It is 1905. Asta and her husband Rasmus have come to East London from Denmark with their two little boys. With Rasmus constantly away on business, Asta keep loneliness and isolation at bay by writing a diary. These diaries, published over seventy years later, reveal themselves to be more than a mere journal. For they seem to hold they key to an unsolved murder and to the mystery of a missing child. It falls to Asta's granddaughter Ann to unearth the buried secrets of nearly a century before.

Chronicles the historical development of maps and mapping from the Bronze Age to the present, collecting some 175 maps spanning ten millennia that represent the progress of civilization and technology, from military plans that depict enemy positions, to the famed London Underground layout, to the digitally enhanced renderings of today.

We are women, we are men. We are refugees, single mothers, people with disabilities, and queers. We belong to social categories and they frame our actions, self-understanding, and opportunities. But what are social categories? How are they created and sustained? How does one come to belong to them? Ásta approaches these questions through analytic feminist metaphysics. Her theory of social categories centers on an answer to the question: what is it for a feature of an individual to be socially meaningful? In a careful, probing investigation, she reveals how social categories are created and sustained and demonstrates their tendency to oppress through examples from current events. To this end, she offers an account of just what social construction is and how it works in a range of examples that problematize the categories of sex, gender, and race in particular. The main idea is that social categories are conferred upon people. Ásta introduces a 'conferralist' framework in order to articulate a theory of social meaning, social construction, and most importantly, of the construction of sex, gender, race, disability, and other social categories.

An “obsessively readable” mystery from the New York Times–bestselling author of Dark Corners about a century-old diary that holds clues to a murder (The Sunday Telegraph). Asta Westerby is lonely. In 1905, shortly after coming to East London from Denmark with her husband and their two little boys, she feels like a stranger in a strange land. And it doesn’t help that her husband is constantly away on business. Fortunately, she finds solace in her diary—and she continues to do so until 1967. Decades later, her granddaughter, Ann, finds the journal, and it becomes a literary sensation, offering an intimate view of Edwardian life. But it also appears to hold the key to an unsolved murder and the disappearance of a child. A modern masterpiece by the Edgar Award–winning author of the Inspector Wexford Mysteries, and an excellent choice for readers of P. D. James, Ian Rankin, or Scott Turow, Asta’s Book is at once a crime story, a historical novel, and a psychological portrait told through the diary itself and through Ann, who is bent on unlocking the journal’s excised mystery.

For use in schools and libraries only. Accused of a crime he did not commit, Crispin has been declared a "wolf's head." That means he may be killed on sight, by anyone. If he wishes to remain alive, he must flee his tiny village.

The House of Stairs - an unputdownable crime classic from bestselling author Barbara Vine Lizzie hasn't seen her old friend, Bell, for some fourteen years, but when she spots her from a taxi in a London street she jumps out and pursues her despite 'all the terrible things' that passed between them. As Lizzie reveals those events, little by little, the women rekindle their friendship, with terrifying results ... 'This is the third psychological thriller by Ruth Rendell writing as Barbara Vine and when I say it surpasses the first two that's really saying something ... Vine has not only produced a quietly smouldering suspense novel but also presents an accurately atmospheric portrayal of London in the heady 60's. Literally unputdownable' Time Out The House of Stairs is a modern masterpiece of the crime genre and will leave you gripped from the first page to the last. If you enjoy the novels of P.D. James, Ian Rankin and Scott Turow, you will love this book. 'The Rendell/ Vine partnership has for years been producing consistently better work than most Booker winners put together' Ian Rankin 'A superb and original writer' Amanda Craig, Express Barbara Vine is the pen-name of Ruth Rendell. She has written fifteen novels using this pseudonym, including A Fatal Inversion and King Solomon's Carpet which both won the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger Award. Her other books include: A Dark Adapted Eye; The House of Stairs; Gallowglass; Asta's Book; No Night Is Too Long; In the Time of His Prosperity; The Brimstone Wedding; The Chimney Sweeper's Boy; Grasshopper; The Blood Doctor; The Minotaur; The Birthday Present and The Child's Child.

The commemoration of an act of bravery and self-sacrifice in ancient Poland saves the lives of a family two centuries later.