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‘A compelling and illuminating account of a great drama in the history of our times which showed once again that ordinary men and women really can change the world’ Jonathan Dimbleby, MAIL ON SUNDAY

For more than 40 years after the Second World War the Iron Curtain divided Europe physically, with 300 km of walls and barbed wire fences; ideologically, between communism and capitalism; psychologically, between people imprisoned under totalitarian dictatorships and their neighbours enjoying democratic freedoms; and militarily, by two mighty, distrustful power blocs, still fighting the cold war. At the start of 1989, ten European nations were still Soviet vassal states. By the end of the year, one after another, they had thrown off communism, declared national independence, and embarked on the road to democracy.

One of history’s most brutal empires was on its knees. Poets who had been languishing in jails became vice presidents. When the Berlin Wall fell on a chilly November night it seemed as though the open wounds of the cruel twentieth century would at last begin to heal. The Year of Revolutions appeared as a beacon of hope for oppressed people elsewhere who dared to dream that they too could free themselves.

In a dizzying few months of almost entirely peaceful revolutions the people’s will triumphed over tyranny. An entire way of life was swept away. Now, twenty years on, Victor Sebestyen reassesses this decisive moment in modern history.

No. 1 bestseller and superstar doing what he does best, introducing millions of avid readers to little-known peoples and places.

Until the early 1990s, when the Berlin Wall came tumbling down, travelling behind the iron curtain was never easy. In undertaking his new journey through Eastern Europe, breathing in its rich history, and exquisite sights and talking to its diverse peoples, Michael fills what has been a void in his own experience and that of very many others.

NEW EUROPE is very much a voyage of discovery, from the snows of the Julian Alps to the beauty of the Baltic sea, he finds himself in countries he’d barely heard of, many unfamiliar and mysterious, all with tragic histories and much brighter futures.

During his 20-country adventure Palin meets Romanian lumberjacks, drives the 8.58 stopping train from Poznan to Wolsztyn, treads the catwalk at a Budapest fashion show, learns about mine-clearing in Bosnia and watches Turkish gents wrestling in olive oil.

As with all his bestselling books, in his uniquely entertaining style, Palin opens up a new and undiscovered world to millions of readers.

No. 1 bestseller and superstar doing what he does best, introducing millions of avid readers to little-known peoples and places.

Until the early 1990s, when the Berlin Wall came tumbling down, travelling behind the iron curtain was never easy. In undertaking his new journey through Eastern Europe, breathing in its rich history, and exquisite sights and talking to its diverse peoples, Michael fills what has been a void in his own experience and that of very many others.

NEW EUROPE is very much a voyage of discovery, from the snows of the Julian Alps to the beauty of the Baltic sea, he finds himself in countries he’d barely heard of, many unfamiliar and mysterious, all with tragic histories and much brighter futures.

During his 20-country adventure Palin meets Romanian lumberjacks, drives the 8.58 stopping train from Poznan to Wolsztyn, treads the catwalk at a Budapest fashion show, learns about mine-clearing in Bosnia and watches Turkish gents wrestling in olive oil.

As with all his bestselling books, in his uniquely entertaining style, Palin opens up a new and undiscovered world to millions of readers.

A Memoir by Clarissa Eden, born a Churchill and a Prime Minister’s wife at the age of 34.

In 1955, at the astonishingly young age of 34, Clarissa Eden entered No. 10 Downing Street as the wife of the new Prime Minister, Anthony Eden.

Born Clarissa Churchill in 1920, her uncle was the great Winston, and when she married the 55-year-old Eden, then Foreign Secretary, at Caxton Hall register office in 1952, there were crowds as big as the gathering that had cheered Elizabeth Taylor and Michael Wilding’s wedding there six months earlier.

A renowned beauty, she was at home with her mother’s Liberal intellectual circle, and mixed in her youth with the pillars of Oxford’s academic community – Isaiah Berlin, Maurice Bowra and David Cecil among them: according to Antonia Fraser, she was ‘the don’s delight because she was beautiful and extremely intellectual’. Her close circle of friends included some of the leading cultural figures of the twentieth century: Cecil Beaton, Evelyn Waugh, Orson Welles among them. Her observations and insights into these men and their world provide a unique window into the mid 20th century. As the spouse of the most important man in Britain, the hostess at No. 10 and Chequers, Clarissa Eden was inevitably privy to a multitude of top-level secrets. The Suez crisis and Eden’s ill health meant that she shared just four years of Anthony’s political life and eighteen months as Prime Minister’s wife.

This individual, discriminating and honest memoir is her first account of extraordinary times, intuitively edited by Cate Haste, co-author of The Goldfish Bowl.

An imaginative, intriguing and dark fairytale.

After many years Doctor Victor Hoppe returns to the small village he grew up in. His return after an absence of many years generates a lot of interest – and suspicion – as he is accompanied by three triplets, all of whom share the same physical deformity as the doctor – a hare lip.

These children are very quiet and are rarely seen in the village. But with time, and a series of apparently miraculous cures and tales of the wife he lost, the doctor begins to win the villagers over. He hires an ex schoolmistress, Charlotte, to look after the children. But the longer she works with the doctor, the more she begins to suspect that the children – and the doctor – aren’t what they seem…

Inside the opulent, decadent world of the Mughal emperors

The Mughal emperors were larger-than-life figures, men written on a supra-human scale who exercised absolute power. The three centuries of their rule, as laid out in Eraly’s previous volume, THE MUGHAL THRONE, mark one of the most crucial and fascinating periods of Indian history. Here, he looks beyond the story of the empires rise and fall – an exotic growth that was transplanted to India from Islamic Persia – to bring the world of the Mughal ruler and Hindu subject vividly into focus.

Blending contemporary sources and detailed description he introduces an India full of strangeness and contrast: of sacred harems and suttee rites, of brutal war and cultural and artistic refinement, of staggering opulence, deviant indulgences and abject poverty. From bizarre religious cults to the Mughal fondness for formal gardening, from murderous female bandits to the sex lives of the nobles, almost every angle of life is examined making this a comprehensive and absorbing introduction to India’s last Golden Age.

The beguiling story of a man, a woman and a nasty crime, from ‘the hottest thriller writer in the US’ [Time].

“But the whole deal, staying and going along with her idea, both, depended really on how much nerve he had. Which she would have to find out…”

Nancy Hayes has plenty of feminine charm – and the instincts of a shark.
Jack Ryan is handy with his fists, and has all the cunning of an ex-con.
Now, in a Michigan resort town, a rich man wants Jack gone and Nancy for himself.

For Jack, the choice is clear: Nancy’s promises of pleasure, her crazy, thrill-seeking schemes of breaking into homes, shooting guns and maybe stealing a whole lot of money is driving him mad.

But there is one thing Jack doesn’t know yet. Nancy is planning the deadliest thrill of all…

The New York Times bestselling author of BE COOL and GET SHORTY.

War in Cuba isn’t Ben Tyler’s concern. Still, sailing mares and guns into Havana harbor in 1898 – right past the submerged wreckage of the U.S. battleship Maine – may not be the smartest thing the recently prison-sprung horse wrangler ever did. Neither is shooting one of the local Guardia, though the pompous peacock deserved it.

Now Tyler’s sitting tight in a vermin-infested Cuban stockade waiting to face a firing squad. But he’s not dying until he gets the money he’s owed from a two-timing American sugar baron. And there’s one smart, pistol-hot lady at the rich man’s side who could help Ben get everything he’s got rightfully coming…even when the whole damn island’s going straight to hell.

OUT OF SIGHT was made into the highly-acclaimed movie starring George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez.

Jack Foley was busting out of Florida’s Glades Prison when he ran head-on into Karen Sisco with a shotgun. Suddenly the world-class gentleman felon was sharing a cramped car trunk with a disarmed federal marshal – whose Chanel suit cost more than the take from Foley’s last bank job – and the chemistry was working overtime. Here’s a lady Jack could fall for in a big way, if she weren’t a dedicated representative of the law that he breaks for a living. And as soon as she escapes, he’s already missing her.

But there are some seriously bad men and a major score waiting for Jack in Motown. And there’s a good chance that when his path crosses Karen’s again, she’s going to be there for business, not pleasure.

Palm Beach playboy Chip Ganz needs money – fast. He has spiralling debts, and his mother’s gravy-train has just derailed.

So he has a plan: he’s going to find somebody rich, and take them hostage. With the help of an ex-con, a psycho gardener and the beautiful psychic Reverend Dawn, he chooses bookmaker Harry Arno as the lucky victim.

The trouble is, Harry can scam with the best of them. And that’s not the only problem. US Marshal Raylan Givens is sleeping with Harry’s ex girlfriend, Joyce, and she wants Harry found.

And when everyone’s got a gun, someone is going to get hurt …

A tale of taut suspense from ‘the best writer in crime fiction today’ [USA Today]

Harry Arno runs a South Miami Beach gambling operation. To protect his position, he was forced to cut a deal with the local muscle, Jimmy Capotorto (Jumbo Jimmy Cap), an even fifty-fifty split. For years Harry had been padding his own stake by skimming off the top. Now a couple of local detectives – wise to sticky fingers – try to bag Jimmy by putting the squeeze on Harry.

U.S. Marshalls deliver Harry to court to testify at Jimmy’s trial. Even though he’s a step slower than he used to be, Harry’s no fool – he slips out of the country pronto. With Jimmy Cap’s men following and the Feds close behind, the three sides end up in Italy, watching their own backs while keeping abreast of Harry’s. But it’s not until the chase leads back to Miami that the real winners and losers are revealed …

The New York Times bestselling author of Be Cool and Get Shorty

When someone delivers an alligator to Judge Bob Gibbs’ porch, there’s no shortage of suspects – hard-sentencing, womanising redneck ‘Maximum Bob’ is pretty much the most unpopular man in Florida.

Throw into the mix the Crowe clan – about as primitive and aggressive as any alligator – a doped-up doctor on early release with a tag, quick-witted probation officer Kathy Baker, a mermaid and a long-dead slave girl called Wanda, and things get a tad complicated. And inevitably, they don’t work out the way you might expect…

A gripping mob thriller from the NEW YORK TIMES bestselling author of BE COOL and GET SHORTY.

Gorgeous widow Karen DiCilia just found out what it really means to be married to the mob. Her Mafia husband Frank left her millions and a Florida Gold Coast mansion.

He also left orders that she’d lose everything the day she slept with another man. With his boys as enforcers, Karen was soon a lonely lady. Then she met Detroit’s Cal Maguire, a sexy, street-smart ex-con with a scam to get Karen her money and her freedom – or get them both killed.

Ex-cons, armed robberies and scams in Miami – another classic crime thriller from the masterful Elmore Leonard.

After serving time for armed robbery, Ernest ‘Stick’ Stickley is back on the outside and trying to stay legit. But it’s tough staying straight in a crooked town – and Miami is a pirate’s paradise, where investment fat cats and lowlife drug dealers hold hands and dance.

And when a crazed player chooses Stick at random to die for another man’s sins, the struggling ex-con is left with no choice but to dive right back into the game. Besides, Stick knows a good thing when he sees it – and a golden opportunity to run a very profitable sweet-revenge scam seems much too tasty to pass up

The New York Times bestselling author of Be Cool and Get Shorty

Killer man Vincent Majestyk had his belly-full of killing in Asia. It was his job and he was one of the best, but when he stripped off his uniform he never wanted to go back to it.

Now he works under the open skies of the American Southwest, growing melons on his farm, where nobody knows about his past. And that was why a cheap crook named Kopas, a hard-nosed cop named McAllen, and a big-time, high-priced hit man named Renda all figured Majestyk was another local yokel to be pushed around.

Majestyk was about to go to war again…

‘A captivating biography … This rollicking story is packed with anecdotes’ The Times

Francis I was inconstant, amorous, hot-headed and flawed. Yet he was also arguably the most significant king that France ever had. This is his story.

A contemporary of Henry VIII of England, Francis saw himself as the first Renaissance king, a man who was the exemplar of courtly and civilised behaviour throughout Europe. A courageous and heroic warrior, he was also a keen aesthete, an accomplished diplomat and an energetic ruler who turned his country into a force to be reckoned with.

Yet he was also capricious, vain and arrogant, taking hugely unnecessary risks, at least one of which nearly resulted in the end of his kingdom. His great feud with his nemesis Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, defined European diplomacy and sovereignty, but his notorious alliance with the great Ottoman ruler Suleiman the Magnificent threatened to destroy everything.

With access to never-before-seen private archives, Leonie Frieda’s comprehensive and sympathetic account explores the life of the most human of all Renaissance monarchs – and the most enigmatic.

The women who wielded the real power behind the throne in Renaissance Italy, from a bestselling historian.

This book is one of drama on a grand scale, a Renaissance epic, as Christendom emerged from the shadows of the calamitous 14th century. The sweeping tale involves inspired and corrupt monarchs, the finest thinkers, the most brilliant artists and the greatest beauties in Christendom.

Here are the stories of its most remarkable women, who are all joined by birth, marriage and friendship and who ruled for a time in place of their men-folk: Lucrezia Turnabuoni (Queen Mother of Florence, the power behind the Medici throne), Clarice Orsini (Roman princess, feudal wife), Beatrice d’Este (Golden Girl of the Renaissance), Caterina Sforza (Lioness of the Romagna), Isabella d’Este (the Acquisitive Marchesa), Giulia Farnese (‘la bella’, the family asset), Isabella d’Aragona (the Weeping Duchess) and Lucrezia Borgia (the Virtuous Fury). The men play a secondary role in this grand saga; whenever possible the action is seen through the eyes of our heroines.

These eight women experienced great riches, power and the warm smile of fortune, but they also knew banishment, poverty, the death of a husband or the loss of one or more of their children. As each of the chosen heroines comes to the fore in her turn, she is handed the baton by her ‘sister’, and Leonie Frieda recounts the role each woman played in the hundred-year drama that is THE DEADLY SISTERHOOD.

The women who wielded the real power behind the throne in Renaissance Italy, from a bestselling historian.

This book is one of drama on a grand scale, a Renaissance epic, as Christendom emerged from the shadows of the calamitous 14th century. The sweeping tale involves inspired and corrupt monarchs, the finest thinkers, the most brilliant artists and the greatest beauties in Christendom.

Here are the stories of its most remarkable women, who are all joined by birth, marriage and friendship and who ruled for a time in place of their men-folk: Lucrezia Turnabuoni (Queen Mother of Florence, the power behind the Medici throne), Clarice Orsini (Roman princess, feudal wife), Beatrice d’Este (Golden Girl of the Renaissance), Caterina Sforza (Lioness of the Romagna), Isabella d’Este (the Acquisitive Marchesa), Giulia Farnese (‘la bella’, the family asset), Isabella d’Aragona (the Weeping Duchess) and Lucrezia Borgia (the Virtuous Fury). The men play a secondary role in this grand saga; whenever possible the action is seen through the eyes of our heroines.

These eight women experienced great riches, power and the warm smile of fortune, but they also knew banishment, poverty, the death of a husband or the loss of one or more of their children. As each of the chosen heroines comes to the fore in her turn, she is handed the baton by her ‘sister’, and Leonie Frieda recounts the role each woman played in the hundred-year drama that is THE DEADLY SISTERHOOD.

‘Try this tequila oil, Hugito. Just as the alcohol hits your stomach, the chilli will as well and blow it back into your brain. It will take your head off.’ Explorer Hugh Thomson takes on Mexico.

It’s 1979, Hugh Thomson is eighteen, far from home, with time to kill – and on his way to Mexico. When a stranger tells him there’s money to be made by driving a car over the US border to sell on the black market in Central America, Hugh decides to give it a go.

Throwing himself on the mercy of Mexicans he meets or crashes into, Hugh and his Oldsmobile 98 journey through the region, meeting their fate in the slums of Belize City.

Thirty years on, Hugh returns – older but not necessarily wiser – to complete his journey.

‘Try this tequila oil, Hugito. Just as the alcohol hits your stomach, the chilli will as well and blow it back into your brain. It will take your head off.’ Explorer Hugh Thomson takes on Mexico.

It’s 1979, Hugh Thomson is eighteen, far from home, with time to kill – and on his way to Mexico. When a stranger tells him there’s money to be made by driving a car over the US border to sell on the black market in Central America, Hugh decides to give it a go.

Throwing himself on the mercy of Mexicans he meets or crashes into, Hugh and his Oldsmobile 98 journey through the region, meeting their fate in the slums of Belize City.

Thirty years on, Hugh returns – older but not necessarily wiser – to complete his journey.

A masterly biography of a great Conservative Prime Minister (and publisher) – Harold Macmillan (1894-1986).

Harold Macmillan was a figure of paradox. Outwardly, it was Edwardian elegance and civilised urbanity. Inwardly, it was emotional damage from his wife’s open adultery and his progressive perplexity at the onward march of time.

The First World War showed the courageous soldier. From then on, it was politics, rather than the family business of publishing, which was to be his future. Nevertheless, although he supported Churchill in the 1930s he was deemed boring – and certainly not ministerial material.

All changed with the Second World War. Appointed Minister in Residence in North Africa, Macmillan’s career flowered. After the War he became indispensable to Conservative Cabinets and as Churchill’s Minister of Housing in the early 1950s he achieved the target, against all expectations, of 300,000 houses annually. Thereafter, he was Eden’s Foreign Secretary and Chancellor but by then Macmillan had become openly ambitious. Over the Suez affair in 1956 he played a difficult – and somewhat devious – hand. Eden’s resignation left him as the clear choice of his Cabinet colleagues to become Prime Minister.

From 1957 to 1962, Macmillan was a good – some would say a great – Prime Minister. By 1962, however, his government was looking tired. The Profumo affair in 1963 was particularly damaging, and in the autumn of 1963 his health forced him to retire.

A masterly biography of a great Conservative Prime Minister (and publisher) – Harold Macmillan (1894-1986).

Harold Macmillan was a figure of paradox. Outwardly, it was Edwardian elegance and civilised urbanity. Inwardly, it was emotional damage from his wife’s open adultery and his progressive perplexity at the onward march of time.

The First World War showed the courageous soldier. From then on, it was politics, rather than the family business of publishing, which was to be his future. Nevertheless, although he supported Churchill in the 1930s he was deemed boring – and certainly not ministerial material.

All changed with the Second World War. Appointed Minister in Residence in North Africa, Macmillan’s career flowered. After the War he became indispensable to Conservative Cabinets and as Churchill’s Minister of Housing in the early 1950s he achieved the target, against all expectations, of 300,000 houses annually. Thereafter, he was Eden’s Foreign Secretary and Chancellor but by then Macmillan had become openly ambitious. Over the Suez affair in 1956 he played a difficult – and somewhat devious – hand. Eden’s resignation left him as the clear choice of his Cabinet colleagues to become Prime Minister.

From 1957 to 1962, Macmillan was a good – some would say a great – Prime Minister. By 1962, however, his government was looking tired. The Profumo affair in 1963 was particularly damaging, and in the autumn of 1963 his health forced him to retire.

The first collection of food writing by Britain’s funniest and most feared critic

A.A. Gill knows food, and loves food. A meal is never just a meal. It has a past, a history, connotations. It is a metaphor for life. A.A. Gill delights in decoding what lies behind the food on our plates: famously, his reviews are as much ruminations on society at large as they are about the restaurants themselves. So alongside the concepts, customers and cuisines, ten years of writing about restaurants has yielded insights on everything from yaks to cowboys, picnics to politics.

TABLE TALK is an idiosyncratic selection of A.A. Gill’s writing about food, taken from his Sunday Times and Tatler columns. Sometimes inspired by the traditions of a whole country, sometimes by a single ingredient, it is a celebration of what great eating can be, an excoriation of those who get it wrong, and an education about our own appetites. Because it spans a decade, the book focuses on A.A. Gill’s general dining experiences rather than individual restaurants – food fads, tipping, chefs, ingredients, eating in town and country and abroad, and the best and worst dining experiences. Fizzing with wit, it is a treat for gourmands, gourmets and anyone who relishes good writing.

How the early Christians rewrote history, turning a Jewish teacher and messiah into a ‘Christian’ man-deity, bringing eternal life to all who believe

We often forget the undeniable fact that Jesus was Jewish. He lived and died a Jew, teaching the religion of his forbears and living by the Torah. After his death there was a ‘Jesus movement’ led by Jesus’ brother James in Jerusalem and a ‘Christ movement’ led by Paul (who never met Jesus) in the Diaspora. The Christ movement deliberately sought to replace and destroy the Jesus movement.

The battles of the Jewish community against the Romans, and the chaos after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in AD 70, helped Paul and his party to seduce Jesus’ followers away from the strictures of Judaism. Having killed off the historical Jesus, the new Christians turned the religion away from a traditional emphasis on behaviour into the most successful personality cult in recorded history.