The sudden death of overweight 49-year-old Thomas Whibley sparks off an acrimonious furore in Bayswater, and sparks fly between rival diet doctors, vegetarians and the extremist Pure Food Society. Young sleuth Frances Doughty is engaged to discover the author of anonymous libels, when a former colleague of Whibley's, Hubert Sweetman, who has served fourteen years in prison for a violent robbery he claims he did not commit, asks her to trace his estranged family. Before she can start, however, the police arrive and arrest her client for the murder of his wife. There will be more murders and a vicious attack on Frances before she finally resolves a number of knotty questions. Is Hubert Sweetman really innocent? Where are his missing children? And who wielded the poisoned pen? The fourth book in the popular Frances Doughty Mystery series .

SPANNING SIX GENERATIONS and three continents, My Name, a Living Memory is a fictionalized saga of author Giorgio van Straten’s family from the Napoleonic era through World War II. The story begins in Rotterdam in 1811, when Hartog son of Alexander — father, cucumber salesman, and Dutch Jew — is forced by Napoleonic edict to choose a last name. He chooses Straaten, the Dutch word for “street.” The name presages a journey through history that flings Hartog’s descendants as far afield as San Francisco, London, Odessa, Sao Paolo, and Tbilisi. They witness the Gold Rush, the Russian Revolution, the Stalinist purges, and, finally, the Holocaust. Some are uprooted by business interests, including the author’s grandfather, who lost one of the A’s in his surname en route. As the political climate grows increasingly perilous for Jews throughout Europe, several are forced to flee for their lives, and many fail to return from Auschwitz, Sobibor, and Bergen-Belsen. Historical fiction of a very personal sort, van Straten weaves his relatives’ stories together, much as an art restorer reconstructs the missing portions of a fresco, guided by the evidence that remains. A gold watch, a few photographs, crumpled documents and letters, family lore; these are the artifacts from which lives are re-created. In the end, the story of van Straten’s family can be read as a testament to the rich and varied history and culture of Jews in Europe and the Americas.

Text: English, Hebrew (translation)

A contemporary of Lorca and Buñuel in Spain’s Second Republic, Max Aub escaped into a life of exile after General Franco seized Barcelona. His masterpiece, acknowledged in Spain as one of the best accounts of the Spanish Civil War, is the five-novel cycle known as The Magic Labyrinth —never before translated into English. A playwright as well as a novelist, he brings the period alive through vibrant dialogue and a story that navigates the factional intrigues that eventually erupted onto the streets in violence. The protagonist of the first novel is Rafael López Serrador, whose coming of age in Barcelona introduces a cast from all walks of city life—Catalan nationalists, anarchists, Falangists, government ministers and showgirls. Just as central a character is Barcelona itself, lovingly depicted. Rafael’s adventures bring him into contact with the forces that were to destroy the Republic and determine the bloody course of the Spanish Civil War. Masterfully translated by Gerald Martin, author of Gabriel García Márquez: A Life , Max Aub’s novel is set to introduce to an English-speaking audience a classic of Spanish and Latin American literature—an account of the Spanish Civil War to compare with Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls .

The fifth in a series of Victorian murder mysteries set in London with a clever and determined female sleuth London 1881: When a body is found in the Paddington canal basin, a woman with a hearing impairment claims that the remains are those of her missing husband, who disappeared three years ago. Unable to prove her case, she appeals to Frances Doughty, the lady detective, to investigate. In this, her fifth case, Frances soon learns that the missing man has secrets of his own, and, when another body is discovered and a witness is viciously attacked, it becomes clear that she must choose her allies wisely.

LONDON 1882: In this, her most demanding case, Frances Doughty goes undercover for Her Majesty's Government to investigate some disturbing information regarding the apparently innocuous Bayswater Bicycle Club. Before long, she is plunged into a murky world of deadly secrets, a suspicious disappearance and a brutal murder, and the Lady Detective is forced to do the unthinkable to avoid becoming the next victim.With a new and exciting future before her, is there anything the dauntless Miss Doughty cannot do?

The year is 1880. In West London, a dedicated doctor has set up a waiting mortuary on the borders of Kensal Green Cemetery, where corpses are left to decompose before burial to reassure clients that no one can be buried alive. When he collapses and dies on the same night that one of his most reliable employees disappears, Frances Doughty, a young sleuth with a reputation for solving knotty cases, is engaged to find the missing man, but nothing is as it seems. In this, her third case, Frances Doughty must rely on her wit, courage and determination - as well as some loyal friends - to solve the case. Suspicions of blackmail, fraud and murder lead to a gruesome exhumation in the catacombs, with shocking results. The third book in the popular Frances Doughty Mystery series .

"Separated by 70 years, Michael, an American soldier, and Michel, a French printer, flee German-occupied France towards Gibraltar. As Michael travels, he continues to stumble onto traces of his grandfather's earlier journey, discovering patterns which connect the two men across the expanse of time."--

"Considered Antonio Lobo Antunes's masterpiece, The land at the end of the world -- now in a new and fully restored translation by acclaimed translator Margaret Jull Costa -- recounts the anguished tale of a Portuguese medic haunted by memories of war, who, like the Ancient Mariner, will tell his tale to anyone who listens. In the tradition of William Faulkner and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, one of the twentieth century's most original literary voices has delivered a haunting and heartrending meditation on the absurdities of love and war"--Back cover

"In 1915, fourteen years before Berlin Alexanderplatz, Alfred Doblin published his first novel, an amazing, extensively researched Chinese historical extravaganza: The Three Leaps of Wang Lun. Even more remarkably, given its subject matter, the book was written in expressionist style and is now considered the first modern German novel, as well as the first Western novel to depict a China untouched by the West. Based on actual accounts of a doomed rebellion during the reign of Emperor Qianlong in the late eighteenth century, the novel tells the story of Wang Lun, a historical martial arts master and charismatic leader of the White Lotus sect, who leads a futile revolt of the "Truly Powerless." Densely packed cities and Tibetan wastes, political intrigue and religious yearning, imperial court life and the fate of wandering outcasts are depicted in a language of enormous vigor and matchless imagination, unfolding the theme of timidity against force and a mystical sense of the world against the realities of power"--

"[...] Happy, however, as the people appeared to be in again beholding the house of God reared and dedicated to his holy worship, they still felt and saw the deficiency in the one, when compared with the other; for it must be observed, that in the second temple but few of the glories remained which had adorned the first temple, so renowned in history for its beauty, magnificence, and architectural delicacy and elegance. The temple erected by king Solomon at Jerusalem, was built after the model of the tabernacle erected in the wilderness. This superb edifice was completed in about seven years. Its grandeur and magnificence excited the envy and the curiosity of all the surrounding nations.[...]".

Cowan, Paul

"[...]ecclesiastical council. It numbered 70 like the Council of Elders appointed by Moses (Exodus xxiv, 1). Thus it happened when all political power was taken, from the Jews, the presentation of religion through the forms of law very naturally survived. There is yet another reason for Judaism being interpreted as Law, which touches the genius of Judaism. Judaism has always been less a faith to be confessed than a life to be lived. The emphasis was laid on deed rather than on dogma, on law rather than creed. We shall later see (p. 133) that it was on this very distinction that Christianity broke away from the parent religion to become a separate Faith. The reduction of religion to law had its abuses as well as its excellences. It led to the multiplication of ceremonials. The laws of ritual cleanliness, especially[...]".

In Light of My Eye, Paula Jacques, born in Egypt, recreates the vanished world of cosmopolitan Cairo with remembered affection and amusing dialogue. Her novel depicts the turbulent waning days of its once thriving Jewish community, during the strange and ominous time between the collapse of the Egyptian monarchy and Nasser's rise to power. At its center are the pre-adolescent Mona Castro and her family, whose lives and destinies the author evokes in a series of scenes that veer between poignancy and wit. Mona's coming of age is marked by her youthful rebellion against her domineering mother, Becky; the illness of the beloved family patriarch, Joucky; and her half-innocent dalliance with an older man, a refugee from eastern Europe. The surrounding ensemble of relatives, whose family gatherings attempt to cope with a history that will overwhelm them, shifts the focus from Mona' s tale to a chronicle of a proud, doomed family.