Harpercollins The Pact We Made AlAmmar Layla

On the morning after the Venice Preservation Society’s annual black-tie gala, art restorer and legendary spy Gabriel Allon enters his favorite coffee bar on the island of Murano to find General Cesare Ferrari, the commander of the Art Squad, eagerly awaiting his arrival. The Carabinieri have made a startling discovery in the Amalfi villa of a murdered South African shipping tycoon—a secret vault containing an empty frame and stretcher matching the dimensions of the world’s most valuable missing painting. General Ferrari asks Gabriel to quietly track down the artwork before the trail goes cold • “Isn’t that your job?” • “Finding stolen paintings? Technically speaking, yes. But you’re much better at it than we are.” • The painting in question is The Concert by Johannes Vermeer, one of thirteen works of art stolen from Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 1990

This landmark book tackles a deceptively simple idea: the more we spend time with people unlike ourselves, doing things together, the more understanding, tolerant, and even friendly we become • Combining fresh analysis with a wealth of fascinating examples, Jon Yates demonstrates the ways in which our societies have become disconnected, so that most of us spend less and less time with people who are different — as defined by age, race, or class, earning power or education • By answering a series of surprising questions, Yates reveals a set of truths that will change the way you think about yourself and those around you. What unites the England football team, the iPod and Singapore? How did a city that funded its schools the least become the best place to grow up poor? How did Silicon Valley come from nowhere to dominate the tech industry? How did a village of Italian-Americans become incredibly healthy while smoking cigars, drinking red wine and never exercising? And why is talking to our friends about politics the worst thing we can do for our democracy? • Fractured is ultimately an optimistic book, showing convincingly how great people are when they're united in diversity

To celebrate the 30th anniversary of first publication, a new de luxe edition of The Silmarillion, featuring the revised, reset text, a colour frontispiece illustration, bound in special materials and presented in a matching slipcase • The Silmarillion is an account of the Elder Days, of the First Age of Tolkien’s world. It is the ancient drama to which the characters in The Lord of the Rings look back, and in whose events some of them such as Elrond and Galadriel took part. The tales of The Silmarillion are set in an age when Morgoth, the first Dark Lord, dwelt in Middle-earth, and the High Elves made war upon him for the recovery of the Silmarils, the jewels containing the pure light of Valinor • Included in the book are several shorter works

For fans of Charles Duhig, Malcolm Gladwell and Nate Silver, a brilliant and buoyant investigation into the existence (or not) of hot streaks • For decades, psychologists and economists have studied the science of streaks to determine whether the ‘hot hand’ exists. Is there such a thing as being in the zone? Or it simply a case of seeing patterns in randomness? Genius scholars and Nobel Prize winners have dedicated years to answering this question. A substantial number of the decisions we make each day are rooted in two opposing beliefs: that if something happened before, it will happen again – or if it happened before, it probably won’t happen again • The Hot Hand is an incredibly entertaining and provocative investigation into the seductive idea that streaks not only exist but can be created

A love story that will break your heart. Perfect for fans of Karen Swann • Some bonds can never be broken • One terrible moment changes everything for teenagers Kate and David. Brought together during the darkest of times of the Troubles, a spark of hope is ignited between them – a hand held in the darkness, a promise whispered. Neither of them will ever forget those moments • It’s another ten years before they meet once more, and their lives are now so different. The promise they made to each other on that fateful day still binds them, but now they have so much more to lose • Have they missed their one chance at happiness? They only way they will ever know is to risk everything to be together. Is that too high a price to pay for love…?

"Интерпретация голландской культуры золотого века" - книга, которая создала репутацию Саймону Шаме, когда была впервые опубликована в 1987 году. Исторический шедевр, это эпическое повествование о голландской культуре Золотого века Рембрандта и ван Димена • В этой блестящей работе, которая выходит далеко за рамки социальной или культурной истории, Саймон Шама исследует удивительный случай самопроизвольного изобретения народа • Он показывает, как в 17 веке скромные фермерские, рыболовецкие и судоходные общины, не имевшие общего языка, религии или правительства, превратились в грозную мировую империю - Голландскую республику • Книга на английском языке • This is the book that made Simon Schama’s reputation when first published in 1987. A historical masterpiece, it is an epic account of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age of Rembrandt and van Diemen

‘We felt an urge to document what we had witnessed. If we who had experienced it, I reasoned, did not reveal the bitter truth, people simply would not believe the extent of the Nazis’ evil. I wanted to share our life, the events and our struggle to survive.’ • Thomas Geve was just 15 years old when he was liberated from Buchenwald concentration camp on 11 April 1945. It was the third concentration camp he had survived. Upon arrival at Auschwitz- Birkenau, Thomas was separated from his mother and left to fend for himself in the men’s camp of Auschwitz I, at the age of 13. During the 22 months he was imprisoned, he was subjected to, and forced to observe first-hand, the inhumane world of Nazi concentration camps • On his eventual release Thomas felt compelled to capture daily life in the death camps in more than eighty profoundly moving drawings

The ups and down of three plucky factory girls, set in Britain’s best loved wrapped chocolate factory • The Quality Street Factory is fizzing with the news that the King and Queen and the two young princesses, Elizabeth and Margaret Rose, are going to visit the Mackintosh Factory where the country’s favourite wrapped chocolate is made. The factory floor is heady with excitement but plans are dealt a blow when a much loved staff member is the victim of a poisoning incident • Everyone is under suspicion, which only adds to Reenie Calder’s woes, anxious that her new promotion has only made her stick out even more like a sore thumb. Can she and her friends, Mary and Diana, get their heads together and find the malicious troublemaker before something unthinkable happens?

HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics. 'The movements of his mind seemed to tend to the thought that some power was working against him.' When Henchard, an out-of-work hay-trusser gets drunk and sells his wife at a country fair, his life will never be the same. Eighteen years later, his wife and daughter return to Casterbridge to find that Henchard has become Mayor. Although he's spent most of his life attempting to repent for his actions, he remains a rash and impetuous man. Hardy portrays Henchard as a tragic hero, searching for love and acceptance from the community around him, posing the overarching question of whether we shape our own fate, or whether life deals us an inevitable hand

The brilliant and provocative new book from one of the world’s foremost political writers • ‘The anti-Western revisionists have been out in force in recent years. It is high time that we revise them in turn…’ • In The War on the West, international bestselling author Douglas Murray asks: if the history of humankind is one of slavery, conquest, prejudice, genocide and exploitation, why are only Western nations taking the blame for it? • It’s become perfectly acceptable to celebrate the contributions of non-Western cultures, but discussing their flaws and crimes is called hate speech. What’s more it has become acceptable to discuss the flaws and crimes of Western culture, but celebrating their contributions is also called hate speech. Some of this is a much-needed reckoning; however, some is part of a larger international attack on reason, democracy, science, progress and the citizens of the West by dishonest scholars, hatemongers, hostile nations and human-rights abusers hoping to distract from their ongoing villainy

THE END OF THE WORLD IS COMING. PLAY NOW. OR WE ALL LOSE • After centuries waiting in secret, twelve unbroken bloodlines, armed with hidden knowledge and lethal training, are called to take humanity’s fate into their hands… • The first book in a game-changing new series by bestselling author, James Frey • Bryan High School, Omaha, Nebraska: Sarah stands at her graduation ceremony – perfect SATs, a star athlete, her life ahead of her. Then a meteor wipes out half her school. But Sarah is not hurt and not surprised. Because she is the Player of the 233rd line – the Cahokian. And she knows what this means • Endgame is here • Juliaca, Puno, Peru: Jago walks the streets after the meteor hits. There’s looting and violence but he’s not scared. He is the Player of the 21st line – the Olmec

The true story of one of Scotland’s most notorious and romantic heroes • He was a spy, a clan-chief, a traitor. A polyglot, a deserter and a man of philosophy • Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat, was the last of the great Scottish chiefs – and the last nobleman executed for treason. In life, his wit, ambition and dubious sense of morality kept him in the thick of political intrigue. With a taste for risk and determined to make his fortune, Lovat made pacts with Catholics and Protestants, Scots and Englishmen • Lovat found his famous end a turncoat and a martyr: he threw himself in with the ‘45 rebellion and fought for Prince Charles against the crown. His execution in Tower Hill, at the age of 80, was the last of its kind • Lovat was one of Scotland’s most notorious and romantic figures: a man whose loyalty had no home, whose sword had a price