In his stunning essay, Coldness and Cruelty, Gilles Deleuze provides a rigorous and informed philosophical examination of the work of the late 19th-century German novelist Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. Deleuze's essay, certainly the most profound study yet produced on the relations between sadism and masochism, seeks to develop and explain Masoch's "peculiar way of 'desexualizing' love while at the same time sexualizing the entire history of humanity." He shows that masochism is something far more subtle and complex than the enjoyment of pain, that masochism has nothing to do with sadism; their worlds do not communicate, just as the genius of those who created them - Masoch and Sade - lie stylistically, philosophically, and politically poles a part.Venus in Furs, the most famous of all of Masoch's novels was written in 1870 and belongs to an unfinished cycle of works that Masoch entitled The Heritage of Cain. The cycle was to treat a series of themes including love, war, and death. The present work is about love. Although the entire constellation of symbols that has come to characterize the masochistic syndrome can be found here - fetishes, whips, disguises, fur-clad women, contracts, humiliations, punishment, and always the volatile presence of a terrible coldness - these do not eclipse the singular power of Masoch's eroticism.

`Compulsively readable novel... well-written scenes worthy of John le Carre... McNeil's writing is most luminous, both spare and powerful' The New York Times 'Completely absorbing, eminently readable... You won't read many better novels this year.' --The Daily Mail 'This exotic novel handles large themes with assurance, tact and knowledge.' --Giles Foden, author of The Last King of Scotland When Rebecca Laurelson, an English doctor, is forced to leave her post in an East African field hospital, she arrives at her aunt's house on the Indian Ocean and is taken into the heart of a family she has never met before. Amongst the all-night beach parties and cocktail receptions, her attraction for her much younger cousin grows. But the gilded lives of her aunt Julia's family and their fellow white Africans on the coast are under threat - Islamist terror attacks are on the rise and Rebecca knows more about this violence than she is prepared to divulge. Will she be able to save her new-found family from the violence that encroaches on their seductive lives? Or, amidst growing unrest, will the true reason for her hasty exit from her posting, be unmasked?

'Burns with a fierce intensity. Passions are ignited and family dynamics laid bare. A triumph.' Paul Burston 'This book surprises, turn after compulsive turn. ' Melanie Finn When NGO worker Nick drops unexpectedly into the lives of Pieter and Sara Lisson, he feels he has found the parents he never had. Nick is enraptured by their lives of splendour and acclaim as much as the stirring setting of the African city where they live, but he soon senses a secret at the heart of his new family. Nick then meets Riaan, the Lissons' son, and so begins an intense connection that threatens to erupt into a relationship neither had ever considered. In the shadow of the Brandberg, the glowing mountain that stands at the heart of the desert, Nick will discover that his passion for Riaan is not the only fire which threatens his newfound home. What Reviewers and Readers Say: `This is a remarkable and beautiful book [its] power is through its realism and its subtlety' Bookbag 'Sharp and evocative' Times Literary 'Stunningly written' New York Times 'Completely absorbing, eminently readable...' Daily Mail 'A formidable novel ... The writing is searing and fierce, even the most minutely explored character has a complexity that allows for empathy' Read and Review blog 'Gives you time to think and appreciate the lyrical quality of the writing and the unique landscapes' Madhouse Family Reviews 'A complex, mesmerising read ... McNeil has created so authentic a narrative that the reader becomes utterly immersed ... a triumph of a book' Linda's Book bag

In the winter of 2005/06 novelist and short story writer Jean McNeil lived in the Antarctic for over three months as writer-in-residence with the British Antarctic Survey. She journeyed to the Antarctic and back on research vessels, flew around the continent in planes, visited remote field camps and lived on a scientific base. Her project was to write a literary novel, published as The Ice Lovers (2009). A subsequent residency in the Arctic, as writer-in-residence with a Natural Environment Research Council expedition to west Greenland in 2009, forms the basis of this polar notebook in poetic form, encompassing journal entries, poetry, images and maps. Vivid, immediate, ambitious, these poem-sequences are 'verbal photographs of essentially mysterious places', where the 'polar night teaches that to know light you must also know darkness'. In Night Orders the novelist's eye for telling detail marries with a keen ear for patterns of sound. McNeil's often daring imagery and willingness to trust the music of poetry is perfectly suited to her task of mapping in languages these extraordinary worlds