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Montaillou : Cathars and Catholics in a French village, 1294-1324
by Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie
Eminent historian Le Roy Ladurie reconstructs the economy and social structure of the the village of Montaillou and the surrounding mountainous region of Southern France in the 1300s, and probes the most intimate aspects of medieval life: love & marriage, gestures & emotions, conversations & gossip, clans & factions, crime & violence, concepts of time & space, attitudes to the past, animals, magic & folklore, death & beliefs about the other world.
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Under occupation : a novel
by Alan Furst
A historical novel based on the true stories of Polish prisoners in Nazi Germany finds a young member of the French resistance in occupied Paris navigating increasingly dangerous assignments and the machinations of an enigmatic spy.
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Mr Gandy's grand tour
by Alan Titchmarsh
The new bestselling novel from Britain's favourite gardener and TV presenter Alan Titchmarsh. Mr Gandy escapes his humdrum life with an unexpected Grand Tour of Europe where drama, romance and friendship await in this beguiling tale of self-discovery.
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Nigel : My Family and Other Dogs
by Monty Don
A celebration of Nigel and all the dogs Monty Don has had and how dogs enrich our lives by the BBC Gardeners' World presenter.
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Hexarchate Stories
by Yoon Ha Lee
A general outnumbered eight-to-one must outsmart his opponent... A renegade returns from seclusion to bury an old comrade... From the incredible imagination of Hugo- and Arthur C. Clarke-nominated author Yoon Ha Lee comes a collection of stories set in the world of the best-selling Ninefox Gambit. Showcasing Lee's extraordinary imagination, this collection takes you to the very beginnings of the hexarchate's history and reveals new never-before-seen stories.
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A memory called empire
by Arkady Martine
After discovering that the previous ambassador in her post may have been murdered, Mahit Dzmare arrives in the capital of the Teixcalaanli Empire determined to find the killer, as she hides a secret which may save her station from the Teixcalaan's desire for expansion.
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How to paint a dead man
by Sarah Hall
Moving from Italy to England, spanning nearly half a century, and bringing together the lives of four disparate characters, this novel offers a fierce and brilliant study of art and its place in our lives.
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The Wish Child
by Catherine Chidgey
It’s 1939. Sieglinde lives in the affluent ignorance of middle-class Berlin, her father a censor who cuts prohibited words such as love and mercy out of books. Erich is an only child living a rural life near Leipzig, tending beehives, aware that he is shadowed by strange, unanswered questions. Drawn together as Germany’s hope for a glorious future begins to collapse, the children find temporary refuge in an abandoned theatre amidst the rubble of Berlin. Outside, white bedsheets hang from windows; all over the city people are talking of surrender. The days Sieglinde and Erich spend together will shape the rest of their lives.
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Bookworm : A Memoir of Childhood Reading
by Lucy Mangan
A love letter to the joys of childhood reading from Wonderland to Narnia.Lucy brings the favourite characters of our collective childhoods back to life - prompting endless re-readings, rediscoveries, and, inevitably, fierce debate - and brilliantly uses them to tell her own story, that of a born, and unrepentant, bookworm.
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The Underground Railroad : a novel
by Colson Whitehead
The award-winning author of The Noble Hustle chronicles the daring survival story of a cotton plantation slave in Georgia, who, after suffering at the hands of both her owners and fellow slaves, races through the Underground Railroad with a relentless slave-catcher close behind.
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Sweet tooth : a novel
by Ian McEwan
Recruited into MI5 against a backdrop of the Cold War in 1972, Cambridge student Serena Frome, a compulsive reader, is assigned to infiltrate the literary circle of a promising young writer whose politics align with those of the government, a situation that is compromised when she falls in love with him.
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The Dickens Boy
by Thomas Keneally
The tenth child of Charles Dickens, Edward Bulwer Lytton Dickens, known as Plorn, had consistently proved unable 'to apply himself ' to school or life. So aged sixteen, he is sent to Australia. Plorn arrives in late 1868 having never read a word of his father's work. He is sent out to remotest NSW to learn to become a man from the most diverse and toughest of companions. In the outback he becomes enmeshed with Paakantji, colonists, colonial-born, ex-convicts, ex-soldiers, and very few women. Plorn, unexpectedly, encounters the same veneration of his father and familiarity with Dickens' work in Australia as was rampant in England. Against this backdrop, Plorn meets extraordinary people and enjoys wonderful adventures as he works to prove himself.
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