Kim Philby has been called "one of the most remarkable double-agents to have been exposed in our time". Harry St. John Bridger Philby, Kim Philby's father and mentor, was one of the most intriguing intellectuals and adventurers of our time, a manipulator who played a key role in establishing the modern Middle East. In this dual biography, Anthony Cave Brown, tells the extraordinary story of two men whose lives were directly opposed to the establishment into which they were born and for which they were bred. St. John, the brilliant Arabist, became a Moslem and political adviser to King Ibn Saud. He was the middleman in the U.S. acquisition of the Saudi oil concession, called by the State Department "the greatest commercial prize in the history of the planet". And as St. John turned to Mecca, Kim turned to the Kremlin, serving as a secret agent against the Anglo-American intelligence services for fifty-three years.

Now in paperback, the critically acclaimed autobiography of Zimbabwean cricketer Henry Olonga (famous for his black armband protest against Robert Mugabe, which saw him forced to flee his homeland in fear of this life), which was longlisted for the 2010 William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award. Includes a new chapter in which Olonga talks about what has happened to him since the book was first published, including the reaction from the Zimbabwean government and a new twist in the tale.

He came to her handsome and youthful in appearance. He had been alive far longer than she could have imagine. In that time he had faced many dangers, but was she the danger that would undo him and send him to eternal damnation?

In 1728 a stranger handed a letter to Governor Yue calling on him to lead a rebellion against the Manchu rulers of China. Feigning agreement, he learnt the details of the plot and immediately informed the Emperor, Yongzheng. The ringleaders were captured with ease, forced to recant and, to the confusion and outrage of the public, spared. Drawing on an enormous wealth of documentary evidence - over a hundred and fifty secret documents between the Emperor and his agents are stored in Chinese archives - Jonathan Spence has recreated this revolt of the scholars in fascinating and chilling detail. It is a story of unwordly dreams of a better world and the facts of bureaucratic power, of the mind of an Emperor and of the uses of his mercy.

The young black activists whose rejection of their parents' complacency led to the 1976 Soweto uprising and the eventual demise of apartheid are part of a long tradition of generational conflict in South Africa. In Blood from Your Children, Benedict Carton traces this intense challenge to an extraordinary and pivotal episode a century ago that bitterly divided families along generational lines. Facing a series of ecological disasters that crippled agriculture in the 1890s, African youths in colonial Natal and Zululand perceived their fathers' struggle to meet increased colonial demands as an act of betrayal. Young people engaged more frequently in premarital sex, while young men sparked widespread gang fights, and young women rejected traditional filial and marital obligations. In 1906, after the imposition of an onerous head tax on young men, this domestic turmoil exploded into an armed uprising known as Bambatha's Rebellion. The young men sought revenge by attacking both the African patriarchs whose apparent accomodation they considered traitorous and the colonial troops dispatched to quell the violence. After the Natal forces crushed the insurrection, some captured rebels faced trial for treason under martial law. Often, their fathers testified against them. While the military intervention eventually caused many more African youths to seek work in the mines, thus defusing generational turmoil, others moved to industrial centers in the wake of the uprising. These young people formed the vanguard of insurgent political groups that continue to play an important role in South African urban life. Through his lively and thorough presentation of the forces at work in Bambatha's Rebellion, Benedict Carton brings a fresh understanding to the tragic role of defiant youth and generational rivalry in African resistance.