The fiddler busking in the Columbus Circle subway station in 1965 is the Dekrepitzer Rebbe, the sole survivor of the obscure Dekrepitzer Hasidic sect known before the war for its rebbes' fiddling.

The Last Dekrepitzer follows the life and spiritual quest of Shmuel Meir Lichtbencher a/k/a Sam Lightup, from his isolated shtetl in the mountains of southern Poland, where he is brought up to be the future rebbe, to the wharves in Naples, where he jams with Black soldiers waiting to ship home at the end of the war. Dressing him in the uniform and dog tags of an AWOL soldier, they smuggle him home to rural Mississippi. He lives for years among the Blacks, speaks Black English, preaches and plays the blues with the Brown Sugar Ramblers trio. His marriage to a Black woman, Lula Curtin, legal by Jewish law though forbidden under Mississippi law, results in a cross burning that forces them to flee to Manhattan. He plays on the streets of Harlem and Midtown with the Reverend Gary Davis, the great blind guitarist whose mission is saving souls for the next world. Shmuel Meir's devout wife, though she knows herself to be the Dekrepitzer Rebbitzen, is spurned by the Jewish community.

Through it all, Shmuel Meir fiddles his prayers in defiance of God. But God gives the Dekrepitzer Rebbe no peace.

A discarded painting in a junk pile, a skeleton in an attic, and the greatest racehorse in American history: from these strands, a Pulitzer Prize winner braids a sweeping story of spirit, obsession, and injustice across American history.

Kentucky, 1850. An enslaved groom named Jarret and a bay foal forge a bond of understanding that will carry the horse to record-setting victories across the South. When the nation erupts in civil war, an itinerant young artist who has made his name on paintings of the racehorse takes up arms for the Union. On a perilous night, he reunites with the stallion and his groom, very far from the glamor of any racetrack.

New York City, 1954. Martha Jackson, a gallery owner celebrated for taking risks on edgy contemporary painters, becomes obsessed with a 19th-century equestrian oil painting of mysterious provenance.

Washington, DC, 2019. Jess, a Smithsonian scientist from Australia, and Theo, a Nigerian-American art historian, find themselves unexpectedly connected through their shared interest in the horse—one studying the stallion’s bones for clues to his power and endurance, the other uncovering the lost history of the unsung Black horsemen who were critical to his racing success.

Based on the remarkable true story of the record-breaking thoroughbred, Lexington, who became America’s greatest stud sire, Horse is a gripping, multi-layered reckoning with the legacy of enslavement and racism in America.

Throughout the 1940s, forgers helped thousands of children escape Nazi France. In this instant New York Times bestseller, Kristin Harmel reimagines their story...

Perfect for readers of The Tattooist of Auschwitz, The Librarian of Auschwitz and The Book Thief.

In 1942, Eva is forced to flee Paris after the arrest of her father, a Polish Jew. Finding refuge in a small mountain town, she begins forging identity documents for Jewish children escaping to neutral Switzerland. But erasing people comes with a price, and along with a mysterious, handsome forger named Rémy, Eva realises she must find a way to preserve the real names of the children who are too young to remember their own identities.

When Rémy disappears and the resistance cell they work for is betrayed, the records they keep in The Book of Lost Names become even more crucial to remembering the truth...

A present day discovery of the book leaves researchers fascinated by its origins and desperate to decipher its codes. Only Eva holds the answer but will she have the strength to face old memories and help reunite those lost during the war?

In August 1945 the Japanese in Malaya finally surrendered. The Malayan People's Anti-Japanese Army, who were largely Communist, emerged from the jungle to make claim on the promises given them by the British and Malayan authorities.They were to be disappointed. The pre-war ban on the Communist Party in Malaya continued and the promise of land and money in recognition of their brave service failed to be honoured.After three years of frustration they returned to the jungle now calling themselves the Malayan Races Liberation Army. They started to blow up bridges, ambush roads and abduct local businessmen, many of whom were murdered.In 1948, a state of emergency was declared and British and Commonwealth Troops entered the jungle to kill or capture their former allies. This proved no easy task, for their enemy had been well trained during the war by British instructors.The emergency or 'The Undeclared War' lasted until 1960, when the remnants of the terrorists finally accepted an amnesty.The novel 'Jungle Haven' is the sequel to that of 'Strange Alliance'. The story restarts in July 1952 as the book's two main characters, Royal Marines Sgt Major Jim Muir and Sgt Peter Blake, are coming to the end of their unit's two-year stint fighting the terrorists. They have just completed their last patrol and are about to prepare for the move to Singapore then onward to Malta in the troopship Dilwara.

They knew they were changing history.
They didn’t know they would change each other.

Oxford, 1920. For the first time in its 1000-year history, the world’s most famous university has admitted female students. Giddy with dreams of equality, education and emancipation, four young women move into neighbouring rooms on Corridor Eight. They have come here from all walks of life, and they are thrown into an unlikely, life-affirming friendship.

Dora was never meant to go to university, but, after losing both her brother and her fiancé on the battlefield, has arrived in their place. Beatrice, politically-minded daughter of a famous suffragette, sees Oxford as a chance to make her own way – and her own friends – for the first time. Socialite Otto fills her room with extravagant luxuries but fears they won’t be enough to distract her from her memories of the war years. And quiet, clever, Marianne, the daughter of a village vicar, arrives bearing a secret she must hide from everyone – even The Eights – if she is to succeed.

But Oxford’s dreaming spires cast a dark shadow: in 1920, misogyny is still rife, influenza is still a threat, and the ghosts of the Great War are still very real indeed. And as the group navigate this tumultuous moment in time, their friendship will become more important than ever.

The Eights is a captivating debut novel about sisterhood, self-determination, courage, and what it means to come of age in a world that is forever changed.

'I implore our citizens and allies that when I shall have departed this life they will honor my deeds and name with their praise and kind remembrance.' Vain hope! In death, as in life, political intrigues, family hatreds and betrayals, and sexual passions and jealousies combine with a succession of personal tragedies to destroy the character and good name of Tiberius, the brilliant stepson and successor of the deified Augustus. The 'ablest of all the sovereigns the empire ever had' surges to life with all his stiff pride, mordant wit and penetrating intelligence in this adventure-packed tale of love, war, political double-dealing, partisan struggle and brazen treachery. The hand of fate lays waste all rivals, leaving Tiberius the reluctant Caesar, burdened by the twin griefs of having to give up the woman he loves in order to wed Augustus's licentious daughter, and the bitter humiliation of having been the choice of last resort to govern Rome. While his military prowess shields the empire, his reputation and political authority are under incessant assault and treachery, not only from enemies but even his most trusted lieutenant, Sejanus, in this epic novel of an age whose events often mirror those of the present. Tiberius - Reluctant Caesar depicts a world whose political duplicity, cynical manipulations, fanatical hatreds, public gullibility and sexual intrigues are difficult to distinguish from our own.

From the beloved, critically acclaimed New York Times bestselling author comes a spectacularly moving and intense novel of secrecy, misunderstanding, and love, the story of Eilis Lacey, the complex and enigmatic heroine of Brooklyn, Tóibín’s most popular work in twenty years.

Eilis Lacey is Irish, married to Tony Fiorello, a plumber and one of four Italian American brothers, all of whom live in neighboring houses on a cul-de-sac in Lindenhurst, Long Island, with their wives and children and Tony’s parents, a huge extended family that lives and works, eats and plays together. It is the spring of 1976 and Eilis, now in her forties with two teenage children, has no one to rely on in this still-new country. Though her ties to Ireland remain stronger than those that hold her to her new land and home, she has not returned in decades.

One day, when Tony is at his job and Eilis is in her home office doing her accounting, an Irishman comes to the door asking for her by name. He tells her that his wife is pregnant with Tony’s child and that when the baby is born, he will not raise it but instead deposit it on Eilis’s doorstep. It is what Eilis does—and what she refuses to do—in response to this stunning news that makes Tóibín’s novel so riveting.

Long Island is about longings unfulfilled, even unrecognized. The silences in Eilis’s life are thunderous and dangerous, and there’s no one more deft than Tóibín at giving them language. This is a gorgeous story of a woman alone in a marriage and the deepest bonds she rekindles on her return to the place and people she left behind, to ways of living and loving she thought she’d lost.

'Unspoken' charts the interlocking stories of a very different group of characters through the tumultuous decade of the 1960s in Ireland. It is an ambitious novel, rich in characterisation, which depicts a period integral to the story of modern Ireland.

The Secrets of the Lake is a gripping wartime novel, by the author of The Silk Weaver, Liz Trenow. 'Masterful storytelling, immersive locations, and characters that inhabit your heart from the first page' - Gill Paul, author of The Secret Wife. The war may be over, but for Molly life is still in turmoil. Uprooted from London after the death of her mother, Molly, her father and younger brother Jimmy are starting again in a quiet village in the countryside of Colchester. As summer sets in, the heat is almost as oppressive as the village gossip. Molly dreams of becoming a journalist, finding a voice in the world, but most of the time must act as Jimmy's carer. At just ten years old he is Molly's shadow, following her around the village as she falls under the spell of local boy Kit. Kit is clever, funny and a natural-born rebel. Rowing on the waters of the lake with him becomes Molly's escape from domestic duty. But there is something Kit is not telling Molly. As the village gossip starts building up with whispers against Molly's father over missing church funds, everything Molly thought she knew is turned upside down. And on one stormy night, when she sneaks out of the house to try to put things right, Jimmy vanishes. Never to be seen again. Decades later, Molly is an elderly woman in sheltered housing, still haunted by the disappearance of her brother. When two police officers arrive to say that the remains of a body have been found at the bottom of the lake, it seems like Molly will at long last have her answer . . .

Imagine waking up and a wall has divided your city in two. Imagine that on the other side is your child...

Lisette is in hospital with her baby boy. The doctors tell her to go home and get some rest, that he’ll be fine.

When she awakes, everything has changed. Because overnight, on 13 August 1961, the border between East and West Berlin has closed, slicing the city - and the world - in two.

Lisette is trapped in the east, while her newborn baby is unreachable in the west. With the streets in chaos and armed guards ordered to shoot anyone who tries to cross, her situation is desperate.

Lisette's teenage daughter, Elly, has always struggled to understand the distance between herself and her mother. Both have lived for music, but while Elly hears notes surrounding every person she meets, for her mother - once a talented pianist - the music has gone silent.

Perhaps Elly can do something to bridge the gap between them. What begins as the flicker of an idea turns into a daring plan to escape East Berlin, find her baby brother, and bring him home....

Based on true stories, The Silence in Between is a page-turning, emotional epic that will stay with you long after you finish reading.

On the voyage to France Wordsworth meets the elegant Elizabeth Montrose, who is travelling to Orleans to visit her nephew Pierre. Wordsworth's plans are to visit Paris and Orleans so when Elizabeth Montrose invites him to call on her, he gratefully accepts. There he meets Pierre, stays at his splendid chateau and visits his vineyard. Pierre is a generous man and gives freely to his workers and the locals. But his generosity doesn't allay fears that as the revolution spreads, his chateau and vineyard will become targets for pillage and destruction. At the chateau Wordsworth meets the beautiful Annette Vallon. They become inseparable but their lives are clouded with fear. Revolutionary France is a dangerous place for foreigners and Wordsworth must leave for his safety. Wordsworth is distraught as Annette is expecting his child and he vows to return when calmer times prevail. Back in England he befriends Samuel Taylor Coleridge and they collaborate on works of poetry, particularly the Lyrical Ballads. William and Dorothy return to the Lake District and find Dove Cottage where they meet again a childhood friend Mary Hutchinson. William and Mary fall in love but Wordsworth has learned Annette gave birth to a daughter, his daughter. He is drawn again to France to see Annette and their daughter and after joyous times there he returns to England to write, and with Annette's blessing, to marry Mary Hutchinson. This is a splendid novel which captures the horrors of revolution and the brilliance of Britain's best-loved poet.

American literature’s philosopher king – and its sharpest satirist’ – The New Yorker

In Watershed, Percival Everett, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel James, turns his focus once again to the injustices of recent American history, exploring the relationship between Native American activists and Black Panther groups who bonded over their shared enemies in the 1960s Civil Rights movement.

On a windswept landscape somewhere north of Denver, Robert Hawks, a feisty and dangerously curious hydrologist, finds himself enmeshed in a fight over Native American treaty rights. What begins for Robert as a peaceful fishing interlude ends in murder and the disclosure of government secrets.

Part of the Picador Collection, a series celebrating fifty years of Picador books and showcasing the best of modern literature.

The Sunday Times bestselling sequel to Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, the stunning conclusion to Hilary Mantel's Man Booker Prize-winning Wolf Hall trilogy. Shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2020 Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2020 'Mantel has taken us to the dark heart of history...and what a show' The Times 'If you cannot speak truth at a beheading, when can you speak it?' England, May 1536. Anne Boleyn is dead, decapitated in the space of a heartbeat by a hired French executioner. As her remains are bundled into oblivion, Thomas Cromwell breakfasts with the victors. The blacksmith's son from Putney emerges from the spring's bloodbath to continue his climb to power and wealth, while his formidable master, Henry VIII, settles to short-lived happiness with his third queen, Jane Seymour. Cromwell is a man with only his wits to rely on; he has no great family to back him, no private army. Despite rebellion at home, traitors plotting abroad and the threat of invasion testing Henry's regime to breaking point, Cromwell's robust imagination sees a new country in the mirror of the future. But can a nation, or a person, shed the past like a skin? Do the dead continually unbury themselves? What will you do, the Spanish ambassador asks Cromwell, when the king turns on you, as sooner or later he turns on everyone close to him? With The Mirror and the Light, Hilary Mantel brings to a triumphant close the trilogy she began with Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies. She traces the final years of Thomas Cromwell, the boy from nowhere who climbs to the heights of power, offering a defining portrait of predator and prey, of a ferocious contest between present and past, between royal will and a common man's vision: of a modern nation making itself through conflict, passion and courage. A Guardian Book of the Year * A Times Book of the Year * A Daily Telegraph Book of the Year * A Sunday Times Book of the Year * A New Statesman Book of the Year * A Spectator Book of the Year Sunday Times Bestseller (08/03/2020)

'a tour de force work of art' - The Wall Street Journal, Best Books of the Year Longlisted for the 2022 CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award It's Saturday evening, 9 March 1566, and Mary, Queen of Scots, is six months pregnant. She's hosting a supper party, secure in her private chambers. She doesn't know that her Palace is surrounded - that, right now, an army of men is creeping upstairs to her chamber. They're coming to murder David Rizzio, her friend and secretary, the handsome Italian man who is smiling across the table at her. Mary's husband, Lord Darnley, wants it done in front of her and he wants her to watch it done ... Denise Mina brilliantly portrays the sexual dynamics and politics of power - between men and women, monarch and subjects, master and servants. The period is masterfully researched yet lightly drawn, the characterisation quick, subtle and utterly convincing. This breathtakingly tense work is a tale of sex, secrets and lies, one that explores the lengths that men - and women - will go to in the search for love and power.

HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics. "For a time I believed that mankind had been swept out of existence, and that I stood there alone, the last man left alive." When a strange, meteor-like object lands in the heart of England, the inhabitants of Earth find themselves victims of a terrible attack. A ruthless race of Martians, armed with heat rays and poisonous smoke, is intent on destroying everything that stands in its way. As the unnamed hero struggles to find his way across decimated wastelands, the fate of the planet hangs in the balance . . . H. G. Wells was a pioneer of modern science fiction. First serialised in the UK in 1897, The War of the Worlds is one of the earliest stories to depict conflict with an extraterrestrial race, and has influenced countless adaptations and sequels.