′An ideal text for challenging the thinking of those studying for NPQH… The conclusion by the authors suggests nine major points to consider if improvement for schools in extremely challenging circumstances is to happen and be sustained. These ′nine lesson for policy makers′ are very frank and pertinent points, let′s hope at least some of our policy makers read them!′ - ESCalate′Rarely does a book on education reform capture both the big and the small picture with such brilliant cl...

Freelance journalist Dorlores Gunn is a night crawler armed with a ruthless curiosity and a knack for self-preservation. With her drugged-out TV crew in tow, she scours the night city for saleable stories: violent death in the street is just a service industry providing her next clip, and every victim is a potential actor. Criss-crossing her path is Eli, a bike courier who travels with ease through the clogged arteries of the urban core and rides the periphery when the media pounces on a s...

From award-winning author John MacLachlan Gray comes a mesmerizing novel of corruption and murder through the looking-glass of Victorian London.Edmund Whitty writes lurid articles for the London press. He’s investigating a quack psychic who has been murdered after revealing a scandal involving Whitty’s late brother. Whitty’s search for the truth takes him back to Oxford, where a brilliant and eccentric cleric who delights in playing croquet, telling children’s stories and taking li...

It’s 1852, and the ranks of the London poor have doubled. In the swollen shadow of the great St. Giles Rookery, fallen women attract perfumed dandies of the West End in a vicious circle of venality, vanity and vice.Edmund Whitty, correspondent for The Falcon, the city’s second-best sensational tabloid, writes whatever will stimulate the reader, delay his (increasingly physical) creditors, and supply him with the alcohol and opiates required to see him through the day. His ...

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • BOOKER PRIZE FINALIST • From the bestselling author of The Sense of an Ending comes an “extraordinary … first rate” novel (The New York Times Book Review) that follows the lives of two very different British men and explores the grand tapestry of late-Victorian Britain.A Kirkus Reviews Best Fiction Book of the CenturyAs boys, George, the son of a Midlands vicar, and Arthur, living in shabby g...

These stories go deeper into the Victorian world and lives of the acclaimed international bestseller, The Crimson Petal and the White.Michel Faber's tale of love and lust in the Victorian Era, The Crimson Petal and the White, was hailed as "a Dickensian novel for our times." Now a major BBC TV drama, the saga of a prostitute named Sugar and the man who longs to possess her captured hearts and left readers desperate for more ( The Guardian...

When Harriet Unwin takes the position of governess in the well-to-do Thackerton household, it would seem that fortune has smiled on her at last. That is until William Thackerton is found stabbed, and Harriet accused of murder...In a desperate attempt to prove her innocence, she embarks on a daring scheme to save herself from the gallows. In doing so she uncovers the dark secrets which the family is trying to hide behind a veneer of Victorian respectability.

'An enticing and clever book, inside and out' Book Of The Month - The TimesYork, 1799.In August, an artist is found murdered in his home - stabbed with a pair of scissors. Matthew Harvey's death is much discussed in the city. The scissors are among the tools of his trade - for Harvey is a renowned cutter and painter of shades, or silhouettes, the latest fashion in portraiture. It soon becomes clear that the murderer must b...

'This is historical fiction with a human face'Peter Ackroyd, The Times'A vivid and erudite tour de force'Penelope Lively, Booker Prize-winning author of Moon Tiger'A skilled, ornate and convincing examination of a nineteenth-century scandal in Bragg's own Cumbria'Thomas Keneally, Booker Prize-winning author of Schindler's ArkSet in the Lake District in the early ninete...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Raucous cops, outlaw bikers, and suntanned celebrities collide in a steamy landscape swirling with natural beauty and unnatural death.Seventeen months ago the California desert revealed the remains of Jack Watson. The rich man’s son was found incinerated in a Rolls-Royce, a bullet in his head. Now, a year and a half later, Los Angeles Police Department homicide detective Sidney Blackpool is called into the desert to take on the ...

The fourteenth book to feature the classic crime-solving detective, Chief Inspector Wexford.Concealed by a shroud of dirty brown velvet, looking like a heap of rags, the woman's dead body lay between a silver Escort and a dark-blue Lancia.In the desolate shopping centre car park, Wexford has been too preoccupied to notice anything out of the ordinary - only the teenage girl in the red car, driving past him rather too fast. It was Burden who called him at home with the grim ...

In the shadows of Victorian London, a tale of obsession and redemption unfolds.Margaret Prior, an upper-class woman recovering from a suicide attempt, has begun visiting the women’s ward of Millbank prison, Victorian London’s grimmest jail, as part of her rehabilitative charity work. Amongst Millbank’s murderers and common thieves, Margaret finds herself increasingly fascinated by on apparently innocent inmate, the enigmatic spiritualist Selina Dawes.Selina...