Fathi, a writer no longer permitted to write, makes his way through a city churned by parades for an unnamed dictator. It is a day stifled by heat & the noise of the chants, a day of people trampled, & of the brutality & bullying of the party faithful. But Fathi presses treacherously against the crowd, attempting just to visit his mother & his girlfriend. The Silence & the Roar is a personal, urgent, funny & aggrieved novel. It asks what it means to have a conscience, or to laugh, or to endure in a time of the violence, strangeness & roar of tyranny. It is both a true literary achievement & an act of real courage by a brilliant Syrian writer. ...

From the Booker Prize-winning author of Regeneration & one of our greatest contemporary writers on war comes a reimagining of the most famous conflict in literature
- the legendary Trojan War. When her city falls to the Greeks, Briseis`s old life is shattered. She is transformed from queen to captive, from free woman to slave, awarded to the god-like warrior Achilles as a prize of war. & she`s not alone. On the same day, & on many others in the course of a long & bitter war, innumerable women have been wrested from their homes & flung to the fighters. The Trojan War is known as a man`s story: a quarrel between men over a woman, stolen from her home & spirited across the sea. But what of the other women in this story, silenced by history? What words did they speak when alone with each other, in the laundry, at the loom, when laying out the dead? In this magnificent historical novel, Pat Barker charts one woman`s journey through the chaos of the most famous war in history, as she struggles to free herself & to become the author of her own story. Praise for Pat Barker:` Barker delves unflinchingly into the enduring mysteries of human motivation` Sunday Telegraph` She is not only a fine chronicler of war but of human nature` Independent` Barker is a writer of crispness & clarity & an unflinching seeker of the germ of what it means to be human` Herald` You go to her for plain truths, a driving storyline & a clear eye, steadily facing the history of our world` Guardian
...

The most chilling novel yet from Yrsa Sigurdardottir, an international bestseller at the height of her powers. ` Mummy dead.` The child`s pure treble was uncomfortably clear. It was the last thing Brynjar
- & doubtless the others
- wanted to hear at that moment. ` Daddy dead.` It got worse. ` Adda dead. Bygga dead.` The child sighed & clutched her grandmother`s leg. ` All dead.` A luxury yacht arrives in Reykjavik harbour with nobody on board. What has happened to the crew, & to the family who were on board when it left Lisbon? Thora Gudmundsdottir is hired by the young father`s parents to investigate, & is soon drawn deeper into the mystery. What should she make of the rumours saying that the vessel was cursed, especially given that when she boards the yacht she thinks she sees one of the missing twins? Where is Karitas, the glamorous young wife of the yacht`s former owner? & whose is the body that has washed up further along the shore?

...

A woman on the run from her past. A child on the run from reality. A man on the run from himself. Carofiglio confronts the dark side of the human soul in this captivating story of fall & redemption. Every week, Roberto Marias crosses Rome on foot to arrive at his psychiatrist`s office. There, he often sits in silence, stumped by the ritual
- but sometimes crucial memories come to the surface. He remembers when he was a child & used to surf with his father. He remembers the treacherous years he spent working as an under-cover carabinieri, years that taught him how cynicism & corruption are not merely external influences, but also exist within us. He has lived an intoxicating & crushing life, but now his psychiatrist`s words, the hypnotic strolls through Rome, & a meeting with a woman named Emma
- who like Roberto is ravaged by a profound guilt
- are beginning to revive him. & when eleven-year-old Giacomo asks Roberto to help him conquer his nightmares, Roberto at last achieves a true rebirth.


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WINNER SWEDISH CRIME NOVEL OF THE YEAR. The adrenaline-charged & suspenseful thriller set in a ruthless world where all means are permitted in the fight for power. When a savaged body is found in the waters outside the governing party`s conference centre, the case lands on detective Julia Gabrielsson`s desk. Who is the deceased & why has somebody gone to such trouble to make sure the body is unidentifiable? Officer David Sarac is a man haunted by demons. After a violent showdown that almost cost him his life, the policeman is being treated at a closed ward far from the capital. Soon he will permanently silence the accusing voices in his head. But a mysterious offer has David changing his mind. ...

From the No. 1 bestselling author of THE AMERICAN BOY comes a brilliant new historical thriller set during the French Revolution. Selected as Historical Novel of the Year by The Times & Sunday Times, & picked as one of Radio 4`s Crime Books of the Year. Paris, 1792. Terror reigns as the city writhes in the grip of revolution. The streets run with blood as thousands lose their heads to the guillotine. Edward Savill, working in London as agent for a wealthy American, receives word that his estranged wife Augusta has been killed in France. She leaves behind ten-year-old Charles, who is brought to England to Charnwood Court, a house in the country leased by a group of emigre refugees. Savill is sent to retrieve the boy, though it proves easier to reach Charnwood than to leave. & only when Savill arrives there does he discover that Charles is mute. The boy has witnessed horrors beyond his years, but what terrible secret haunts him so deeply that he is unable to utter a word? ...

Inspired by the work of Shirley Jackson & Susan Hill & set in a crumbling country mansion, The Silent Companions is an unsettling gothic ghost story to send a shiver down the spine... Newly married, newly widowed Elsie is sent to see out her pregnancy at her late husband`s crumbling country estate, The Bridge. With her new servants resentful & the local villagers actively hostile, Elsie only has her husband`s awkward cousin for company. Or so she thinks. For inside her new home lies a locked room, & beyond that door lies a two-hundred-year-old diary & a deeply unsettling painted wooden figure
- a Silent Companion
- that bears a striking resemblance to Elsie herself...

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As featured on the Radio 2 Book Club. Some doors are locked for a reason... Newly married, newly widowed Elsie is sent to see out her pregnancy at her late husband`s crumbling country estate, The Bridge. With her new servants resentful & the local villagers actively hostile, Elsie only has her husband`s awkward cousin for company. Or so she thinks. For inside her new home lies a locked room, & beyond that door lies a two-hundred-year-old diary & a deeply unsettling painted wooden figure
- a Silent Companion
- that bears a striking resemblance to Elsie herself...

...

In Oe`s masterpiece of the human condition & family psychology, estranged brothers Mitsusaburo & Takashi have long since left their family home in a remote forested valley on Shikoku, in the south of Japan: Mitsusaburo for work in Tokyo; his younger brother Takashi for the United States, to atone for his part in anti-American student protests. Takashi`s return to Japan coincides with a local Korean supermarket magnate`s offer to buy the brothers` ancestral storehouse, pitting the brothers against one another & dredging up family histories best forgotten. The Silent Cry is the most important Japanese novel of the post-war period & a strange, unsettling tale of how the call of blood & history echoes down the generations. ...

On 6 June 1944 Britain woke up to a profound silence. Overnight, 160, 000 Allied troops had vanished & an eerie emptiness settled over the country. The majority of those men would never return. This is the story of that extraordinary 24 hours. Using a wealth of first person testimonies, renowned historian Max Arthur recounts a remarkable new oral history of D-Day, beginning with the two years leading up to the silent day which saw the UK transformed by the arrival of thousands of American & Canadian troops. We also hear the views of the American troops, who quickly formed strong views of both the British military & civilian populations. Then, on that June morning, many Britain people woke up to discover that vast areas of the country, which had throbbed with life only the day before, were now empty & silent. Civilian workers found coffee pots still warm on the stove but not a soul to greet them. Many women
- & children
- felt bewildered & betrayed. Then, throughout that day & the days that followed, the whole population gathered around wireless sets, waiting for news. There are powerful testimonies from families of who lost loved ones on the beaches of Normandy, & dramatic personal accounts from young widows who had never had the chance to say goodbye. THE SILENT DAY is an original & evocative portrait of a key event in world history, & a poignant reminder of the human cost of D-Day.

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