In 1631, the heartbroken Moghul Emperor, Shah Jahan, ordered the construction of a monument of unsurpassed splendor & majesty in memory of his beloved wife. Theirs was an extraordinary story of passionate love: although almost constantly pregnant
- she bore him fourteen children
- Mumtaz Mahal followed her husband on every military campaign. But then Mumtaz died in childbirth. Blinded by grief, Shah Jahan created an exquisite & extravagant memorial for her on the banks of the river Jumna. The Taj Mahal took twenty years to build & depleted the Moghul treasuries. But Shah Jahan was to pay a greater price for his obsession. He ended his days imprisoned by his own son in Agra Fort, gazing across the river at the monument to his love. The building of the Taj Mahal had set brother against brother & son against father in a savage conflict that pushed the seventeenth century's most powerful empire into irreversible decline.

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In the summer of 2008, Andrei Kaplan moves from New York to Moscow to look after his ageing grandmother, a woman who survived the dark days of communism & witnessed Russia`s violent capitalist transformation, during which she lost her beloved dacha. She welcomes Andrei into her home, even if she can`t always remember who he is. Andrei learns to navigate Putin`s Moscow, still the city of his birth, but with more expensive coffee. He looks after his elderly
- but surprisingly sharp!
- grandmother, finds a place to play hockey, a cafe to send emails, & eventually some friends, including a beautiful young activist named Yulia. Capturing with a miniaturist`s brush the unfolding demands of family, fortune, personal ambition, ideology, & desire, A TERRIBLE COUNTRY is a compelling novel about ageing, radical politics, Russia at a crossroads, & the difficulty
- or impossibility
- of actually changing one`s life.



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Gustas is nearly killed in the hurricane, trying to save his banana tree; Nenna & her brother Man-Man patrol the cocnut plantation in the dead of night, ready to catch interlopers; Becky longs for a bicycle & Fanso longs to find his father who walked out thirteen years ago. This is a wonderfully atmospheric collection of contemporary short stories that bring James Berry`s Caribbean childhood vividly to life. ...

How the global tea industry influenced the international economy & the rise of mass consumerism Tea has been one of the most popular commodities in the world. Over centuries, profits from its growth & sales funded wars & fueled colonization, & its cultivation brought about massive changes--in land use, labor systems, market practices, & social hierarchies--the effects of which are with us even today. A Thirst for Empire takes a vast & in-depth historical look at how men & women--through the tea industry in Europe, Asia, North America, & Africa--transformed global tastes & habits & in the process created our modern consumer society. As Erika Rappaport shows, between the seventeenth & twentieth centuries the boundaries of the tea industry & the British Empire overlapped but were never identical, & she highlights the economic, political, & cultural forces that enabled the British Empire to dominate--but never entirely control--the worldwide production, trade, & consumption of tea. Rappaport delves into how Europeans adopted, appropriated, & altered Chinese tea culture to build a widespread demand for tea in Britain & other global markets & a plantation-based economy in South Asia & Africa. Tea was among the earliest colonial industries in which merchants, planters, promoters, & retailers used imperial resources to pay for global advertising & political lobbying. The commercial model that tea inspired still exists & is vital for understanding how politics & publicity influence the international economy. An expansive & original global history of imperial tea, A Thirst for Empire demonstrates the ways that this fluid & powerful enterprise helped shape the contemporary world. ...

A Thousand days in Tuscany by Marlena de Blasi is the story of Marlena & her Venetian husb&, Fernando, as they make a life for themselves on a forgotten patch of Earth where Tuscany, Umbria & Lazio collide. Amongst the many people they befriend is Barluzzo, an old sage who takes the couple under his wing & initiates them in the age-old traditions of Tuscan life: since their house lacks electricity, he helps them build a traditional brick oven in the garden; in autumn he wakes them at dawn to gather chestnuts & porcini mushrooms, & at the onset of winter he takes them to pull grapes from the vines & beat olives from the trees. Beautifully written & richly seasoned with mouth-watering recipes of the region, this book is filled with the carpe diem attitude that so captivated readers of A Thousand Days in Venice. ...

An intimate portrait of five inextricably linked lives, spanning one calendar year at Kew Gardens
- an exquisite, strange & beautiful
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Mariam is only fifteen when she is sent to Kabul to marry Rasheed. Nearly two decades later, a friendship grows between Mariam & a local teenager, Laila, as strong as the ties between mother & daughter. When the Taliban take over, life becomes a desperate struggle against starvation, brutality & fear. Yet love can move a person to act in unexpected ways, & lead them to overcome the most daunting obstacles with a startling heroism. ...

Brilliant & original, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers introduces a remarkable first collection of stories about China from an author set to become a major literary talent. In this extraordinary first collection, Yiyun Li brings us a modern China facing up to a complex history of repression & guilt. In ` Immortality`, winner of the Paris Review prize, a young man bears a striking resemblance to the dictator, & so finds a strange kind of calling. In ` Extra`, first published in the New Yorker, a Chinese woman, alone in middle age, befriends a young boy who has become an outcast in a remote country school. In their friendship, we see how love can begin to overcome the strictures that dominate their lives. In turn horrifying & breathtakingly lyrical, Yiyun Li, a new & talented young Chinese writer, confronts the silence that dominated the history of her country, & illuminates how mythology, politics, history & culture intersect with personality. She leaves us with an enduring vision of a country undergoing tremendous change. ...

Children can make their own beautiful pop-up book using this imaginative kit, a little glue & by following simple step-by-step instructions. The result is a series of magical gardens
- French, Japanese, Arabian, tropical & dreamlike
- through which a mysterious tiger wonders. Brief texts introduce readers to the various types of gardens. Inspired by the late artist Derek Jarman`s unique garden on the coast of Kent, Engl&, this marvellous do-it-yourself book will provide readers with a product they can return to again & again
- & perhaps even the tools to create their very own pop-up book design.


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In seven works of non-fiction, especially in ” Birders” & the universally acclaimed ” Birds Britannica”, Mark Cocker has established himself as one of the foremost writers on nature & wilderness. In his most lyrical work to date, he has drawn together the best of his writing on wildlife, mainly taken from columns for the ” Guardian” & ” Guardian Weekly.” These carefully distilled articles, over a hundred in all, illustrate some of his most enduring themes over the last twenty years
- the magical dynamism of birds, as well as the subtle beauty, vast skies & wildlife riches of the Norfolk landscape. In its celebration of the natural world, the hugely varied selection also demonstrates a concern to champion the despised & neglected
- rats, gulls, crows (the ` Black Beasts` of his first section)
- as much as it explores some of the most charismatic creatures on Earth
- penguins, whales, lions & elephants. Cocker is equally good at evoking the commonplace mysteries of garden blackbirds & thrush`s song, as he is the exotic otherness of mountain gorillas or the one-horned rhinoceros. With its attention to detail, especially the sharpness of perception & the precise use of language, the writing in ”A Tiger in the Sand” shows qualities more usually associated with poetry than with prose.



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