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*Written with the haunting emotional power of Elizabeth Strout and Barbara Kingsolver, an astonishing debut novel that explores the lingering effects of a brutal crime on the women of one small Texas oil town in the 1970s*. Mercy is hard in a place like this … It’s February 1976, and Odessa, Texas, stands on the cusp of the next great oil boom. While the town’s men embrace the coming prosperity, its women intimately know and fear the violence that always seems to follow. In the early hours of the morning after Valentine’s Day, fourteen-year-old Gloria Ramírez appears on the front porch of Mary Rose Whitehead’s ranch house, broken and barely alive. The teenager had been viciously attacked in a nearby oil field—an act of brutality that is tried in the churches and barrooms of Odessa before it can reach a court of law. When justice is evasive, the stage is set for a showdown with potentially devastating consequences. *Valentine*  is a haunting exploration of the intersections of violence and race, class and region in a story that plumbs the depths of darkness and fear, yet offers a window into beauty and hope. Told through the alternating points of view of indelible characters who burrow deep in the reader’s heart, this fierce, unflinching, and surprisingly tender novel illuminates women’s strength and vulnerability, and reminds us that it is the stories we tell ourselves that keep us alive. ( *From the publisher*.)This is the story of… [life] in a backwater oil town in the mid-1970s, which Wetmore seems to know with empathy so deep it aches…. Several of these chapters are masterful short stories in their own right, but Wetmore knits them together with increasing intensity…. Wetmore has written something thrilling and thoughtful. Don’t let the launch of this novelist’s career be drowned out. Someday book clubs will meet again, and this would be a rousing choice. Ron Charles - Washington Post<

The Aldens are sight-seeing in New York City. But before the end of their very first day in the city someone steals the priceless Elizabeth Star Diamond from their friend Mr. Pound—and the Boxcar Children spring into mystery-solving action.<

The Indonesian Homo Floresiensis, a dwarf species of man, died out a scant twelve thousand years ago. But natives all across Indonesia tell stories of little people called Ebu Gogo, which bear a striking resemblance to Homo Floresiensis. Famed cryptozoologist Lewis Dare has traveled the world in search of mysterious, elusive cryptids. But nothing could have possibly prepared him for what horrors he would find on Floratra, an uninhabited island in Indonesia.<

Calder has survived the battle on the Gray Island, and escaped the Heart of Nakothi with his sanity intact. The Empire is without a leader, and he’s perfectly placed to take the reins himself. But he is not Emperor yet. The world is divided between those who support Imperial tradition and those who believe no one can take the throne. Calder must do everything he can to hold the Empire together, even as the Elders lurk in the shadows, ready to devour mankind. Meanwhile, Shera and her Consultant’s Guild are stronger than ever. If Calder doesn’t stop them soon, he may never get another chance. In the shadows, a woman seeks to divide mankind. On the seas, a man fights to save it.<

Decent men everywhere rejoiced in the Pendarvis Decision, which declared the species Fuzzy sapiens to be a sentient race entitled to all the rights and privileges of man. But of course that was only the beginning. Men had a long way to go before they would get over the habit of thinking of Fuzzies as adorable pets and begin to accept them as equals in the universe. The study of Fuzzies as a species had begun immediately, and some puzzling questions emerged: Where did Puzzles come from? What was their anthropology? Why did they seem such oddities, in many small but significant biological ways, on the planet where men found them? The answers that began to appear were startling- and potentially dangerous to the Fuzzies and to all who cared about them. H. BEAM PIPER ENDEARED HIMSELF TO MILLIONS OF READERS WITH LITTLE FUZZY AND FUZZY SAPIENS. NOW, AT LAST, THE STORY CONTINUES. WILLIAM TUNING HAS MADE AN EXHAUSTIVE STUDY OF PIPER'S CREATION, AND HAS HIMSELF CREATED A LABOR OF LOVE, A TRIBUTE TO ALL THAT PIPER STOOD FOR: FUZZY BONES<

Jack Pine was born to be a Hollywood star. He has no morals, no scruples; he will not hesitate to do anything or love anyone if it might advance his career, get him the best roles, or project him ever more firmly into the spotlight.

And success does come, beyond the imagination of Jack’s agents and co-stars — even beyond the hopes of his boyhood friend Buddy Pal, a man who carries with the dark secrets of Jack’s past.

Buddy stands apart, aloof: he alone truly benefits from Jack’s careening ambition and his artful, charming conniving. Others who depend on Jack may fall by the wayside, but how can the affable star be blamed?

In fact, Jack Pine can be excused anything — until he carries out the final sin, for which there can be no pardon.

Peter Naseby is enjoying a leisurely naval career when his ship runs down the Admiral in Command at Portsmouth. On his watch. It is early 1915 and he had been looking forward to joining the Grand Fleet at Scapa Flow. Now he must accept a posting to obscurity or volunteer for hazardous duty. To save his career, he joins the Blimps of the Royal Naval Air Service – he becomes a Balloonatic. Sat in a flimsy cockpit under 70,000 cubic feet of inflammable hydrogen with a crew of one, a Lewis Gun, and a single bomb, he potters out every day to chase submarines in the English Channel. Occasionally, he catches one. Onshore, he juggles the demands of Josephine, a young English rose, and Charlie, much more of a hothouse flower, while he decides just what his future shall be.<

When the crew of the deep space merchant vessel Riyadh emerge from cryogenic sleep, they expect to wake at Talus, the last jump before home. Instead, they find their ship docked at an uncharted Soviet space station under quarantine with no communications, failing life support and their Chief Officer missing. Stranded millions of light years from Earth, Captain Tor Gjerde has little option but to lead a salvage expedition to the seemingly abandoned station, but once aboard the decaying hulk Tor and his crew discover the terrible fate of Murmansk-13 and the horrifying legacy that remains lurking within its gloomy corridors.<

It’s late 1915 and the industrial nations still have not geared up for war. Shortages of munitions leave soldiers hanging on barbed wire in the fields. The war in France is at a stalemate, both sides finding it impossible to advance, and spending tens of thousands of lives on the discovery. Richard Baker is in the front line with his battalion, learning how to fight this new war. While the generals, well behind him, are only focussed on finding a way to let the cavalry loose in another Charge of the Light Brigade, reaching for glory. At sea, Simon Sturton continues to make a name for himself as one of the new breed of destroyermen, while Christopher Adams has overcome his fall from grace sufficiently to be posted to Black Prince cruiser, part of the Grand Fleet at Scapa Flow in the months leading up to the long-awaited ‘Great Smash’ in the North Sea.<

A fascinating fictional account of the French Resistance in World War II. It's told by William Catesby and is a sort of prequel to the 6 part series of books about Catesby and his work as a British spy. Now in his 90's, he is dictating his memoirs of his time in Occupied France to his granddaughter Leanna. We learn that he left Cambridge University in 1941 to join the army but ended up as an officer with the SOE (Special Operations Executive) an organisation set up by the British Government 1940 with the aim of conducting espionage, sabotage and reconnaissance in occupied Europe. There's a detailed account of Catesby's training before he is parachuted in to Occupied France to aid the Maquis with whom he shares the successes and failures in their battle against the German occupying forces and French collaborators. Although the author Edward Wilson stresses that this is a work of fiction, Catesby's memoirs provide an engrossing account of a British agent's experience fighting with the French Resistance. A wonderful blend of spy story, romance and the realities of war. Catesby's views are perfectly summed up when he tells Leanna: "That's why writing history is so difficult. Those in power drip feed the past - and edit what they pass on." Recommended for anyone with an interest in the real story of resistance in World War II, this is a worthy addition to the Catesby series.<

April 1915, and it has become apparent that the war will be neither glorious nor short. England is changing, rapidly in some aspects, and the feuding between military and politicians is just beginning. The three remaining midshipmen, two successful, one disgraced, have survived so far. Simon Sturton is still with the destroyers of the Harwich Patrol, fighting in the unending series of minor actions that keep the Channel open for the troopships to cross to France. Christopher Adams, once the bright star of his year at Dartmouth, is sent from one temporary, insignificant posting to another, mostly in minesweeping trawlers manned by Reservists, managing to find action in the Mediterranean and Red Seas. Richard Baker, a failure at sea, finds his new life in the Army increasingly to his taste, enjoying the social prominence of his VC in London, while he trains his new battalion and takes them back to France.<

**'Surely destined to conquer the world . . . Astonishingly good' RUTH JONES** **'So beautifully written . . . will remain with you for a long time' LYNDA LA PLANTE** **'Contender for thriller of the year' JON COATES,** SUNDAY EXPRESS *With the staggering intensity of James Lee Burke and the absorbing narrative of Jane Harper's* The Dry *,* We Begin at the End *is a powerful novel about absolute love and the lengths we will go to keep our family safe. This is a story about good and evil and how life is lived somewhere in between.* **'YOU CAN'T SAVE SOMEONE THAT DOESN'T WANT TO BE SAVED . . .'** **There are two kinds of families: the ones we are born into and the ones we create.** Walk has never left the coastal California town where he grew up. He may have become the chief of police, but he’s still trying to heal the old wound of having given the testimony that sent his best friend, Vincent King, to prison decades before. Now, thirty years later, Vincent is being released. Duchess is a thirteen-year-old self-proclaimed outlaw. Her mother, Star, grew up with Walk and Vincent. Walk is in overdrive trying to protect them, but Vincent and Star seem bent on sliding deeper into self-destruction. Star always burned bright, but recently that light has dimmed, leaving Duchess to parent not only her mother but her five-year-old brother. At school the other kids make fun of Duchess―her clothes are torn, her hair a mess. But let them throw their sticks, because she’ll throw stones. Rules are for other people. She’s just trying to survive and keep her family together. A fortysomething-year-old sheriff and a thirteen-year-old girl may not seem to have a lot in common. But they both have come to expect that people will disappoint you, loved ones will leave you, and if you open your heart it will be broken. So when trouble arrives with Vincent King, Walk and Duchess find they will be unable to do anything but usher it in, arms wide closed. Chris Whitaker has written an extraordinary novel about people who deserve so much more than life serves them. At times devastating, with flashes of humor and hope throughout, it is ultimately an inspiring tale of how the human spirit prevails and how, in the end, love―in all its different guises―wins.<

SUMMARY: The modern obsession with celebrity began with the Bright Young People, a voraciously pleasure-seeking band of bohemian party-givers and blue-blooded socialites who romped through the gossip columns of 1920s London. Drawing on the virtuosic and often wrenching writings of the Bright Young People themselves, the biographer and novelist D. J. Taylor has produced an enthralling account of an age of fleeting brilliance. "The laziest way to put someone down is to call him or her an egomaniac. It's what we say when we loathe someone but can't think of anything more precise. That label was often and too easily applied, in London in the late 1920s and early '30s, to members of the so-called Bright Young People: a small, carefully circumscribed circle of elite 20-somethings who seemed to glide, as D. J. Taylor puts it in his nimble new book, on 'a compound of cocktails, jazz, license, abandon and flagrantly improper behavior.' The Bright Young People were the most glamorous, influential, self-absorbed, quasi-bohemian and overeducated creatures in existence. During their flickering moment they were adored and despised in almost equal measure. Good parties are enemy-making machines--You weren't asked? Surely your invitation was lost in the mail--and no one orchestrated them like the Bright Young ones. Nearly every event was an eye-popping spectacle, fully played out in the era's gossip columns. In his novel "Vile Bodies," published in 1930 (and still hilarious), Evelyn Waugh gave an overview of the Champagne-fueled social carnage: 'Masked parties, savage parties, Victorian parties, Greek parties, Russian parties, circus parties, parties where one had to dress as somebody else, almost naked parties in St. John's Wood, parties in flats and studios and houses and ships and hotels and nightclubs, in windmills and swimming baths . . . all the succession and repetition of massed humanity. . . . Those vile bodies.' Waugh, of course, was a Bright Young Thing himself, or at the least he existed at the group's margins. So did others who would go on to become well-known artists: John Betjeman, Nancy Mitford, Anthony Powell, Cecil Beaton and Henry Green among them. These bold-face names were among the lucky survivors. More than a few burned out, got lost or threw their promise away. Other would-be Bright Young People, Lytton Strachey snarked, seemed to have 'just a few feathers where brains should be.' Mr. Taylor, the British author of "Bright Young People: The Lost Generation of London's Jazz Age," is a biographer (he has written lives of Thackeray and Orwell) and literary critic, and he tells this story with a good deal of essayistic flair, precision and flyaway wit. Just as important, he relates this ultimately elegiac narrative with a surprising amount of intellectual and emotional sympathy. He plainly wants to be bothered by the Bright Young People's antics, too. 'One of the great consolations of English literary life, ' Mr. Taylor observes, wonderfully, is the idea that 'seriousness is automatically the preserve of people with cheery, proletarian values and prosaic lifestyles--that a barfly with a private income and a web of well-connected friends has already damned himself beyond redemption.'"--Dwight Garner, "The New York Times ""The saga of Beaton, Evelyn Waugh and the less famous social butterflies that everyone called the Bright Young People may be the ideal escapist fantasy for these sober economic times. Theirs was a life of glittering frivolity, of scavenger hunts that stopped traffic in Sloane Square, cocktails and dancing until dawn, notorious gatherings like the Bath and Bottle Party at a swimming pool ('bring a Bath towel and a Bottle' the invitation said), sprees that envious mortals read about in gossip columns. To make the fantasy complete, the story even offers a satisfying touch of schadenfreude. As D. J. Taylor emphasizes in this incisive social history, these flighty creatures crashed with a thud louder than you'd imagine butterflies could make. Taylor compares the Mozart party photo to a 'medieval morality play' capturing how the Bright Young People got their comeuppance: their zaniness became more self-conscious and attenuated; they tried to ignore the fragile postwar economy and the crumbling aristocracy, but those changes were ready to bite them. It was fun while it lasted, though, for much of the 1920s . . . Lightened by the book's beautiful design, laced with mordant period quotations and delicious satiric cartoons from newspapers and magazines. Taylor's richly detailed work also calls attention to two breezy, auspicious first novels about the Bright Young People that are unfortunately out of print: Nancy Mitford's "Highland Fling" and Anthony Powell's "Afternoon Men.""--Caryn James, "The New York Times Book Review" "Combining diaries, biographies, news reports and novels to paint the social life of 1920s London, D.J. Taylor has created that rarest of books--one you can safely recommend both to scholars of Evelyn Waugh and the entourage of Paris Hilton. The engaging "Bright Young People," written by a critic and novelist best known for his biography of George Orwell, reads like a case study in youth culture, trendsetting, log-rolling and cultivated bohemianism. It examines the symbiotic relationship between a loose-knit group of partygoers and a media that, in gossip columns and mocking denunciations, made them the first celebrities who were famous, in our contemporary sense, for being famous. By the most generous estimate, there were never more than 2,000 souls among the ranks popularly known at the time as the Bright Young People. By most accounts, those souls were self-absorbed, self-mythologizing and terribly jaded. Their defining exploits included boisterous scavenger hunts, extravagant hoaxes and the 'stylized debauchery' of more fancy-dress balls than you can shake an engraved 16-inch-high invitation at--including the Bath and Bottle Party, the Circus Party, the Hermaphrodite Party, the Great Urban Dionysia and the Mozart Party, where the menu came from a cookbook owned by Louis XVI. They excited the public imagination--and incited a moderate moral panic--with their fast living and reflexive flippancy. The greatest talents associated with the movement were Waugh and the photographer Cecil Beaton. Taylor deftly traces how the former drew on his friends' exploits for the hysterical satire of "Vile Bodies" and "Decline and Fall," and how the latter--an Edmund Hilary among social climbers--used his to further his career. Lesser accomplishments detailed here include "Singing Out of Tune," a novel by brewery heir Bryan Guinness that documented the Bright Young Person's daily routine: 'waking up late, meeting people for lunch, bringing the lunch party home for tea, moving on to cocktails and dinner . . . and ending up with a communal trek around the fashionable restaurants of the West End.' But in this realm any accomplishment was an exception, and the non-career of the occasional poet Brian Howard proved emblematic of this wasted youth revolt. 'The books Brian Howard never wrote would fill a decent-sized shelf, ' Taylor writes, elsewhere noting that the man lived out his frustrating life 'in that exotic never-never land where the Ritz bar meets the out-of-season Continental resort.' The fun ended soon enough; by 1931, England was in financial crisis and a 10-hour-long Red and White Ball rang down the era. But Taylor's skillful reconstruction of the whole hazy time feels like a lasting party favor."--Troy Patterson, NPR"A poignant study of the elusive relationship between art and the social world from whence it springs . . . D. J. Taylor, author of a first-rate life of George Orwell, shows the sharp instincts of an expert biographer in his approach to a 1920s English youth culture."--Damian Da Costa, "The New York Observer ""In "Bright Young People" Taylor is writing splendid social history, not fiction, and he brings a more tempered and rueful approach, showing the sadness beneath an entire generation's compulsion to waste its promise and dance in the spotlight. Scott Fitzgerald, a writer admired by Waugh (who was no soft touch), called his own 'lost' contemporaries 'the beautiful and damned'; here, Taylor makes us feel the full force of the reckoning implied in that sad conjunction . . . Taylor has a nice way with a one-liner--'The books Brian Howard never wrote would fill a decent-sized shelf'--and is excellent on the evolution of BYP argot . . . By placing generational tensions and tenderness center-stage, Taylor gives his book a beating emotional heart."--Richard Rayner, "Los Angeles"" Times ""Jam-packed and delicious, crammed with a cast of selfish, feckless, darling, talented, almost terminally eccentric, good-looking men and women, "Bright Young People" chronicles the doings of London's gilded youth in the Roaring Twenties. Even if you think you know a lot (or enough) about them; even if you've read the acerbic novels of the early Evelyn Waugh or plowed your way through Anthony Powell's "A Dance to the Music of Time," there's bound to be material here you haven't seen or heard of."--Carolyn See, "The Washington Post ""If the flappers of the 1920s epitomized the Jazz Age on this side of the Atlantic, in England it was the Bright Young People. The British milieu of society scions flinging themselves into the nonstop pursuit of fun in the aftermath of World War I was immortalized--and hilariously flayed--by Evelyn Waugh in 1930 with his novel "Vile Bodies," but the real-life major players who made up this set are long gone. Thanks are due, then, to English critic D.J. Taylor, who brings them back to life in "Bright Young People." Some were distinguished, others once famous only for being famous and now pretty much forgotten--but they were almost invariably fascinating . . . Mr. Taylor also reminds us of lesser-known characters, such as Beverly Nichols and Bryan Guinness, up-and-coming writers whose work fed on this scene and who were celebrated in London at the time . . . "Bright Young People" was published last year in Britain. It arrives on these shores with a new resonance as we contemplate a world in its worst financial straits since the Depression, with many troubling political and military signs on the horizon as well. Then as now, parties everywhere ended as a more sober age dawned."--Martin Rubin, "The Wall Street Journal" " ""Absorbing . . . The book really takes hold when Taylor seizes on the actual trajectory of the lives of individual members, most . . . poignantly that of Elizabeth Ponsonby . . . The pages devoted to her, enriched by Taylor's access to the Ponsonby family papers, are all the biography her lack of accomplishments and frittered-away youth warrant; yet they greatly deepen this study of a social phenomenon."--Katherine A. Powers, "The Boston Globe ""Waugh was at once an enamored occasional participant in the Bright Young People's decadence and a revolted critic of it. In his novels that memorialize the age, "Vile Bodies" especially, the tone Waugh takes toward his generation is ambivalent. In his captivating new history of the age, "Bright Young People: The Lost Generation of London's Jazz Age," D.J. Taylor takes his sense of 1920s London from Waugh: Mr. Taylor's book is at once elegy and critique. And this is just as it should be, because it is hard not to be by turns enthralled by the splendor of this brief age and, in turn, dismayed by its selfishness and frivolity . . . The Bright Young People's decadence, their frivolity, their refusal of moral seriousness for a shared escapist devotion to pleasure is, as it should be--thanks to Mr. Taylor's deft managing of tone--both enticing and repulsive."--Emily Wilkinson, "The Washington Times" "Holroyd is an accomplished accumulator of facts and anecdotes; and he writes easily and fluently."--Richard Jenkyns, "The New Republic" "[Conveys] precisely the aspect of the Bright Young People that is most difficult to give expression to on paper: not books or parties, but 'an atmosphere . . . An outlook, a gesture, an essence.'"--Mark Bostridge, "The Independent on Sunday ""Compelling and ultimately touching . . . A witty and sensitive account of the pathos and the glamour of the generation fated to 'sorrow in sunlight.' "--Rosemary Hill, "The Guardian ""Excellent . . . the brightest of the Bright Young People [make] their fictional counterparts in Waugh pale into insignificance . . . [Taylor] lays bare their cavortings with an archeological eye."--Philip Hoare, "The Independent ""Taylor, for years a journalist, is fascinated by--and authoritative on--the lucrative relationship forged between the shrewdest of the Bright Young People and the glamour-hunting press . . . Shrewd and absorbing in his analysis of the way Waugh and Nancy Mitford . . . promoted the world they would soon skewer in fiction."--Miranda Seymour, "The Sunday Times" (London) "Moving and always entertaining."--Jane Stevenson, "The Daily Telegraph ""Fascinating . . . A complex study of family, fear and breakdown . . . Taylor's achievement is to remind us that there are few periods of recent history more culturally interesting than the years between the wars."--Frances Wilson, "New Statesman ""A goldmine . . . If I had to choose one book as a summing up of the BYP, it would be Taylor's."--Bevis Hillier, "The Spectator ""An engrossing social history of the blue bloods, bohos, and bobos who constituted the 'lost generation' of post-World War I England."--Michael Moynihan, "Wilson Quarterly" "One yearns to have been a fly on the wall at the 'fancy dress ball . . . featuring a gang of fashionable debutantes dressed as the Eton rowing eight, ' or the notorious Bruno Hat exhibition of faked modernist paintings. Taylor expertly connects this shrill game-playing to memorable depictions of it in Waugh's "Vile Bodies," Powell's "Afternoon Men" and Henry Green's "Party Going," while never neglecting the actual achievements of their lesser peers (e.g., Beverley Nichols's forgotten novel "Singing Out of Tune"). A note of genuine pathos is struck in his description of how the increasingly straitened economic and political circumstances of the '30s began rendering this gaudy subculture obsolete. Immensely readable, and of real value as a sharply pointed cautionary tale."--"Kirkus Reviews ""There are . . . plenty of juicy anecdotes to go around . . . The text is enlivened by several "Punch" cartoons from the period, vividly depicting the hold these rich young partygoers once held on the public's imagination."--"Publishers Weekly" SUMMARY: From Alexander Waugh, the author of the acclaimed memoir Fathers and Sons, comes a grand saga of a brilliant and tragic Viennese family.The Wittgenstein family was one of the richest, most talented, and most eccentric in European history. Karl Wittgenstein, who ran away from home as a wayward and rebellious youth, returned to his native Vienna to make a fortune in the iron and steel industries. He bought factories and paintings and palaces, but the domineering and overbearing influence he exerted over his eight children resulted in a generation of siblings fraught by inner antagonisms and nervous tension. Three of his sons committed suicide; Paul, the fourth, became a world-famous concert pianist, using only his left hand and playing compositions commissioned from Ravel and Prokofiev; while Ludwig, the youngest, is now regarded as one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century. In this dramatic historical and psychological epic, Alexander Waugh traces the triumphs and vicissitudes of a family held together by a fanatical love of music yet torn apart by money, madness, conflicts of loyalty, and the cataclysmic upheaval of two world wars. Through the bleak despair of a Siberian prison camp and the terror of a Gestapo interrogation room, one courageous and unlikely hero emerges from the rubble of the house of Wittgenstein in the figure of Paul, an extraordinary testament to the indomitable spirit of human survival. Alexander Waugh tells this saga of baroque family unhappiness and perseverance against incredible odds with a novelistic richness to rival Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks. SUMMARY: From Alexander Waugh, the author of the acclaimed memoir Fathers and Sons, comes a grand saga of a brilliant and tragic Viennese family.The Wittgenstein family was one of the richest, most talented, and most eccentric in European history. Karl Wittgenstein, who ran away from home as a wayward and rebellious youth, returned to his native Vienna to make a fortune in the iron and steel industries. He bought factories and paintings and palaces, but the domineering and overbearing influence he exerted over his eight children resulted in a generation of siblings fraught by inner antagonisms and nervous tension. Three of his sons committed suicide; Paul, the fourth, became a world-famous concert pianist, using only his left hand and playing compositions commissioned from Ravel and Prokofiev; while Ludwig, the youngest, is now regarded as one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century. In this dramatic historical and psychological epic, Alexander Waugh traces the triumphs and vicissitudes of a family held together by a fanatical love of music yet torn apart by money, madness, conflicts of loyalty, and the cataclysmic upheaval of two world wars. Through the bleak despair of a Siberian prison camp and the terror of a Gestapo interrogation room, one courageous and unlikely hero emerges from the rubble of the house of Wittgenstein in the figure of Paul, an extraordinary testament to the indomitable spirit of human survival. Alexander Waugh tells this saga of baroque family unhappiness and perseverance against incredible odds with a novelistic richness to rival Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks.<

SUMMARY: "Fascinating . . . Alison Weir does full justice to the subject."--The Philadelphia InquirerAt his death in 1547, King Henry VIII left four heirs to the English throne: his only son, the nine-year-old Prince Edward; the Lady Mary, the adult daughter of his first wife Katherine of Aragon; the Lady Elizabeth, the teenage daughter of his second wife Anne Boleyn; and his young great-niece, the Lady Jane Grey. In this riveting account Alison Weir paints a unique portrait of these extraordinary rulers, examining their intricate relationships to each other and to history. She traces the tumult that followed Henry's death, from the brief intrigue-filled reigns of the boy king Edward VI and the fragile Lady Jane Grey, to the savagery of "Bloody Mary," and finally the accession of the politically adroit Elizabeth I.As always, Weir offers a fresh perspective on a period that has spawned many of the most enduring myths in English history, combining the best of the historian's and the biographer's art."Like anthropology, history and biography can demonstrate unfamiliar ways of feeling and being. Alison Weir's sympathetic collective biography, The Children of Henry VIII does just that, reminding us that human nature has changed--and for the better. . . . Weir imparts movement and coherence while re-creating the suspense her characters endured and the suffering they inflicted."--The New York Times Book Review<

SUMMARY: Eleanor of Aquitaine was a remarkable woman. She was an important factor in the reign of four kings, lived to the ripe old age of 82, bore 10 children and outlived all but two of them. Her sons were kings of England and her daughters queens of Castile and Sicily, while her later descendants included a Holy Roman emperor and kings of France and Spain, as well as a couple of saints. In an age of men, she was indeed a powerful woman.Born in 1122 into the sophisticated and cultured court of Poitiers, Eleanor of Aquitaine came of age in a world of luxury, bloody combat, and unbridled ambition. At only fifteen, she inherited one of the great fortunes of Europe - the prize duchy of Aquitaine - yet was forced to submit to a union with the handsome but sexually withholding Louis VII, the teenage king of France. The marriage endured for fifteen fraught years, until Eleanor finally succeeded in having it annulled - only to enter an even stormier match with Henry of Anjou, who would soon ascend to the English throne as Henry II.With astonishing historic detail, mesmerizing pageantry, and irresistible accounts of royal scandal and intrigue, Weir re-creates not only a remarkable personality, but a magnificent past era. As Weir traces the fascinating intersection of public and private lives in Europe's twelfth-century courts, Eleanor comes to life as a complex, boldly original woman who transcended the mores of society. Later, after sixteen years of imprisonment for plotting to overthrow Henry, the humbled Queen emerged, at age sixty-seven, to rule England.<

SUMMARY: Following the tremendous success of her first novel, Innocent Traitor, which recounted the riveting tale of the doomed Lady Jane Grey, acclaimed historian and New York Times bestselling author Alison Weir turns her masterly storytelling skills to the early life of young Elizabeth Tudor, who would grow up to become England’s most intriguing and powerful queen.Even at age two, Elizabeth is keenly aware that people in the court of her father, King Henry VIII, have stopped referring to her as “Lady Princess” and now call her “the Lady Elizabeth.” Before she is three, she learns of the tragic fate that has befallen her mother, the enigmatic and seductive Anne Boleyn, and that she herself has been declared illegitimate, an injustice that will haunt her. What comes next is a succession of stepmothers, bringing with them glimpses of love, fleeting security, tempestuous conflict, and tragedy. The death of her father puts the teenage Elizabeth in greater peril, leaving her at the mercy of ambitious and unscrupulous men. Like her mother two decades earlier she is imprisoned in the Tower of London–and fears she will also meet her mother’s grisly end. Power-driven politics, private scandal and public gossip, a disputed succession, and the grievous example of her sister, “Bloody” Queen Mary, all cement Elizabeth’s resolve in matters of statecraft and love, and set the stage for her transformation into the iconic Virgin Queen. Alison Weir uses her deft talents as historian and novelist to exquisitely and suspensefully play out the conflicts between family, politics, religion, and conscience that came to define an age. Sweeping in scope, The Lady Elizabeth is a fascinating portrayal of a woman far ahead of her time–an orphaned girl haunted by the shadow of the axe, an independent spirit who must use her cunning and wits for her very survival, and a future queen whose dangerous and dramatic path to the throne shapes her future greatness.From the Hardcover edition.<

SUMMARY: Nearly five hundred years after her violent death, Anne Boleyn, second wife to Henry VIII, remains one of the world's most fascinating, controversial, and tragic heroines. Now acclaimed historian and bestselling author Alison Weir has drawn on myriad sources from the Tudor era to give us the first book that examines, in unprecedented depth, the gripping, dark, and chilling story of Anne Boleyn's final days.The tempestuous love affair between Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn scandalized Christendom and altered forever the religious landscape of England. Anne's ascent from private gentlewoman to queen was astonishing, but equally compelling was her shockingly swift downfall. Charged with high treason and imprisoned in the Tower of London in May 1536, Anne met her terrible end all the while protesting her innocence. There remains, however, much mystery surrounding the queen's arrest and the events leading up to it: Were charges against her fabricated because she stood in the way of Henry VIII making a third marriage and siring an heir, or was she the victim of a more complex plot fueled by court politics and deadly rivalry? The Lady in the Tower examines in engrossing detail the motives and intrigues of those who helped to seal the queen's fate. Weir unravels the tragic tale of Anne's fall, from her miscarriage of the son who would have saved her to the horrors of her incarceration and that final, dramatic scene on the scaffold. What emerges is an extraordinary portrayal of a woman of great courage whose enemies were bent on utterly destroying her, and who was tested to the extreme by the terrible plight in which she found herself. Richly researched and utterly captivating, The Lady in the Tower presents the full array of evidence of Anne Boleyn's guilt—or innocence. Only in Alison Weir's capable hands can readers learn the truth about the fate of one of the most influential and important women in English history.<

SUMMARY: "A SURPRISINGLY FRESH AND TREMENDOUSLY THOROUGH CONTRIBUTION to the debate...Weir's book is, no doubt, not the last on this subject, but it might be the best....[She] constructs a devastating case...[and] brilliantly illuminates the nature of late-medieval political power." --The Boston Globe Despite five centuries of investigation by historians, the sinister deaths of the boy king Edward V and his younger brother Richard, Duke of York, remain two of the most fascinating murder mysteries in English history. Did Richard III really kill "the Princes in the Tower," as is commonly believed, or was the murderer someone else entirely? Carefully examining every shred of contemporary evidence as well as dozens of modern accounts, English historian Alison Weir reconstructs the entire chain of events leading to the double murder. We are witnesses to the rivalry, ambition, intrigue, and struggle for power that culminated in the imprisonment of the prince and the hushed-up murders that secured Richard's claim to the throne as Richard III. A masterpiece of historical research and a riveting story of conspiracy and deception, The Princes in the Tower at last provides a solution to this age-old puzzle. "Weir takes on this delicious mystery with a fearsome vengeance. The result is a fascinating and completely credible account." --Milwaukee Journal "Did Richard III do in his nephews or didn't he? How much of the evil-uncle legend was later Tudor propaganda and how much was true?...This is exciting reading." --The Denver Post "A fascinating historical whodunit in which truth is more sordid than fiction." --Kirkus Reviews A MAIN SELECTION OF THE BOOK-OF-THE-MONTH CLUB<

EDITORIAL REVIEW: In Obama's Wars, Bob Woodward provides the most intimate and sweeping portrait yet of the young president as commander in chief. Drawing on internal memos, classified documents, meeting notes and hundreds of hours of interviews with most of the key players, including the president, Woodward tells the inside story of Obama making the critical decisions on the Afghanistan War, the secret campaign in Pakistan and the worldwide fight against terrorism.At the core of Obama's Wars is the unsettled division between the civilian leadership in the White House and the United States military as the president is thwarted in his efforts to craft an exit plan for the Afghanistan War."So what's my option?" the president asked his war cabinet, seeking alternatives to the Afghanistan commander's request for 40,000 more troops in late 2009. "You have essentially given me one option.... It's unacceptable.""Well," Secretary of Defense Robert Gates finally said, "Mr. President, I think we owe you that option."It never came. An untamed Vice President Joe Biden pushes relentlessly to limit the military mission and avoid another Vietnam. The vice president frantically sent half a dozen handwritten memos by secure fax to Obama on the eve of the final troop decision.President Obama's ordering a surge of 30,000 troops and pledging to start withdrawing U.S. forces by July 2011 did not end the skirmishing.General David Petraeus, the new Afghanistan commander, thinks time can be added to the clock if he shows progress. "I don't think you win this war," Petraeus said privately. "This is the kind of fight we're in for the rest of our lives and probably our kids' lives."Hovering over this debate is the possibility of another terrorist attack in the United States. The White House led a secret exercise showing how unprepared the government is if terrorists set off a nuclear bomb in an American city--which Obama told Woodward is at the top of the list of what he worries about all the time.Verbatim quotes from secret debates and White House strategy sessions--and firsthand accounts of the thoughts and concerns of the president, his war council and his generals--reveal a government in conflict, often consumed with nasty infighting and fundamental disputes.Woodward has discovered how the Obama White House really works, showing that even more tough decisions lie ahead for the cerebral and engaged president.Obama's Wars offers the reader a stunning, you-are-there account of the president, his White House aides, military leaders, diplomats and intelligence chiefs in this time of turmoil and danger.From the Washington PostBy Steve Luxenberg, September 22, 2010:President Obama urgently looked for a way out of the war in Afghanistan last year, repeatedly pressing his top military advisers for an exit plan that they never gave him, according to secret meeting notes and documents cited in a new book by journalist Bob Woodward.Frustrated with his military commanders for consistently offering only options that required significantly more troops, Obama finally crafted his own strategy, dictating a classified six-page "terms sheet" that sought to limit U.S. involvement, Woodward reports in Obama's Wars.According to Woodward's meeting-by-meeting, memo-by-memo account of the 2009 Afghan strategy review, the president avoided talk of victory as he described his objectives."This needs to be a plan about how we're going to hand it off and get out of Afghanistan," Obama is quoted as telling White House aides as he laid out his reasons for adding 30,000 troops in a short-term escalation. "Everything we're doing has to be focused on how we're going to get to the point where we can reduce our footprint. It's in our national security interest. There cannot be any wiggle room."Read the full Post news report on Obama's Wars.<