Category Archives: Travel Guides
White Crocodile
Every so often a thriller appears that offers more to the reader than just entertainment. White Crocodile is just that. When emotionally damaged mine-clearer Tess Hardy travels to Cambodia to find out the truth behind her ex-husband`s death, she doesn`t know much about the country or its beliefs. On arrival, she finds that teenage mothers
Rites of Passage
This is the first volume of William Golding`s Sea Trilogy. Sailing to Australia in the early years of the nineteenth century, Edmund Talbot keeps a journal to amuse his godfather back in England. Full of wit and disdain, he records the mounting tensions on the ancient, sinking warship where officers, sailors, soldiers and emigrants jostle
The Unexpected Professor: An Oxford Life in Books
`Among the wealthy elders, my views gave some offence. Two or three people walked out of my lecture in Hamburg. At a dinner in Oldenburg I was seated next to a senior academic who berated me for my leftist leanings – not what he expected of an Oxford professor…` John Carey, best known for his
Fire Down Below: With an introduction by Victoria Glendinning
The third volume of William Golding`s Sea TrilogyA decrepit warship sails on the last stretch of its voyage to Sydney Cove. It has been blown off course and battered by wind, storm and ice. Little but rope holds the disintegrating hull together. And after a risky operation to reset its foremast, an unseen fire begins
Amnesia
When Gaby Bailleux released the Angel Worm into Australia`s prison system, allowing hundreds of asylum seekers to walk free, she also let the cat out of the bag. The Americans ran the prisons, like so many parts of her country, and so the doors of some 5000 American places of incarceration also opened. Both countries`
Close Quarters: With an introduction by Ronald Blythe
The second volume of William Golding`s Sea TrilogyIn a wilderness of heat, stillness and sea mists, a ball is held on a ship becalmed halfway to Australia. In this surreal, fete-like atmosphere the passengers dance and flirt, while beneath them thickets of weed like green hair spread over the hull. The sequel to Rites of
Darkness Visible
This title comes with an introduction by Philip Hensher. Darkness Visible opens at the height of the London Blitz, when a naked child steps out of an all-consuming fire. Miraculously saved but hideously scarred, soon tormented at school and at work, Matty becomes a wanderer, a seeker after some unknown redemption. Two more lost children
The Wall – Longlisted for the 2019 Man Booker Prize
Longlisted for the 2019 Man Booker Prize”Masterly… A signal achievement… Remarkable.” GuardianKavanagh begins his time patrolling the Wall.If he`s lucky, if nothing goes wrong, he only has to do two years of this. 729 more nights.The best thing that can happen is that he survives and gets off the Wall and will never have to
The Dark Heart of Italy
This is an essential guide to the strange, sometimes sinister culture of contemporary Italy. When Tobias Jones first travelled to Italy, he expected to discover the pastoral bliss described by centuries of foreign visitors and famous writers. Instead, he discovered a very different country, besieged by unfathomable terrorism and deep-seated paranoia, where crime is scarcely
Telegram from Guernica: The Extraordinary Life of George Steer, War Correspondent
On 26 April 1937, in the rubble of the bombed city of Guernica, the world`s press scrambled to submit their stories. But one journalist held back, and spent an extra day exploring the scene. His report pointed the finger at secret Nazi involvement in the devastating aerial attack. It was the lead story in both
Flight Behaviour
On the Appalachian Mountains above her home, a young mother discovers a beautiful and terrible marvel of nature. As the world around her is suddenly transformed by a seeming miracle, can the old certainties they have lived by for centuries remain unchallenged? “Flight Behaviour” is a captivating, topical and deeply human story touching on class,
The Time by the Sea: Aldeburgh, 1955-1958
The Time by the Sea is about Ronald Blythe`s life in Aldeburgh during the 1950s. He had originally come to the Suffolk coast as an aspiring young writer, but found himself drawn into Benjamin Britten`s circle and began working for the Aldeburgh Festival. Although befriended by Imogen Holst and by E M Forster, part of
Turkish Awakening: Behind the Scenes of Modern Turkey
Born in London to a Turkish mother and British father, Alev Scott moved to Istanbul to discover what it means to be Turkish in a country going through rapid political and social change, with an extraordinary past still linked to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and an ever more surprising present under the leadership of Recep Tayyip
Town and Country: New Irish Short Stories
Edited by award winning novelist and short story writer Kevin Barry, this volume will once again mix established names with previously unpublished authors, and will seek to offer fresh renditions to the Irish story – new angles, new approaches, new modes of attack. Published in 2011, “New Irish Short Stories”, edited by Joseph O`Connor, has
Carrigan & Miller: Book III: The Intrusions Untitled
A SUNDAY TIMES AND GUARDIAN BOOK OF THE YEAR, 2017`A Silence of the Lambs for the internet age as a serial killer stalks his prey online, entering and controlling their lives. Chilling and utterly convincing.` Ian Rankin`Exposes a nightmare world of secret surveillance.` Joan Smith, Sunday Times Detectives Carrigan and Miller are thrust into the
The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses and the Rise of the Tudors
The fifteenth century saw the crown of England change hands seven times as the great families of England fought to the death for power, majesty and the right to rule. The Hollow Crown completes Dan Jones` epic history of medieval England, and describes how the Plantagenets tore themselves apart to be finally replaced by the
Empires of the Sea: The Final Battle for the Mediterranean, 1521-1580
“Empires of the Sea” shows the Mediterranean as a majestic and bloody theatre of war. Opening with the Ottoman victory in 1453 it is a breathtaking story of military crusading, Barbary pirates, white slavery and the Ottoman Empire – and the larger picture of the struggle between Islam and Christianity. Coupled with dramatic set piece
The Chosen Ones
The Am Spiegelgrund clinic, in glittering Vienna, masqueraded as a well-intentioned reform school for wayward boys and girls and a home for chronically ill children. The reality, however, was very different: in the wake of Germany`s annexation of Austria on the eve of World War Two, its doctors, nurses, and teachers created a monstrous parody
Constantinople: The Last Great Siege, 1453
In the spring of 1453, the Ottoman Turks advanced on Constantinople in pursuit of an ancient Islamic dream: capturing the thousand-year-old capital of Christian Byzantium. During the siege that followed, a small band of badly organised defenders, outnumbered ten to one, confronted the might of the Ottoman army in a bitter contest fought on land,
In Times of Fading Light
“Already hailed as a Cold War classic” (Boyd Tonkin, Independent Books of the Year). “Utterly absorbing, funny and humane. A romp through a twisted century in the heart of Europe” (Anna Funder, author of Stasiland). It is an international bestseller and Winner of the German Book Prize. It is a sweeping story of one family
