During the last months of Hitler's Berlin, an estimated 30, 000 German teenagers perished defending their beloved Fhrer in the Russian onslaught. Armin Lehmann was one of the few boy soldiers who escaped the bloodbath. Like every other member of the Hitler Youth, Armin would have given his life gladly for his leader, but he was not to be sacrificed to the enemy at the gate. Instead, he was chosen to serve in the German High Command's bunker complex. It was a stroke of fate that brought him into the company of the most notorious Nazis of Hitler's hated Reich, including Martin Bormann, Goebbels &, of course, the Fhrer himself. When Hitler greeted Armin, the 16-year-old boy knew he had been granted a unique part in history. In Hitler's Bunker is Armin's eyewitness account of the Nazi apocalypse. It is also the story of how his unquestioning fanaticism won him that role in the final act of the Third Reich. It takes us back to his boyhood & the brutal SS father who instilled the Nazi's hateful creed in his son. It follows Armin's odyssey through the ranks of the Hitler Youth & shares his teenage anguish over his doomed love for a beautiful German nurse. It is the story of Armin's gradual realisation of the full horror of what he had been part of, & recounts his quest for the truth, which took him in the footsteps of Mahatma Ghandi & to a meeting with Albert Schweitzer, the missionary & theologian. Above all, In Hitler's Bunker is the story of how one man, instead of running away from his past, confronted it & found peace, at last. ...

Barney Crispin, a Captain in the SAS, is a tough as they come. He is sent on an urgent mission to the Afghanistan border: to destroy one of the Soviet Mi-24 helicopters, a highly sophisticated & virtually invulnerable piece of military equipment, & retrieve the hardware. In order to do so, he needs the help of the Mujahidin resistance & must first train them in the ways of stealth & sabotage.

But the guerillas he trains are ill-equipped & disorganised. Their attempt fails & several of them are killed in the process. Against orders & with only eight missiles & a local boy as his guide, Barney decides to undertake the mission alone, his own solitary battle for vengeance

...

Late evening, New York City: young American adventuress Faith Ballard makes a reckless & illegal parachute jump off a tall building. Evading the police, she hides in the flat of a very sexy woman. Meanwhile in London, gay but reserved clerk Joyce Wilde awakens & pleasures herself in the afterwaves of a bizarre erotic dream.

What links Faith & Joyce is a tontine: an agreement & legacy set up by the late Constance Wilde

...

Amsterdam 1758, & a man is artfully seducing a woman. He is, to all appearances, Monsieur le Chevalier de Seingalt, she is a courtesan, well-known in Amsterdam for the fact that she never removes her veil. He sets her a challenge: if she can find a woman who has suffered after falling in love with him, she is entitled to resist his charms; if not, she should play his game.

What Seingalt doesn't know is that he has already met the veiled woman many years ago, in another life. What Lucia doesn't know is that Seingalt will go down in history as one of the world's greatest lovers, Casanova.

A deliciously entertaining & moving story of innocence & experience, love & sacrifice, In Lucia



...

Amsterdam 1758, & a man is artfully seducing a woman. He is, to all appearances, Monsieur le Chevalier de Seingalt, a French government envoy selling shares to the Dutch; she is a courtesan, well-known in Amsterdam for the fact that she never removes her veil. He sets her a challenge: if she can find a woman who has suffered after falling in love with him, she is entitled to resist his charms; if not, she should succumb. What Seingalt doesn't know is that he has already met the veiled woman many years ago, in another life. What Lucia doesn't know is that Seingalt will go down in history as one of the world's greatest lovers, Casanova.

The inspiration for this perfectly plotted, wonderfully romantic historical novel lies in Casanova's memoirs, & a tiny reference to the woman he fell in love with at seventeen, but later met, hideously disfigured, in an Amsterdam brothel. Arthur Japin has expanded this anecdote into a deliciously entertaining & moving story of innocence & experience, love & sacrifice
- all seen through eyes of the woman who first broke Casanova's heart. His cunning narrative takes the reader on an entrancing journey from the canals of Amsterdam to those of Venice, painting a glorious portrait of the eighteenth century with all its contradictions of reason & instinct, wit & sensuality, head & heart.


...

The world could be changed forever by new biotechnologies: cloning, 'genomics' &, above all, by genetic engineering. ' Designer crops'
- GMOs
- are already with us. The 'designer baby' is now being planned. We need to understand the issues involved & to find acceptable & robust ways to control our own ingenuity. But how can we do so when the ideas seem so complex & various that even the experts appear confused? In the 1950s & '60s, growing peas in his monastery garden in Brno in Moravia, Augustinian friar Gregor Mendel worked out the basic laws of heredity. Once we understand what Mendel did & why
- & why nobody did it sooner
- all subsequent advances fall naturally into place & a brilliant light is thrown on to the future of humanity. The story of genetics & its underlying principles are utterly compelling
- & beguilingly simple to grasp.




...

In this autobiographical work, specifically mentioned in Issac Bashevis Singer's Nobel Prize citation, Singer remembers his childhood in Warsaw, & especially the bet din, or Jewish Court, in his father's home on working-class Krochmalna Street. Advice seekers & petitioners making wills or seeking marriage settlements daily visit the rabbi in his study. In a world on the brink of modernity, Singer's gentle, learned father & his mother, equally pious but eminently practical, maintain a stubbornly traditional existence. In My Father's Court is a tribute to their efforts, & a fine evocation of life in early-twentieth century Warsaw. ...