Showing results by publisher "John Murray" in Literature & Fiction

When a pair of young lovers abscond from a Puritan colony, little do they know that their humble cabin in the woods will become the home of an extraordinary succession of human and inhuman characters alike. In his transcendent fourth novel, Pulitzer Prize finalist Daniel Mason delivers a magisterial and highly inventive tale brimming with love and madness, humor and hope. Following the cycles of history, nature and even language, North Woods shows the myriad, magical ways in which we're connected to our environment, to history and to each other.

Drake: Shakespeare is ordered to protect him. With Drake on land fitting out his ships, he is frighteningly vulnerable. If he dies, England will be open to invasion. In a London rife with rumour, Shakespeare must decide which leads to follow, which to ignore. When a high-born young woman is found mutilated and murdered at an illicit printing house, it is political gunpowder - and he has no option but to investigate.

The year is 1920. The place is a remote farmhouse in Provence, home to the reclusive painter Edouard Tartuffe and his niece, Ettie. Into this strange, silent house walks Joseph: a young journalist hoping to write an article about Tartuffe. But the more he entangles himself in the peculiar household, the more Joseph's curiosity grows . . .

Betjeman's England is a place of patriotic poets and seaside coves, provincial cathedrals and eccentric dons. For 50 years, Betjeman celebrated the glories of Englishness and what it meant to be English. Against a tide of rapid change, he unearthed forgotten heroes, bygone haunts, and old-fashioned modes of thought. But as this original collection reveals, his appeal goes far beyond simple nostalgia. It lies in his passionate convictions, his humour and his humanity.

The Seljuk Empire is on fire and the king is on a rampage after learning of his wife's infidelity. Unsated by her execution, he has gone on to wed and behead a new wife night after night. Fear spreads through the city and Shaherazade must do something, anything, to halt the horror she has set in motion. When the king starts searching for his next bride, Shaherazade steps forward. As the sun sets on her wedding night, she begins to weave a tale that will go down in history.

Short Stories in English for Beginners has been written especially for students from beginner to intermediate level, designed to give a sense of achievement, a feeling of progress and most importantly - enjoyment! Mapped to A2-B1 on the Common European Framework of Reference, these eight captivating stories are designed to give you a sense of achievement and a feeling of progress when listening. From science fiction to fantasy, to crime and thrillers, Short Stories in English for Beginners will make learning English easy and enjoyable.

Spring 1593. England is a powder keg of rumour and fear. Plague rages, famine is rife, the ageing Queen's couriers scheme: Elizabeth's Golden Age is truly tarnished. Meanwhile Spain watches and waits - and plots. Into this turmoil a small cart clatters through the streets of London, carrying a deadly load. It is the first in a wave of horrific bombing attacks on the Dutch immigrant community that will change John Shakespeare's life for ever.

Like all 20-year-olds, Ryan Cusack is trying to get his head around who he is. This is not a good time for his boss to exploit his dual heritage by opening a new black market route from Italy to Ireland. It is certainly not a good time for his adored girlfriend to decide he's irreparably corrupted. And he really wishes he hadn't accidentally caught the eye of an ornery grandmother who fancies herself his saviour.

In a remote and seemingly cursed village on the Yorkshire Lancashire border, the inhabitants of Barrowbeck wrestle with life, death and a landscape that is wild and mercurial. Friends gather to support a widower whose wife has died in mysterious circumstances; an elderly teacher is unnerved by one of his pupils; a childless couple must make an agonising decision; sisters welcome a lodger into their home. Set over the course of a year, these gothic stories are riven with psychological trauma, unsettling events and encroaching darkness.

He was definitely dead, whoever he was. He wore a once-black jumper and a pair of shiny tracksuit bottoms. The back of his head was cracked and his hair matted, but it had been foxy before that. A tall man, a skinny rake, another string of piss, now departed. She hadn't gotten a look at his face before she flaked him with the Holy Stone, and she couldn't bring herself to turn him over. One messy murder affects the lives of five misfits who exist on the fringes of Ireland's post-crash society.

Jebi is tired of noisy, crowded Seoul and her dull job at a photography studio in the city. When she sees a billboard on her commute showing beautiful Jeju Island, she decides to quit her job and spend a summer there. On the last day of her trip, when she's due to fly back to her real life, she loses everything: phone, credit cards, plane ticket. Wandering through a fishing village, she stumbles across a tiny photo studio.

Sigi lived upstairs from Sara at Friedrichstrasse 19, yet before they met, Sara had no idea that Berlin could be so thrillingly irreverent or that sex could be so intoxicatingly wonderful. But then came the war and hunger, loneliness and barbed wire. It was just as a young girl, a protegee of the Academy of Magical Arts situated in Friedrichstrasse at the start of the century, had predicted. Battered and divided, Berlin, like its people, endured.

The year is 1793, Stockholm. King Gustav of Sweden has been assassinated, years of foreign wars have emptied the treasuries and the realm is governed by a self-interested elite, leaving its citizens to suffer. On the streets, malcontent and paranoia abound. A body is found in the city's swamp by a watchman, Mickel Cardell, and the case is handed over to investigator Cecil Winge, who is dying of consumption.

'Dear Mama, I am having a lovely time here. We play football every day here. The beds have no springs....' So begins the first letter that nine-year-old Roald Dahl penned to his mother, Sofie Magdalene, under the watchful eye of his boarding school headmaster. For most of his life, Roald Dahl would continue to write weekly letters to his mother, chronicling his adventures, frustrations and opinions, from the delights of childhood to the excitements of flying as a World War II fighter pilot....

As foot and mouth disease spreads across the hills of Cumbria, emptying the valleys of sheep and filling the skies with smoke, Steve Elliman and William Herne, two neighbouring farmers, join forces to reverse their fortunes by rustling livestock from the south. With the struggles of the land never far away, Steve's only distraction is his growing fascination with William's wife, Helen. When their mountain home comes under the sway of a ruthless outsider, it is left to Steve to save himself and what's left of their farming community, in a savage conflict that threatens an ancient way of life.

She was seventeen when she'd first met Gabriel. Over that heady, intense summer, he made her think and feel and see differently. She thought it was the start of her great love story and that it would last forever. When Gabriel left to become the person his mother expected him to be, she was broken. It was Frank who picked up the pieces. Together they'd built a home very different from the one she'd imagined with Gabriel. But then Gabriel came back, and all Beth's certainty about who she was and what she wanted crumbled.

1592. England and Spain are at war, yet there is peril at home, too. The death of her trusted spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham has left Queen Elizabeth vulnerable. Conspiracies multiply. The quiet life of John Shakespeare is shattered by a summons from Robert Cecil, the cold but deadly young statesman who dominated the last years of the Queen's long reign, insisting Shakespeare re-enter government service. His mission: to find vital papers, now in the possession of the Earl of Essex.

Fairy tales are not just fairy tales: they are records of historical phenomena, telling us something about how Western civilisation was formed. In The Fairy-Tellers, award-winning travel-writer Nick Jubber explores their secret history of fairy tales: the people who told them, the landscapes that forged them and the cultures that formed them.

Paris, July 1942: Sarah, a ten year-old Jewish girl, is arrested by the French police in the middle of the night, along with her mother and father. Desperate to protect her younger brother, she locks him in a cupboard and promises to come back for him as soon as she can. Paris, May 2002: Julia Jarmond, an American journalist, is asked to write about the 60th anniversary of the Vel' d'Hiv'--the infamous day in 1942 when French police rounded up thousands of Jewish men, women and children.

This extraordinary novel is seen through the eyes of Johannes, an avid member of the Hitler Youth in the 1940s. After he is severely injured in a raid, he discovers his parents are hiding a Jewish girl called Elsa behind a false wall in their large house in Vienna. His initial horror turns to interest, then love and obsession. After the disappearance of his parents, Johannes finds he is the only one aware of Elsa's existence in the house, the only one responsible for her survival.