The Lacuna" is the heartbreaking story of a man's search for safety of a man torn between the warm heart of Mexico & the cold embrace of 1950s Mc Carthyite America. Born in the U.S. & reared in Mexico Harrison Shepherd is a liability to his social-climbing flapper mother Salome. Making himself useful in the household of the famed Mexican artists Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo & exiled Bolshevik leader Lev Trotsky young Shepherd inadvertently casts his lot with art & revolution. A violent upheaval sends him north to a nation newly caught up in World War II. In the mountain city of Asheville North Carolina he remakes himself in America's hopeful image. But political winds continue to throw him between north & south in a plot that turns many times on the unspeakable breach
- the lacuna
- between truth & public presumption. A gripping story of identity loyalty & the devastating power of accusations to destroy innocent people. " The Lacuna" is as deep & rich as the New World."

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Meet Akhilandeswari Akhila for short: forty-five & single an income-tax clerk & a woman who has never been allowed to live her own life
- always the daughter the sister the aunt the provider. Until the day she gets herself a one-way ticket to the seaside town of Kanyakumari. In the intimate atmosphere of the all-women sleeping car
- the ' Ladies Coupe'
- Akhila asks the five women she is travelling with the question that has been haunting her all her adult life: can a woman stay single & be happy or does she need a man to feel complete? This wonderfully atmospheric deliciously warm novel takes the reader into the heart of women's lives in contemporary India revealing how the dilemmas that women face in their relationships with husbands mothers friends employers & children are the same the world over.


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Prunella Scales & Patricia Routledge are full of fighting spirit in this eighth series of the acclaimed BBC Radio 4 comedy. The caustic correspondence between Irene Spencer & Vera Small is always richly entertaining & these latest letters are no exception. Catty & competitive as ever the pensioner pen-pals find themselves in yet more trouble in this latest series. Fundraising for her ancient local hospital Irene organises a charity dinner which Vera attends on the arm of her new beau local millionaire Alan Trumper. Unfortunately Vera has a choking incident & is admitted to that very hospital. Visiting her Irene then has a mishap with a trolley & ends up stuck in the same ward. Soon the Ladies are sniping at one another vying for Alan's attention & complaining about the struggling hospital's standard of cleanliness
- superbugs are taking over & rats running rampant on the wards. Meanwhile Vera's granddaughter Sabrina has accidentally let the cat out of the bag about Vera's harbouring of illegal immigrant Youssou & no sooner is Vera out of hospital than she finds herself arrested. While in prison she finds out that Alan has a sinister plot in mind & sets out to warn Irene
- who manages to embroil them all in a complex plan leading to injury imprisonment & an encounter with the Queen. What will Her Majesty make of the Ladies? ' An hilarious double act by Prunella Scales & Patricia Routledge'
- Northern Echo". ' Beautifully scripted & perfectly acted'
- " Daily Express"."



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The Ladies Paradise (Au Bonheur des Dames) recounts the spectacular development of the modern department store in late nineteenth century Paris. The store is a symbol of capitalism of the modern city & of the bourgeois family; it is emblematic of consumer culture & the changes in sexual attitudes & class relations taking place at the end of the century. Octave Mouret the stores owner-manager masterfully exploits the desires of his female customers. In his private life as much as in business he is the great seducer. But when he falls in love with the innocent Denise Baudu he discovers she is the only one of the salesgirls who refuses to be commodified. This new translation of the eleventh book in the Rougon-Macquart cycle captures the spirit of one of Zolas greatest novels of the modern city. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford Worlds Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxfords commitment to scholarship providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features including expert introductions by leading authorities helpful notes to clarify the text up-to-date bibliographies for further study & much more. ...

Lady Fiona Carnarvon became the chatelaine of Highclere Castle
- the setting of the hit series Downton Abbey
- eight years ago.

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Peter Popham's major new biography of Aung San Suu Kyi draws upon previously untapped testimony & fresh revelations to tell the story of a woman whose bravery & determination have captivated people around the globe. Celebrated today as one of the world's greatest exponents of non-violent political defiance since Mahatma Gandhi she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize only four years after her first experience of politics. In April 1988 Suu Kyi returned from Britain to Burma to nurse her sick mother but within six months found herself the unchallenged leader of the largest popular revolt in the history of Burma. When the party she co-founded won a landslide victory in Burma's first free elections for thirty years she was already under house arrest & barred from taking office by the military junta. Since then ' The Lady' has set about transforming her country ethically as well as politically displaying dazzling courage in the process. Under house arrest for 15 of the previous 20 years she has come close to being killed by her political enemies & her commitment to peaceful revolution has come at extreme personal cost. In November 2010 after fraudulent elections in which she played no part Suu Kyi was again freed. She was greeted by ecstatic crowds but only time will tell what role this remarkable woman will have in the future of her country. ...

From the bestselling author of Girl with a Pearl Earring comes a historical tale of love sex & revenge. Jean le Viste a newly-wealthy member of the French court commissions a series of tapestries to hang in his chateau named ' The Lady & the Unicorn.' Nicolas his chosen designer is a talented artist. He is also dangerously attractive to the women around him including le Viste's wife Genevieve & his daughter Claude. Nicolas is at once smitten with Claude but will her social standing prevent her from returning his advances? As Nicolas begins to weave the tapestries so too do the lives & desires of the people around him intertwine. As people fall in love are shunned take revenge find unrequited love turn to the church or to pagan ideals the tapestries become to each an ideal vision of life
- yet all discover that they are unable to make this ideal world their own. Set against the historical backdrop of medieval France Chevalier weaves together an intricate tapestry of love revenge & art in a novel which will appeal to fans of Sarah Dunant Rachel Hore & Philippa Gregory.
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She fights. He bites. Janie Parkers a supernatural assassin
- not by choice but whats a girl gonna do? The only thing standing
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Weathering critical scorn Lady Audleys Secret" quickly established Mary Elizabeth Braddon as the leading light of Victorian sensation fiction sharing the honour only with Wilkie Collins. Addictive cunningly plotted & certainly sensational " Lady Audleys Secret" draws on contemporary theories of insanity to probe mid-Victorian anxieties about the rapid rise of consumer culture. What is the mystery surrounding the charming heroine? Lady Audleys secret is investigated by Robert Audley aristocrat turned detective in a novel that has lost none of its power to disturb & entertain." ...

The Penguin English Library Edition" of " Lady Audleys Secret" by Mary Elizabeth Braddon. Lady Audley uttered a long low wailing cry & threw up her arms above her head with a wild gesture of despair. In this outlandish outrageous triumph of scandal fiction a new Lady Audley arrives at the manor: young beautiful
- & very mysterious. Why does she behave so strangely? What exactly is the dark secret this seductive outsider carries with her? A huge success in the nineteenth century the books anti-heroine
- with her good looks & hidden past
- embodied perfectly the concerns of the Victorian age with morality & madness. " The Penguin English Library" contains 100 editions of the best fiction in English from the eighteenth century & the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War."


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