abacus

It seemed straightforward enough. Sean had now consumed so much alcohol that everything seemed perfectly reasonable. He'd started planning the jo...

When Michiel Steyn returns to the family farmstead in South Africa for his mother's funeral, he has spent close to half his lifetime abroad. But ev...

Rudyard Kipling was born in Bombay in 1865 and spent his early years there, before being sent, aged six, to England, a desperately unhappy experien...

'Gardam writes about love, death, loneliness, money and madness with gentle ferocity. The Old Filth trilogy should be read by anyone who has ever b...

From his chlidhood in Fez, having fled the Christian Inquisition, through his many journeys to the East as an itinerant merhcant, Hasans story is a...

'Very dark and very funny' Jo Brand'Utterly compelling' Jojo Moyes'Totally compulsive reading' Jenny ColganJean Collins had two daughters. But she ...

Douglas Hurd retired as Foreign Secretary in 1995 after a distinguished career in Government spanning 16 years. As Secretary of State for Ireland,...

Like his great-great-great uncle, the early geneticist Gregor Mendel, Dr Benedict Lambert is struggling to unlock the secrets of heredity. But for ...

Bestselling historian and broadcaster Tom Holland gives a thrilling panoramic account of the birth of the new Western Europe in the year 1000'An ex...

In 1830, as the end of the world approached, the charismatic, hunchbacked prophet of a religious sect settled in Lancashire heeds the biblical inju...

Vienna, 1938. Beautiful actress Julia Homburg and her politician husband Franz Wedeker embody all the enlightened brilliance of their native city. ...

Paris at the time of the French Revolution was the world capital of science. Its scholars laid the foundations of today's physics, chemistry and bi...

Now. Christopher Metcalfe returns to his family home in Kent after the death of his father. Sorting through a box of memorabilia from his days at p...

'It's a cliche to compare novelists to Jane Austen, but in the case of Jane Gardam it happens to be true. Her diamond-like prose, her understanding...

In these essays, about a quarter of them previously unpublished, Eric Hobsbawm reflects upon the theory, practice and development of history and it...

The senior pupils of St Peter's High School are on retreat to a secluded outdoor activity centre, coming to terms with the murder of a fellow pupil...

Royal Ascot, Henley Regatta, polo at Cowdray Park, public schools, pheasant shooting - it's a wonderful life, being a member of the English aristoc...

Tom Holland's bestselling account of the world's very first clash of civilisations between the Persians and the Greeks in 480BC'Magisterial... told...

The Raj was, for two hundred years, the jewel in the British imperial crown. Although founded on military expansionism and undoubted exploitation, ...

PLAYING CARDS IN CAIRO is a fly-on-the-wall account - like THE BOOKSELLER OF KABUL - of life (for western readers) in a strange and exotic environm...

Angel is dark and plain, introverted and submissive, a spontaneous composer of childish verses, wholly consumed by the wild, seductive spell of her...

'Prague Spring is a wonderfully atmospheric portrait of the city as well as a political and historical thriller with dashes of espionage. It is as ...

The first book in the Jack Parlabane series, from author Christopher Brookmyre.Yeah, yeah, the usual. A crime. A corpse. A killer. Heard it. Except...