Recently widowed attorney Paul Madriani is struggling to hold on to what is left of his family when he & his young daughter are caught up in yet another family tragedy. Pauls sister-in-law Laurel Vega is involved in a bitter custody battle with her ex-husband Jack who wants to take their children to Washington DC. When her case disintegrates Jacks new wife is found dead in the family home. Laurel is arrested & charged with murder. Madriani takes on her defence but the evidence against Laurel is daunting & her own failure to cooperate
- in particular to tell Paul where she was on the night of the murder
- leaves the reader wondering if perhaps he is defending a guilty woman. But what actually happened that night is more tragic than anything revealed so far. & it is up to Paul to uncover the shattering piece of evidence that will lead to the terrible truth.

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The Special Operations Executive was one of the most secretive organizations of the Second World War its activities cloaked in mystery & intrigue. The fate therefore of many of its agents was not revealed to the general public other than the bare details carved with pride upon the headstones & memorials of those courageous individuals. Then in 2003 the first batch of SOE personal files was released by the National Archive. Over the course of the following years more & more files were made available. Now at last it is possible to tell the stories of all those agents that died in action. These are stories of bravery & betrayal incompetence & misfortune of brutal torture & ultimately death. Some died when their parachutes failed to open others swallowed their cyanide capsules rather than fall into the hands of the Gestapo many died in combat with the enemy most though were executed by hanging by shooting & even by lethal injection. The bodies of many of the lost agents were never found destroyed in the crematoria of such places as Buckenwald Mauthausen & Natzweiler others were buried where they fell. All of them should be remembered as having undertaken missions behind enemy lines in the knowledge that they might never return. ...

Angelic powers forbidden romance & the choice between fulfiling your destiny or following your hearts desire. Clara has known she is part-angel since she turned fourteen two years ago. But only now through fragmented visions of a terrifying bush fire is her Purpose
- the crucial rite of passage for every part-angel
- becoming clear to her. When Clara meets Christian the boy in her visions he is everything she could wish for
- so why does she also have feelings for her enigmatic classmate Tucker? Clara discovers that her Purpose is only a small part of a titanic struggle between angels & their destructive counterparts the Black Wings. & when the fire of her vision erupts & both Christian & Tucker are in danger who will she choose to save?


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Unearthly Disclosure is a story of alien bases alien contacts & abductions genetic mutants animal mutilations & government paranoia. Here Timothy Good one of the worlds most respected authorities on the alien phenomenon reveals for the first time sensational information provided to him by high-level military & scientific sources who confirm that aliens have established subterranean & submarine bases on Earth & that extra-terrestrial contact has been made with a select group in the US military & scientific intelligence community. Among numerous revelations in this book are those involving the alien creature photographed by Filiberto Caponi in Italy. The author spent several years investigating this controversial case & commissioned an Expert Witness checked by the Law Society to analyse Caponis astonishing photographs. Published for the first time this unique story forms the central section of Unearthly Disclosure. ...

A broken heart & a moment of drunken bravado inspires middle-aged & typically rather cautious journalist Mike Carter to take off on a life-changing six month motorcycle trip around Europe. Never mind that he hadn't been on two wheels since an inglorious three-month teenage chapter involving a Lambretta four crashes & an 18-month ban for drink-driving a plan had begun to loosely form... And so having completed a six day residential motorcycle course & hastily re-mortgaged his flat Mike sets off alone resolving to go wherever the road takes him & enjoy the adventure of heading off into the unknown. He ends up travelling almost 20 000 miles & reaching the four extremes of Europe: the Arctic Circle in the north the Mediterranean coast in the south the Portuguese Atlantic to the west & the Iraqi border of Turkey in the east. But really it's a journey inwards as on the way Mike finds his post-divorce scars starting to heal & attempts to discover what he as a man in his forties who hasn't quite found his place in the world should be doing. Self-deprecating poetic & utterly engaging his is a heroic journey taken for the rest of us too scared to leave our 9 to 5 office-bound existence. ...

The new blockbuster from one of the world's greatest storytellers continues the legacy of A Woman of Substance. The great-grandaughters of Emma Harte the heroine of A WOMAN OF SUBSTANCE & EMMA'S SECRET follow in her legendary footsteps... Evan Hughes Emma's American great-grandaughter is trying to integrate into the powerful Harte family. She is caught between her estranged parents her new family & new love. Meanwhile a dangerous enemy hovers in the background. Tessa Longden Evan's cousin is battling her husband for custody of their daughter Adele. When Adele suddenly goes missing Tessa seeks her sister Linnet's help. Linnet O' Neill the most brilliant businesswoman of the four great-granddaughters is the natural heir to her mother Paula. But her glittering future at the helm of the vast Harte empire means many sacrifices. India Standish the traditionalist in the family falls in love with a famous British artist from a working-class background. Madly in love India is determined to marry him. When Evan discovers letters from Emma Harte to her grandmother the story is swept back to the 1950s. But it is the revelations in Emma's letters to her grandmother that give Evan a new perspective & help to set her free from her own past. This latest dramatic story in the on-going saga of an extraordinary family dynasty is full of love passion & jealousy & is Barbara Taylor Bradford at her inimitable best. ...

Cecilia Banks has a great deal on her plate. But when her son Ian turns up on her doostep with the unexpected consequence of a brief fling she feels she has no choice but to take the baby into her life. Cephas's arrival is the latest of many challenges Cecilia has to face. There is the matter of her cancer for a start an illness shared with her novelist friend Helen. Then there is Helen herself whose observations of Cecilia's family life reveal a somewhat ambivalent attitude to motherhood. Meanwhile Tim Cecilia's husband is taking self-effacement to extremes & Ian unless he gets on with it will throw away his best chance at happiness. Cecilia however does not have to manage alone. In a convent in Hastings sits Sister Diana Clegg who holds the ties that bind everyone not only to each other but to strangers as yet unmet. As events unfold & as the truth about Cephas is revealed we are invited to look closely at madness guilt mortal dread & the gift of resilience. No one will remain unchanged. ' Frank courageous & entertaining. I felt better for reading it' Margaret Drabble ...

When Elizabeth Price engages private detective Roland ' Orlando' Gibbons to find out the truth about her husband's suspected affair she unwittingly sets off a chain of correspondence that reunites four formerly close-knit couples. They all live just a few suburban streets away from each other; they are all still married; so how
- & why
- did they become so estranged? In a series of letters
- from love notes to condolence messages (the latter one arriving some years late)
- each protagonist is far more self-revealing than they would ever be in person. The result is an uproarious & poignant portrait of four marriages & a story about how little we know those we think we know best. Nigel Williams' new novel of suburban intrigue & late-flowering lust (and love) Unfaithfully Yours heralds the return of one of the country's finest comic writers in peak condition: all hail Nigel Williams chronicler of England's sleepy suburbs where all is not quite as cricket as it seems...



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The good news: Bobby survived her Undead school trip. Bad news: her best mate Smitty is missing. Bobby knows she's got to find him. even if it means risking it all & going out into the starving-zombie-infested wastelands again. Even if it means taking fellow survivors
- including a couple of old frenemies
- along for the ride. & even if the zombies are not the only ones who are chasing them this time.

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John Darwin won the Wolfson History Prize for his book After Tamerlane: The Rise & Fall of Global Empires". In " Unfinished Empire" he examines the enormous influence of the British Empire. It has shaped the world in countless ways: repopulating continents carving out modern nations imposing its own language technology & values. For perhaps two centuries its existence expansion & final collapse were the single largest determinant of historical events. Now that it has gone it seems to us baffling that such a strange entity should ever have existed. What was the dynamic that led to English-speakers standing on the shores of the Pacific controlling the worlds sea transport & creating a financial system that revolutionized the worlds economies? John Darwins provocative & richly enjoyable new book is an attempt to make us see anew how diverse strange & in many ways chaotic the British Empire really was controlled by a range of interests often at loggerheads with each other & as much driven on by others weaknesses as by its own strength. By understanding the different phases of imperial conquest the wildly different types of colonist (with soldiers & farmers merchants & government officials often barely on speaking terms) & what made the Empire ultimately collapse in ruins " Unfinished Empire" is a surprising original & often critical account of an extraordinary phenomenon. Reviews: "A breadth of perspective few other imperial historians can boast. The British Empire really does look different in the light of it... Breadth of vision fizzing ideas & a brilliant style as well as superb scholarship... It deserves to supplant every other book on this topic including
- though my publisher & bank manager wont thank me for saying this
- my own. It is British imperial history at last without hang-ups; the one weve been waiting for". (Bernard Porter " History Today"). "A brilliantly perceptive analysis of the forces & ideas that drove the creation of an extraordinary enterprise... Bringing together his huge erudition scrupulous fairness & elegant prose Mr Darwin has produced a wonderfully stimulating account of something that today seems almost incredibly yet was in historical terms only yesterday. It is also a much-needed antidote both to the leftish consensus of the past 50 years that Britains empire was unrelievedly awful...and the recent triumphalist revisionism of more conservative historians". (" Economist"). " Engrossing... What Darwin adds to this subject is a rare wonderful capacity for comparison... Seeing the imperial experience in the round like this does gives us a clearer more subtle appreciation of the range of power & violence at play. It raises the historical writing on empire to another level". ("BBC History Magazine"). " Balanced original & impressive... Subtle...intelligent". (" Literary Review"). " Comprehensive... Darwins erudition allows him to skirt around the narrow orthodoxies of apologist v critic & provide an insightful account of Britains unlikely period of global hegemony". (" Sunday Times"). " How incredibly refreshing it is when as distinguished an historian as John Darwin...writes something as thoughtful well-researched & persuasive as " Unfinished Empire" which explains the half-millennium-long expansion of Britain across the globe in terms that genuinely make sense... The authors deep familiarity with all the key sources of this vast subject allows him to pluck examples for his arguments from across the centuries & continents... Best of all...is the thought that Darwins book might at long last herald the victory of the post-Marxist phase of imperial historiography & not a moment too soon". (Andrew Roberts " Sunday Telegraph"). Book of the Week About the author: John Darwins interest lies in the history of empires both their rise & fall. He has written extensively on the decline of Britains empire & teaches imperial & global history at "

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