In Sybil, or The Two Nations, social activist, political reformer and twice Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli tells the love story of a young working-class woman and a newly elected nobleman. While on a visit to the manufacturing towns of the north, aristocrat Charles Egremont encounters beautiful Sybil Gerard, singing in the grounds of Marney Abbey. Graceful and angelic, Sybil Gerard is a symbol of religious purity. He also meets her father, a working-class radical, who tells him about the...

'Witty and geekily eclectic' The TimesAn erudite and amusing exploration' Financial Times'Full of jawdropping facts' Mail on Sunday'Remarkable . . . engrossing' Sunday Times'A pleasure' Spectator'An infectiously enthusiastic history' Times Literary SupplementThe encyclopaedia once shaped our un...

Travel across the United States with David Reynolds as he explores US Route 50, one of the few remaining two-lane highways running from the Atlantic to the Pacific.Driving as slowly as safety permits, stopping frequently and often going backwards to have a second look at something glimpsed in passing, Reynolds talks to people on the streets, in bars and cafes, motels and gas stations. They talk about everything from slavery and the traditional Indian sundance, to cannabis in Colora...

'A gripping murder mystery and a vivid recreation of Paris under German Occupation.' ANDREW TAYLOR*WINNER OF THE HWA GOLD CROWN AWARD FOR BEST HISTORICAL FICTION**SHORTLISTED FOR THE CWA HISTORICAL DAGGER AWARD*'Terrific' SUNDAY TIMES, Best Books of the Month'A thoughtful, haunting thriller' MICK HERRON'Sharp and compelling' ...

Rickie Alleyn, son of the famed detective Roderick Alleyn had taken to the peaceful Channel Island village of Deep Cove to write his book. However, soon enough the tedium of provincial life threatens to send him packing until, that is, he finds a dead stablehand and sleepy community's world is upturned. His father is called to take proceedings into hand, but as a darker side to island life emerges, one of illegal drugs and smuggling, Rickie goes missing. Will Ngaio Marsh's stalwart detecti...

Once again, Roderick Alleyn is on the case of a killer who plucked the life from the newest initiate of The House of the Sacred Flame, just as she was about to drink the sacrificial wine, being as it was laced with cyanide. In investigating her death he finds the High Priest and his followers are more enmeshed is the earthly passions of lust and jealousy than they would like to imagine. It may hail from the 'golden age' of the whodunit, but Ngaio Marsh's Death in Ecstasy contains enough of...

The remarkable, moving story of Prince Philip's mother by eminent biographer Hugo Vickers, updated in this new edition - for fans of Kingmaker and The Lives and Deaths of the Princesses of HessePrincess Alice, mother of Prince Phillip, was something of a mystery figure even within her own family. Profoundly deaf, she was born at Windsor Castle in the presence of her great-grandmother, Queen Victoria, and brought up in England, Darmstadt, and Malta.In 1903 she married Prince...

Born in a workhouse and sold into an apprenticeship with an undertaker, young orphan Oliver Twist escapes and travels through London. While on his adventure, he meets Jack Dawkins, a member of a gang of juvenile pickpockets led by the elderly criminal Fagin. Caught in a life of immorality, Oliver finds himself taken away by a kind gentleman who leads him to a life he had never anticipated for himself.

THE BRAND NEW NOVEL IN THE AWARD-WINNING OCCUPATION SERIES, FEATURING DETECTIVE EDDIE GIRALIn Paris 1940, survival means sacrifice. Like most in the city, Detective Eddie Giral has already lost so much under Occupation: the people he once loved, the job he once believed in.And his latest investigation into the murder of a black-marketeer has made it clearer than ever: Eddie is no longer just catching criminals. He's working for them. Because when a...

'In Detective Eddie Giral, Chris Lloyd has created a flawed hero not just for occupied Paris, but for our own times, too' KATHERINE STANSFIELDParis, 1940. As the city adjusts to life under Nazi occupation, Detective Eddie Giral struggles to reconcile his job as a policeman with his new role enforcing a regime he cannot believe in but must work under.He's sacrificed so much in order to survive in this new world, but the past is not so easily...

Against the background of the Protestant Reformation and conflicts between England and Spain, this novel relates the rise of the House of Orange and the beginnings of Dutch nationalism. The factual history of the conflict is long and complex, but Holland tells an insightful, if small, slice of a much bigger picture, through the stories of one Dutch family. Holland brings the reader into the action, fighting alongside Jan & Hanneke against Alva and the Spaniards who seek to crush their revo...

**The arms dealer betrayed them. Now the survivors want revenge.**Eighteen years after the barbarous war with the Serbs that tore their communities apart, a group of Croatian villagers discover the identity of the Englishman who they believe betrayed them by welching on a deal to supply arms.With revenge in sight at last, they hire a professional killer from London to track him down . . . but is the story as simple as they think?A brilliant, bruising thriller, told in a uni...