Vera and the Ambassador is a book to be savored and enjoyed on many levels. Both a behind-the-scenes peek at the operations of a U.S. embassy in a post–Cold War former Soviet satellite and a personal story of a refugee's escape and triumphant return, Vera and Donald Blinken's dual memoir openly details their challenges, setbacks, and victories as they worked in tandem to advance America's interests in Eastern Europe and to restore a former Soviet satellite state to a pre-communist level of prosperity. Hungary in all its cultural glory and historical anguish lies at the heart of this dramatic and deeply personal story. Born in Budapest just prior to World War II, Vera was only five years old when the Germans invaded in 1944. In a harrowing account, she describes how she and her mother managed to survive the atrocities of the war and, in 1950, narrowly escape Soviet-occupied Hungary for the freedom and opportunity of America. Making their way to New York, Vera settled into her adopted country with an indomitable spirit, a vow to become the best American she could be, and a hope of finding some way to give back as a show of gratitude for her good fortune in surviving the destruction of the war. That opportunity came in 1994 when her husband was appointed ambassador to Hungary by President Clinton, just five years into the country's tentative transformation from a command economy and totalitarian government into a market economy and fledgling republic based upon democratic ideals. A former investment banker, Donald might have lacked foreign service experience, but his skills as an administrator and his willingness to try innovative ideas, combined with Vera's knowledge of Hungarian language and culture and her outreach to the Hungarian community, helped them deal head-on with a variety of challenges, including a collapsing economy and the threat of a slide back toward the old ways of communism, and a brutal civil war that raged across the country's southern border in the former Yugoslavia. Replete with colorful characters from the streets of Budapest, humorous scenes at the ambassadorial residence, and accounts of tense high-level diplomatic negotiations in the run-up to Hungary's vote to join NATO, Vera and the Ambassador shows how the Blinkens helped chart a new course for American diplomacy in the mid-1990s. Ultimately, it is also the story of how Hungarians came to see them personally, and memorably, as their Vera and their ambassador.

Can you ever escape your childhood?

The latest mind-blowing novel from award-winning author Christopher Edge, Escape Room is a thrilling adventure that challenges readers to think about what they've done to save the world today. When twelve-year-old Ami arrives at The Escape, she thinks it's just a game - the ultimate escape room with puzzles and challenges to beat before time runs out. Meeting her teammates, Adjoa, Ibrahim, Oscar and Min, Ami learns from the Host that they have been chosen to save the world and they must work together to find the Answer. But as he locks them inside the first room, they quickly realise this is no ordinary game. From a cavernous library of dust to an ancient Mayan tomb, a deserted shopping mall stalked by extinct animals to the command module of a spaceship heading to Mars, the perils of The Escape seem endless. Can Ami and her friends find the Answer before it's too late? With cover illustration by David Dean. "A writer of genuine originality" - Guardian Check out these other brilliant books from Christopher Edge: - The Many Worlds of Albie Bright - The Jamie Drake Equation - The Infinite Lives of Maisy Day - - The Longest Night of Charlie Noon -

The year is 2057. Endless wars have torn the USA apart and enslaved Americans to the CCR, the Confederation of Consolidated Republics. Growing up in the wasteland of war has made 14-year-old Cody Pierce wise in survival skills, and now he's the White Fox, rebel leader of the children's barracks in a CCR prison camp. Once he escapes, life with the underground teaches him new skills in weaponry and strategy as he plays cat-and-mouse with the CCR. Every day brings him closer to capture, as well as to his goal: to return and liberate the children he left behind.

Will you get to the Orwellians before the Wanstein Club get to you? The clock is ticking… Based on the global phenomenon of Escape Rooms, and following on from the international bestseller The Escape Book by Ivan Tapia, this book puts your ingenuity, wit and perseverance to the test with even more fiendish challenges, puzzles, and enigmas that you must solve to thwart the sinister Wanstein Club. Investigative journalist Candela Fuertes is at rock bottom: her fight against Castian Warnes, the head of the powerful and sinister Wanstein Club, has undermined her credibility as a journalist, and meanwhile she suspects Warnes is behind the car accident that put her boss in hospital. Corroded by the thirst for revenge, she decides to turn to the only people who can help her in a cause that seems already lost: the Orwellians, a group of hackers hell bent on revealing the secrets of the rich and famous. In order to get to the Orwellians, you and Candela must follow their trail all over London. The chapters of the book are jumbled up, and to know where to continue reading, you must solve the puzzles, optical illusions, conundrums and anagrams that you find. Each time you solve a puzzle, the number you arrive at will indicate the page from which you can continue the story.

Oz is the magical land at the end of the rainbow where little Dorothy Gale's adventures with the Scarecrow, the Cowardly Lion and the Tin Man had begun. But, back in Kansas, nobody would believe that Oz was real ... Dorothy returns to the land of Oz only to find that a terrible change has taken place. However, her friends Tik Tok, Billina and Jack Pumpkinhead are determined to help her: together they overcome Princess Mombi and the Wheelers, discover what a Gump is, and find out why Nomes are just terrified of chickens!