` This is the story of about the strangest thing that I`ve ever encountered, old art dealer that I am.` It is perhaps the finest art collection of its kind, acquired through a lifetime of sacrifice
- but when a dealer comes to see it, he finds something quite unexpected, & is drawn into a peculiar deception of the collector himself... Stefan Zweig was a wildly popular writer of compelling short fiction: in this collection there are peaks of extraordinary emotion, stories of all that is human crushed by the movements of history, of letters that fill a young heart or drive a person towards death, of obsession & desire. They will stay with the reader for ever.
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The unseen letters of the only British officer to spend three years in the trenches throughout the First World War Colonel Graham Chaplin, commander of the Cameron Highlanders, wrote letters from the trenches almost daily to the wife he had married just before the war began. Even if he had no time to write, he would at least send a postcard to reassure her he was ` Quite well`. These personal & loving letters give a rare insight into the mind of a serving officer, his worries about his men & his family back home, his concern for the progress of the war (however cautiously phrased) & his comments on the growing list of friends dead or wounded. Having once refused what he considered unacceptably dangerous orders to send his troops over the top during the Battle of Loos, Chaplin wasn`t promoted out of the trenches until 1917. Respected & trusted by his men, he was, even so, the only officer to whom this happened. Andrew Davidson, author of the highly praised Fred`s War, analyses Chaplin`s unique status & weaves around his letters a fascinating portrait of a soldier`s life & of the war on the Western Front. ...

Few historical figures are as well-known as Napoleon Bonaparte, & yet the Emperor`s ten-month exile on the small island of Elba is virtually unexplored. Now, for the first time, we have a window into this critical moment when the most powerful man on earth turns defeat into one final challenge.A close character study mixed with a world-shaking drama, The Invisible Emperor will show Napoleon as he`s never before been seen: as heart-broken husb&, civil engineer, interior decorator, gardener & spy master. It will show a man at his nadir rise up against the global odds to build a miniature island empire, turn his two greatest foes into his closest confidantes, & return to France without firing a single shot. ...

A killer at large in a remote Basque Country valley, a detective to rival Sarah Lund, myth versus reality, masterful storytelling
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A killer at large in a remote Basque Country valley, a detective to rival Clarice Starling, myth versus reality, masterful storytelling
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`A real gem of a book` Stylist A wickedly funny tale of two rebellious sisters in 1940s Rio de Janeiro‘ Why Euridice & Antenor married, no one knows for certain.’ Euridice is bright & ambitious. But this is Brazil in the 1940s, & society expects her to be a loving wife & mother. While Antenor is busy congratulating himself on his excellent catch, Euridice spends her spends her humdrum days ironing his shirts & removing the lumps of onion from his food, dreaming of the success she could have made from herself – as a writer, dressmaker or culinary whizz – in another life. Her free-spirited sister Guida, on the other h&, is the kind of person who was ‘born knowing everything’. When she returns from her failed elopement with stories of heartbreak & loss, the lives of Euridice & her husband are thrown into confusion, with disastrous consequences. The Invisible Life of Euridice Gusmao is a darkly comic debut, bursting with vibrant Brazilian spirit & unforgettable characters – a jubilant novel about the emancipation of women, perfect for fans of Maria Semple’s Today Will Be Different & Elizabeth Strout’s My Name Is Lucy Barton. ...

Based on a true story The Invisible Mile tells the poignant story of five Australian & New Zealand cyclists who in 1928 formed the first English-speaking team to ride in the Tour de France. They were gallant, under-resourced & badly outnumbered but taken deep to the heart by the French nation. The novel describes in a wonderful poetic & visceral voice what it was like to ride in this race (the chaos, danger & rivalries), the extraordinary lengths to which the riders pushed themselves, suffering horrific injuries, riding through the night in pitch dark, & the ways they staved off the pain, through camaraderie, through sexual conquest, through drink, & through drugs (cocaine for energy, opium for pain). Added to the team is the fictional narrator who is cycling towards his demons in a northern France still scarred by the First World War. His brother was a fighter pilot damaged by his experiences in France, his sister has died, & this self-imposed test of endurance is slowly & painfully bringing him to his final, invisible mile where memory eventually comes to collide with the past ...

The sweep of a century, the hand of history, three women whose lives will never be the same again. As the twentieth century dawns, so begins one of the most dramatic periods in the history of South America. Women are emancipated, Che Guevara & Fidel Castro free Cuba, the Perons take power in Argentina, & three generations of Firielli women are to live, love, & fight for their independence & freedom. Pajarita is the founder of the dynasty, born into a rural village & constantly chafing against its narrow confines. A love-match with a circus performer offers her escape, but she is trapped in a cage of another sort when her husband becomes a monster. Her spirited daughter, Eva, enters a world shaken by revolution. Fleeing childhood abuse, & alienated from her mother, she heads to Buenos Aires, but the glittering circles she moves in cannot erase the memories of her past. Her daughter, Salome, driven by political passion becomes a guerrilla fighter, but her idealism turns to tragedy when she is captured, & brutalised. From bohemian Buenos Aires to the hills of Rio de Janeiro; from tangos to demonstrations; from the broad sweep of history to the intimate lives of the Fierelli family, The Invisible Mountain traverses a changing South America, in which some things
- love, family, hope
- continue forever.

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Small-time private investigator Ray Lovell veers between paralysis & delirium in a hospital bed. But before the accident that landed him there, he had promised to find Rose Janko. Rose was married to the charismatic son of a travelling gypsy family, Ivo Janko. When Ray starts to investigate her disappearance he's surprised that her family are so hostile towards him. The Jankos have not had an easy past. They are a clan touched by tragedy
- either they are cursed, or they are hiding a terrible secret. Could it be that Rose's discovery of that secret led to her disappearance all those years ago? Soon Ray wishes that he'd never asked the question. In a novel that is totally different from Stef's extraordinary debut The Tenderness of Wolves, she shows herself once more to be a matchless storyteller.
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” During the 1970s & early 80s, dozens
- perhaps hundreds
- of Japanese civilians were kidnapped by North Korean commandos

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