It is January 1819, & Captain Adam Bolitho, newly married, makes haste to ship out from Falmouth & leave his beautiful wife, Lowenna, once again. Bound for Freetown, on the old the slave coast of Africa, H.M.S. Onward carries sealed orders in the strongbox below deck. But why all the secrecy & apparent urgency? & why Onward, so soon after the Mediterranean, & that bloody action with Nautilus?

Mission completed, yet Adam cannot & will not leave. On their way into port, the crew of the Onward spy the debris of an allied frigate, destroyed as if taken by surprise. There are bodies strewn among the shark-infested waters & no enemy in sight. A single word frozen on the lips of the dead. Mutiny. The men begin to question who is friend & who is foe.

All is not well aboard the Onward; envy & hunger for power consume some of the crew, but they must band together & risk their lives together, in the name of the King. A searing & gripping tale of trouble on the high seas, & of the weakness of the human spirit, In the King



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It is January 1819, & Captain Adam Bolitho, newly married, makes haste to ship out from Falmouth & leave his beautiful wife, Lowenna, once again. Bound for Freetown, on the old the slave coast of Africa, H.M.S. Onward carries sealed orders in the strongbox below deck. But why all the secrecy & apparent urgency? & why Onward, so soon after the Mediterranean, & that bloody action with Nautilus?

Mission completed, yet Adam cannot & will not leave. On their way into port, the crew of the Onward spy the debris of an allied frigate, destroyed as if taken by surprise. There are bodies strewn among the shark-infested waters & no enemy in sight. A single word frozen on the lips of the dead. Mutiny. The men begin to question who is friend & who is foe.

All is not well aboard the Onward; envy & hunger for power consume some of the crew, but they must band together & risk their lives together, in the name of the King. A searing & gripping tale of trouble on the high seas, & of the weakness of the human spirit, In the King



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' Who ends up in the kitchen, Gabe?'

' Misfits, ' he said, 'psychos, exiles, culinary artists, & people who

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At the once-splendid Imperial Hotel, chef Gabriel Lightfoot is trying to run a tight kitchen. But his integrity & his sanity ...

Alphonse Daudet (1840-1897) was one of the most popular nineteenth-century French novelists, whose work radiated humour & good cheer. What few except those close to him knew was that for his entire adult life he suffered from syphilis, a disease both unmentionable & incurable at the time. What even fewer knew was that for the last dozen years of his life he kept an intimate notebook in which he recorded the inevitable development & terrifying effects of the disease. He described the often alarming treatments he took in the desperate attempt to defeat the disease, & wrote with comic zest about life in the spa-towns to which he was sent for a cure.

Even for a time when we are more openly confessional about illness, Daudet remains exemplary & instructive, both in his lucid self-examination & in his amused stoicism. In the Land of Pain was first published by Daudet's widow in 1931. Julian Barnes brings us the first English translation of this surprising, touching, & at times brutal masterpiece.

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In 1912, six months after Scott & his men came to grief in Antarctica, the Russian navigator Valerian Albanov embarked on an expedition that would prove even more disastrous. In search of new Arctic hunting grounds, Albanov's ship, the Saint Anna, was frozen fast in the pack ice of the treacherous Kara Sea
- a misfortune grievously compounded by an incompetent commander, the absence of crucial nautical charts, insufficient fuel, & inadequate provisions that left the crew weak & debilitated by scurvy. For nearly a year & a half, the twenty-five men & one woman aboard the Saint Anna endured terrible hardships & danger as the icebound ship drifted helplessly north. Convinced that the Saint Anna would never free herself from the ice, Albanov & thirteen crewmen left the ship in January 1914, hauling makeshift sledges & kayaks behind them across the frozen sea, hoping to reach the distant coast of Franz Josef L&. With only a shockingly inaccurate map to guide him, Albanov led his men on a 235-mile journey of continuous peril, enduring blizzards, disintegrating ice floes, attacks by polar bears & walrus, starvation, sickness, snowblindness, & mutiny. That any of the team survived is a wonder. That Albanov kept a diary of his ninety-day ordeal
- a story that Jon Krakauer calls an 'astounding, utterly compelling book', & David Roberts calls 'as lean & taut as a good thriller'
- is nearly miraculous. First published in Russia in 1917, Albanov's narrative is here translated into English for the first time. Haunting, suspenseful, & told with gripping detail, In the Land of White Death can now rightfully take its place among the classic writings of Nansen, Scott, Cherry-Garrard & Shackleton.


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In 1912, six months after Scott & his men came to grief in Antarctica, the Russian navigator Valerian Albanov embarked on an expedition that would prove even more disastrous. In search of new Arctic hunting grounds, Albanov's ship, the Saint Anna, was frozen fast in the pack ice of the treacherous Kara Sea
- a misfortune grievously compounded by an incompetent commander, the absence of crucial nautical charts, insufficient fuel, & inadequate provisions that left the crew weak & debilitated by scurvy. For nearly a year & a half, the twenty-five men & one woman aboard the Saint Anna endured terrible hardships & danger as the icebound ship drifted helplessly north. Convinced that the Saint Anna would never free herself from the ice, Albanov & thirteen crewmen left the ship in January 1914, hauling makeshift sledges & kayaks behind them across the frozen sea, hoping to reach the distant coast of Franz Josef L&. With only a shockingly inaccurate map to guide him, Albanov led his men on a 235-mile journey of continuous peril, enduring blizzards, disintegrating ice floes, attacks by polar bears & walrus, starvation, sickness, snowblindness, & mutiny. That any of the team survived is a wonder. That Albanov kept a diary of his ninety-day ordeal
- a story that Jon Krakauer calls an 'astounding, utterly compelling book', & David Roberts calls 'as lean & taut as a good thriller'
- is nearly miraculous. First published in Russia in 1917, Albanov's narrative is here translated into English for the first time. Haunting, suspenseful, & told with gripping detail, In the Land of White Death can now rightfully take its place among the classic writings of Nansen, Scott, Cherry-Garrard & Shackleton.


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