Winter Games is a dazzling tale of secrets & betrayal & the perfect novel for fans of The Bolter by Frances Osborne & all those fascinated by the Mitford sisters. Munich 1936. She doesn't know it but eighteen-year old Daphne Linden has a seat in the front row of history. Along with her best friend Betsy Barton-Hill & a whole bevy of other young English upper-class girls Daphne is in Bavaria to improve her German to go to the Opera to be 'finished'. It may be the Third Reich but another war is unthinkable & the girls are having the time of their lives. Aren't they? London 2006. Seventy years later & Daphne's granddaughter Francie Fitzsimon has all the boxes ticked: large flat successful husband cushy job writing up holistic spas... The hardest decision she has to make is where to go for brunch
- until that is the discovery of a photograph of Daphne sends her on a quest to discover what really happened to her grandmother in Germany all those years ago. A dazzling tale of secrets & betrayal Winter Games is powerful novel of innocent lives caught up in the march of history. Johnson has a brilliant eye for the telling specifics... She is a natural comic writer & has a breezy Mitfordian tone that makes you laugh at the same time as wincing in recognition... To write an entertaining romp set against the backdrop of Nazi Germany is a tricky feat to pull off. Yet Johnson has done it
- & done it in style". (Observer). "A rip-roaring read". (Evening Standard ' There's never a dreary moment in this blast of a book.. . Johnson's descriptions are irresistibly exuberant.. . As addictively fizzily invigorating as the Alpine air itself' Daily Mail ' Johnson delivers a genuine sense of time & place.. .there isn't a dull sentence in this sure-footed novel' Jenny Colgan Telegraph ' An excellent romp. Full of 'tally-ho' Mitfordian charm.. .a witty fast read' Red ' Excellent on period detail the blundering innocent abroad & young heartbreak' Sunday Times ' The Jane Austen of W11' Scotsman Rachel Johnson is a journalist who has written two previous novels & two volumes of diaries. The Mummy Diaries Notting Hell Shire Hell & A Diary of The Lady are all available now from Penguin."

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So who put the body in with the spring bulbs? The merest hint of spring has arrived in Cheshire & so has young reporter Daisy Dalrymple. The feisty flapper's visit is a breath of fresh air for gloomy Occles Hall. But while photographing the rather barren grounds Daisy spots that someone's been digging among the first green shoots
- & much to her horror unearths the corpse of missing parlour maid Grace Moss. So begins an extraordinary adventure as first the dead woman's shocking secret is revealed & then Daisy swiftly realizes she needs to catch the killer before she herself is left pushing up the daisies. Praise for the Daisy Dalrymple" series: ' Manners (P G Wodehouse-style) & mystery get equal time in a low-key story with considerable charm'
- " Kirkus Reviews". ' Engaging.. . Dunn's style gives an entertaining spark'
- " Publishers Weekly"."


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The Great War took much more than lives. It robbed a generation of friends lovers & futures. In Freddie Watson's case it took his beloved brother & at times his peace of mind. Unable to cope with his grief Freddie has spent much of the time since in a sanatorium. In the winter of 1928 still seeking resolution Freddie is travelling through the French Pyrenees
- another region that has seen too much bloodshed over the years. During a snowstorm his car spins off the mountain road. Shaken he stumbles into the woods emerging by a tiny village. There he meets Fabrissa a beautiful local woman also mourning a lost generation. Over the course of one night Fabrissa & Freddie share their stories of remembrance & loss. By the time dawn breaks he will have stumbled across a tragic mystery that goes back through the centuries. By turns thrilling poignant & haunting this is a story of two lives touched by war & transformed by courage.
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You know what its like. Dark at teatime & sleeping indoors: nothing ever happens in the winter holidays. Or so Nancy thinks. Then the lake ices over completely & the Swallows & Amazons along with Dick & Dorothea
- the Ds
- plan a race to find the North Pole. How will they reach it if they cant sail? By sledges of course! But when a blizzard blows up & there is a mix up about signals the Ds disappear into the Arctic night. Disaster looms. Can the Swallows & Amazons save their friends?

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' You know what it's like. Dark at teatime & sleeping indoors: nothing ever happens in the winter holidays.'" Or so Nancy thinks. Then the lake ices over completely & the Swallows & Amazons along with Dick & Dorothea -- 'the D's' -- plan a race to find the North Pole. How will they reach it if they can't sail? By sledges of course! But when a blizzard blows up & there is a mix up about signals the D's disappear into the Arctic night. Disaster looms. Can the Swallows & Amazons save their friends?" ...

When Marnie receives a phone call that summons her to the side of a once-beloved friend she is wrenched from her orderly London life & sent back into a past from which she has fled but never escaped. Ralph Marnie & Oliver once knew each other well & are still inextricably bound by ties of love & betrayal. Now they meet again in Ralph's secluded cottage in the Scottish highlands to spend the precious days that Ralph has left with each other. As they reminisce Marnie is taken back to the summer years ago when everything changed between them & heartbreak & desire broke up their little group. Will Ralph have the chance to say what needs to be said before it's too late? & can they put the devastating events of twenty years ago to rest & rekindle the intimacy they once shared? ...

After assignments as a Canadian diplomat in Mexico Colombia Sudan & South Africa Nicholas Coghlan & his wife Jenny unwind by sailing Bosun Bird a 27foot sailboat from Cape Town across the South Atlantic & into the stormy winter waters of the Beagle Channel Tierra del Fuego & the Strait of Magellan. Coghlan recalls earlier adventures in Patagonia when taking time off from his job as a schoolteacher in Buenos Aires in the later seventies & with both Argentina & Chile in the grip of harsh military dictatorships he & his wife explored the region over three successive summers. & now as they negotiate the labyrinth of channels & inlets around snow-covered Fireland he reflects on the voyages of past explorers: Magellan Cook Darwin Slocum & others. Sailing enthusiasts & readers of true adventures will want to add Coghlans world-wise narrative to their libraries. Coghlan revisits their past adventures in Patagonia: Twenty-five years prior he was a school teacher in Buenos Aires; he & Jenny would lead trekking expeditions to remote areas in the South of Argentina & Chile while both nations were in the grips of military dictatorships. This time as they negotiate the labyrinth of channels & inlets around Tierra del Fuego Coghlan reflects on the voyages of past explorers
- Magellan Cook Darwin & others. Sailing enthusiasts & readers of true adventures will want to add Coghlans world-wise narrative to their libraries.
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1940: The Spanish Civil War is over & Madrid lies ruined its people starving while the Germans continue their relentless march through Europe. Britain now stands alone while General Franco considers whether to abandon neutrality & enter the war. Into this uncertain world comes Harry Brett: a traumatised veteran of Dunkirk turned reluctant spy for the British Secret Service. Sent to gain the confidence of old schoolfriend Sandy Forsyth now a shady Madrid businessman Harry finds himself involved in a dangerous game -- & surrounded by memories. Meanwhile Sandy's girlfriend ex-Red Cross nurse Barbara Clare is engaged on a secret mission of her own -- to find her former lover Bernie Piper a passionate Communist in the International Brigades who vanished on the bloody battlefields of the Jarama. In a vivid & haunting depiction of wartime Spain Winter in Madrid is an intimate & compelling tale which offers a remarkable sense of history unfolding & the profound impact of impossible choices. ' Sansom adroitly draws the disparate strands of his ambitious saga together. His non-pareil evocations of time & place anchor his characters with satisfying precision' Independent ...

On January 3 2011 exactly one month before his sixty-fourth birthday Paul Auster sat down & wrote the first entry of Winter Journal" his unorthodox beautifully wrought examination of his own life as seen through the history of his body. Composed in the manner of a musical fugue the journal advances from one autobiographical fragment to the next jumping backward & forward in time as the various themes intersect bounce off one another & ultimately merge in a great chorus of multiple voices of one voice multiplied into many. Writing in the second person as if addressing himself as a stranger which at the same time establishes an uncanny intimacy with the reader Auster takes us from childhood to the brink of old age as he summons forth a universe of physical sensation of pleasures & pains moving from the awakening sexual desire as an adolescent to the ever deepening bonds of married love from the shocks of violent accidents to an account of his mothers sudden death in 2002 from meditations on eating & sleeping to the "scalding epiphanic moment of clarity" in 1978 that set him on a new course as a writer. Thirty years after the publication of " The Invention of Solitude" his first book of prose Paul Auster has now given us a second memoir of uncommon power & grace. " Winter Journal" is a book that looks straight into the heart of what it means to be alive." ...

In 1851 the fortunes of the Morland family are more buoyant than they have been for years. Morland Place is recovering under Benjamin's steady hands
- happy at last with Sibella. Charlotte now Duchess of Southport is shortly to give birth to hersecond child & on the point of opening her modern hospital for the poor. Cavendish's engagement to the ethereally beautiful but slightly silly Miss Phipps causes a stir in the drawing rooms of Mayfair & his wedding causes his family some misgivings. Then the storms in Europe spill in to Britain when the army is forced to defend Turkey against the Tsar. Within weeks Cavendish is in the Crimea & disappears in the Charge of the Light Brigade. Another moving & beautifully portrayed episode in the riveting Morland saga.
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