Dates is an informative & enjoyable account of the date & the date palm, following its journey from ancient Mesopotamia to the places where it is cultivated today. Dates is interwoven with stories, anecdotes & humour, & explores date etymology, history, culture, religion, myth & legend. ...

Paris Armstrong never saw it coming. With two grown children & a lovely home in Connecticut, Paris was happy with her marriage, her family, her life. So when her husband of twenty-four years said they needed to talk, Paris couldn't imagine what he was about to say. I want a divorce, Peter tells her. ...

When Jake Probyn hauled up outside the Circle F ranch, he was looking for work & not trouble. But trouble in the shape of the boss' daughters & the foreman, Ransome, was what he found. Things got worse when the old man died & left the ranch to his daughters. Then there were back shootings & range fires with one daughter going missing. ...

Details: Lizzie is finding that life in the Birmingham blitz is hard. Her husband is away fighting in the Second World
...

Archaeologist, spy, Arabist, linguist, author, poet, photographer, mountaineer & nation builder, Gertrude Bell was born in 1868 into a world of privilege & plenty. This title presents her story. It is a portrait of a woman who transcended the restrictions of her class & age & in so doing created a remarkable & enduring legacy. ...

Maddy Shillabeer's prospects are limited.

Being the only woman in a household of men, she's resigned herself to

...

The autobiography of a young girl growing up in Mao's China. Hong Ying grew up in a slum on the banks of the Yangtze, an area permanently veiled in fog & steeped in superstition. Life was precarious & Hong Ying, the youngest of the six children, grew up afraid that she would be condemned to a life of carrying sand & emptying chamber pots. Gradually, Hong Ying began to try & solve some of the mysteries which had seemed to surround her early life: a stalker who had followed her since she was a child, a VD record in her father's file, & a persistent feeling that there was something strange about her birth. Among her discoveries, Hong Ying learnt that her mother was once married to a Triadman who had died in a labour camp as a counter-revolutionary, while her father, now a blind sailor, had several times barely escaped with his life during the civil war. Under the corrupt rule, her mother had taken extreme measures to keep the children alive while several of her relatives starved to death during the Great Famine. Moreover, Hong Ying's stalker turned out to have an astoundingly close connection with her. After the tragic deaths of both her first lover & her first child, Hong Ying decided she had to take control of her own life: she left home & worked hard to become a published poet & a novelist. After the events in Tian'anmen Square, she left China to live in London. ...

Inspector Alan Grant, recuperating from a broken leg, becomes fascinated with a portrait of Richard III that bears no resemblance to the Wicked Uncle of history. Could such a sensitive, noble face actually belong to one of the world's most heinous villains
- a venomous hunchback who may have killed his brother's children to make his crown secure?
...

Details: A captivating new saga set in Liverpool & Irel&, from the bestselling author of DAYS OF HOPE & FAR FROM HOME
...

It is 1925 & the war is long over. But much has been lost & life will never truly be the same again.

Castle Deverill,

...