Translated by Constance Garnett with an introduction by Anthony Briggs Dostoevsky's fascination for mental breakdown & violence (20 murders in his four main novels) was based on his own life & these two unmistakably autobiographical works bear this out The House of the Dead is fiction but based on his four years in a Siberian prison An educated upper-class man is condemned to live among criminals & brutal guards with arbitrary punishments lousy food disgusting living conditions hard toil & many floggings Somehow he avoids bitterness & recrimination; faith in humanity survives With its breadth of characterisation acute sense of detail & strong narrative interest this work can still shock entertain & inspire In The Gambler we see the Russian community in a German spa town Drawn to the casino Alexey becomes obsessed with roulette In a gripping story full of psychological interest his growing mania eclipses even his interest in Polina a heroine of demonic & vibrant sexuality Dostoevsky himself was rescued from a similar gambling obsession by the young stenographer who took down this work at his dictation & married him soon afterwards ...

WINNER OF THE CUNDHILL HISTORY PRIZE 2017 SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOLFSON HISTORY PRIZE 2017 THE PUSHKIN HOUSE RUSSIAN BOOK PRIZE 2017 & THE LONGMAN-HISTORY TODAY BOOK PRIZE 2017THE TIMES SPECTATOR BBC HISTORY & TLS BOOKS OF THE YEAR' Masterful gripping filled with astonishing vivid & heartbreaking stories of crime & punishment of redemption love & terrifying violence It has an amazing cast of despots murderers whores & heroes It's a wonderful read' Simon Sebag Montefiore It was known as 'the vast prison without a roof' From the beginning of the nineteenth century to the Russian Revolution the tsarist regime exiled more than one million prisoners & their families beyond the Ural Mountains to Siberia The House of the Dead brings to life both the brutal realities of an inhuman system & the tragic & inspiring fates of those who endured it This is the vividly told history of common criminals & political radicals the victims of serfdom & village politics the wives & children who followed husbands & fathers & of fugitives & bounty-hunters The tsars looked on Siberia as creating the ultimate political quarantine from the contagions of revolution Generations of rebels
- republicans nationalists & socialists
- were condemned to oblivion thousands of kilometres from European Russia Over the nineteenth century however these political exiles transformed Siberia's mines prisons & remote settlements into an enormous laboratory of revolution This masterly work of original research taps a mass of almost unknown primary evidence held in Russian & Siberian archives to tell the epic story both of Russia's struggle to govern its monstrous penal colony & Siberia's ultimate decisive impact on the political forces of the modern world' An absolutely fascinating book rich in fact & anecdote'
- David Aaronovitch'A splendid example of academic scholarship for a public audience Yet even though he is an impressively calm & sober narrator the injustices & atrocities pile up on every page'
- Dominic Sandbrook'A superb colourful history of Siberian exile under the tsars'
- The Times




...

Peter Kristufek's sweeping family saga covering Slovakia's history from 1938 to the early 2000s explores the way the pressure of history makes a decent but weak man harm the people around him skilfully weaving into the narrative extracts from authentic period documents ranging from advertisements to poetry & diaries 560 pages Kristufek Peter ...

As a girl Clara del Valle can read fortunes make objects move as if they had lives of their own & predict the future Following the mysterious death of her sister Rosa the Beautiful Clara is mute for nine years When she breaks her silence it is to announce that she will be married soon to the stern & volatile landowner Esteban Trueba Set in an unnamed Latin American country over three generations The House of the Spirits is a magnificent epic of a proud & passionate family secret loves & violent revolution ...

In a cavern called The House of Thunder Susan Thorton watched in terror as her lover died a brutal death in a college hazing & in the following four years the four young men who participated in that grim fraternity rite also died violently Or did they? Twelve years later Susan wakes in a hospital bed Apparently involved in a fatal accident she is suffering from amnesia She doesn't remember who she is or why she is there All she knows is that her convalescence is unfolding into a fearful nightmare
- & that the faces that surround her pretending loving care are those of the four men involved in that murder years before Have the dead come back to life? Or has Susan plunged into the abyss of madness? With the help of her neurosurgeon Susan desperately clings to her sanity while fighting to uncover who or what could be stalking her Originally published under the pseudonym Leigh Nichols
...

The first illustrated monograph dedicated to the history of the House of Worth the world's pioneering haute couture label ...

An engaging love story set in eighteenth century Whitby & on the romantic North Yorkshire Moors Penelope is a very young & beautiful girl refined & educated with no desire for an arranged marriage But she can hardly imagine how her life will change when she meets the charming handsome Robert Curzon set to inherit a great farm & its lands Listening to the echoes of the past can this love be carried from the shadows of the eighteenth century to the present day? Can true love really last forever in this exciting time-slip story? ...

Lose yourself in a sweeping love story this summer
- perfect for fans of Dinah Jeffries & Santa Montefiore Northern France 1917
...

The House on Cold Hill is a chilling & suspenseful ghost story from the multi-million copy bestselling author of Dead Simple Peter James Moving from the heart of the city of Brighton & Hove to the Sussex countryside is a big undertaking for born townies Ollie Harcourt his wife Caro & their twelve-year-old daughter Jade But when they view Cold Hill House
- a huge dilapidated Georgian mansion
- they are filled with excitement Despite the financial strain of the move Ollie has dreamed of living in the country since he was a child & with its acres of land he sees Cold Hill House as a paradise for his animal-loving daughter a base for his web-design business & a terrific long-term investment Caro is less certain & Jade is grumpy about being removed from all her friends But within days of moving in it soon becomes apparent that the Harcourt family aren't the only residents in the house At first it is only a friend of Jade talking to her on Facetime who sees a spectral woman standing behind her Then there are more sightings of her as well as increasingly disturbing occurrences in the house Two weeks after moving in Caro out in the garden is startled to see faces staring out of an upstairs window of the house The window of a room which holds the secret to the house's dark history a room which does not appear to exist

...

' We're going to a fine place' Idie told Homer to console him 'with gullies & monkeys & hummingbirds' Idie Grace is twelve when she inherits a grand old house on a Caribbean island & is sent away from grey old England to a place where hummingbirds hover & monkeys clamber from tree to tree As a lady of property Idie can do as she pleases so she fills the house with exotic animals keeps her beloved horse in the hallway & carries a grumpy talking cockatoo called Homer on her shoulder But the island house holds as many secrets as it does animals & the truth behind Idie's inheritance is the biggest secret of all Perfect for fans of Eva Ibbotson & Katherine Rundell ...