Colonel Nicholson was an exemplary British officer. When his Japanese captors ordered him to build a strategic assault bridge in southeast Asia, the colonel’s code of military honor left him no choice but to obey. Though they were sick and wounded, he set his men to work, toiling in the jungle heat. He intended to complete a perfect bridge in record time—even though his Imperial Majesty’s Army would use it for the invasion of India.Meanwhile, half across the continent, “Force 316” of British Intelligence was already plotting how to blow up the bridge…

Julie Otsuka’s long-awaited follow-up to When the Emperor Was Divine is a tour de force of economy and precision, a novel that tells the story of a group of young women brought from Japan to San Francisco as “picture brides” nearly a century ago.In eight incantatory sections, The Buddha in the Attic traces the picture brides’ extraordinary lives, from their arduous journey by boat, where they exchange photographs of their husbands, imagining uncertain futures in an unknown land; to their arrival in San Francisco and their tremulous first nights as new wives; to their backbreaking work picking fruit in the fields and scrubbing the floors of white women; to their struggles to master a new language and a new culture; to their experiences in childbirth, and then as mothers, raising children who will ultimately reject their heritage and their history; to the deracinating arrival of war.

In "The Building of Jalna", Adeline lay thinking about the journey. They were leaving London. When might she see it again? Perhaps never, with all the dangers of travel. What would happen to her and Philip in the New World? What strange distant place lay waiting for them?The vast and beautiful Canadian wilderness is the setting for this very special novel about Jalna. Unfolded here is the absorbing story of the beginning of Jalna — of Adeline and Philip Whiteoak, who come across half a world to meet the challenge and promise of a new land. For them both, Jalna not only becomes a symbol of their love, but a heritage for generations to come.

Runner up SAW Barbara Hammond Trophy

Finalist Wishing Shelf Book Awards

Scotland 1546. A group of nobles seize St Andrews Castle foiling all attempts to re-take it. Local lad Will is among them, fighting for the Protestant cause. His traitorous activities place his family in grave danger, forcing his sister Bethia into an unwelcome alliance. As the long siege unravels, Bethia and Will struggle over where their loyalties lie and the choice they each must make – whether to save their family, or stay true to their beliefs and follow their hearts.

This debut novel closely follows the true historical events of the siege of St Andrews Castle, and its dramatic re-taking.

In the tradition of City of Thieves and Child 44, a troubled First World War veteran races across the frozen steppe of 1930s Ukraine to save a child from a shadowy killer with unthinkable plans.December 1930, Western Ukraine. Luka is a war veteran who now wants a quiet life with his family. His village has, so far, remained hidden from the advancing Soviet brutality, but everything changes the day the stranger arrives, pulling a sled bearing a terrible cargo.The villager’s fear turns deadly and they think they can save themselves, but their anger has cursed them: when calm is restored, a little girl has vanished. Luka is the only man with the skills to find who could have stolen a child in these frozen lands - and besides, the missing girl is best friend to Luka’s daughter, and he swears he will find her.Together with his sons, Luka sets out in pursuit across lands ravaged by war and gripped by treachery. Soon they realise that the man they are tracking is no ordinary criminal, but a skilful hunter with the child as the bait in his twisted game. It will take all of Luka's strength to battle the harshest of conditions, and all of his wit to stay a step ahead of Soviet authorities. And though his toughest enemy is the man he tracks, his strongest bond is a promise to his family back at home.

Hadley, the rattlesnake-toting patriarch who took his comfort where he found it — in the Bible, the bottle or the bed... Minerva, the lusty, stubborn woman he loved, shepherding her young through the harsh realities of the way west and the terrifying passions in their own hearts... Will, the brawling, hard-drinking sinner who sought salvation in the arms of a savage... Bobbo and Gideon, boys at the start of a journey, blood-stained men at the end... Bonnie Sue, too young to love, too ripe not to; a child forced to womanhood in the wilderness... Annabel, the youngest, whose quiet courage was tested in an act of unspeakable savagery. The Chisholms — a family as raw and unyielding as the soil of Virginia they left behind; as wild and enduring as the dream they pursued across the American continent.

A stunning new ebook original story by J. M. SidorovaIncludes an exclusive excerpt of Sidorova’s acclaimed debut novel, The Age of Ice. Speculative fiction icon John Crowley calls J. M. Sidorova’s The Age of Ice “marvelous.” Karen Joy Fowler, author of The Jane Austen Book Club, hails it as “everything you could want in a novel.” Now, in this special ebook-only story, Sidorova returns to the world of The Age of Ice—her captivating blend of fiction, history, and fantasy—offering a mesmerizing new tale of the power of cold.In April 1814, just days after Napoléon’s defeat by the coalition of the European powers, Prince Alexander Velitzyn, the hero of The Age of Ice, is drifting around Paris, coming to grips with the brutality of the war and his role in it. Unbeknownst to him, Alexander strolls through the same passageways as another human being just like him.Hidden behind costume and makeup, twenty-two-year-old Cherie performs a daily show in the Palais-Royal, a noble palace where shopkeepers and showgirls have set up all manner of risqué commerce—boutiques, gambling rooms, and pubs designed to satiate every desire of the senses. Cherie, though, is an unusual act. Her feat relies on physics, not trickery. She is a young woman making do with the fate she’s been dealt—not just the terror of revolution, but her own, crippling coldness. Then, one evening, a wounded young soldier named Julien comes to her room, and what happens threatens to upend Cherie’s notion of the world and herself.The Colors of Cold is a beautifully imagined glimpse into two lives trapped by frost—metaphorical and literal—set amid one of the most stirring moments in the history of Paris.

Anna is on her way home from work on a cold winter’s day when she sees a crowd queuing at a kiosk. Though a queue is not an unusual sight in a Russian city, this appears different. There’s a rumour that famous exiled composer Selinksy is returning to conduct his last symphony for one night only—and this kiosk is selling tickets.The acquisition of tickets to this concert becomes an obsession in Anna’s small family. Her husband, a tuba player in a state band, sees the ticket as a way of embarking on an illicit affair. Their son thinks going to the concert will help him flee to the West on Selinksy’s coattails. And Anna? She secretly hopes the ticket will make her husband love her again.The Concert Ticket is a heartbreaking novel about the secret, profound longings at the heart of a family struggling in a time of great repression.

Dumas manages to jam enough action and storyline into the novel to make it worth the read. Despite being a weaker work in Dumas’ bibliography, it displays the craftsmanship in blending action and suspense that were so common to his novels.

As Tom Dudley took his turn on watch, he looked with horror on the bodies of his crew.

Their ribs and hip bones were already showing through their wasting flesh. There were angry, ulcerating sores on their elbows, knees and feet, their lips were cracked and their tongues blackened and swollen.

They had continued to live on the turtle-flesh for a week, even though some of the fat became putrid in the fierce heat. Tom cut out the worst parts and threw them overboard, but they devoured the rest, and when the flesh was finished they chewed the bones and leathery skin.

They ate the last rancid scraps of it on the evening of 17 July. Tom looked at the others. ‘If no boat comes soon, something must be done…’

On 5 July 1884 the yacht Mignonette set sail from Southampton bound for Sydney. Halfway through their voyage, Captain Tom Dudley and his crew of three men were beset by a monstrous storm off the coast of Africa.

After four days of battling towering seas and hurricane gales, their yacht was finally crushed by a ferocious forty-foot wave.

The survivors were cast adrift a thousand miles from the nearest landfall in an open thirteen-foot dinghy, without provisions, water or shelter from the scorching sun. When, after twenty-four days, they were finally rescued by a passing yacht, the Moctezuma, only three men were left and they were in an appalling condition.

The ordeal they endured and the trial that followed their eventual return to England held the whole nation — from the lowliest ship’s deckhand to Queen Victoria herself — spellbound during the following winter.

From yellowing newspaper files, personal letters and diaries, and first-person accounts of the principals, Neil Hanson has pieced together the extraordinary tale of Captain Tom Dudley, the Mignonette and her crew. Their routine voyage culminated in unimaginable hardship and horror, during which the survivors of the storm had to make some impossible decisions. This is the true story of the voyage and the subsequent court case that outlawed for ever a practice followed since men first put to the ocean in boats: the custom of the sea.

Though the title character of David Ebershoff's debut novel is a transsexual, The Danish Girl is less explicitly concerned with transgender issues than the mysterious and ineffable nature of love and transformation in relationships.Loosely based on the life of Danish painter Einar Wegener who, in 1931, became the first man to undergo a sex-change operation, The Danish Girl borrows the bare bones of his story as a starting point for an exploration of how Wegener's decisions affected the people around him. Chief among these is his Californian wife, Greta, also a painter, who unwittingly sets her husband's feet on the path to transformation when, trying to finish a portrait, she asks Einar to stand in for her female sitter. Putting on her clothes and shoes, he is shaken:Einar could concentrate only on the silk dressing his skin, as if it were a bandage. Yes, that was how it felt the first time: the silk was so fine and airy that it felt like a gauze-a balm-soaked gauze lying delicately on healing skin. Even the embarrassment of standing before his wife began to no longer matter, for she was busy painting with a foreign intensity in her face. Einar was beginning to enter a shadowy world of dreams where Anna's dress could belong to anyone, even to him.Greta encourages her husband not only to dress like a woman, but to take on a woman's persona, as well. What starts out as a harmless game soon evolves into something deeper, and potentially threatening to their marriage. Yet Greta's love proves to be enduring if not immutable.Ebershoff's historical prestidigitation is remarkable, making it seem easy to create the sights and sounds and smells of 1930s Denmark. Even more remarkable is his treatment of Greta: he gets inside her head and heart, and renders her in such loving detail that her reactions make perfect sense. Ebershoff's sensitivity to Greta is one of the finest achievements of this startling first novel; Einar is more of a cipher. In the end, this is Greta's book and David Ebershoff has done her proud. -Sheila Bright

1648, a small village in the Alps: In the thick of a blizzard, a town priest discovers he's been poisoned. As numbness creeps up his body, he summons the last of his strength and scratches a sign in the frost that will lead the town hangman, his daughter, and the town physician in pursuit of a treasure of the Knights Templar. But the priest's murderer is already on their trail, and he's not the only one after the legendary fortune: a dark monk is not far behind, and a band of thieves is roving the countryside, attacking solitary travelers and spreading panic. The race is on, and the stakes are high.Delivering on the promise of his first book, Oliver Pötzsch takes readers on a whirlwind tour through the occult hiding places of Bavaria's ancient monasteries, bringing to life the compassionate hangman who's destined to join the ranks of literature's most beloved characters.

"[A] richly engaging portrait of the life and times of one of history's most appealing characters!" – Diana GabaldonA thrilling debut novel starring one of history's most famous and beloved courtesans.From London's slums to its bawdy playhouses, The Darling Strumpet transports the reader to the tumultuous world of seventeenth-century England, charting the meteoric rise of the dazzling Nell Gwynn, who captivates the heart of King Charles II-and becomes one of the century's most famous courtesans.Witty and beautiful, Nell was born into poverty but is drawn into the enthralling world of the theater, where her saucy humor and sensuous charm earn her a place in the King's Company. As one of the first actresses in the newly-opened playhouses, she catapults to fame, winning the affection of legions of fans-and the heart of the most powerful man in all of England, the King himself. Surrendering herself to Charles, Nell will be forced to maneuver the ruthless and shifting allegiances of the royal court-and discover a world of decadence and passion she never imagined possible.

From the acclaimed author of Schindler’s List, the epic, unforgettable story of two sisters from Australia, both trained nurses, whose lives are transformed by the cataclysm of the first World War.In 1915, two spirited Australian sisters join the war effort as nurses, escaping the confines of their father’s farm and carrying a guilty secret with them. Used to tending the sick as they are, nothing could have prepared them for what they confront, first near Gallipoli, then on the Western Front.Yet amid the carnage, Naomi and Sally Durance become the friends they never were at home and find themselves courageous in the face of extreme danger, as well as the hostility they encounter from some on their own side. There is great bravery, humor, and compassion, too, and the inspiring example of the remarkable women they serve alongside. In France, where Naomi nurses in a hospital set up by the eccentric Lady Tarlton while Sally works in a casualty clearing station, each meets an exceptional man: the kind of men for whom they might give up some of their precious independence—if only they all survive.At once vast in scope and extraordinarily intimate, The Daughters of Mars brings World War I to vivid, concrete life from an unusual perspective. A searing and profoundly moving tale, it pays tribute to men and women of extraordinary moral resilience, even in the face of the incomprehensible horrors of modern war.

November 1918: World War I had just ended and the deadly Spanish flu was raging across the world. Max Shertok, an immigrant US Army Private, leaves his Big Red One fighting unit in France to rescue his parents from civil war in Russia. On his way East he meets Zalmund Hofitz and Deena Wójick, renegades from the Bolshevik Revolution. The pair had fought police in the mayhem of worker revolts in Poland, carried guns for the Bolsheviks in the Red Terror in Moscow, and ran contraband for the crime syndicate in the decadence of Kyiv. Together, the explosive triangle produces love, betrayal, arrest and mass murder in the chaos that consumed Europe after the Peace. Will Max make it through the Cossacks, White Army, Anarchists, Ukrainian Nationals and Bolsheviks to his parents and back home to the US? Based on real people and true stories of the most tumultuous time of the Century.

It’s late 1915 and the industrial nations still have not geared up for war. Shortages of munitions leave soldiers hanging on barbed wire in the fields. The war in France is at a stalemate, both sides finding it impossible to advance, and spending tens of thousands of lives on the discovery. Richard Baker is in the front line with his battalion, learning how to fight this new war. While the generals, well behind him, are only focussed on finding a way to let the cavalry loose in another Charge of the Light Brigade, reaching for glory. At sea, Simon Sturton continues to make a name for himself as one of the new breed of destroyermen, while Christopher Adams has overcome his fall from grace sufficiently to be posted to Black Prince cruiser, part of the Grand Fleet at Scapa Flow in the months leading up to the long-awaited ‘Great Smash’ in the North Sea.

NOW A FILM FROM NETFLIX STARRING LILY JAMES, CAREY MULLIGAN, AND RALPH FIENNES.

A succinct and witty literary venture that tells the strange story of a priceless treasure discovered in East Anglia on the eve of World War II

In the long, hot summer of 1939, Britain is preparing for war, but on a riverside farm in Suffolk there is excitement of another kind. Mrs. Pretty, the widowed owner of the farm, has had her hunch confirmed that the mounds on her land hold buried treasure. As the dig proceeds, it becomes clear that this is no ordinary find.

This fictional recreation of the famed Sutton Hoo dig follows three months of intense activity when locals fought outsiders, professionals thwarted amateurs, and love and rivalry flourished in equal measure. As the war looms ever closer, engraved gold peeks through the soil, and each character searches for answers in the buried treasure. Their threads of love, loss, and aspiration weave a common awareness of the past as something that can never truly be left behind.

When the Russians come, where do you go?

It is the end of April, 1945 in a small village in eastern Germany. The front is coming closer and ten-year-old Fritz knows that the Soviet Army’s invasion of his family’s home can be only a few days away. Grandpa Karl, a Nazi sympathizer, takes Fritz into the forest that surrounds the family farm to show him a secret. Under a tall pine tree, Grandpa Karl has dug a pit and covered it with branches. The hole is to hide Fritz’s sister, mother, and grandmother when the Russians invade their village. Grandpa Karl is convinced that he and Fritz will defend to the death the Friedrich family.

But when the Russian soldiers arrive, Fritz, his sister, and his mother find themselves alone. They look to Lech, a Polish farmhand, for help, but new communist policies force them off their farm and into the role of refugees. Separated from his home and eventually his family, Fritz has to find his own way in a crumbling world. The Dog in the Wood tells a dramatic story of loss and survival in a changing Germany at the end of World War II.