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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What if God exists? What if angels are real? What if we treated religious tracts, including the Bible, as empirical evidence of the supernatural world? Karl Ove Knausgaard`s major novel, A Time For Everything, is about God & his angels. It posits that angels are real, & that God exists. It posits, further, that heavenly beings evolve, & that even God may be subject to change. Written with Knausgaard`s characteristic style
- level, patient, & intensely readable
- it is a dazzling & innovative examination of the relationships between human, angels & God.

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Doreen Ingrams & her husband were the first Europeans ever to live in the Hadhramaut, an extraordinary, isolated region of southern Arabia. Married to an Arabic-speaking British official, she arrived by boat, & during their ten-year residency travelled throughout the region by camel & donkey. Doreen kept a diary in which she detailed their adventures & described her unequalled access to the domestic quarters, to the women & children, the food, the scents, secrets, jewels & privileges of this extraordinarily rich traditional society. ”A Time in Arabia” is a precious document
- part history, part time-travel, seen through the eyes of a decent, modest & compassionate woman.
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Elisabeth`s Bowen account of a time spent in Rome between February & Easter is both an introduction for visitors & an attempt to capture the ”mood” of the Eternal City. It is no ordinary guidebook but an evocation of a city
- its history, its architecture &, above all, its atmosphere. She describes the famous classical sites, conjuring from the ruins visions of former inhabitants & their often bloody activities. She speculates about the immense noise of ancient Rome, the problems caused by the Romans` dining posture, & the Roman temperament, which blended ”constructive will with supine fatalism”. She envies the Vestal Virgins & admires the Empress Livia, who survived a barren marriage. She evokes the city`s moods
- by day, when it is characterized by golden sunlight, & at night, when the blaze of the moon ”annihilates history, turning everything into a spectacle for Tonight”. Elegant & amusing, A Time in Rome is an unusual portrait of this glorious city into which Bowen has woven her personal meditations on religion, politics, love & life.” Rome is a continuity, called `eternal`. What has accumulated in this place acts on everyone day & night, like an extra climate”, Elisabeth Bowen

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In 1933, at the age of 18, Patrick Leigh Fermor set out on an extraordinary journey by foot
- from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople.
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AUTHOR OF THE BBC RADIO 2 BOOK CLUB BESTSELLER BETTER OFF DEADFrom hot thriller author Tom Wood comes the latest breathtaking Victor novel
- The Day of the Jackal meets Jason Bourne, with a thoroughly modern twist.` Terrifically fun & explosively propulsive` Gregg Hurwitz, author of Orphan XEven a killer can be a hero If the assassin known only as Victor once had a moral compass, it is long since buried, along with his many victims. Yet some men are so evil even Victor accepts they must die for reasons other than just money. One such is Milan Rados, a former commander in the Serbian army who has escaped trial at The Hague to become a formidable criminal power. Tracking down & killing this brutal man will win Victor a reprieve for his own recent crimes on British soil. But Victor isn`t the only one who wants Rados dead. A woman, whose family was butchered on the tyrant`s orders, will do anything to see Rados` blood spilled on the snow of Eastern Europe. Now Victor has an unlikely ally
- but an army stands between them & justice.

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First published in 1969, ”A Time to Keep” has a vast cast of characters drawn from Orkney`s past & present. The stories offer a range of emotions & incidents, exploring how the new & old collide & crash in a community as deeply rooted as Orkney`s. ` Celia` portrays a woman who is shutting out the contemporary world, losing herself in an alcohol-fuelled haze which helps her rejects the horrors of Apartheid & the Vietnam War. In ` The Wireless Set`, an old couple begins to fear the implications of new technology, as they associate the loss of their son during the war with the radio he brought to them before he left. ”A Time to Keep” reflects Brown`s recent conversion five years earlier to Roman Catholicism, which is both reflected in the title & in the spiritual content of the tales. ...