VIKING

While Afghan warlord Ahmed Shah Abdali plunders 18th century Delhi, a wandering storyteller fleeing the carnage happens across an isolated casbah a day's ride from the city. When the beautiful and lonely lady of the manor invites him to stay and share a story, his grief at the destruction of his glorious city spills forth in a story of two...

A wonderful novel with intrigue, love, mystery and tender, audacious and clean-cut characters....

A remarkable, unprecedented account of the role of magic in cultures both ancient and modern -- from the first known horoscope to the power of tattoos.'Fascinating, original, excellent' Simon Sebag Montefiore______________________Three great strands of practice and belief run through human history: science, religion and magic. But magic - the idea...

2020 marks 250 years since Beethoven's birthLudwig van Beethoven: to some, simply the greatest ever composer of Western classical music. Yet his life remains shrouded in myths, and the image persists of him as an eccentric genius shaking his fist at heaven.Beethoven by Oxford professor Laura Tunbridge cuts through the noise in a refreshing way....

When did globalization begin? Most observers have settled on 1492, the year Columbus discovered America. But as celebrated Yale professor Valerie Hansen shows, it was the year 1000, when for the first time new trade routes linked the entire globe, so an object could in theory circumnavigate the world. This was the 'big bang' of globalization, which...

In Iran, 1953, a driver named Behrouz discovers an abandoned baby in an alleyway. When he adopts her, naming her Aria, he has no idea how profoundly this fiery, blue-eyed orphan will shape his future.As she grows, Aria is torn between the three women fated to mother her: the wife of Behrouz, who beats her; the wealthy widow Fereshteh, who offers...