Three of these stories were previously published in Victoria Hislop's ebook collection One Cretan Evening. In ten powerful stories Victoria Hislop takes us through the streets of Athens & into the tree-lined squares of Greek villages. As she evokes their distinct atmosphere she brings vividly to life a host of unforgettable characters from a lonesome priest to battling brothers & from an unwanted stranger to a groom troubled by music & memory. These bittersweet tales of love & loyalty of separation & reconciliation captured in Victoria Hislop's unique voice will stay with you long after you reach the end. ...

Three of these stories were previously published in Victoria Hislop's ebook collection One Cretan Evening. In ten powerful stories Victoria Hislop takes us through the streets of Athens & into the tree-lined squares of Greek villages. As she evokes their distinct atmosphere she brings vividly to life a host of unforgettable characters from a lonesome priest to battling brothers & from an unwanted stranger to a groom troubled by music & memory. These bittersweet tales of love & loyalty of separation & reconciliation captured in Victoria Hislop's unique voice will stay with you long after you reach the end. ...

Glasgow 1971. The old way of life is under threat for the tight-knit community in Dalbeattie Street Maryhill. The shadow of the wrecker's ball looms large over their homes & they must face the choice of moving to a new estate or dispersing throughout the city. But powerful friendships refuse to be broken. These characters have gone through too much together to be destroyed by some measly planning scheme. They'll face this with the same inimitable Scottish humour & strength of spirit that have carried them through other tough times. Douglas' vivid portrait of Seventies Glasgow recreates in glorious detail a particular time & place but at its heart are the universal themes of love friendship & community. ...

Glasgow 1971. The old way of life is under threat for the tight-knit community in Dalbeattie Street Maryhill. The shadow of the wrecker's ball looms large over their homes & they must face the choice of moving to a new estate or dispersing throughout the city. But powerful friendships refuse to be broken. These characters have gone through too much together to be destroyed by some measly planning scheme. They'll face this with the same inimitable Scottish humour & strength of spirit that have carried them through other tough times. Douglas' vivid portrait of Seventies Glasgow recreates in glorious detail a particular time & place but at its heart are the universal themes of love friendship & community. ...

If you like The Artist youll love Daisy Waughs Last Dance with Valentino. One night. One dance. One love to last a lifetime. 1916. Leaving war-ravaged London Jenny Doyle sets sail for New York where she is to work for the de Saulles family. Their home Gatsby-like in elegance is rife with intrigue & madness. Only Jennys friendship with dancer Rodolfo offers escape! until one tragic day the household is changed forever. 1926. America booms prohibition rules & Rodolfo has taken his place on the silver screen as Rudolph Valentino. Will the worlds most desired film star & his lost love have their Hollywood happy ending or will the tragic echoes from their time with the de Saulles thwart them one last time? ...

By the end of the nineteenth century Detroit founded by the French as a fur-trading post was thriving. In 1913 Henry Ford began mass-producing cars at his Model T plant transforming the area into the Silicon Valley of its day. By 1920 it was the fourth largest city in America & by the mid-1950s General Motors had become the single biggest employer on earth. Here indeed was the most modern city in the world the city of tomorrow. But by the time Berry Gordy founded Motown Records in 1960
- thereby creating twentieth-century Detroits other great assembly line
- the cracks were already beginning to show: big industry was looking elsewhere for cheaper sites cheaper labour & better tax breaks; urban planning was in meltdown; corruption was rife; racial tensions were running high. The 1967 riots
- at the time the worst in US history
- left 43 dead more than 7 000 arrested & 3 000 buildings destroyed. Detroit a former beacon of the capitalist dream had degenerated into an urban wilderness where unemployment ran at 50 per cent. With more guns in the city than people the murder rate was the highest in America
- three times that of New York. Mark Binelli returned to live in his native Detroit after a break of many years. He tells the story of the boom & the bust
- & of the new society to be found emerging from the debris: Detroit with its urban farms & vibrant arts scene; Detroit as a laboratory for the post-industrial post-recession world. Heres what an iconic rust-belt city now looks like & how it might transform & regenerate itself in the twenty-first century.





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Brilliantly written & researched The Last Days of Hitler remains the most vivid account of the final Wagnerian chapter of Hitlers tyranny Max Hastings In September 1945 the fate of Adolf Hitler was a complete mystery. He had simply disappeared & had been missing for four months. Hugh Trevor-Roper an intelligence officer was given the task of solving the mystery. His brilliant piece of detective work not only proved finally that Hitler had killed himself in Berlin but also produced one of the most fascinating history books ever written. The Last Days of Hitler tells the extraordinary story of those last days of the Thousand Year Reich in the Berlin Bunker. Besieged in the shattered capital but still dominating the remains of his court Hitler reiterated the original alternative of Nazism: either total victory or annihilation. This book is the record of that carefully prepared ceremonious finale to a terrible chapter of history. This is an incomparable book by far the best written on any aspect of the second German war: a book sound in scholarship brilliant in its presentation.. . No words of praise are too strong A. J. P. Taylor New Statesman A masterpiece The Times A brilliant study Guardian ...

St Giles London 1829: three people have been brutally murdered & the city simmers with anger & political unrest. Pyke sometime Bow Street Runner sometime crook finds himself accidentally embroiled in the murder investigation but quickly realises that he has stumbled into something more sinister & far-reaching. In his pursuit of the murderer Pyke ruffles the feathers of some powerful people & falsely accused of murder himself he soon faces a death sentence & the gallows of the Old Bailey. Imprisoned & with only his uncle & the headstrong aristocratic daughter of his greatest enemy who believe in him Pyke must engineer his escape find the real killer & untangle the web of politics that has been spun around him. From the gutters of Seven Dials to the cells of Newgate prison from the turmoil of 1800s Belfast to the highest levels of murky pre-Victorian politics THE LAST DAYS OF NEWGATE is a gripping darkly atmospheric story with a fantastic pragmatic
- & reluctantly heroic
- hero.

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The Last Days of Richard III contains a new & uniquely detailed exploration of Richards last 150 days & explores these events from the standpoint of Richard himself & his contemporaries. By deliberately avoiding the hindsight knowledge that he will lose the Battle of Bosworth Field we discover a new Richard: no passive victim awaiting defeat & death but a king actively pursuing his own policies & agenda. It also re-examines the aftermath of Bosworth: the treatment of Richards body; his burial; & the construction of his tomb. Based on newly discovered evidence & wider insights it explores the motives underlying these events. & there is the fascinating story of why & how Richard IIIs DNA was rediscovered alive & well & living in Canada. John Ashdown-Hill has produced a stimulating & thought-provoking acount of the end of Richards life. Even readers very familiar with his short life will discover a new & fascinating picture of him. ...

The Last Days of Richard III contains a new & uniquely detailed exploration of Richard's last 150 days. By deliberately avoiding the hindsight knowledge that he will lose the Battle of Bosworth Field we discover a new Richard: no passive victim awaiting defeat & death but a king actively pursuing his own agenda. It also re-examines the aftermath of Bosworth: the treatment of Richard's body; his burial; & the construction of his tomb. & there is the fascinating story of why & how Richard III's family tree was traced until a relative was found alive & well in Canada. Now with the discovery of Richard's skeleton at the Greyfrairs Priory in Leicester England John Ashdown-Hill explains how his book inspired the dig & completes Richard III's fascinating story giving details of how Richard died & how the DNA link to a living relative of the king allowed the royal body to be identified. ...