Deborah Devonshire is a natural writer with a knack for the telling phrase & for hitting the nail on the head. She tells the story of her upbringing lovingly & wittily describing her parents (so memorably fictionalised by her sister Nancy); she talks candidly about her brother & sisters & their politics (while not being at all political herself) finally setting the record straight. Throughout the book she writes brilliantly about the country & her deep attachment to it & those who live & work in it. As Duchess of Devonshire Debo played an active role in restoring & overseeing the day-to-day running of the family houses & gardens & in developing commercial enterprises at Chatsworth. She tells poignantly of the deaths of three of her children as well as her husbands battle with alcohol addiction. Wait For Me is enthralling & a total joy full of the authors sympathetic wit (which she is not afraid to use on herself). ...

This is a gripping historical adventure by a much-loved & award winning author. It is World War II & Jo stumbles on a dangerous secret: Jewish children are being smuggled away from the Nazis close to his mountain village in Spain. Now German soldiers have been stationed at the border. Jo must get word to his friends that the children are trapped. The slightest mistake could cost them their lives. ...

When you're small waiting for anything can seem to take a lifetime especially when it's a baby! There is so much to sort out for the new arrival
- clothes toys & a place to sleep. A new addition to any family is exciting but the experience can also be worrying & confusing for siblings. Coping with the new situations & emotions that arise can be very challenging. This series of four board books deals with the anticipation of waiting for the new baby the excitement of the arrival itself & the beginnings of the special relationship that develops between siblings. The simple conversational text & lively illustrations are carefully designed to encourage further dialogue between reader & child.
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He appears out of the sea washed up naked in the treacherous Straits of Gibraltar. Seemingly delirious & claiming to be Christopher Columbus he is taken to an insane asylum in Seville where astonishingly he starts to reveal the true story of how he set sail on behalf of the Spanish queen five hundred years ago. Consuela a nurse at the Institute is charged with helping him back to reality. She listens to his fantastic tales in the hope of discovering the truth. But as his story unfolds she finds herself falling for her patient -- no longer able to tell where truth ends & fantasy begins. Meanwhile across the continent Emile Germain is involved in a different search. He's an Interpol officer on the hunt for a missing person presumed dangerous. He's a determined man & when his investigation leads to Spain these two stories collide. Part romance part mysterious thriller this is a rich & emotional novel about love loss & the fragile beauty of our own life stories. ...

Nothing happens nobody comes nobody goes it's awful.' This line from the play was adopted by Jean Anouilh to characterize the first production of Waiting for Godot at the Theatre de Babylone in 1953. He went on to predict that the play would in time represent the most important premiere to be staged in Paris for forty years. Nobody acquainted with Beckett's masterly black comedy would now question this prescient recognition of a classic of twentieth-century literature. ...

A life full of shattered hopes... Brenda ODonnell is turned out by her family when she finds herself pregnant at sixteen. Widowed Sid Rawlins the rag-&-bone man says she can come & live with him & he will give her child a name in return for her running his home & looking after his children. Despite the gossip a desperate Brenda has little choice but to accept. Life isnt easy for Brenda & little Ruby but they try make the best of things. Until Brenda falls in love with Sids eldest son Danny & their affair causes trouble within the family. & when Sid dies & leaves the business to his cousin Charlie life becomes even harder for Brenda as she faces the threat of losing everything she holds dear... ...

Frederica Kimball had been waiting for the day when Nicholas Le Beck would fall as desperately in love with her as she had always been with him. Nick didnt know what had hit him...sweet adorable Freddie whom hed always loved like a kid sister was suddenly looking & acting like a sensual woman. The waiting was over but the wanting had just begun! ...

A childhood in a privileged household in 1950s Havana was joyous & cruel like any other
- but with certain differences. The neighbours
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The Sunday Times bestseller Vienna 1913. It is a fine day in August when Lysander Rief a young English actor walks through the city to his first appointment with the eminent psychiatrist Dr Bensimon. Sitting in the waiting room he is anxiously pondering the particularly intimate nature of his neurosis when a young woman enters. She is clearly in distress but Lysander is immediately drawn to her strange hazel eyes & her unusual intense beauty. Her name is Hettie Bull. They begin a passionate love affair & life in Vienna becomes tinged with a powerful frisson of excitement for Lysander. He meets Sigmund Freud in a cafe begins to write a journal enjoys secret trysts with Hettie & appears
- miraculously
- to have been cured. Back in London 1914. War is imminent & events in Vienna have caught up with Lysander in the most damaging way. Unable to live an ordinary life he is plunged into the dangerous theatre of wartime intelligence
- a world of sex scandal & spies where lines of truth & deception blur with every waking day. Lysander must now discover the key to a secret code which is threatening Britains safety & use all his skills to keep the murky world of suspicion & betrayal from invading every corner of his life. Moving from Vienna to Londons West End from the battlefields of France to hotel rooms in Geneva Waiting for Sunrise is a feverish & mesmerising journey into the human psyche a beautifully observed portrait of wartime Europe a plot-twisting thriller & a literary tour de force from the bestselling author of Any Human Heart Restless & Ordinary Thunderstorms.


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Vienna 1913. Lysander Rief a young English actor walks through the city to his first appointment with eminent psychiatrist Dr Bensimon. Sitting in the waiting room he is anxiously pondering the particularly intimate nature of his neurosis when a young woman enters. Lysander is immediately drawn to her strange hazel eyes & her unusual intense beauty. Her name is Hettie Bull. Their subsequent affair is both passionate & particularly destructive. Moving from Vienna to Londons West End from the battlefields of France to hotel rooms in Geneva Waiting for Sunrise is a feverish & mesmerising journey into the human psyche a beautifully observed portrait of wartime Europe a plot-twisting thriller & a literary tour de force. ...