From No.1 bestselling author Andrew Taylor comes the sequel to the phenomenally successful The Ashes of London Somewhere in the soot-stained ruins of Restoration London, a killer has gone to ground... The Great Fire has ravaged London, wreaking destruction & devastation wherever its flames spread. Now, guided by the incorruptible Fire Court, the city is slowly rebuilding, but times are volatile & danger is only ever a heartbeat away. James Marwood, son of a traitor, is thrust into this treacherous environment when his ailing father claims to have stumbled upon a murdered woman
- in the very place where the Fire Court sits. Then his father is run down & killed. Accident? Or another murder...? Determined to uncover the truth, Marwood turns to the one person he can trust
- Cat Lovett, the daughter of a despised regicide. Marwood has helped her in the past. Now it`s her turn to help him. But then comes a third death... & Marwood & Cat are forced to confront a vicious & increasingly desperate killer whose actions threaten the future of the city itself.

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The fifth book in the classic Martin Beck detective series from the 1960s
- the novels that shaped the future of Scandinavian crime
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In these wide-ranging tales from a life on the road, Vietnam vet & ”adventure eater” Richard Sterling takes the reader deep into the heart of cultures from Asia to Africa to North America. Whether he is breaking bread with a murderer in the Baja desert or enjoying a shipboard dalliance with a mysterious new acquaintance on the South China Sea, Sterling`s faith in humanity is continually renewed through the sharing of food, drink, & passion. Provocative & testosterone-edged, his writing is also poignant & hilarious. ...

A timely & groundbreaking collection of essays & poems about race in America edited by Jesmyn Ward, the first woman to win the National Book Award twice THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERIn this bestselling collection of essays & poems, Jesmyn Ward gathers a new generation of writers & thinkers to speak on race. From Claudia Rankine to Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah, Jericho Brown to Carol Anderson, these voices shine a light on the darkest corners of American history, wrestle with the struggles the country faces today & imagine a better future. Envisioned as a response to The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin`s groundbreaking 1963 essay collection, The Fire This Time considers the black experience in modern America. Significant progress has been made in the fifty years since Baldwin`s essays were published, but America is a long distance away from a post-racial society
- a truth that must be confronted if the country is to continue to work towards change. Baldwin`s `fire next time` is now upon us, & it needs to be talked about. Sage, urgent & impassioned, this is an essential collection edited by one of America`s greatest writers.
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The No 1 Swedish thriller by the author of The Hypnotist & The Nightmare One girl is dead Detective Inspector Joona Linna has been called to a home for troubled girls, north of Stockholm. A young girl has been brutally murdered, her body arranged in bed with her hands covering her eyes. One girl is missing Vicky Bennet is the only girl unaccounted for. Did she run away to escape the chaos or does a bloody hammer found under her pillow make her the prime suspect? One girl claims to have witnessed it all In Stockholm, Flora Hansen works as a medium, pretending to commune with the dead. When she begins to suffer crippling visions of the young girl`s murder, will anyone believe her? As Joona refuses to accept the easy answers, his search leads him into darker, more violent territory, &, finally, to a shocking confrontation with his past. ...

The Fires of Autumn was written in the last two years of Irene Nemirovsky`s life, after she fled Paris in 1940. The prequel to her masterpiece, Suite Francaise, it is a panoramic exploration of French life & a witness to the greatest horrors of the twentieth century. After four years of bloody warfare Bernard Jacquelain returns from the trenches a changed man. No more the naive hopes & dreams of the teenager who went to war. Attracted by the lure of money & success, Bernard embarks on a life of luxuriant delinquency supported by suspect financial dealings & easy virtue. Yet when his lover throws him off, he turns to a wholesome childhood friend for comfort. For ten years he lives the good bourgeois life, but as another war threatens everything Bernard had clung to starts to crumble, & the future for his marriage & for France looks terribly uncertain. First published posthumously in France in 1957, The Fires of Autumn is a coruscating, tragic evocation of the reality of war & its dirty aftermath, & the ugly colour it can turn a man`s soul. ...

What Lila wants to be more than anything else in the world is.. .a Firework-Maker! But firework-making is not just about being able to make Crackle-Dragons & Golden Sneezes. There is also one special secret: every Firework-Maker must make a perilous journey to face the terrifying Fire-Fiend! Not knowing that she needs special protection to survive the Fire-Fiend`s flames, Lila sets off alone. Her friends, Chulak & Hamlet
- the King`s white elephant
- race after her. But can they possibly reach her in time?

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Where do we find the world`s very first art? When, & why, did people begin experimenting with different materials, forms & colours? Were our once-cousins, the Neanderthals, also capable of creating art? Prehistorians have been asking these questions of our ancestors for decades, but only very recently, with the development of cutting-edge scientific & archaeological techniques, have we been able to piece together the first chapter in the story of art. Overturning the traditional Eurocentric vision of our artistic origins, which has focused almost exclusively on the Franco-Spanish cave art, Paul Bahn & Michel Lorblanchet take the reader on a search for the earliest art across the whole world. They show that our earliest ancestors were far from being the creatively impoverished primitives of past accounts, & Europe was by no means the only `cradle` of art; the artistic impulse developed in the human mind wherever it travelled. The long universal history of art mirrors the development of humanity. ...

The Great Western is the least known of Isambard Kingdom Brunel`s three ships, being overshadowed by the later careers of the Great Britain & the Great Eastern. However, the Great Western was the first great success, confounding the critics in becoming the fastest ship to steam continuously across the Atlantic, & began the era of luxury transatlantic liners. It was a bold venture by Brunel & his colleagues, who were testing the limits of known technology. This book examines the businessmen, the shipbuilding committee & Brunel & looks at life on board for the crew & the passengers using diaries from the United States & Engl&. The ship`s first voyage made headline news in New York & London & involved a race with the small steamship Sirius. The Great Western`s maiden voyage was a triumph, & this wooden paddle steamer became the wonder of her age. She linked antebellum New York with the London of Charles Dickens & the youthful Queen Victoria. The ship continued to carry the rich & the famous across the Atlantic for eighteen years. ...

On 7 August 1914, a week before the Battle of Tannenburg & two weeks before the Battle of the Marne, the French army attacked the Germans at Mulhouse in Alsace. Their objective was to recapture territory which had been lost after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, which made it a matter of pride for the French. However, after initial success in capturing Mulhouse, the Germans were able to reinforce more quickly, & drove them back within three days. After forty-three years of peace, this was the first test of strength between France & Germany. In 1929 Karl Deuringer wrote the official history of the battle for the Bavarian Army, an immensely detailed work of 890 pages; First World War expert & former army officer Terence Zuber has translated this study & edited it down to more accessible length, to produce the first account in English of the first major battle of the First World War. ...