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Little, Brown and Company
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When Michiel Steyn returns to the family farmstead in South Africa for his mother's funeral, he has spent close to half his lifetime abroad. But even after fifteen years' absence, neither Michiel nor those he left behind have truly come to terms with his terrible flight from the farm they called Paradise. As Michiel submits himself to the rituals of mourning and remembrance in the small town and on the land where he became a man, all that has lain undisturbed for years is brought to light. A father's implacable fury and a brother's violent death, the loss of a child, the betrayal of love and the ugly memory of the dying days of apartheid all come between the prodigal and forgiveness. Michiel finds that he must confront not only his grief for his mother's passing but the painful truth of his own transgressions. Elegiac and chilling, poignant and profoundly thoughtful, Kings of the Water is at once a lament both personal and political, and a meditation on the potency of reconciliation. |
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Why is Rosamund so paralyzed by Tyler and his secrets? The whole world was once in love with her. Now, married to the dangerously charismatic Tyler, estranged from her conservationist father, despairing of her teenage son's silences, she feels completely alone. Revisiting the almost forgotten world of her Indian childhood may help, but can her family survive the changes she must make to save herself? Ruth Padel, acclaimed for her brilliant nature writing, has set her captivating debut novel in London, Devon and the jungles of India. But at its heart is a family in crisis. Where the Serpent Lives is a beautifully evocative tale for our times about love, science, renewal, and the place of wild nature in human lives, from one of our finest poets. |
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Autumn, 1797. With Napoleon's forces sweeping through Europe, a young English woman travels to Paris, risking her life on a secret mission that just might end the war for good... Mary Finch is no stranger to adventure, but even she hesitates before accepting her new assignment, travelling as the wife of an American artist into the very heart of enemy territory. The plan is so secret she can't even tell Captain Holland, with whom she is supposed to have 'an understanding'. After a terrifying journey through revolutionary France she arrives in Paris only to discover that her American 'husband' is not quite what he appears. With the French chasing a deadly new weapon and an old nemesis threatening to unmask her as a spy, Mary soon finds herself in mortal danger... Thrilling and deeply satisfying, The Mistaken Wife is a spirited and gripping historical mystery from the author of the acclaimed The Blackstone Key. |
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As a 19-year old Black Watch conscript Tom Renouf's war began with some of the most vicious fighting of the conflict — against Himmler's fanatical 'Hitler Youth' SS Division. It ended with the capture of Himmler himself and Tom taking a trophy he still treasures — the Gestapo commander's watch. Seriously wounded and later decorated with a Military Medal for gallantry, Tom Renouf witnessed the death and maiming of countless of his teenage comrades and saw the survivors transformed into grizzled veterans. Tom Renouf draws on his own personal experiences as well as his unique archive of interviews with veterans amassed over twenty years as secretary of the 51st Highland Division Veterans' Association — to paint a vivid picture of the Battle of Normandy, the liberation of Holland, the Battle of the Bulge and many more memorable WW2 events. |
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Alistair Urquhart was a soldier in the Gordon Highlanders captured by the Japanese in Singapore. He not only survived working on the notorious Bridge on the River Kwai, but he was subsequently taken on one of the Japanese 'hellships' which was torpedoed. Nearly everyone else on board died and Urquhart spent 5 days alone on a raft in the South China Sea before being rescued by a whaling ship. He was taken to Japan and then forced to work in a mine near Nagasaki. Two months later a nuclear bomb dropped just ten miles away... This is the extraordinary story of a young men, conscripted at nineteen and whose father was a Somme Veteran, survived not just one, but three close encounters with death — encounters which killed nearly all his comrades. |
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Jesse has survived the chasers. He's survived the roving bands of humans. And he might even have started to make some new friends. But the quarantine period is up. The army is coming in. And Jesse's about to learn that the real test of survival has only just begun. |
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A chilling YA thriller from critically acclaimed author Michael Northrop. The day the blizzard started, no one knew that it was going to keep snowing for a week. That for those in its path, it would become not just a matter of keeping warm, but of staying alive. Scotty and his friends Pete and Jason are among the last seven kids at their high school waiting to get picked up that day, and they soon realize that no one is coming for them. Still, it doesn't seem so bad to spend the night at school, especially when distractingly hot Krista and Julie are sleeping just down the hall. But then the power goes out, then the heat. The pipes freeze, and the roof shudders. As the days add up, the snow piles higher, and the empty halls grow colder and darker, the mounting pressure forces a devastating decision. |
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Over the past few thousand years, Fabio has come to hate his job. As Fate, he's in charge of assigning the fortunes and misfortunes that befall most of the human race — the 83 per cent who keep screwing things up. And with the steady rise in population since the first Neanderthal set himself on fire, he can't exactly take a vacation. Frustrated with his endless parade of drug addicts and career politicians, it doesn't help watching Destiny guide her people to Nobel Peace Prizes. To make matters worse, he has a five-hundred-year-old feud with Death, and his best friends are Sloth and Gluttony. And worst of all? He's just fallen in love with a human. Sara Griffen might be on Destiny's path, but Fabio keeps bumping into her — by accident at first, and then on purpose. Getting involved with her breaks Rule No. 1 — and about ten others — setting off some cosmic-sized repercussions that could strip him of his immortality... or lead to a fate worse than death. |
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In 1904, at the age of six, Polly goes to live with her two holy aunts. The house is so close to the sea it seems to toss like a ship, and so isolated, Polly might be marooned on an island. There she lives for 81 years, while the century rages around her and Victorian order becomes nuclear dread. |
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SACRED LAND will enable you to discover the hidden secrets and meaning of the landscape around you, town or country, modern or old, wherever you live in Britain. There has been a dramatic growth in interest in our own history, buildings, landscape, sacred places, beliefs and culture over the last few years and this book will equip you with the tools to unlock the meaning, stories and history that are literally embedded into our landscape. It takes us from street names to churches; from hill forts to burial mounds; from the way a road bends to the shapes of fields in order to understand better the land that lies beneath our feet. In the literal shape of our countryside can be detected the eddies of time, politics, belief, warfare, passion and the durability of the human existence. SACRED LAND is a fascinating, accessible read and the perfect reference guide to have in your home or in your car. It will be of interest to all those people who love history, sacred places and sacred history, and people who like to explore their ancestry and roots. |
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Inspector Singh is sick of sick leave, so when Mrs Singh suggests they attend a family wedding in Mumbai, he grudgingly agrees — hoping that the spicy Indian curries will make up for extended exposure to his wife's relatives. Unfortunately, the beautiful bride-to-be disappears on the eve of her wedding — did she run away to avoid an arranged marriage, or is there something more sinister afoot? When a corpse is found, the fat inspector is soon dragged into a curious murder investigation with very firm instructions from Mrs Singh to exonerate her family. But as he uncovers layer upon layer of deceit, he knows it isn't going to be that easy... |
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Rosie Hopkins, city girl to the end, is about to face major upheaval. Her elderly aunt Lily, who lives slap bang in the middle of nowhere, is ill and so, taking a leave of absence from the bustling London hospital where she works, Rosie is putting her friends, her boyfriend and her entire life on hold to move to the depths of the Peak District to help. She's fairly certain she won't be able to get a decent cup of coffee, or Heat magazine — and she's dreading it. Lilian Hopkins has run the village sweetshop all her life — through wartime and family feuds, observing as the village around her has grown and changed with the times. As she struggles with the idea that it might finally be time to sell up, she also wrestles with the secret history hidden behind the jars of beautifully coloured sweets. Will Rosie come round to the charms of the old sweetshop on the Northern road? Can Lilian come to terms with her past, and learn to let go? |
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In the February of the year of our Lord 1141, men march home from war to Shrewsbury, but the captured Sheriff Gilbert Prestcote is not among them. Elis, a young Welsh prisoner, is, and he is delivered to the Abbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul to begin a tale that will test Brother Cadfael's sense of justice... and his heart. By good fortune, it seems, the prisoner can be exchanged as Sheriff Prestcote's ransom. What none expects is that good-natured Elis will be struck down by Cupid's arrow. The sherrif's own daughter holds him in thrall, and she too, is blind with passion. Now regaining her father means losing her lover. But then the sheriff ailing and frail, is brought to the abbey's infirmary and murdered there. Suspicion falls on the prisoner, who only has his Welsh honour to gain Brother Cadfael's help. And Cadfael gives it, not knowing the truth will be a trial for his own soul. |
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Anna packs her bags one day without telling anyone where and why she is going — just that she'll be back soon. Her thoughts, as she boards a plane, is that this journey will give her time to think about her life — as a woman hitting forty, a journalist and a single mother. She has no premonition that she will become a statistic in a missing person file. Left at home is Anna's beloved six year old daughter Lily, her gay friend Paul who is surrogate father to Lily, and her eccentric best friend Estella. When Anna doesn't return, they make uneasy excuses, until, as time passes, the mind-numbing possibility that Anna might not be coming back, becomes terrifyingly real. And while those closest to her battle with their imaginations, Anna is on a dark journey — in one scenario Anna is on a ravishing, sexual adventure, on the other, much darker voyage, she is the victim of a stranger's dangerous sexual fantasy. In a masterpiece of emotionally intelligent and nerve-wracking suspense, Sarah Dunant takes us to the very edge. |
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'There never was a Churchill from John of Marlborough down who had either morals or principles', so said Gladstone. From the First Duke of Marlborough — soldier of genius, restless empire-builder and cuckolder of Charles II — onwards, the Churchills have been politicians, gamblers and profligates, heroes and womanisers. The Churchills is a richly layered portrait of an extraordinary set of men and women — grandly ambitious, regularly impecunious, impulsive, arrogant and brave. And towering above the Churchill clan is the figure of Winston — his failures and his triumphs shown in a new and revealing context — ultimately our 'greatest Briton'. |
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Blinded Psychologist Alan Gregory has a new patient: Gibbs Storey, whose looks turn grown men into dazzled adolescents. She tells Alan that she thinks her husband, Sterling, may have murdered one of her friends. Blandly recounting a history of dangerous sexual encounters, Gibbs stuns Alan with another revelation: she thinks there are other victims... and that her husband will kill again. Struggling with a strict confidentiality agreement, Alan walks a perilous ethical line by revealing just enough to interest his detective friend, Sam Purdy, and start a search for a missing Sterling Storey and a string of innocent victims. But are they too late to stop more killings? Missing Persons Hannah Grant had volunteered to cover Alan Gregory's practice over the Christmas period, but when he and another colleague called at her office they discovered her body, the cause of death not clear. Then on Christmas Day itself a fourteen-year-old girl is reported missing — eight years to the day after another missing child had been discovered murdered — a girl who had she lived would have been fourteen.Then it emerges that the parents of the latest missing girl had been treated by Alan some years ago, and recently the girl herself had consulted Hannah. Could any of these tangential connections prove to be links to both deaths and the missing girl, or are they mere coincidences? |
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Worried about how you'll be able to afford all the things you love in the midst of the credit crisis? With almost twice as many people aged 18-24 as stressed by their financial situation as those aged over 55, and a third of 18-30 year olds cutting back on going out due to limited funds, THE LAZY GIRL'S GUIDE TO THE HIGH LIFE ON A BUDGET is an essential survival guide to living it up without losing the plot. It's about making sense of the credit crunch, dealing with your debts and learning to be thrifty, all so you can live your life as glamorously as you want. Full of tips on how to do everything from the frivolous shop smartly and be supermarket savvy to the serious downshift and bounce back from redundancy it's the most prudent buy of the season. |
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Tomb raider Simon Bonner wants out of the looting game... until a mysterious crystal lens lands on his doorstep. Legend has it that this lens holds the key to the archives of man — a Mexican tomb that explains the root of all knowledge. There's just one problem — he doesn't know how to use it. Museum curator Jillian Talbot's ability to see an object's history is her secret, so when Simon approaches her, she finds it hard to believe that she's the seer of legend — that only she can unlock the mystery behind the crystal lens. Journeying into the jungles of Mexico, with evil crooks hot on their tail and a growing passion between them, every move for Jillian and Simon becomes a terrifying dance with danger. |
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Blind since birth, widowed in her twenties, now lonely in her forties, Marianne Fraser lives in Edinburgh in elegant, angry anonymity with her sister, Louisa, a successful novelist. Marianne's passionate nature finds solace and expression in music, a love she finds she shares with Keir, a man she encounters on her doorstep one winter's night. Whilst Marianne has had her share of men attracted to her because they want to rescue her, Keir makes no concession to her condition. He is abrupt to the point of rudeness, and yet oddly kind. But can Marianne trust her feelings for this reclusive stranger who wants to take a blind woman to his island home on Skye, to 'show' her the stars? |
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'I ought to tell you at the beginning that I am not quite normal having had a violent experience at the age of nine' Jessica Vye's 'violent experience' colours her schooldays and her reaction to the world around her a confining world of Order Marks, wartime restrictions, viyella dresses, nicely-restrained essays and dusty tea shops. For Jessica she has been told that she is 'beyond all possible doubt', a born writer. With her inability to conform, her absolute compulsion to tell the truth and her dedication to accurately noting her experiences, she knows this anyway. But what she doesn't know is that the experiences that sustain and enrich her burgeoning talent will one day lead to a new and entirely unexpected reality. |
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