When prize-winning author Rachel Cusk decides to travel to Italy for a summer with her husband & two young children she has no idea of the trials & wonders that lie in store. Their journey leads them to both the expected
- the Piero della Francesca trail & queues at the Vatican
- & the surprising
- an amorous Scottish ex-pat & a longing for home
- all seen through Cusk`s sharp & humane perspective. Exploring the desire to travel & to escape, art & its inspirations, beauty & ugliness, & the challenge of balancing domestic life with creativity, The Last Supper is a wonderful travel book about life on the most famous art trail in the world, from one of Britain`s most pre-eminent writers.



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In The Last Train to Zona Verde, Paul Theroux grippingly & compellingly examines the places & people he encounters as he journeys by bus from Cape Town to Luanda. From there, he plans to travel by train to the Green Zone, where African traditions & values, & wild animals survive. By doing so, he shows us an Africa away from the typical tourist destinations in what, he admits, will probably be his last trip through this continent. His bus trip through South Africa, Namibia & Angola proves to be a long & difficult journey. His vivid writing style allows us to witness the squalid bus stations, the suburban shantytowns, the poverty & the semi anarchy that seem all-pervasive in this account ...

In The Last Train to Zona Verde, Paul Theroux grippingly & compellingly examines the places & people he encounters as he journeys by bus from Cape Town to Luanda. From there, he plans to travel by train to the Green Zone, where African traditions & values, & wild animals survive. By doing so, he shows us an Africa away from the typical tourist destinations in what, he admits, will probably be his last trip through this continent. His bus trip through South Africa, Namibia & Angola proves to be a long & difficult journey. His vivid writing style allows us to witness the squalid bus stations, the suburban shantytowns, the poverty & the semi anarchy that seem all-pervasive in this account – an account in which the author only occasionally lightens the mood with dark & dry humour. The conditions of the people & countries he observes offer many opportunities for reflection on such issues as the growing Chinese presence, foreign aids, game reserves & political leadership. The Last Train to Zona Verde tells of the sad reality endemic to these regions, & as a result, the author is critical & angry in places. He reveals the dark side of what he calls “the kingdom of light”; a place he loves, but the poverty & desperation, along with the injustice he finds there, upsets him. He concludes that Africa’s hopes for improvement lie in the Green Zone; yet, he ultimately cannot face going there. ...

` How long do I have?` I force a laugh.` Not long, ` he says very quietly. ` They have confirmed your sentence of death. You are to be beheaded tomorrow. We don`t have long at all.` Jane Grey was Queen of England for nine days. Using her position as cousin to the deceased king, her father & his conspirators put her on the throne ahead of the king`s half-sister Mary, who quickly mustered an army, claimed her crown & locked Jane in the Tower. When Jane refused to betray her Protestant faith, Mary sent her to the executioner`s block. There Jane turned her father`s greedy, failed grab for power into her own brave & tragic martyrdom. ` Learn you to die` is the advice that Jane gives in a letter to her younger sister Katherine, who has no intention of dying. She intends to enjoy her beauty & her youth & find love. But her lineage makes her a threat to the insecure & infertile Queen Mary &, when Mary dies, to her sister Queen Elizabeth, who will never allow Katherine to marry & produce a potential royal heir before she does. So when Katherine`s secret marriage is revealed by her pregnancy, she too must go to the Tower. ` Farewell, my sister, ` writes Katherine to the youngest Grey sister, Mary. A beautiful dwarf, disregarded by the court, Mary finds it easy to keep secrets, especially her own, while avoiding Elizabeth`s suspicious glare. After watching her sisters defy the queen, Mary is aware of her own perilous position as a possible heir to the throne. But she is determined to command her own destiny & be the last Tudor to risk her life in matching wits with her ruthless & unforgiving cousin Elizabeth. Praise for Philippa Gregory: ` Meticulously researched & deeply entertaining, this story of betrayal & divided loyalties is Gregory on top form` Good Housekeeping ` Gregory has popularised Tudor history perhaps more than any other living fiction writer...all of her books feature strong, complex women, doing their best to improve their lives in worlds dominated by men` Sunday Times ` Engrossing` Sunday Express ` Popular historical fiction at its finest, immaculately researched & superbly told` The Times ...

One hundred years have passed since Robert Falcon Scott's beleagured expeditionary team arrived at the South Pole, only to find that they had been beaten by the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen. The most feted explorer of his generation, Amundsen counted the discovery of the Northwest Passage, in 1905, as well as the North Pole amongst his greatest achievements. In the golden age of polar exploration Amundsen, whose revolutionary approach to technology transcends polar & nautical significance, was a titan among men. However, until now, his story has rarely featured as more than a footnote to Scott's tragic failure. Reviled for defeating Scott but worshipped by his men, Amundsen was pursued by women & creditors throughout his life before disappearing on a rescue mission for the Italian Fascist who had set off in an airship to claim the North Pole for Mussolini. The Last Viking is the life of a visionary & a showman, who brought the era of Shackleton to an end, put the newly independent Norway on the map & was the twentieth century's brightest trailblazing explorer. Against the backdrop of the race to conquer the most inhospitable corners of the earth, The Last Viking stands alongside The Worst Journey in the World for its grim immediacy of heroism & hardship. Bestriding the generation defined by adventure & the unquenchable desire for discovery, it is the mesmerising story of courage, misery, friendship & the ultimate price paid for immortality. ...

In this spellbinding novel, a young man journeys from California to Cairo to unravel centuries-old family secrets. Joseph, a literature student at Berkeley, is the son of a Jewish mother & a Muslim father. One day, a mysterious package arrives on his doorstep, pulling him into a mesmerizing adventure to uncover the tangled history that binds the two sides of his family. For generations, the men of the al-Raqb family have served as watchmen of the storied Ibn Ezra Synagogue in Old Cairo, built at the site where the infant Moses was taken from the Nile. Joseph learns of his ancestor Ali, a Muslim orphan who nearly a thousand years earlier was entrusted as the first watchman of the synagogue & became enchanted by its legendary--perhaps magical--Ezra Scroll. The story of Joseph`s family is entwined with that of the British twin sisters Agnes & Margaret, who in 1897 depart their hallowed Cambridge halls on a mission to rescue sacred texts that have begun to disappear from the synagogue. The Last Watchman of Old Cairo is a moving page-turner of a novel from acclaimed storyteller Michael David Lukas. This tightly woven multigenerational tale illuminates the tensions that have torn communities apart & the unlikely forces--potent magic, forbidden love--that boldly attempt to bridge that divide. Praise for The Last Watchman of Old Cairo”A beautiful, richly textured novel, ambitious & delicately crafted, The Last Watchman of Old Cairo is both a coming-of-age story & a family history, a wide-ranging book about fathers & sons, religion, magic, love, & the essence of storytelling. This book is a joy.”--Rabih Alameddine, author of the National Book Award finalist An Unnecessary Woman ...

Adrian Weynfeldt is an art expert in an international auction house, a bachelor in his mid-fifties living in a grand Zurich apartment filled with costly paintings & antiques. Always correct & well-mannered, he`s given up on love until one night entirely out of character for him Weynfeldt decides to take home a ravishing but unaccountable young woman. The next morning, he finds her outside on his balcony threatening to jump. Weynfeldt talks her down & soon finds himself falling for this damaged but alluring beauty & his buttoned up existence comes unraveled. As their two lives become entangled, Weynfeldt gets embroiled in an art forgery scheme that threatens to destroy everything he & his prominent family have stood for. This refined page-turner moves behind elegant bourgeois facades into darker recesses of the heart. Praise for Martin Suter` The Last Weynfeldt is a must-read... Once started, you will not stop reading until the end. You will probably forget to eat, not answer text messages & miss your stop on the bus`
- Suddeutsche Zeitung` There is charm, irony, & undeniable elegance in the novels of Martin Suter, who is probably one of the best contemporary authors`
- Le Nouvel Observatuer` Prose as calculated as a Swiss watch, impeccably drawn characters, first-class intrigues, the eye of a moralist & a clear sense of satire`
- L` Express


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Neil Ansell`s THE LAST WILDERNESS is a mesmerising book on nature & solitude by a writer who has spent his lifetime taking solitary ventures into the wild. For any readers of the author`s previous book, DEEP COUNTRY, Robert Macfarlane`s THE OLD WAYS or William Atkins THE MOOR.`A gem of a book, an extraordinary tale. Ansell`s rich prose will transport you to a real life Narnian world that C.S. Lewis would have envied. Find your deepest, most comfortable armchair & get away from it all` Countryfile The experience of being in nature alone is here set within the context of a series of walks that Neil Ansell takes into the most remote parts of Britain, the rough bounds in the Scottish Highlands. He illustrates the impact of being alone as part of nature, rather than outside it. As a counterpoint, Neil Ansell also writes of the changes in the landscape, & how his hearing loss affects his relationship with nature as the calls of the birds he knows so well become silent to him. ...

Neil Ansell`s THE LAST WILDERNESS is a mesmerising book on nature & solitude by a writer who has spent his lifetime taking solitary ventures into the wild. For any readers of the author`s previous book, DEEP COUNTRY, Robert Macfarlane`s THE OLD WAYS or William Atkins THE MOOR.`A gem of a book, an extraordinary tale. Ansell`s rich prose will transport you to a real life Narnian world that C.S. Lewis would have envied. Find your deepest, most comfortable armchair & get away from it all` Countryfile The experience of being in nature alone is here set within the context of a series of walks that Neil Ansell takes into the most remote parts of Britain, the rough bounds in the Scottish Highlands. He illustrates the impact of being alone as part of nature, rather than outside it. As a counterpoint, Neil Ansell also writes of the changes in the landscape, & how his hearing loss affects his relationship with nature as the calls of the birds he knows so well become silent to him. ...

In The Last Wolf, Jim Crumley explores the place of the wolf in Scotland
- past, present & future
- & challenges many of the

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