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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Winner of the HW Fisher best first biography prize Spectator books of the year 2012 Sunday Times" " Daily Telegraph" " Tls" " Financial Times" " Guardian" " Daily Mail" & " Sunday Telegraph Books of the Year 2011". " He were a dark prince & infinitely suspicious & his times full of secret conspiracies & troubles". (Sir Francis Bacon). In his remarkable debut Penn vividly recreates the dark & turbulent reign of Henry VII. He traces the transformation of a young vulnerable boy Prince Henry into the aggressive teenager who would become Henry VIII & of Catherine of Aragon his future queen. & at the book's heart is the tragic magnetic figure of Henry VII
- controlling paranoid avaricious with a Machiavellian charm & will to power."
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In the great floating city of Sanctaphrax blizzards howl through the streets as the Edgeworld descends into an endless winter. Quint the son of a sky pirate has just begun his training at the Knights Academy
- training that involves heading out over the Edge on tethers to develop his flying skills. But when Quint breaks the rules & head out to Open Sky on his own he runs into the great sky leviathan known as a cloud-eater & must use all his skill & ingenuity if catastrophe is not to strike the Edgeworld...
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Fresh from his defeat of King Harold at the Battle of Hastings William of Normandy has returned home in triumph accompanied by the English nobles he cannot trust to leave behind. For Waltheof of Huntingdon however rebellion is not at the forefront of his thoughts. From the moment he catches sight of Judith daughter of the Kings formidable sister he knows he has found his future wife. When Waltheof saves Judiths life it is clear that the attraction is mutual. But marriage has little to do with love in mediaeval Europe. William refuses to let the couple wed & Waltheof joins an uprising against him. William crushes the rebellion but decides the best way to keep Waltheof in check is to agree to the marriage. But is the match between Saxon earl & Norman lady one made in heaven or hell? As their children grow Waltheof & Judith must choose between their feelings for each other & older loyalties... Based on an astonishing true story THE WINTER MANTLE reaches from the turbulent reign of William the Conqueror to the high drama of the crusades... ...

Eduardo a retiree whose wife & son have died lives on his isolated Montana ranch. His life is peaceful
- if lonely
- until he

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Out of print for thirty years & incredibly difficult to get hold of The Winter of Enchantment" is an iconic & elusive book written by the author when she was just 21. It tells the story of Sebastian who travels back from his Victorian world to a magical world of Melissa Mantari & the wicked Enchanter. The reissue of this book has been clamoured for by many." ...

Steinbeck's last great novel focuses on the theme of success & what motivates men towards it. Reflecting back on his New England family's past fortune & his father's loss of the family wealth the hero Ethan Allen Hawley characterizes success in every era & in all its forms as robbery murder even a kind of combat operating under 'the laws of controlled savagery'. ...

Berlin in 1933 is in upheaval. Eleven-year-old Carla von Ulrich struggles to understand the tensions disrupting her family as Hitler strengthens his grip on Germany. Into this turmoil steps her mother's formidable friend & former British MP Ethel Leckwith & her student son Lloyd who soon learns for himself the brutal reality of Nazism. He also encounters a group of Germans resolved to oppose Hitler
- but are they willing to go so far as to betray their country? Such people are closely watched by Volodya a Russian with a bright future in Red Army Intelligence. The international clash of military power & personal beliefs that ensues will sweep over them all as it rages from Cable Street in London's East End to Pearl Harbor in Hawaii from Spain to Stalingrad from Dresden to Hiroshima. At Cambridge Lloyd is irresistibly drawn to dazzling American socialite Daisy Peshkov who represents everything his left-wing family despise. But Daisy is more interested in aristocratic Boy Fitzherbert
- amateur pilot party lover & leading light of the British Union of Fascists. Back in Berlin Carla worships golden boy Werner from afar. But nothing will work out the way they expect as their lives & the hopes of the world are smashed by the greatest & cruellest war in the history of the human race. Winter of the World is the second novel in Ken Follett's uniquely ambitious & deeply satisfying trilogy ' The Century'. On its own or read in sequence with Fall of Giants this is a magnificent spellbinding epic of global conflict & personal drama.

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