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Orion Books
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The story of Tsar Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra has fired the worlds imagination ever since their violent deaths during the Russian Revolution. In this biography, first published in 1967, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Robert Massie sets out to show how the personal tragedy of the young heirs haemophilia, and the decisive influence it brought Rasputin, became fatally linked with the collapse of Imperial Russia. The book presents an account of one of historys most dramatic episodes, anportrait of the two people caught at the centre of the maelstrom. |
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The Russo-Turkish war is at a critical juncture, and Erast Fandorin, broken-hearted and disillusioned, has gone to the front in an attempt to forget his sorrows. But Fandorin's efforts to steer clear of trouble are thwarted when he comes to the aid of Varvara Suvorova — a 'progressive' Russian woman trying to make her way to the Russian headquarters to join her fiance. Within days, Varvara's fiance has been accused of treason, a Turkish victory looms on the horizon, and there are rumours of a Turkish spy hiding within their own camp. Our reluctant gentleman sleuth will need to resurrect all of his dormant powers of detection if he is to unmask the traitor, help the Russians to victory and smooth the path of young love. |
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This is the first book featuring Erast Fandorin, a gentleman sleuth who solves murders and mysteries in Tsarist Russia. Moscow 1876. A young law student commits suicide in broad daylight in Moscow's Alexander Gardens. But this is no ordinary death, for the young man was the son of an influential industrialist and has left a considerable fortune. Erast Fandorin, a hotheaded new recruit to the Criminal Investigation Department, is assigned to the case. Brilliant, young, and sophisticated, Fandorin embarks on an investigation that will take him from the palatial mansions of Moscow to the seedy backstreets of London in his hunt for the conspirators behind this mysterious death. |
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Peter Sinclair is tormented by bereavement and failure. In an attempt to conjure some meaning from his life, he embarks on an autobiography, but he finds himself writing the story of another man in another, imagined, world, whose insidious attraction draws him even further in... TheAffirmation is at once an original thriller and a haunting study of schizophrenia; it has a compulsive, dream-like quality. |
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Dexter Morgan isn't exactly the kind of man you'd bring home to your mum. At heart, he's the perfect gentleman: he has a shy girlfriend, and seems to lead a quiet, normal life bordering on the mundane. Despite the fact that he can't stand the sight of blood, he works as a blood-spatter analyst for the Miami police. But Dexter also has a secret hobby: he is an accomplished serial killer. So far, he's killed 36 people and has never been caught because he knows exactly how to hide the evidence. And while that may lead some people to assume he's not such a nice guy, he tempers his insatiable hunger for brutality by only killing the bad guys. However, Dexter's well-organised life is suddenly disrupted when a second, much more visible serial killer appears in Miami. Intrigued that the other killer favours a style similar to his own, Dexter soon realises that the mysterious new arrival is not simply invading his turf but offering him a direct invitation to “come out and play”... |
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Set at the time of the Russian Revolution, the end of a centuries old dynasty, the rise of the Bolsheviks sent shockwaves around the world. This is the story of one man who was there. It's real history — about the riches and excesses, the glory of the Russian nobility, Nicholas and Alexandra, their haemophiliac son, Alexei, notorious Rasputin, Lenin and Trotsky who ruled from palaces where the Czars had once danced till dawn. The man was real too, his name was Arthur Ransome. He was a writer, accused of being a spy, perhaps even a double agent, and he left his wife and beloved daughter and fell in love with Russia and a Russian woman, Evgenia. Fictionalising history and blending it with real life, part i is told as a fairy tale. Wise and foolish kings, princesses, enchantresses (characters more suited to fairy tale than reality), wishes and magic, Russia with its vast cold plains and mighty cities, its riches and poverty, all play a part in the downfall of the Czars and rise of the new order. Part ii is about betrayal — Ransome the spy, bleak and threatening. Part iii is a love story, a fairy tale, ending — of Ransome's love for his daughter, Tabitha, and for Evgenia. |
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It all starts with a cat-and-mouse chase to the death in a Baltimore funfair: the Jackal, Bourne's age-old antagonist, is back and Bourne is forced from his idyllic retirement with his wife and children to confront his enemy. In Europe, Russia and America there are men and women whose lust for power is disguised by their positions and respectability. Their aim: to gain control at the highest level, to avenge, to destroy. Jason Bourne has been the assassin before: now he longs for peace with his family, but the threat of the Jackal puts in jeopardy all possibility of peace... |
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The Stasi was among the most sophisticated intelligence organisations in the world, but by the end of the 1980s the Orwellian state of East Germany was collapsing around it. The special squads of armed officers, the torture chambers in the Stasi jail, the hundreds of thousands of informers could do nothing to prevent the rebellion that saw the fall of the Berlin Wall. It is in the context of these last few paranoid weeks of the Communist world, when a population that had been oppressed for nearly sixty years found the will to rise up, that this outstanding thriller is set. Its hero is Dr Rudolf Rosenharte, an academic from Dresden and agent for MI6; his controller is Robert Harland, from A SPY'S LIFE and EMPIRE STATE. When Rosenharte's security is compromised he is faced with a stark choice: to defect to the West, leaving his beloved family to the mercies of the Stasi, or return to East Germany to carry out a dangerous assignment under the Stasi's suspicious eye... When Rosenharte's security is compromised he is faced with a stark choice: to defect to the West, leaving his beloved family to the mercies of the Stasi, or return to East Germany to carry out a dangerous assignment under the Stasi's suspicious eye... |
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Dexter Morgan is busy planning his wedding to Rita to complete his nice-guy disguise. But when a student is found burnt, molested and headless — seemingly sacrificed to an ancient god — and Dex is brought in as forensic analyst to help investigate, he realises he could be dealing with someone a whole lot more sinister than he is. Soon it seems the dark passenger in Dexter's head has gone into hiding. And when something creeps out your friendly neighbourhood serial killer, you know it's serious ... As Halpern and Dexter are stalked by death, it looks like it's getting personal — especially as Dex now has a family to protect. Gradually, Dexter realises his stepchildren might share his extracurricular interest in death. Could he help them target their bloodlust, just as he steers his own? But to do that, Dex must cope with a certain mutilated sergeant from his past, and more importantly ...stay alive ... |
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British-born Teresa Simons returns to England after the death of her husband, an FBI agent, who was killed by an out-of-control gunman while on assignment in Texas. A shocking coincidence has drawn her to the run-down south coast town of Bulverton, where a gunman's massacre has haunting similarities to the murders in Texas. Desperate to unravel the mystery, Teresa turns to the virtual reality world of Extreme Experience, ExEx, now commercially available since she trained on it in the US. The best and worst of human experience can be found in ExEx, and in the extremes of violence Teresa finds that past and present combine... |
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Charlie Gordon, IQ 68, is a floor sweeper, and the gentle butt of everyone's jokes, until an experiment in the enhancement of human intelligence turns him into a genius. But then Algernon, the mouse whose triumphal experimental tranformation preceded his, fades and dies, and Charlie has to face the possibility that his salvation was only temporary. |
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«Cameraman Richard Grey's memory has blanked out the few weeks before he was injured in a car bomb explosion. When he is visited by a girl who seems to have been his lover, his attempts to recall the forgotten period produce an odyssey through France and conflicting accounts of what happened. When Susan Kewley speaks to him of that time, he finds himself glimpsing a terrible twilight world — the world of «the glamour».» |
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Having risen to the challenge of seas, poles, dhows and deserts, the highest mountains in the world were a natural target for Michael Palin. In a journey rarely, if ever, attempted before, in 6 months of hard travelling Palin takes on the full length of the Himalaya including the Khyber Pass, the hidden valleys of the Hindu Kush, ancient cities like Peshawar and Lahore, the mighty peaks of K2, Annapurna and Everest, the gorges of the Yangtze, the tribal lands of the Indo-Burmese border and the vast Brahmaputra delta in Bangladesh. Facing altitudes as high as 17,500 feet as well as some of the world's deepest gorges, Palin also passed through political flashpoints like Pakistan's remote north-west frontier, terrorist-torn Kashmir and the mountains of Nagaland, only recently open to visitors. |
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A strange, beautiful account of a woman's intimate encounters with the people, places and politics of a rich yet crumbling culture. |
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The novel traces the events of Jane Austen's well-loved Pride and Prejudice through the eyes of Mr Darcy. It reveals his reactions to Elizabeth, his gradual falling in love and the process by which he painfully gains self-knowledge, and it brings to life all the off-stage events that are only referred to in Austen's novel. We learn of Darcy's life in London, of his dangerous friendship with Byron, of the responsibilities that come with running Pemberley, and the terrible guilt he feels at not protecting his sister well enough from the dastardly Wickham. We also see Miss Bingley's increasingly desperate attempts to woo Darcy, and his own part in bringing about the separation between Elizabeth's sister and his own best friend. But above all, we come to know Fitzwilliam Darcy as a fully-rounded character, with all his flaws and all his attractions, and we learn that the story told from his point of view is as enchanting, gripping and unforgettable as Jane Austen's original. |
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Meet Chloe Zhivago, 43 and definitely not counting. Married for what feels like all eternity to Greg who tests his memory in infuriating ways, for example hiding the kettle from himself in the drum of the washing machine, Chloe is a successful psychotherapist with two children and a Famous Friend from hell. She's got it all. So why does she want to rub her life out and start again? Is this it? She asks herself. Will I never sleep with another man again? When Chloe meets temptation in the shape of Ivan, does she dare risk a passionate Russian romance before gravity wins the battle with her face and figure? Can she get away with one glorious, final fling? Dr Zhivago didn't. And just look what happened to Anna Karenina...This is a razor sharp, wonderfully funny, sexy novel that asks a serious question — how do you keep love alive during a long marriage? — and answers it with poignancy and pure delicious comedy. |
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Until the early 1990s, when the Berlin Wall came tumbling down, travelling behind the iron curtain was never easy. In undertaking his new journey through Eastern Europe, breathing in its rich history, and exquisite sights and talking to its diverse peoples, Michael fills what has been a void in his own experience and that of very many others. NEW EUROPE is very much a voyage of discovery, from the snows of the Julian Alps to the beauty of the Baltic sea, he finds himself in countries he'd barely heard of, many unfamiliar and mysterious, all with tragic histories and much brighter futures. During his 20-country adventure Palin meets Romanian lumberjacks, drives the 8.58 stopping train from Poznan to Wolsztyn, treads the catwalk at a Budapest fashion show, learns about mine-clearing in Bosnia and watches Turkish gents wrestling in olive oil. As with all his bestselling books, in his uniquely entertaining style, Palin opens up a new and undiscovered world to millions of readers. |
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Dave Robicheaux left his drinking days behind him many years ago, but he still feels guilt over a tragic event he wasn't sober enough to prevent. Dallas Klein, a gambling addict and bar buddy of Dave's when Dave was posted to Miami PD, was killed in an armed robbery he'd been forced to engineer. Two decades later, several incidents in Dave's life in Iberia Parish link to those involved. First he meets Dallas' daughter, Trish, who keeps odd company and is blackballed by the local casinos. Then the supposed suicide of a young girl appears to be connected to the man Dallas owed money to back in the Miami days. Dave's inability to let things alone gets him involved with two very powerful criminals, both wanting to protect their sons from the trouble they court, and both with the attitude of the privileged and white. When a young black drug dealer gets on the wrong side of the boys, tensions run high and there are more needless deaths — causing Dave to come to blows with the FBI, the DA's office and a thug who has little regard for any life but his own. |
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Who, among you, deserves eternal life? Daniel is a highly successful stand-up comedian who has made a career out of playing outrageously on the prejudices of his public. But at the beginning of the twenty-first century, he has begun to detest laughter in particular and mankind in general. Despite this, Daniel is unable to stop himself believing in the possibility of love. A thousand years on, war, drought and earthquakes have decimated the earth and Daniel24 lives alone in a secure compound — his only companion, a cloned dog named Fox. Outside, the remnants of the human race roam in packs, while Daniel24 attempts to decipher his predecessor's history. In a nightmarish vision of the implosion of the modern world, he, like his predecessor attempts to fathom the meaning of love, sex, suffering and regret. |
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RED MUTINY tells how the sailors of Imperial Russia's newest and most powerful battleship, POTEMKIN, seized control and flew the red flag of revolution in June 1905. It is a tale of dramatic adventure, naval battles, heroic sacrifices, treachery and intrigue at the court of the last Tsar. A dedicated band of revolutionaries inspire and lead the sailors to overthrow their tyrannical officers, but the POTEMKIN finds itself steaming around the Black Sea with the rest of the fleet in pursuit. Hunted from port to port, the mutineers enter Odessa, sparking a bloody insurrection (made famous by Eisenstein's film) and bringing Imperial Russia to its knees. As Lenin and many others recognised at the time, this was the key event that would make the Russian revolution possible. The political consequences of this mutiny were profound, but the author concentrates on the individuals involved in these dramatic events: it is a brilliantly realised, cinematic treatment that really brings the story to life. |
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