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Yet, as he set off on his pilgrimage, he found he wasn’t alone. Accompanying him on his 126-kilometre walk in theheat of the Spanish sun was the ghost of his long-dead father, a distant and aloof figure whom he lost when he was only twenty-two years old. Here, with searing honesty and beautifully wrought prose, Harding examines how this man, who had diedalmost half a century ago, could have had such a profound effect on the writer’s life.
‘The premier satirist of great British crapness is on killer form in this gag-a-minute mystery’ Observer
‘A new Jonathan Coe is always a treat… Coe is a master at exploring the pains of modern life’ The Times
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Post-university life doesn’t suit Phyl. Time passes slowly living back home with her parents, working a zero-hour contract serving Japanese food to holidaymakers at Heathrow’s Terminal 5.
As for her budding plans of becoming a writer, those are going nowhere.
That is, until family friend Chris comes to stay. He’s been on the path to uncover a sinister think-tank, founded at Cambridge University in the 1980s, that’s been scheming to push the British government in a more extreme direction. One that’s finally poised to put their plans into action.
But speaking truth to power can be dangerous – and power will stop at nothing to stay on top.
As Britain finds itself under the leadership of a new Prime Minister whose tenure will only last for seven weeks, Chris pursues his story to a conference being held deep in the Cotswolds, where events take a sinister turn and a murder enquiry is soon in progress.
But will the solution to the mystery lie in contemporary politics, or in a literary enigma that is almost forty years old?
THE TOP FIVE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
This is the story of one lost poem, two great rivers, and three remarkable lives – all connected by a single drop of water.
*****
In the ruins of Nineveh, that ancient city of Mesopotamia, there lies hidden in the sand fragments of a long-forgotten poem, the Epic of Gilgamesh.
In Victorian London, an extraordinary child is born at the edge of the dirt-black Thames. When his brilliant memory earns him a spot as an apprentice at a printing press, the world opens up far beyond the slums and across the seas.
In 2014 Turkey, Narin, a Yazidi girl living by the River Tigris, waits to be baptised. The ceremony is cruelly interrupted, and soon she and her grandmother must journey across war-torn lands in the hope of reaching the sacred valley of their people.
In 2018 London, broken-hearted Zaleekhah, a hydrologist, moves to a houseboat on the Thames to escape the wreckage of her marriage – until an unexpected connection to her homeland changes everything.
Here is the fascinating story of the Spanish Armada, brought to life in this well-researched and richly illustrated book. Written in an accessible style and full of new revelations, this thought-provoking book is essential to gain a new perspective on the intriguing story of the Spanish Armada of 1588, one of history’s most famous events.
Following the arc of two centuries, from the horrors of the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 to the early 21st century, Wandering Stars is an indelible novel of America’s war on its own people.
It is also the tender, shattering story of several generations of a Native American family, searching for ways through displacement and pain, towards home and hope: a wondrous novel of poetry, music, rage and love, from one of the most astonishing voices of his generation.
It’s 1536 and the Queen has been beheaded. Lady Grace Fairfax, witch, knows that something foul is at play – that someone had betrayed Anne Boleyn and her coven.
Wild with the loss of their leader – and her lover, a secret that if spilled could spell Grace’s own end – she will do anything in her power to track down the traitor. But there’s more at stake than revenge: it was one of their own, a witch, that betrayed them, and Grace isn’t the only one looking for her. King Henry VIII has sent witchfinders after them, and they’re organized like they’ve never been before under his new advisor, the impassioned Sir Ambrose Fulke, a cold man blinded by his faith.
His cruel reign could mean the end of witchkind itself. If Grace wants to find her revenge and live, she will have to do more than disappear. She will have to be reborn.
In this gripping, propulsive, sultry novella, Juno Dawson takes us back to the bloody beginnings of Her Majesty’s Royal Coven to show us the strength, steel and sacrifice it takes to make a sisterhood.
Before dawn on a cold, miserably wet Irish morning, Arthur Cummins arrives absurdly early for his wedding to rich girl, Hilary Fenton. He virtually breaks into the church to get out of the rain and falls
over a murdered corpse in the apse.
Arthur is desperate for the wedding to go ahead. He has borrowed money from the sinister Gizzard Man and is counting on a large cash wedding gift from Hilary’s daddy to clear the debt. But a body in the body of the church is certain to end the happy day before it begins.
Arthur makes a spur-of-the-moment decision and hides the body in
the basement, to be discovered some time in the future.
Then everything spirals rapidly downwards, and Arthur finds himself the main suspect for the murder. And developing an unbefitting crush on investigating detective Francine Bluett only complicates matters.
Enlisting the help of his offbeat friend Tom Farrington, and his now ex-fiancée Hilary, Arthur unwittingly wades deeper into a world of violence and betrayal.
A dark and humorous tale of murder, a spoiled wedding and an almost love affair
She said, We needed a tool. So I asked the gods.
There have always been whispers.
Legends. The warrior who cannot be killed. Who’s seen a thousand civilizations rise and fall.
He has had many names: Unute, Child of Lightning, Death himself. These days, he’s known simply as “B.”
And he wants to be able to die.
In the present day, a U.S. black-ops group has promised him they can help with that.
And all he needs to do is help them in return. But when an all-too-mortal soldier comes back to life, the impossible event ultimately points toward a force even more mysterious than B himself. One at least as strong.
And one with a plan all its own.
In a collaboration that combines Mieville’s singular style and creativity with Reeves’s haunting and soul-stirring narrative, these two inimitable artists have created something utterly unique, sure to delight existing fans and to create scores of new ones.
In this final work from renowned journalist Robert Fisk, he picks up reporting on the Middle East where his internationally bestselling The Great War of Civilisation left off.
Fully immersed in the Middle East and critical of the West’s ongoing interference, Fisk was committed to uncovering complex and uncomfortable truths that rarely featured on the traditional news agenda.With a foreword from fellow Middle East correspondent and former colleague Patrick Cockburn, Night of Power delivers an essential and final account from one of the world’s finest journalists, and proves itself timely as ever. An extraordinary chronicle of Fisk’s trademark rigorous journalism, historical analysis and eyewitness reporting.
Ghost Mountain, is a simple fable-like novel about a mountain that appears suddenly, and the way in which its manifestation ripples through the lives of characters in the surrounding community. It looks at the uncertain fragile sense of self we hold inside ourselves, and our human compulsion to project it into the uncertain world around us, whether we’re ready or not. It is also about the presence of absence, and how it shadows us in our lives.
Mountains are at once unmistakably present yet never truly fathomable.
. . It was unputdownable!’ Oprah Winfrey, OprahDaily.comSpanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water follows a family in southern India that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning – and in Kerala, water is everywhere.
At the turn of the century a twelve-year-old girl, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her forty-year-old husband for the first time. From this poignant beginning, the young girl and future matriarch – known as Big Ammachi – will witness unthinkable changes at home and at large over the span of her extraordinary life, full of the joys and trials of love and the struggles of hardship. A shimmering evocation of a lost India and of the passage of time itself, The Covenant of Water is a hymn to progress in medicine and to human understanding, and a humbling testament to the hardships undergone by past generations for the sake of those alive today.
Imbued with humour, deep emotion and the essence of life, it is one of the most masterful literary novels published in recent years.