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On the 1st December 1838,all slaves were finally freed on South Africa, four years after slavery hadofficially been abolished.First of December followsthree people during the week of November 1838: James and Caroline Kendrick, andan unnamed runaway slave making her way to Cape Town along the coast, desperateto reach it by midnight on the 31st November.Caroline is trapped in anunhappy marriage, in a place she hates, always longing to go home; bored,lonely, without purpose or any sense of belonging. James is forever on themove, desperate for success after a lifetime of failure and humiliation, seeingSouth Africa as his last great hope, preparing for the climax of his work, abank to serve the city. Each resents the other, feeling trapped and unloved,yet with a wish for it all to change. Meanwhile the slave-apprentice, fearfulof being caught before the deadline, meets others living on the coast, at theedge of society, yet always remaining alone, without any clear idea of what toexpect in Cape Town.

A dark and stormy night. Wind howling inthe trees. The creaky door of an old house…The tropes of the classic ghost taledid not spring up overnight, fully formed; they grew over time, from theRomantic literature of the 18th century to the early 20th century, the ‘heyday’ of horror fiction.The Tales from the Penny Bloods Podcast began as aseries of audio dramas inspired by stories from Victorian Penny Fiction (thinkPenny Dreadfuls), keepsake volumes, and journals like Household Words. Thiscollection brings together the ghostlier of such stories: loves lost and crimesunpunished, haunted carriages, and of course, haunted houses. From GothicRomanticism to Edwardian horror, these tales illustrate the evolution of themodern ghost story over the ‘long century’.The companion volume to this storyanthology includes the original scripts for these audio plays. [The Tales from the Penny Bloods Podcast can beheard, performed by a talented group of actors and brought to life with musicand special effects, on Spotify, Apple Music, and other platforms. Non-profittheatres can request the rights to perform the scripts at no cost, andfor-profit theatres can present them for a nominal fee.]

Without the horse, India would not be this India ... The history of the horse in India is an epic tale of life and war, of migration and intermingling, and points towards a greater history throughout the world, the history of humans and animals in symbiosis.

English-Polish volume of 27 poems by AnnaBlasiak with 27 photographs by Lisa Kalloo It isn't exaggeration to say Deliverance is pioneering; it is a book of design,of illustration, a collaboration built upon a dynamic exchange across mediums;a collection of photopoetry, of image and poem, each elevating the other; allspeaking with immediacy to what can be gleaned from personal experience. - SJ Fowler, poet, writer, organiser ofEuropean Poetry Festival in the UKAnnaBlasiak's poetry book has kicked me where ithurts. These are moving poems about discrimination on many levels, but alsoabout love and finding oneself. Deliverance is a liberation, an unmasking, beautifully complementedby Lisa Kalloo's photographic collages. - Wioletta Greg, poet, novelist, longlistedfor the Man Booker International Prize (2017) and shortlisted to the GriffinPoetry Prize (2015) Aseries of poems about growing up queer in Poland in the 1980s. Deliverancehas a narrative angle and explores themes of gender identity, LGBTQ rights,coming out, homophobia, women's rights etc, at the same time being mainly basedon the author's family/societal history/background. The book has been writtenbilingually, in Polish and in English. The idea is that a reader can read eachpoem in either of the languages or in both of them simultaneously. The authorhas been exploring different techniques to achieve this result: mirroring,intertwining, playing on sounds in both languages. This is her attempt ofshowing the reality of somebody living between the languages, sometimesstretched between them - of somebody who, originally from Poland, haslived in the UK for over 20 years and who, as a translator, works in both ofthose languages on everyday basis.

Deidre is a victim, of her family, her society, her history. That is how she sees herself, and so she feels free of all obligations, moral and practical. Until the police take her back to her family home...In a Cape Town where water is rationed and has to be collected from trucks each day, with the consequences of apartheid and the ending of it still evident, Deidre lives from day to day in squalor - largely created by herself - borrowing, persuading, cadging her way from the water trucks to the bar, testing the tolerance and pity of everyone she knows. Then she is contacted by the police, and taken by a respectful constable to the house where she grew up and where she lost her leg in a shattering explosion while still young. Faced with what is found there, she has to accept the truth of her past, and of her older brother, her parents' golden boy. Then she must confront herself and her responsibility, and what it truly is to be a victim.

“…an extraordinarily immersive narrative, and a fascinating story of the little-known Ouled Nail dancers.” The Island Prize Judges"A compelling storyteller, fresh and engaging." Karen Jennings, An IslandTourists know it as the City of Joy. For Ouled Nail dancers, Bousaada is a city of horrors.It is 1931 when two sisters arrive in Bousaada bursting with dreams of becoming successful dancers. But the city, occupied by the ruthless French colonial army, changes their lives forever.When they kill a soldier in self-defence, Fahima and Salima must outsmart the French Colonel who will stop at nothing to uncover the truth. The sisters are driven further into a cycle of violence with every attempt to hide their crime. Risking their lives and the lives of their loved ones, the dancers find themselves at the heart of a civilizational clash.SAND ROSES is a tale of resistance, sisterhood and the shameful past of two colliding nations. This extraordinarily immersive narrative thrusts its reader into the Algerian city of Bousaada during the 1930s and the story of the Nailiya dancers.

It’s 1997, three years after the end of Apartheid. Two girls, Leilah, who is mixed race, and Frankie, who is white, are drawn together when they start at a new school, one that remains racially divided despite the country’s new laws. Their friendship deepens and intensifies before suddenly falling apart when each tells the other secrets.

BeforeReese Witherspoon and Zoella's Book Clubs, there was Oprah Winfrey and Richardand Judy. And before them, there was Hugh Walpole and the Book Society. This isthe story of Britain's first celebrity book club and the judges who changed howwe read. For forty years between1929-1969, the Book Society chose from the best of world literature to mail outone book a month - fiction, history, travel, or biography - to subscribers in overthirty countries. The judges established what a good 'book club book' lookedlike: well-written, entertaining, informative; worth investing your time andmoney in, not too highbrow nor obscure. Making book-buying easier, they starteda revolution. And the legacy of their taste is still with us on bookshelvestoday. HughWalpole, J. B. Priestley, Sylvia Lynd, Cecil Day-Lewis, and Edmund Blunden werethe literary influencers of their day; household names whose personal lives,affairs, and politics informed their recommendations, mixing the personal andprofessional; social history with the domestic; love, disappointment, and war.They made global bestsellers with books that saw readers through Empire and thegrowth of fascism and antisemitism, the Great Depression, Spanish Civil War,and World War Two. Recommended!exploreshow a group of writers shook up the interwar book world, changing forever howwe buy and think about books.

When Nomandla is awarded ascholarship to attend the prestigious Cameron House for Girls in Durban, shethinks her life will improve. Instead it falls apart.Growing up in Ziyabuya township, Nomandlabattles poverty, racism, and her own mental health. She is pursued by visionswhich result in her being hospitalised, and is then made to accompany herfather on Saturdays to his gardening job at the home of the Smith family. It ishere that she first encounters Casey, a girl who will play a significant rolein turning her life upside down, destroying her hope of a better future.Meanwhile, at Cameron House, Nomandla learns that, as a scholarship girl, sheis expected to showcase gratitude as well as her culture, being regarded aslittle more than a display of transformation, unity and acceptance.Unfortunately, the reality is very different.Andile Cele’s beautiful debut novelconsiders the complexities around identity, its ties to shame, grief, and toSouth Africa’s painful history. Braids & Migraines follows Nomandla as shecomes to a place of personal understanding and acceptance, withoutcompromise.

TIMES BOOK OF THE MONTHONE OF THE TIMES BEST HISTORICAL FICTION NOVELS OF 2025Inthe summer of 1566 an infernoof political rebellion and image-smashing, the Beeldenstorm, sweptacross Flanders and Holland; young Gillis Vervloet,model and muse to artist Pieter Bruegel, almost didn't survive.Morethan sixty years later, in the Saarland forest, Gil wants only to enter themonastery of St Bartolomeus andlive out his days in peace, but first he must find their long-lost statue of StMichael. And to prove he is not a heretic, Gil must also account for his lifewith Bruegel, who painted a tense path through the artistic riches,intellectual ferment and explosive religious politics of the Low Countries. Ashe writes of his passionate vocation for the priesthood and impossible love forDorothea, his outlaw brother Roeland and radical priest-mentor Pater Paulus,Gil's hard-won understanding must show him where to seek St Michael, and savehim from the Inquisition.TheBruegel Boy is a profound exploration of love,brotherhood, vocation and the power of art to transform lives but also divideand even destroy them.

Deidre is a victim, of herfamily, her society, her history. That is how she seesherself, and so she feels free of all obligations, moral and practical. Untilthe police take her back to her family home...In a Cape Town where wateris rationed and has to be collected from trucks each day, with the consequencesof apartheid and the ending of it still evident, Deidre lives from day to dayin squalor - largely created by herself- borrowing, persuading, cadging her way from the water trucks to the bar, testing the tolerance and pity of everyoneshe knows. Then she is contacted by the police, and taken by a respectfulconstable to the house where she grew up and where she lost her leg in ashattering explosion while still young. Faced with what is found there, she hasto accept the truth of her past, and of her older brother, her parents' goldenboy. Then she must confront herself and her responsibility, and what it trulyis to be a victim.

A visitor calls with a gift and a message from the past in this literary, historical novel. In 1802 Thomas de Quincey, a young man from a comfortable middle-class background who would go on to become one of the most celebrated writers of his day, collapsed on Oxford Street and was discovered by a teenage prostitute who brought him back to her room and nursed him to health. It was the beginning of a relationship that would introduce Thomas to a world just below the surface of London's polite society, where pleasure was a tradeable commodity and opium could seem the only relief from poverty. Yet it is also a world where love might blossom, and goodness survive. The lives of a street girl, an aspiring writer, and a freed slave cross and re-cross the slums of London in this novel about the birth of passion, the burden of addiction, and the consolations of literature.

The story of Lili Pohlmann's childhood and survival. During the Second World War she was helped by many people, including a German woman working for the Nazi occupying forces in Lemberg, and a Greek Catholic Metropolitan Archbishop. After the war Lili came to London in the first transport of Jewish children from Poland.

Part memoir, part biography, part book about creative writing and what really makes a novel, and also a brave book about failure, This Is Not A Book About Charles Darwin is unique and compelling.

Everyone has something interesting to say if you take the time to listen. The Interview Chain is a series of conversations-each interviewee was asked to nominate someone they admire as the next link. Starting from a casual conversation on a boat on the Thames, the chain wended its way for over 23,000 miles, alighting on three continents and gathering up personal perspectives on issues that really matter in the world today. The interviewees include a theatre director, a rabbi, a philanthropist, a sculptor, a New York Mayoral candidate, a pioneering documentary maker, and a man who rescues giant trees. Some have worked in challenging places-Kabul in the time of the Taliban, a Romanian orphanage, immigration detention centres, remote Indian villages-while others have found themselves caught up in extraordinary situations such as the Rwandan genocide, the Ferguson uprising, and the UN Climate Change Negotiations. This is the most lovely approach to tell social change stories that I have read about ever, and it is an overwhelming honor to be part of this book.Ruth Messinger, Global Ambassador to the American Jewish World Service and formerNew York City political leader.

When Stephen Bloodsmith creates a series of images inspired by Rubens' trip to 1629 London, he is finds in a world of suspicion and intrigue. When he practises deception in his own marriage, falling in love with his model, the parallels between Bloodsmith's and Rubens' lives become hard to live with and impossible to ignore.

Everybody knows about Charles Darwin, and many know about others in his family, from Erasmus Darwin and Tom Wedgwood, the first photographer, to composer Ralph Vaughan Williams and poet and radical John Cornford, the first Briton to be killed in the Spanish Civil War. But when Charles and Emma Darwin's great-great-granddaughter, another Emma Darwin, tried to root her new novel in that history, the conflict between her complex heritage, and her own identity as a writer, became a battle that nearly killed her.This is Not a Book About Charles Darwin takes the reader on a writer's journey through the Darwin-Wedgwood-Galton clan, as seen through the lens of Emma's struggle. Along the way, her wry, witty and honest memoir becomes a brave book about failure - and, above all, a book about writing and how stories are told. Richly illustrated with over 40 black and white images.

A book-length interview with the Mother of God. No questions, just answers. Mariamne is an old Jewish peasant woman from Galilee. She is visited by a young Greek man who came to see her to talk about her late son. Mariamne spins her story in a colourful and blunt language of a simple, old woman of natural intelligence and dry sense of humour.

In the Ellis family, no-one talks about Susie but no-one can forget her - until Gina and Robert receive invitations to a family reunion by the sea in Cornwall.As the three days unfold, the stories and secrets of each character are mapped against England's changing society. The truth of Susie's disappearance over twenty years ago is gradually revealed.Three Days by the Sea is a subtle, funny and moving story of hope and renewal. With both dry, sharp humour and warmth, Helen E. Mundler unpicks the trials and tensions of family life.

Tropical sun, walks on the beach, time for exercise and relaxation: life as an expat wife seems like a holiday. Reality proves disappointing and as boredom turns to despair, her fascination with the way her greyhounds hunt and kill develops into daydreams. She pushes herself ever closer to acts unthinkable at home. Is there a killer in us all?

A haunting ode to those who paid the ultimate price-through the prism of the Maoist insurgency, Ashutosh Bhardwaj meditates on larger questions of violence and betrayal, love and obsession, and what it means to live with and write about death.From 2011 to 2015, Ashutosh lived in the Red Corridor in India wherein the Ultra-Left Naxalites, taking inspiration from the Russian revolution and Mao's tactics, work to overthrow the Indian government by the barrel of the gun. He made several trips thereafter reporting on the insurgents, on police and governmental atrocities, and on the lives caught in the crossfire. Ashutosh chronicles his experiences and bears witness to the lives and deaths of the unforgettable men and women he meets from both sides of the struggle, bringing home the human cost of conflict with astonishing power. Narrated in multiple voices, the book is a creative biography of the region, Dandakaranya, that combines the rigour of journalism, the intimacy of a diary, the musings of a travelogue, and the craft of a novel.The Death Script is one of the most significant works of non-fiction to be published in recent times, bringing often overlooked perspectives and events to light with empathy. Praised by India's topmost scholars and critics, the book has already won various awards.

The summer of 2006, and nineteen-year-old Layla returns to Lebanon. When she arrives she finds that her troubled younger brother is missing. She heads to Beirut to search for him, but her quest is cut short when Beirut comes under fire. A new war has begun, and she is trapped in the middle of it.

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2021 BOOKER PRIZE'An Island concerns itself with lives lived on the margins, through the story of a man who has exiledhimself from the known world only to find himself called to the service of others, themselves exiledfrom the world by cruelty and circumstance. It is on these grounds that this writer deftly constructsa moving, transfixing novel of loss, political upheaval, history, identity, all rendered in majestic andextraordinary prose.' Booker Prize Judges panel."A gripping, terrifying and unforgettable story." Elleke BoehmerSamuel has lived alone for a long time; one morning he finds the sea has brought someone to offer companionship and to threaten his solitude...A young refugee washes up unconscious on the beach of a small island inhabited by no one but Samuel, an old lighthouse keeper. Unsettled, Samuel is soon swept up in memories of his former life on the mainland: a life that saw his country suffer under colonisers, then fight for independence, only to fall under the rule of a cruel dictator; and he recalls his own part in its history. In this new man's presence he begins to consider, as he did in his youth, what is meant by land and to whom it should belong. To what lengths will a person go in order to ensure that what is theirs will not be taken from them?A novel about guilt and fear, friendship and rejection; about the meaning of home.

'Captivating . . . a sumptuous study of one of history's most infamous love triangles.' Independent; 'Excellent; I was taken by every page; more, every sentence. It is beautifully and startlingly written, the sudden shifts and turns, impulse and counter-impulse within and from these remarkable people. A very fine love story.' CHRISTOPHER RICKS

A unique and beautiful book, profusely illustrated, A Certain Slant of Light was shortlisted for the Fitzcarraldo Prize. Duncan White's moving novel reverberates with unspoken grief. A beautifully written meditation on impermanence, in which art and human life are seen as signal flares into the darkness.

This book has collaboration and translation at its heart: between people, words and images, languages, cultures. The poems came first, in Polish. Then came the photographic response to them. Then four translators, MARTA DZIUROSZ, MARIA JASTRZEBSKA, DANUSIA STOK and ELZBIETA WOJCIK-LEESE, took a set of 12 or 13 poems each and translated them into English. All people involved were women: the poet, the photographer, the four translators and the two editors. Together they arrived at 51 Polish poems, 51 English poems and 51 photographs making this collection. They raise themes such as cultural identity and migration, queerness, racism, isolation and family memories.

Greta Garbo, the immortal goddess of the silver screen, said that she wanted to be alone. What if she had been granted that wish? What if she had travelled further and further until she arrived at the North Pole? And what if she met a faithful dog along the way...

This is the story of Lili Pohlmann's incredible childhood and survival. During the Second World War she was helped by many people, sometimes by simply 'looking the other way'; but of especial significance were two remarkable non-Jews: a German woman working for the Nazi occupying forces in Lemberg, and a Greek Catholic Metropolitan Archbishop. After the war Lili came to London in the first of three transports of Jewish children from Poland. She arrived in the British capital on her sixteenth birthday. She still lives in London.The book consists of interviews with Lili, revealing her own voice, which is vivid, colourful and engaging. The conversations focus on Lili's childhood, wartime experiences, her arrival in London and years shortly after the war. They are accompanied by historical commentaries, as well as more personal pieces from the author, Anna Blasiak, framing and contrasting Lili's story and experiences with the story of somebody from a different generation, growing up years after the war in Poland, a place where the vanished Jews left a painful, gaping hole.Introduction by Philippe SandsHistorical Context by Clare MulleyIllustrated with photographs throughout

Selected by Chris Patten in the Sunday Telegraph as ‘the novel which shows the best grasp of political life’. 'Tolstoyan . . . a wide-ranging, detailed and sympathetic portrayal of a whole society.' ANTHONY THWAITE, Observer; 'What a treat . . . stylish, politically interesting and immensely readable.' NINA BAWDEN, Daily Telegraph