Head of Zeus

The turbulent Tudor age never fails to capture the imagination. But what was it actually like to be a woman during this period? This was a time when death in infancy or during childbirth was rife; when marriage was usually a legal contract, not a matter for love, and the education of women was minimal at best. Yet the Tudor century was also dominated by powerful and characterful women in a way that no era had been before.
Elizabeth Norton explores the seven ages of the Tudor woman, from childhood to old age, through the diverging examples of women such as Elizabeth Tudor, Henry VIII's sister who died in infancy; Cecily Burbage, Elizabeth's wet nurse; Mary Howard, widowed but influential at court; Elizabeth Boleyn, mother of a controversial queen; and Elizabeth Barton, a peasant girl who would be lauded as a prophetess. Their stories are interwoven with studies of topics ranging from Tudor toys to contraception to witchcraft, painting a portrait of the lives of queens and serving maids, nuns and harlots, widows and chaperones.

England, late 1547. Henry VIII is dead. His 14-year-old daughter Elizabeth is living with the old king's widow Catherine Parr and her new husband Thomas Seymour. Ambitious, charming and dangerous, Seymour begins an overt flirtation with Elizabeth that ends in her being sent away by Catherine.
When Catherine dies in autumn 1548 and Seymour is arrested for treason soon after, the scandal explodes into the open. Alone and in dreadful danger, Elizabeth is closely questioned by the king's regency council: Was she still a virgin? Was there a child? Had she promised to marry Seymour? In her replies, she shows the shrewdness and spirit she would later be famous for. She survives the scandal. Thomas Seymour is not so lucky.
The Seymour Scandal led to the creation of the Virgin Queen. On hearing of Seymour's beheading, Elizabeth observed 'This day died a man of much wit, and very little judgement'. His fate remained with her. She would never allow her heart to rule her head again.

Just because football is a game, it doesn't mean you have to play fair.
Football manager Scott Manson needs a new job, but finding one in the star-studded world of international football isn't easy. A new position in Shanghai turns out to be part of an elaborate sting operation – and in Barcelona, he's not hired as a football manager, but as a detective. Barca's star player is missing, and Scott has a month to track him down.
As Scott follows the trail from Paris to Antigua, he encounters corrupt men, wicked women, and the rotten heart of the beautiful game…

The beautiful game just got deadly.
London City is playing in Athens, and football manager Scott Manson is keeping his team on a tight leash. He needs them home in one piece for a crucial match at Silvertown Docks.
But Scott didn't plan for death on the pitch. As the Greek authorities are mounting a murder investigation, Scott must find the truth – and fast – to get his boys home in time.

'She's a Queen of Words' CAITLIN MORAN.
'One of the great lionesses of modern English literature' HARPER'S BAZAAR.
'Readable, articulate and fascinating' THE SCOTSMAN.
'Outrageously funny' DAILY EXPRESS.
'Sharp, witty, incisive' THE TIMES.
'Wise, knowing, forthright' INDEPENDENT.
Reviewers have been describing Fay Weldon's inimitable voice for years. Now, here is Fay Weldon in her own words. Choosing and and introducing twenty-one of her favourite short stories written throughout her fifty year career as one of Britain's foremost novelists. Included as a bonus is a new novella, The Ted Dreams, a ghost story for the age of cyber culture, big pharma, and surveillance.

'An ancient brooding castle… a dispossessed child… a lifelong passion for one errant man… wars, crises and feuds… ' WASHINGTON POST.
Reay Tannahill's great bestseller is the story of an extraordinary woman's determination to win back her birthright – the remote and beautiful West Highland castle of Kinveil – sold by her father to a Glasgow merchant when she was seven years old. It is also the intricate picture of a family in the heyday of the British Empire, an epic story spanning almost a hundred years and stretching from Edinburgh to the Crimea, from an expanding America to the India of the Raj.

Three women, one man, and a tangle of lies.
When the world famous music conductor Leo Bruck dies suddenly, the three women who loved him meet for the first time at his graveside.
Victoria, his partner of twenty years and mother of two of his children; Maddy, mother of Leo's daughter Phoebe; and twenty-four year old Cat. Can these three very different women, whose lives become inextricably bound, break free from the masterful control Leo exerts – even from the grave – once and for all?
THE DARLING GIRLS is a moving story of love, loss, and the prevailing power of female friendship.

The year is 1905 and King Edward VII has invited himself and his mistress to a shooting weekend with the Dilbernes. Now Isobel, the Countess, must turn a run-down mansion into a palace fit for a king. Just as well the family fortunes have been restored, but money can't solve everything… not even a kidnapping.
The servants refuse to condone the King's morals; Isobel's daughter, Lady Rosina – now widowed and wealthy – insists on publishing a scandalous book, and the mis-spent pasts of Viscount Arthur and his Irish-American wife Minnie rear up to blacken the family name. When fate deals a hand in the middle of the shooting party, Isobel must consider not only her leading position in Society, but her entire future.
Fay Weldon brings an aristocratic Edwardian household to fabulous, vibrant life in this gorgeously witty tale of manners and morals, commoners and countesses, from one of Britain's best loved authors.

Meet Bror Telemann. 42 years old. Husband to Nina Telemann. Father to Heidi, Berthold and Sabine. Currently: stage director at the Norwegian National Theatre. Soon to be: world-famous playwright and general talking head.
Now he's on holiday with his family at the foot of the Alps, south of Munich. That's in Germany. Nina loves Germany. Telemann does not. Telemann loves Nigella Lawson.
Ahem… he loves the theatre.That's better.
So, whilst his wife and children frolic in the dusky sunshine with lederhosen-sporting, schnitzel-scoffing locals, Telemann prefers to spend his time thinking about theatre… except when his mind wanders… again.
Subversive and original, this is the 2009 Norwegian bestseller from the deliciously dark mind of Erlend Loe.

December 1901: With London Society in a frenzy of anticipation for the coronation of the new king, Edward VII, the Earl and Countess of Dilberne are caught up in lavish preparations. Yet Lady Isobel still has ample time to fret, and no wonder with a new heir on the way, an elopement, family tragedy, a runaway niece, and a gaggle of fraudulent spiritualists to contend with…
With her trademark joie de vivre, Fay Weldon once again draws her readers into the lives and loves of the aristocratic Dilberne family, as they embrace not only a new century, but a new generation – a generation with somewhat radical views…

In early 1145, subsiding flood waters reveal a robbery has been committed on church grounds, and Brother Cadfael thinks the robbery is connected to a murder.

Acclaimed fantasy debut introducing a ripsnorting swords and sorcery adventure, inspired by the tales of One Thousand and One Nights. THE CHRONICLE OF SWORD & SAND: Baghdad, AD 790. Caliph Harun al-Rashid presides over the greatest metropolis on Earth, ruler of an empire stretches from China to Byzantium. His exploits will be recorded in Alf Layla or, as we know it, The Book of One Thousand and One Nights. But The Thousand and One Nights are silent on the deeds and adventures that befell two of the Caliph's subjects: the renowned scholar Dabir ibn Kahlil, and his shield and right hand, Asim el Abbas. For their story, we must turn to the Chronicle of Sand and Sword… THE DESERT OF SOULS: Amid the trackless sands of ancient Arabia, two companions – a swordsman and a scholar – search for the ruins of the lost city of Ubar. Before their quest is over, they will battle necromancers and animated corpses, they will confront a creature that has traded wisdom for the souls of men since the dawn of time and they will fight to save a city's soul.

A novel of love, death and aristocracy in twenties London.
Consider Vivien in November 1922. She is twenty-four, and a spinster. She wears fashionably droopy clothes, but she is plain and — worse — intelligent. Fortunately, Vivien is rich, so she can bribe a man to marry her. What nobody knows is that Vivien is pregnant, and will die in childbirth in just a few months…

The Pyramid Texts were carved onto the walls of burial chambers in royal pyramids 4,000 years ago. They have intrigued scholars, mystics and historians ever since they were discovered in 1881. They have usually been misconstrued as a garbled collection of primitive myths and incantations, relegating their radiant fusion of philosophy, scientific inquiry, and religion to obscurity. Translations of the texts often reduce them to gibberish. Yet these writings are in fact among the world's oldest poetry, cosmological speculations and reflections on nature.
Susan Brind Morrow has recast The Pyramid Texts as a coherent work of art, arguing that they should be recognized as a formative event in the evolution of human thought. The result is a work of beautiful and intelligent literature, alongside a persuasive argument for The Pyramid Texts' central importance to the history of language.

The violent and predatory society of Dark Age Scandinavia left a unique impact on the history of medieval Europe. From their chill northern fastness, Norse warriors, explorers and merchants raided, traded, and settled across wide areas of Europe, Asia and the North Atlantic from the late 8th to the mid-11th century.
THE VIKING CHRONICLES narrates their story region by region, focusing on places where key events were played out, from the sack of Lindisfarne in 793 to the murder in Iceland in 1241 of the saga-writer Snorri Sturluson. Such episodes are fascinating in themselves, but also shed crucial light on the nature of Viking activity – its causes, effects, and the reasons for its decline.
In 800 the Scandinavians were barbarians in longboats bent on plunder and rapine; by 1200, their homelands were an integral part of Latin Christendom. John Haywood tells, in authoritative but compellingly readable fashion, the extraordinary story of the dawning, the high noon and the long twilight of the Viking Age.

For Ben Ellison, his job with a prestigious law firm is a safe haven from the espionage world that almost killed him. But when the director of the CIA is killed, Ben's old employers want him back…
Not only must Ben track down the killers, but also a multi-million dollar fortune in gold, spirited out of Russia in the last days of the Soviet Union.

A PHOENIX COLD CASE: David Mapstone has returned to Phoenix, Arizona, the desert city he left behind a lifetime ago. The ex-cop, ex-history professor is working the police dept's cold case desk, unearthing long-buried secrets. And he's good at it: as an ex-historian Mapstone knows the past is never past, as an ex-cop he knows he can't trust anybody…
SOUTH PHOENIX RULES: Jax Delgado, a New York professor in Phoenix to research his next book has been tortured, murdered, his head severed and sent to his girlfriend. It shouldn't be an assignment for Mapstone, but the girlfriend in question just happens to his sister-in-law, Robin.
Delgado's murder has all the hallmarks of drug cartel execution, and Mapstone fears Robin could be the next target. But is she as innocent as she claims? And why would a professor be targeted by a drug cartel? Mapstone's investigation will compel him to cross the line into South Phoenix, a world that plays by a different set of rules: South Phoenix Rules.

WELCOME TO ROMAN BRITAIN. It is almost fifty years since the legions invaded but Britannia is still a raw, frontier province. Tensions run high, especially in the north, where Aurelia Marcella, a young Roman woman fled from the ruins of Pompeii, runs the Oak Tree Inn on the road to York.
DANGER IN THE WIND. On fine summer's morning in 100 AD, Aurelia awakes to two unusual events: a soldier murdered in his bed, and a letter arrived from Isurium and her cousin, Jovina, inviting Aurelia to a midsummer birthday party. But the missive also reads as a plea for help, referring to 'danger in the wind'. The murdered soldier also bore a message, locked in Aurelia's strongbox, indicating violence would erupt at the very same fort on the day of the party. At Isurium, Aurelia finds Jovina and her drunken husband and unruly children caught in a tangled web of greed, love, intrigue, and death. When violence engulfs the district, Aurelia suddenly finds herself in peril from enemies engaged in an anti-Roman plot and from family members bent on misguided or evil agendas of their own.

MEDIEVAL MYSTERY: On a remote East Anglian coast stands Tyndal Priory, which belongs to the Order of Fontevraud where monks and nuns live and work in close proximity. Prioress Eleanor of Wynethorpe, young and inexperienced, has just been controversially appointed by King Henry III.
TYRANT OF THE MIND: Winter, 1271. The shadow of death falls over Castle Wynethorpe on the Welsh border. Eleanor's nephew's life hangs in the balance, and she is summoned home tend him with prayers and healing talents. But death will not be denied. The chill that pervades the castle stems not just from the bitter winter besieging it, but also from the murderous tensions that afflict its occupants. Soon after Eleanor arrives, her brother, bloody dagger in hand, is found standing over the corpse of his oldest friend.
Unable to believe that her brother is a murderer, Eleanor sets out to prove his innocence before he meets his fate on the hangman's gibbet.

A MEDIEVAL MYSTERY.
On a remote East Anglian coast stands Tyndal Priory, home to a rare monastic order where men and women live and work together in close proximity. Twenty-year-old Eleanor of Wynethorpe has been appointed prioress by Henry III over the elected choice of the priory itself. Young and inexperienced, Eleanor will face a grave struggle – in a place dedicated to love and peace, she will find little of either.
In March, 1279, Edward I takes a break from hammering the Welsh and bearing down on England's Jews to vacation in Gloucestershire. The royal party breaks the journey at Woodstock Manor. And there one life begins as Queen Eleanor labours to birth a new daughter, and one draws to an end when apoplexy fells Baron Adam Wynethorpe.
Hotfoot to the baron's deathbed comes his elder son, Hugh, a veteran of Edward I’s Crusades, who can’t shake off the battle horrors he’s witnessed. The baron's daughter, Prioress Eleanor, has already arrived, bringing along both her sub-infirmarian, Sister Anne, and the monk, Brother Thomas, to tend her father. Awaiting Hugh is his bastard son, Richard, a youth filled with rebellion and a secret.
The royal manor is packed with troubling guests including a sinister priest, an elderly Jewish mother from nearby Oxford mourning a son hanged for the treason of coin-clipping, contentious and greedy courtiers, and a lusty wife engaged with more than one lover. Quite soon, the wife is found hanged. Eleanor and Sister Anne persuade the High Sheriff of Berkshire that Mistress Hawis death was not a suicide. In fact, many at the manor had reason to wish Hawis dead.