Who were the three men the American and Soviet superpowers exchanged at Berlin's Glienicke Bridge and Checkpoint Charlie in the first prisoner exchange between East and West? Bridge of Spies traces the paths to that exchange on February 10, 1962. It is the story of three men -- William Fisher, alias Rudolf Abel, a British born KGB agent arrested by the FBI in New York City and jailed as a Soviet superspy for trying to steal America's most precious...

Lytton Strachey's biographical essays on four 'eminent Victorians' dropped a depth-charge on Victorian England when the book was published in 1918. This edition is fully annotated and draws on the full-range of Strachey's manuscript materials and literary remains.

In the middle years of the ninth century, the fierce Danes stormed onto British soil, hungry for spoils and conquest. Kingdom after kingdom fell to the ruthless invaders until only one realm remained. Suddenly the fate of all England--and the course of history--depended upon one man, one king.

Rider Sandman, having fought Napoleon in the French wars, expected to lead the life of an English country gentleman, but now, two years after Waterloo, his family is impoverished, his name is disgraced and he has been forced to relinquish the woman he loves from her obligation to marry him. Desperate to earn money he accepts the job of being the government's Investigator; an official who discovers whether petitions for mercy sent by condemned criminals...

Uhtred is a Saxon, cheated of his inheritance and adrift in a world of fire, sword, and treachery. He has to make a choice: whether to fight for the Vikings, who raised him, or for King Alfred the Great of Wessex, who dislikes him. In the late ninth century, Wessex is the last English kingdom. The rest have fallen to the Danish Vikings, a story told in The Last Kingdom, the New York Times bestselling novel in which Uhtred's tale began. Now the Vikings...

Since its formation in 1861, Italy has struggled to develop an effective political system and a secure sense of national identity. Christopher Duggan's acclaimed introduction charts the country's history from the fall of the Roman Empire in the West to the present day, and surveys the difficulties Italy has faced during the last two centuries in forging a nation state. Duggan successfully weaves together political, economic, social and cultural history,...

Gabrial is a young dragon, anxious to both prove himself and also find his father who years ago was one of a Wearle of dragons who set out from their home planet and were never heard from again--and now he is part of a new Wearle that has come to Erth, but one of the other dragons has dark plans, and when war erupts between dragons and humans, Gabrial finds that his only ally is an unusual human boy called Ren.

In a stand-alone psychological thriller from acclaimed mystery master Reginald Hill, a mysterious ex-con returns to his remote childhood home on a deadly hunt for revenge. Combining the chilling atmospheres of Thomas Harris's The Silence of the Lambs, the narrative ingenuity of P.D. James's The Private Patient, and the compelling characterizations of Hill's own Dalziel and Pascoe series, Hill delivers a frightful, fast-paced study of suspense at its...

First published in 1819, "Don Juan" is often acknowledged as one of Lord Byron's greatest poetic works. An epic poem, comprised of seventeen cantos that Byron continued to work on and expand until his death, "Don Juan" follows the adventures of the famous Spanish libertine and reflects upon many of the romantic and personal experiences that are universal to all mankind. From a forbidden love affair in Spain, to exile in Italy, from being shipwrecked...

The dragon Wearle is deeply divided because of the human boy, Ren, who has bonded with a pair of baby dragons and developed extraordinary new powers; but the war with the humans is not really over, and the humans have a mysterious new leader, Tywyll, who plans to lead his followers back into dragon territory--and unknown to both sides an ancient power is beginning to stir.