Showing titles in Political

With one impatient phone call, a young Christopher Isherwood is drawn into the film industry. On the other end of the line is the brilliant yet temperamental Austrian director Friedrich Bergmann. Christopher’s job is to rescue the script of a saccharine love story set in nineteenth-century Vienna, a film called Prater Violet. Meanwhile, in the real Vienna of 1934, the Austrian right crushes a socialist uprising. Bergmann is distraught; his family is in danger in Vienna, while his prophecy of a coming war goes unheeded by his British colleagues.

A compelling dramatisation of Rohinton Mistry's Booker Prize-nominated novel about India's underclass India, 1975. Desperate to preserve her independence from her abusive brother, Parsi widow Dina Dilal turns her cramped city apartment into a sweatshop. But when her eyesight begins to fail, she...

Navy SEAL turned covert operative Scot Harvath is called to action once again in this pulse-pounding political thriller from #1 New York Times and #1 Wall Street Journal bestselling author Brad Thor. Buried within the black ops budgets of the Department of Defense, a new spy agency has been...

M.J. Rose and Fiona Davis' Stories from Suffragette City is a collection of short stories from a chorus of best-selling writers all set on the same day, October 23, 1915, in which over a million women marched for the right to vote in New York City - featuring an introduction by Kristin Hannah....

Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel, often published as 1984, is a dystopian social science fiction novel by English novelist George Orwell. It was published on 8 June 1949 by Secker & Warburg as Orwell's ninth and final book completed in his lifetime. Thematically, Nineteen Eighty-Four centres on the consequences of totalitarianism, mass surveillance, and repressive regimentation of persons and behaviours within society. Orwell, himself a democratic socialist, modelled the authoritarian government in the novel after Stalinist Russia.

Brought to you by Penguin. Perhaps one reason not enough people kill billionaires is it’s actually quite tricky... An electrifying, ultra-contemporary heist, a wild and hilarious story that is also dangerously prescient. When her home is destroyed in wildfires, fourteen-year-old Australian...

The thesis of this story is that “because of the development of scientific knowledge, separate sovereign states and separate sovereign empires are no longer possible in the world. To attempt to keep on with the old system is to heap disaster upon disaster for [hu]mankind and perhaps to destroy our race altogether. The remaining interest of this book now is the sustained validity of this thesis and the discussion of the possible ending of war on the earth.”

It is 1917, and President Woodrow Wilson is about to lead the country into the Great War in Europe. In California, a new industry is born that will irreversibly transform America. Caroline Sanford, the alluring heroine of Empire, discovers the power of moving pictures to manipulate reality as she vaults to screen stardom under the name of Emma Traxler. Just as Caroline must balance her two lives - West Coast movie star and East Coast newspaper publisher and senator’s mistress - so too must America balance its two power centers: Hollywood and Washington. Here is history as only Gore Vidal can re-create it: brimming with intrigue and scandal, peopled by the greats of the silver screen and American politics.

Brought to you by Penguin. This Penguin Classic is performed by Alexander Terentyev, best known for Wonder Woman. This definitive recording includes an introduction by James Meek. A Dog's Heart: An Appalling Story is Mikhail Bulgakov's hilarious satire on Communist hypocrisies. In this surreal...

In The 13th Juror, Dismas Hardy, lawyer/investigator, undertakes the defense of Jennifer Witt, accused of murdering her husband and their eight-year-old son as well as her first husband, who had died nine years earlier from an apparent drug overdose.

When Ashdyke Manor is attacked, Lady Christen is forced to witness her husband's murder and the pillaging of her lands at the hands of brutal Norman invaders. It seems the pain is finally over when Miles Le Gallois, Lord of Milnham-on-Wye, calls off the attack. But he has Christen's brother under armed guard and a deal to offer: her brother's freedom for her hand in marriage. Christen finds herself hastily married into the enemy side, with her brother swearing his vengeance on her new husband. 

Making connections between the Suez Canal War in 1949 and the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, this novel about a British couple's disastrous marriage is told by their daughter, who has discovered her mother's diary written at the end of World War II. Ailsa Roberts, the writer of the diary, shows herself to be a vivid and intelligent young Englishwoman who is sailing with her little daughter on the Empire Glory to join her husband, a Welsh RAF sergeant stationed in Egypt, where Britain still occupies the Suez Canal Zone.

The explosion of a Chinese freighter–carrying illegal workers–in Charleston Harbor is the first sign that someone is capping Chinese interests abroad. After explosions in South Africa and Taipei, Op-Center roots out the cause: warring factions in the Chinese government. But still reeling...

The exciting new thriller from Andy McNab, again following Nick Stone as he prepares for his next mission. Aborting an officially sanctioned assassination attempt at the Houses of Parliament when he realizes who the target is, Secret Intelligence Service ‘deniable operator’ Nick Stone is...

When Audrey Marshall sends her daughter Emily to the religious boarding school where she herself was educated a generation before, memories return—memories of a culture of child sexual abuse presided over by a highly-regarded priest. Audrey turns to barrister Ben Schroeder in search of justice for Emily and herself. But there are powerful men involved, men determined to protect themselves at all costs. . .

It is 1917, and Korea has yet to be divided into North and South. With the threat of famine looming, a young girl named Jade is sold by her family to Miss Silver's courtesan school in cosmopolitan Pyongyang, an act of desperation that will cement her place in the lowest social status. Jade flees to Seoul, where she forms a deep friendship with an orphan boy called Jung Ho, who scrapes together a living begging on the streets. As Jade becomes a sought-after performer with unexpected romantic prospects, Jung Ho is swept up in the revolutionary fight for independence.

Britain is awash, the sea creeps into the land, brambles and forest swamp derelict towns. Food production has moved overseas and people are forced to move to the cities for work. The countryside is empty. A chorus, the herd voice of feral cows, wander this newly wild land watching over changing times, speaking with love and exasperation. Jesse and his puppy Mister Maliks roam the woods until his family are forced to leave for London. 

Tunde, the man at the centre of this novel, reflects on the places and times of his life, from his West African upbringing to his current work as a teacher of photography on a renowned New England campus. He is a reader, a listener, and a traveller drawn to many different kinds of stories: from history and the epic; of friends, family, and strangers; those found in books and films. One man's personal lens refracts entire worlds, and back again.

Allen Drury has penetrated the world's stormiest political battleground and the smoke-filled committee rooms of the United States Senate to reveal the bitter conflicts set in motion when the president calls upon the Senate to confirm his controversial choice for secretary of state. This novel is a true epic, showing in fascinating detail the minds and motives of the statesmen, the opportunists, the idealists. Advise and Consent is a timeless story with clear echoes of today's headlines.

Richard has spent his life as a university professor, immersed in the world of books and ideas. Recently retired, he steps into the streets of his city, Berlin, and discovers a new community. A tent city has grown up on Oranienplatz, established by African asylum seekers. Hesitantly getting to know the people there, Richard finds his life changing, as he begins to question his own sense of belonging in a city that once divided its citizens into them and us.