Apollo – förlag

Set in a luxurious grand hotel just outside Lisbon, at the height of the Second World War, Estoril is a delightful and poignant novel about exile, divided loyalties, fear and survival. The hotel''s guests include spies, fallen kings, refugees from the Balkans, Nazis, American diplomats and stateless Jews. The Portuguese secret police broodingly observe the visitors, terrified that their country''s neutrality will be compromised.The novel seamlessly fuses the stories of its invented characters with appearances by historical figures like the ex-King Carol of Romania, the great Polish pianist Jan Paderewski, the British agent Ian Fleming, the Russian chess grandmaster Alexander Alekhine and the French writer and flyer Antoine de St Exupery, who forms a poignant friendship with a young Jewish boy living alone in the hotel.

ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES'' BEST BOOKS OF THE 21ST CENTURY * The million-copy bestseller* * National Book Award finalist** An instant New York Times Bestseller ** Selected for Emma Watson''s Our Shared Shelf book club **Selected for The Queen''s Reading Room*''This is a captivating book... Min Jin Lee''s novel takes us through four generations and each character''s search for identity and success. It''s a powerful story about resilience and compassion'' BARACK OBAMA. Yeongdo, Korea, 1911. Teenaged Sunja, the adored daughter of a fisherman, falls for a wealthy yakuza. He promises her the world, but when she discovers she is pregnant – and that her lover is married – she refuses to be bought. Facing ruin, she accepts an offer of marriage from a gentle minister passing through on his way to Japan. Following a man she barely knows to a hostile country where she has no friends, Sunja will be forced to make some difficult choices. Her decisions will echo through the decades. Spanning nearly 100 years of history, Pachinko is an unforgettable story of love, sacrifice, ambition and loyalty told through four generations of one family.

''Without translation, we would be living in provinces bordering on silence'' George Steiner. It is impossible to overstate the influence world literatures have had in defining each other. No culture exists in isolation; all writers are part of the intertwining braid of literature. Found In Translation brings together one hundred glittering diamonds of world literature, celebrating not only the original texts themselves but also the art of translation. From Azerbijan to Uzbekistan, by way of China and Bengal, Suriname and Slovenia, some of the greatest voices of world literature come together in a thunderous chorus. If the authors include Nobel Prize winners, some of the translators are equally famous – here, Saul Bellow translates Isaac Beshevis Singer, D.H. Lawrence and Edith Wharton translate classic Italian short stories, and Victoria Hislop has taken her first venture into translation with the only short story written by Constantine P. Cavafy. This exciting, original and brilliantly varied collection of stories takes the reader literally on a journey, exploring the best short stories the globe has to offer.

''One of the greatest novels of the Second World War'' The Times ''A remarkable find'' Antony Beevor''A masterpiece'' Mail on SundayStalingrad, November 1942. Lieutenant Breuer dreams of returning home for Christmas. But he and his fellow German soldiers will spend winter in a frozen hell as snow, ice and relentless Soviet assaults reduce the once-mighty Sixth Army to a diseased and starving rabble. Breakout at Stalingrad is a stark and terrifying portrait of the horrors of war, and a profoundly humane depiction of comradeship in adversity.The book itself has an extraordinary story behind it. Its author fought at Stalingrad and was imprisoned by the Soviets. In captivity, he wrote a novel based on his experiences, which the Soviets confiscated before releasing him. Gerlach resorted to hypnosis to remember his narrative, and in 1957 it was published as The Forsaken Army. Fifty-five years later Carsten Gansel, an academic, came across the original manuscript of Gerlach''s novel in a Moscow archive. This first translation into English of Breakout at Stalingrad includes the story of Gansel''s sensational discovery.

A TLS Book of the Year. ''Erudite and urgent, Ian Thomson''s Dante''s Divine Comedy is another book that everyone ought to read'' Spectator. ''Succinct but wide-ranging, Ian Thomson''s richly illustrated exploration of Dante''s masterpiece is... fun... ingenious... fascinating'' Observer. ''A book worth savouring as a chunky, chatty, richly illustrated guide that brings Dante and his world within our reach'' Evening Standard. A lively and wide-ranging exploration of a literary masterwork and its influence on writers, poets, artists and film-makers up to our own time. Dante has no equal as he sings of other-worldly horror and celestial beatitude alike. Yet for all our distance from medieval theology, the Florentine poet''s allegorical journey through hell, purgatory and paradise remains one of the essential works of world literature. At least fifty English language versions of the Inferno the first part of Dante''s poem appeared in the twentieth century alone. If Dante''s Divine Comedy speaks to our present condition, it is because it tells the story of Everyman who sets out in search of salvation in this world. Dante composed his great poem in the spoken Italian of his time. He wrote about suffering bodies and human weakness, and about divine ecstasy, in words that have resonated with readers and writers for the last seven hundred years.

Motherhood, nurture and violence – these are the themes of Elske Rahill''s remarkable first collection, In White Ink. Rahill brings to life the psychological and physical reality of mothering, pregnancy and childbirth in ways that few others writers have attempted. Here is a biting realism, in the relations between men and women and in the expectations and failures of their assigned roles. Each story is illumined by moments of harsh poetry. They are carefully crafted snapshots of our condition. In the title story, an isolated young mother is locked in to a custody battle with her abusive husband; ''Right to Reply'' shows three generations of women confronting the terrible legacy of their family''s past; in ''Toby'', a woman obsessed with hygiene finally snaps, when she finds her home is infested with fleas. The precision of Rahill''s prose, the stoicism of her unflinching narrative gaze, reveal characters caught up in violently emotional situations. The version of motherhood found here is painful. Yet its endurance, as nature''s greatest force, is brilliantly and compassionately rendered.

Chicago''s beautiful Reliance Building, sixteen storeys tall, was designed in 1890 by John Root and completed in 1895 by Charles B. Atwood. In its construction – metal frame, large areas of plate glass, fire-proof brick and terracotta cladding – it pioneers all the key elements of twentieth-century high-rise architecture, and many of the tenets of Modernism. Cruickshank reflects on the extraordinary architectural, artistic and engineering world of the 1890s and its great figures such as Daniel H. Burnham, Louis Sullivan and William Le Baron Jenney. He looks forward to the Reliance building''s immediate progeny, such as the 1902 Flatiron Building in New York and to the hubristic high-rise architecture of the twenty-first century. This is also the story of Gilded Age Chicago, which was burned to the ground in 1871. The city – corrupt, violent and fabulously wealthy – was ready to try anything, even revolutionary forms of architecture.

Once the pride of New York''s Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Sarpedon krater is a wine-mixing bowl crafted by two Athenians, Euxitheos (who shaped it) and Euphronios (who decorated it), in the late 6thc BC. The moving image Euphronios created for the krater, depicting the stricken Trojan hero Sarpedon being lifted from the battlefield by ''Sleep'' and ''Death'', was to have an influence that endured well beyond Antiquity. Nigel Spivey not only explores the particular culture that produced the vase, but also reveals how its central motif was elaborated throughout classical antiquity and then reworked as a Christian tableau. The Sarpedon Krater is both the extraordinary story of a small and occasionally scandalous object, once consigned to the obscurity of an Etruscan tomb, and a fascinating case study of the deep classical roots of the ideas and iconography of Western art.

A concise history of one of the world''s greatest and most comprehensive museum collections, from its founding in 1753.A product and symbol of the 18th-century Enlightenment, the British Museum is as iconic an expression of that cultural tendency as Johnson''s Dictionary, the French Encyclopedie and Linnaean plant classification. Its collections embody the raw material of empiricism – the bringing together of things to enable the widest intellectual experiment to take place. James Hamilton explores the establishment of the Museum in the 1750s (from the bequest to the nation of the collections of Sir Hans Sloane); the chosen site of its location; the cultural context in which it came into being; the subsequent development, expansion and diversification of the Museum, both as a collection and as a building, from the early 19th to the 21st century; the controversy occasioned by some of its acquisitions; and the legacy and influence of the Museum nationally and globally.

The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge has been at the forefront of scientific endeavour for more than 350 years, since receiving its royal charter from Charles II in 1662. Philosophical Transactions, published in 1665, established the concepts of scientific priority and peer review and is the oldest scientific journal in continuous publication in the world. The 8,000 fellows elected to the Society to date include all of the scientific leading lights of the last four centuries, including Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Tim Berners-Lee and Stephen Hawking. The Society''s motto, nullius in verba, ''on the word of no one'', is a reminder of its founders'' belief that authority must always be questioned; hypotheses can never be taken for granted; truths must be demonstrated or they are not truths at all. Adrian Tinniswood examines why the Royal Society has been such a pivotal institution in the cultural life of Britain and the world.

In the northwestern corner of the great peninsula of the Peloponnese, close to the meeting point of the Cladeus and Alpheus rivers, lies a peaceful river valley overlooked by the steep-sided Hill of Cronus. Here, between the eighth century BCE and the fourth century CE, rival athletes competed for glory in the ancient Olympic Games. Every four years, and from every corner of the Mediterranean world – from Samos to Syracuse and from Sparta to Smyrna – they descended on this quiet corner of southern Greece sacred to Zeus, seeking to excel in disciplines as diverse as sprinting, boxing, wrestling, trumpet blowing and chariot and mulecart racing. The victors of these ancient games may have been awarded crowns of olive leaves in recognition of their achievements, but these original Olympics were no idealistic celebration of the classical aesthetic of grace and beauty shared by all of the participating Greek city-states, but often a bitterly contested struggle between political rivals. Robin Waterfield paints a vivid picture of the reality of the ancient Olympic Games; describes the events in which competitors took part; explores their purpose, rituals and politics; and charts the vicissitudes of their remarkable thousand-year history.

China Miéville''s brilliant reading of the modern world''s most controversial and enduring political document: The Communist Manifesto. ''It''s thrilling to accompany Miéville... as he wrestles – in critical good faith and incandescent commitment – with a manifesto that still calls on us to build a new world'' Naomi Klein ''Read this and be dazzled by its contemporaneity'' Mike Davis ''A rich, luminous reflection of and on a light that never quite goes out'' Andreas Malm ''Reading with [Miéville] today sharpens our senses to contemporary internationalist movements from below'' Ruth Wilson Gilmore ''[Written] with diligence and a ruthlessly critical eye worthy of Marx himself'' Sarah JaffeIn 1848, a strange political tract was published by two German émigrés. Marx and Engles''s apocalyptic vision of an insatiable system, which penetrates every corner of the globe, reduces every relationship to that of profit, and bursts asunder the old forms of production and of politics, remains a picture of our world. And the vampiric energy of that system is once again highly contentious. The Manifesto shows no sign of fading into antiquarian obscurity, and remains a key touchstone for modern political debate.China Miéville is not a writer hemmed in by conventions of disciplinary boundaries or genre, and this is a strikingly imaginative take on Marx and what his most haunting book has to say to us today. Like the Manifesto itself, this is a book haunted by ghosts, sorcery and creative destruction.

A BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week. ''Francis Pryor brings the magic of the Fens to life in a deeply personal and utterly enthralling way'' TONY ROBINSON. ''Pryor feels the land rather than simply knowing it'' GUARDIAN. Inland from the Wash, on England''s eastern cost, crisscrossed by substantial rivers and punctuated by soaring church spires, are the low-lying, marshy and mysterious Fens. Formed by marine and freshwater flooding, and historically wealthy owing to the fertility of their soils, the Fens of Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire are one of the most distinctive, neglected and extraordinary regions of England. Francis Pryor has the most intimate of connections with this landscape. For some forty years he has dug its soils as a working archaeologist – making ground-breaking discoveries about the nature of prehistoric settlement in the area – and raising sheep in the flower-growing country between Spalding and Wisbech. In The Fens, he counterpoints the history of the Fenland landscape and its transformation – from Bronze age field systems to Iron Age hillforts; from the rise of prosperous towns such as King''s Lynn, Ely and Cambridge to the ambitious drainage projects that created the Old and New Bedford Rivers – with the story of his own discovery of it as an archaeologist. Affectionate, richly informative and deftly executed, The Fens weaves together strands of archaeology, history and personal experience into a satisfying narrative portrait of a complex and threatened landscape.

Few buildings carry such a freight of historical symbolism as the Palace of Versailles. First built as a hunting lodge by Louis XIII in the early seventeenth century, then radically repurposed by his absolutist son Louis XIV, Versailles became the focus of that king''s centralised power. Drawing on a new wave of research in recent years, particularly on the buildings and material culture of Versailles, Colin Jones, distinguished historian of early modern France, describes the various building campaigns undertaken by Louis XIV and his formal installation of his court at Versailles in 1682; the ritualized rhythms of life at the court of the Sun King; the palace''s variegated fortunes under Revolution, First Empire, Restoration and July Monarchy; its return to the political stage in the Franco-Prussian War; its later role as a venue for treaty signings and proclamations; and its continuing legacy as imposing physical embodiment of the ancien régime.

A STORY OF SABOTAGE, BETRAYAL AND THE TERRIBLE SADNESS OF EXILE. ''Remarkable''The Times. ''A magnificent novel''The Times. ''Gripping''The Spectator. Scotland, 1940: The Fronsac, a French warship, blows up in the Firth of Clyde. The disaster is witnessed by three locals. Jackie, a young girl who thinks she caused the explosiong by running away from school. Her mother Helen, a spirited woman married to a dreary young officer; and their lodger, a Polish soldier whose country has just been erased from the map by Hitler and Stalin. All their lives will be changed by the death of the Fronsac.

As the woman who trained the great Best Mate to win three consecutive Cheltenham Gold Cups, no one could be better qualified than Henrietta Knight to discover what makes today''s top jumps trainers succeed. From eccentric, outspoken Yorkshireman Mick Easterby, to elegant, aristocratic Venetia Williams, from Irish wizard, Willie Mullins, to perfectionist champion trainer, Paul Nicholls and young pretender, Dan Skelton, here is a dazzling cast of extraordinary characters, all with their quirks and foibles, but with one single-minded ambition – finding first-class horses and training them to win big races. Henrietta shares their dramatic journeys, methods and secrets of working in a tough, competitive industry. For the trainers, every win reignites the thrill of the sport and a craving for success that never dies. Their stories are fascinating, each one illustrated with unique photographs from private albums.

**FROM THE ACCLAIMED AUTHOR OF PACHINKO**''Ambitious, accomplished.'' NEW YORK TIMES''A remarkable writer.'' THE TIMES ''Exquisitely evoked.'' USA TODAYCasey Han''s years at Princeton have given her a refined diction, an enviable golf handicap, a popular white boyfriend and a degree in economics. The elder daughter of working-class Korean immigrants, Casey inhabits a New York a world away from that of her parents. But she has no job, and a number of bad habits.So when a chance encounter with an old friend lands her a new opportunity, she''s determined to carve a space for herself in a glittering world of privilege, power, and wealth – but at what cost?As Casey navigates an uneven course of small triumphs and spectacular failures, a clash of values and ambitions plays out against the colourful backdrop of New York society, its many shades and divides. Addictively readable, Min Jin Lee''s bestselling debut Free Food for Millionaires exposes the intricate layers of a community clinging to its old ways in a city packed with haves and have-nots.''Explores the most fundamental crisis of immigrants'' children: how to bridge a generation gap so wide it is measured in oceans.'' OBSERVER

Twenty-five stories, twenty-five paintings, five years to write, ten years to paint. This is an extraordinary collaboration between artist and artist: the Booker Prize-winning writer Ben Okri and the painter Rosemary Clunie. Together they have created a world, and peopled it with dreams. Twenty-five fairy tales for adults, these narratives are a response to our times, informed by our world but not limited by it, imaginative, enchanting, haunting – both prescient and prophetic. Twenty-five original paintings, beautiful, playful, intimate, dreamlike, these works pull you in to a land of colour and vision. Who can say which came first, the word or image, when both grew together out of a long friendship and a creative symbiosis. What if Calvino and Magritte had combined inspiration? What if we could see our world again with a child''s eyes? What if there really is a magic lamp?

A sparkling account of the nineteenth-century rebuilding of Paris as the most beautiful city in the world, as part of the stunning Landmark Library series. ''This really is an impressive book'' Sebastian Faulks. ''Brisk, vivid and unexpectedly stirring... No one writes as evocatively and entertainingly about Paris as Christiansen does'' Mail on Sunday. ''Every page is a pleasure, every building, every gas lamp brought shimmering to life... Don''t board the Eurostar without a copy'' The Times. ''A wonderful book, amazingly vivid... But also a truly original work of scholarship'' Theodore Zeldin. In 1853 the French emperor Louis Napoleon inaugurated a vast and ambitious programme of public works, directed by Georges-Eug ne Haussmann, the prefect of the Seine. Haussmann''s renovation of Paris would transform the old medieval city of squalid slums and disease-ridden alleyways into a ''City of Light'' characterised by wide boulevards, apartment blocks, parks, squares and public monuments, new railway stations and department stores and a new system of public sanitation. City of Light charts a fifteen-year project of urban renewal which despite the interruptions of war, revolution, corruption and bankruptcy would set a template for nineteenth and early twentieth-century urban planning and create the enduring and globally familiar layout of modern Paris.

A Sunday Times Book of the Year Winner of the Polari Prize''A book about love, identity, acceptance and the freedom to write, paint, compose and wear corduroy breeches with gaiters. To swear, kiss, publish and be damned. It is vastly entertaining and often moving... There isn''t a page without an entertaining vignette'' The Times. The extraordinary story of how a singular group of women in a pivotal time and place – Paris, Between the Wars – fostered the birth of the Modernist movement. Sylvia Beach, Bryher, Natalie Barney, and Gertrude Stein. A trailblazing publisher; a patron of artists; a society hostess; a groundbreaking writer. They were all women who loved women. They rejected the patriarchy and made lives of their own – forming a community around them in Paris. Each of these four central women interacted with a myriad of others, some of the most influential, most entertaining, most shocking and most brilliant figures of the age. Diana Souhami weaves their stories into those of the four central women to create a vivid moving tapestry of life among the Modernists in pre-War Paris.''One of the best books I''ve read this year.'' James Bridle

LONGLISTED FOR THE HWA GOLD CROWN 2023 Neva is born into a world of trickery and illusion, where fortunes are won and lost on the turn of a card. But she is also born with an extraordinary gift: she can predict the weather. In Regency England, where the proper goal for a gentlewoman is marriage and only God can foretell the future, this is a dangerous power to possess.In order to stand up to the men of science, Neva adopts a sophisticated male disguise, created by her brilliant clockmaker father. But what will happen when she falls in love with a charismatic young man?''Seductive'' Observer''Wildly inventive'' The Times''Superb... joyful'' New Statesman''A delight'' The Sunday Times''Beguiling'' Mail on Sunday''Magical storytelling'' Heat''A triumph!'' Caroline Lea''Bold and original'' Financial Times''I was completely captivated'' Amanda Craig

The story of the Peterloo massacre, a defining moment in the history of British democracy, told with passion and authority. ''Excellent'' Zadie Smith ''Fast-paced and full of fascinating detail'' Tim Clayton ''A superb account of one of the defining moments in modern British history'' Tristram Hunt ''Peterloo is one of the greatest scandals of British political history... Riding tells this tragic story with mesmerising skill'' John BewOn a hot late summer''s day, a crowd of 60,000 gathered in St Peter''s Field. They came from all over Lancashire – ordinary working-class men, women and children – walking to the sound of hymns and folk songs, wearing their best clothes and holding silk banners aloft. Their mood was happy, their purpose wholly serious: to demand fundamental reform of a corrupt electoral system.By the end of the day fifteen people, including two women and a child, were dead or dying and 650 injured, hacked down by drunken yeomanry after local magistrates panicked at the size of the crowd. Four years after defeating the ''tyrant'' Bonaparte at Waterloo, the British state had turned its forces against its own people as they peaceably exercised their time-honoured liberties. As well as describing the events of 16 August in shattering detail, Jacqueline Riding evokes the febrile state of England in the late 1810s, paints a memorable portrait of the reform movement and its charismatic leaders, and assesses the political legacy of the massacre to the present day.As fast-paced and powerful as it is rigorously researched, Peterloo: The Story of the Manchester Massacre adds significantly to our understanding of a tragic staging-post on Britain''s journey to full democracy.

A rediscovered classic of Irish literature, this darkly comic tale tells of murder and its consequences. Set in a remote village in the northwest of Ireland, Roarty, a publican and former priest, kills his lecherous bartender and buries him in a bog. When Roarty begins to receive blackmail letters, matters quickly spiral out of his control. Alive with the loquacious brio of his pub''s eccentric regulars, and full of the bleak beauty of the Donegal landscape, Patrick McGinley''s rural gothic novel is a modern masterpiece.

A lovesick kraken slowly drags the object of its desire - a ship of sailers - into the sea; a group of cantankerous saints materialize in a well-appointed parlour, and must unravel the mystery of how they got there; ageing fathers are sunk to the bottom of the ocean in pressure-sealed crates in a time-honoured ritual. Michael Andreasen''s stories romp through the lunatic and surreal with a tender generous ease; there is a joyous absurdity to each premise. Just because a sister is born without a head doesn''t mean her brother won''t love and protect her; just because an adulterous tryst ends in alien abduction doesn''t mean the man doesn''t miss his wife. An extremely funny, very weird, brilliantly constructed set of stories, from an exciting young writer.

The wooden holiday cabin, or hytte, is a staple of Norwegian life. Robert Ferguson, author of Scandinavians, explores the significance of a national icon in this charming, affectionate history.Turf-roofed and wooden-built, offering fresh air, breathtaking views and peaceful isolation, the wooden cabin home – or hytte – is a crucial part of Norwegian national identity. In 2016, Robert Ferguson and his wife bought a piece of land high up in the Hardangervidda, and on it they built a cabin.As the cabin takes shape, Ferguson learns how native Norwegians have married a new-found urban affluence to their past as a tight-knit rural community-nation, and confronts his own ideas about the dream-tradition of the hytte, drawing an affectionate but unsentimental portrait of Norwegian culture, society and landscape.''Singular and captivating: the pursuit of a dream'' Professor John Carey''Illuminating'' TLS''An uncompromising journey into the dark cold north, to reveal the warmth that comes from deep community bonds'' Tim Ecott

The story behind the scandalous first performance of one of the most influential works in the history of music, as part of the stunning Landmark Library series. On 29 May 1913, at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris, a new ballet by Diaghilev''s Ballets Russes, choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky, received its premiere. Many of the cultural big names of Paris were there, or were rumoured to have been there: Debussy, Ravel, Proust, Gertrude Stein, Picasso. When the curtain rose on a cast of frenziedly stamping dancers, a near-riot ensued, ensuring the evening would enter the folklore of modernism. While it was the dancing that triggered the mayhem, Stravinsky''s score contained shocks enough, with its innovations in form, rhythm, dissonance and its sheer sonic power. The Rite of Spring would achieve recognition in its own right as a concert piece, and is now seen as one of the most influential works of the 20th century. Gillian Moore explores the cultural climate that created The Rite, tells the story of the creation of the music and the ballet and provides a guide to the music itself, showing how a scandalous novelty of 1913 became a 21st-century concert staple. As well as considering its influence on 20th-century classical composers, she probes The Rite''s impact on film music (including scores for Star Wars and Jaws); its extensive influence on jazz musicians (including Charlie Parker) and by artists as diverse as Weather Report, Joni Mitchell, Frank Zappa and The Pet Shop Boys.

Founded in 1884 to promote Irish identity and revive the traditional sports of hurling, football and handball, the GAA enjoyed an intimate relationship with the nationalist movement from the turn of the twentieth century onwards. In 1914, the Irish Volunteers drilled with hurley sticks in the absence of rifles; after the 1916 Rising many of those interned by the British were GAA members; and on 21 November 1920, a Gaelic football match between Dublin and Tipperary at Croke Park was interrupted by a raid by British crown forces that left fourteen dead in Ireland''s first ''Bloody Sunday''. With affection and authority, Tim Pat Coogan traces the stirring story of an institution which, from modest beginnings as a grass-roots sporting organisation, has grown into a cornerstone of Irish society both North and South. The Gaelic Athletic Association is, Coogan argues, the most socially valuable organisation in Ireland, whose ideal of voluntarism has contributed to a distinctive sense of national identity that flourishes wherever green is worn.

The independent kingdom of Scotland flourished until the beginning of the last century. Its great trading port of Challaid, in the north west of the country, sent ships around the world and its merchants and bankers grew rich on their empire in Central America. But Scotland is not what it was, and the docks of Challaid are almost silent. The huge infrastructure projects collapsed, like the dangerous railway tunnels under the city. And above ground the networks of power and corruption are all that survive of Challaid''s glorious past. Darian Ross is a young private investigator whose father, an ex cop, is in prison for murder. He takes on a case brought to him by a charismatic woman, Maeve Campbell. Her partner has been stabbed; the police are not very curious about the death of a man who laundered money for the city''s criminals. Ross is drawn by his innate sense of justice and his fascination with Campbell into a world in which no-one can be trusted.

Frank and Joan''s marriage is in trouble. Having spent thirty years failing to understand each other, Joan''s frustrations have finally reached boiling point. But it''s Christmas, and their three children are coming home for the holiday. So Joan determines to make things work. With the Christmas tree up, plates of mince pies artfully arranged and the obligatory poinsettia in situ, the stage is set for a traditional family Christmas. If only this family were up to the challenge. Told with wit, understanding and disarming honesty, this is a novel about the thorniness of family love and its capacity to endure.