The bedroom, or "chambre", is where life begins and ends, and this highly readable translation brings a prize-winning French social history to an English-speaking readership. The bedroom of the Sun King Louis XIV at Versailles was the epitome of magnificence, both as a theatrical setting in which visiting ambassadors had to stop at the edge of the carpet in front of the bed, and also as the altar on which the elevation of the monarch to quasi-divine status took place. His wives and mistresses were accorded sumptuous apartments nearby. For the aristocracy, separate rooms continued to be the norm, but for the bourgeoisie the conjugal bedroom became customary after 1840, following the unusual example of the uxorious Queen Victoria and her consort Prince Albert. Hygiene and safety were an issue even for wealthy couples, but the arrival of running water finally made the chamber pot redundant and electricity eliminated the hazard of candles. In total contrast, the 18th century poor might sleep on hay in large communal areas, often mingling with animals, or if there was a bed it would accommodate several people. No-one wants to live like this: the desire for personal space is universal and humanity has been ingenious in devising ways of achieving privacy for sleep, sex, sickness, prayer, meditation, reading and writing. Virginia Woolf summed it up in the title of her book A Room of One's Own. The author notes that preparing for sleep is hedged round with rituals, while the act of sleeping may invite nightmares and fantasies. For the insomniac, there are waking fears engendered by creaking floorboards or simple silence. Women's rooms, workers' rooms, hotel rooms, servants' rooms are considered alongside the whole range of life experience enclosed by the "chambre". 371pp.

The Pacific accounts for nearly half the earth's water surface, falling to a depth of seven miles, and this gorgeously illustrated book, divided into the four categories Passionate, Voracious, Mysterious and Violent rises magnificently to the challenge of depicting a major natural phenomenon. Symbolising nature at its most terrible, the Great White Shark is endowed with keen sensory organs, identifying a single drop of blood in 10 billion of water. The Blue Whale is the largest animal ever to have lived on earth, stretching to 30 metres as an adult and with a heart the size of a Volkswagen Beetle car. In social terms Blue Whales are solitary creatures but they have the loudest, strongest vocalisations on the planet, calling to each other across a distance of 1000 miles. Another massive creature is Nomura's Jellyfish, now causing trouble for Japanese fishermen as a result of global warming. The yellow-eyed penguin is one of the world's rarest, a model parent who never leaves the chicks unguarded. One of the most spectacular-looking creatures of the Pacific is the Red Lionfish, striped and bristling with spikes capable of delivering a lethal sting. The Galapagos Archipelago has one of the highest levels of endemism, or species unique to the place, on the planet. A prime example is the Marine Iguana, captured here in close-up with some superb photography. There are also fine pictures of Galapagos tortoises and their predators, the Galapagos Hawks. The white spotted pufferfish creates patterns like crop circles on the seabed, while the Firefly Squid is surrounded by luminescence while spawning. The edge of the Pacific, particularly the northwest, encompasses a volatile geological cauldron known as the Ring of Fire, while the world's largest tidal bore, known as the Silver Dragon, occurs near the Chinese city of Hangzhou. A fascinating and wonderfully illustrated book which blends a wealth of stunning Ultra HD images with spellbinding storytelling to take you into a realm teeming with exotic life rarely witnessed up close, until now. 240pp, landscape format, colour photos on most pages.
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The Incident At Alpha Tau Omega, Why Don't U Tell Me Wht You're Into?, The Case of the Vanishing Blonde, ...A Million Years Ago, The Body In Room 348 and Who Killed Euhommie Bond? were first published in the 1980s, the first story involving the rape versus non-rape and more difficult moral terrain of a young woman attending a college frat party drunk and tripping on acid: "At the time who could more or less expect to be sexually assaulted." This campus rape at the University of Pennsylvania unleashed a debate over the nature of consent. There are three cold cases featuring the inimitable Long Island private detective Ken Brennan and a startling investigation into a murderer deep within the LAPD's ranks, shielded for 26 years by officers keen to protect one of their own. Six riveting stories spanning four decades of searing characters and unsettling tales. 232pp.

In this beautifully illustrated work of impressive contemporary scholarship, Caroline Vout uses the celebrated double sculpture in marble known as "The Tyrannicides" to argue that the term "Classical Art" is a controversial category. Ascribed to Kritios and Nesiotes in the 5th century BCE, this is not the bronze statue erected in the Athenian agora, but a Roman copy, and in fact the "original" bronze was itself a copy of an even earlier version. In the Renaissance one of the figures was given a head belonging to a different figure, and finally a cast of what may have been the original head was restored in the 20th century. So is this sculpture classical, and is it even art? The concept of authenticity makes its appearance with the 4th century Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, which consciously incorporated a mixture of styles at a date when sculptors had begun signing their work. It opened the door for Roman sculptors to define themselves by their eclecticism, sometimes integrating exotic elements such as the Egyptian style of the sculpture of Hadrian's lover Antinous from the second century CE. At the end of the book a bearded larger than life statue of Hadrian himself, located in the UK during the 18th century and more recently in a glass case in the atrium of an American bank, is revealed as a complete pastiche, only the head of which is ancient. Vout demonstrates that Rome's absorption of Greek art dominated the collections of empire-builders such as Napoleon, and in the later 18th century great British country houses such as Holkham, Kedleston, Newby Hall and Wentworth Woodhouse were either purpose built or adapted to incorporate monumental galleries in the Roman style. Only in the 19th century did the spectacular finds from Greek archaeological sites such as Olympia restore the primacy and charisma of Greek sculpture. 359pp, numerous reproductions in black and white and colour.
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This fast-moving novel about war correspondents in the aftermath of the Iraq War follows the stories of Rita Khoury, an American-Irish-Lebanese journalist caught up in the middle eastern conflict, and her interpreter Nabil al-Jumaili, a young Muslim gay man whose career and family life are agonisingly impacted by the secret of his sexuality. We meet Rita in America in 2008 as she drives with her Jewish boyfriend Jonah to introduce him to her family at the mahrajan, the annual festival of the Lebanese Maronite community, where Rita is reunited with her mother Mary-Jo and her much-loved cousin Bobby, at the centre of the dancing with his prosthetic leg. The story then backtracks to her mother's generation, where Mary-Jo Coughlin wants to be a doctor but is directed into nursing college. Soon her tutor, George Khoury, notices that she has acquired a doctor's knowledge and invites her to be his business partner and then his wife. There are surprises in store for Mary-Jo as she has to fight off her mother-in-law's expectations and realises that George wants his daughters to reach the highest pinnacle of their careers. Rita gives every sign of fulfilling her father's ambitions but then life gets complicated as she meets Muslim girls like Yasmin who are at the centre of the struggle for women's freedoms. Meanwhile Nabil is experiencing the traumas of the Saddam years and wonders with his fellow-citizens whether an American surgical incision could possibly rid the country of its brutal dictatorship while leaving ordinary citizens in peace. The stage is set for an agonising clash of cultures. 440pp.

Sub-titled 'How Relativity Triumphed Amid the Vicious Nationalism of World War I', the book explores the birth of a world-changing idea in the middle of a bloodbath. It is a riveting exploration of the beauty of scientific creativity and the enduring horrors of human nature - two great forces battling in a story, the mind-bending theory of general relativity. The Great War was industrialised slaughter that bled Europe from 1914-18 and shaped Einstein's life and work. While he never held a rifle, he formulated general relativity while blockaded in Berlin, literally starving. He lost 50 pounds in weight in three months, unable to communicate with his most important colleagues, some of whom fought against rabid nationalism. Others were busy inventing chemical warfare. Being a scientist trapped a person in the powerplays of empire. Meanwhile, Einstein struggled to craft relativity and persuade the world that it was correct. This was after all the first complete revision of our conception of the Universe since Isaac Newton's, and its victory was far from certain. Scientists seeking to confirm Einstein's ideas were arrested as spies. Technical journals were banned as enemy propaganda. Colleagues died in the trenches. Einstein was separated from his most crucial ally by barbed wire and U-boats. This ally was the Quaker astronomer and Cambridge don A. S. Eddington, who would go on to convince the world of the truth of relativity and of the greatness of Einstein. Eddington in May 1919 led a globe-spanning expedition to catch a fleeting solar eclipse for a rare opportunity to confirm Einstein's bold prediction that light has weight. It was as a result of this that the proof of relativity as many saw it put Einstein on front pages around the world. This is an epic tale and celebration of how bigotry and nationalism can be defeated, and of what science can offer when they are. This moving and beautifully written account captures the heady thrills and the crushing setbacks amid the divided line that World War One had drawn across Europe. 390pp, illus.

'A deft blend of historical research, moving interviews and challenging psychological insights, Lowe writes with elegance and perception.' - Jonathan Dimbleby. The fruit of five years labour, Lowe dissects the impact of the Second World War on society, politics, urban planning and more besides. The war created new philosophies, new ways of living, new architecture - this was the era of Le Corbusier, Simone de Beauvoir and Chairman Mao. But amid the waves of revolution and idealism there are also fears of globalisation, a dread of the atom bomb, and an unexpressed longing for a past forever gone. WWII was one of the most catastrophic events in human history, but how did the experience and memory of bloodshed - and bonding - affect the modern world? How did fears of violence, dreams of equality, and craving for freedom and belonging affect the world, countries and communities we live in today? The book describes and analyses a period of unprecedented geopolitical, social and economic change. The new order as it emerged after 1945 saw the collapse of European colonialism and the birth of two new superpowers - the USA and the Soviet Union - in a new, global Cold War. Scientists delivered new technologies beginning the nuclear age. Politicians fanaticised about overhauled societies. Some argued for global government, others for independence. Living standards were altered dramatically. It was a time of both terror and wonder which resonates in the arguments about nationalism, immigration and globalisation that exist today. Chapters include Planned Utopias, Equality and Diversity, Freedom and Belonging, The Birth of An Asian Nation, An African Nation, Democracy in Latin America and Israel. 561pp, 45 illustrations and 17 colour plates. Maps on endpapers.

The remarkable story of the Spanish Civil War as seen through the eyes of the reporters, writers, artists, doctors and nurses who witnessed it. The War (1936-39) inspired and haunted an extraordinary number of exceptional artists and writers including Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, Martha Gellhorn, Ernest Hemingway, George Orwell and John Dos Passos. The idealism of the cause, defending democracy from Fascism at a time when Europe was darkening towards another World War, and the brutality of the conflict drew from them some of their best work - Guernica, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Homage to Catalonia, The Spanish Earth. The war spurred breakthroughs in military and medical technology as well - new aircraft, weapons, tactics and strategy all emerged. Indiscriminate destruction, raining from the sky, became a dreaded reality for the first time. Progress also arose from the horror - the doctors and nurses who volunteered to serve with the Spanish defenders devised major advances in battlefield surgery and frontline blood transfusion. In many ways the war served as a test bed for World War Two and for the entire 20th century. From the life of John James Audubon to the invention of the atomic bomb, readers have relied on Richard Rhodes to distil and dramatize crucial moments in history. Now he takes us into the battlefields and bomb shelters, into the studios of artists, the crowded wards of war hospitals and into the hearts and minds of a rich cast of characters to show how the ideological, aesthetic and technological developments that emerged in Spain changed the world for ever. 16 pages of plates, 302pp.

Amphibians and reptiles were the first vertebrates to venture forth from the seas some 300 million years ago. Exactly when and which kind of fish was the first to make the move is not known with any degree of precision, but this was one pioneering piscean! As well as being the first vertebrates to leave the water, they were also the first to mate without using water to transport gametes, colonise the deserts, burrow into the ground, take to the air and, critically, the first to get their oxygen from the air rather than the water. Yet today, having walked the Earth for so long, there are a great many of their species at critical risk of extinction. Here, in this companion book to his 2008 BBCTV series the world's greatest natural history broadcaster travels the world to tell their epic story - their astounding past success and the profound implications of their uncertain future. Having once ruled the planet, their descendants today exhibit some of the most colourful variety, bizarre form and peculiar behaviour in all the animal kingdom. Sumptuously illus in colour throughout, Sir David gets up close and personal with those descendants and through them traces the fascinating history their pioneering ancestors. He explains in his inimitable manner how it is that some of today's amphibians and reptiles have changed little from their prehistoric forebears yet, as we know, some evolved into dinosaurs, then birds and mammals and his eye for the unusual and quirky is as sharp as ever, with hundreds of examples of amazing physiological and behavioural adaptations featured throughout. The camerawork is second to none, with incredible shots of impossibly photogenic crocodiles, axolotls, salamanders, the cutest frogs imaginable and the most threatening snakes, especially the King Cobra which appears to be about to launch itself at you from the page! The finest natural history in 288pp.

Award-winning US bestselling writer presents a suspenseful, alternating narrative that travels back and forth between the present and Abby's tortured childhood in an eerie complex thriller about a newlywed wife haunted by her secret, traumatic past. As a child, Abby had the same recurring nightmare night after night in which she wandered through a field full of human skulls and bones. Now an adult, she thinks she has outgrown her demons, but the evening before her wedding the terrible dream returns and forces her to confront the dark secrets from her past that she has kept from her new husband, Willem. Less than 24 hours after exchanging vows, Abby steps out into traffic. As his wife lies in her hospital bed, sleeping in fits and starts, Willem tries to determine whether this is an absentminded accident, or a premeditated plunge. He quickly discovers a mysterious set of clues about what his wife might be hiding. Why is there a rash-like red mark circling her wrist? What does she dream about that causes her to scream and awaken? Slowly Abby begins to open up to her husband revealing the story of a terrified mother, a jealous, drug-addled father, and a daughter's harrowing captivity. Stylistically dashing as we expect from this superb writer. 216pp, non-mint.