I had attached myself to the birds. I couldn't move on until the birds moved on, and the birds couldn't move on without the spring.One winter, after an enforced period of recuperation, William Fiennes finds himself restless and yearning for adventure. He travels to Texas, where he begins a quest to trace the million-strong flocks of snow geese making their spring flight thousands of miles north to the Arctic tundra. On his epic journey he meets people from every walk of life, from ex-nuns to train fanatics, and their stories resound with the longing to arrive at the right place in the world.Shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize and winner of the Hawthornden Prize, The Snow Geese is a poignant and lyrical paean to the richness and wonder of the world around us. A unique blend of autobiography, travel and nature writing, this is a classic tale of belonging and the inescapable lure of home.

Published for the first time in the U.S., an early book in Diamond Dagger award-winning crime novelist Ann Cleeves's Vera Stanhope series, brought to life in the hit TV series Vera.On a hot summer on the Northumberland coast, Julie Armstrong arrives home from a night out to find her son murdered. Luke has been strangled, laid out in a bath of water and covered with wild flowers. This stylized murder scene has Inspector Vera Stanhope and her team intrigued. But now, Vera must work quickly to find this killer who is making art out of death. As local residents are forced to share their private lives, sinister secrets are slowly unearthed. And all the while the killer remains in their midst, waiting for an opportunity to prepare another beautiful, watery grave..."I do love Vera!" —Val McDermid"Cleeves offers up evocative settings and flawed characters with depth, making her mysteries wonderfully addictive. Her latest...

Born in 1776 in East Anglia near the river Stour, John Constable was destined for his father's business of milling and grain-shipping. But he was obdurately opposed to this and persuaded his family he should become an artist instead. In the same determined spirit, he wooed Maria Bicknell in the teeth of opposition from her formidable grandfather, and persisted in painting landscapes at a time when history paintings and portraits were the fashion. Sometimes sharp and sarcastic, and often depressed, Constable in fact possessed a warm gift for intimate friendship. This is revealed in his letters to John Dunthorne, village handyman and housepainter, and to his best friend and patron, archdeacon John Fisher, to whom he wrote: 'I have a kingdom of my own, both fertile and populous - my landscape and my children'. In recent times, after a period of relative ignominy, Constable's influence on British landscape painting has been re-acknowledged, he has...

On the night that Quinn of the Morning Post began his holiday, he strayed into a late party. When he got drunk, a girl called Carole made herself responsible for him. Next day, she took him off for a quiet weekend with friends in Dorset. But within a few hours, death had joined the guests at Elm Lodge... Inevitably, Quinn gets caught up in the smouldering passions that govern the house of secrets.

A sequel to Deborah Ellis's highly acclaimed international bestsellers, The Breadwinner, and Governor General's Award nominee Parvana's Journey.This final book of the acclaimed and bestselling Breadwinner trilogy continues the story of Parvana's best friend. Fourteen-year-old Shauzia has fled Afghanistan and is faced with surviving on her own on the streets of Peshawar, Pakistan. With her dog as her only friend, she must scrounge for food, beg for money and look for a safe place to sleep every night. But could it be worse than a lifetime spent living in a refugee camp? This is a powerful and very human story of a feisty, driven girl who tries to take control of her own life.

Eddie is a grizzled war veteran who feels trapped in a meaningless life of fixing rides at a seaside amusement park. As the park has changed over the years—from the Loop-the-Loop to the Pipeline Plunge—so, too, has Eddie changed, from optimistic youth to embittered old age. His days are a dull routine of work, loneliness, and regret. Then, on his 83rd birthday, Eddie dies in a tragic accident, trying to save a little girl from a falling cart. With his final breath, he feels two small hands in his—and then nothing. He awakens in the afterlife, where he learns that heaven is not a lush Garden of Eden, but a place where your earthly life is explained to you by five people who were in it. These people may have been loved ones or distant strangers. Yet each of them changed your path forever. One by one, Eddie’s five people illuminate the unseen connections of his earthly life. As the story builds to its stunning conclusion, Eddie desperately seeks redemption in the still-unknown last act of his life: Was it a heroic success or a devastating failure? The answer, which comes from the most unlikely of sources, is as inspirational as a glimpse of heaven itself. In The Five People You Meet in Heaven, Mitch Albom gives us an astoundingly original story that will change everything you’ve ever thought about the afterlife—and the meaning of our lives here on earth. With a timeless tale, appealing to all, this is a book that readers of fine fiction, and those who loved Tuesdays with Morrie, will treasure.

A richly woven and evocative portrayal of Elizabeth Cook by the author of the acclaimed Lambs of God.In the great sweep of history, of winds, tides and seasons, there is a story of courage and survival that belongs not to a great sea captain, but to his wife.While James Cook circumnavigated the globe, travelling further than any man had before, Elizabeth Cook travelled with him in her thoughts, imagining the exotic, the sensual and the strange. There were months, sometimes years, with no word.But as James sailed into the blue, earning his place in history, Elizabeth Cook made discoveries of her own. Though she rarely left London, she was propelled on a journey into the far reaches of the human heart, a journey marked by James' departures and those of her six children, whom she lost one by one.This is a rich portrayal of the life of a woman whose passion and intellect matched that of her celebrated husband. It is a lyrical exploration of imagined interior...