Stockholm, 1791. Emil Larsson is a self-satisfied bureaucrat in the Office of Customs and Excise. He is a true man of the Town-a drinker, card player, and contented bachelor. That is until Mrs. Sofia Sparrow, fortune-teller and proprietor of an exclusive gaming parlor, shares with him a vision she has had of a golden path that will lead Emil to love and connection. She lays an Octavo for him, a spread of eight cards that augur the eight individuals who can help him realize this vision-if he can find them.

But as Emil eagerly searches for his eight, he comes to the startling realization that finding them is no longer just a game of the heart, but crucial to pulling his country back from the crumbling precipice of rebellion and chaos.

Photography by acclaimed photographer Michael Clinton. Global Snaps is first volume in his acclaimed Global series, featuring the design and architectural vestiges that make each of the countries he has visited distinct and memorable. Basic supermarket shopping has become a global affair: We buy strawberries grown in Peru, rice cultivated in Indonesia and beef from Columbian ranchers. Michael Clinton has created a global volume for a global age. Shot in luminous four-colour, Global Snaps: 500 Photographs from 7 Continents celebrates the diversity of human culture and the startling array of images. Bestselling author of Wanderlust: One Hundred Countries, Clinton again takes us on a trip into the tantalizing prospect of trotting the globe. Over thirty-five years of travel, Clinton has compiled the photo album that we all wish we had taken ourselves. Organised by continent with convenient tabbing for quick reference, Global Snaps is part global tour guide, part fantasy. Clinton's photos cover an astonishing one hundred and five countries and every continent. His book is an incredible survey of all the places everyone wants to visit - the Taj Mahal, Sistine Chapel and Pyramids of Giza - along with many other sites that provide inspiration for more exotic ventures, like Antarctic ice flows and Turkish mosques. Clinton brings the same degree of care and sensitivity to his "snapshots" of great monuments as to his intimate portraits of local life.

'A delicious page-turner that brings 18th century Stockholm to vivid life, complete with scandal, conspiracy, mystery, and a hint of magic.' - Eleanor Brown, New York Times bestselling author of The Weird Sisters In 18th century Stockholm, as the winds of revolution rage through the great capitals of Europe, the key to a nation's fate rests in the hands of an unlikely hero. Emil Larsson is a drinker, card player and contented bachelor until he is told that his position at the Office of Excise and Customs depends on his settling down and finding a wife. Mrs Sparrow, proprietor of an exclusive gaming house, fortune teller (and confidante of King Gustav III) offers to lay an Octavo for him - a form of cartomancy which can divine his future if he can find the eight individuals who can help him realise his vision. When Mrs Sparrow wins a mysterious fan in her card game, the Octavo's deeper powers are revealed. No longer just a game of the heart, collecting his Eight is now crucial to pulling his country back from the brink of rebellion and chaos. A debut novel full of opulent period detail, brilliantly interweaving history, romance and intrigue, in which one man's fortune holds the key to a nation's precarious fate.