The boy from the sea
£16.99Incredibly moving and warm, The Boy from the Sea is a love story: of a family, a town, and a boy whose arrival changes everything. For fans of Kate Atkinson, Claire Keegan and Jon McGregor.
Showing 97–108 of 914 resultsSorted by latest
-
-
The painter’s daughters
£9.991759, Ipswich. Sisters Peggy and Molly Gainsborough are the best of friends and do everything together. They spy on their father as he paints, they rankle their mother as she manages the books, they tear barefoot through the muddy fields that surround their home. But there is another reason they are inseparable: from a young age, Molly has had a tendency to forget who she is, to fall into mental confusion, and Peggy knows instinctively that no one must find out. When the family move to Bath, the sisters are thrown into the whirl of polite society, where the merits of marriage and codes of behaviour are crystal clear, and secrets much harder to keep. As Peggy goes to greater lengths to protect her sister from the threat of an asylum, she finds herself falling in love, and their precarious situation is soon thrown catastrophically off course.
-
The ghosts of Rome
£20.00February 1944. Six months since Nazi forces occupied Rome. Inside the beleaguered city, the Contessa Giovanna Landini is a member of the band of Escape Line activists known as ‘The Choir’. Their mission is to smuggle refugees to safety and help Allied soldiers, all under the nose of Gestapo boss Paul Hauptmann. During a ferocious morning air raid a mysterious parachutist lands in Rome and disappears into the backstreets. Is he an ally or an imposter? His fate will come to put the whole Escape Line at risk. Meanwhile, Hauptmann’s attention has landed on the Contessa. As his fascination grows, she is pulled into a dangerous game with him – one where the consequences could be lethal.
-
Glorious exploits
£9.99It’s 412 BC, and Athens’ invasion of Sicily has failed catastrophically. Thousands of Athenian soldiers are held captive in the quarries of Syracuse, starving, dejected, and hanging on by the slimmest of threads. Lampo and Gelon are local potters, young men with no work and barely two obols to rub together. When they take to visiting the nearby quarry, they discover prisoners who will, in desperation, recite lines from the plays of Euripides for scraps of bread and a scattering of olives. And so an idea is born: the men will put on Medea in the quarry. A proper performance to be sung of down the ages. Because after all, you can hate the Athenians for invading your territory, but still love their poetry. But as the audacity of their enterprise dawns on them, it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish between enemies and friends.
-
You dreamed of empires
£9.99One morning in 1519, conquistador Hernán Cortés entered the floating city of Tenochtitlan – today’s Mexico City. Later that day, he would meet the emperor Moctezuma in a collision of two worlds, two empires, two languages, two possible futures. Cortés was accompanied by his nine captains, his troops, and his two translators: Friar Aguilar, a taciturn, former slave, and Malinalli, a strategic, former princess. Greeted at a ceremonial welcome meal by the steely princess Atotoxli, sister and wife of Moctezuma, the Spanish nearly bungle their entrance to the city. As they await their meeting with Moctezuma – who is at a political, spiritual, and physical crossroads, and relies on hallucinogens to get himself through the day and in quest for any kind of answer from the gods – the Spanish are ensconced in the labyrinthine palace.
-
The players
£20.00England, 1685. Decades after the end of the civil war, the country is once again divided when Charles II’s illegitimate son, the Protestant Duke of Monmouth, arrives in Dorset to incite rebellion against his Catholic uncle. Armed only with pitchforks, Monmouth’s army is quickly defeated by King James II’s superior forces and charged with high treason. Those found guilty will be hanged, drawn and quartered. As Dorset braces for carnage, the redoubtable Lady Jayne Harrier and a small group of trusted allies – including her courageous son and the independent-minded daughter of a local lawyer – contrive ways to save men from the gallows.
-
-
Alvesdon
£9.99Wiltshire, 1939. In the small village of Alvesdon, the Castell family and their farm have been staples in the community for decades. As the threat of war edges closer to their sanctuary each day, each member of the Castell family finds themselves pushed in ways they could have never imagined. With relationships tested and torn apart, facing both personal tragedy and physical conflict, this novel explores the fortunes of three generations of the Castell family from the onset of the Second World War up until the Battle of Britain in 1940.
-
A history of the big house
£17.99“This vibrant family saga chronicles the rise and fall of the Nassar clan, as they navigate the great events of the 20th century in Lebanon, from the Ottoman Empire to the French Mandate. At the end of the 19th century, a man is forced to flee his village after a quarrel. Starting over with nothing, the banished, audacious Wakim Nassar will create orange plantations on the outskirts of Beirut and become the head of a large clan, feared and respected. The great house he builds at their center will become a powerful symbol of the Nassars’ glory, admired from afar. But this decadence is short-lived, battered by the First World War, illness, family tragedy, and the shifting regimes that control Lebanon. As circumstances compel Wakim’s descendants, one by one, to leave the house, it falls into ruin. A rich, sweeping tale full of unforgettable characters and anchored in historical fact, A History of the Big House captures the unique experienc
-
The haunting of Moscow House
£18.99In this elegant gothic horror tale set in post-revolutionary Russia, two formerly aristocratic sisters race to uncover their family’s long-buried secrets in a house haunted by a past dangerous – and deadly – to remember.
-
The lion women of Tehran
£9.99From the award-winning author of The Stationery Shop of Tehran comes a heartfelt, sweeping new novel of friendship, betrayal, and the pursuit of redemption, set against the tireless fight for women’s rights in Iran and following the journey of two girls from Tehran over the course of three transformative decades.
-
Maude Horton’s glorious revenge
£9.99An exciting and pacey story of a quest for justice in the macabre world of Victorian London, with an intrepid heroine ready to risk it all for her missing sister.