Search results for ""Atlantic Books""

One night, Akram Khan walks out of his house towards an appointed time and place where he is supposed to detonate a bomb that will end his life and that of many innocent bystanders. As he wanders through the town he encounters Grace, whose life has been marred just as his has, forming an unlikely closeness borne of need and necessity.Akram tells Grace about his seemingly inexorable journey towards radicalization: a childhood within the tight-knit Pakistani community, his complex friendships among outcasts, his disastrous years in the army, and his empty arranged marriage to a woman who remains a stranger. Delicately drawn, Akram's War is an honest and shocking kaleidoscopic portrait of contemporary Britain, and of the ways in which the twists and turns of fate can scar and mark a life.

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Longlisted for the Historical Writers Association debut novel award 2016.Hendrickje, a young girl from a strict Calvinist family, leaves home to find work as a maid. Entering Rembrandt's flourishing and busy household after the death of the great artist's wife, she finds a world filled with secrets and desire.Shocked to the core after discovering the intense relationship between Rembrandt and Geertje, his housekeeper, Hendrickje is nevertheless slowly drawn to Rembrandt by his freshness, by his freedom, by his intensity.Rembrandt's Mirror explores the three women of Rembrandt's life, and the towering passions of the artist, seen through the eyes of his last, great love, Hendrickje.

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Oxford, 1862. Poor, plain Mary Prickett takes up her post as governess to the daughters of the Dean of Christ Church. When Mary meets Charles Dodgson, a friend of the family, she is flattered by his attentions and becomes convinced he plans to propose marriage. But it is also clear that he is drawn to the little girls in Mary's care, and on a boating trip one sunny day Mr Dodgson tells the story of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland a curious tale about the precocious Alice LiddellAs Mary waits for her life to change, she becomes increasingly suspicious of Alice's friendship with Mr Dodgson. Before long, everything Mary believes is turned topsy-turvy, and her determination to get to the truth will have lasting consequences for all involved...

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In Saint Paul, Minnesota state investigator Kirk Stevens and his sometime colleague FBI special agent Carla Windermere witness the assassination of a local billionaire. The shooter flees the scene, but not before the pair see his face - and the blank expression in his eyes. Stevens and Windermere investigate and are led across the country, down dead ends and into long-forgotten cold cases, until they finally discover a chilling clue: a high tech murder-for-hire website. It's a break in the case but only the beginning. Who is the dead-eyed shooter? Who recruits the assassins? And who profits from the fee? It is a race against the clock, and the killer has his next target in sight...

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The utterly charming prequel to the New York Times-bestseller Mr Penumbra's 24-hour Bookstore. San Francisco, 1969. The summer of drugs, music and a new age dawning. A young, earnest Ajax Penumbra has been given his first assignment as a Junior Acquisitions Officer - to find the single surviving copy of the Techne Tycheon, a mysterious volume that has brought and lost great fortune for anyone who has owned it. After a few weeks of rigorous hunting, Penumbra feels no closer to his goal than when he started. But late one night, after another day of dispiriting dead ends, he stumbles upon a 24-hour bookstore and the possibilities before him expand exponentially. With the help of his friend's homemade computer, an ancient map, a sunken ship and the vast shelves of the 24-hour bookstore, Ajax Penumbra might just find what he's seeking...

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Aged 105, Rose has endured more than her fair share of hardships: the Armenian genocide, the Nazi regime, and the delirium of Maoism. Yet somehow, despite all the suffering, Rose never loses her joie de vivre. As she looks back over her long life - one of survival and, sometimes, one of retribution - she recalls those unique experiences that added such spice to her life, whether it was being a confidante to Hitler, a friend to Simone de Beauvoir or cooking for Heinrich Himmler.

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The internet is everywhere. Those who control it, control us.As a gifted Ivy League student, Andrei Koss hit upon an idea that would revolutionise social networking and move it on by a generation. Enlisting the help of his best friends, Ben and Kevin, he turned their dorm room into an operations base, where flashes of creative brilliance and all-night-coding sessions led to the creation of Fishbowl. He is now the 21-year-old CEO of a multi-billion-dollar empire. His creation reaches into every corner of the planet. But its immense power has many uses, and some will stop at nothing to get a piece of it.

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SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE 2016SHORTLISTED FOR THE SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE 2015Emma Sky was working for the British Council during the invasion of Iraq, when the ad went around calling for volunteers. Appalled at what she saw as a wrongful war, she signed up, expecting to be gone for months. Instead, her time in Iraq spanned a decade, and became a personal odyssey so unlikely that it could be a work of fiction. Quickly made civilian representative of the CPA in Kirkuk, and then political advisor to General Odierno, Sky became valued for her outspoken voice and the unique perspective she offered as an outsider. In her intimate, clear-eyed memoir of her time in Iraq, a young British woman among the men of the US military, Emma Sky provides a vivid portrait of this most controversial of interventions, exploring how and why the Iraq project failed.

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Every house holds a secret. Some secrets can kill.Lacey has found the house of her dreams: the perfect home to raise the child she's expecting.Soon, the beautiful sunlit rooms will be filled with joy.But the house doesn't want Lacey. The house is already occupied.Beneath the dark stairway lies a secret...No child has survived this house. No woman emerged in tact.Lacey has made a mistake. Now she must fight to survive it.

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Kiera Lindsey has a passion for Australian history. She has worked in the Australian film and television industries and presented a history program on ABC Radio. She has also published a regular column in The Adelaide Review. She lectures in Australian history at the University of South Australia and was the winner of the inaugural Greg Dening Memorial Prize.

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In the 1980s, a small man is pulled up out of the Indian Ocean in Port Pallid, SA, claiming to have been kidnapped as a baby. The Sergeant, whose job it is to sort the local people by colour, and thereby determine their fate, peers at the boy, then sticks a pencil into his hair, as one did in those days, waiting to see if it stays there, or falls out before he gives his verdict:'He's very odd, this Jimfish you've hauled in. If he's white he is not the right sort of white. But if he's black, who can say? We'll wait before we classify him. I'll give his age as 18, and call him Jimfish. Because he's a real fish out of water, this one is.'So begins the odyssey of Jimfish, a South African Everyman, who defies the usual classification of race that defines the rainbow nation. His journey through the last years of Apartheid will extend beyond the borders of South Africa to the wider world, where he will be an unlikely witness to the defining moments of the dying days of the twentieth century. Part fable, part fierce commentary on the politics of power, this work is the culmination of a lifetime's writing and thinking, on both the Apartheid regime and the history of the twentieth century, by a writer of enormous originality and range.

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THE SECOND INSTALMENT IN THE JOHN DEE PAPERSThe acclaimed second instalment of The John Dee Papers. Tudor intrigue, murder and the dark arts - brooding superstition leaves John Dee isolated in the land of his father...'Chills, thrills and satisfies. A fabulous read.' - Huffington PostAt the end of the sunless summer of 1560, black rumour shrouds the death of the one woman who stands between Lord Robert Dudley and marriage to the young Queen Elizabeth. Did Dudley's wife, Amy, die from an accidental fall in a deserted house, or was it murder? Even Dr John Dee, astrologer royal, adviser on the Hidden and one of Dudley's oldest friends, is uncertain. Then a rash promise to the Queen sends him to his family's old home on the Welsh Border in pursuit of the Wigmore Shewstone, a crystal credited with supernatural properties. With John Dee goes Robert Dudley, considered the most hated man in England. They travel with a London judge sent to try a sinister Welsh brigand with a legacy dating back to the Battle of Brynglas. After the battle, many of the English bodies were, according to legend, obscenely mutilated. Now, on the same haunted hill, another dead man has been found, similarly slashed. Devious politics, small-town corruption, twisted religion and a brooding superstition leave John Dee isolated in the land of his father. The previous book in the bestselling The John Dee Papers is The Bones of Avalon.

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Glasgow's melting. The temperature is rising and so is the murder rate. Douglas Brodie, ex-policeman, ex-soldier and now newest reporter on the Glasgow Gazette, has no shortage of material for his crime column.But even Brodie baulks at his latest subject: a rapist who has been tarred and feathered by a balaclava-clad group. Brodie soon discovers a link between this horrific act and a series of brutal beatings.As violence spreads and the body count rises, Brodie and advocate Samantha Campbell are entangled in a web of deception and savagery. Brodie is swamped with stories for the Gazette. But how long before he and Sam become the headline?

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In this original and thought-provoking book philosopher Michael Hampe sets out to help us understand happiness. The right and proper path to a happy life is a topic that has been debated for millennia. There are many theories, from those of ancient philosophy to those of modern neuroscience, but can any one of them ultimately tell us how the objective of a perfectly fulfilled life might be achieved? By telling the story of two friends - the unhappy philosopher Stanley Low and the happy gardener Gabriel Kolk - alongside a presentation of four essays that examine prominent and very plausible theories of happiness, Michael Hampe illustrates that there is no easy answer to our search for unadulterated bliss.Four Meditations on Happiness is an erudite and illuminating investigation into one of mankind's most elusive quests, one that allows us to reconsider what it means to be happy.

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As an F-16 fighter pilot, Darwin Cole was a family man on top of his world. Now he's a washout - drunk and alone in a trailer in the Nevada desert, haunted by the memory of an Afghan child running for her life from the Predator drone he 'piloted'. Reluctantly, Cole teams up with three journalists seeking to discover the identity of the anonymous intelligence operative who called the shots in that ill-fated mission. But in a surveillance culture, even the well-intentioned must sometimes run for their lives. Especially when they're tracking leads to the very heart of that culture - in intelligence, in the military, and among the unchecked private contractors who stand to profit richly from the advancing technology... Technology not just for use 'over there', but for right here, right now.

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It is 1977. A new force is terrorising Rome - a mob of reckless, ultraviolent youths known as La Banda della Magliana. As the gang ruthlessly take control of Rome's heroin trade, they begin an inexorable rise to power. Banda della Magliana intend to own the streets of Rome - unless their internal struggles tear them apart. Based on Rome's modern gangland history, Romanzo Criminale fearlessly confronts Italy's Age of Lead: war on the streets and terrorism, kidnappings and corruption at the highest levels of government.

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Hercules is a dachshund, and his new mistress Caroline is the greatest human being on earth. She's the one who rescued him from the animal shelter, who smells of summer and strawberries, and who laughs when the little pup snuggles up with her on the sofa. So when Caroline is badly treated by her bossy, dog-hating boyfriend, Hercules decides it's high time he rescued his mistress for a change. And so begins an epic quest to find his favourite woman the perfect man. Touching, original, and very funny, Puppy Love is a story about love, life, and the best friend a girl could ever have.

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THE FIRST INSTALMENT IN THE HANNE WILHELMSEN SERIES.A superbly chilling story of corruption in the corridors of power.A drug dealer is battered to death in the outskirts of Oslo. A young Dutch student, covered in blood, walks aimlessly through the streets of central Oslo. He is taken into custody, but refuses to speak.Five days later a shady criminal lawyer called Hans Olsen is murdered. The two deaths don't seem related, but Detective Inspector Hanne Wilhelmsen is unconvinced. Soon, she uncovers a link between the bodies: Olsen defended the drug dealer. But there are powerful forces working against Hanne; a conspiracy that reaches far beyond a crooked lawyer and a small-time dealer. The investigation will take her into the offices of the most powerful men in Norway - and even put her own life at risk...

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'What would Germaine do?'This is the mantra that Skip and Marlo Wells turn to as they navigate their way through the twists and turns that life brings. Such as the sectioning of their mother Karen Jane. Marlo puts her faith in her hero, Germaine Greer, and twelve-year-old Skip trusts her clever big sister to know the right thing to do. But when the sisters are forced to move to their Auntie Noreen and Uncle Doug's home in the backwater city of Crater Lakes even Marlo can't think of a solution. At age sixteen, Marlo is forced to quit school and work in the family hardware store. Skip manages to get on her auntie's bad side from the get-go and is an outcast at school as she vehemently declares the injustice of the Vietnam War - not what Noreen wants to hear with her precious son Barry off fighting. Skip and Marlo dream of escape from Crater Lakes but with Karen Jane's release nowhere on the horizon they resign themselves to their new life. Before long they make the acquaintance of the Novak brothers - Skip's classmate Honza and his eternally cheerful older brother Pavel. Marlo becomes entangled with the local drama teacher, leaving Skip to explore the town's haunts with Honza. Skip learns about the mysterious Dansie residence, a secluded house that once belonged to Roger Dansie - an actor and the closest thing to a local hero that Crater Lakes ever had. As the days roll on the Wells sisters are drawn ever deeper in to the lives of their new acquaintances, learning that their first impressions of Crater Lakes may not be as accurate as they believed. Against the backdrop of a broken home, the fight for equality and a far off war Volcano Street is a heartfelt tale of acceptance and belonging, and learning what family truly means.

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In her garden, ensconced in the lush vegetation of the Western Cape, Clare Wald, world-renowned author, mother, critic, takes up her pen and confronts her life. Sam Leroux has returned to South Africa to embark upon a project that will establish his reputation - he is to write Clare's biography. But how honest is she prepared to be? Was she complicit in crimes lurking in South Africa's past; is she an accomplice or a victim? Are her crimes against her family real or imagined? In the stories she weaves and the truth just below the surface of her shimmering prose, lie Sam's own ghosts.

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Since the end of the Cold War so-called experts have been predicting the eclipse of America's "special relationship" with Britain. But as events have shown, especially in the wake of 9/11, the political and cultural ties between America and Britain have grown stronger. Blood, Class and Empire examines the dynamics of this relationship, its many cultural manifestations-the James Bond series, PBS "Brit Kitsch," Rudyard Kipling-and explains why it still persists. Contrarian, essayist and polemicist, Christopher Hitchens notes that while the relationship is usually presented as a matter of tradition, manners, and common culture, sanctified by wartime alliance, the special ingredient is empire; transmitted from an ancient regime that has tried to preserve and renew itself thereby. England has attempted to play Greece to the American Rome, but ironically having encouraged the United States to become an equal partner in the business of empire, Britain found itself supplanted.

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Set in the 5th century AD, Azazeel is the exquisitely crafted tale of a Coptic monk's journey from Upper Egypt to Alexandria and then Syria during a time of massive upheaval in the early Church. Winner of the Arab Booker Prize, Azazeel highlights how the history of our civilization has been warped by greed and avarice since its very beginnings and how one man's beliefs are challenged not only by the malice of the devil, but by the corruption with the early Church. In sparse and often sparkling prose that reflects the arid beauty of the Syrian landscape, Azazeel is a novel that forces us to re-think many of our long-held beliefs and invites us to rediscover a lost history.

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Shortlisted for the Katharine Briggs Folklore Award and runner-up for Countryfile Book of the Year. For millennia, the passing seasons and their rhythms have marked our progress through the year. But what do they mean to us now that we lead increasingly atomised and urban lives and our weather becomes ever more unpredictable or extreme?In this splendidly rich and lyrical celebration of the English seasons, Nick Groom investigates the trove of strange folklore and often stranger fact they have accumulated over the centuries and shows how tradition and our links with nature still have a vital role to play in all our lives.

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A collection of autobiographical short stories, small vignettes of his life experiences, universal in their appeal yet unabashedly intimate and very funny.From the #1 bestselling author of Running with Scissors and Dry comes a contagiously funny, heartwarming, shocking, twisted, and absolutely magical collection. True stories that give voice to the thoughts we all have but dare not mention. It begins with a Tang Instant Breakfast Drink television commercial when Augusten was seven. Then there is the contest of wills with the deranged cleaning lady. The execution of a rodent carried out with military precision and utter horror. Telemarketing revenge. Dating an undertaker and much more. A collection of true stories that are universal in their appeal yet unabashedly intimate and very funny.

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***'A refreshing perspective on mourning, as well as a moving tale of a social outcast' - i-D Magazine******'Subtle and understated [...] ultimately very moving' - The Big Issue******A fascinating glimpse into how [rural women's] lives are still led' - Dorset Magazine***Is it ever too late to change your life?Elegant, wry and moving, The Funeral Cryer tells the tale of one woman's mid-life re-awakening in contemporary rural China and proves that it's never too late to alter your fate.The Funeral Cryer long ago accepted the mundane realities of her life: avoided by fellow villagers because of the stigma attached to her job as a professional mourner and under-appreciated by The Husband, whose fecklessness has pushed the couple close to the brink of break-up. But just when things couldn't be bleaker, The Funeral Cryer takes a leap of faith - and in so doing things start to take a surprising turn for the better . . . Dark, moving and wry, The Funeral Cryer is both an illuminating depiction of a 'left behind' society - and proof that it's never too late to change your life.What readers have been saying about The Funeral Cryer:'A beautiful, thought-provoking book [...] incredibly humorous' - J. Wells, Five-star Reader Review'A stunning debut' - Stacey, Five-star Reader Review'A first person narrative that shows how the life of a middle-aged woman working as a funeral cryer in China is deeply linked to the people who touch her life and the way they treat her.' - Kate Poels, Five-star Reader Review'A remarkable novel that explores themes of marriage, family relationships, elderly care, and gender equality [...] this book offers a unique reading experience and an opportunity for deep contemplation.' - Rui, Five-star Reader Review'Excellent literary fiction. [...] Simultaneously the story speaks to the rural economic desperation, the separation of town and country, they way the young move to the cities and are often left with no other option to finance themselves than selling themselves. The huge discrepancy between the haves and have-nots is very evident.' - Cheryl M-M, Five-star Reader Review

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'A formidable achievement... a moving enactment of a modern pilgrimage' Rory Stewart'Thoughtful [and] heartfelt' Observer'Profound [and] compelling' Spectator'A noble endeavour' New Statesman***A WATERSTONES BEST BOOKS OF 2022 PICK***Without a permanent home, a wife or a job, and with no clear sense of where his life was going, Anthony Seldon set out on a 35-day pilgrimage from the French-Swiss border to the English Channel.The route of his 1,000 kilometre journey was inspired by a young British soldier of the First World War, Alexander Douglas Gillespie, who dreamed of creating a 'Via Sacra' that the men, women and children of Europe could walk to honour the fallen. Tragically, Gillespie was killed in action, his vision forgotten for a hundred years, until a chance discovery in the archive of one of England's oldest schools galvanised Anthony into seeing the Via Sacra permanently established.Tracing the historic route of the Western Front, he traversed some of Europe's most beautiful and evocative scenery, from the Vosges, Argonne and Champagne to the haunting trenches of Arras, the Somme and Ypres. Along the way, he wrestled heat exhaustion, dog bites and blisters as well as a deeper search for inner peace and renewed purpose. Touching on grief, loss and the legacy of war, The Path of Peace is the extraordinary story of Anthony's epic walk, an unforgettable act of remembrance and a triumphant rediscovery of what matters most in life.____________________________________________'The Western Front Way, an idea that waited 100 years for its moment, is the simplest and fittest memorial yet to the agony of the Great War. Anthony Seldon's account of how he walked it, and what it means to all of us, will be an inspiration to younger generations.' Sebastian Faulks'A deeply informed meditation on the First World War, an exploration of walking's healing power, a formidable physical achievement... and above all a moving enactment of a modern pilgrimage.' Rory Stewart'A journey of self-discovery and a pilgrimage of peace... A remarkable book by a remarkable man.' Michael Morpurgo'An incredible journey that will move and inspire.' Bear Grylls

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'A delectable slice of dark academia' Times Crime ClubCleeve is not for everyone...When Eve's husband is appointed housemaster at his old boarding school, Cleeve College, she gives up her life in London to join him. But the isolation and loss of autonomy threaten both her happiness and her marriage.The arrival of Fen, an enigmatic artist and wife of the new Classics teacher, is a welcome distraction. Fen doesn't play by the rules, and she and Eve enter into a game of escalating dares, disrupting the delicate balance of school life.Then, the morning after Hazard Night, a tradition that allows the students to run wild and play pranks for one day, a body is found. Someone has been murdered. And it seems everyone has something to hide...

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A SUNDAY TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR'This feels like a vision for the 21st-century novel... It made me happy' Ocean Vuong, author of On Earth We're Briefly GorgeousBenson and Mike are two young guys who have been together for a few years - good years - but now they're not sure why they're still a couple. There's the sex, sure, and the meals Mike cooks for Benson, and, well, they love each other. But when Mike finds out his estranged father is dying in Osaka just as his acerbic Japanese mother, Mitsuko, arrives for a visit, Mike picks up and flies across the world to say goodbye. In Japan he undergoes an extraordinary transformation, discovering the truth about his family and his past, while back home, Mitsuko and Benson are stuck living together as unconventional roommates, an absurd domestic situation that ends up meaning more to each of them than they ever could have predicted...Funny and profound, Memorial is about family in all its strange forms, becoming who you're supposed to be and the outer limits of love.NAMED A BOOK TO WATCH IN 2021 BY:SUNDAY TIMES | THE TIMES | DAILY MAIL | THE TELEGRAPH | RADIO 4 | IRISH TIMES

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'Limburg describes movingly her own struggles as a new mother and the pressure of society's expectations...Through such delicately intertwined experiences, Limburg quietly shouts for change.' Times Literary SupplementIt seemed to me that many of the moments when my autism had caused problems, or at least marked me out as different, were those moments when I had come up against some unspoken law about how a girl or a woman should be, and failed to meet it.An autism diagnosis in midlife enabled Joanne Limburg to finally make sense of why her emotional expression, social discomfort and presentation had always marked her as an outsider. Eager to discover other women who had been misunderstood in their time, she writes a series of wide-ranging letters to four 'weird sisters' from history, addressing topics including autistic parenting, social isolation, feminism, the movement for disability rights and the appalling punishments that have been meted out over centuries to those deemed to fall short of the norm. This heartfelt, deeply compassionate and wholly original work humanises women who have so often been dismissed for their differences, and will be celebrated by 'weird sisters' everywhere.

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***A Waterstones Best Books of 2022 pick***The story of the pioneering anthropologists and their adventures among civilisations that were first thought of as being primitive and savage. What they discovered, however, would change the way we think about ourselves.In the late nineteenth century, when non-European societies were seen as 'living fossils' offering an insight into how Western civilisation had evolved, anthropology was a thrilling new discipline which attracted the brightest minds of the academic world. But, by the middle of the twentieth century, colonialism was recognised as being inextricably linked to exploitation and outdated labels like 'savage' were inconceivable when so-called 'civilised' man had wreaked such devastation across two world wars.Focusing on twelve key European and American anthropologists working in the field, from Franz Boas on Baffin Island in the 1880s to Claude Lévi-Strauss in Brazil fifty years later, Lucy Moore explores the brief flowering of anthropology as a quasi-scientific area of study with all its insights and ambivalence. In Search of Us tells the story of the men and women whose observations of the 'other' would transform attitudes about race, gender equality, sexual liberation, parenting and tolerance in ways they had never anticipated. In an enthralling, perceptive narrative, Moore shows how these radical anthropologists were inspired by their time in the furthest-flung reaches of the known world, becoming pioneers of a new way of thinking. In the end, their legacy is less about understanding foreign cultures and more about their attempts to persuade human beings to look at one another with eyes washed free from prejudice. Their intention may have been to explain what they saw as the primitive world to the civilised one but they ended up changing the way people viewed themselves - at least for a time.

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Amazon reviewers love The Scarlet Code!'A rollicking good tale''Thoroughly enjoyable, highly recommend''Exciting, swashbuckling adventure''Everything you could want from an adventure thriller: excitement, a fabulously endearing heroine and pirate to fall in love with, a cruel killer and... well-written historical detail. Superb.'1789. The Bastille has fallen...As Parisians pick souvenirs from the rubble, a killer stalks the lawless streets. His victims are female aristocrats. His executions use the most terrible methods of the ancient regime.English spy Attica Morgan is laying low in Paris, helping nobles escape. When her next charge falls victim to the killer's twisted machinations, Attica realises she alone can unmask him. But now it seems his deadly sights are set on her.As the city prisons empty, and a mob mobilises to storm Versailles, finding a dangerous criminal is never going to be easy. Attica's only hope is to enlist her old ally, reformed pirate Jemmy Avery, to track the killer though his revolutionary haunts. But even with a pirate and her fast knife, it seems Attica might not manage to stay alive.'A rip-roaring adventure' Tessa Harris on The Bastille Spy

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'Brilliantly eerie' PETER JAMES'Engrossing and beautifully dark . . . a cracking good read' JO BRAND'A most original sleuth' THE TIMES Welcome to the River Wye: a place of poetry, historic obsession... and occult murder.The curious death of an estate agent is being investigated by detective David Vaynor who, before joining the police, studied the famous 18th century poet William Wordsworth. As Vaynor is discovering, the dark paganism that changed Wordsworth's life still lingers on the banks of the River Wye today - and there are some killings even the police can't approach...Enter Merrily Watkins, parish priest, single mum, and diocesan exorcist for Hereford. Called away from her local hauntings, Merrily finds herself confronting the riverside ghosts who, as Wordsworth puts it, 'promote ill purposes and flatter foul desires'. In the ancient heart of the Wye Valley, a buried grudge is about to come to light.*Book 16 in the Merrily Watkins series - now a critically acclaimed ITV drama starring Anna Maxwell-Martin!*More praise for Phil Rickman 'Cleverly illuminates the darkest corners of our imagination' John Connolly 'The layers, the characters, the humour, the spookiness - perfect' Elly Griffiths'First rate crime with demons that go bump in the night' Daily Mail'No one writes better of the shadow-frontier between the supernatural and the real world' Bernard Cornwell

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***'Superb storytelling. [...] Readers everywhere are in for a treat!' - Tracy Chevalier******'Multi-layered, compelling and intriguing, The Silver Wolf draws us into the murky underbelly of Europe's Thirty Years' War.' - Minette Walters******'[A] marvellous [...] intelligently written romp through history' - NB Magazine******With a huge cast of characters and great storytelling, this is epic, action-packed historical fiction.' - Choice***The extraordinarily rich, dark, panoramic tale of an orphaned boy's quest for truth and then for vengeance as war rages across 17th-century Europe.Amidst the chaos of the Thirty Years' War, Jack Fiskardo embarks upon a quest that will carry him inexorably from France to Amsterdam and then onto the battlefields of Germany. As he grows to manhood will he be able to unravel the mystery of his father's death? Or will his father's killers find him first?The Silver Wolf is a tale of secrets and treachery and the relentlessness of fate - but it is also a story of courage and compassion, of love and loyalty and ultimately of salvation too.Book One of Fiskardo's War marks the start of a series of unforgettable, epic historical fiction for readers of Ken Follett and Kate Mosse.'Harvey handles a huge cast of characters and a mountain of research with enviable confidence, and gives us a gift of a hero. I am completely invested in Jack Fiskardo now, and will eagerly follow him through many more battles and beds, murders and mayhem, to reach his nemesis.' - Tracy Chevalier'A powerfully impressive debut.' - Minette Walters

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'Festers in glorious style' Telegraph'Magnificently spiky' Guardian'Utterly enthralling' Times Literary Supplement When Holly applies for a job at the Paradise - one of the city's oldest cinemas, squashed into the ground floor of a block of flats - she thinks it will be like any other shift work. She cleans toilets, sweeps popcorn, avoids the belligerent old owner, Iris, and is ignored by her aloof but tight-knit colleagues who seem as much a part of the building as its fraying carpets and endless dirt. Dreadful, lonely weeks pass while she longs for their approval, a silent voyeur. So when she finally gains the trust of this cryptic band of oddballs, Holly transforms from silent drudge to rebellious insider and gradually she too becomes part of the Paradise - unearthing its secrets, learning its history and haunting its corridors after hours with the other ushers. It is no surprise when violence strikes, tempers change and the group, eyes still affixed to the screen, starts to rapidly go awry...

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'Inspiring... Important' Observer'A page-turner which everyone who cares about policing and justice in Britain should read.' Meera SyalAt the point of her retirement from the Metropolitan Police Service in 2019, Parm Sandhu was the most senior BAME woman in the capital's police force. She was also the only non-white female to have been promoted through the ranks from constable to chief superintendent in the Met's entire history.In this enthralling memoir, Parm chronicles her journey from life on the outskirts of Birmingham as the fourth child of immigrants from the Punjab to the upper echelons of the Met. Forced into an abusive arranged marriage aged just 16, Parm made the decision to escape to London with her newborn son and later joined the police as a constable.During her thirty-year career, Parm worked in everything from crime prevention to counter-terrorism, and she also served in the Met's police corruption unit. She played a senior organizing role in the London Olympics and was the superintendent on duty when Lee Rigby was beheaded in the street in Greenwich. However, Parm's time on the force was chequered throughout with incidents of racial and gender discrimination, and, after deciding to make a stand, she found herself facing a spurious charge of gross misconduct. Black and Blue tells her shocking story and of her quest for justice in her police work and for herself. It is a story that cannot fail to inspire anyone who has experienced prejudice or abuse of any kind.

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Fifty years ago, an eruption of armed violence traumatized Northern Ireland and transformed a period of street protest over civil rights into decades of paramilitary warfare by republicans and loyalists. In this evocative memoir, Malachi O'Doherty not only recounts his experiences of living through the Troubles, but also recalls a revolution in his lifetime. However, it wasn't the bloody revolution that was shown on TV but rather the slow reshaping of the culture of Northern Ireland - a real revolution that was entirely overshadowed by the conflict.Incorporating interviews with political, professional and paramilitary figures, O'Doherty draws a profile of an era that produced real social change, comparing and contrasting it with today, and asks how frail is the current peace as Brexit approaches, protest is back on the streets and violence is simmering in both republican and loyalist camps.

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'Part glamorous travelogue, part slow-burn mystery, this full-bodied tale of a runaway is at once formally inventive and heartbreakingly familiar... (It's also insanely funny.)' -- Lena DunhamFrom the acclaimed author of Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name and The Lovers comes a tensely drawn, spellbinding literary thriller that gets to the heart of what defines us as human beings-the singular identity we create for ourselves in the world and the myriad alternative identities that lie just below the surface.In Vendela Vida's taut and mesmerizing novel of ideas, a woman travels to Casablanca, Morocco, on mysterious business. Almost immediately, while checking into her hotel, she is robbed, her passport and all identification stolen. The crime is investigated by the police, but the woman feels there is a strange complicity between the hotel staff and the authorities-she knows she'll never see her possessions again.Stripped of her identity, she feels both burdened by the crime and liberated by her sudden freedom to be anyone at all. Then, a chance encounter with a film crew provides an intriguing opportunity: A producer sizes her up and asks, would she be willing to be the body-double for a movie star filming in the city? And so begins a strange journey in which she'll become a stand-in-both on-set and off-for a reclusive celebrity who can no longer circulate freely in society while gradually moving further away from the person she was when she arrived in Morocco.Infused with vibrant, lush detail and enveloped in an intoxicating atmosphere-while barely pausing to catch its breath-The Diver's Clothes Lie Empty is a riveting, entrancing novel that explores freedom, power and the mutability of identity.

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''Impeccably researched and beautifully written'' David Wengrow''Utterly original'' Paul StrathernWhen it was found in 1922, the 3,300-year old tomb of Tutankhamun sent shockwaves around the world, turning the boy-king into a household name overnight and kickstarting an international media obsession that endures to this day.From pop culture and politics to tourism and heritage, and from the Jazz Age to the climate crisis, it''s impossible to imagine the twentieth century without the discovery of Tutankhamun - yet so much of the story remains untold. Here, for the first time, Christina Riggs weaves compelling historical analysis with tales of lives touched by an encounter with Tutankhamun, including her own. Treasured offers a bold new history of the young pharaoh who has as much to tell us about our world as his own.''Searching, masterful and eloquent'' James Delbourgo

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A NUMBER ONE IRISH TIMES BESTSELLER ''Pacey and exciting and totally joyous.'' Jo Spain, author of The Confession________________________You won''t be able to look awayWhen Vittoria Devine and Lily Power find themselves sitting next to each other on a flight to New York, they discover they both have men in their lives whose impact has been devastating. Lily''s family life is in turmoil, her brother left on the brink of ruin by a con man. Vittoria''s philandering husband''s latest mistress is pregnant. By the time they land, Vittoria and Lily have realised that they can help each other right the balance. But only one of them knows the real story...''Delightfully dark and satisfying'' Roz Watkins, author of the DI Meg Dalton series

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Shortlisted for the 2018 Parliamentary Book Awards (Best Memoir by a Parliamentarian)Why is gender inequality so stubbornly persistent? Power. Even today, power remains concentrated in the hands of men right across the worlds of business, politics and culture. Decisions taken by those with power tend to perpetuate gender inequality rather than accelerate solutions. And those who see the problem often feel powerless: ingrained sexism and gender inequality can seem too huge to solve.Equal Power holds a mirror up to society, showing the stark extent of gender inequality while making the case that everyone has the power to create change. Whether you are a teenage student, a global CEO or a taxi driver, there is much we can do as friends, consumers, parents and colleagues to create a world of Equal Power. In this inspiring and essential book, deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats and former Government Minister for Women Jo Swinson outlines the steps we can all take, small and large, to make our society truly gender equal.

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'A striking memoir...A must-read for anyone healing from complex trauma' Jeanette McCurdy, bestselling author of I'm Glad My Mom DiedEvery cell in my body is filled with the code of generations of trauma, of death, of birth, of migration, of history that I cannot understand. . . . I want to have words for what my bones know. By the age of thirty, Stephanie Foo was successful on paper: she had her dream job as an award-winning radio producer at This American Life and a loving boyfriend. But behind her office door, she was having panic attacks and sobbing at her desk every morning. After years of questioning what was wrong with herself, she was diagnosed with complex PTSD - a condition that occurs when trauma happens continuously, over the course of years. Both of Foo's parents abandoned her when she was a teenager, after years of physical and verbal abuse and neglect. She thought she'd moved on, but her new diagnosis illuminated the way her past continued to threaten her health, relationships, and career. She found limited resources to help her, so Foo set out to heal herself, and to map her experiences onto the scarce literature about C-PTSD. In this deeply personal and thoroughly researched account, Foo interviews scientists and psychologists and tries a variety of innovative therapies. She returns to her hometown in California to investigate the effects of immigrant trauma on the community, and she uncovers family secrets in the country of her birth, Malaysia, to learn how trauma can be inherited through generations. Ultimately, she discovers that you don't move on from trauma - but you can learn to move with it. Powerful, enlightening and hopeful, What My Bones Know is a brave narrative that reckons with the hold of the past over the present, the mind over the body - and examines one woman's ability to reclaim agency from her trauma.

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When Gill and Gabe''s elder son drowns overseas, they decide they must hide the truth from their desperately unwell teenaged daughter. But as Gill begins to send letters from her dead son to his sister, the increasingly elaborate lie threatens to prove more dangerous than the truth. A novel about family, food, grief, and hope, this gripping, lyrical story moves between Tasmania and London, exploring the many ways that a family can break down - and the unexpected ways that it can be put back together.

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In an alternate reality a lot like our world, every person's physical size is directly proportional to their wealth. The poorest of the poor are the size of rats, and billionaires are the size of skyscrapers.Warner and his sister Prayer are destitute - and tiny. Their size is not just demeaning but dangerous: day and night they face mortal dangers that bigger, richer people don't ever have to think about, from being mauled by cats to their house getting stepped on. There are no cars or phones built small enough for them, or schools or hospitals, for that matter - there's no point, when no one that little has any purchasing power, and when salaried doctors and teachers would never fit in buildings so small. Warner and Prayer know their only hope is to scale up, but how can two littlepoors survive in a world built against them?Brilliant, warm and funny, this is a social novel for our times in the tradition of 1984 or the work of Douglas Adams.

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'Sometimes when you're reading Neal Stephenson, he doesn't just seem like one of the best novelists writing in English right now; he seems like the only one.' TimeOne of the most talented and creative authors working today, Neal Stephenson is renowned for his exceptional novels - works colossal in vision and mind-boggling in complexity. Exploring and blending a diversity of topics, including technology, economics, history, science, pop culture, and philosophy, his books are the product of a keen and adventurous intellect. Not surprisingly, Stephenson is regularly asked to contribute articles, lectures, and essays to numerous outlets, from major newspapers and cutting edge magazines to college symposia. This remarkable collection brings together previously published short writings, both fiction and nonfiction as well as a new essay (and an extremely short story) created specifically for this volume. Stephenson ponders a wealth of subjects, from movies and politics to David Foster Wallace and the Midwestern American College Town; video games to classics-based sci-fi; how geekdom has become cool and how science fiction has become mainstream (whether people admit it or not); the future of publishing and the origins of his novels. By turns amusing and profound, critical and celebratory, yet always entertaining, Some Remarks offers a fascinating look into the prismatic mind of this extraordinary writer.

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Con men and killers, aliens and zombies, priests and soldiers - just some of the characters that kill and thrill in this compelling collection of gun-toting, double-crossing, back-stabbing, pulse-pounding stories. Jeffery Deaver investigates the suspicious death of a crime-writer in 'The Plot'; Karin Slaughter's grieving widow takes revenge on her dying ex-husband in 'Cold, Cold Heart'; Stephen Coonts discovers a flying saucer in the depths of the ocean in 'Savage Planet' and John Lescroat's secret field agent finds himself caught up in a complex game of cat-and-mouse in 'The Gate Conundrum'. Handpicked by world number one Lee Child, celebrity authors and stars of the future are brought together, writing brand-new stories, especially commissioned for this must-have collection. Whether you're reading today's bestseller or tomorrow's phenomenon, grisly horror or paranoia thriller, historical suspense or supernatural crime, one thing's for certain. You'll be thrilled to the core.

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Now filmed as INVICTUS directed by Clint Eastwood, and starring Matt Damon and Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela. SHORTLISTED FOR THE WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR 2008As the day of the final of the 1995 Rugby World Cup dawned, and the Springboks faced New Zealand's all-conquering All Blacks, more was at stake than a sporting trophy. When Nelson Mandela appeared wearing a Springboks jersey and led the all-white Afrikaner-dominated team in singing South Africa's new national anthem, he conquered the hearts of white South Africa. Playing the Enemy tells the extraordinary human story of how that moment became possible. It shows how a sport, once the preserve of South Africa's Afrikaans-speaking minority, came to unify the new rainbow nation, and tells of how - just occasionally - something as simple as a game really can help people to rise above themselves and see beyond their differences.

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Paris, 1959. As dusk settles over the immigrant quarter, 12-year-old Michel Marini - amateur photographer and compulsive reader - is drawn to the hum of the local bistro. From his usual position at the football table, he has a vantage point on a grown-up world - of rock 'n' roll and of the Algerian War. But as the sun sinks and the plastic players spin, Michel's concentration is not on the game, but on the huddle of men gathered in the shadows of a back room... Past the bar, behind a partly drawn curtain, a group of eastern European men gather, where under a cirrus of smoke and over the squares of chess boards, they tell of their lives before France - of lovers and wives, children and ambitions, all exiled behind the Iron Curtain. Listening to this band of survivors and raconteurs, Michel is introduced to a world beyond the boundaries of his childhood experience, a world of men made formidable in the face of history, ideas and politics: the world of the Incorrigible Optimists Club.

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THE EIGHTH INSTALMENT IN THE HANNE WILHELMSEN SERIES.A snowbound mountain pass, a derailed train, a locked, shuttered and heavily guarded carriage, an apocalyptic storm, an ancient hotel, old betrayals, murder and state secrets.1222 metres above sea level: train 601 from Oslo to Bergen careens off iced rails as the worst snowstorm in Norwegian history gathers force around it. With night falling and the temperature plummeting, its 269 passengers are forced to abandon their snowbound train and find shelter in a centuries-old mountain hotel. Before dawn breaks, one of them will be murdered. Trapped by the killer within, trapped by the deadly storm outside, Hanne Wilhelmsen's unease is mounting. Why was the last train carriage sealed? Why is the top floor of the hotel locked down? And, of course, what if the killer strikes again?

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