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Orion Books
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From the moment when they first met, in the commission of the same, audacious theft, Fafhrd, the giant barbarian warrior from the Cold Waste, and the Gray Mouser, master thief, novice wizard and expert swordsman, felt no ordinary affinity. Forged over the gleam of sharpened steel as, back to back, they faced their foes, theirs was a friendship that would take them from adventure to misadventure across all of Nehwon, from the caves of the inner earth to the waves of the outer sea. But it was in the dark alleys and noisome back streets of the great fog-shrouded city of Lankhmar that they became legends. THE FIRST BOOK OF LANKHMAR includes the first four volumes of the hugely enjoyable Swords series. |
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Years have gone by since the events surrounding the death of Anne Boleyn. But her missing hand and all that it represents to the dark world of 16th-century Europe still draws the powerful to seek it out. Jean Rombaud — the French executioner of the first novel — has grown old, both in age and spirit. Wearied by the betrayal of a son and the scorn of a wife, he fights in the seemingly never-ending siege of Siena. Meanwhile, Gianni Rombaud has forsaken everything his ageing father stands for and now kills heathen for the Inquisition in Rome. Then he is summoned by Cardinal Carafa himself. His masters no longer merely want his dagger in the hearts of Jews, they want the hand of the dead queen... But only three people know where it is buried, and one of them is Gianni's father... |
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May 1941. At four in the morning, a rust-streaked tramp freighter steams up the Tagus river to dock at the port of Lisbon. She is the Santa Rosa, flies the flag of neutral Spain, and is in Lisbon to load cork oak, tinned sardines and drums of cooking oil bound for the Baltic port of Malmo. But she is not the Santa Rosa. She is the Noordendam, a Dutch freighter under the command of Captain Eric DeHaan. She sails for the intelligence division of the British Royal Navy and is involved in a secret mission. On board are a Polish engineer and British spy, Spaniards who fought for Franco and Germans who fought against Hitler. For them, this is a last desperate flight to freedom. |
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After crashing and burning during his PhD viva, Mason Ambrose is offered a large amount of money to go to a mysterious tropical island — Isla de Sangre. His employer is wealthy recluse Edwina Sabachtani whose daughter has supposedly lost her sense of right and wrong after a diving accident. Mason is to use his knowledge as a philosopher to instil a conscience, a moral compass in the child. Mason happily instructs her in schools of thought, from the stoics to the epicureans, but it is when he introduces Londa to the Beatitudes that the seeds of a rampaging sense of justice are sown. Venturing from the confines of the island, Londa sets out to create a world that is more just. But when she takes her crusade too far, kidnapping a boat full of wealthy industrialists, Mason realises he must take desperate measures... |
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The expansion of the congestion charge zone, prices going up on the Underground, bendy buses — all ideas brought about to try to make the traffic situation in our capital city run more smoothly. Surely there must be a better way? In fact there is. In Roman times, when the streets were even more crowded, Caesar decreed that all vehicles (except those involved in building work) were banned from the City, while Nero took advantage of a major fire to broaden the streets to improve access. Whatever the problem, from the leader whose deputy wants to replace him to the question of how to make democracy really work, you can guarantee that our Classical forebears faced the same situation and came up with some far more effective solutions than our current politicians. In this enthralling, informative and hugely entertaining book, Peter Jones, one of the UK's leading Classicists, highlights just how much we have to learn from the past and how things really were once so much better. |
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Nina is the peacemaker of the family — dutiful daughter, sister and wife. Richard is the baby of the family — he's always been spoilt, and in his mother's eye, can do no wrong. Susan is envious of everyone. She has always got the worst of everything — or so she believes. Nina has been married to workaholic Alex long enough to decide that it's time for a child, but for him the moment is never right. There's always another property to buy, another deal to be struck. Or is there something else that's keeping him late so often at the office, something readily on offer that he cannot refuse? But as the secrets of those closest to her are shockingly revealed, suddenly everything is under threat — her marriage, her home and her future happiness. |
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Lizzie Buckley has a life many women dream of — a gorgeous husband, wonderful home and beautiful (when they're not fighting) three year old twins. But there's a snag. It's not that Lizzie has gone off marriage, as such. Well, not exactly. She's just gone off the physical side of it. Ever since the birth of the twins, she's had a fantasy about locking herself in her bedroom for 24 hours alone with a good book and a box of chocolates. Unfortunately, her husband James doesn't understand her feelings. And when Lizzie hits 'send' on the wrong email, suddenly everything starts to unravel. With the word 'divorce' ringing in her ears, Lizzie finds herself moving out and embarking on a totally different life — new house; new neighbours; no husband. But despite transforming her body, her neglected career and her libido (courtesy of the local landscape gardener), Lizzie can't get over her soon-to-be ex. Still mulling over her failed marriage, Lizzie can't help wondering whether she was ever good enough for gorgeous James. Or, as her mother-in-law suggests, was she just the wrong sort of wife? The other side of much misunderstanding, mayhem and more than a little merlot, Lizzie will find out if she wanted the fairy tale ending after all? |
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London, June 1940. When the body of silent screen star Mabel Morgan is found impaled on railings in Fitzrovia, the coroner rules her death as suicide, but DI Ted Stratton of the CID is not convinced. Despite opposition from his superiors, he starts asking questions, and it becomes clear that Morgan's fatal fall from a high window may have been the work of one of Soho's most notorious gangsters. MI5 agent Diana Calthrop, working with senior official Sir Neville Apse, is leading a covert operation when she discovers that her boss is involved in espionage. She must tread carefully — Apse is a powerful man, and she can't risk threatening the reputation of the Secret Service. Only when Stratton's path crosses Diana's do they start to uncover the truth. But as they discover Morgan's connection with Apse and their mutual links to a criminal network and a secretive pro-fascist organisation, they begin to realise that the intrigues of the Secret Service are alarmingly similar to the machinations of war-torn London's underworld. |
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That Sunday feeling... The weekend's over, there's nothing on TV except for the Antiques Roadshow. The only thing you can do is face the fact that the working week is just around the corner. And for Matt Bletch, the working week is not a prospect to be relished. He's moved to middle of nowhere and taken a job at the only school that would have him. Surrounded by social misfits, clowns and psychopaths (and that's just his fellow teachers) he's left his girlfriend, social life and sanity back in London in the hope of earning some cash and maybe even finishing off his novel in the school holidays. Unfortunately, no one told Matt that a year spent in the dead-end town of Buxdon is unlikely to get the creative juices flowing. Walking through town before the first week of term, everything is grey, damp and smells slightly dubious. Will he ever tempt his girlfriend down to stay? Will the kids lynch him? And will Matt survive a year in the place where every day is like Sunday? |
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The Mass-Observation organisation was set up in 1937 with the aim of recording everyday life in Britain. Dorothy Sheridan has plundered its astonishingly rich archives to put together this anthology of women's experience in the Second World War. What was this experience? How far did it go to liberate women? Was it the opportunity that so many expected or was it simply six years of deprivation, hard work and pain? WARTIME WOMEN allows us to explore these questions through the writings of women living through the war years. The range of contributors is enormous, from a fish and chip shop worker in Birmingham to Irish immigrant munitions, factory workers, young women welders in Yorkshire and a seventeen-year-old schoolgirl in Essex. 'My horror of all this war business is qualified by an eagerness to be a unit of it. I feel as if I have been waiting for this all my life and I have just realised it' — A young woman writing in her diary in September, 1939. |
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'From the moment the first scabrous and brilliant volume was published, people wanted more. Now they have it and they will not be disappointed... These diaries are not wonderful simply because they show a politician unafraid to say what he thinks, and refusing to suck up to those whom he represents. They are great because they show all sides of a man who was, within his complex personality, arrogant, sensitive, loyal, unfaithful, patriotic, selfish, selfless, and — at all times — completely Technicolour' Simon Heffner, DAILY MAIL. |
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Living at home with her mother, aunt, and grandmother, Evelyn is still haunted by the death of her younger brother James in the First World War. She is also determined to make a career for herself as one of the first female lawyers. So when the doorbell rings late one night and a woman appears, claiming to have mothered James's child, her world is turned upside down. Evelyn distrusts Meredith at first, but also finds that this new arrival challenges her work-obsessed lifestyle. So far her legal career has not set the world alight. But then two cases arise that make Evelyn realise perhaps she can make a difference. The first concerns a woman called Leah Marchant whose children have been taken away from her simply because she is poor. The second, Stephen Wheeler, has been charged with murdering his own wife. It is clear that Wheeler is innocent but he won't talk. In the meantime, Meredith makes an earth-shattering accusation about James — and Evelyn falls in love with a man engaged to be married. With the Wheeler case coming to a head, and her heart in limbo, Evelyn takes matters into her own hands... |
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George Madoc had commanded an RAF Air-Sea Rescue boat ferrying secret agents between the south coast and occupied France. One night in April 1944 an operation to bring back a French agent went terribly wrong, and when George finally made it home two months later, he was unable to speak about what had happened. Hi son, Iain, is finally given a clue to unlocking the mystery of what so traumatised his father that he turned away from his own son. The wreck of his father's boat has been found near the Breton village of St Cyriac, and with it, perhaps, the key to unlocking George Madoc's memories. Desperate to understand, Iain goes to St Cyriac determined to discover the truth. But St Cyriac will not give up its secrets easily. For some people the past is still dangerously alive, and Iain soon finds that his own family may have to pay the price of uncovering it. |
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HEAVEN, HELL AND CHANEL follows the stories of four young fashion-obsessed people trying to make it big in the late 1960s world of Paris haute couture. Sophie is a beautiful Parisian girl from one of the city's most influential families. She finds herself working as a Chanel model when a sudden discovery about her family roots shatters her previously cosy and privileged existence... Monique has left her lowly family home in Angers to become a seamstress in the house of Chanel. As she arrives at 9.30am on her first day of work, two beautiful girls in grey dresses emerge from the house holding flacons of Chanel No.5 and spray scent into the street. Will all of Monique's dreams come true in this magical place? Christopher is London born and bred and the experience of Paris's swinging 60s left bank lifestyle expands his horizons in more ways than one. His quest to become a top fashion designer brings him into contact with a world of glamour, sex and parties he could never have imagined... Samantha is a Jewish princess, freshly arrived from New York, and with a fantastic fashion publicity job courtesy of Hungarian Daddie's impeccable contacts in the garment industry. Will this loud, opinionated American ever be accepted by the sophisticated Parisian ladies that she must mix with? As the destinies of these four gifted individuals unfold, they intertwine with none other than the elderly and enigmatic Coco Chanel herself... |
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Greece, 1930s. A young British diplomat and his wife have been posted to Athens. But while Hugh Timberlake thrives on the endless parties and socialising, his spirited and unconventional wife Evadne finds her life as an embassy wife stifling. When they go to Crete on holiday to stay in a run-down house owned by Hugh's family, Evadne falls in love with the place, deciding to stay on when Hugh returns to his duties. As she tries to rebuild the ramshackle home, Evadne makes firm friends with Anthi, a woman from the village, and Christos, the handsome and charismatic man employed to work on the house. But the dark clouds of war are gathering, and the little island will become a crucible of violence and bloodshed in the days to come. For Evadne, her friends and family, it will be the greatest test they have ever known. |
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When David Audley, that most subtle of Intelligence chiefs, sends his insubordinate protege Paul Mitchell off to investigate a KGB operation by researching a long-forgotten naval engagement off France in 1812, it doesn't look to Mitchell as if it will lead anywhere. But the fate of the crew of the Vengeful has more than a few surprises in store for Mitchell and suddenly the past throws a dazzling and very dangerous light on the present. |
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Nowadays a top Premiership football club can spend 50 million on a Portuguese pin-up or a legendary Italian goalkeeper, but you cannot take into account the effects of a dodgy takeaway meal, a dropped bottle of aftershave on a goalkeeper's toe, or the fact that your most creative player has to leave town because of a chance drunken encounter with another player's wife. It is these random moments that have shaped football as much as the headline-grabbing Cantona kung fu kick and that Russian linesman in 1966. Along the meandering paths of this witty alternative history of the world's most popular game, you will learn: Different sizes of football were used in each half of the inaugural World Cup Final of 1930. The first England defeat was not that famous 6-3 home defeat in 1953 by Hungary but was in Madrid against Spain back in 1929 (4-3). After penalty kicks were introduced in 1891, the Corinthian Casuals goalkeeper would stand idly by his post to allow the ball into his goal unhindered, such was the stigma of conceding a penalty. From the height of international football to the scandal of the Conference league Christmas party that cost far more than a bar-bill, Colin Murray tries his best to make you believe, once more, in football's unpredictability. |
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In less than twenty-four hours a vicious and virulent viral epidemic destroys virtually all of the population. Billions are killed, within minutes. There are no symptoms and no warnings; within moments of infection each victim suffers a violent and agonising death. At the end of ten minutes, only a handful of survivors remain. By the end of the first day those survivors wish they were dead. By the end of the first week, as the dead get up and walk, they know they are in hell. AUTUMN, the classic free underground novel finally bursts into the mainstream. It is cold, dark, relentless — and uncomfortably plausible, a NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD for the 21st Century. Amazon said: 'The perfect zombie story, nothing written in the genre has grabbed me in the same way as AUTUMN, an equal to Romero's Night of the Living Dead'. |
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Originally published in 1955 Jack Finney's sinister SF tale has outgrown the initial debate about whether it satirized Communism or the conformity of US society at the time, to become a classic of paranoia; an examination of our fear of 'the other'. Most people know the story from seeing THE INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, the classic 1978 remake (one of the few Hollwood remakes said to better than the original, made in 1956) starring Donald Sutherland. Here's your chance to read the original source; a story that has resonated with readers and viewers for more than 50 years. |
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Harold Pinter and Antonia Fraser lived together from August 1975 until his death thirty-three years later on Christmas Eve 2008. MUST YOU GO is, in essence, a love story based partly on Antonia Fraser's own diaries, which she has kept since October 1968. She has also used her own recollections, both immediate reactions and memories. She has quoted Pinter where he told her things about his past, once again noting the source, and has occasionally quoted his friends talking to her on the same subject. The result is a marvellously insightful testimony to modern literature's most celebrated marriage, between the greatest playwright of the age and a beautiful and famous prize-winning biographer. |
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