'Perhaps the most readable history ever written' Time Out

Lords of the Horizons charts the Ottoman Empire's swirling epic history; dramatic -- detailed and alive -- a journey, and a world all in one.

The Ottoman Empire has long exerted a strong pull on Western minds and hearts. For over six hundred years the Empire swelled and declined; rising from a dusty fiefdom in the foothills of Anatolia to a power which ruled over the Danube and the Euphrates with the richest court in Europe. But its decline was prodigious, protracted, and total.

'A fascinating read...a perfect companion for anyone who visits Turkey and wants to make sense of it' The Times

Come of age in the credit crunch. Be civil in a hostile environment. Step out into a world of Go Home vans. Go to Oxbridge, get an education, start a career. Do all the right things. Buy a flat. Buy art. Buy a sort of happiness. But above all, keep your head down. Keep quiet. And keep going.

The narrator of Assembly is a Black British woman. She is preparing to attend a lavish garden party at her boyfriend's family estate, set deep in the English countryside. At the same time, she is considering the carefully assembled pieces of herself. As the minutes tick down and the future beckons, she can't escape the question: is it time to take it all apart?

Quién es Aníbal Quevedo? Un loco, un caballero andante de la revolución o uno de los intelectuales comprometidos más importantes de la segunda mitad del siglo XX? Mezcla de novela política y de aventuras, de crítica del mundo intelectual y de farsa estructuralista, El fin de la locura es ante todo una cruel metáfora sobre el destino de la izquierda, el apasionante relato del derrumbe de la utopía revolucionaria. El periplo de Aníbal Quevedo, psicoanalista mexicano, se inicia en el París de mayo de 1968 y se prolonga a lo largo de más de veinte años hasta su regreso al México de Carlos Salinas de Gortari y el triunfo del neoliberalismo, donde conocerá a Rafael Guillén mucho antes de que éste asuma la personalidad del subcomandante Marcos, padecerá la seducción del poder y se verá arrastrado en un escándalo que pondrá fin a su locura. En medio, innumerables aventuras que lo relacionarán con algunas de las figuras más importantes del pensamiento francés —Jacques Lacan, Louis Althusser, Roland Barthes y Michel Foucault— y que lo llevarán a sumarse a la Izquierda Proletaria, a viajar a Cuba para recibir entrenamiento guerrillero, a psicoanalizar a Fidel Castro y a viajar con él a Chile para entrevistarse con Allende, y a convertirse en crítico de arte y en escritor de culto. Tras su consagración internacional con En busca de Klingsor (Premio Biblioteca Breve 1999), Jorge Volpi demuestra de forma absolutamente brillante que una novela inteligente puede ser apasionante y divertida.

The best lives leave a mark. A bewitching tale of first love, shattering grief, and the dangerous magic that draws us home. Mara's island is one of stories and magic, but every story ends in the same way. She will finish her days on the cliff, turned to stone and gazing out at the horizon like all the islanders before her. Mara's parents - a boxer and a ballerina - chose this enchanted place as a refuge from the turbulence of their previous lives; they wanted to bring up their children somewhere special and safe. But the island and the sea don't care what people want, and when they claim a price from her family, Mara's world unravels. It takes the arrival of Pearl, mysterious and irresistible, to light a spark in Mara again, and allow her to consider a different story for herself. The Gloaming is a gorgeous tale of love and grief, and the gap between fairy tales and real life.

The ability of the human index finger to point is truly unique in the animal world. In Michaelangelo's Finger, Raymond Tallis shows just how central this seemingly insignificant difference has been in determining the amazing evolutionary pathway of the human being. In this startlingly original and persuasive book, Raymond Tallis shows that it is easy to underestimate the influence of small things in determining what manner of creatures humans are. He reveals that over time the repeated and multiple effects of the seemingly insignificant can make an enormous difference and argues that the independent movement of the human index finger is one such easily overlooked factor. Indeed, not for nothing is the index finger called 'the forefinger'. It is the one we most naturally deploy when we want to winkle things out of small spaces, but it plays a far more significant role in an action unique to us among primates: pointing. In Michelangelo's Finger, Raymond Tallis argues that it is through pointing that the index finger made a significant contribution to hominid development and to the creation of a human world separate to the rest of the natural world. Observing the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and the hugely familiar and awkward encounter between Michelangelo's God and Man through their index fingers, Tallis identifies an intuitive indication of the central role of the index finger in making us unique. Just as the reaching index fingers of God and Man are here made central to the creation of our kind, so Tallis believes that the simple act of pointing is central to our extraordinary evolution.

For 150 years people have looked to Bartlett's Familiar Quotations for wisdom, inspiration, and pure fun. Here now is an elegant new collection of the best advice ever given, inspiring words from the world's wisest men and women.

"There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval." -George Santayana

Readers will be delighted by insights that span almost five thousand years of human history, from ancient Egypt to the modern day, capturing the differences-and the similarities-of human thought over time.

"Truth is great and its effectiveness endures." -Ptahhotpe

From such varied sources as the Bible, Jane Austen, and John F. Kennedy, everyone is sure to find a gem.

"Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee." -Muhammad Ali

With its thoughtful and entertaining selection of quotes, Bartlett's Words to Live By is an enlightening gift for the graduate or the student of life and a splendid addition to the reference shelf.

"In my end is my beginning." -Mary, Queen of Scots

"Bartlett's Familiar Quotations is an admirable work, and I studied it intently."

-Sir Winston Churchill

In 1855, Massachusetts bookseller John Bartlett self-published a small collection of prose and verse quotations. Since then, his volume has been continuously expanded and published to reflect the ever-changing cultural climate. Bartlett's Familiar Quotations remains the most authoritative, thought-provoking, and entertaining book of quotations available.

Ramsay is a man twice born, a man who has returned from the hell of the battle-grave at Passchendaele in World War I decorated with the Victoria Cross and destined to be caught in a no man's land where memory, history, and myth collide. As Ramsay tells his story, it begins to seem that from boyhood, he has exerted a perhaps mystical, perhaps pernicious, influence on those around him. His apparently innocent involvement in such innocuous events as the throwing of a snowball or the teaching of card tricks to a small boy in the end prove neither innocent nor innocuous. Fifth Business stands alone as a remarkable story told by a rational man who discovers that the marvelous is only another aspect of the real.

Six intrepid brothers and sisters crew out on the high seas where they brave every imaginable danger.

During a summer of sailing and camping the Swallows and Amazons discover a cave and have to deal with a great-aunt.

During the winter holidays the Swallows and Amazons abandon their ships and take to the iced-over lake on skates to form an expedition to their own North Pole.

While he was best known for the Tarzan of the Apes and Barsoom series, Edgar Rice Burroughs true brilliance bursts forth in the Caspak Trilogy. In this trilogy, which includes "The Land that Time Forgot," "The People that Time Forgot," and "Out of Time's Abyss," we have Burroughs at his very best. This adventure streaks onward like a bullet to its jaw-dropping end. The Caspak trilogy, set during World War I, begins with the discovery of Bowen J. Tyler's worn manuscript floating in a bottle off the coast of Greenland. The manuscript reveals that Bowen and his companions were taken captive by a German submarine. The harrowing submarine ride leads to the discovery of a subterranean passageway to a most incredible land. This land, called Caspak by its inhabitants, is a microcosm of millions of years of evolutionary progress - with winged, humanlike creatures, dinosaurs, ferocious beasts of prey, Neanderthals, "wild ape-men," and monstrous reptiles. Ray Bradbury was a huge fan of Burroughs, as can be seen in the following quote: "We may have liked Verne and Wells and Kipling, but we loved, we adored, we went quite mad with Mr. Burroughs." Bradbury was certainly not alone in his admiration of Burroughs as over the years countless directors, producers, actors, and writers have drawn inspiration from his writings. Burroughs' influence can still be seen nearly 60 years after his death. Spielberg's "Jurassic Park", Peter Jackson's "King Kong", and Tim Burton's "Planet of the Apes" all owe a debt of gratitude to Mr. Burroughs.

The engrossing tale of an idealistic and naïve British interpreter, Bruno Salvo Salvador. The 29-year-old Congo native's mixed parentage puts him in a tentative position in society, despite his being married to an attractive upper-class white Englishwoman, who's a celebrity journalist. Salvo's genius with languages has led to steady work from a variety of employers, including covert assignments from shadowy government entities. One such job enmeshes the interpreter in an ambitious scheme to finally bring stability to the much victimized Congo, and Salvo's personal stake in the outcome tests his professionalism and ethics. Amid the bursts of humor, le Carré convincingly conveys his empathy for the African nation and his cynicism at its would-be saviors, both home-grown patriots and global powers seeking to impose democracy on a failed state.

Graham Greene's classic study in the banality of evil is set in the unforgettably evoked underworld of pre-war Brighton where Pinkie, a small-time ganster, meets his nemesis at the hands of Ida, the girl he betrays, Published in 1938, Greene's most celebrated novel signalled the beginning of the long series of masterpieces produced between then and his death in 1991

The stories in this collection from Orange-Prize winner Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie straddle the cultures of Nigeria and the West. Her characters battle with the responsibilities of modern life, a world in which identity is too often compromised.

It is summer in Istanbul and the body of a young man is discovered in a local lake. The air is oppressive as Behiye prepares to enter one of Turkey's most prestigious universities. Angry, overweight, embarrassed by her parents and contemptuous of her Nazi older brother - Behiye longs for some salvation from her teenage despair. In the week before she starts university she is introduced to Handan - a beautiful, gentle girl who will change Behiye's life forever. Immediately drawn to one another, the two girls embark upon an intense, exclusive relationship even though they are from completely different backgrounds, with different dreams and ambitions. As their friendship spirals out of control, Behiye realises the impossibility of their being able to cross the cultural divide. - Now a Kutlug Ataman film. 

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE

Frank Reid had been born and brought up in Moscow. His father had emigrated there in the 1870s and started a print-works which, by 1913, had shrunk from what it was when Frank inherited it. In that same year, to add to his troubles, Frank's wife Nellie caught the train back home to England, without explanation.

How is a reasonable man like Frank to cope? How should he keep his house running? Should he consult the Anglican chaplain's wife? Should he listen to the Tolstoyan advice of his chief book-keeper? How do people live together, and what happens when, sometimes, they don't?

"For the life of me I can't decide how properly to respond to this book. Whether it contains a latent moral or allegorical message, or whether it is simply a tour de force of craft and imagination I have not the faintest idea. I only know that it is one of the most skilful and utterly fascinating novels I have read for years. I cannot imagine any kind of reader who would not get a thrill from this gloriously peculiar book."JAN MORRIS, 'Independent'

"Penelope Fitzgerald has produced a real Russian comedy, at once crafty and scatty. She has mastered a city, a landscape and a vanished time. She has written something remarkable, part novel, part evocation, and done so in prose that never puts a foot wrong. She is so unostentatious a writer that she needs to be read several times. What is impressive is the calm confidence behind the apparent simplicity of utterance. 'The Beginning of Spring' is her best novel to date."ANITA BROOKNER, 'Spectator'

A compendium of the greatest thoughts, greatest minds and greatest books - listed in accessible and concise form - from one of the world's greatest scholars.

When Meredith bumps into her old school friend Rachel Hunter at the Chelsea Flower Show, she is shocked to discover that she was the first wife of her companion, Chief Inspector Markby. But the meeting is not the only surprise - before the afternoon is out, Markby has a death on his hands.