Pamela Mountbatten was born at the end of the Twenties into one of Britain's grandest families. The daughter of Lord Louis Mountbatten & his glamorous wife Edwina Ashley she was bought up by nannies & governesses as she was often parted from her parents as they dutifully carried out their public roles. A solitary child she learned to occupy her days lost in a book riding or playing with the family's animals (which included at different times a honey bear chameleons a bush baby two wallabies a lion a mongoose & a coati mundi). Her parents' vast social circle included royalty film stars senior service officers politicians & celebrities. Noel Coward invited Pamela to watch him filming; Douglas Fairbanks Jr. dropped in for tea & Churchill would call for 'a word with Dickie'. After the war Pamela truly came of age in India while her parents were the Last Viceroy & Vicereine. This introduction to the country would start a life-long love affair with the people & the place. ...

Following an attack on her family fifteen-year-old Thora is enslaved by a brutish Viking chieftain Bjorn Svanson. A healer & a midwife Thora is valuable. She also has visions of the future.. .and in one she foresees Svansons death. When her prediction becomes reality Thora recognizes that another of Svansons slaves is a man she has seen before-a man from recurrent visions who is destined to be part of her future. Assuming Svansons identity the slave & Thora use the dead mans ships to escape. Their destination is Iceland the then uncharted land of fire & ice. To succeed they must first win over Svansons crew & their journey is fraught with hardship & danger. But their troubles are only just beginning. Soon newcomers are among them & someone is stealing from Thoras medicines to cause terrible harm. Under suspicion herself can Thora unmask the real culprit & clear her name? & can Thora & the man now known as Bjorn ever really hope that their pasts wont catch up with them? ...

Young Lorelei Patio is determined to escape the eerie shadows of her past & her dark-willed father into a bright future filled with hope & love. Away from the darkness Lorelei finds refuge amongst the tenants of elderly Mrs Winston & when she meets her landlady's handsome gr&-nephew Liam love soon blossoms. But try as she might she can't seem to escape her past. Sinister nightmares weave through her nights & the hours of daylight seem incapable of protecting her from the perpetual terror that her father could find her & destroy her new life & everything she has come to hold dear. Virginia Andrews' breathtakingly seductive tale will hold readers captive in its irresistible spell. ...

Sattareh Farman Farmaian the daughter of a once-powerful & wealthy Iranian prince was raised & educated in the 1920s & 1930s in a Persian harem compound along with numerous mothers & more than 30 brothers & sisters. As a young woman she broke with Muslim tradition & travelled to America where she became the first Persian to study at the University of Southern California. Her new life in the West fired a vision to lift her own people out of backwardness & poverty & she returned to Iran to found the Tehran School of Social Work. For more than 20 years Sattareh & her students waged a war against poverty disease & overcrowding & then soon after the collapse of the Shahs regime she was forced to flee the country in fear of her life. In this account of her experiences she provides an insiders view of Irans journey through the 20th century & of the events which led up to & followed the Islamic revolution. ...

Errand requiring immediate attention. Come. The note was on vellum pierced by the talons of the almost-crow that delivered it. Karou read the message. He never says please she sighed but she gathered up her things. When Brimstone called she always came. In general Karou has managed to keep her two lives in balance. On the one hand shes a seventeen-year-old art student in Prague; on the other err&-girl to a monstrous creature who is the closest thing she has to family. Raised half in our world half in Elsewhere she has never understood Brimstones dark work
- buying teeth from hunters & murderers
- nor how she came into his keeping. She is a secret even to herself plagued by the sensation that she isnt whole. Now the doors to Elsewhere are closing & Karou must choose between the safety of her human life & the dangers of a war-ravaged world that may hold the answers she has always sought.

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Archaeologist spy Arabist linguist author poet photographer mountaineer & nation builder Gertrude Bell was born in 1868 into a world of privilege & plenty but she turned her back on all that for her passion for the Arab peoples becoming the architect of the independent kingdom of Iraq & seeing its first king Faisal safely onto the throne in 1921. Daughter of the Desert is her story vividly told & impeccably researched drawing on Gertrude's own writings both published & unpublished. It is a compelling portrait of a woman who transcended the restrictions of her class & age & in so doing created a remarkable & enduring legacy. ' What a great Oscar-laden biopic this will make the combination of epic scenes & personal drama makes Georgina Howell's saga a winner' Daily Express ' Howell sketches in the gradations of colour & emotion that have been lacking in hitherto monochrome accounts of Bell's life.. . Exemplary' Sunday Times ' Riveting few women have had a life more worth reading about.' Diana Athill Literary Review ...

From the imagination of two of fantasys greatest names comes a magnificent epic of heroic & dynastic struggle. At age 17 Maras ceremonial pledge of servantship to the goddess Lashima is interrupted by the news that her father & brother have been killed in battle on Trigia the world through the rift. Now Ruling Lady of the Acoma Mara finds that not only are her familys ancient enemies the Minwanabi responsible for the deaths of her loved ones but her military forces have been decimated by the betrayal & House Acoma is now vulnerable to complete destruction. ...

The autobiography of a young girl growing up in Maos 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 fathers 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 Yings 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 Tiananmen Square she left China to live in London. ...

Josephine Tey's classic novel about Richard III the hunchback king whose remains were recently discovered. The Daughter of Time investigates his role in the death of his nephews the princes in the Tower & his own death on the battlefield. Richard III reigned for only two years & for centuries he was villified as the hunch-backed wicked uncle murderer of the princes in the Tower. Josephine Tey's novel The Daughter of Time is an investigation into the real facts behind the last Plantagenet king's reign & an attempt to right what many believe to be the terrible injustice done to him by the Tudor dynasty. Inspector Alan Grant of Scotland Yard recuperating from a broken leg becomes fascinated with a contemporary 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? Or could Richard have been the victim turned into a monster by the the Tudors? Grant determines to find out once & for all with the help of the British Museum & an American scholar what kind of man Richard III really was & who killed the Princes in the Tower.
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A captivating new saga set in Liverpool & Ireland from the bestselling author of DAYS OF HOPE & FAR FROM HOME Angela ORourke is six when her parents hand her over to an aunt & uncle in a distant village. Its a common practice for large hard-up families in 1950s Ireland but for Angela it means that her mother & father dont love her any more. Still shes well cared for till shes sixteen when her uncle starts to take too much of an interest in her. Moving to Liverpool in the early 1960s she becomes a success in the world of fashion design. The pain of a disastrous love affair sends her home to Ireland just after the death of her aunt: & there among old papers Angela makes an astonishing discovery. As she learns the truth about the past a brighter new future beckons. ...