Simon Fraser Lord Lovat was one of Scotlands most notorious & romantic figures. A double-agent & spy he became the most famous supporter of Bonnie Prince Charlie & the last nobleman to be executed for treason. For all fans of Ben Mac Intyre & C.J. Sansom a great non-fiction historical adventure. Lord Simon Lovat was the last of the great Scottish chiefs
- & the last nobleman to be executed for treason. He is one of Scotlands most notorious & romantic figures a shrewd & calculating soldier of unlimited ambition wit & double-dealing who died a martyr for his country & for an independent Scotl&. Born into the unpredictable world of the late seventeenth-century as a younger son of a junior branch of the Frasers Simon determined to enforce his claim to be chief of the Fraser clan & enjoy the income from its lands. In a life packed with plotting & incident spells as a wanted outlaw a prisoner in the Bastille as loyal British soldier & aspirant Duke Simon became the greatest double-agent of the age. Determined in 1701 to seek his fortune with exiled Jacobite king in France Fraser acted as a spy for both the Stuarts & the Hanoverian Georges; claimed to be both Protestant & Roman Catholic. He was feudal a Highland warrior chief & benevolent despot. He disputed theological niceties with the Papal Nuncio in France while courting Louis XIV for money to fund an invasion of Engl&. He was fluent in five languages. In July 1745 Bonnie Prince Charlie landed on Eriskay
- a tiny Hebridean island & launched his last & greatest attempt to seize back his throne joined after victory at Preston Pans by Simon Fraser & his clans. They reached Derby before retreating ignominiously & facing final defeat at the hands of the British at Culloden. Fraser
- one of Scoltands most colourful characters
- was found hiding in a tree. This gripping adventure & swash-buckling spy story uses the events of Lovats life to recreate this extraordinary period of history. As Sarah Fraser argues the defeat at Culloden led directly to the end of traditional Gaelic civilization; to the brutal clearances & pacification of the Highlands which followed & the lost civilisations of Scotland that were destroyed after 1745 by English repression.



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Fans of C.J. Sansom must read this Saltire Society Literary Awards Scottish First Book of the Year
- a great non-fiction adventure
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Dr. Martin Luther King had a dream. & Stevie Wonder had a dream. This is a book about dreams. In the autumn of 1980 Stevie Wonder invited Gil Scott-Heron to join him on a forty-one-city tour across America ending in Washington in January 1981 to gather popular support for the creation of a holiday in honour of the great civil-rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. Scott-Heron uses this history-making tour as the backbone of his fascinating memoir. Raised by his grandmother in Jackson Tennessee Scott-Herons journey from humble beginnings to becoming one of the most uncompromising & influential musicians & songwriters of his generation is a remarkable one. Politically savvy & savagely satirical socially conscious & tender-hearted Gil Scott-Heron has been called the godfather of rap & his unexpected death in May 2011 marked the loss of one of the worlds most vocal & articulate artists. Chuck D of Public Enemy said of Scott-Heron we do what we do & who we do because of you & Eminem added Scott-Heron influenced all of hip-hop. In the words of Sarah Silverman he mirrored ugliness with beauty audacity & valour. A compelling testament to Gil Scott-Herons career & achievements The Last Holiday is full of Scott-Herons keen insights into the music industry the civil rights movement modern America governmental hypocrisy & our wider place in the world. ...

Dawn broke fine on that fatal day. A couple of thousand feet above the tiny canvas tent the summit of the world's highest mountain stood impassively waiting for someone to have the courage to approach. Inside the ice-crusted shelter two forms lay still as death. Then there was a groan a stirring & eventually the slow scratch of match against sandpaper. Low voices shared the high-altitude agonies of waking the heating of water the struggle with frozen boots. As the sun rose through wisps of cloud beyond the Tibetan hills to the east one of the men emerged through the tent flaps. It was a fine morning for the attempt with only a few clouds in the sky. The two of them stood for a while shuffling their feet & blowing into their hands. Inside the tent lay a mess of sleeping bags & food. The men lifted oxygen sets onto their backs then they turned towards the mountain & stamped off into history. On the 6th June 1924 George Mallory & Sandy Irvine disappeared into the mists of history. George Mallory's body was discovered high on Everest in 1999. Sandy Irvine's body is still believed to be on the mountain having been rediscovered in 1975 by a Chinese climber who was killed the very next day. In 1993 Graham Hoyland became the 15th English man to climb Everest having become obsessed by the mountain & the myth of what happened to Mallory & Irvine. It was his evidence that led to the discovery of Mallory's body & it will be his evidence that will lead to the discovery of Sandy Irvine's. The Last Hours on Everest is the most detailed reconstruction of what happened after the two English climbing legends left the camp on that fateful day. Combining personal experience the physical evidence found on the mountain & an insight into the hearts & minds of the two climbers Graham Hoyland produces the most compelling description of what actually happened on that day & the answer to that most intriguing of questions
- did they actually climb Everest?
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Separated by a narrow stretch of swamp-like waters & distinguished by the color of their skin the Black Jews & the White Jews have been locked in a rancorous feud for centuries. Only now when their combined number has diminished to less than 50 & they are on the threshold of extinction have the two remaining Jewish communities in south India begun to realize that their destiny & their undoing is the same. Living in Cochin alongside this last generation Edna Fernandes tells their story from the illustrious arrival of their ancestors from the court of King Solomon through their long heyday of wealth tolerance & privilege to their present twilit existence as synagogues crumble into disuse & weddings disappear leaving only funerals. ...

In an incredible twist of fate a Scottish doctor on a Ugandan medical mission becomes irreversibly entangled with one of the worlds most barbaric figures: Idi Amin. Impressed by Dr. Garrigans brazen attitude in a moment of crisis the newly self-appointed Ugandan President Amin hand picks him as his personal physician & closest confidante. Though Garrigan is at first flattered & fascinated by his new position he soon awakens to Amins savagery
- & his own complicity in it. Horror & betrayal ensue as Garrigan tries to right his wrongs & escape Uganda alive.
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The first book in a brand new series The Last Kingdom is set in England during the reign of King Alfred. Uhtred is an English boy born into the aristocracy of ninth-century Northumbria. Orphaned at ten he is captured & adopted by a Dane & taught the Viking ways. Yet Uhtreds fate is indissolubly bound up with Alfred King of Wessex who rules over the only English kingdom to survive the Danish assault. The struggle between the English & the Danes & the strife between christianity & paganism is the background to Uhtreds growing up. He is left uncertain of his loyalties but a slaughter in a winter dawn propels him to the English side & he will become a man just as the Danes launch their fiercest attack yet on Alfreds kingdom. Marriage ties him further still to the West Saxon cause but when his wife & child vanish in the chaos of the Danish invasion Uhtred is driven to face the greatest of the Viking chieftains in a battle beside the sea. There in the horror of the shield-wall he discovers his true allegiance. The Last Kingdom like most of Bernard Cornwells books is firmly based on true history. It is the first novel of a series that will tell the tale of Alfred the Great & his descendants & of the enemies they faced Viking warriors like Ivar the Boneless & his feared brother Ubba. Against their lives Bernard Cornwell has woven a story of divided loyalties reluctant love & desperate heroism. In Uhtred he has created one of his most interesting & heroic characters & in The Last Kingdom one of his most powerful & passionate novels. ...

Read by Jamie Glover. Harper Collins are delighted to announce that this bestselling favourite author following the triumphant conclusion to the Grail Quest series with the publication of Heretic has embarked on a new medieval series. The Last Kingdom is set in the England of the ninth & tenth centuries. These were the years when the Danish Vikings had invaded & occupied three of Englands four kingdoms & when King Alfred his son & grandson fought back & won the freedom of the country again. The story is seen through the eyes of Uhtred a dispossessed English nobleman. Captured as a child & raised by the Danes he now finds his allegiances divided. But the one thing he knows is that he wants to recover his fathers land the fort by the wild northern sea that we now know as Bamburgh. Bernard Cornwell is a master of historical fiction & this new series looking with a fresh light at Alfred the Great his kingdom & his legacy will be as outstanding & as popular as the Grail Quest & the Warlord Chronicles. ...

A twisted zoo where otherworlders are the main attraction & trapped in the cages. Any time AIR gets close to shutting it down the zoo vanishes & reappears somewhere else. Solo is a black ops agent who's captured & enslaved & treated like an animal. Vika is his new handler tasked with his care & feeding. They were supposed to be enemies but they become lovers-until his feelings for her are used against him & he's put to the ultimate test. ...

Martine is looking forward to the holidays & riding Jemmy her white giraffe until an accident sends her & Ben on a journey to the Matobo Hills wilderness in Zimbabwe. It is a lawless land where nothing is as it seems. When they uncover a plot in which the fate of a magnificent leopard & the lost treasure of an African King are mysteriously linked their friendship faces its greatest test. Far from home & the help of Grace & Tendai & with Gwyn Thomas languishing under false accusations in jail Martine & Ben must use every survival skill they possess. They'll come face to face with Griffin Mercy Mr Ratcliffe (known as Rat) Magnus the hornbill & a witch doctor not to mention Khan the last leopard. They must decide who their friends are & who are enemies as they race against time to save the world's rarest leopard & each other. This third African adventure is written with all the zest & skill that have endeared so many readers to THE WHITE GIRAFFE & DOLPHIN SONG. ...