Clover has loved James for as long as she can remember, since before she knew what what love was. But fate seems determined to keep them apart. As children, Clover & James played beside a turquoise sea under cloudless skies, their Caribbean island home a place of pleasure & privilege, of lush lawns & tennis parties. In such a paradise nothing should obstruct the kind of happiness Clover dreams of, except that, as she discovers, true love is often harder than paradise allows for. & when Clover`s mother falls out of love with her husb&, a web of complications is woven that may take Clover a lifetime to unravel. If she ever can... Tender & true, The Forever Girl traces love`s unpredictable path to maturity with style, wit & feeling. ...

In wartime Berlin, Cioma Schonhaus discovered a way of turning his talent for graphic design to good use: he forged documents which helped save hundreds of Jewish lives. His first challenge involved painstakingly recreating each of the twelve long & 24 short feathers on German Imperial Eagle so that a pass stood up to scrutiny by Nazi officials. Many more forged documents were to follow, as the 20-year-old Schonhaus attempted to stay one step ahead of the authorities, who had him on their wanted list. Schonhaus is breathtakingly bold
- he gets himself arrested for wandering onto a military airfield & manages to talk his way out; he makes a complaint about the drunken behaviour of a policeman harassing Jewish diners in a restaurant; he goes cycling with a girlfriend in the countryside at a time when Jews were subject to curfew & banned from riding bicycles. On his final 1000-mile flight from Germany, he is forced to abandon his plan to jump on a goods train bound for Switzerland as too dangerous, & is left with the option of swimming across the Bodensee, or pedalling all the way... As those around him are one by one deported to the concentration camps, his is an astonishing story of wartime survival.
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` When I wasn`t reading Sharon Guskin`s The Forgetting Time, I was itching to return to it` Jodi Picoult Noah is four & wants to go home. The only trouble is he`s already there. Noah is a little boy who knows things he shouldn`t & remembers things he should have forgotten. Because as well as being a four-year-old called Noah, he remembers being a nine-year-old called Tommy. He remembers his house. His family. His mother. & now he wants to go home. Two boys. Two mothers. One unforgettable story.. . ...

The Forging of a Rebel is an unsurpassed account of Spanish history & society from early in the twentieth century through the cataclysmic events of the Spanish Civil War. Arturo Barea`s masterpiece charts the author`s coming-of-age in a bruised & starkly unequal Spain. These three volumes recount in lively detail Barea`s daily experience of his country as it pitched toward disaster: we are taken from his youthful play & rebellion on the streets of Madrid, to his apprenticeship in the business world & to the horrors he witnessed as part of the Spanish army in Morocco during the Rif War. The trilogy culminates in an indelible portrait of the Republican fight against Fascist forces in which the Madrid of Barea`s childhood becomes a shell & bullet-strewn warzone. Combining historical sweep & authority with poignant characterization & novelistic detail, The Forging of a Rebel is a towering literary & historical achievement. ...

David & Jo Henniger are on their way to a party at their old friends` home, deep in the Moroccan desert. But as a groggy David navigates the dark desert roads, two young men spring from the roadside, the car swerves & collides with one of the boys... Meanwhile, festivities at the house are in full flow. Under the watchful eyes of their Moroccan staff, the extravagant hosts attend to the whims of their glittering, insatiable guests as the party rages on into a new day. The stage is set for a weekend in which David & Jo must come to terms with their fateful act & its shattering consequences. ...

An international bestseller, this is a German soldier`s first-hand account of life on Russian front during the second half of the Second World War. When Guy Sajer joins the infantry full of ideals in the summer of 1942, the German army is enjoying unparalleled success in Russia. However, he quickly finds that for the foot soldier the glory of military success hides a much harsher reality of hunger, fatigue & constant deprivation. Posted to the crack Grosse Deutschland division, with its sadistic instructors who shoot down those who fail to make the grade, he enters a violent & remorseless world where all youthful hope is gradually ground down, & all that matters is the brute will to survive. As the biting cold of the Russian winter sets in, & the tide begins to turn against the Germans, life becomes an endless round of pounding artillery attacks & vicious combat against a relentless & merciless Red Army. A book of stunning force, this is an unforgettable reminder of the horrors of war. ...

Bestselling author Charlie Connelly returns with a First World War memoir of his great uncle, Edward Connelly, who was an ordinary boy sent to fight in a war the likes of which the world had never seen. But this is not just his story; it is the story of all the young forgotten soldiers who fought & bravely died for their country The Forgotten Soldier tells the story of Private Edward Connelly, aged 19, killed in the First World War a week before the Armistice & immediately forgotten, even, it seems, by his own family. Edward died on exactly the same day, & as part of the same military offensive, as Wilfred Owen. They died only a few miles apart & yet there cannot be a bigger contrast between their legacies. Edward had been born into poverty in west London on the eve of the twentieth century, had a job washing railway carriages, was conscripted into the army at the age of eighteen & sent to the Western Front from where he would never return. He lies buried miles from home in a small military cemetery on the outskirts of an obscure town close to the French border in western Belgium. No-one has ever visited him. Like thousands of other young boys, Edward`s life & death were forgotten. By delving into & uncovering letters, poems & war diaries to reconstruct his great uncle`s brief life & needless death; Charlie fills in the blanks of Edward`s life with the experiences of similar young men giving a voice to the voiceless. Edward Connelly`s tragic story comes to represent all the young men who went off to the Great War & never came home. This is a book about the unsung heroes, the ordinary men who did their duty with utmost courage, & who deserve to be remembered. ...

” Secrets, tragedy, hidden pasts & family secrets all set in glorious Provence
- I loved this”. (Santa Montefiore). Secrets ripen
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` Secrets, tragedy, hidden pasts & family secrets all set in glorious Provence
- I loved this` Santa Montefiore Secrets ripen
...

More than 300 years ago, Taiwan was a controversial topic in London thanks to a stupendous fraud perpetrated by a Frenchman claiming to have been born there. He made up an entire fantasy for the island with a fake history, a fake language & long list of outrageous claims that made his book, A Description of Formosa, a publishing sensation in London in 1704. Even the Bishop of London swallowed Psalmanazar`s story & invited him to teach his (fake) Formosan language at Oxford University. The Formosa fantasy world he created, including elephants & camels, gold mines & outlandish religious sacrificial ceremonies, almost rivals Tolkein`s Middle Earth, with the crucial difference that many people believed it to be real. This is the story of one of the great frauds in literary history. ...