Simon Prebble

It is Christmastime, 1914, and World War I rages. A young French soldier named Pierre who had quietly left his regiment to visit his family for two days is imprisoned when he returns. Now he faces execution for desertion, and as he waits in isolation, he meditates on big questions: the nature of patriotism, the horrors of war, the joys of friendship, the love of family, and how, even in times of danger, there is a whole world inside every one of us-and...

An abridgement of Dickens's beloved tale of a miser who learns the true meaning of Christmas when three ghostly visitors review his past and foretell his future.

"Inspector Alan Banks--hailed as "a man for all seasons" by Michael Connelly--must face the music when he becomes embroiled in one of his most perplexing and distressing cases in this haunting page-turner from New York Times bestselling author Peter Robinson. Two women. Two crimes. The first is a poet claiming she was assaulted decades earlier by a man now regarded as one of the country's national treasures. The second is a girl found on a remote...

"Lucien (Lucy) Minor is the resident odd duck in the bucolic hamlet of Bury. Friendless and loveless, young and aimless, Lucy is a compulsive liar, a sickly weakling in a town famous for producing brutish giants. Then Lucy accepts employment assisting the Majordomo of the remote, foreboding Castle Von Aux. While tending to his new post as Undermajordomo, Lucy soon discovers the place harbors many dark secrets, not least of which is the whereabouts...

Featuring the Honorable Charlie Mortdecai-degenerate aristocrat, amoral art dealer, seasoned epicurean, unwilling assassin, and general knave-about-Piccadilly-Something Nasty In the Woodshed is, chronologically, the third in the Mortdecai trilogy, after Don't Point That Thing at Me and After You With the Pistol, although written second. The players are, once again, Charlie, Johanna, and Jock (the thuggish anti-Jeeves), and there is plenty of liquor,...

A cult classic in the UK since its first publication there in the 1970s, Don't Point that Thing at Me is the hilarious and dark humored crime thriller featuring the Honorable Charlie Mortdecai: degenerate aristocrat, amoral art dealer, seasoned epicurean, unwilling assassin, and general knave-about-Piccadilly. With his thuggish manservant Jock, Mortdecai endures all manner of nastiness involving secret police, angry foreign governments, stolen paintings,...

As a young double agent infiltrating the Soviet spy network in Nazi-occupied Paris, Andrew Hale finds himself caught up in a secret, even more ruthless war. Two decades later, in 1963, he will be forced to confront again the nightmare that has haunted his adult life: a lethal unfinished operation code-named Declare. From the corridors of Whitehall to the Arabian desert, from post-war Berlin to the streets of Cold War Moscow, Hale's desperate quest...

This title is replete with brilliant photographs and exclusive in-depth coverage including Bob Ballard's 1985 discovery.

Writer W. W. Jacobss haunting tale of how a mans cavalier wishes are tragically granted by an exotic but cursed talisman, wreaking havoc on what was previously a content family.

A masterful collection of horror fiction by widely acclaimed authors whose contributions to the genre have been lost in the shadow of Poe, by one of America's foremost anthologists. Edgar Allan Poe did not invent the tale of terror. There were American, English, and Continental writers who preceded Poe and influenced his work. Similarly, there were many who were in turn influenced by Poe's genius and produced their own popular tales of supernatural...