Little does
Mrs Robinson`s Disgrace: The Private Diary of a Victorian Lady
When the married Isabella Robinson was introduced to the dashing Edward Lane at a party in 1850, she was utterly enchanted. He was `fascinating`, she told her diary, before chastising herself for being so susceptible to a man`s charms. But a wish had taken hold of her, and she was to find it hard to
My Life as a Wife: Love, Liquor and What to Do About Other Women
Born in London during the Blitz, Elisabeth Luard – step-daughter of a British diplomat and reluctant debutante in her teens – was working as an office typist at Private Eye when she fell for the `King of Satire` Nicholas Luard. At just twenty-one years old, she married him. As the pioneer of Britain`s satire movement,
On the Trail of Genghis Khan: An Epic Journey Through the Land of the Nomads
The relationship between man and horse on the Eurasian steppe gave rise to a succession of rich nomadic cultures. Among them were the Mongols of the thirteenth century – a small tribe, which, under the charismatic leadership of Genghis Khan, created the largest contiguous land empire in history. Inspired by the extraordinary life nomads still
Once You Break A Knuckle
Shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize 2012 In the remote Kootenay Valley in western Canada, good people sometimes do bad things. Two adolescents sabotage a rope swing; a heartbroken young man chooses not to warn his best friend about an approaching car; sons challenge their fathers. Crackling with tension and propelled by jagged, cutting dialogue,
Shadow Of The Rock
One humid summer night in Gibraltar, lawyer Spike Sanguinetti arrives home to find an old friend, Solomon Hassan, waiting on his doorstep. Solomon is on the run, accused of a brutal murder in Tangiers. He has managed to skip across the Straits but the Moroccan authorities want him back. Spike travels to Tangiers to try
Sidney Chambers and The Shadow of Death (The Grantchester Mysteries)
Sidney Chambers, the Vicar of Grantchester, is a thirty-two year old bachelor. Sidney is an unconventional clergyman and can go where the police cannot. Together with his roguish friend Inspector Geordie Keating, Sidney inquires into the suspect suicide of a Cambridge solicitor, a scandalous jewellery theft at a New Year`s Eve dinner party, the unexplained
The Bull of Mithros
Drawn to the sun-drenched island of Mithros by the myth of its fabled bull, the arrival of investigator Hermes Diaktoros coincides with a violent and troubling death. The death has echoes in Mithros`s past, in a brutal unsolved crime from years ago which, it seems, is neither forgotten, nor forgiven. Hermes sets out to solve
The Forrests
LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN`S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2013 Dorothy Forrest is immersed in the sensory world around her; she lives in the flickering moment. From the age of seven, when her odd, disenfranchised family moves from New York City to the wide skies of Auckland, to the very end of her life, this is her
Bird Sense: What It`s Like to Be a Bird
What is it like to be a swift, flying at over one hundred kilometres an hour? Or a kiwi, plodding flightlessly among the humid undergrowth in the pitch dark of a New Zealand night? And what is going on inside the head of a nightingale as it sings, and how does its brain improvise? Bird
Light of Amsterdam
It is December in Belfast, Christmas is approaching and three sets of people are about to make their way to Amsterdam. Alan, a university art teacher, goes on a pilgrimage to the city of his youth with troubled teenage son Jack; middle-aged couple Marion and Richard take a break from running their garden centre to
The Dreyfus Affair: The Story of the Most Infamous Miscarriage of Justice in French History
Intelligent, ambitious and a rising star in the French artillery, Captain Alfred Dreyfus appeared to have everything: family, money, and the prospect of a post on the General Staff. But his rapid rise had also made him enemies – many of them aristocratic officers in the army`s High Command who resented him because he was
Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan
In the spring of 1839, the British invaded Afghanistan for the first time. Led by lancers in scarlet cloaks and plumed shakos, nearly 20,000 British and East India Company troops poured through the high mountain passes and re-established on the throne Shah Shuja ul-Mulk. On the way in, the British faced little resistance. But after
A Lady Cyclist`s Guide to Kashgar
It is 1923 and Evangeline English, keen lady cyclist, arrives with her sister Lizzie and their zealous leader Millicent at the ancient city of Kashgar to establish a mission. As they encounter resistance and calamity, Eva commences work on her Lady Cyclist`s Guide to Kashgar…In present-day London, Frieda opens her door to find a man
