The Last Poppy completes the Marsden trilogy of books, following The Baker's Story and Arthur's War. The date is 1915 and the now global conflict has had a considerable impact on the family. The story continues to reflect the war overseas in Northern France and in the Middle East as the fortunes of the Marsden family and their immediate friends are played out against a backdrop of huge social and military challenges. In this gripping finale, we also learn of the psychological impact of war and the disturbing efforts of the medical fraternity to solve it. The book concludes on armistice day 1918, read how the experiences of four years of war have changed the family forever.

Nominated for the 2019 Hammett Prize Autumn 1915. The First World War is raging across Europe. Woodrow Wilson has kept Americans out of the trenches, although that hasn't stopped young men and women from crossing the Atlantic to volunteer at the front. Christopher Marlowe 'Kit' Cobb, a Chicago reporter and undercover agent for the US government is in Paris when he meets an enigmatic nurse called Louise. Officially in the city for a story about American ambulance drivers, Cobb is grateful for the opportunity to get to know her. Soon his intelligence handler, James Polk Trask, extends his mission and he is active again. Parisians are meeting 'death by dynamite' in a new campaign of bombings, and the German-speaking Kit seems just the man to discover who is behind this - possibly a German operative who has infiltrated with the waves of refugees? And so begins a pursuit that will test Kit Cobb, in all his roles, to the very limits of his principles, wits and talents for survival. Fleetly plotted and engaging with political and cultural issues that resonate deeply today, Paris in the Dark is a page-turning novel of unmistakable literary quality.

"One of Hungary's most important twentieth-century writers" New York Times "Magda Szabo's fiction shows the travails of modern Hungarian history from oblique but sharply illuminating angles" Economist Eszter Encsy is an acclaimed actress, funny and outrageous, quick-witted but callous. Yet even flushed with the success of adulthood, Eszter craves acceptance of herself as she really is and of the person she has been. The only child of an impoverished aristocrat and a harried music teacher failing to make ends meet, Eszter grew up poor and painfully aware of it in a provincial Hungarian town. The feelings of resentment and envy acquired during her fraught childhood have hardened into an obsessional hatred for one person, the beautiful, saintly and pampered Angela, Eszter's former classmate and the wife of the man who becomes her lover. Set against newly communist 1950s Hungary, The Fawn embraces the lies and falsehoods people were obliged to live with in those nightmarish times, and displays Szabo's uncanny ability to convey how the past can haunt and consume us. Translated from the Hungarian by Len Rix.

A deserting soldier treks through the torn-up countryside and abandoned villages, trying to distance himself from the atrocities of war. An elderly man sits beneath lime trees, remembering his first sexual encounter one summer night with a female stranger who whispered another man's name. A young woman takes up a job in a care home, spending monotonous days scrubbing floors and yearning to dance at the local nightclub. The artist Franz Marc lives on in an imagined life as a patient at an asylum, before falling victim to Hitler's policy of Gnadentod. Finally, a young Jewish girl, the life she once knew destroyed, holds her memories close as she finds refuge in wreckage of her homeland. And throughout there is the shadowy presence of Viktor - one man or many? A looming figure in Germany's own reckoning with its past. Through these five interconnected stories, Philippe Claudel reflects on Germany's complex history and the experiences of its people, dismantling the idea of "a nation" or "a people" and exploring the malleability of memory.

The unputdownable historical novel by the acclaimed and bestselling author of WAKE and EXPECTATION: a devastating story of love and madness at the brink of the Great War. 'Absolutely heart-breaking. One of the best books I've ever read' DINAH JEFFERIES, author of The Tea-Planter's Wife 'Compelling, elegant, insightful' OBSERVER 1911: Inside an asylum at the edge of the Yorkshire moors, where men and women are kept apart by high walls and barred windows, there is a ballroom vast and beautiful. For one bright evening every week they come together and dance. When John and Ella meet it is a dance that will change two lives forever. Set over the heatwave summer of 1911, the end of the Edwardian era, THE BALLROOM tells a rivetting tale of dangerous obsession, of madness and sanity, and of who gets to decide which is which. It is a love story like no other. ***************************************** Praise for Anna Hope's The Ballroom: 'Beautifully wrought, tender, heartbreaking' Sunday Express 5/5 'Moving, fascinating' Times 'A tender and absorbing love story' Daily Mail 'Unsentimental and affecting' Sunday Times 'Exquisitely good' Metro 'Absolutely fantastic . . . I'm in real awe of her writing' ELIZABETH MACNEAL, author of The Doll Factory ______________

Can Edie find the courage to choose her own future? June 1914. Edie Moore is a Governess for Lord and Lady Moreland, living in comfort at the grand Downland House in Sussex. But, wanting more from life, she flees in secret to Littlehampton, the place where she spent many idyllic childhood holidays. Desperate for work, Edie begins working as a chambermaid at the prestigious Beach Hotel, even if the menial tasks are a far cry from her previous job. While the days are long and gruelling, Edie works hard and soon is in favour with Helen Bygrove, the manager's wife, who sees that Edie is destined for bigger things - which leads to tension with some of the other chambermaids. But as she navigates her new life and finds friendship with fellow maid Lili Probert, she also grows closer to charming, cheerful porter, Charlie Cobbett, and finally finds the happiness she has been searching for. However, what none of her new friends know is that Edie is hiding a secret from her past, one that would change the way they view her, forever. When the truth comes out, will Edie be able to keep her new life and remain in the place she loves so much? A captivating, romantic and moving World War 1 saga that fans of Elaine Roberts and Pam Howes won't be able to put down. Readers love Francesca Capaldi's historical romances: 'Heart-wrenching, highly emotional and hard to put down...saga writing at its mesmerizing best.' Reader Review 'Lovely and romantic...This was such an emotional book.' Reader Review 'This is such a warm-hearted book...I would ask all readers to read this book. I loved it' Reader Review 'This is a really emotional book...I really enjoyed this book and fully recommend it. Worth all the stars' Reader Review 'A story of friends, love, hate and forgiveness...A story of the war and those lost. I did enjoy reading this book and I would recommend it.' Reader Review

Shortlisted for The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year 2015, Ben Fergusson's critically acclaimed debut, The Spring of Kasper Meier, was the winner of the Betty Trask Prize 2015 and the HWA 2015 Debut Crown Award. The Other Hoffmann Sister is a gripping, evocative read about two sisters set in pre-WW1 Germany which will appeal to fans of The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry. For Ingrid Hoffmann the story of her sister's disappearance began in their first weeks in Southwest Africa... Ingrid Hoffmann has always felt responsible for her sister Margarete and when their family moves to German Southwest Africa in 1902, her anxieties only increase. The casual racism that pervades the German community, the strange relationship between her parents and Baron von Ketz, from whom they bought their land, and the tension with the local tribes all culminate in tragedy when Baron von Ketz is savagely murdered. Baroness von Ketz and their son, Emil, flee with the Hoffmanns as the Baron's attackers burn down the family's farm. Both families return to Berlin and Ingrid's concerns about Margarete are assuaged when she and Emil von Ketz become engaged on the eve of the First World War. But Margarete disappears on her wedding night at the von Ketz's country house. The mystery of what happened to her sister haunts Ingrid, but as Europe descends into chaos, her hope of discovering the truth becomes ever more distant. After the war, in the midst of the revolution that brings down the Kaiser and wipes out the aristocracy that her family married into, Ingrid returns to the von Ketzes' crumbling estate determined to find out what really happened to her sister.