Bloomsbury

Ever since its formation during World War II, the Special Air Service had operated under conditions of such secrecy that few members of the public even knew of its existence. By the evening of 5 May 1980, all this had changed drastically.On the morning of 30 April, the Iranian Embassy at No.16 Price's Gate in London was seized by six...

In 1948 Communist terrorists were waging a bloody war against estates and rubber-plantation owners in Malaya. Chased into the interior by British Army units, the guerrillas soon became experts at survival and evasion, emerging from the jungle only to launch increasingly ferocious attacks.In 1952, on the recommendation of Lieutenant-Colonel...

Alice McDermott's masterful novel is a portrait of a working-class American family living through the tumultuous middle decades of the twentieth century. While Michael and Annie Keane taste the alternately intoxicating and bitter fruits of the sexual revolution, their older brother, Jacob, finds himself on the way to Vietnam. Clare, the...

'I am following the traces of a great jewel. All its owners are dead, and the jewel is lost...'Precious stones are thousands of years old. They pass through the hands of owners and smugglers, merchants and thieves. Often the hands leave no trace, but they are there all the same: they leave impressions, invisible, like atoms of hydrogen...

Twice a week, Lucy Dailey leaves suburbia with her three children in tow, returning to the Brooklyn home where she grew up, and where her stepmother and unmarried sisters still live. Aunt Veronica, with her wounded face and dreams of beauty, drowns her sorrows in drink. Aunt Agnes, an acerbic student of elegance, sips only from the finest crystal...

The Boy Who Ran Away From the Circus (and joined the library)'There are many boys in the world, all slightly different from one another, and most of them are referred to by names. These are often John or Jack or Desmond, but sometimes they are James or Philip or Simon. Once, and once only, there was a boy whose name was...