Armed only with textbook Arabic & restless curiosity, Adam Valen Levinson set out to ”learn about the world 9/11 made us fear”. From a base in Abu Dhabi, he sets out to lunch in Taliban territory in Afghanistan, travels under the watchful eye of Aleppo`s secret police, risks shipwreck en route to Somalia, investigates Yazidi beliefs in a sacred cave, cliff-dives in Oman, celebrates New Year`s Eve in Tahrir Square &, at every turn, discovers a place that doesn`t match its reputation. While politicians & the media eagerly stoke the flames of Islamophobia, Valen Levinson crosses borders with abundant humour & humanity. Seeking common ground everywhere, he finds that people who pray differently often laugh the same. & as a young man bar mitzvahed at twenty-one (instead of the usual thirteen), he slowly learns how childish it is to live by decisions & distinctions born of fear. ...

Mala & Ronak are adults now. They`ve married, begun their own families & moved away from the suffocating world of their first generation immigrant parents. But when they learn their mother has only months to live, the focus of their world returns to her home. Having shown little interest in the Indian cuisine they eat at every gathering, Mala decides to master the recipes her mother learned at her own mother`s knee. & as they cook together, mother & daughter begin to confront the great divisions of their lives, & finally heal their fractured relationship. But when Ronak comes up with a plan to memorialise his mother, the hard-won peace between them is tested to its limits. Written with tenderness & wry compassion, Amit Majmudar has captured anew the immigrant experience, the clash of cultures, the conflicts of assimilation, &, most poignantly, the tangled ties between generations. ...

Why did the taxi crash on the autobahn in Vienna? Who exactly were Besfort Y & Rovena, the mysterious couple who died after being flung from the back seat? How was Besfort connected to the war in the Balkans? & why was his affair with Rovena clouded in jealousy & mistrust? Who wanted them dead? This is the story of the last forty weeks of their lives
- a fever dream where love & obsession collide.
...

From Edgar Award-winning Chris Pavone, author of the Sunday Times & New York Times bestseller The Expats, comes a riveting time-bomb of a thriller (fans of The Expats will be excited to see a few characters from Pavone`s first book pop up here as well). Taking place over the course of twenty-four hours, The Accident draws on the rich worlds of publishing, politics & international spies to tell a suspenseful tale of intrigue in the vein of John Grisham & Laura Lippman. In New York City, Isabel Reed, one of the most respected & powerful literary agents in the city, frantically turns the pages of a manuscript into the early dawn hours. This manuscript
- printed out, h&-delivered, totally anonymous
- is full of shocking revelations & disturbing truths linked to a car accident that occurred years ago, things which could compromise national security. Is this what she`s been waiting for her entire career: a book that will help her move on from a painful past, a book that could save her beloved industry.. .a book that will change the world? In Copenhagen, Hayden Gray, a veteran station chief, wary of the CIA`s obsession with the Middle East, has been steadfastly monitoring the dangers that abound in Europe. Even if his bosses aren`t paying attention, he`s determined to stay vigilant. & he`s also on the trail of this manuscript
- & the secrets that lie at its heart. For him, quite simply, it must never see the light of day. As Isabel & Hayden try to outwit each other, the nameless author watches on from afar. With no-one quite sure who holds all the cards, the stakes couldn`t be higher: in just one day careers could be ruined, devastating secrets could be unearthed, & innocent people could die. As the manuscript moves from person to person, it leaves a trail of bodies in its wake. Gripping, sophisticated, & impossible to put down, The Accident is a masterful follow-up to one of the most acclaimed & striking debut thrillers of recent years.


...

From the author of ” His Bloody Project”, shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2016. There does not appear to be anything remarkable about the fatal car crash on the A35. But one question dogs Inspector Georges Gorski: where has the victim, an outwardly austere lawyer, been on the night of his death? The troubled Gorski finds himself drawn into a mystery that takes him behind the respectable veneer of the sleepy French backwater of Saint-Louis. Graeme Macrae Burnet returns with a literary mystery that will beguile fans of ” His Bloody Project” & ” The Disappearance of Adele Bedeau”. Darkly humorous, subtle & sophisticated, ” The Accident on the A35” burrows deep into the psyches of its characters & explores the forgotten corners of small-town life. ...

The Accidental Adventurer by Ben Fogle tells the story of this extraordinary explorer & TV presenter. Follow him tracing back adventures that raised money for charity & took him around the world: rowing across the Atlantic, walking to the South Pole & running the Sahara are just a few. Ben Fogle offers a fine example & answer to a universal dilemma about how one could live a life different from expectations. Here is the story of a man who chose to follow his heart on a journey that saw him treading an unconventional route. Packed with action, challenges & setbacks, this book also cast some light on how it all started & some pictures just add more colours to the story. Get ready for a rollercoaster! ...

Meet Charles Rangeley-Wilson. He’s one of Britain’s best-kept secrets – angler, conservationist, traveller. He’s also one of our finest fishing writers. Now join him on the trip of a lifetime, on a journey that will make the familiar new, & the strange familiar. Published to accompany the new BBC TV series, The Accidental Angler takes us from London suburbs to Bhutan, Icelandic moonscapes to the Seychelles – in fact, anywhere a fishing rod leads. In The Accidental Angler you’ll battle titanic monsters on a tropical atoll & make-believe sharks on the mushy-peas-&-gravy Wash. You’ll chase inscrutable grayling through back gardens in Provence, or phantom sea trout in downtown Southampton. & you’ll dance in Brazilian carnivals & find secret rivers hidden beneath the streets. Because fishing can take you to the heart of a landscape in a way few other forms of travel can match. A fishing rod will break the ice with locals, guides, farmers, shopkeepers, taxi drivers & bar-flies. Whether in the world’s most outlandish & awe-inspiring places or just at the end of your road, fishing will introduce you to crabby weather & crabbier locals, moon-phases, rip-tides, floods, droughts, remarkable tales, & of course fantastic slippery beasts. ...

Sunday Times bestselling author Caroline Taggart takes her usual gentle & gently humorous approach to punctuation, pointing out what really matters & what doesn`t. In Roman times, blocks of text were commonly written just as blocks without even wordspacingnevermindpunctuation to help the reader to interpret them. Orators using such texts as notes for a speech would prepare carefully so that they were familiar with the content & didn`t come a cropper over a confusion between, say, therapists & the rapists. As we entered the Christian era & sacred texts were widely read (by priests if not by the rest of us), it became ever more important to remove any likelihood of misinterpretation. To a potential murderer or adulterer, for example, there is a world of difference between ` If you are tempted, yield not, resisting the urge to commit a sin` & ` If you are tempted, yield, not resisting the urge to commit a sin`. & the only surface difference is the positioning of a comma. So yes, you SMS-addicts & `let it all hang out` Sixties children, punctuation does matter. &, contrary to what people who tear their hair out over apostrophes believe, it is there to help
- to clarify meaning, to convey emphasis, to indicate that you are asking a question or"ing someone else`s words. It also comes in handy for telling your reader when to pause for breath. Caroline Taggart, who has made a name for herself expounding on the subjects of grammar, usage & words generally (and who for decades made her living putting in the commas in other people`s work), takes her usual gentle & gently humorous approach to punctuation. She points out what matters & what doesn`t; why using six exclamation marks where one will do is perfectly OK in a text but will lose you marks at school; why hang glider pilots in training really need a hyphen; & how throwing in the odd semicolon will impress your friends. Sometimes opinionated but never dogmatic, she is an ideal guide to the (perceived) minefield that is punctuation.
...

In life you never get what you deserve: you get what you negotiate… What would you do if, out of the blue, a billionaire industrialist decided to make you the CEO of his company? No prior business experience necessary. There is only one catch: you need to pass seven tests from the `textbook of life`. This is the offer made to Sapna Sinha, an ordinary salesgirl in an electronics boutique in downtown Delhi, by Vinay Mohan Acharya, one of India`s richest men. Thus begins the most challenging journey of Sapna`s life, one that will test her character, her courage & her capabilities. Along the way she encounters a host of memorable personalities, from a vain Bollywood superstar to a kleptomaniac Gandhian. At stake is a business empire worth ten billion dollars, & the future she has always dreamt of. But are the seven tests for real or is Acharya playing a deeper game, one driven by a perverse fantasy? From the acclaimed author of Slumdog Millionaire, one of the biggest films of the decade, comes this compelling, suspenseful tale of the power of dreams, the lure of money & the universal need to know who we are. ...

In life you never get what you deserve: you get what you negotiate… What would you do if, out of the blue, a billionaire industrialist decided to make you the CEO of his company? No prior business experience necessary. There is only one catch: you need to pass seven tests from the `textbook of life`. This is the offer made to Sapna Sinha, an ordinary salesgirl in an electronics boutique in downtown Delhi, by Vinay Mohan Acharya, one of India`s richest men. Thus begins the most challenging journey of Sapna`s life, one that will test her character, her courage & her capabilities. Along the way she encounters a host of memorable personalities, from a vain Bollywood superstar to a kleptomaniac Gandhian. At stake is a business empire worth ten billion dollars, & the future she has always dreamt of. But are the seven tests for real or is Acharya playing a deeper game, one driven by a perverse fantasy? From the acclaimed author of Slumdog Millionaire, one of the biggest films of the decade, comes this compelling, suspenseful tale of the power of dreams, the lure of money & the universal need to know who we are. ...