Literature

Freeman's poetry debut maps the present by way of the past, drawing inspiration from childhood memories, family, and former loves.

Two and a half thousand years ago, the Greeks and the Persians fought an epic battle to decide the future of the world... Arimnestos of Plataea grew up wanting to be a bronzesmith, like his father. Then, in the chaos of war, he was taken to a city in the Persian empire and sold as a slave. To win his freedom he had to show that he could fight and kill. Now, to preserve that freedom, he must kill again. For the Persians are coming. A vast army sent by King Darius to put down the rebellious Greeks and burn the city of Athens to the ground. Standing against them on the plain of Marathon is a much smaller force of Athenians, alongside their Plataean allies. To defeat such overwhelming force seems impossible. And yet to yield would mean the destruction of everything the Greeks have dreamed of. In the dust and heat of Marathon, in the clash of shields and the rush of spears, amid the thunder of hooves and the screams of the dying, those dreams will undergo their fiercest test - and Arimnestos and his Greek comrades will discover the true price of freedom.

REYoung ‘s latest features a nation buried in snow and ice in an obligatory 365 days a year Christmas celebration, a tribe of Mayan warriors in comedy troupe disguise, an existentially challenged hero known as the Snowman on a quest that takes him south of the border down ol’ Mexico way, and a B-grade movie director named Boone Weller with his own agenda. Is it a book? A movie? Told in a shoot from the hip Texas style, Margarito and the Snowman is loose, rangy, battered with an attitude and bound to offend everybody.

Beautifully and poignantly told, Marking Time is the second novel in Elizabeth Jane Howard's bestselling Cazalet Chronicles. Home Place, Sussex, 1939. As the shadows of the Second World War roll in, banishing the sunlit days of childish games and trips to the coast, a new generation of Cazalets take up the family's story. Louise, who dreams of becoming a great actress, finds herself facing the harsh reality that her parents have their own lives with secrets, passions and yearnings. Clary, an aspiring writer, learns that her beloved father is now missing somewhere on the shores of France. And sensitive, imaginative Polly feels stuck - stuck without a vocation, stuck without information about her mother's illness, stuck without anything except her nightmares about the war. With cover artwork exclusively designed by artist Luke Edward Hall, this is the second volume of the extraordinary Cazalet Chronicles and a perfect addition to your collection. Marking Time is followed by Confusion, the third book in the series. 'Charming, poignant and quite irresistible . . . to be cherished and shared' - Times

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
SHORTLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS
AN OBAMA'S BOOK OF THE YEAR

'Gorgeous, sensual, addictive' SARA COLLINS
'Brightly lit' NAOMI ALDERMAN

Born from a long line of female warriors and crusaders, yet too coarse for courtly life, Marie de France is cast from the royal court and sent to Angleterre to take up her new duty as the prioress of an impoverished abbey.

Lauren Groff's modern masterpiece is about the establishment of a female utopia.

'A propulsive, captivating read' BRIT BENNETT
'Fascinating, beguiling, vivid' MARIAN KEYES
'A dazzlingly clever tale' THE TIMES
'A thrillingly vivid, adventurous story about women and power that will blow readers' minds. Left me gasping' EMMA DONOGHUE

An astonishingly frank and deeply autobiographical account of homosexual relationships in an era when love between men was not only stigmatised, but also illegal, E.M. Forster's Maurice is edited by P.N. Furbank with an introduction by David Leavitt in Penguin Classics. Maurice Hall is a young man who grows up confident in his privileged status and well aware of his role in society. Modest and generally conformist, he nevertheless finds himself increasingly attracted to his own sex. Through Clive, whom he encounters at Cambridge, and through Alec, the gamekeeper on Clive's country estate, Maurice gradually experiences a profound emotional and sexual awakening. A tale of passion, bravery and defiance, this intensely personal novel was completed in 1914 but remained unpublished until after Forster's death in 1970. Compellingly honest and beautifully written, it offers a powerful condemnation of the repressive attitudes of British society, and is at once a moving love story and an intimate tale of one man's erotic and political self-discovery. In his introduction, David Leavitt explores the significance of the novel in relation to Forster's own life and as a founding work of modern gay literature. This edition reproduces the Abinger text of the novel, and includes new notes, a chronology and further reading. E. M. Forster (1879-1970) was a noted English author and critic and a member of the Bloomsbury group. His first novel, Where Angels Fear To Tread appeared in 1905. The Longest Journey appeared in 1907, followed by A Room With A View (1908), based partly on the material from extended holidays in Italy with his mother. Howards End (1910) was a story that centred on an English country house and dealt with the clash between two families, one interested in art and literature, the other only in business. Maurice was revised several times during his life, and finally published posthumously in 1971. If you enjoyed Maurice, you might like Forster's A Room With a View, also available in Penguin Classics.

Beginning with the liberation of Mauthausen concentration camp by the Americans and continuing through the months that followed before the prisoners were repatriated, lakovos Kambanellis' Mauthausen tells the story of a remarkable love affair between two former prisoners. The events of the story are all true, but they read like a strange fairy-tale. The euphoria of the first days of the Liberation, the slow awakening of the inmates to the possibilities of love and normalcy, the beauty of the spring landscape in which the lovers walk hand-in-hand make the atrocities that preceded them seem inconceivable. And like the lovers who walk through the camp exorcizing its demons, we are spared no detail of the savagery perpetuated in the years of its operation. Kambanellis' account is based on the notes he made just after he was liberated. In the twenty years that passed between his experiences and the publishing of his memoir in Greek, he became a mature writer and Greece's best known playwright. Like Primo Levi's writing about his experience in Auschwitz, Kambanellis' Mauthausen is both a literary masterpiece and a testament to the extraordinary resilience of the human spirit.

One of the most powerful and enduring of Greek tragedies, Euripides' masterwork centers on the myth of Jason, leader of the Argonauts, who has won the dragon-guarded treasure of the Golden Fleece with the help of the sorceress Medea ― whom he marries and eventually abandons. Authoritative Rex Warner translation.