For years Kazu has run her fashionable restaurant with a combination of charm & shrewdness. But when the she falls in love with one of her clients, an aristocratic retired politician, she renounces her business in order to become his wife. But it is not so easy to renounce her independent spirit, & eventually Kazu must choose between her marriage & the demands of her irrepressible vitality. After the Banquet is a magnificent portrait of political & domestic warfare. ...

Edwidge Danticat had long been scared off from Carnival by a loved one, who spun tales of people dislocating hips from gyrating with too much abandon, losing their voices from singing too loudly, going deaf from the clamor of immense speakers, & being punched, stabbed, pummeled, or fondled by other lustful revelers. Now an adult, she resolves to return & exorcise her Carnival demons. During her journeys she traces the heroic & tragic history of the isl&, from French colonists & Haitian revolutionaries to American invaders & home-grown dictators. Danticat also introduces us to many of the performers, artists, & organizers who re-create the myths & legends that bring the Carnival festivities to life. When Carnival arrives, we watch as she goes from observer to participant & finally loses herself in the overwhelming embrace of the crowd. Part travelogue, part memoir, this is a lyrical narrative of a writer rediscovering her country along with a part of herself. ...

Father John controls everything inside The Fence. & Father John likes rules. Especially about never talking to Outsiders. Because Father John knows the truth. He knows what is right, & what is wrong. He knows what is coming. But Moonbeam is starting to see the lies behind Father John`s words. She wants him to be found out. What if the only way out of the darkness is to light a fire? ...

“ After the Fire, a Still Small Voice” is the debut novel from Evie Wyld, winner of the * John Llewellyn Prize* & was shortlisted for the * Orange Award for New Writers*. The novel centres on Frank & Leon, two men from different times, discovering that sometimes all you learn from your parents` mistakes is how to make different ones of your own. Frank is trying to escape his troubled past by running away to his family`s beach shack. As he struggles to make friends with his neighbors & their precocious young daughter, Sal, he discovers the community has fresh wounds of its own. A girl is missing, & when Sal too disappears, suspicion falls on Frank. Decades earlier, Leon tries to hold together his family`s cake shop as their suburban life crumbles in the aftermath of the Korean War. When war breaks out again, Leon must go from sculpting sugar figurines to killing young men as a conscript in the Vietnam War. ...

` London was but is no more!` In these words diarist John Evelyn summed up the destruction wrought by the Great Fire that swept through the City of London in 1666. The losses included St Paul`s Cathedral & eight-seven parish churches (as well as at least thirteen thousand houses). In After the Fire, celebrated photographer & architectural historian Angelo Hornak explores, with the help of his own stunning photographs, the churches built in London during the sixty years that followed the Great Fire, as London rose from the ashes, more beautiful
- & far more spectacular
- than ever before. The catastrophe offered a unique opportunity to Christopher Wren & his colleagues
- including Robert Hooke & Nicholas Hawksmoor
- who, over the next forty years, rebuilt St Paul`s & fifty-one other London churches in a dramatic new style inspired by the European Baroque. Forty-five years after the Fire, the Fifty New Churches Act of 1711 gave Nicholas Hawksmoor the scope to build breathtaking (and controversial) new churches including St Anne`s Limehouse, Christ Church Spitalfields & St George`s Bloomsbury. By the 1720s the pendulum was swinging away from the Baroque of Wren & Hawksmoor, & it was James Gibbs` more restrained St Martin-in the-Fields that was to provide the prototype for churches throughout the English-speaking world
- especially in North America
- for the next hundred years.





...

The economy was booming. People had more money than they knew what to do with. & then the earthquake struck. For the characters in After the Quake, the Kobe earthquake is an echo from a past they buried long ago. Satsuki has spent thirty years hating one man: a lover who destroyed her chances of having children. Did her desire for revenge cause the earthquake? Junpei`s estranged parents live in Kobe. Should he contact them? Miyake left his family in Kobe to make midnight bonfires on a beach hundreds of miles away. Fourteen-year-old Sala has nightmares that the Earthquake Man is trying to stuff her inside a little box. Katagiri returns home to find a giant frog in his apartment on a mission to save Tokyo from a massive burrowing worm. ` When he gets angry, he causes earthquakes, ` says Frog. ` And right now he is very, very angry.` This new collection of stories, from one of the world`s greatest living writers, dissects the violence beneath the surface of modern Japan. ...

In August 1947 the British ended the ` Raj` & left India. Some stayed on; others who had grown up in India shortly returned there. Over the next sixty years they adapted to modern India while always being conscious of their legacy, the inheritance of the Raj. This is the story of the very last of the stayers-on. Through their eyes we see how the legacy has withered over the years but, with their help, also how it has evolved in a new millennium: from post-imperial hangover to heritage industry; from the singing of Victorian hymns in neo-Gothic churches to a new Christian evangelism; from Shakespeare wallahs to multimedia English language teaching & call centres. Tea planter, missionary, tiger hunter turned conservationist, club manager, `box-wallah`, antiques dealer, single mother in the ghost town of Mc Cluskiegunge
- they all have remarkable stories to tell. & now there are fewer than a dozen of the stayers-on left. Hugh Purcell`s After the Raj is the haunting, uplifting, unexpected story of the very last remnants of British India.
...

After the Silence is the utterly compelling crime debut from Jake Woodhouse. A body is found hanging on a hook above the canals of Amsterdam`s old town, a mobile phone forced into the victim`s mouth. In a remote coastal village, a doll lies in the ashes of a burnt-down house. But the couple who died in the fire had no children of their own. Did a little girl escape the blaze? &, if so, who is she & where is she now? Inspector Jaap Rykel knows that he`s hunting a clever & brutal murderer. Still grieving from the violent death of his last partner, Rykel must work alongside a junior out-of-town detective with her own demons to face, if he has any hope of stopping the killer from striking again. Their investigation reveals two dark truths: everybody in this city harbours secrets
- & hearing those secrets comes at a terrible price... After the Silence introduces Inspector Jaap Rykel in a gripping debut police procedural from Jake Woodhouse, which is sure to appeal to fans of Ian Rankin, Peter Robinson & Stuart Mac Bride. This is the first novel in The Amsterdam Quartet series. Jake Woodhouse has worked as a musician, winemaker & entrepreneur. He now lives in London with his wife & their young gundog. After the Silence is the first book in his Amsterdam Quartet.
...

Perfect for fans of The Killing or The Bridge, After the Silence is an utterly compelling crime debut set in Amsterdam. A body is found hanging on a hook above the canals of Amsterdam`s old town, a mobile phone forced into the victim`s mouth. In a remote coastal village, a doll lies in the ashes of a burnt-down house. But the couple who died in the fire had no children of their own. Did a little girl escape the blaze? &, if so, who is she & where is she now? Inspector Jaap Rykel knows that he`s hunting a clever & brutal murderer. Still grieving from the violent death of his last partner, Rykel must work alongside a junior out-of-town detective with her own demons to face, if he has any hope of stopping the killer from striking again. Their investigation reveals two dark truths: everybody in this city harbours secrets
- & hearing those secrets comes at a terrible price... After the Silence introduces Inspector Jaap Rykel in a gripping debut police procedural from Jake Woodhouse, which is sure to appeal to fans of Ian Rankin, Peter Robinson & Stuart Mac Bride. This is the first novel in The Amsterdam Quartet series. Praise For Jake Woodhouse: ” This gripping detective novel will thrill fans of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo & bears comparison to Fatherl&... Utterly unputdownable.” (The Sun). ” Utterly enthralling...looks set to be one of the key sequences in modern crime fiction.” (Barry Forshaw, Crimetime). ” Jake Woodhouse`s taut, twisty plots are expertly woven & beautifully written. They are peopled with complex characters that will have you turning the pages to see what becomes of them. He has created a flawed gem in Inspector Jaap Rykel, a cop with an assured literary future.” (Craig Robertson, author of Witness the Dead & The Last Refuge). ” After the Silence is as dark & twisty as the Amsterdam it navigates & Rykel a fascinating & original protagonist. A promising start to what could be a great series.” (Stav Sherez, author of A Dark Redemption). ” Complex...intriguing...keeps the reader hooked.” (Eurocrime).
...

Vince Cable`s bestselling book, The Storm, explored & explained the causes of the 2008 world economic crisis & how Britain should respond to the great challenges it brought. In After the Storm, Cable, who was Business Secretary in the 2010-2015 coalition government, provides a unique perspective on the state of the global financial markets & how the British economy has fared since 2008. This timely book will provide a previously unreported inside view of the coalition, & offers a carefully considered perspective on how the British economy should be managed over the next decade & beyond. What was sadly missing from the 2015 election campaign, Cable argues, was debate around the economic future of Britain, of how to make improvements in productivity to raise living standards, & above all how Britain can rebalance its economy & earn its keep in an increasingly uncertain global market. Cable addresses these issues from his vantage point as someone who has spent the last five years at the heart of government. After the Storm is a fascinating & urgent intervention from one of the key figures in British politics of the past two decades ...