Moving back through the 1940s, through air raids, blacked out streets, illicit liaisons, sexual adventure, to end with its beginning in 1941, The Night Watch is the work of a truly brilliant & compelling storyteller. This is the story of four Londoners
- three women & a young man with a past, drawn with absolute truth & intimacy. Kay, who drove an ambulance during the war & lived life at full throttle, now dresses in mannish clothes & wanders the streets with a restless hunger, searching.. . Helen, clever, sweet, much-loved, harbours a painful secret.. . Viv, glamour girl, is stubbornly, even foolishly loyal, to her soldier lover.. . Duncan, an apparent innocent, has had his own demons to fight during the war. Their lives, & their secrets connect in sometimes startling ways. War leads to strange alliances.. . Tender, tragic & beautifully poignant, set against the backdrop of feats of heroism both epic & ordinary, here is a novel of relationships that offers up subtle surprises & twists. The Night Watch is thrilling. A towering achievement.
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When Patrick Modiano was awarded the 2014 Nobel Prize for LIterature he was praised for using the `art of memory` to bring to life the Occupation of Paris during the Second World War. The Night Watch is his second novel & tells the story of a young man of limited means, caught between his work for the French Gestapo informing on the Resistance, & his work for a Resistance cell informing on the police & the black market dealers whose seedy milieu of nightclubs, prostitutes & spivs he shares. Under pressure from both sides to inform & bring things to a crisis, he finds himself driven towards an act of self-sacrifice as the only way to escape an impossible situation & the question that haunts him
- how to be a traitor without being a traitor. In this astonishing, cruel & tender book, Modiano attempts to exorcise the past by leading his characters out on a fantasmagoric patrol during one fatal night of the Occupation.
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Bravery, courage, fear & love in a time of war. Despite their differences, sisters Viann & Isabelle have always been close. Younger, bolder Isabelle lives in Paris while Viann is content with life in the French countryside with her husband Antoine & their daughter. But when the Second World War strikes, Antoine is sent off to fight & Viann finds herself isolated so Isabelle is sent by their father to help her. As the war progresses, the sisters` relationship & strength is tested. With life changing in unbelievably horrific ways, Viann & Isabelle will find themselves facing frightening situations & responding in ways they never thought possible as bravery & resistance take different forms in each of their actions. Vivid & exquisite in its illumination of a time & place that was filled with atrocities, but also humanity & strength, Kristin Hannah`s novel will provoke thought & discussion that will have readers talking long after they finish reading. ...

The New York Times number one bestselling title. Bravery, courage, fear & love in a time of war. Despite their differences, sisters Viann & Isabelle have always been close. Younger, bolder Isabelle lives in Paris while Viann is content with life in the French countryside with her husband Antoine & their daughter. But when the Second World War strikes, Antoine is sent off to fight & Viann finds herself isolated so Isabelle is sent by their father to help her. As the war progresses, the sisters` relationship & strength is tested. With life changing in unbelievably horrific ways, Viann & Isabelle will find themselves facing frightening situations & responding in ways they never thought possible as bravery & resistance take different forms in each of their actions. Vivid & exquisite in its illumination of a time & place that was filled with atrocities, but also humanity & strength, Kristin Hannah`s The Nightingale will provoke thought & discussion that will have readers talking long after they finish reading. ...

From internationally acclaimed & Governor General`s Award-winning author Steven Heighton comes a passionate novel of buried secrets, the repercussions of war & finding love among the ruins Elias Trifannis is desperate to belong somewhere. To make his dying ex-cop father happy, he joins the military--but in Afghanistan, by the time he realizes his last-minute bid for connection was a terrible mistake, it`s too late & a tragedy has occurred. In the aftermath, exhausted by nightmares, Elias is sent to Cyprus to recover, where he attempts to find comfort in the arms of Eylul, a beautiful Turkish journalist. But the lovers` reprieve ends in a moment of shocking brutality that drives Elias into Varosha, once a popular Greek-Cypriot resort town, abandoned since the Turkish invasion of 1974. Hidden in the lush, overgrown ruins is a community of exiles & refugees living resourcefully but comfortably. Thanks to the cheerfully corrupt Colonel Kaya, who turns a blind eye, they live under the radar of the Turkish authorities. As he begins to heal, Elias finds himself drawn to the enigmatic & secretive Kaiti while he learns at last to ”simply belong.” But just when it seems he has found sanctuary, events he himself set in motion have already begun to endanger it. ...

This lavishly produced hardback book is the perfect keepsake gift to treasure. Fully illustrated in colour throughout by acclaimed illustrator Tony Ross, The Nights Before Christmas has twenty-four classic festive tales, songs & stories to read throughout Advent or keep as a family Christmas anthology. There are festive extracts from much-loved books including A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, Little Women by Louisa May Alcott & The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame; yuletide poems (`A Visit from St. Nicholas`) & carols (` Good King Wenceslas`), together with traditional tales from Hans Christian Andersen & the Brothers Grimm. This is the ultimate gift for Christmas. ...

This accessible volume looks at the centrality of the Nile to Egyptian history
- how the people of Egypt have relied on it for
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The Nile in the Step by Step series by Insight Guides focuses on providing tailor made walks & tours around the city. The guide features eighteen route recommendations that link up better known sights & take you off of the more beaten track; they are written by local experts who have personally selected places to eat & drink en-route & who offer insider tips on culture, shopping & nightlife. The guide has an array of colour photographs which help bring to life the background & descriptive information provided for destinations & attractions. An overview chapter opens the guide & reviews geography, customs & culture, history, food & drink, shopping, culture & entertainment. Next feature the selected itineraries for walks and/or tours, each of which have a good amount of accompanying information & come with a simple route plan. A user friendly alphabetical directory lists practical information to do with day to day basics & listings of h&-picked hotels & restaurants are provided to suit different budgets & tastes. The publisher ...

From Herodotus`s day to the present political upheavals, the steady flow of the Nile has been Egypt`s heartbeat. It has shaped its geography, controlled its economy & moulded its civilisation. The same stretch of water which conveyed Pharaonic battleships, Ptolemaic grain ships, Roman troop-carriers & Victorian steamers today carries modern-day tourists past bankside settlements in which rural life
- fishing, farming, flooding
- continues much as it has for millennia. At this most critical juncture in the country`s history, foremost Egyptologist Toby Wilkinson takes us on a journey up the Nile, north from Lake Victoria, from Cataract to Cataract, past the Aswan Dam, to the delta. The country is a palimpsest, every age has left its trace: as we pass the Nilometer on the island of Elephantine which since the days of the Pharaohs has measured the height of Nile floodwaters to predict the following season`s agricultural yield & set the parameters for the entire Egyptian economy, the wonders of Giza which bear the scars of assault by nineteenth-century archaeologists & the modern-day unbridled urban expansion of Cairo
- & in Egypt`s earliest art (prehistoric images of fish-traps carved into cliffs) & the Arab Spring (fought on the bridges of Cairo)
- the Nile is our guide to understanding the past & present of this unique, chaotic, vital, conservative yet rapidly changing l&.



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`A spectacular book with a wide range of insights to the 17th century` Terry Jones Four hundred years ago, every barrister had to dance
- because dancing put them in harmony with the universe. John Ogilby`s first job, in 1612, was to teach them. By the 1670s, he was Charles II`s Royal Cosmographer, creating beautiful measured drawings that placed roads on maps for the first time. During the intervening years, Ogilby had travelled through fire & plague, war & shipwreck; had been an impresario in Dublin, a poet in London, a soldier & sea captain, as well as a secret agent, publisher & scientific geographer. The world of his youth had been blown up & turned upside down. Beset by danger, he carefully concealed his biography in codes & cyphers, which meant that the truth about his life has remained unknown until today. In this book, Alan Ereira brings a fascinating hidden history to light, & reveals that Ogilby`s celebrated Britannia is far more than a harmless road atlas: it is, rather, filled with secrets designed to serve Charles II`s sinister purpose... The Nine Lives of John Ogilby is the story of a remarkable man, & of a covert journey which gave birth to the modern world.
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