Karen Maitl&, the author of the hugely popular Company of Liars, has written a powerful historical thriller which takes you right back to the darkest corners of the 16th century. Intelligently written & meticulously researched, The Falcons of Fire & Ice is a real treat for all fans of CJ Sansom & Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose. A tour de force: dark & woven with the supernatural. (Daily Mail 1564, Lisbon). The Inquisition displays its power & ruthlessly spreads fear. Heretics are tortured & burned. Any who oppose the Church's will realize that silence is preferable to a slow & agonizing death. Isabela, daughter of the Falconer at the Royal Court, is about to be caught in the Church's terrifying schemes. The slaughter of two of the King's precious white falcons sees her father arrested & imprisoned. As punishment he & his family will be killed unless the birds are replaced. Isabela, young & headstrong, decides that only she can save her father. These birds are impossibly rare, & she will have to travel far & into strange lands to find them to clear her father's name. It is a journey that will take her into a dark & dangerous world filled with menacing people driven by fearful beliefs. &, unfortunately for Isabela, the Church has sent a companion to ensure she never returns... Step back in time with Karen Maitland's Dark Tales & discover a world full of imagination in The Falcons of Fire & Ice
- A thrilling horrible vision of the Dark Ages. (Metro). Karen Maitland travelled & worked in many parts of the United Kingdom before finally settling in the beautiful medieval city of Lincoln. She is the author of The White Room, Company of Liars, The Owl Killers & The Gallows Curse. The latter three titles are available as Penguin paperbacks.
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Rob & Jamie are great friends from childhood. They have grown up together & become top climbers, but have since become estranged. Rob is nevertheless amazed & grief-stricken when he hears of Jamie`s death after a fall on a relatively easy Welsh rockface. The past, though, hides the secret clues behind the tragedy. Layer by layer Simon Mawer peels back what happened, going not only into the friends` childhoods but that of their parents
- who were also intimate. & there is no escaping that past
- vividly imagined scenes in the London of the Blitz reveal how through two generations Rob & Jamie & their respective parents have been addicted
- to desire & the heady dangers of climbing. Brilliantly structured as we move from past to present & back again, this novel will make Simon Mawer`s literary reputation.


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The world first publication of a previously unknown work by J.R.R. Tolkien, which tells the extraordinary story of the final days of England`s legendary hero, King Arthur. The Fall of Arthur, the only venture by J.R.R. Tolkien into the legends of Arthur King of Britain, may well be regarded as his finest & most skilful achievement in the use of the Old English alliterative metre, in which he brought to his transforming perceptions of the old narratives a pervasive sense of the grave & fateful nature of all that is told: of Arthur`s expedition overseas into distant heathen lands, of Guinevere`s flight from Camelot, of the great sea-battle on Arthur`s return to Britain, in the portrait of the traitor Mordred, in the tormented doubts of Lancelot in his French castle. Unhappily, The Fall of Arthur was one of several long narrative poems that he abandoned in that period. In this case he evidently began it in the earlier nineteen-thirties, & it was sufficiently advanced for him to send it to a very perceptive friend who read it with great enthusiasm at the end of 1934 & urgently pressed him ` You simply must finish it!` But in vain: he abandoned it, at some date unknown, though there is some evidence that it may have been in 1937, the year of the publication of The Hobbit & the first stirrings of The Lord of the Rings. Years later, in a letter of 1955, he said that `he hoped to finish a long poem on The Fall of Arthur`; but that day never came. Associated with the text of the poem, however, are many manuscript pages: a great quantity of drafting & experimentation in verse, in which the strange evolution of the poem`s structure is revealed, together with narrative synopses & very significant if tantalising notes. In these latter can be discerned clear if mysterious associations of the Arthurian conclusion with The Silmarillion, & the bitter ending of the love of Lancelot & Guinevere, which was never written. ...

In the Tale of The Fall of Gondolin are two of the greatest powers in the world. There is Morgoth of the uttermost evil, unseen in this story but ruling over a vast military power from his fortress of Angb&. Deeply opposed to Morgoth is Ulmo, second in might only to Manwe, chief of the Valar. Central to this enmity of the gods is the city of Gondolin, beautiful but undiscoverable. It was built & peopled by Noldorin Elves who, when they dwelt in Valinor, the land of the gods, rebelled against their rule & fled to Middle-earth. Turgon King of Gondolin is hated & feared above all his enemies by Morgoth, who seeks in vain to discover the marvellously hidden city, while the gods in Valinor in heated debate largely refuse to intervene in support of Ulmo`s desires & designs. Into this world comes Tuor, cousin of Turin, the instrument of Ulmo`s designs. Guided unseen by him Tuor sets out from the land of his birth on the fearful journey to Gondolin, & in one of the most arresting moments in the history of Middle-earth the sea-god himself appears to him, rising out of the ocean in the midst of a storm. In Gondolin he becomes great; he is wedded to Idril, Turgon`s daughter, & their son is Earendel, whose birth & profound importance in days to come is foreseen by Ulmo. At last comes the terrible ending. Morgoth learns through an act of supreme treachery all that he needs to mount a devastating attack on the city, with Balrogs & dragons & numberless Orcs. After a minutely observed account of the fall of Gondolin, the tale ends with the escape of Tuor & Idril, with the child Earendel, looking back from a cleft in the mountains as they flee southward, at the blazing wreckage of their city. They were journeying into a new story, the Tale of Earendel, which Tolkien never wrote, but which is sketched out in this book from other sources. Following his presentation of Beren & Luthien Christopher Tolkien has used the same `history in sequence` mode in the writing of this edition of The Fall of Gondolin. In the words of J.R.R. Tolkien, it was `the first real story of this imaginary world` &, together with Beren & Luthien & The Children of Hurin, he regarded it as one of the three ` Great Tales` of the Elder Days. ...

The collapse of France in 1870 had an overwhelming impact – on Paris, on France & on the rest of the world. People everywhere saw Paris as the centre of Europe & the hub of culture, fashion & invention. Suddenly France, not least to the disbelief of her own citizens, was gripped in the vice of the Iron Chancellor’s armies & forced to surrender on humiliating terms. In this brilliant study of the Siege & its aftermath, Alistair Horne evokes the high drama of those ten fantastic months & the spiritual agony which Paris & the Parisians suffered. ...

Oscar Wilde owed his most outstanding characteristics
- his precocious intellectualism, his flamboyance, his hedonism, his recklessness,
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Sunday Times Top Ten Best-seller. The final destruction of the Ottoman Empire
- one of the great epics of the First World War,
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In September 1943, German soldiers advance on the ancient gates of Gjirokaster, Albania. It is the first step in a carefully planned invasion. But once at the mouth of the city, the troops are taken aback by a surprising act of rebellion that leaves the citizens fearful of a bloody counter-attack. Soon rumours circulate, in cafes, houses & alleyways, that the Nazi Colonel in command of the German Army was once a school acquaintance of a local dignitary, Doctor Gurameto. In the town square, Colonel von Schwabe greets his former classmate warmly; in return, Doctor Gurameto invites him to dinner. The very next day, the Colonel & his army disappear from the city. The dinner at Gurameto's house changes the course of events in twentieth-century Europe. But as the citizens celebrate their hero, a conspiracy surfaces which leads some to place Gurameto
- & the stone city
- at the heart of a plot to undermine Socialism. Enigmatic & compelling, The Fall of the Stone City displays Ismail Kadare at the height of his considerable powers.

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This is shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2013. In September 1943, Nazi troops advance on the ancient gates of Gjirokaster, Albania. The very next day, the Germans vanish without a trace. As the townsfolk wonder if they might have dreamt the events of the previous night, rumours circulate of a childhood friendship between a local dignitary & the invading Nazi Colonel, a reunion in the town square & a fateful dinner party that would transform twentieth-century Europe. A captivating novel of resistance in a dictatorship, & steeped in Albanian folklore, The Fall of the Stone City shows Kadare at the height of his powers. ...

Misha Glenny`s acclaimed account of the war in former Yugoslavia contains substantial new material that discusses the end of the five-year conflict & looks ahead to an uneasy future in this turbulent region. Writing in the ” Evening Standard”, Fitzroy Maclean said ` Misha Glenny`s deeply disturbing book is, to my mind, essential reading for anyone trying to underst&, or even just follow, events in what was once Yugoslavia`. ...