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<b>'Gripping, moving and important' Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of <i>The World: A Family History</i></b><br/><br/>This is the incredible story of Elzbieta Zawacka, the WW2 female resistance fighter known as Agent Zo, told here for the very first time. Agent Zo was the only woman to reach London from Warsaw during the Second World War as an emissary of the Polish Home Army command, and then in Britain she became the only woman to join the Polish elite Special Forces, known as the 'Silent Unseen'. She was secretly trained in the British countryside, and then the only female member of these SOE affiliated forces to be parachuted back behind enemy lines to Nazi-occupied Poland. There, whilst being hunted by the Gestapo who arrested her entire family, she took a leading role in the Warsaw Uprising and the liberation of Poland.<br/><br/>After the war she was demobbed as one of the most highly decorated women in Polish history. Yet the Soviet-backed post-war Communist regime not only imprisoned her, but also ensured that her remarkable story remained hidden for over forty years. Now, through new archival research and exclusive interviews with people who knew and fought alongside Zo, Clare Mulley brings this forgotten heroine back to life, and also transforms how we see the history of women's agency in the Second World War.

As winter comes and the hours of darkness overtake the light, we seek out warmth, good food, and good company. But beneath the jollity and bright enchantment of the festive season, there lurks a darker mood - one that has found expression over the centuries in a host of strange and unsettling traditions and lore. Here, Sarah Clegg takes us on a journey through midwinter to explore the lesser-known Christmas traditions, from English mummers plays and Austrian Krampus runs, to modern pagan rituals at Stonehenge and the night in Finland when a young girl is crowned with candles as St Lucy - a martyred Christian girl who also appears as a witch leading a procession of the dead. At wassails and hoodenings and winter gatherings, attended by ghastly, grinning horses, snatching monsters and mysterious visitors, we discover how these traditions originated and how they changed through the centuries, and we ask ourselves: if we can't keep the darkness entirely at bay, might it be fun to let a little in?

<b>WINNER OF THE EDGAR AWARD FOR BEST FACT CRIME<br/>SHORTLISTED FOR THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE IN NON-FICTION<br/>SHORTLISTED FOR THE CWA ALCS GOLD DAGGER FOR NON-FICTION<br/>**SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE DIRECTED BY MARTIN SCORSESE STARRING LEONARDO DICAPRIO AND ROBERT DE NIRO**</b><br/><br/>'<b>A riveting true story</b> of greed, serial murder and racial injustice'<b> JON KRAKAUER</b><br/>'<b>A fiercely entertaining mystery</b><b> story </b>and a wrenching exploration of evil'<b> KATE ATKINSON</b><br/>'<b>A fascinating account </b>of a tragic and forgotten chapter in the history of the American West' <b>JOHN GRISHAM </b><br/><br/><b>From the bestselling author of <i>The Lost City of Z, </i>now a major film starring Charlie Hunnam, Sienna Miller and Robert Pattison, <i>and the Number One international bestseller The Wager</i>, </b>comes a true-life murder story which became one of the FBI's first major homicide investigations.<br/><br/>In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Indian nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, they rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions and sent their children to study in Europe.<br/><br/>Then, one by one, the Osage began to be killed off. <b>As the death toll climbed</b>, <b>the FBI took up the case</b>. But the bureau badly bungled the investigation. In desperation, its young director, J. Edgar Hoover, turned to a former Texas Ranger named Tom White to unravel the mystery. Together with the Osage he and his undercover team began to expose <b>one of the most chilling conspiracies in American history</b>.<br/><br/>'<b>David Grann has a </b><b>razor-keen instinct for suspense</b>' <b>LOUISE ERDRICH</b>

<b>One of the most remarkable stories in the history of Special Forces' operations - <i>Daily Express</i></b><br/><br/>In the bleak moments after defeat on mainland Europe in winter 1939, Winston Churchill knew that Britain had to strike back hard. So Britain's wartime leader called for the lightning development of a completely new kind of warfare, recruiting a band of eccentric free-thinking warriors to become the first 'deniable' secret operatives to strike behind enemy lines, offering these volunteers nothing but the potential for glory and all-but-certain death.<br/><br/><i>The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare</i> tells the story of the daring victories for this small force of 'freelance pirates', undertaking devastatingly effective missions against the Nazis, often dressed in enemy uniforms and with enemy kit, breaking all previously held rules of warfare. Master storyteller Damien Lewis brings the adventures of the secret unit to life, weaving together the stories of the soldiers' brotherhood in this compelling narrative, from the unit's earliest missions to the death of their leader just weeks before the end of the war.

<b>A <i>Times</i>/<i>Sunday Times, Economist, Guardian</i>, <i>BBC History Magazine </i>and <i>History Today </i>Book of the Year</b><br/><b><br/>'One of the most fascinating and important works of global history to appear for many years' William Dalrymple</b><br/><br/><b>'Quinn has done a lot more than reinvent the wheel. What we have here is a truly encyclopaedic and monumental account of the ancient world' <i>The Times</i><br/></b><br/>Ancient Greece and Rome have long been considered the parents of Western civilisation. But the ancient world was a very wide one, of conversation, commerce and theft, sex, war and enslavement. It was this restless global contact that built the West.<br/><br/>Why did Macedonian generals steal elephants from India to rule new realms? How did the lewd graffiti left by foreign workers in Egypt form the basis of the alphabet? In a voyage through space and time, from the Levant of 2000 BC to the dawn of the Age of Exploration, Josephine Quinn rewrites the story of the West - and in doing so, offers us a new history of our shared past.<br/><br/><b>'Superb, refreshing and full of delights, this is world history at its best' Simon Sebag-Montefiore</b><br/><b>'Full of little gem-like shifts of perspective' <i>Guardian</i></b><br/> <b>'Scintillates with its focus on the unexpected' <i>Economist</i></b><br/> <b>'A work of great confidence, empathy, learning and imagination' Rory Stewart</b><br/> <b>'This is, in every way, a big book' <i>TLS</i></b>

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER'[A] clever, lively ... splendid new book'DAN JONES, SUNDAY TIMES'A big gold bar of delight'SPECTATORSixteen hundred years ago Britain left the Roman Empire and swiftly fell into ruin. Into this violent and unstable world came foreign invaders from across the sea, and established themselves as its new masters.<br/><br/>In this sweeping and original history, renowned historian Marc Morris separates the truth from the legend and tells the extraordinary story of how the foundations of England were laid. 'Marc Morris is a genius of medieval narrative'IAN MORTIMER, author of The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England'Brilliant ... Beautifully written, incredibly accessible and deeply researched'JAMES O'BRIEN'A much-needed book ...<br/><br/>A gripping story, beautifully told'BERNARD CORNWELL, author of The Last Kingdom'Highly informative and hugely enjoyable'IAN HISLOP'A vivid, sharply drawn story of seven centuries of profound political change'THOMAS PENN, author of The Winter King

<b>LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE<br/><br/>AN INSTANT <i>SUNDAY TIMES</i> BESTSELLER<br/><br/>BEST BOOKS OF 2023: THE TIMES * SUNDAY TIMES * FINANCIAL TIMES * INDEPENDENT * DAILY TELEGRAPHY * NEW STATESMAN<br/><br/>'Utterly brilliant . . . Authoritative, lively and profoundly human, it is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand post-World War II Europe' Julia Boyd</b><br/><br/><b>'One of the best young historians writing in English today. . . Well-researched, well-written and profoundly insightful, <i>Beyond the Wall</i> explodes many of the lazy Western cliches about East Germany' Andrew Roberts</b><br/><br/>In 1990, a country disappeared. When the iron curtain fell, East Germany simply ceased to be. For over forty years, from the ruin of the Second World War to the cusp of a new millennium, the GDR presented a radically different German identity to anything that had come before, and anything that exists today. Socialist solidarity, secret police, central planning, barbed wire: this was a Germany forged on the fault lines of ideology and geopolitics.<br/><br/>In <i>Beyond the Wall</i>, acclaimed historian Katja Hoyer offers a kaleidoscopic new vision of this vanished country. Beginning with the bitter experience of German Marxists exiled by Hitler, she traces the arc of the state they would go on to create, first under the watchful eye of Stalin, and then in an increasingly distinctive German fashion. From the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961, to the relative prosperity of the 1970s, and on to the creaking foundations of socialism in the mid-1980s, Hoyer argues that amid oppression and frequent hardship, East Germany was yet home to a rich political, social and cultural landscape, a place far more dynamic than the Cold War caricature often painted in the West.<br/><br/>Powerfully told, and drawing on a vast array of never-before-seen interviews, letters and records, this is the definitive history of the other Germany, the one beyond the Wall.