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Best known as the iconic lead vocalist of the Rolling Stones, Grammy-award winning Sir Mick Jagger has pushed the boundaries of rock music over five decades.  In this authoritative biography, Philip Norman will tell the Mick Jagger's incredible story to the present day, covering both his early music career and well-documented personal life, through to the phenomenal success the Rolling Stones have continued to achieve in recent years, following their 40th anniversary tour and album. The book will be delivered in the summer of 2011.

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Life of 19th century artist in compelling context of Victorian life and culture.

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Naples, 1926.

Rocco Campobello, a fabulously accomplished operatic tenor at the peak of his powers, one of the most famous and loved entertainers in the world, is convalescing after suffering a life-threatening collapse. He emerges from the crisis a changed man. Ignoring the expectations of his following and the frustration of his glamorous American wife, Campobello sheds ambition and celebrity, and begins to unearth some painful and sinister ghosts from his early life back in Naples.

But he cannot extricate himself from the clutches of a powerful Neapolitan crime chieftain who has overseen his progress for years, and who now, in liaison with Campobellos wife, will stop at nothing to re-launch the ailing tenor's career. As Campobello discovers a miraculous new life through the shadows of his past, he feels the anger of the criminal underworld rise against him, and is compelled to hatch a dangerous counter plot to extricate himself from his spotlight as the world's greatest tenor.

Moving between the palatial environment of a 1920s superstar in New York and the impoverished, crime-ridden backstreets of Naples The Maestro's Voice weaves a path through a world of celebrity glamour, ruthless violence and human innocence.

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The world lies devastated after the massive oil crisis that was described in LAST LIGHT. Human society has more or less entirely broken down and millions lie dead of starvation and disease. There are only one or two beacon communities that have managed to fashion a new way of living.

 

Jenny Sutherland runs one of these groups. Based on a series of decaying offshore oil-rigs - for safety - a few hundred people have rebuilt a semblance of normality in this otherwise dead world. But as her and her people start to explore their surroundings once again, they start to realise not every survivor has the same vision of a better future than their catastrophic past.

 

There are people out there who would take everything they have. War is coming, and the stakes are truly massive...

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 Few buildings have played so central a role in Spain's history as the monastery-palace of San Lorenzo del Escorial. Colossal in size and imposing - even forbidding - in appearance, the Escorial has invited and defied description for four centuries. Part palace, part monastery, part mausoleum, it has also served as a shrine, a school, a repository for thousands of relics, and one of the greatest libraries of its time. Constructed over the course of more than twenty years, the Escorial challenged and provoked, becoming for some a symbol of superstition and oppression, for others a 'wonder of the world'. Now a World Heritage Site, it is visited by thousands of travellers every year. In this intriguing study, Henry Kamen looks at the circumstances that brought the young Philip II to commission construction of the Escorial in 1563. He explores Philip's motivation, the influence of his travels, the meaning of the design, and its place in Spanish culture. It represents a highly engaging narrative of the high point of Spanish imperial dominance, in which contemporary preoccupations with art, religion, and power are analyzed in the context of this remarkable building.

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  A fallen star. A runaway bride. They're about to be pitted against each other by a very powerful man. Madison Miller has everything - beautiful, talented and just a little bit naive; she's the small-town girl who swept to victory on America's hottest talent show to become the nation's sweetheart. She's also head-over-heels in love with the man who's masterminded her career - the head-spinningly powerful, lethally attractive Beau Silverman. But there's trouble in paradise... Jess has bolted from her approaching wedding and a dead-end job in London to chase dreams of being a fashion designer in New York. But she's finding life in the Big Apple tough, until she meets a man who makes her an offer she can't refuse. It means a taste of a life she's never had - glamorous parties, paparazzi, haute couture - but at what price? Sweeping from the hotspots of LA to the coolest bars of New York, SPOTLIGHT cuts a gloriously fun swathe through the world of celebrity and glamour, with a page-turning story at its heart.

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A compulsive, edge-of-your-seat read from a bestselling author, combining glamour, thrills and dangerous passion

Lisa Costello is leading a charmed life – until she wakes up the morning after her glamorous Thailand wedding to find her new husband Josh dead in their bed, the murder weapon in her hand. She remembers learning at the wedding that Josh had been unfaithful, but she certainly doesn't remember killing him. As Lisa flees the scene for Europe, ex-FBI trainee Sam Murray is on her trail. Catching up with her, he's quickly convinced she's been set up, and they start to work out which of movie producer Josh's many enemies could be behind the hit. It's a race against time to unearth the truth and keep Lisa out of jail – or gunned down by the professional assassin tailing them. And the danger only adds to the excitement of the passion brewing between them...

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It's the perfect wedding: tropical sunshine, glamorous guests, a beautiful bride who came from nowhere to marry a handsome Hollywood millionaire. But the day is about to take a shocking turn.

 Lisa Costello has all the expensive clothes and exotic vacations that come with dating a rich man. But her relationship with Josh Steen is a sham. Yet nothing could have prepared Lisa for the morning after their decadent wedding in Thailand. Josh is dead – and it looks like Lisa killed him.

As Lisa escapes, ex-FBI trainee turned journalist Sam Murray is on her trail. Suspecting a set-up, both Lisa and Sam face a race against time to uncover who’s really behind the hit. With a professional assassin moving in for the kill, the clock is ticking fast…

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Inspired by true events that have horrified the nation, Soljas delves into a new form of gang warfare erupting on Britain's council estates, where guns and knives are as common as mobile phones. Dylan, Noxy and their crew 'tax' rival drug dealers using a red-hot steam iron and celebrate by making videos of themselves raping wannabe WAGS. But what happens when an innocent three-year-old girl is killed in the crossfire? Will the mayhem stop? Will the teenage murderers find redemption? Or will they be elevated to superstar status, in the media as well as the underworld? From burgeoning organised crime to warped celebrity culture, Soljas is an apocalyptic vision of a world in freefall. What or who will confront urban warfare - a militarised police, controversial anti-terror laws or private military contractors? The gripping debut novel by the bestselling author of Powder Wars is a mind-blowing tale that is all the more shocking because it is inspired by real-life events.

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 When writing his magnificent life of Robert Peel, Douglas Hurd found himself caught up again in a debate that has always fascinated him as a former diplomat and Foreign Secretary - the argument between the noisy popular liberal interventionist approach and the more conservative diplomatic approach concentrating on co-operation between other nations. The argument has run for two centuries - and is at the heart of heated discussion on both sides of the Atlantic today. Hurd concentrates on personalities and circumstances. He begins with the dramatic antagonism after Waterloo between Canning (liberal, populist, interventionist) and Castlereagh (institutions, compromise, real politics) - the last occasion on which ministerial colleagues fought a duel. A generation later comes Palmerston vs Aberdeen, from which Palmerston, the noisy interventionist, emerged the victor. A fascinating, but forgotten vignette is provided by the quarrel between Disraeli and his old friend and Foreign Secretary, Lord Derby, which led to Derby resigning as a protest against jingoism and Disraeli spreading the rumour that Lady Derby was leaking secrets to the Russian Ambassador. Salisbury and then Edward Grey wrestled with the same dilemma in the context of imperialism (Salisbury) and the European balance of power (Grey). Between the wars, another vignette describing Austen Chamberlain, the decent, monocled Foreign Secretary who began as an idealist (Locarno Treaty) and ended as a passionate opponent of appeasement. Finally Eden and Bevin, from wholly different backgrounds, combined with the Americans to create a post-war compromise, which served its purpose for half a century, but is coming apart today as the old questions resurface in new and savage forms in an era of terrorism and racial conflict.

"One of the great achievements of this thoughtful and elegant book is to emphasise the thread of continuity running through British foreign policy from the age of Napoleon to the cold war... If William Hague wants to prepare for the rigours of the Foreign Office, he should buy a copy immediately" Sunday Times. "Douglas Hurd has done the impossible. Together with his co-author, Edward Young, he has produced a page-turning book about the history of British foreign policy." Independent. "This is a fascinating book" David Owen, Guardian. "A hugely enjoyable book... Any future foreign secretary would be well advised to read this engrossing book on their first day in office." Jack Straw, Observer.

 

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It was a brutal murder, and the trial of the decade. On 1 November 2007, 21-year-old British student Meredith Kercher was slaughtered in cold blood in the apartment in Perugia, Italy, that she shared with three other girls. Two bright young people, Amanda Knox and her Italian ex-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, stood accused of the killing in a trial that lasted through 2009. They were found guilty and sentenced to twenty-six and twenty-five years respectively on 4 December. A second man, Ivory Coast-born Rudy Guede, 22, had already been found guilty of the sexual assault and murder of Meredith in a separate trial in 2008 and sentenced to thirty years, but the prosecution always stated that he didn't act alone. Kercher was a model student whilst American Knox acquired a reputation that fuelled specualtion about her character. Her bizarre behaviour just after Meredith's body was found, her false accusation of an innocent man, her weak alibi and her DNA on the murder weapon - a kitchen knife found to be scubbed with bleach - went against her. TV producer Paul Russell and critically acclaimed crime writer Graham Johnson have teamed up with leading Italian forensics expert General Luciano Garofano to reveal the full truth behind this sensational murder and its trial. They unravel all the details and study all the personalities in this case that has stunned the world. Complex, and some say controversial, DNA evidence is explained in simple language and, bit by bit, a story emerges of brutality and jealousy in a university town where all was not what it seemed. Their findings make for gripping, sensational reading.

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 Over the past half-century Frank Kermode has established himself as one of the finest literary critics of his generation. When he delivered the Clark Lectures at Cambridge in 2007, he chose as his subject E.M. Forster - eighty years after Forster gave the same series of lectures, which became his ASPECTS OF THE NOVEL. Kermode's lectures form the core of this book: he assesses the influence and meaning of all of Forster's novels as well as his criticism, reflects on his profound musicality (Britten thought Forster the most musical of all writers) and offers a fascinating interpretation of his greatest work, A PASSAGE TO INDIA. The second part of the book takes the form of a causerie, a brilliant and wide-ranging series of loosely organized, interweaving discussions in which Forster is reduced in size, placed in the wider context of his times, and occasionally scolded by Kermode for being not quite the author he would have preferred him to be. Kermode reflects not only on Forster's considerable talent but on the social and personal circumstances that restricted it, on the dizzying changes in English society in the first half of the twentieth century, and the preoccupations and uncertainties of those, like Forster, who found themselves caught between two worlds. Taking Forster as his starting point, Kermode also casts a spotlight on many of his great contemporary writers - Joseph Conrad, Henry James, Virginia Woolf, Arnold Bennett, D.H. Lawrence and H.G. Wells. The product of a lifetime's reading and thinking by one of our most distinguished critics, CONCERNING E.M. FORSTER is both a stimulating and original portrait of E.M. Forster and a unique panorama of twentieth-century English letters.

"This is a lovely book on a novelist Kermode has lived with and thought about for many decades; a readable and valuable product of what we would be wise to call Kermode’s late middle period." Telegraph

"Like all good criticism, Concerning EM Forster makes one want to read the books under discussion once more, and it ends on an appropriately affectionate note. " Sunday Times

 

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Brought up in a rural vicarage surrounded by fells, falcons and ferrets, Freddy Spencer Chapman acquired a deep love of nature and became 'fascinated by danger' during childhood. Thirty years later, as an SOE-trained guerrilla soldier of exceptional ability and courage, the orphan boy would prove to be one of the British army's deadliest agents. In 1941 Chapman was dispatched to Singapore to train British guerrillas for the coming war with Japan. Setting out from Kuala Lumpur on 7 January 1942 on a mission to sabotage Japanese supply lines, he became a veritable one-man army. The Japanese deployed 2,000 men to search for what they believed was a squad of 200 Australian guerrillas. Following Japan's invasion of Malaya and the fall of Singapore in February 1942, Chapman found himself stranded. Under these most desperate of circumstances, the man dubbed the 'the jungle Lawrence' by Field Marshal Wavell showed his bloody-minded talent for survival. Relentlessly hunted by the Japanese army, he was afflicted by typhus, scabies, pneumonia, blackwater fever, cerebral malaria, dengue fever and ulcers before finally being rescued and evacuated to Ceylon on 13 May 1945. Chapman returned to Malaya by parachute in August to take the Japanese surrender at Penang. Jungle Soldier is a unique and remarkable account of superhuman bravery and resourcefulness in adversity.

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2008: Deep in the mountain forests of Wyoming, Julian Cooke stumbles across the rotting remains of a wooden wagon. He's discovered what's left of the Preston Group, a convoy of settlers that vanished in the winter of 1856. It's clear that something horrific happened here all those years ago, but Cooke can only find a few tantalising clues.

 

1856: As early snows descend, the eclectic group of settlers that form the Preston wagon train are forced to dig in. Miles from any kind of civilisation, they see the group of Native Americans also trapped nearby as their greatest threat. But they soon realise what true danger is. When a woman is found murdered, one of the Indian party struggles wounded back to camp, whispering of unspeakable evil as he dies. United by fear, the settlers and the Indians must protect themselves against whatever is lurking in the woods. But as suspicion and panic grow, perhaps their own terror will be just as dangerous. Or maybe, whatever's out there is worse than anything they can imagine.

 

Back in the present day, as Cooke unravels the mystery, he must question if the horror he is uncovering was in fact only the start of something much worse...

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 Although Alan Clark died in 1999 his reputation lives on - a TV series (John Hurt as Alan) gave BBC4 its first million+ audience. His diaries (3 vols) sold more than half a million copies. A noted historian, he was Tory MP for Plymouth Sutton and controversial minister under Mrs Thatcher; later MP for Kensington & Chelsea. His biographer has drawn on an Aladdin's cave of papers at the Clarks' Saltwood Castle home in Kent. Ion Trewin tells an enthralling story of the life that Clark himself chose not to discuss: an unhappy childhood with neglectful parents (his art historian father Kenneth Clark, best known for his 'Civilisation' TV series). Fire destroyed his first school; he endured wartime Eton, at Oxford he read history under Hugh Trevor-Roper and drove large cars (he was known as 'Klaxon' Clark). His parents insisted he read law; passing his exams at the 3rd attempt, he never practised. His first novel - accepted on the 13th submission - was pulped because of libel, but went on to gain praise. The Donkeys, his first work of history, brought down the wrath of military historians. Clark changed course and into politics in his forties. Readers may think they know Clark's political life from his diaries, but Clark himself neglected to tell all, about Mrs T's downfall, the Matrix Churchill arms to Iraq scandal and much more. He adored women - Trewin has tracked down his first great love, a ballet dancer, and his last infatuation - and courted a schoolgirl he first met when she was 16 and he 30. This was Jane, to whom he remained married - if not faithfully - until his death from a brain tumour in 1999. The extent of his extra-marital escapades is now revealed. Here for the first time the unknown Alan Clark stands revealed.

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 Pre-eminent military historian Max Hastings presents Winston Churchill as he has never been seen before. Winston Churchill was the greatest war leader Britain ever had. In 1940, the nation rallied behind him in an extraordinary fashion. But thereafter, argues Max Hastings, there was a deep divide between what Churchill wanted from the British people and their army, and what they were capable of delivering. Himself a hero, he expected others to show themselves heroes also, and was often disappointed. It is little understood how low his popularity fell in 1942, amid an unbroken succession of battlefield defeats. Some of his closest colleagues joined a clamour for him to abandon his role directing the war machine. Hastings paints a wonderfully vivid image of the Prime Minister in triumph and tragedy. He describes the 'second Dunkirk' in 1940, when Churchill's impulsiveness threatened to lose Britain almost as many troops in north-west France as had been saved from the beaches; his wooing of the Americans, and struggles with the Russians. British wartime unity was increasingly tarnished by workers' unrest, with many strikes in mines and key industries. By looking at Churchill from the outside in, through the eyes of British soldiers, civilians and newspapers, and also those of Russians and Americans, Hastings provides new perspectives on the greatest Englishman. He condemns as folly Churchill's attempt to promote mass uprisings in occupied Europe, and details 'Unthinkable', his amazing 1945 plan for an Allied offensive against the Russians to liberate Poland. Here is an intimate and affectionate portrait of Churchill as Britain's saviour, but also an unsparing examination of the wartime nation which he led and the performance of its armed forces.

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In the current financial crisis Keynes has been taken out of his cupboard, dusted down, consulted, cited, invoked and appealed to about why events have taken the course they have and how a rescue operation can be effected. Why have we gone back so emphatically to the ideas of an economist who died fifty years ago? There are three main ideas of Keynes’s worth thinking about now. The first is that the future is unknowable, and therefore that economic storms, especially those originating in the financial system, are not random shocks which impinge on smoothly-adjusting markets, but part of the normal working of the market system. The second idea is that economies wounded by these ‘shocks’ can, if left to themselves, stay in a depressed condition for a long time. That is why governments need to have and use fiscal ammunition to prevent a slide from financial crisis to economic depression. The third concerns what he termed ‘organicism’: societies are communities not, as he put it, ‘branches of the multiplication table’. This limited his support for the pursuit of efficiency at all costs. The ideas of John Maynard Keynes have never been more timely.

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Colonel Stuart Tootal is the first senior commander to provide an account of the fighting in Afghanistan. A gritty portrayal of unforgiving conflict, Danger Close captures the essence of combat, the risks involved and the aftermath.

 

3 PARA was the first unit into Helmand in 2006. Sent on a peace mission, it became engaged in a level of combat that has not been experienced by the British Army since the end of the Korean War. Undermanned and suffering from equipment shortages, 3 PARA fought doggedly to win the break in battle.

 

Numerous gallantry decorations were awarded, but they were not without cost. On returning from Afghanistan, Tootal fought to get proper treatment for his wounded and feeling frustrated with the Government’s treatment of its soldiers, he resigned from the Army.

 

This is a dramatic, and often moving, insight into the leadership of soldiers and the sharp end of war.

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"English Journey is an important book that has a literary importance and social value that far exceeds the time it was written." Dame Beryl Bainbridge "This is a wonderful book: profound, wise, humane; a good companion indeed" Nina Bawden "Written in the elegant, simple language which was an essential part of Priestley's brilliance. It is, in consequence, a masterpiece." Roy Hattersley"

In 1934, JB Priestley published an account of his journey through England from Southampton to the Black Country, to the North East and Newcastle, to Norwich and home. In capturing and describing an English landscape and people hitherto unseen in literature of its kind, he influenced the thinking and attitudes of an entire generation and helped formulate a public consensus for change that led to the formation of the welfare state. Prophetic, profound, humorous and as relevant today as it was 75 years ago, English Journey expresses Priestley s deep love of his native country and teaches us much about the human condition and the nature of Englishness. This fully illustrated special anniversary edition of one of Priestley s most enduring and widely-read works comes with a first word from Nina Bawden, forewords by Tom Priestley and Roy Hattersley; an exploration of the book s social, political and literary legacy; and personal contributions from Margaret Drabble, Alan Plater, William Woodruff, Dame Beryl Bainbridge, Lemn Sissay and Professor John Baxendale.