After the Great War the millions killed on the battlefields were eclipsed by the millions more civilians carried off by disease & starvation when the conflict was over. Haunted by memories the Allies were determined that the end of the Second World War would not be followed by a similar disaster & they began to lay plans long before victory was assured. Confronted by an entire continent starving & uprooted Allied planners devised strategies to help all 'displaced persons' & repatriate the fifteen million people who had been deprived of their homes & in many cases forced to work for the Germans. But over a million Jews Poles Ukrainians Latvians Lithuanians Estonians & Yugoslavs refused to go home. This book offers a radical reassessment of the aftermath of World War II. Unlike most recent writing about the 1940s it assesses the events & personalities of that decade in terms of contemporary standards & values. This the true & epic story of how millions ultimately found relief reconciliation & a place to call home. ...

A journey through & succesfully out of twenty years of anorexia. It wasnt just losing weight that mattered to Alison
- it was
...

The plan is so complex the target so well protected that the three snipers have to rehearse the killing in the seclusion of the Arizona desert. Cole Howard of the FBI knows he has only days to prevent the audacious assassination. But he doesnt know who the target is. Or where the crack marksmen will strike. Former SAS sergeant Mike Cramer is also on the trail infiltrating the Irish community in New York as he tracks down Mary Hennessy the ruthless killer who tore his life apart. Unless Cramer & Howard agree to co-operate the world will witness the most spectacular terrorist coup of all time.. . ...

From the critically acclaimed Andrea Levy Orange Prize winning author of SMALL ISLAND comes this breathtaking hauntingly beautiful heartbreaking & unputdownable novel shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize & longlisted for the Orange Prize. You do not know me yet. My son Thomas who is publishing this book tells me it is customary at this place in a novel to give the reader a little taste of the story that is held within these pages. As your storyteller I am to convey that this tale is set in Jamaica during the last turbulent years of slavery & the early years of freedom that followed. July is a slave girl who lives upon a sugar plantation named Amity & it is her life that is the subject of this tale. She was there when the Baptist War raged in 1831 & she was present when slavery was declared no more. My son says I must convey how the story tells also of Julys mama Kitty of the negroes that worked the plantation land of Caroline Mortimer the white woman who owned the plantation & many more persons besides
- far too many for me to list here. But what befalls them all is carefully chronicled upon these pages for you to peruse. Perhaps my son suggests I might write that it is a thrilling journey through that time in the company of people who lived it. All this he wishes me to pen so the reader can decide if this is a novel they might care to consider. Cha I tell my son what fuss-fuss. Come let them just read it for themselves.
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What happens when there is almost unlimited choice? When everything becomes available to everyone? & when the combined value ...

Eldritch Swan is a dead man. Or at least that is what his nephew Stephen has always been told. Until one day Eldritch walks back into his life after 36 years in an Irish prison. He wont reveal any of the details of his incarceration insisting only that he is innocent of any crime. His return should be of interest to no-one. But the visit of a solicitor with a mysterious request will take Eldritch & his sceptical nephew from sleepy seaside Paignton to London where an exhibition of Picasso paintings from the prestigious Brownlow collection proves to be the starting point on a journey that will transport them back to the Second World War & the mystery behind Eldritchs imprisonment. In 1940 he was personal assistant to a wealthy diamond dealer in Antwerp whose collection of modern art was the envy of many. The subsequent disappearance of those paintings began a trail of murder & intrigue which was to have a catastrophic effect on Eldritchs life. But untangling the web of murky secrets family ties & old betrayals that conceals the truth will prove to be a dangerous pursuit for Eldritch & Stephen. Before long a mysterious enemy is doing everything possible to stop the truth emerging
- at whatever cost...
...

This is one of the world's greatest stories of adventure survival & escape. Slavomir Rawicz was a young Polish cavalry officer. On 9th November 1939 he was arrested by the Russians & after brutal interrogation in Moscow's infamous Lubyanka prison & a farce of a trial he was sentenced to 25 years' hard labour in the Gulags for 'spying'. After a three-month journey to Siberia in the depths of winter he escaped with six companions realising that to stay in the camp meant almost certain death. In June 1941 they crossed the trans-Siberian railway & headed south climbing into Tibet & finally freedom nine months later in March 1942 after travelling on foot for 4 000 miles through some of the harshest regions in the world including the Gobi Desert. By the end he weighed just five stone & 3 of the 7 had died. ...

Young Mikey Quinn scavenging on the streets of Hull is thrown into prison for stealing a rabbit from the butcher. His chief accuser a well-to-do lawyer has a daughter Eleanor whom he badly mistreats. When Mikey is released he finds that his mother has died & his brothers taken into the workhouse
- determined to find a better life for his family he walks all the way to London to seek his fortune. There he finds that the grim realities of city life are even worse than they were in Hull & comes under the evil patronage of the sinister Tully first encountered when he was in prison. But he also meets Eleanor again & between them they face the dangers of London & gradually make a new life for themselves. Together they have to face journeying back to Hull
- the long walk home.

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This is the story of how over a period of one hundred & ninety-two days I was torn away from the life I knew & loved & dragged down to the depths of despair; of how I endured enforced isolation & near-starvation at the hands of Somali pirates; & of how I made a choice to survive by any & all means that I could muster. In September 2011 Judith Tebbutt & her husband David set out on an adventurous holiday to Kenya. A couple for thirty-three years they had first met in Zambia: Africa had played a major part in their life together. After a joyous week on safari in the Masai Mara they flew on to a beach resort forty kilometres south of Somalia. & there in the early hours of 11 September tragedy struck them. Judith was torn away from David by a band of armed pirates dragged over sea & land to a village in the arid heart of lawless Somalia & there held hostage in a squalid room a ransom on her head. There too she learned the terrible truth that the responsibility of securing her release now rested with her son Ollie. But though she was isolated intimidated & near-starved Judith resolved to survive
- walking endless circuits of her nine-foot prison trying to make her captors see her as a human being keeping her faith at all times in Ollie. Powerful moving & at times quite devastating this is Judith Tebbutt's story in her own words. It is a memoir of the life she shared with her beloved husband an unflinching account of the ordeal that overturned her world & a testament to the inner resilience & familial love that sustained her through captivity. There is nothing so bad in life as to have no hope
- to believe you have been defeated to give in to that. Now that I found myself in confinement four thousand miles from home under a hostile sky I would not accept that fate for myself.

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At the peak of her fast-paced career as a news presenter & interviewer Selina Scott bought a house in the Tramuntana hills of Mallorca. It was a ramshackle old farmhouse without even mains electricity but the beauty & peace of the surroundings promised an idyllic escape from her high-pressure job. After several years of commuting between continents she decided to settle there & spend time renovating the house properly. Along the way a new rhythm & peaceful way of life would surely emerge? It was then that the adventure really began. In this funny elegantly written account of her Spanish years Selina tells us about the house that captured her heart the neighbours that became friends & those that didnt the hills & wildlife that enchanted her the building work that nearly broke her & crucially the dog that found her & changed every single one of her best laid plans! This title presents an uplifting story of escape change & friendship. ...