Product Description: This New York Times bestseller makes the fascinating argument that the Chinese discovered the Americas a full 70 years before Columbus. Unveiling incontrovertible evidence of their astonishing voyages, 1421 rewrites our understanding of history in a landmark work of historical investigation...read more

[Read by Simon Vance] A story of courage, loyalty, and friendship; of Browsers, Shadow-Tangles, and Tatterdermalions; of incredible landscapes, ingenious devices, and cunning plot twists; Attica has a richness and depth that will delight listeners of all ages. Join Jordy, Alex, and Chloe as they cross the portal from our world to a strange and wonderful place, accessible for just a moment through the trapdoor of the attic in their family home. From hat-stand forests to towering hills of old musical instruments, deserts of old books, and a great water-tank lake, the vast continent they stumble upon is one of limitless surprises - and that's before they meet the inhabitants. The strange clans of small, lumpen people live in homes constructed from all manner of found things and drive vehicles powered by old sewing-machine parts. It is against this remarkable backdrop that the three children will embark on a spellbinding adventure to recover a prized possession, save a life, and - somehow - find a way back home.

Product Description: When the Iraq war began, conservationist Lawrence Anthony could think of only one thing: the fate of the Baghdad Zoo, caught in the crossfire at the heart of the city. Once Anthony entered Iraq, he discovered that hostilities and uncontrolled looting had devastated the zoo and its animals...read more

Product Description: [Read by Simon Vance]In a case of mistaken identity, Barnaby Rudge, an eccentric half-wit, is arrested as the leader of a mob of anti-Catholic rioters during the Gordon Riots, in this grand novel of private lives and public events.

Product Description: Samuel Beckett's work evokes passionate responses: readers and playgoers either revere it or consider it a load of pretentious nonsense. But his philosophy of pessimism will always find a new generation of young readers, for it bursts the rainbow soap bubbles of illusion, leaving us blinking with stinging eyes at unremitting reality...read more

This incandescent novel chronicles both an internal journey and a physical trek into the heart of Africa, a place caught between the dangerously alluring modern world and its own tenacious past and traditions. Exploring political and individual corruption, it expresses skepticism about the ability of newly decolonized nations to forge independent identities. Salim, a Muslim Indian merchant, opens a store in a sleepy small town at a bend in the river, whose inhabitants include a Belgian priest, a witch, and a white intellectual named Raymond. The president of the new country is a demagogue called the Big Man who hires Raymond as his speechwriter. Salim loses control of his store to the commercially inexperienced Citizen Theotime, who hires Salim to manage it. Gradually, the town's veneer of civilization begins to crumble.

Product Description: [Read by Simon Vance]As Enzo Macleod takes on the third of seven famous cold cases he has confidently bet he can solve, this is one instance when his Scottish stubbornness might pay off. -- Sometimes it's what you dont see. -- Enzo MacLeod, a Scot teaching in southwest France, has confidently bet that he can crack seven notorious murders described in a book on cold cases...read more

Product Description: Naomi Novik's beloved Temeraire series, a brilliant combination of fantasy and history that reimagines the Napoleonic wars as fought with the aid of intelligent dragons, is a twenty-first-century classic. From the first volume, His Majesty's Dragon, readers have been entranced by the globe-spanning adventures of the resolute Capt...read more

Product Description: [Read by Simon Vance]As Enzo Macleod takes on the cold case of a famous French chef murdered before he could make a shattering announcement, he must unravel the relationships around the man - a spurned lover, jealous wife, estranged brother, and embittered food critic.

Product Description: The Boleyn Deceit is a captivating novel set in the imagined Tudor court of King Henry IX, son of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, who must navigate a terrain rife with palace intrigue, impending war, and unbridled passions.The regency period is over and William Tudor, now King Henry IX, sits alone on the throne...read more

Product Description: The Boleyn King is the first book in an enthralling trilogy that dares to imagine: What if Anne Boleyn had actually given Henry VIII a son who grew up to be king?Just seventeen years old, Henry IX, known as William, is a king bound by the restraints of the regency yet anxious to prove himself...read more

Product Description: Weaving fiction with fact, fantastic matter with historical figures, Borges' frequent theme of a world where time, culture, and place converge is both timely and pertinent in our advance toward globalization. Drawing from his multi-ethnic and -lingual upbringing in Argentina, Borges' focus on universal themes early on came to belittle the sentiments of racism and communism, earning him widespread recognition...read more

Discover the man behind the myth in this new biography of one of the most pioneering and influential performers of our time—David Bowie.David Bowie—the iconic superstar of rock, fashion, art, design, and the quintessential sexual liberator—is a living legend. However, for the past five decades, he has managed to retain his Hollywood star mystique. Now, New York Times bestselling author Wendy Leigh reveals the real man behind the mythology. Through scores of interviews with Bowie’s lovers (both male and female), his girlfriends, business associates, groupies, and band members, Leigh, who grew up just a mile from where Bowie was born and went to school, has written an intimate biography of rock’s greatest enigma.In an unexpurgated exploration of Bowie’s kaleidoscopic personal life, she reveals his star-crossed inheritance—his mother was once an acolyte of the British Fascist party; his father, the PR genius who masterminded his early career—in a dramatic contrast to those family members grappling with mental illness, fears that would haunt Bowie for most of his life.Above all, there is Bowie’s hard-won rise to fame and fortune, his astounding creativity, his courage as a performer, and his shape-shifting style, coupled with a ruthless ambition that caused him to submit to the casting couch on his way to the top. In the process, Leigh tells of Bowie’s strong bond with John Lennon, his love/hate relationship with Mick Jagger, his male sexual partners, and his women, as disparate as Elizabeth Taylor, Susan Sarandon, Tina Turner, Marianne Faithful, Nina Simone, and most notable, his marriage to Iman, which has lasted for the past quarter of a century.This biography is a once-in-a-lifetime look at the iconic superstar who changed the world.