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

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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

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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



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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.


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Ninety years after the cessation of gunfire on the Western Front, the Imperial War Museum pays tribute to the memory of those who fought its battles with a major new exhibition. The exhibition focuses on remembrance, honouring the lives of the men & women who suffered the war ...

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. ...