George Orwell was an inveterate keeper of diaries. The Orwell Diaries presents eleven of them, covering the period 1931-1949, & follows Orwell from his early years as a writer to his last literary notebook. An entry from 1931 tells of a communal shave in the Trafalgar Square fountains, while notes from his travels through industrial England show the development of the impassioned social commentator. This same acute power of observation is evident in his diaries from Morocco, as well as at home, where his domestic diaries chart the progress of his garden & animals with a keen eye; the wartime diaries, from descriptions of events overseas to the daily violence closer to home, describe astutely his perspective on the politics of both, & provide a new & entirely refreshing insight into Orwell`s character & his great works. ...

Seattle, 1972: Neil Countryman & John William Barry, two teenage boys from very different backgrounds, are at the start of an 800m race. Their lives collide for the first time, & so begins an extraordinary friendship. As they grow older Neil follows the conventional route of the American dream, but the eccentric, fiercely intelligent John William makes radically different choices, dropping out of college & moving deep into the woods. Convinced it is the only way to live without hypocrisy, John William enlists Neil to help him disappear completely, drawing his oldest friend into a web of secrets & agonising responsibility, deceit & tragedy
- one that will finally break open with an unexpected, life-altering revelation.
...

Ryszard Kapuscinski witnessed & reported on major wars, coups & revolutions as they happened throughout the developing world & global South. In this distillation of his reflections on a lifetime of travel, he takes a fresh look at the Western idea of the Other: the non-European or non-American. Looking at this concept through the lens of his own encounters in Africa, Asia & Latin America, & considering its formative significance for his own work, Kapuciski traces how the West has understood the Other from classical times to colonialism, from the age of enlightenment to the postmodern global village. He observes how today we continue to treat the non-European as an alien & a threat, an object of study that has not yet become a partner in sharing responsibility for the fate of the world. In our globalized but increasingly polarized post-9/11 age, Kapuscinski shows how the Other remains one of the most compelling ideas of our times. ...

What happens when a tale with real magic, that was supposed to be finished, never was? This is a story about one of those stories.. . Midge loves riddles, his cat, Twitch, &
- most of all
- stories. Especially because he`s grown up being read to by his sister Alice, a brilliant writer. When Alice goes missing & a talking cat turns up in her bedroom, Midge searches Alice`s stories for a clue. Soon he discovers that her secret book, The Museum of Unfinished Stories, is much more than just a story. In fact, he finds two of its characters wandering around town. But every tale has its villains
- & with them leaping off the page, Midge, Gypsy & Piper must use all their wits & cunning to work out how the story ends & find Alice. If they fail, a more sinister finale threatens them all.. .A rich & twisting tale of magic, riddles & the power of imagination, from a classic author.


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The first known inhabitant of St Helena
- long before Napoleon
- was a 16th-century Portuguese renegade. In 1506 Fernao Lopes,

...

The Other Hand by Chris Cleave was shortlisted for the 2008 COSTA Novel Award. The novel is the story of two women, Little Bee & Sarah. Little Bee is a 16-year-old Nigerian asylum seeker who turns up on Sarah’s doorstep paperless & illegal after a brief but terrifying meeting on a Nigerian beach some years previous. Cleave`s novel alternates Little Bee`s traumatised but resilient voice as she observes the incongruities English life with the stubborn independence of Sarah, who struggles to maintain control as Little Bee`s arrival pitches her dynamic life into freefall. ...

Reissued to mark Sceptre`s 30th anniversary, with an exclusive new afterword by the author. Shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers` Prize & Costa Novel of the Year, this international bestseller has become a reading group classic. We don`t want to tell you too much about this book. It is a truly special story & we don`t want to spoil it. Nevertheless, you need to know something, so we will just say this: It is extremely funny, but the African beach scene is horrific. The story starts there, but the book doesn`t. & it`s what happens afterwards that is most important. Once you have read it, you`ll want to tell everyone about it. When you do, please don`t tell them what happens either. The magic is in how it unfolds. ...

Shortlisted for The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year 2015, Ben Fergusson`s critically acclaimed debut, The Spring of Kasper Meier, was the winner of the Betty Trask Prize 2015 & the HWA 2015 Debut Crown Award. The Other Hoffmann Sister is a gripping, evocative read about two sisters set in pre-WW1 Germany which will appeal to fans of The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry. For Ingrid Hoffmann the story of her sister`s disappearance began in their first weeks in Southwest Africa... Ingrid Hoffmann has always felt responsible for her sister Margarete & when their family moves to German Southwest Africa in 1902, her anxieties only increase. The casual racism that pervades the German community, the strange relationship between her parents & Baron von Ketz, from whom they bought their l&, & the tension with the local tribes all culminate in tragedy when Baron von Ketz is savagely murdered. Baroness von Ketz & their son, Emil, flee with the Hoffmanns as the Baron`s attackers burn down the family`s farm. Both families return to Berlin & Ingrid`s concerns about Margarete are assuaged when she & Emil von Ketz become engaged on the eve of the First World War. But Margarete disappears on her wedding night at the von Ketz`s country house. The mystery of what happened to her sister haunts Ingrid, but as Europe descends into chaos, her hope of discovering the truth becomes ever more distant. After the war, in the midst of the revolution that brings down the Kaiser & wipes out the aristocracy that her family married into, Ingrid returns to the von Ketzes` crumbling estate determined to find out what really happened to her sister. ...

The Other Mrs Walker is the beguiling debut from Mary Paulson-Ellis, for fans of Kate Atkinson & Sarah Waters. -- Waterstones Scottish Book of the Month March 2017 -- Somehow she`d always known that she would end like this. In a small square room, in a small square flat. In a small square box, perhaps. Cardboard, with a sticker on the outside. & a name.. . An old lady dies alone & unheeded in a cold Edinburgh flat on a snowy Christmas night. A faded emerald dress hangs in her wardrobe; a spilt glass of whisky pools on the floor. A few days later a middle-aged woman arrives back in the city she thought she`d left behind, her future uncertain, her past in tatters. She soon finds herself a job at the Office for Lost People, tracking down the families of those who have died neglected & alone. But what Margaret Penny cannot yet know, is just how entangled her own life will become in the death of one lonely stranger.. .` One of the strongest debuts of the year` Herald ` Full of twists & turns` Independent `A wonderful, inventive debut.. .I can`t wait to see what this author has up her sleeve next` Fanny Blake, Daily Mail ...

Paris, the City of Light, the city of fine dining, seductive couture & intellectual hauteur, was until fairly recently always accompanied by its shadow: the city of the poor, the outcast, the criminal, the eccentric, the willfully nonconforming. In The Other Paris, Luc Sante gives us a panoramic view of that second metropolis, whose traces are in the bricks & stones of the contemporary city, & in the culture of France itself. Richly illustrated with over three hundred images, The Other Paris reclaims the city from the modern bon vivants & speculators; scuttling through the knotted streets, through the whorehouses & dance halls, the knock-out shops & hobo shelters of the old city. ...