Sir Alfred Munnings retiring President of the Royal Academy chooses the 1949 Annual Banquet to launch a savage attack on Modern Art. The effect of his diatribe is doubly shocking leaving not only his distinguished audience gasping but also many people tuning in to the BBC's live radio broadcast. But as he approaches the end of his assault the speech suddenly dissolves into incoherence when he stumbles over a name
- a name he normally takes such pains to avoid
- that takes him back forty years to a special time & a special place. Summer in February is a disturbing & moving re-creation of a celebrated Edwardian artistic community enjoying the last days of a golden age soon to be shattered by war. As resonant & understated as The Go-Between it is a love story of beauty deprivation & tragedy.

...

The only travel writing book on Gascony A Summer in Gascony" is a charming & humorous tale of an extraordinary summer spent in this relatively unknown part of south-western France the home of D Artagnan Cyrano de Bergerac gutsy red wine fine sweet wine Armagnac & sunflowers. It is a tale of two love affairs: an idyllic summer romance & a lifelong love affair with Gascony with its village festivals dusty roads & sun-baked wine country. Stretching from Toulouse in the east to the Atlantic coast in the west from the river Garonne in the north to the Pyrenees in the south Gascony is a golden land of rolling hills & wide horizons swathed with vineyards sunflowers maize & pastures. It has a distinct identity which sets it apart from the rest of France & old affinities with England: the Gascons fought alongside the English in the Middle Ages & the Napoleonic Wars against their common foe the French. In the tiny hamlet of Peguilhan Martin Calder is introduced to the Gascon way of life: working in the fields shepherding & slaughtering sheep feeding the cattle harvesting the wheat watering the crops. He discovers a unique people fiercely proud of their independent heritage. Full of colourful characters: the charismatic & convivial Jacques-Henri the hardworking farmer whose family take Martin into their home & hearts; the yoga-practising Germans; & Pattes the mischievous stray dog; Madame Parle-Beaucoup the town gossip & Monsieur Fustignac whose pride in his Gascon heritage is unforgettable. But the real star of the book is Gascony itself with its strong spirit of independence & the simple pleasures it provides. Written by a true Francophile who has come to know the people & understands their way of life "A Summer in Gascony" evokes the spirit sights smells & sounds of this still relatively unknown & unspoiled other South of France." ...

Laughter sunshine & love
- spend summer in Orchard Valley The Bloomfield sisters Valerie Stephanie & Norah have returned home to
...

A conversation between strangers on a long-haul flight will change lives for ever; one night in Baden-Baden will threaten to tear a couple apart; a meeting with an ex-lover will give a divorcee a second chance; holiday lovers will struggle in the harsh reality of daily routine... As Schlinks characters navigate their lives we discover the many faces of love: the small betrayals hidden truths & abiding affections. In Schlinks trademark spare prose we come face-to-face with the desires & jealousies that define our daily lives with the fragility of happiness & with the abiding possibility of hope. Tender yet unsentimental achingly personal yet utterly universal SUMMER LIES asks what it means to love to deceive & ultimately to be human. ...

After finishing work on their sensationally successful TV series Louisa Danny & Sarah take a much-needed holiday on the French Riviera. All they want to do is party soak up the sun & have a good time. Danny the actress with her sensual beauty & impossible temper soon has the eligible men of the Riviera chasing her. Louisa the scriptwriter on the rebound from a broken love affair finds herself more & more drawn to the mysterious Jake Mallory. While Sarah the producer just wants to hang out & have fun. But they quickly discover that the sparkle of Riviera life conceals a dark presence that pulls them into a game no one can win. & when mayhem & madness begin to stalk them to their terror they find there is no way out. ...

Revolt & upheaval in medieval Britain by a brilliant new narrative historian Summer of Blood breaks new ground in its portrayal of the personalities & politics of the bloody days of June 1381. The Peasants Revolt of 1381 is one of the most dramatic & bloody events in English history. Starting with village riots in the Essex countryside chaos rapidly spread across much of the south-east of England as tens of thousands of ordinary men & women marched in fury to London torching houses slaughtering their social superiors & terrifying the life out of those who got in their way. The burning down of Savoy Palace home to the most powerful magnate in the realm marked one of the Revolts most violent episodes. The Peasants Revolt has remained an underexplored period of history. In revisiting the bloody events of 1381 Dan Jones has brought back to glorious life the squalor drama & complex hierarchies of a society that until now seemed almost too distant to imagine. His examination of village life & the failings of government from the perspective of the Revolts key players is both intellectually stimulating & compulsively readable. Vivid atmospheric & beautifully written this is historical writing of the highest quality. ...

Evokes the master of Barcelona-set narrative Carlos Ruiz Zafon". (" Independent"). When the death of a young witness in a case of human trafficking & voodoo provokes the normally calm Inspector Salgado to beat someone up he is swiftly removed from the project. Instead he is sent to investigate a teenager's fall to his death in one of Barcelona's uptown areas. As Salgado begins to uncover the inconvenient truths behind the city's most powerful families two seemingly unsolvable cases are set to implode under the hot Barcelona sun." ...

Matthew Bartholomew jumps at the chance to travel to Ely with Brother Michael as it will give him a unique opportunity to study in the richly stocked library of the Benedictine priory. Michael has been summoned to the city by his bishop but it isnt until they arrive that they discover the reason
- the bishop has been accused of murder. The charge seems ludicrous but Michael takes the investigation seriously & energetically sets about his task. Almost immediately he discovers that there appears to have been a series of unexplained deaths in the area. At the same time Bartholomew comes across an underground movement of rebellion against the church & the tithes they demand from the laity & the two men also learn that there has been a spate of burglaries which are being blamed on a band of travellers. Then a fellow of the priory is murdered almost under their noses. Can this death be connected to the others? Are all the killings linked to the burgeoning rebellion in the city? Once again Susanna Gregory has created a superbly crafted mystery narrated with wit & style against a perfectly realised period background.
...

A terrifying & dream-like new novel from one of our greatest contemporary writers. At a critical point in her career painter Angelika Rossdal suddenly moves to Kvaloya a small island deep in the Arctic Circle to dedicate herself to the solitary pursuit of her craft. With her she brings her young daughter Liv who grows up isolated & unable or unwilling to make friends her own age spending much of her time alone or with an elderly neighbour Kyrre Jonsson who beguiles her with old folk tales & stories about trolls mermaids & -- crucially for the events that unfold in the summer of her eighteenth year -- about the huldra " a wild spirit who appears in the form of an irresistibly beautiful girl to lure young men to their doom. Now twenty-eight Liv looks back on her life & particularly to that summer when two boys drowned under mysterious circumstances in the still moonlit waters off the shores of Kvaloya. Were the deaths accidental or were the boys as Kyrre believes lured to their deaths by a malevolent spirit? To begin with Liv dismisses the old mans stories as fantasy but as the summer continues & events take an even darker turn she comes to believe that something supernatural is happening on the isl&. But is it? Or is Liv a lonely girl who has spent her entire life in the shadow of her beautiful gifted mother slowly beginning to lose touch with reality? Set in the white nights of an Arctic summer the novel has the heightened hallucinogenic atmosphere of a dream but culminates in a moment of profound horror. Intensely imagined & exquisitely written A Summer of Drowning""is a play of dark & light of looking & seeing that will hold & haunt every reader. " From the Hardcover edition."" ...

A gorgeously warm funny & heartbreaking story about facing up to your past & finding out what
- & who
- you really want... Alice

...