The First World War threw the imperial order into crisis. New states emerged from the great European land empires, while Germany`s African & Pacific colonies, & the Ottoman provinces in the Middle East fell into allied hands. Britain, France, Belgium, Japan, & the British dominions wanted to keep the new states, but Woodrow Wilson & the millions converted to the ideal of self-determination thought otherwise. At the Paris Peace conference of 1919, the allies agreed reluctantly to govern their new conquests according to international & humanitarian norms & under `mandate` from the League of Nations. As The Guardians shows, this decision had enormous consequences. The allies sought to use the League to safeguard imperial authority, but that authority was undermined by the mechanisms for international oversight they had themselves created. Colonial nationalists & humanitarians exploited new rights of petition or opportunities for publicity to expose abuses or scandals; Germans resentful of the loss of their colonies & Italians eager to found a new empire arrived in Geneva to demand a repartition of the spoils. As imperial politicians wearied of continual scandals & crises
- revolts in South West Africa, Syria, Samoa, & Palestine; famine in Rwanda; labour abuses in New Guinea; extortionate oil contracts in Iraq
- they began to question whether independent states might be easier to deal with than territories subject to international scrutiny. Drawing on research in four continents & dozens of archives, & bringing to life a global network of nationalists, humanitarians, international bureaucrats, & imperial statesmen, The Guardians offers an entirely new interpretation of the importance of international organizations in the emergence of the modern world order.

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The beloved, life-affirming international bestseller which has sold over 5 million copies worldwide
- soon to be a major film
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It`s 1946 & author Juliet Ashton can`t think what to write next. Out of the blue, she receives a letter from Dawsey Adams of Guernsey
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A couple in their thirties live in a small rented cottage in a quiet part of Tokyo. They work at home as freelance writers. They no longer have very much to say to one another. One day a cat invites itself into their small kitchen. She is a beautiful creature. She leaves, but the next day comes again, & then again & again. New, small joys accompany the cat; the days have more light & colour. Life suddenly seems to have more promise for the husband & wife; they go walking together, talk & share stories of the cat & its little ways, play in the nearby Garden. But then something happens that will change everything again. The Guest Cat is an exceptionally moving & beautiful novel about the nature of life & the way it feels to live it. The book won Japan`s Kiyama Shohei Literary Award, & was a bestseller in France & America. ...

The Guest Log contains plenty of room for recording your visitors aboard, as well as information about your cruises. Reference pages are also included, covering such topics as: Equipment checklist, rules of the road, & more. Pages are also provided for recording important information about your vessel. ...

My name is Ted Spark. Three months ago, I solved the mystery of how my cousin Salim disappeared from a pod on the London Eye. This is the story of my second mystery. This summer, I went on holiday to New York, to visit Aunt Gloria & Salim. While I was there, a painting was stolen from the Guggenheim Museum, where Aunt Gloria works. Then Aunt Gloria was blamed for the theft, & I realised just how important it was to find the painting, & discover who really had taken it. ...

The Gulag Archipelago is Solzhenitsyn`s masterwork, a vast canvas of camps, prisons, transit centres & secret police, of informers & spies & interrogators & also of heroism, a Stalinist anti-world at the heart of the Soviet Union where the key to survival lay not in hope but in despair. The work is based on the testimony of some two hundred survivors, & on the recollection of Solzhenitsyn`s own eleven years in labour camps & exile. It is both a thoroughly researched document & a feat of literary & imaginative power. This edition has been abridged into one volume at the author`s wish & with his full co-operation. ...

For most people, being a single mother to three boys (two of them teenagers), sorting out your feelings for an ex-boyfriend who`s now an international film star, pacifying an elderly father who keeps asking why you`re not married, tolerating your bigoted brother, while keeping out of the way of a dismissive film producer who seems to have made a mission out of annoying you, would be quite enough of a challenge. Annie Lester however, is not only trying to tackle all this
- she`s also doing it in the small Gulf emirate of Hawar where, in the summer of 2002, the impact of America`s decision to invade Iraq is just beginning to be felt. As her well-organised life begins to unravel in the most unexpected ways, Annie has to make some difficult decisions, & question where her loyalties lie. Are her sons defined by who they are, or by what they do? Can a British woman ever really be at home in the Middle East? & can James Hartley, the blue-eyed heartthrob adored by millions, really be serious about someone as ordinary as Annie Lester believes herself to be?
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The memory of war will stay with a man longer than anything else. Dawn, mist clearing over the rice fields, a burning Vietnamese village, & a young war photographer gets the shot that might make his career. The image, of a staring soldier in the midst of mayhem, will become one of the great photographs of the war. But what he has seen in that village is more than he can bear, & he flees. Jonathan drifts on to Japan, to lose himself in the vastness of Tokyo, where there are different kinds of pictures to be taken: peacetime pictures of crowds & subways & cherry blossom. & pictures of a girl with whom he is no longer lost: innumerable pictures of Kumiko, on the streets & in the rain & in the heat of the summer. Yet even here in this alien city, his history will catch up with him: that photograph & his responsibility in taking it; his responsibility as a witness to war, & as a witness to other events buried far deeper in his past. The Gun Room is a powerful exploration of image & memory, & of the moral complexity & emotional consequences of the experience of war. ...

The memory of war will stay with a man longer than anything else. Dawn, mist clearing over the rice fields, a burning Vietnamese village, & a young war photographer gets the shot that might make his career. The image, of a staring soldier in the midst of mayhem, will become one of the great photographs of the war. But what he has seen in that village is more than he can bear, & he flees. Jonathan drifts on to Japan, to lose himself in the vastness of Tokyo, where there are different kinds of pictures to be taken: peacetime pictures of crowds & subways & cherry blossom. & pictures of a girl with whom he is no longer lost: innumerable pictures of Kumiko, on the streets & in the rain & in the heat of the summer. Yet even here in this alien city, his history will catch up with him: that photograph & his responsibility in taking it; his responsibility as a witness to war, & as a witness to other events buried far deeper in his past. The Gun Room is a powerful exploration of image & memory, & of the moral complexity & emotional consequences of the experience of war. ...