Capital punishment in London, its history & basis, is the theme of this new book on a darker side of London's history. London had many sites of execution, Tyburn, of course, but also Clerkenwell, Wapping, Kennington & Tower Hill among others. The spectacle, in the opinion of the authorities, provided deterrence, though more often it was a grisly form of public entertainment. The author has researched archives for accounts of executions & the book is well illustrated. ...

Can the US president really just disappear into thin air...? Helen Barclay, the first female of the United States, has been kidnapped on a state visit to Norway: it is up to the FBI & the Norwegian police to work together to find her. But their enemy is far more powerful than they could ever imagine. The President`s abduction represents the biggest threat to homeland security since 9/11. However, as Johanne Vik assists on the investigation she learns that the private life of President Barclay is also under attack. There are those who would stop at nothing to destroy the leader of the free world. & in a twist of fate, secrets from Johanne`s own past are at risk of being revealed, jeopardising all she has worked for & endangering the lives of those she loves most... The third instalment in the gripping Vik/ Stubo series. ...

Since the rediscovery of her work in the late 1980s, Annemarie Schwarzenbach
- journalist, traveler, archaeologist, opium addict,
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In Rome, four members of a German family are reunited by chance. A young composer, Siegfried; his estranged father, Freidrich, who held office under the Nazis & is once more making his way in public life, this time as a democratically elected buromaster; Siegfried`s uncle, Judejahn, a unrepentant former SS general; & Judejahn`s renegade son, Adolf, who is preparing himself for a Catholic priesthood. The four men recount their separate experiences in music, bureaucracy, arms & religion- taken together they personify the German soul. Death in Rome is a history book, a family book, a book about the battle over who gets to represent the authentic face of post-war Germany. It is a devastating & brilliant provocation of an entire nation. ...

Florence, 1965. A man is found murdered, a pair of scissors stuck through his throat. Only one thing is known about him
- he
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Five years after Charles II`s triumphant return to London there is growing mistrust of his extravagant court & of corruption among his officials
- & when a cart laden with gunpowder explodes outside the General Letter Office, it is immediately clear that such an act is more than an expression of outrage at the inefficiency of the postal service. As intelligencer to the Lord Chamberlain, Thomas Chaloner cannot understand why a man of known incompetence is put in charge of investigating the attack while he is diverted to make enquiries about the poisoning of birds in the King`s aviary in St James`s Park. He becomes even more suspicious of his employer`s motives when he discovers that the witnesses he needs to interview have close links to the business conducted in the General Letter Office, activities more firmly centred on intercepting people`s mail than delivering it. Then human rather than avian victims are poisoned, & Chaloner knows he has to ignore his master`s instructions & use his own considerable wits to defeat an enemy whose deadly tentacles reach into the very heart of the government: an enemy who has the power & expertise to destroy anyone who stands in the way.. .
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` Fierce, fresh & feminist, Fern Riddell tells the story of Suffragette Kitty Marion in a way that fizzes & shocks. Exciting, twisty & very very timely.` Lucy Worsley` History with no dust.` Matt Haig In Death in Ten Minutes Fern Riddell uncovers the story of radical suffragette Kitty Marion, told through never before seen personal diaries in Kitty`s own h&. Kitty Marion was sent across the country by the Pankhurst family to carry out a nationwide campaign of bombings & arson attacks, as women fought for the vote using any means necessary. But in the aftermath of World War One, the dangerous & revolutionary actions of Kitty & other militant suffragettes were quickly hushed up & disowned by the previously proud movement, & the women who carried out these attacks were erased from our history. Now, for the first time, their untold story will be brought back to life. Telling a new history of the women`s movement in the light of new & often shocking revelations, this book will ask the question: Why has the life of this incredible woman, & the violence of the suffragettes been forgotten? &, one hundred years later, why are women suddenly finding themselves under threat again? ...

Hemingway’s Death in the Afternoon shares the sights, the sounds, the excitement, & above all, the knowledge which fuelled his passion for Spain & the bullfight. This remarkable book contains some of his finest writing, inspired by the intense life, as well as the inevitable death, of those hot, violent afternoons. ...

Set in an isolated, run down community in the Peruvian Andes, Vargas Llosa`s riveting novel tells the story of a series of mysterious disappearances involving the Shining Path guerrillas & a local couple performing cannibalistic sacrifices with strange similarities to the Dionysian rituals of ancient Greece. Part-detective novel & part-political allegory, it offers a panoramic view of Peruvian society; not only of the current political violence & social upheaval, but also of the country`s past, & its connection to Indian culture & to pre-Hispanic mysticism. As in his other novels, Vargas Llosa breathes into this work a magical assemblage of narrators, time frames & subplots. We meet Senderista guerrillas, disenfranchised Indians, jaded army officers, eccentric townspeople & cult worshippers, among many unforgettable characters. The result is a work of broad sweep, powerful narrative drive, & keen insight into one of Latin America`s most fascinating & complex countries. No other book conveys so much about Peru so vividly
- the magic, the desolation of the Altiplano, the Sendero Luminoso, the mentality. Fabulous & essential for anybody who is planning a visit to the country.
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A woman is killed by a poisoned dart in the enclosed confines of a commercial passeneger plane... From seat No.9, Hercule Poirot was ideally placed to observe his fellow air passengers. Over to his right sat a pretty young woman, clearly infatuated with the man opposite; ahead, in seat No.13, sat a Countess with a poorly-concealed cocaine habit; across the gangway in seat No.8, a detective writer was being troubled by an aggressive wasp. What Poirot did not yet realize was that behind him, in seat No.2, sat the slumped, lifeless body of a woman. ...