Colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett was the last of a breed of great British explorers who ventured into 'blank spots' on the map with little more than a machete, a compass & unwavering sense of purpose. In 1925, one of the few remaining blank spots in the world was in the Amazon. Fawcett believed the impenetrable jungle held a secret to a large, complex civilization like El Dorado, which he christened the ' City of Z'. When he & his son set out to find it, hoping to make one of the most important archeological discoveries in history, they warned that none should follow them in the event that they did not return. They vanished without a trace. For the next eighty years, hordes of explorers -- shocked that a man many deemed invincible could disappear in a land he knew better than anyone, & drawn by the centuries-old myth of El Dorado -- searched for the expedition & the city. Many died from starvation, disease, attacks by wild animals, & poisonous arrows. Others simply vanished. In The Lost City of Z, David Grann ventures into the hazardous wild world of the Amazon to retrace the footsteps of the great Colonel Fawcett & his followers, in a bracing attempt to solve one of the greatest mysteries. It is an irresistibly readable adventure story, a subtle examination of the strange & often violent encounters between Europeans & Amazonian tribes & a tale of lethal obsession. ...

Soon to be a major film starring Robert Pattinson, Charlie Hunnam & Sienna Miller. Colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett, the inspiration behind Conan Doyle`s novel The Lost World, was among the last of a legendary breed of British explorers. For years he explored the Amazon & came to believe that its jungle concealed a large, complex civilization, like El Dorado. Obsessed with its discovery, he christened it the City of Z. In 1925, Fawcett headed into the wilderness with his son Jack, vowing to make history. They vanished without a trace. For the next eighty years, hordes of explorers plunged into the jungle, trying to find evidence of Fawcett`s party or Z. Some died from disease & starvation; others simply disappeared. In this spellbinding true tale of lethal obsession, David Grann retraces the footsteps of Fawcett & his followers as he unravels one of the greatest mysteries of exploration. ...

The Lost Continent is the book that launched the career of one of the funniest & most successful travel writers working today
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In THE LOST CONTINENT BBC Europe Editor Gavin Hewitt tells the story of a flawed dream, a noble vision that turned dangerous, & which led Europe into its gravest crisis since World War Two
- a crisis for which it was totally unprepared. A pillar of the post-war European dream was a shared currency, & with it came easy money, seducing some countries into a wild spending binge. After the financial crash in the United States, Europe caught the cold & was left with a debt crisis that came to threaten the entire European project. THE LOST CONTINENT is rich in anecdote, weaving together the stories of ordinary people with the high politics & drama of Europe in crisis to give an unparalleled & vivid portrait of a massive shift in modern history. It

Includes:: interviews with top officials & insiders, & dramatic accounts of key meetings. Gavin Hewitt`s THE LOST CONTINENT is a clear-eyed book by a distinguished & well-connected journalist which tells the astonishing story of how we got here & where we might be headed.


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`I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to` &, as soon as Bill Bryson was old enough, he left. Des Moines couldn`t hold him, but it did lure him back. After ten years in Engl&, he returned to the land of his youth, & drove almost 14, 000 miles in search of a mythical small town called Amalgam, the kind of trim & sunny place where the films of his youth were set. Instead, his search led him to Anywhere, USA; a lookalike strip of gas stations, motels & hamburger outlets populated by lookalike people with a penchant for synthetic fibres. He discovered a continent that was doubly lost; lost to itself because blighted by greed, pollution, mobile homes & television; lost to him because he had become a stranger in his own l&. Bryson`s acclaimed first success, The Lost Continent is a classic of travel literature
- hilariously, stomach-achingly, funny, yet tinged with heartache
- & the book that first staked Bill Bryson`s claim as the most beloved writer of his generation.

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Leda, a middle-aged divorcee, is alone for the first time in years when her daughters leave home to live with their father. Her initial, unexpected sense of liberty turns quickly to ferocious introspection following a seemingly trivial occurrence. Ferrante`s language is as fierce & finely tuned as ever
- she treats her theme with an intense, candid tenacity. A complex, controlled & piercing meditation on motherhood & womanhood.
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Her past.' Pallioti tapped the files. This, ' he said, is how you'll find her.' In Florence, a young American student goes missing. At first neither Alessandro Pallioti, one of the city's most senior policemen, nor Enzo Saenz, his deputy, are too concerned. But soon the men are horrified to discover that the older man Kristen has been spending time with is Antonio Tomaselli, a member of the notorious Red Brigades. Then, before the police can get a handle on the case, Kristen's step-mother, Anna, also vanishes. Before long Enzo finds himself enmeshed in a web of false identities, betrayed loyalties, & revenge. At its centre is Anna, a woman he is increasingly drawn to, but knows he should not trust; & at stake is the life of an eighteen year old girl. With the horrors of the past rising behind him & the women's futures hanging in the balance, Enzo Saenz is on unfamiliar ground & playing the most deadly game of his life.. . Set against the stunning backdrop of Ferrara, Rome & Florence, in the 1970's & the modern day, The Lost Daughter is at once a gripping thriller & the heartbreaking story of a desperate love affair, the consequences of which will resound for decades. ...

Geling Yan traces the lives of two individuals separated by prejudice & mistrust, but bound forever by their passion for one another. Fusang is a Chinese girl shanghaied from her village in China, brought to California & sold into the seedy underworld of prostitution. Soon she falls into an obsessive relationship with a young boy, Chris. But many barriers are laid between the lovers
- by Chris` wealthy family, & most menacingly by Fusang`s murderous pimp, who bestrides Chinatown with a clutch of daggers at his waist.
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Before he became a household name in America as perhaps our greatest hard-boiled crime writer, before his attachment to Lillian Hellman & blacklisting during the Mc Carthy era, & his subsequent downward spiral, Dashiell Hammett led a life of action. Born in 1894 into a poor Maryland family, Hammett left school at fourteen & held several jobs before joining the Pinkerton National Detective Agency as an operative in 1915 &, with time off in 1918 to serve at the end of World War I, he remained with the agency until 1922, participating alike in the banal & dramatic action of an operative. The tuberculosis he contracted during the war forced him to leave the Pinkertons--but it may well have prompted one of America`s most acclaimed writing careers. While Hammett`s life on center stage has been well-documented, the question of how he got there has not. That largely overlooked phase is the subject of Nathan Ward`s enthralling The Lost Detective. Hammett`s childhood, his life in San Francisco, & especially his experience as a detective deeply informed his writing & his characters, from the nameless Continental Op, hero of his stories & early novels, to Sam Spade & Nick Charles. The success of his many stories in the pulp magazine Black Mask following his departure from the Pinkertons led him to novels; he would write five between 1929 & 1934, two of them (The Maltese Falcon & The Thin Man) now American classics. Though he inspired generations of writers, from Chandler to Connelly & all in between, after The Thin Man he never finished another book, a painful silence for his devoted readers; & his popular image has long been shaped by the remembrance of Hellman, who knew him after his literary reputation had been made. Based on original research across the country, The Lost Detective is the first book to illuminate Hammett`s transformation from real detective to great American detective writer, throwing brilliant new light on one of America`s most celebrated & remembered novelists & his world. ...

Tom Loxley is holed up in a cottage in the bush, trying to finish his book on Henry James, when his dog goes missing, trailing a length of orange twine. As Tom searches it becomes clear that he needs to unravel other puzzles in his life & the story shifts between past & present, taking in his parents` mixed-race marriage in India, their arrival in Australia in the 1970s, Tom`s own failed marriage, & his current involvement with Nelly Zhang, an artist with her own secrets & mysteries. Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2008. ...