Adaption is everything, something Frau Lohmark is well aware of as the biology teacher at the Charles Darwin High School in a country backwater of the former East Germany. A strict devotee of Darwin`s evolution principle, Lohmark views education as survival of the fittest: classifying her pupils as biological specimens & scorning her colleagues for indulging in `favourites`. However, as people move West in search of work & opportunities, the school`s future is in jeopardy & the Lohmark is forced to face her most fundamental lesson: she must adapt or she cannot survive. ...

It was the kind of August day that hinted at monsoons, & the year was 1774, though not for very much longer. Sixteen-year-old Nix Song is a time-traveller. She, her father & their crew of time refugees travel the world aboard The Temptation, a glorious pirate ship stuffed with treasures both typical & mythical. Old maps allow Nix & her father to navigate not just to distant lands, but distant times
- although a map will only take you somewhere once. & Nix`s father is only interested in one time, & one place: Honolulu 1868. A time before Nix was born, & her mother was alive. Something that puts Nix`s existence rather dangerously in question.. . Nix has grown used to her father`s obsession, but only because she`s convinced it can`t work. But then a map falls into her father`s lap that changes everything. & when Nix refuses to help, her father threatens to maroon Kashmir, her only friend (and perhaps, only love) in a time where Nix will never be able to find him. & if Nix has learned one thing, it`s that losing the person you love is a torment that no one can withst&. Nix must work out what she wants, who she is, & where she really belongs before time runs out on her forever.
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Six-year-old Gretl Schmidt is on a train bound for Aushwitz. Jakob Kowalski is planting a bomb on the tracks. As World War II draws to a close, Jakob fights with the Polish resistance against the crushing forces of Germany & Russia. They intend to destroy a German troop transport, but Gretl`s unscheduled train reaches the bomb first. Gretl is the only survivor. Though spared from the concentration camp, the orphaned German Jew finds herself lost in a country hostile to her people. When Jakob discovers her, guilt & fatherly compassion prompt him to take her in. For three years, the young man & little girl form a bond over the secrets they must hide from his Catholic family. But she can`t stay with him forever. Jakob sends Gretl to South Africa, where German war orphans are promised bright futures with adoptive Protestant families-so long as Gretl`s Jewish roots, Catholic education, & connections to communist Poland are never discovered. Separated by continents, politics, religion, language, & years, Jakob & Gretl will likely never see each other again. But the events they have both survived & their belief that the human spirit can triumph over the ravages of war have formed a bond of love that no circumstances can overcome. ...

A World War II love story set against the romance & danger of occupied Venice. Cenzo is a world-weary fisherman, determined to sit out the rest of the war. He`s happy to stay out of the way of the SS, quietly going about his business of fishing in the lagoons of northern Italy. Then one night, instead of pulling in his usual haul, Cenzo fishes a young woman out of the canal. Guilia is an Italian Jew who has managed to escape capture & is determined to find her family. This meeting results in them both taking an entirely unexpected journey, & Cenzo suddenly finds himself thrown headlong into the world of international wartime politics, where everyone has their own agenda & nowhere is safe... ...

From the internationally bestselling author of Gorky Park comes a suspenseful World War II story set against the beauty, mystery & danger of occupied Venice. Venice, 1945. The war may be waning, but the city known as La Serenissima is still occupied & the people of Italy fear the power of the Third Reich. One night, under a canopy of stars, a fisherman named Cenzo finds a young woman`s body floating in the lagoon & soon discovers that she is still alive & in trouble. Born to a wealthy Jewish family, Giulia is on the run from the Wehrmacht SS. Cenzo chooses to protect Giulia
- an act of kindness that leads them into the world of Partisans, Mussolini`s broken promises, &, everywhere, the enigmatic maze of the Venice Lagoon...
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THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO IS BACK WITH A UK NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER Lisbeth Salander & Mikael Blomkvist have not been in touch for some time. Then Blomkvist is contacted by renowned Swedish scientist Professor Balder. Warned that his life is in danger, but more concerned for his son`s well-being, Balder wants Millennium to publish his story
- & it is a terrifying one. More interesting to Blomkvist than Balder`s world-leading advances in Artificial Intelligence, is his connection with a certain female superhacker. It seems that Salander, like Balder, is a target of ruthless cyber gangsters
- & a violent criminal conspiracy that will very soon bring terror to the snowbound streets of Stockholm, to the Millennium team, & to Blomkvist & Salander themselves.

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” It is as if Henry VIII, Mary & Elizabeth were combined into one character, & unleashed for the first time: so much more fun than another Boleyn book”. (” Independent”). ” Compelling, exotic & fast-paced: a wonderful story of love & death that transports you into a forgotten world”. (Vanora Bennett). ” Speedy, gripping, historical fiction”. (Marie Claire). ” Clothier has a good story, a vigorous style & well-turned phrase”. (” Times Literary Supplement”). ...

The dazzling new novel from Ruth Rendell. When the bones of two severed hands are discovered in a box, an investigation into a long buried crime of passion begins. & a group of friends, who played together as children, begin to question their past. ` For Woody, anger was cold. Cold & slow. But once it had started it mounted gradually & he could think of nothing else. He knew he couldn`t stay alive while those two were alive. Instead of sleeping, he lay awake in the dark & saw those hands. Anita`s narrow white hand with the long nails painted pastel pink, the man`s brown hand equally shapely, the fingers slightly splayed.` Beneath the green meadows of Loughton, Essex, a dark network of tunnels has been dug. A group of children discover them. They play there. It becomes their place. Seventy years on, the world has changed. Developers have altered the rural landscape. Friends from a half-remembered world have married, died, grown sick, moved
- or disappeared. Work on a new house called Warlock uncovers a long buried grisly secret. & a weary detective, more concerned with current crimes, must investigate a case of murder. In all her novels, Ruth Rendell digs deep beneath the surface to investigate the secrets of the human psyche. The interconnecting tunnels of Loughton in THE GIRL NEXT DOOR lead to no single destination. But the relationships formed there, & the incidents that occurred, exert a profound influence
- not only on the survivors but in unearthing the true nature of the mysterious past.

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One rainy morning Commissario Brunetti & Ispettore Vianello respond to an emergency call reporting a body floating near some steps on the Grand Canal. Reaching down to pull it out, Brunetti`s wrist is caught by the silkiness of golden hair, & he sees a small foot
- together he & Vianello lift a dead girl from the water. But, inconceivably, no one has reported a missing child, nor the theft of the gold jewellery that she carries. Brunetti is drawn into a search not only for the cause of her death but also for her identity, her family, & for the secrets that people will keep in order to protect their children
- be they innocent or guilty. From the canals & palazzi of Venice to a gypsy encampment on the mainl&, Brunetti struggles with institutional prejudice & entrenched criminality to try to unravel the fate of the dead child.

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Elizabeth has been married to Michael for ten years. She has adjusted to a fairly monotonous routine with her wealthy, decent but boring husb&. Part of this routine involves occasional visits to Beinn Caorrun, the dank & gloomy house in a Scottish glen that Michael inherited. There are memories there that Michael will not share with her. But then Michael begins to change. It starts when he thinks he sees, in a picture, the figure of a girl on a landing. As he changes, life becomes so much more fun & Elizabeth sees glimpses of a man she can fall in love with at last. But who
- or what
- is changing Michael.. .?

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