"Claire Easton is a writer and magazine editor living in Los Angeles, married to a successful music producer, Ben Roden. As Ben is about to leave on a three-month music tour in Australia, Claire travels to England to research a book on her favorite author, Charlotte Brontèe, a love she inherited from her otherwise inattentive mother. While seeking Brontèe's secrets, Claire discovers her own"--

‘You’re being watched. You give us five minutes before leaving here. Five minutes. “If you want Laidlow back, don’t blow it.”' An important British diplomat is abducted in Pakistan. What appears to be a terrorist outrage may be the result of a vendetta by a powerful tycoon. Crime and mystery novel Rendezvous with Death follows the story of Nick Dyson, a young barrister in London, who accepts the appointment as personal assistant to his friend Robert Laidlow who is a Special Envoy to the Middle East, based in Islamabad. Nick, Robert and Robert’s wife, Emma have made a bitter enemy of Gerald Macbeth, now an influential tycoon in Islamabad. When Robert disappears and his security guard is beheaded, Nick begins to suspect that Macbeth is behind the crimes. He tries to persuade Emma to leave Pakistan with him. She refuses and dies in a speedboat acciden. Robert is executed by terrorists. Nick flees to London with over a million dollars of bribe money paid to Robert. Rendezvous with Death will appeal to those who enjoy crime and mystery novels plus fans of Gil’s former novels.

This beloved account about an intrepid young Englishman on the first leg of his walk from London to Constantinople is simply one of the best works of travel literature ever written. At the age of eighteen, Patrick Leigh Fermor set off from the heart of London on an epic journey—to walk to Constantinople. A Time of Gifts is the rich account of his adventures as far as Hungary, after which Between the Woods and the Water continues the story to the Iron Gates that divide the Carpathian and Balkan mountains. Acclaimed for its sweep and intelligence, Leigh Fermor’s book explores a remarkable moment in time. Hitler has just come to power but war is still ahead, as he walks through a Europe soon to be forever changed—through the Lowlands to Mitteleuropa, to Teutonic and Slav heartlands, through the baroque remains of the Holy Roman Empire; up the Rhine, and down to the Danube. At once a memoir of coming-of-age, an account of a journey, and a dazzling exposition of the English language, A Time of Gifts is also a portrait of a continent already showing ominous signs of the holocaust to come.

Updated, with new research and over 100 revisions Ten years later, they're still talking about the weather! Kate Fox, the social anthropologist who put the quirks and hidden conditions of the English under a microscope, is back with more biting insights about the nature of Englishness. This updated and revised edition of Watching the English - which over the last decade has become the unofficial guidebook to the English national character - features new and fresh insights on the unwritten rules and foibles of "squaddies," bikers, horse-riders, and more. Fox revisits a strange and fascinating culture, governed by complex sets of unspoken rules and bizarre codes of behavior. She demystifies the peculiar cultural rules that baffle us: the rules of weather-speak. The ironic-gnome rule. The reflex apology rule. The paranoid pantomime rule. Class anxiety tests. The roots of English self-mockery and many more. An international bestseller, Watching the English is a biting, affectionate, insightful and often hilarious look at the English and their society.

‘Ridiculously enjoyable’ Tom Holland A Book of the Year for The Times, Mail on Sunday and BBC History Magazine The ‘Mermaid of Morwenstow’ excommunicated a cat for mousing on a Sunday. When he was late for a service, Bishop Lancelot Fleming commandeered a Navy helicopter. ‘Mad Jack’ swapped his surplice for leopard skin and insisted on being carried around in a coffin. And then there was the man who, like Noah’s evil twin, tried to eat one of each of God’s creatures… In spite of all this they saw the church as their true calling. These portraits reveal the Anglican church in all its colourful madness.