From the author of Midnight in St Petersburg, a novel of love, art, music & family secrets set amongst the Russian emigre community of Paris in 1937. Evie, a rebellious young American leaves New York in search of art & adventure in jazz-age Paris, where her grandmother lives. But on arrival, her grandmother`s sudden death leaves Evie compelled to carry out her dying wish: to find a man from her past called Zhenya. The quest leads Evie deep into the heart of the Russian emigre community of Paris. With the world on the brink of war, she becomes embroiled in murder plots, conspiracies & illicit love affairs as White faces Red Russian & nothing is as it seems. With Jean, a liberal Russian writer by her side, Evie finally seems to have found the passion & excitement she`s yearned for. But is she any nearer to discovering the identity of the mysterious Zhenya, or the heartbreak of her grandmother`s past? ...

St Petersburg 1917. The capital of the glittering Empire of the Tsars & a city on the brink of revolution where the jackals of the Secret Police intrigue for their own survival as their aristocratic masters indulge in one last, desperate round of hedonism. For Sandro Ruzsky, Chief Investigator of the city police, even this decaying world provides the opportunity for a new beginning. Banished to Siberia for four years for pursuing a case his superiors would rather he`d quietly buried, Ruzsky finds himself investigating the murders of a young couple out on the ice of the frozen river Neva. The dead girl was a nanny at the Imperial Palace, the man an American from Chicago &, if the brutality of their deaths seems an allegory for the times, Ruzsky finds that, at every turn, the investigation leads dangerously close to home. At the heart of the case, lies Maria, the beautiful ballerina Ruzsky once loved & lost. But is she a willing participant in what appears to be a dangerous conspiracy or likely to be it`s next, perhaps last, victim? In a city at war with itself, & pitted against a ruthless murderer who relishes taunting him, Ruzsky finds himself at last face to face with his own past as he fights to save everything he cares for, before the world into which he was born goes up in flames. ...

' Look after your sister, Tinashe'. Tinashe is a young Shona boy living in a small village in rural Rhodesia. The guerilla war of the late 1960s haunts the bushlands, but it only infrequently affects his quiet life; school, swimming in the river, playing with the other kids on the kopje. When his younger sister, Hazvinei, is born, Tinashe knows at once that there is something special about her. Their life in the village, once disturbed only by the occasional visits of his successful uncle & city cousin, Abel, now becomes entangled with the dual forces of the Shona spirit world & the political turmoil of the nation. As Tinashe, Hazvinei & Abel grow older, their destinies entangle in ways they never expected. Tinashe is prepared to follow his sister anywhere
- but how far can he go to keep her safe when the forces threatening her are so much darker & more sinister than he suspected? Andrea Eames weaves together folklore & suspense in this compelling tale of a boy struggling to do the right thing in an unpredictable world.
...

A classic of mountaineering literature, The White Spider tells the story of the harrowing first ascent of the Eiger`s North Wall, one of the most legendary & terrifying climbs in recorded history. Heinrich Herrer, author of Seven Years in Tibet, was a member of the four-man party that scaled the previously untouchable North Wall of the Eiger in 1938. In The White Spider, Herrer tells the story of this harrowing first ascent, a gripping first-hand account of daring & resilience in the high Swiss Alps. Moving from his own amazing experiences to the numerous later attempts to replicate his team`s achievements (some tragic failures, others spectacular successes), Herrer writes as well as he climbs, drawing the reader into a beguiling story of courage, strength & a confidence always on the edge of hubris. A new introduction by Joe Simpson, author of the acclaimed mountaineering epic Touching the Void, reminds us of the enduring relevance of this absolute classic. ...

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga won the Man Booker Prize 2008. Meet Balram Halwai, the ‘ White Tiger’: Indian servant, philosopher, entrepreneur, murderer… Born in a remote Indian village, the son of a rickshaw-puller, Balram is taken out of school by his family & put to work in a teashop. As he smashes coals & wipes tables, he nurses a dream of escape, of breaking away from the banks of Mother Ganga into whose murky depths have seeped the remains of a hundred generations. When a rich village landlord hires him as a chauffeur for his son & daughter-in-law, Balram’s re-education begins. Behind the wheel of a Honda, Balram comes to New Delhi. There he finds himself among cockroaches & traffic-jams, slums & shopping malls, 21st-century technology & medieval superstition. Trapped between his instinct to be a loyal son & servant, & his desire to better himself, & under the scrutiny of 36, 000, 005 gods, he discovers a new morality at the heart of the new India. Gradually Balram comes to see how the Tiger might escape his cage… Balram’s journey from darkness to the light of success is a brilliantly irreverent, blackly comic, deeply endearing & altogether unforgettable tour de force. ...

When Livy`s accepted at Temple College, a school for the very brightest, no one is more surprised than her, though she has always felt different. Recently, Livy`s been drawn to the roof, where, among its towering stone angels, she has the strangest desire to fly. But her behaviour is noticed by others, for whom the ability to defy gravity is a possible reality.. .one that they`ll stop at nothing to use for their own ends. ...

The Western Front dominates our memories of the First World War. Yet a million & half men died in North East Italy in a war that need never have happened, when Italy declared war on the Habsburg Empire in May 1915. Led by General Luigi Cadorna, the most ruthless of all the Great War commanders, waves of Italian conscripts were sent charging up the limestone hills north of Trieste to be massacred by troops fighting to save their homelands. This is a great, tragic military history of a war that gave birth to fascism. Mussolini fought in these trenches, but so did many of the greatest modernist writers in Italian & German
- Ungaretti, Gadda, Musil, Hemingway. It is through these accounts that Mark Thompson, with great skill & empathy, brings to life this forgotten conflict.
...

When George & Sabine Harwood arrive in Trinidad from England George instantly takes to their new life, but Sabine feels isolated, heat-fatigued, & ill at ease with the racial segregation & the imminent dawning of a new era. Her only solace is her growing fixation with Eric Williams, the charismatic leader of Trinidad`s new national party, to whom she pours out all her hopes & fears for the future in letters that she never brings herself to send. As the years progress, George & Sabine`s marriage endures for better or worse. When George discovers Sabine`s cache of letters, he realises just how many secrets she`s kept from him
- & he from her
- over the decades. & he is seized by an urgent, desperate need to prove his love for her, with tragic consequences...

...

Dive into THE WHITSTABLE HIGH TIDE SWIMMING CLUB
- the irresistible, feel-good novel from Katie May. Join Debs & Maisie & the
...

On January 21st, 2017, five million people in 82 countries & on all seven continents stood up with one voice. The Women`s March began with one cause, women`s rights, but quickly became a movement around the many issues that were hotly debated during the 2016 U.S. presidential race immigration, health care, environmental protections, LGBTQ rights, racial justice, freedom of religion, & workers rights, among others. In the mere 66 days between the election & inauguration of Donald J. Trump as the 45th President of the United States, 673 sister marches sprang up across the country & the world. ABRAMS Image presents Why I March to honor the movement, give back to it, & promote future activism in the same vein ...