What a first novel! I love a refreshingly new voice, a humorous and observant writing style, an action-packed thriller, and a strong feminist message. I couldn’t put it down. Mother, assassin, wife – she excels at them all. Back to work after maternity leave, Lex Tyler is naturally anxious as a mum in her first days and first mission back in the ‘office’, But she is smoothly capable as a covert operative for the assassination department of Her Majesty’s Secret Service. She closes in on her target, exposes a traitor inside the most secret ‘Section 8’ she works for, and still gets home for her daughter. Such a funny and gripping juxtaposition of her different roles. Role model for a young girl to do anything and everything she wants or what?
'Will keep you gripped . . . and rooting for a rather wonderful heroine' Sunday Mirror
'James Bond should retire now . . . puts the sass in assassin as it's never been done before' L. S. Hilton
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'Adroitly combines social and parenting comedy with detail-rich derring-do' Sunday Times
Lex Tyler is a covert operative for Platform Eight, the assassination department of Her Majesty's Secret Service, and one of the very few women to successfully negotiate the old boy's network of the espionage world. Like her colleagues, she's smart, resourceful and very deadly - but unlike…
What a twenty-fifth novel! For me, a historical story that tells me something new while plunging me into love and loss, chaos and destruction, heroism and friendship is a truly memorable feast of a read. The Vietnam War spanned my teenage years, with a big impact on how I thought about the world. Frankie McGrath joined the American Army Nurse Corps in 1965 on impulse. She witnessed the overwhelming horror and tragedy of Vietnam, the senseless death and mutilation of young men in an insect-infested tropical jungle. And she forged the fiercest female friendships amidst that inferno. But ‘no women served in Vietnam’ was the official mantra, and PTSD was not yet recognised as such. Theirs was an ignominious return to a changed America and a new battle for survival. Surprisingly, perhaps, this was my first of Kristin Hannah’s global best sellers but I have already sought out more.
From master storyteller Kristin Hannah, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Nightingale and The Four Winds, comes the story of a turbulent, transformative era in America: the 1960s. The Women is that rarest of novels—at once an intimate portrait of a woman coming of age in a dangerous time and an epic tale of a nation divided by war and broken by politics, of a generation both fueled by dreams and lost on the battlefield.
“Women can be heroes, too.”
When twenty-year-old nursing student Frances “Frankie” McGrath hears these unexpected…
By far, this is my non-fiction book of the year. Intelligent, informative and cogently argued by an expert in global public health. I love to read about the long sweep of human history and muse on how, why and when the great revolutionary changes occurred. Paleolithic migrations and the ultimate dominance of Homo sapiens, from nomadic foragers to settled farmers, village to city-life, the rise and fall of empires, kick-starting the age of enlightenment and industrial revolution, from feudalism to capitalism… and much more. Kennedy argues that plague and pestilence have been responsible for such momentous transformations. The world is dominated by bacteria and viruses – both good and bad. For me, the greatest global crisis of today is the plague of poverty, for “pathogens thrive on inequality and injustice.” I believe our collective human ingenuity should be directed, first and foremost, to gaining the upper hand in the fight against poverty.
A “gripping” (The Washington Post) account of how the major transformations in history—from the rise of Homo sapiens to the birth of capitalism—have been shaped not by humans but by germs
“Superbly written . . . Kennedy seamlessly weaves together scientific and historical research, and his confident authorial voice is sure to please readers of Yuval Noah Harari or Rutger Bregman.”—The Times (U.K.)
According to the accepted narrative of progress, humans have thrived thanks to their brains and brawn, collectively bending the arc of history. But in this revelatory book, Professor Jonathan Kennedy argues that the myth of human exceptionalism…
This is a groundbreaking reference work and beautifully illustrated coffee-table book. The stunning photographs, artwork and maps combine with an accessible and authoritative text by internationally acclaimed oceanographer and geologist, Dorrik Stow. There is a wealth of absorbing information and incredible facts on all aspects of the oceans, from their origins over four billion years ago to the hidden riches and environmental fragility they present today. Few other books range across so many topics with such fluidity and command – the formation and destruction of ocean crust, patterns and cycles on the seafloor, rogue waves and internal tides, silent currents and hidden waterfalls, as well as the astonishing diversity and lifestyles of complex marine communities. This is an invaluable and delightful guide to Earth’s final frontier.
