It is said there is a price that every passenger must pay. A price beyond the cost of a ticket.
It is the end of the 19th Century and the world is awash with marvels. But there is nothing so marvellous as the Wastelands: a terrain of terrible miracles that lies between Beijing and Moscow.
Nothing touches this abandoned wilderness except the Great Trans-Siberian Express, an impenetrable train built to carry cargo across continents but which now transports anyone who dares to cross the shadowy Wastelands.
On to the platform steps a curious cast of characters: a grieving woman with a borrowed name, a famous child born on the train and a disgraced naturalist, all heading for the Great Exhibition in Moscow.
But the old rules are changing, and there are whispers that the train isn't safe. As secrets begin to unravel, the passengers and crew must survive their journey through the Wastelands together - even as something uncontrollable seems to be breaking in . . .
It is said there is a price that every passenger must pay. A price beyond the cost of a ticket.
It is the end of the 19th Century and the world is awash with marvels. But there…
It is said there is a price that every passenger must pay. A price beyond the cost of a ticket.
It is the end of the nineteenth century and the world is awash with marvels. But there is nothing so marvellous as the Wastelands: a terrain of terrible miracles that lies between Beijing and Moscow.
Nothing touches the Wastelands except the Great Trans-Siberian Express: an impenetrable train built to carry cargo across continents, but which now transports anyone who dares.
Onto the platform steps a curious cast of characters: Marya, a grieving woman with a borrowed name; Weiwei, a famous child born on the train; and Henry Grey, a disgraced naturalist.
But there are whispers that the train isn't safe. As secrets and stories begin to unravel, the passengers and crew must survive their journey together, even as something uncontrollable seems to be breaking in . . .
It is said there is a price that every passenger must pay. A price beyond the cost of a ticket.
It is the end of the nineteenth century and the world is awash with marvels. But…
Set in the underworld of Paris in 1941.
Reluctant spy Jean Casson returns to occupied Paris under a new identity.
He is wanted by the Gestapo therefore must stay away from the civilised circles he knew as a film producer and learn to survive in the shadowy backstreets and cheap hotels of Pigalle.
Yet as the war drags on, he finds himself drawn back into the dangerous world of resistance and sabotage...
Set in the underworld of Paris in 1941.
Reluctant spy Jean Casson returns to occupied Paris under a new identity.
He is wanted by the Gestapo therefore must stay away from the…
This fully updated edition of the international bestseller includes Manchester City's incredible 2017-18 league triumph
Pep Guardiola is the most successful and sought-after football coach in the world. After being appointed first-team manager in 2008, he transformed Barcelona into arguably the greatest club side of all time, winning thirteen trophies in four years, and he won the Double twice in his three years in charge of Bayern Munich. He then faced his biggest challenge yet when he joined Manchester City in 2016: to turn them into a team that consistently wins in the most difficult of leagues and a regular challenger in the Champions League. But in only his second year at the club, he had turned a good side into memorable one, leading them to the Premier League title in record-breaking style . . . and doing it the Guardiola way.
Guillem Balague has followed Pep's career from the outset and has had direct access to the man and his inner circle for this updated edition. This then is the definitive portrait of Pep Guardiola and his relentless pursuit of footballing perfection.
This fully updated edition of the international bestseller includes Manchester City's incredible 2017-18 league triumph
Pep Guardiola is the most successful and sought-after…
14 CE: The first Roman emperor is dead. A second is about to succeed. The Forum of Rome, once fought over so fiercely, has become hardly more than a museum. The house of all power is up above on the Palatine Hill, about to become the birthplace of Western bureaucracy, a warren of banqueting and bedrooms, a treacherous household where it takes special talents to survive.
This is a Roman history with a cast of new men and newly dominant women, those reviled too often in the past as flatterers and gluttons, uppity slaves and former slaves, lawyers-for-hire, chancer arrivistes and unhinged party animals. Palatine uncovers the lives of the Vitellii, perhaps Rome's least admired imperial clan, of Publius, an old-fashioned soldier snared in the politics of the new age, of Lucius, an exceptionally skilled and sycophantic courtier, and of Aulus a genial sluggard whose prowess at the table carries him all the way to the throne before collapsing his family's reputation for ever. Few now remember them. Yet in their creeping ascent to the very summit of the imperial hierarchy lie neglected truths about a lasting legacy of Rome.
14 CE: The first Roman emperor is dead. A second is about to succeed. The Forum of Rome, once fought over so fiercely, has become hardly more than a museum. The house of all power…
No heart is safe on the savage side.
Arcade and Daffodil are twin sisters born one minute apart. With their fiery red hair and thirst for escape, they form an imaginative world of their own, nurtured by their grandmother's stories. But no matter how hard they try, Arc and Daffy can't escape the generational ghosts that haunt their family. And so, left to fend for themselves in the shadow of their rural Ohio town, the two sisters cling tight to one another.
Years later, a local woman is discovered dead in the river. Soon, more bodies are left floating in the water, and as the killer circles ever closer, Arc's promise to keep her sister safe becomes increasingly desperate - and the powerful riptide of the savage side more difficult to survive.
Drawing from the true story of women killed in Chillicothe, Ohio, acclaimed novelist and poet Tiffany McDaniel offers a moving literary testament and fearless elegy for missing women everywhere.
No heart is safe on the savage side.
Arcade and Daffodil are twin sisters born one minute apart. With their fiery red hair and thirst for escape, they form an imaginative world of…
Kate has always been a wanderer. A well-published author, married several times, she has lived a life full of exploration. Now, as she begins to feel the first ravages of age, she wants to find a new sense of meaning. She leaves her lover Yolo on a journey down the Colorado River - a journey that will force her to re-explore her past and her future, and her connection to the real world. On her travels she meets shamans and the mysterious spiritual world of the native Indian. Yolo too begins his own journey as he travels to Hawaii and meets a former lover whose life is being destroyed by the excesses of American society. As Kate and Yolo gain shifting insights into the world around them, will their paths diverge or lead back to each other? This is a novel very much in tune with the zeitgeist - Alice Walker argues that we need to look inwards and develop a more open attitude in order to combat the pervasive climate of fear and distrust.
Kate has always been a wanderer. A well-published author, married several times, she has lived a life full of exploration. Now, as she begins to feel the first ravages of age, she…
In Last Stand at Saber River, a Civil War veteran returns home to find a Yankee's private army living on his land, while another enemy waits to strike...
Paul Cable has fought - and lost - for the Confederacy but when he returns home he finds that his own war is far from over. The Union Army and two brothers--and a beautiful woman-- have taken over Cable's spread and are refusing to give it back. But Cable is determined that no one is going to take his future away--not with words, not with treachery, and not with guns.
In Last Stand at Saber River, a Civil War veteran returns home to find a Yankee's private army living on his land, while another enemy waits to strike...
Paul Cable has…
The story of Jerusalem is the story of the world.
Jerusalem is the universal city, the capital of two peoples, the shrine of three faiths; it is the site of Judgement Day and the battlefield of today's clash of civilisations. How did this small, remote town become the Holy City, the 'centre of the world' and now the key to peace in the Middle East? Drawing on new archives and a lifetime's study, Montefiore reveals this ever-changing city through the wars, love affairs and revelations of the kings, empresses, prophets, poets, saints, conquerors and whores who created, destroyed, chronicled and believed in Jerusalem.
A classic of modern literature, this is not only the epic story of 3,000 years of faith, slaughter, fanaticism and co-existence, but also a freshly-updated history of the entire Middle East, from King David to the twenty-first century, from the birth of Judaism, Christianity and Islam to the Israel-Palestine conflict and the wars of today. This is how Jerusalem became Jerusalem - the only city that exists twice - in heaven and on earth.
The story of Jerusalem is the story of the world.
Jerusalem is the universal city, the capital of two peoples, the shrine of three faiths; it is the site of Judgement Day and the…
A young man leans over the railings of the ocean liner bound for the exotic shores of Penang. It is early in the 1930s and Dr Alexander Mackay is on his way to take up his post running a maternity hospital in the colony. During the voyage he meets two beautiful sisters and the seeds of a scandal are sown. Seventy years later Edward Mackay wakes after a major brain trauma. In the hazy shadowlands of illness, he conjures the figure of his dead father, a man he knew so little about. This near-death experience provokes a move to the wilds of Orkney, where Edward joins a project to harness the tides around the island as a renewable source of energy. But in the tight-knit island community passions also run high.
A young man leans over the railings of the ocean liner bound for the exotic shores of Penang. It is early in the 1930s and Dr Alexander Mackay is on his way to take up his post…
Isaiah Quintabe's first love, Grace, has been kidnapped by maniacal hitman Skip Hanson, who is determined to punish Isaiah for sending him to prison.
With Grace's safety at stake, Isaiah reunites with his old partner, ex-hustler Juanell Dodson, to track down Grace's whereabouts.
Trouble comes in the shape of Winne Hando, a homicide detective with something to prove. Winnie sees Isaiah's involvement as a potential embarrassment: an unlicensed PI can't be seen doing a better job than a police department.
As Winnie and Isaiah compete in their increasingly desperate hunt, Isaiah starts to fear that even if he can bring Grace home alive, things between them will never be the same ...
Isaiah Quintabe's first love, Grace, has been kidnapped by maniacal hitman Skip Hanson, who is determined to punish Isaiah for sending him to prison.
With Grace's safety…
John Constable, the revolutionary nineteenth-century painter of the landscapes and skies of southern England, is Britain's best-loved but perhaps least understood artist.
His paintings reflect visions of landscape that shocked and perplexed his contemporaries: attentive to detail, spontaneous in gesture, brave in their use of colour. What we learn from his landscapes is that Constable had sharp local knowledge of Suffolk, a clarity of expression of the skyscapes above Hampstead, an understanding of the human tides in London and Brighton, and a rare ability in his late paintings of Salisbury Cathedral to transform silent suppressed passion into paint.
Yet Constable was also an active and energetic correspondent. His letters and diaries - there are over one thousand letters from and to him - reveal a man of passion, opinion and discord, while his character and personality is concealed behind the high shimmering colour of his paintings. They reveal too the lives and circumstances of his brothers and his sisters, his cousins and his aunts, who serve to define the social and economic landscape against which he can be most clearly seen. These multifaceted reflections draw a sharp picture of the person, as well as the painter.
James Hamilton's biography reveals a complex, troubled man, and explodes previous mythologies about this timeless artist, and establishes him in his proper context as a giant of European art.
John Constable, the revolutionary nineteenth-century painter of the landscapes and skies of southern England, is Britain's best-loved but perhaps least understood artist.
His…
What happens when your story doesn't end the way you thought it would?
When you realise - after getting married and having a baby - that you chose wrong?
When the life you dreamt of becomes something you must walk away from?
And when you then find yourself not lonely, but elated - elated to be alone with yourself?
What happens when your story doesn't end the way you thought it would?
When you realise - after getting married and having a baby - that you chose wrong?
When the life you…
Budapest has always been an important place. Almost at the centre of Europe, it is at the crossroads of geographical regions and of civilizations, at the intersection of ancient trade routes. Mountains that gradually slope into gentle hills converge on a great river, the Danube, and the regions of Buda and Pest sprang up on either side.
Throughout history the centre of gravity in Budapest and among Hungarians has shifted between this division of East and West - culturally, politically, emotionally. Invaders have come and gone, empires have conquered, occupied for centuries or decades, and left a few footprints behind: the remains of a Roman bath house complete with wonderfully preserved mosaics stand next to a Soviet-style 'five-year-plan' apartment block. The city bears the scars of the rise and fall of multiple empires, two world wars, fascism, Nazi German occupation, Soviet Communism. It has been home to some of the world's greatest writers, artists and musicians. Hungary is a place of extremes, a small country that has often in history punched well above its weight. At many moments, events that began in Budapest have proved to be of world significance. This is the story of that tumultuous, often divided, but always fascinating city.
Budapest has always been an important place. Almost at the centre of Europe, it is at the crossroads of geographical regions and of civilizations, at the intersection of ancient…
I took off my wedding ring - a gold band with half a line of 'Morning Song' by Sylvia Plath etched inside - and for weeks afterwards, my thumb would involuntarily reach across my palm for the warm bright circle that had gone. I didn't throw the ring into the long grass, like women do in the movies, but a feeling began bubbling up nevertheless, from my stomach to my throat: it could fling my arms out. I was free.
A few years into her marriage and feeling societal pressure to surrender to domesticity, Joanna Biggs found herself longing for a different kind of existence. Was this all there was? She divorced without knowing what would come next.
Newly untethered, Joanna returned to the free-spirited writers of her youth and was soon reading in a fever - desperately searching for evidence of lives that looked more like her own, for the messiness and freedom, for a possible blueprint for intellectual fulfillment.
In A Life of One's Own, Mary Wollstonecraft, George Eliot, Zora Neale Hurston, Virginia Woolf, Simone de Beauvoir, Sylvia Plath, Toni Morrison, and Elena Ferrante are all taken down from their pedestals, their work and lives seen in a new light. Joanna wanted to learn more about the conditions these women needed to write their best work, and how they addressed the questions she herself was struggling with: Is domesticity a trap? Is life worth living if you have lost faith in the traditional goals of a woman? Why is it so important for women to read one another?
This is a radical and intimate examination of the unconventional paths these women took - their pursuits and achievements but also their disappointments and hardships. And in exploring the things that gave their lives the most meaning, we find fuel for our own singular intellectual paths.
I took off my wedding ring - a gold band with half a line of 'Morning Song' by Sylvia Plath etched inside - and for weeks afterwards, my thumb would involuntarily reach…
It's been a few months since murder tore apart the community of Champton apart. As Canon Daniel Clement tries to steady his flock, the parish is joined with Upper and Lower Badsaddle, bringing a new tide of unwanted change. But church politics soon become the least of Daniel's problems. His mother - headstrong, fearless Audrey - is obviously up to something, something she is determined to keep from him. And she is not the only one. And then all hell breaks loose when murder returns to Champton in the form of a shocking ritualistic killing...
It's been a few months since murder tore apart the community of Champton apart. As Canon Daniel Clement tries to steady his flock, the parish is joined with Upper and Lower…
A groundbreaking new story of women's journey through medicine, exposing the historic origins of the gender pain gap.
Medicine carries the burden of its own troubling history. Over centuries, women's bodies have been demonised and demeaned until we feared them, felt ashamed of them, were humiliated by them. But as doctors, researchers, campaigners and most of all as patients, women have continuously challenged medical orthodoxy. Medicine's history has always been, and is still being, rewritten by women's resistance, strength and incredible courage.
In this ground-breaking history Elinor Cleghorn unpacks the roots of the perpetual misunderstanding, mystification and misdiagnosis of women's bodies, illness and pain. From the 'wandering womb' of ancient Greece to today's shifting understanding of hormones, menstruation and menopause, Unwell Women is the revolutionary story of women who have suffered, challenged and rewritten medical misogyny. Drawing on Elinor's own experience as an unwell woman, this is a powerful and timely expose of the medical world and woman's place within it.
A groundbreaking new story of women's journey through medicine, exposing the historic origins of the gender pain gap.
Medicine carries the burden of its own troubling…
Occupied Paris in 1942, a dark, treacherous city now ruled by the German security services, where French resistance networks are working secretly to defeat Hitler.
Just before he dies, a man being chased by the Gestapo hands off to Paul Ricard a strange looking drawing. It looks like a part for a military weapon; Ricard realizes it must be an important document smuggled out of Germany to aid the resistance.
As Ricard is drawn deeper and deeper into the French resistance network, his increasingly dangerous assignments lead him to travel to Germany, along the underground safe houses of the resistance - all the way to the mysterious and beautiful Leila, a professional spy.
Occupied Paris in 1942, a dark, treacherous city now ruled by the German security services, where French resistance networks are working secretly to defeat Hitler.
Just before he…
The echo of the novels of The Cemetery of Forgotten Books series resonates in the stories of Carlos Ruiz Zafon: gathered here for the first time – and some never before published in English – these stories are a celebration of one of the world’s great storytellers
A boy decides to become a writer when he discovers that his creative gifts capture the attentions of an aloof young beauty who has stolen his heart.
A labyrinth maker flees Constantinople to a plague ridden Barcelona, with plans for building a library impervious to the destruction of time.
A strange gentleman tempts Cervantes to write a book like no other, each page of which could prolong the life of the woman he loves.
And a brilliant Catalan architect named Antoni Gaudi reluctantly agrees to cross the ocean to New York, a voyage that will determine the fate of an unfinished masterpiece.
The echo of the novels of The Cemetery of Forgotten Books series resonates in the stories of Carlos Ruiz Zafon: gathered here for the first time – and some never before published…
Bulgaria, 1934. Khristo Stoianev sees his brother kicked to death by a gang of fascist thugs. Taking a risk on the promise of Communism, he flees to Moscow and is trained as an agent of the NKVD, the Soviet secret intelligence service. His first mission is to go to Catalonia, where he is soon caught up in the bloody horrors of the Spanish Civil War. Warned that he is about to become a victim of Stalin's purges, Khristo must again take flight, this time to Paris, where he is a small player on the wrong end of a social scene that is simultaneously decadent and doomed.
One of the twentieth century's greatest spy novels, NIGHT SOLDIERS is a thrilling portrait of one man's extraordinary adventures and of Europe teetering on the brink of the Second World War.
Bulgaria, 1934. Khristo Stoianev sees his brother kicked to death by a gang of fascist thugs. Taking a risk on the promise of Communism, he flees to Moscow and is trained as an…