MacLehose Press Alice's Book. How the Nazis Stole My Grandmother's Urbach Karina

The story of a woman's life, from childhood to death, somewhere in provincial France, from the 1950s to just shy of 2025 • She has doting parents, does well at school, finds a loving husband after one abortive attempt at passion, buys a big house with a moonlit terrace, makes decent money, has children, changes jobs, retires, grows old and dies. All in the comfort that the middle-classes have grown accustomed to • But she's bored • She takes up all sorts of outlets to try to make something happen in her life: adultery, charity work, esotericism, manic house-cleaning, motherhood and various hobbies - each one abandoned faster than the last. But no matter what she does, her life remains unfocussed and unfulfilled. Nothing truly satisfies her, because deep down - just like the town where she lives - the landscape is non-descript, flat, horizontal

Lord of All the Dead is a courageous journey into Javier Cercas' family history and that of a country collapsing from a fratricidal war. The author revisits Ibahernando, his parents' village in southern Spain, to research the life of Manuel Mena. This ancestor, dearly loved by Cercas' mother, died in combat at the age of nineteen during the battle of the Ebro, the bloodiest episode in Spain's history • Who was Manuel Mena? A fascist hero whose memory is an embarrassment to the author, or a young idealist who happened to fight on the wrong side? And how should we judge him, as grandchildren and great-grandchildren of that generation, interpreting history from our supposed omniscience and the misleading • perspective of a present full of automatic answers, that fails to consider the particularities of each personal and family drama? • Wartime epics, heroism and death are some of the underlying themes of this unclassifiable novel that combines road trips, personal confessions, war stories and historical scholarship, finally becoming an incomparable tribute to the author's mother and the incurable scars of an entire generation

In Kirkeveien, Oslo, in the year 1956, forty-year-old Maj is worn down by being a homemaker and widowed mother. To the indignation of the Red Cross ladies, she cautiously frees herself from the role she has otherwise fulfilled to the letter. She finds a job that she turns out to be more than good at, and some kind of love, too. Her friend Margrethe is sick of her marriage to the antiquarian bookseller, Olaf Hall, but cannot think of divorce. Jesper gets a girlfriend who opens the door to a new, more liberated environment of vegetarianism and politics. And his best friend Jostein realises that his talent for making money will allow him access to a world that is larger and richer than that of the Oslo slaughterhouse • Friendship is a beautifully orchestrated story about people and their dreams, about social conventions, personal constraints and what it takes to have the courage to realise oneself

For reasons that will eventually become clear, Paul Hansen is in prison. He's been in prison for a couple of years now, sharing his cell with a fearsome Hells Angel murderer, who often reminds Paul that he could kill him at any moment • But life wasn't always like this for Paul Hansen. Before prison, there were his parents: Danish pastor Johannes and free-spirited Anna, the proprietor of a controversial art house cinema. There were his friends in L'Excelsior, the block of luxury flats where Paul worked officially as a caretaker, and unofficially as a restorer of souls and comforter of the afflicted. And above all, there was his partner, Winona, the daring seaplane pilot, and their beloved dog Nouk • Many of them are dead now: his parents, friends, Winona and Nouk

Freedom of a different kind is in the air across India. The fight against British rule is reaching a critical turn. The Nazis have come to power in Germany. At this point of crisis, two strangers arrive in Gayatri's town, opening up for her the vision of other possible lives • What took Myshkin's mother from India to Dutch-held Bali in the 1930s, ripping a knife through his comfortingly familiar environment? Excavating the roots of the world in which he was abandoned, Myshkin comes to understand the connections between anguish at home and a war-torn universe overtaken by patriotism • Anuradha Roy's enthralling novel is a powerful parable for our times, telling the story of men and women trapped in a dangerous era uncannily similar to the present

This is the first anthology capacious enough to celebrate the full diversity and energy of its writers, subjects and tones. The most famous authors are here, and many others, including some magnificent stories never republished since their first appearance in magazines and periodicals. The Penguin Book of the British Short Story has a permanent authority, and will be reached for year in and year out. This volume takes the story from the 1920s to the present day

Сохраняйте нежность и молодость рук днем и ночью, на отдыхе и на работе с кремом для рук с растительными экстрактами My Plant Hand Cream от южнокорейского бренда The Face Shop • Усиленное формулой на основе экстрактов алоэ вера и агавы ухаживающее средство интенсивно разглаживает кожу, устраняет сухость и делает заметно мягче в течение длительного времени • Растительный состав продукта обеспечивает полное восстановление эпидермиса после воздействия дневных стресс-факторов, а легкая текстура прекрасно впитывается и не оставляет жирных следов и липкости. Отлично увлажняет глубокие слои на долгий срок • Оригинальная упаковка крема для рук с растительными экстрактами The Face Shop My Plant Hand Cream в виде милых кактусов сделает использование средства вдвойне приятным и послужит прекрасным подарком Вашим близким

How Many Lies Can She Get Away With? A gripping domestic thriller of secrets, lies, extramarital affairs and murder • Is it worse to lie to your husband or the police? • Rikke is deceiving them both. When their upstairs neighbour Jorgen is found dead, she's questioned alongside her husband Asmund • How can Rikke admit in front of Asmund that Jorgen and she were having an affair? Or explain to the police the complexity of her feelings for Jorgen? The hint of relief that he's dead. And, as the investigation closes in on the neighbourhood, how long can she conceal the affair from her neighbours, her husband and her teenage daughter? • Rikke knows she can't hide the phone calls, emails and messages from the police. So she cuts herself a deal. In return for a few days' grace to tell Asmund before anyone else does, she'll share everything about the affair

The Novelist Kills by the Book • For Commandant Camille Verhoeven life is beautiful. He is happily married and soon to become a father • He's Always One Chapter Ahead • But his blissful existence is punctured by a murder of unprecedented savagery. When his team discovers that the killer has form - and each murder is a homage to a classic crime novel - the Parisian press are quick to coin a nickname . . . The Novelist • He Hates Happy Endings • With the public eye fixed on both hunter and hunted, the case develops into a personal duel, each hell-bent on outsmarting the other. There can only be one winner. The one who has the least to lose

The Reindeer Hunters is the second in a thrilling historical trilogy that began with The Bell in the Lake • The year is 1903, and twenty-two years have passed since Astrid Hekne died in childbirth. Her son Jehans lives on a modest smallholding up in the hills near Butangen, having withdrawn from his community. He is drawn to freedom, to fishing and reindeer hunting, and one day meets a stranger over the body of a huge reindeer buck • Outside the new church in Butangen, Pastor Kai Schweigaard still cares for Astrid Hekne's grave. The village's overworked priest is tormented by his old betrayal, which led to death and to the separation of two powerful church bells cast in memory of two sisters in Astrid's family. Kai is set on finding an ancient tapestry made by the sisters - the Hekne Weave - in the hope that it will reveal how he can remedy his iniquities

The year is 1903, and twenty-two years have passed since Astrid Hekne died in childbirth. Her son Jehans lives on a modest smallholding up in the hills near Butangen, having withdrawn from his community. He is drawn to freedom, to fishing and reindeer hunting, and one day meets a stranger over the body of a huge reindeer buck • Outside the new church in Butangen, Pastor Kai Schweigaard still cares for Astrid Hekne's grave. The village's overworked priest is tormented by his old betrayal, which led to death and to the separation of two powerful church bells cast in memory of two sisters in Astrid's family. Kai is set on finding an ancient tapestry made by the sisters - the Hekne Weave - in the hope that it will reveal how he can remedy his iniquities

The Dog Islands are a small, isolated cluster of islands in the Mediterranean - so called because together, when viewed from above, they form the shape of a dog, twisting and baring its teeth against a brilliant blue sea. One of the only inhabited islands (the one that takes the place of one of the dog's teeth) is dominated by a gently smoking volcano, fringed by black volcanic beaches and under the iron rule of the heads of community who are loath to let any outside influence disrupt the quiet way of life on the island • Then one morning, an old woman comes across three bodies that have washed up with the tide: three young black men, who have apparently drowned in their attempt to cross the sea. The initial reaction of the island community is that this tragedy must be covered up, lest any association with the drownings damages the island's tourism industry