Bored with her mundane factory job, her nagging mother and her alcoholic father-in-law, Louise is captivated by a glamorous American couple who move to her industrial hometown in Northern France. The
A kind, blundering Czech engineer is pressured by the Nazi government to hand over his invention, which could be key to their military operations. He flees to Paris, hoping to sell his invention to th
The love of drinking was well-developed in the nineteenth-century Englishman. With chapters on port, claret, sherry, champagne, Burgundy, Madeira, wine cellars, glasses and butlers, Through a Glass Li
A maid who is unexpectedly left her wealthy employers' worldly possessions, when they flee the country after the Nazi occupation; a loyal bank clerk, who steals a Renaissance portrait of a Spanish nob
On a quiet mountain road near Barcelona, a woman steps out in front of a car. When the driver, a well-known artist, stops to some to her aid, he finds she is alive, but without any memory of who she i
The life of the painter Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920) was chaotic and tragically brief. Consisting of a series of vignettes, mostly set in the painter's studio and peopled by his lover Jeanne Hébutern
What does eating out tell us about who we are? The deliciously cosmopolitan story of the restaurant from eighteenth-century Paris to El Bulli, now in paperback.The restaurant is where we go to celebra
A short yet fascinating account of Russia's most celebrated writer.In Robert Chandler's exquisite biography, literary giant Alexander Pushkin, lauded as the Russian Shakespeare, is examined as writer,
'Love does not need any comforting. It does not even need requiting. All it needs is itself.'Florence, 1502. Marshal Louis de La Trémouille's small army has stopped off en route to Naples, to buy obje
THE OLD WORLD IS CRUMBLINGOutside the gates of the magnificent Versailles palace, the city of Paris sits mired in squalor and crime. One night a body is found with ghastly mutilations that shock even
In the seventeenth century, a giant strides the border of the Cape Colony frontier. Coenraad de Buys is a legend, a polygamist, a swindler and a big talker; a rebel who fights with Xhosa chieftains ag
"It's long been assumed of the region where my grandmother was born... that at some point each year the dead will come home," Inara Verzemnieks writes in this exquisite story of war, exile and homecom
We'll create a machine. A peace machine that will put an end to all wars. As the twentieth century dawns the world stands on the brink of yet another bloody war. But what if conflict were not inevitab
'Sometimes, when you go astray and touch bottom, you finally come out on the other side' Lucie was brought up by bourgeois parents as a passionate young fascist. At the age of eighteen, the headstrong
One mistake can have a thousand consequences Nofar is just an average teenage girl - so average that she's almost invisible. Serving customers in an ice cream parlour all summer long, she is desperate
Raised near the beaches of Arcachon, Chantal inherits from her mother a deep love of swimming in the sea. Through her young eyes, Thomas vividly evokes the sensory pleasures of the beach: the smell of
Amid the conflict and desolation of post-Communist Albania, teenage boys Agim and Bujar share restless dreams of escape. After Bujar's father dies and Agim's family discover him dressed in his mother'
We all know families that are poor but 'respectable'. Mine, in contrast, was extremely rich but not 'respectable' at all... Banine's family were peasants who became millionaires overnight when oil gus
In this little-known classic of Italian literature, young Arturo grows up in near-isolation on the island of Procida in the Bay of Naples. His mother died in childbirth and his wayward father, who lef
In 1902, the young German writer Rainer Maria Rilke traveled to Paris to write a monograph on the sculptor Auguste Rodin. He returned many times over the course of his life, by turns inspired and appa
