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. ...

Americans have always loved guns. This special bond was forged during the American Revolution & sanctified by the Second Amendment. It is because of this exceptional relationship that American civilians are more heavily armed than the citizens of any other nation. Or so we`re told. In The Gunning of America, historian Pamela Haag overturns this conventional wisdom. American gun culture, she argues, developed not because the gun was exceptional, but precisely because it was not: guns proliferated in America because throughout most of the nation`s history, they were perceived as an unexceptional commodity, no different than buttons or typewriters. Focusing on the history of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, one of the most iconic arms manufacturers in America, Haag challenges many basic assumptions of how & when America became a gun culture. Under the leadership of Oliver Winchester & his heirs, the company used aggressive, sometimes ingenious sales & marketing techniques to create new markets for their product. Guns have never ”sold themselves”; rather, through advertising & innovative distribution campaigns, the gun industry did. Through the meticulous examination of gun industry archives, Haag challenges the myth of a primal bond between Americans & their firearms. Over the course of its 150 year history, the Winchester Repeating Arms Company sold over 8 million guns. But Oliver Winchester--a shirtmaker in his previous career--had no apparent qualms about a life spent arming America. His daughter-in-law Sarah Winchester was a different story. Legend holds that Sarah was haunted by what she considered a vast blood fortune, & became convinced that the ghosts of rifle victims were haunting her. She channeled much of her inheritance, & her conflicted conscience, into a monstrous estate now known as the Winchester Mystery House, where she sought refuge from this ever-expanding army of phantoms. In this provocative & deeply-researched work of narrative history, Haag fundamentally revises the history of arms in America, & in so doing explodes the cliches that have created & sustained our lethal gun culture. ...

Probably the best known, & to their adversaries the most feared, body of fighting men in the British Army, Gurkhas were first recruited to serve the British Crown 200 years ago in 1815 & for all those years their signature weapon has remained the Kukri. In that time, these young men, from the Nepalese hills, have fought in all the major wars where the British Army has been deployed. Winning an extraordinary number of medals for bravery, the Regiment has also won an extraordinary romantic place in the hearts of British people. In 2015, there will be major celebrations to commemorate the 200th Anniversary of Gurkha service to the British Crown. This book, written by Major General J C Lawrence CBE, with a foreword by HRH The Prince of Wales & an introduction by Joanna Lumley OBE, is the complete visual history of Britain`s Gurkhas & the mystique that surrounds them. As Field Marshall Sam Manekshaw, former Chief of Staff of the Indian Army once said, ” If a man says he is not afraid of dying, he is either lying or is a Gurkha.” ...

A disfigured servant girl plans to flee Nepal; a Kalimpong shopkeeper faces an impossible dilemma; a Hindu religious festival in Darjeeling brings with it a sacrifice; a Nepali-Bhutanese refugee pins her hopes on the West; a Gurkha`s daughter tries to comprehend her father`s complaints; two young Nepali-speaking immigrants meet in Manhattan. These are just some of the stories describing & dramatizing the experiences of the Nepalese people & the Nepalese diaspora
- the people whose culture & language is Nepalese but who are dispersed to India, Bhutan & beyond. From every perspective & on every page, Prajwal Parajuly blends rich colour & vernacular to paint an eye-opening picture of a unique world & its people.
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On Mount Gurugu, overlooking the Spanish enclave of Melilla on the North African coast, desperate migrants gather before attempting to scale the city`s walls & gain asylum on European soil. Inspired by firsthand accounts, Juan Tomas Avila Laurel has written an urgent novel, by turns funny & sad, bringing a distinctly African perspective to a major issue of our time. ...

The Sunday Times Top Ten Bestseller Shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award Winner of the South Bank Sky Arts Award Longlisted for the Baileys Women`s Prize for Fiction Shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize What is the difference between friendship & love? Gustav grows up in a small town in Switzerl&, where the horrors of the Second World War seem a distant echo. But Gustav`s father has mysteriously died, & his adored mother Emilie is strangely cold & indifferent to him. Gustav`s life is a lonely one until he meets Anton. An intense lifelong friendship develops but Anton fails to understand how deeply & irrevocably his life & Gustav`s are entwined until it is almost too late...` This is a perfect novel` Observer` The Gustav Sonata is beautifully rendered, & magnificent in its scope. It glows with mastery` Ian Mc Ewan ...

What is the difference between friendship & love? Or between neutrality & commitment? Gustav Perle grows up in a small town in `neutral` Switzerl&, where the horrors of the Second World War seem a distant echo. But Gustav`s father has mysteriously died, & his adored mother Emilie is strangely cold & indifferent to him. Gustav`s childhood is spent in lonely isolation, his only toy a tin train with painted passengers staring blankly from the carriage windows. As time goes on, an intense friendship with a boy of his own age, Anton Zwiebel, begins to define Gustav`s life. Jewish & mercurial, a talented pianist tortured by nerves when he has to play in public, Anton fails to understand how deeply & irrevocably his life & Gustav`s are entwined. Fierce, astringent, profoundly tender, Rose Tremain`s beautifully orchestrated novel asks the question, what does it do to a person, or to a country, to pursue an eternal quest for neutrality, & self-mastery, while all life`s hopes & passions continually press upon the borders & beat upon the gate. ...