The Last Crusade puts the reader on da Gama`s ships in the midst of a perplexing, terrifying, yet exciting new world & in doing so traces the ancestry of antagonism between the world`s two dominant faiths, Christianity & Islam. In 1498 a young captain sailed from Portugal, circumnavigated Africa, crossed the Indian Ocean, & discovered the sea route to the Indies, opening up access to the fabled wealth of the East. It was the longest voyage known to history; the ships were pushed to their limits, their crews were racked by storms & devastated by disease. However, the greatest enemy was neither nature nor the fear of venturing into unknown worlds. With blood-red Crusader crosses emblazoned on their sails, the explorers arrived in the heart of the Muslim East at a time when the old hostilities between Christianity & Islam had intensified. In two voyages that spanned six years, Vasco da Gama would fight a running sea battle that would ultimately change the fate of three continents. The Last Crusade is an epic tale of spies, intrigue, & treachery; of bravado, brinkmanship, & confused
- often comical collisions
- between cultures encountering one another for the first time. With the world once again tipping back East, The Last Crusade offers a key to understanding age-old religious & cultural rivalries resurgent today.

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The Last Crusaders is about the titanic contest between Hadsburg-led Christendom & the Ottoman Empire in the fifteenth & sixteenth centuries, the last great conflict between East & West
- the battles that were fought & the men who led the armies that fought them. It was, in its way, the first world war.
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In this classic mystery from Michael Pearce`s award-winning series, set in the Egypt of the 1900s, the Mamur Zapt investigates the discovery of a young woman`s body at the site of a dam. Cairo, 1908. When an attempt is made to blow up a key regulator in the Cairo Barrage, the Mamur Zapt, British head of Cairo`s secret police, is called in to investigate. To make matters worse, the ceremonial cutting of a dam always requires careful policing, especially on this occasion as it is going to be the Last Cut. Which means the discovery of a young woman`s body at the site of the dam is extremely embarrassing. Is this the traditional ritual sacrifice? Or something more sinister? ...

Three of these stories were previously published in Victoria Hislop`s ebook collection, One Cretan Evening. In ten powerful stories, Victoria Hislop takes us through the streets of Athens & into the tree-lined squares of Greek villages. As she evokes their distinct atmosphere, she brings vividly to life a host of unforgettable characters, from a lonesome priest to battling brothers, & from an unwanted stranger to a groom troubled by music & memory. These bittersweet tales of love & loyalty, of separation & reconciliation, captured in Victoria Hislop`s unique voice, will stay with you long after you reach the end. ...

Every ending starts with a beginning; every beginning, an end. Boyd & Vita have been separated for six years when Boyd asks if he can move back into the house they still own, bringing with him his twenty-seven-year-old girlfriend, Honey. Of course Vita agrees: enough water has travelled under enough bridges since her marriage to Boyd ended & she is totally over him; nothing can touch her now. Boyd & Honey move in & everyone is happy, or so it seems. However, all three are keeping secrets. ...

By the end of the nineteenth century, Detroit, founded by the French as a fur-trading post, was thriving. In 1913 Henry Ford began mass-producing cars at his Model T plant, transforming the area into the Silicon Valley of its day. By 1920 it was the fourth largest city in America & by the mid-1950s General Motors had become the single biggest employer on earth. Here indeed was 'the most modern city in the world, the city of tomorrow'. But by the time Berry Gordy founded Motown Records in 1960
- thereby creating twentieth-century Detroit's other great assembly line
- the cracks were already beginning to show: big industry was looking elsewhere for cheaper sites, cheaper labour & better tax breaks; urban planning was in meltdown; corruption was rife; racial tensions were running high. The 1967 riots
- at the time the worst in US history
- left 43 dead, more than 7, 000 arrested & 3, 000 buildings destroyed. Detroit, a former beacon of the capitalist dream, had degenerated into an urban wilderness where unemployment ran at 50 per cent. With more guns in the city than people, the murder rate was the highest in America
- three times that of New York. Mark Binelli returned to live in his native Detroit after a break of many years. He tells the story of the boom & the bust
- & of the new society to be found emerging from the debris: Detroit with its urban farms & vibrant arts scene; Detroit as a laboratory for the post-industrial, post-recession world. Here's what an iconic rust-belt city now looks like & how it might transform & regenerate itself in the twenty-first century.





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Once America`s capitalist dream town, the Silicon Valley of the Jazz Age, Detroit became the country`s greatest urban failure, having fallen the longest & the furthest. The city of Henry Ford, modernity, & Motown found itself blighted by riots, arson, unemployment, crime & corruption. But what happens to a once-great place after it has been used up & discarded? Who stays there to try to make things work again? & what sorts of newcomers are drawn there? Mark Binelli returned to his native Detroit to explore the city`s swathes of abandoned buildings, miles of urban prairie, & streest filled with wild dogs, to tell the story of the new society emerging from the debris. Here he chronicles Detroit with its urban farms & vibrant arts scene, Detroit as a laboratory for the post-industrial, post-recession world, Detroit reimagined as a city for a new century. ...

A thriller of a war that never was
- of survival in an impossible city
- of surreal cataclysm. In The Last Days of New Paris,

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A gripping account of the months before & after Stalin`s death & how his demise reshaped the course of twentieth-century history Joshua Rubenstein`s riveting account takes us back to the second half of 1952 when no one could foresee an end to Joseph Stalin`s murderous regime. He was poised to challenge the newly elected U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower with armed force, & was also broadening a vicious campaign against Soviet Jews. Stalin`s sudden collapse & death in March 1953 was as dramatic & mysterious as his life. It is no overstatement to say that his passing marked a major turning point in the twentieth century. The Last Days of Stalin is an engaging, briskly told account of the dictator`s final active months, the vigil at his deathbed, & the unfolding of Soviet & international events in the months after his death. Rubenstein throws fresh light on* the devious plotting of Beria, Malenkov, Khrushchev, & other ”comrades in arms” who well understood the significance of the dictator`s impending death;* the witness-documented events of his death as compared to official published versions;* Stalin`s rumored plans to forcibly exile Soviet Jews;* the responses of Eisenhower & Secretary of State Dulles to the Kremlin`s conciliatory gestures after Stalin`s death; and* the momentous repercussions when Stalin`s regime of terror was cut short. ...

It`s two decades since Chris Stewart moved to his farm on the wrong side of a river in the mountains of southern Spain & his daughter Chloe is preparing to fly the nest for university. In this latest, typically hilarious dispatch from El Valero we find Chris, now a local literary celebrity, using his fame to help his old sheep-shearing partner find work on a raucous road trip; cooking a TV lunch for visiting British chef, Rick Stein; discovering the pitfalls of Spanish public speaking; &, most movingly, visiting famine-stricken Niger for Oxfam. Yet it`s at El Valero, his beloved sheep farm, that Chris remains in his element as he, his wife Ana & their assorted dogs, cats & sheep weather a near calamitous flood & emerge as newly certified organic farmers. His cash crop? The lemons & oranges he once so blithely drove over, of course. ...