Sean Barrett

Bleak House, Dickens's most daring experiment in the narration of a complex plot, challenges the reader to make connections: between the fashionable and the outcast, the beautiful and the ugly, the powerful and the victims. Nowhere in Dickens's later novels is his attack on an uncaring society more imaginatively embodied, but nowhere either is the mixture of comedy and angry satire more deftly managed.

"As you read these pages you will understand why I so admire [Peter Wohlleben] and am so in love with his work."—JANE GOODALL

Nature is full of surprises: deciduous trees affect the rotation of the Earth, cranes sabotage the production of Iberian ham, and coniferous forests can make it rain. But what are the processes that drive these incredible phenomena? And why do they matter?

In The Secret Wisdom of Nature,

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A stunning and poignant autobiographical look at the myriad experiences that shape a meaningful life, by the bestselling author of the Kurt Wallander mysteries.
 
“Surely one of the most moving and intriguing farewell notes ever written.... Intensely beautiful in its spirit.” —Alexander McCall Smith, New Statesman

In January 2014, Henning Mankell received a diagnosis of lung cancer....

The "No Popery" or Gordon Riots of 1780 include orgies and fires and Lord George Gordon as a major figure.

A king, old and frail. A challenger filled with vengeance. A kingdom's fate at stake. Sven the Boar is Jarl of Ribe once more. He and Charles try to settle into their new lives, but trouble and treachery are never too far away. Tormented by recent events, Charles struggles to adapt to life amongst the heathens that mock his Christian God and the arrival of a priest from the south only makes things worse. Meanwhile, Sven is burdened with the responsibilities...

An epic battle where heroes fight and die to protect a Kingdom from Viking invasion... 991AD King Aethelred the Unready's Kingdom of the English is threatened. Olaf Tryggvason and his fleet of Viking warships snap at the coastal edges like ravenous wolves, and Sweyn Forkbeard, King of the Danes, has landed in East Anglia with an army of battle-hardened warriors. Ealdorman Byrhtnoth of Essex must stand against them faced with overwhelming odds,...

Warrior queens and roman invaders do battle in the final volume of this thrilling epic fantasy trilogy. Caesar's soldiers have murdered, massacred and pillaged their way through Gaul and loom on the far side of the sea, ready to descend upon Britain - with them are an unstoppable legion of men twisted by dark magic. Somehow, Queen Lowa must repel the invasion, although her best general is dead and her young druid powerless. She faces impossible odds,...

Retired architect Otto Laird is living a peaceful, if slightly bemused, existence in Switzerland with his second wife, Anika. Once renowned for his radical designs, Otto now spends his days communing with nature and writing eccentric letters to old friends (which he doesn't mail). But Otto's comfortable life is rudely interrupted when he learns that his most significant and revolutionary building, Marlowe House, a 1960s tower block estate in South...

'The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.' Haunting, moving, evocative, The Go-Between is L.P. Hartley's heartbreaking novel about social constraints and childhood innocence. During the long hot summer of 1900, young Leo Colston is invited to stay for a month at a lordly, aristocratic manor in Norfolk. There he falls in love with his friend's older sister, who commissions him to ferry secret messages to the local farmer, her...

In "Rob Roy", a historical novel by Walter Scott, Frank Osbaldistone, travels to the North of England, and later to the Scottish Highlands, to collect a debt. During this time, he meets the legendary Scotsman, Rob Roy MacGregor. Set during the Jacobite Uprising of 1715, the novel realistically depicts the terrible social conditions in Scotland during that time. Hugely popular in its day for its gripping drama and vivid battle scenes, it was published...