Shortlisted for the 2011 Costa Biography Award & the 2012 Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize Julia Blackburn & her husband moved to a little house in the mountains of northern Italy in 1999. She arrived as a stranger but a series of events brought her close to the old people of the village & they began to tell her their stories. Of how their village had been trapped in an archaic feudal system & owned by a local padrone who demanded his share of all they had, of the eruption of the Second World War, of the conflict between the fascists & the partisans, of death & fear & hunger of how they hid like like foxes in the mountains. ` Write it down for us, ` they said, `because otherwise it will all be lost.` Thin Paths is a celebration of the songlines of one place that could be many places & a celebration of the humour & determination of the human spirit. ...

You come across the shell of a ruined house. It could be anywhere in southern Europe where people once lived & then moved away because there was no work to hold them there. You might find things scattered in the empty rooms: a bread oven, a broken spade, earthenware jars that still hold the pungent scent of olive oil; even clothes left hanging in a cupboard, a silent clock on a shelf, a picture cut from a newspaper pinned on a wall. The house is remote, but it is surrounded by a tracery of thin paths. One path goes steeply down to a village; others zigzag their way to scattered huts & stone shelters, to caves where you could hide in times of danger & to unexpected lookout points from where you could watch the approach of animals or human intruders. Julia Blackburn & her husband moved to a little house in the mountains of northern Italy in 1999. She arrived as a stranger speaking no Italian, but a series of events brought her close to the old people of the village. They began to tell her stories that made the landscape come alive, repopulating it with their vivid memories. Until quite recently most of them had been mezzadri, half-people who were trapped in an archaic feudal system & owned by a local padrone who demanded his share of all they had
- even a pretty wife or daughter. They were eager to talk about the old way of life & about how everything changed with the eruption of the Second World War. This village was at the heart of the conflict between the fascists & the partisans, so they learnt a lot about death & fear & hunger & how men & women could hide like foxes in the mountains. ` Write it down for us, ` they said, `because otherwise it will all be lost.` Thin Paths is a celebration of the songlines of one place that could be many places; it is also a celebration of the humour & determination of the human spirit.
...

In 1997 Andy Cave climbed the north face of Changabang in the Himalayas & attained something most climbers dream of but at a huge cost: the harrowing process claimed the life of his friend & climbing partner. This trauma prompted him to examine his relationship with the mountains & confront the question of whether he would ever have the courage to face such a challenge on them again. Thin White Line tracks Cave as he tackles some of the severest challenges that modern Alpinism holds in an attempt to steel his resolve & find his answers. ...

Thin White Line is the sequel to Learning to Breathe, Andy Cave's bestselling debut & winner of both the prestigious Boardman Tasker Prize & the Adventure Travel Award at the Banff International Festival. In 1997, Andy Cave returned from the Himalayas, having climbed the stupendous north face of Changabang but losing his friend & climbing partner in the process. Traumatized by the savage ordeal, he must examine his relationship with the mountains that have defined his life so far. Will he have the courage to undertake such a challenge again? Does he want to? Thin White Line charts his struggle towards finding an answer. It is as much a journey into the mind of an extreme mountaineer as it is into the wild landscapes through which he travels. In a nail-biting narrative set in Patagonia, Norway & Alaska, Cave tackles the severest challenges modern Alpinism can pose. Juxtaposed with the stark beauty of the environment are the colourful characters populating his stories, from the adventurers around him, past & present, to the pioneer aviators who get him & his kind to those impossibly remote places. He vividly recreates the joy & despair of climbing, building the book to a desperate finale that lays bare the fragility of our carefully constructed convictions. ...

From the No. 1 bestselling author of What If?
- the man who created xkcd & explained the laws of science with cartoons
- comes

...

Through rallies & marches, in polite drawing rooms & freezing prison cells & the poverty-stricken slums of the East End, three courageous young women join the fight for the vote. Evelyn is seventeen, & though she is rich & clever, she may never be allowed to follow her older brother to university. Enraged that she is expected to marry her childhood sweetheart rather than be educated, she joins the Suffragettes, & vows to pay the ultimate price for women`s freedom. May is fifteen, & already sworn to the cause, though she & her fellow Suffragists refuse violence. When she meets Nell, a girl who`s grown up in hardship, she sees a kindred spirit. Together & in love, the two girls start to dream of a world where all kinds of women have their place. But the fight for freedom will challenge Evelyn, May & Nell more than they ever could believe. As war looms, just how much are they willing to sacrifice? ...

Through rallies & marches, in polite drawing rooms & freezing prison cells & the poverty-stricken slums of the East End, three courageous young women join the fight for the vote. Evelyn is seventeen, & though she is rich & clever, she may never be allowed to follow her older brother to university. Enraged that she is expected to marry her childhood sweetheart rather than be educated, she joins the Suffragettes, & vows to pay the ultimate price for women`s freedom. May is fifteen, & already sworn to the cause, though she & her fellow Suffragists refuse violence. When she meets Nell, a girl who`s grown up in hardship, she sees a kindred spirit. Together & in love, the two girls start to dream of a world where all kinds of women have their place. But the fight for freedom will challenge Evelyn, May & Nell more than they ever could believe. As war looms, just how much are they willing to sacrifice? ...

When Bea Hanlon follows her preacher husband Max to a remote island in the Pacific, she soon sees that their mission will bring anything but salvation... Advent Island is a place beyond the reaches of Bea`s most fitful imaginings. It`s not just the rats & the hordes of mosquitos & the weevils in the powdered milk. Past the confines of their stuffy little house, amidst the damp & the dust & the sweltering heat, rumours are spreading of devil chasers who roam the island on the hunt for evil spirits. & then there are the noises from the church at night. Yet, to the amusement of the locals & the bafflement of her husb&, Bea gradually adapts to life on the isl&. But with the dreadful events heralded by the arrival of an unexpected, wildly irritating & always-humming house guest, Advent Island becomes a hostile place once again. & before long, trapped in the jungle & in the growing fever of her husband`s insanity, Bea finds herself fighting for her freedom, & for her life.*A Stylist Must-Read Book of 2018*` Thrilling` Elle Magazine`I was sucked into its dark beating heart & wasn`t spat out until I`d turned the final page` Claire Fuller ...

Like bubonic plague & stone cladding, no-one took Margaret Thatcher seriously until it was too late. Her first act as leader was to appear before the cameras & do a V for Victory sign the wrong way round. She was smiling & telling the British people to f*** off at the same time. It was something we would have to get used to.` Things Can Only Get Better is the personal account of a Labour supporter who survived eighteen miserable years of Conservative government. It is the heartbreaking & hilarious confessions of someone who has been actively involved in helping the Labour party lose elections at every level: school candidate: door-to-door canvasser: working for a Labour MP in the House of Commons; standing as a council candidate; & eventually writing jokes for a shadow cabinet minister. Along the way he slowly came to realise that Michael Foot would never be Prime Minister, that vegetable quiche was not as tasty as chicken tikki masala & that the nuclear arms race was never going to be stopped by face painting alone. ...

After an Arctic winter, a British recession, & a downturn in the newspaper industry, two journalists & their dog embark on an adventure in the wild & beautiful southern Peloponnese. A perfect plan, except for one thing
- Greece is deep in economic crisis. & if fiscal failure can't overturn the couple's escapade in rural Greece, perhaps macabre local customs, a scorpion invasion, zero dog-tolerance, health scares, & touchy expats will. This is a humorous & insightful journey through one of the last unspoilt regions of Greece. It is full of encounters with warm-hearted, often eccentric, Greeks who show that this troubled country still has heroes, if not euros. In a hillside village in the Mani, the locals share their lives, their laughter & their stories & help chart the couple's own passage back to happiness. They even find a place in their hearts for their Greek nemesis
- the local pungent goat cheese. Things really can only get feta -

...