The Lost Heart of Asia Thubron Colin Random House, Inc

There was life before the fall. 1989 was a year of astonishing and rapid change: the fall of the Berlin Wall marked the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and an end to an entire way of life for millions of people behind the Iron Curtain. Bloc Life collects first hand testimony of the people who lived in East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Romania during the Cold War era, and reveals a rich tapestry of experience that goes beyond the headlines of spies and surveillance, secret police and political corruption. In fact, many of the people remember their lives under communism as 'perfectly ordinary' and even hanker for the 'security' that it offered. From political leaders, athletes and pop stars, to cooks, miners and cosmonauts, the stories collected in Bloc Life evoke the moods, preoccupations and experiences of a world that vanished almost overnight

The Lost Girls of Paris is an emotional story of friendship and betrayal during the second world war, inspired by true events – from the international bestseller Pam Jenoff • 1940s With the world at war, Eleanor Trigg leads a mysterious ring of female secret agents in London. Twelve of these women are sent to aid the resistance • They never return home • 1946 Passing through Grand Central Station, New York, Grace Healey finds an abandoned suitcase tucked beneath a bench. The case is filled with a dozen photographs, each of a different woman • Setting out to find the women behind the pictures, Grace is drawn into the mystery of the lost girls of Paris. And as she delves deeper into the secrets of the past, she uncovers a story of fierce friendship, unthinkable bravery – and, ultimately, the worst kind of betrayal

After ten years' journeying Odysseus returns, again and again, to Ithaca. Each time he finds something different: his patient wife Penelope has betrayed him and married; his arrival accelerates time and he watches his family age and die in front of him; he walks into an empty house in ruins; he returns but is so bored he sets sail again to repeat his voyage; he comes back to find Penelope is dead • In these forty-four retellings of passages from Homer's Odyssey, Zachary Mason uses Homer's linear narrative and explodes it: presenting alternative and contradictory fragments of familiar stories - the Trojan Horse, the Cyclops, Circe, the Sirens - allowing us to see Homer's masterpiece afresh. Elegant, provocative and utterly fascinating, The Lost Books of the Odyssey seems destined to become a modern classic

Some things which feel truly lost, are really there all along, safely hidden, just waiting to be found • France. Summer 1981: In a small village in southern France, a wilful English girl is falling in love. Frances Langley has fallen under Benoit's romantic spell, and their summer of love finds Frances willing to do almost anything for the handsome art collector, even hiding a precious artefact for him, stolen by the Nazis decades before • England. Summer 2022: Frances's son, Harry, finds himself packing up the clutter and chaos of his late mother's home. Little does he know that his mother had sent a letter to Tabitha, the lost love of his life, begging the pair to find a priceless jewellery box, hidden in her cottage • Harry quickly dismisses the search, but as an art historian, Tabitha cannot risk the chance to recover something so valuable that was long thought to be lost

Miranda Hart contributes a fabulous foreword to this beautiful new edition of the beloved bestseller, published to celebrate its ten year anniversary. Hailed a 'modern vintage classic', The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets was a Richard and Judy Book Club Choice • This special edition also includes a brand new exclusive short story from Eva Rice, The Moth Trap, which offers a glimpse into the cocktail party where Penelope's parents, Archie and Talitha, first met • Set in the 1950s, in an England still recovering from the Second World War, this is the enchanting story of Penelope Wallace and her eccentric family at the start of the rock'n'roll era • Penelope longs to be grown-up and to fall in love, but various rather inconvenient things keep getting in her way

В интернет-магазине shop.buka.ru вы можете купить цифровую версию игры AGON - The Lost Sword of Toledo с активацией в сервисе Steam • Профессор Сэмюэль Хант, историк Британского музея, путешествует по отдаленным уголкам мира в поисках мистических древних игр, которые хранят последние семьи, еще способные овладеть ими

It began with a spark • A house is burning. Its six tenants include a failed priest, a naturalist, a neurosurgeon and a photographer. Their landlord's relationship to them is both intimate and shadowy. At times he shares their obsessions and memories. He will also share their fate • The passions of these individuals reach beyond the dying house that holds them. One recalls a lonely childhood, another the cremation grounds of India, another an African refugee camp. But will their stories be consumed forever by the flames?

On 17 July 1918, four young women walked down twenty-three steps into the cellar of a house in Ekaterinburg. The eldest was twenty-two, the youngest only seventeen. Together with their parents and their thirteen-year-old brother, they were all brutally murdered. Their crime: to be the daughters of the last Tsar and Tsaritsa of All the Russias. In Four Sisters acclaimed biographer Helen Rappaport offers readers the most authoritative account yet of the Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia. Drawing on their own letters and diaries, she paints a vivid picture of their lives in the dying days of the Romanov dynasty. We see, almost for the first time, their journey from a childhood of enormous privilege, throughout which they led a very sheltered and largely simple life, to young womanhood - their first romantic crushes, their hopes and dreams, the difficulty of coping with a mother who was a chronic invalid and a haeomophiliac brother, and, latterly, the trauma of the revolution and its terrible consequences

From the bestselling author of Who Owns England?, a mesmerising chronicle of our forgotten rainforests – and an inspiring intervention to help restore them to the places they once were • In 2020, writer and campaigner Guy Shrubsole moved from London to Devon. As he explored the wooded valleys, rivers and tors of Dartmoor, Guy discovered a spectacular habitat that he had never encountered before: temperate rainforest. Entranced, he would spend the coming months investigating the history, ecology and distribution of rainforests across England, Wales and Scotland • Britain, Guy discovered, was once a rainforest nation • This is the story of a unique habitat that has been so ravaged, most people today don’t realise it exists. Temperate rainforest may once have covered up to one-fifth of Britain and played host to a dazzling variety of luminous life-forms, inspiring Celtic druids, Welsh wizards, Romantic poets, and Arthur Conan Doyle’s most loved creations

A secret diary. A forbidden love. A centuries old mystery to solve • When a rare sixteenth-century manuscript lands on her desk courtesy of William, a struggling painter, shy book restorer Rose makes a startling discovery: it is a palimpsest. Beneath the text is a different document, one that's been written over. What they discover is the secret diary of William's ancestor, Giovanni Lomazzo, a Venetian painter who has just been commissioned by Venice's most powerful admiral to paint a portrait of his favourite courtesan... it is a diary of forbidden love, dangerous political plots, and secrets that could destroy everyone involved • Together, Rose and William work to solve the mystery of what happened to the secret lovers. As feelings develop between Rose and William, their own experience begins to mirror the affair that they're uncovering, and each set of lovers is forced to confront the reality of their romance

In this enthralling book van der Post establishes his role as a distinguished explorer and writer describing the rediscovery of the Bushmen, outcast survivors from Stone Age Africa • Laurens van der Post was fascinated and appalled at the fate of this remarkable people. Ostracised by all the changing face of African cultural life they retreated deep into the Kalahari desert. His fascinating attempt to capture their way of life and the secrets of their ancient heritage provide captivating reading and a unique insight into a forgotten way of life

In Titus Awakes the 77th Earl of Groan leaves the crumbling castle of Gormenghast and finds the larger world even stranger than his birthplace. Confronted by elemental and human threats - snowstorms, shipwrecks and attempts on his life - Titus' bravery is tested and he must fight to free himself from the claims of his past • Peake began this fourth and final volume of the Gormenghast stories but he died having only written a few pages. Using notes and the fragments he left behind, his wife, the painter and writer Maeve Gilmore, has created a richly imagined sequel that fans of The Gormenghast Trilogy will delight in