'Feeling the way I do now, it's not a feeling I ever want to have again.' Andrew Flintoff speaks for a nation.The Ashes, 2006/07: Australia 5 England 0. The nightmare returns.For twenty years, Australia has produced competitors so gritty they order sandwiches with sand in, and not just at cricket. Fourth in the medals table at the Athens Olympics, Tour de France contenders, Davis Cup champions, and the Socceroos 3--1 winners over England. For Richard Beard, the football was...

There is Rugby Union: the fast, compelling, TV-friendly combat sport in which sponsored gladiators are sold on their ability to crash into each other at top speed, and sometimes even to avoid each other and score. And then there's rugger.Rugger was once the serious version of rugby, more than a mere game, a fierce contact-sport developed in Victorian public schools to forge manly and unshakeable character. For a hundred years boys played rugger and made themselves into men. They al...

"Spellbinding, terrifying, deeply moving" -- an unflinching portrait of a family's silent grief, and the tragic death of a brother not spoken about for forty years (Joanna Rakoff).On a family summer holiday in Cornwall in 1978, Richard and his younger brother Nicholas are jumping in the waves. Suddenly, Nicholas is out of his depth. One moment he's there, the next he's gone.Richard and his other brothers don't attend the funeral, and incredibly the family ret...

Dr Richard Beard started off as a Science Teacher at Codsall Community High School, Staffordshire, UK and progressed to being an Advanced Skills Teacher (AST), Gifted & Talented and Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Co-ordinator. This supportive role continued for four years and across all subjects within a mixture of age ranges as part of the Codsall High School Federation of Schools. Throughout this period, Richard worked within an outstanding and innovative leaders...

A wildly inventive, darkly suspenseful novel that pits Christ’s “Passion as police procedural” (The Guardian).Set in a hazy Middle East that seems at once ancient and modern, The Apostle Killer features Gallio, an aging, hardboiled investigator who has one last chance to save his career: He’s got to prove Christ’s resurrection was a hoax.To uncover the conspiracy behind the so-called resurrection, Gallio figures all he needs is for oneof t...

"Spellbinding, terrifying, deeply moving" -- an unflinching portrait of a family's silent grief, and the tragic death of a brother not spoken about for forty years (Joanna Rakoff).On a family summer holiday in Cornwall in 1978, Richard and his younger brother Nicholas are jumping in the waves. Suddenly, Nicholas is out of his depth. One moment he's there, the next he's gone.Richard and his other brothers don't attend the funeral, and incredibly the family r...

The bestselling book that asks the question: what would present-day America look like if the Civil War never happened?A New York Times bestseller; a Goodreads Choice finalist; named one of the Best Books of the Year by NPR, Slate, Publishers Weekly, Hudson Bookseller, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Kirkus Reviews, AudioFile Magazine, and AmazonA young black man calling himself Victor has struck a bargain with ...

THE NIGHTMARE NO PARENT COULD ENDURE. THE CASE NO DETECTIVE COULD SOLVE. THE TWIST NO READER COULD PREDICT.For five days, the parents of a seven-year-old Japanese schoolgirl sat and listened to the demands of their daughter’s kidnapper. They would never learn his identity. And they would never see their daughter alive again.Fourteen years later, the mystery remains unsolved. The police department’s press officer—Yoshinobu Mikami, a former detective who was ...

A Wall Street Journal Top Ten Fiction Book of the Year * A Washington Post Notable Fiction Book of the Year * A Seattle Times Favorite Book of the Year * An NPR Best Book of the Year * A Kirkus Reviews Best Historical Fiction Book of the Year * A Library Journal Top Historical Fiction Book of the Year * Winner of the Costa First Novel Award, the RSL Ondaatje Prize, and the Desmond Elliott Prize * Winner of the New York City Book Award

As Henry VIII lies on his deathbed, an incendiary manuscript threatens to tear his court apart.Summer, 1546. King Henry VIII is slowly, painfully dying. His Protestant and Catholic councilors are engaged in a final and decisive power struggle; whoever wins will control the government. As heretics are hunted across London, and radical Protestants are burned at the stake, the Catholic party focuses its attack on Henry's sixth wife -- and Matthew Shardlake's old mentor -- Queen Cather...

C.J. Sansom rewrites history in a thrilling novel that dares to imagine Britain under the thumb of Nazi Germany.Twelve years have passed since Churchill lost to the appeasers and Britain surrendered to Nazi Germany. The global economy strains against the weight of the long German war against Russia still raging in the east. The British people find themselves under increasingly authoritarian rule -- the press, radio, and television tightly control...

WINNER OF THE 2017 COSTA NOVEL AWARDA GUARDIAN BOOK OF THE YEARAN FT BOOK OF THE YEARA TLS BOOK OF THE YEARA TELEGRAPH BOOK OF THE YEARFrom the award-winning author of If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things. Reservoir 13 tells the story of many lives haunted by one family's loss.Midwinter in the early years of this century. A te...