Showing Books By Publisher : Sceptre

Factfulness

A Man Called Ove

The million-copy bestselling phenomenon, Fredrik Backman's heartwarming debut is a funny, moving, uplifting tale of love and community that will leave you with a spring in your step. Perfect for fans of Rachel Joyce's The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Graeme Simsion's The Rosie Project and David Nicholl's US. Soon to be a major film starring Tom Hanks New York Times bestseller 'Warm, funny, and almost unbearably moving' Daily Mail 'Rescued all those men who constantly mean to read novels but never get round to it' Spectator Books of the Year At first sight, Ove is almost certainly the grumpiest man you will ever meet. He thinks himself surrounded by idiots - neighbours who can't reverse a trailer properly, joggers, shop assistants who talk in code, and the perpetrators of the vicious coup d'etat that ousted him as Chairman of the Residents' Association. He will persist in making his daily inspection rounds of the local streets. But isn't it rare, these days, to find such old-fashioned clarity of belief and deed? Such unswerving conviction about what the world should be, and a lifelong dedication to making it just so? In the end, you will see, there is something about Ove that is quite irresistible...

A Shout In The Ruins.

Following his hugely celebrated debut novel, The Yellow Birds, Kevin Powers returns to the battlefield and its aftermath, this time in his native Virginia, just before and during the Civil War and ninety years later. The novel pinpoints with unerring emotional depth the nature of random violence, the necessity of love and compassion, and the fragility and preciousness of life. It will endure as a stunning novel about what we leave behind, what a life is worth, what is said and unsaid, and the fact that ultimately what will survive of us is love.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is a classic spy novel written in 1974 that feature’s one of the author’s beloved fictitious characters George Smiley. George is a resourceful but seldom speaking Intelligence officer, who has been forced into retirement in previous installments by the author, but has to now return to help the government because of the freshly developed dire circumstances. There is a mole amidst the highly accomplished ‘Circus’, one of the most elite units of the British secret intelligence service, and it is up to George to help the government figure out which highly trained agent is working for the Russians. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is filled with suspense and espionage and is a thrilling tale till the final page. The story is highly detailed and is revealed to the reader using a series of flashbacks. The cat and mouse game ensues right from the get go with some of the most intelligent minds trying to figure out which amongst them does not belong in the agency. This Film-tie edition was published by Sceptre Publishing in 2011 and is available in paperback. Key Features: This is the latest film tie-in edition of the classic spy novel Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.

The Next Step In The Dance

The Eternal Quest

n 17th-century Valladolid, Spain's new capital, Miguel Cervantes is busy writing his comic novel, Don Quixote. Issued in instalments, it is fast making him the most popular author in the country, when three potential disasters strike: Cervantes discovers that there is a real Don Quixote, just like the character he thought he'd invented; a jealous poet concocts a scheme involving one of the novel's other characters in order to make Cervantes a laughing stock; and he falls in love with a beautiful, widowed but unavailable Duchess. Many duels, misunderstandings, politicking and betrayals later, Don Quixote himself comes to Cervantes' rescue. A wonderful evocation of Spain in the 17th century peopled with a cast of Chaucerian characters, this is a comedy in the mediaeval sense of the word.

Touching Earth

THE BALINESE TWINS Beautiful and exotic, they exchange an island paradise for the shabby squalor of London, and innocence for corruption. THE SICILIAN- Ricky Delgado strikes a devils bargain with a blood goddess: Build my temple and bring me the souls of damaged people, and you will see what rewards I give. THE COURTESAN Elizabeth makes her living from mens desire. With a flick of the switch in her head, she feels nothing: no pain, no hate, no sorrow, no joy. THE ARTIST Anis takes to painting as an outlet for his rage. His artists eye knows his subjects before they know themselves, and he paints them all, a gallery of broken people. Can they escape the deadly web of decadence and sin?

Thirteen Moons

From one of the most acclaimed writers of our time comes THIRTEEN MOONS, a brilliant novel that is at once an exciting story of adventure, a moving story of passionate love, and a portrait of America during the nineteenth century, a time of savage violence, natural beauty, and epic change. Will Cooper's search for identity and home hegins at thte age of twelve, when he is given a horse, a key and a map, and sent to the edge of the Cherokee Nation to run a trading post as a bound boy. With a Cherokee chief named Bear and the mysterious and beautiful Claire Featherstone, Will finds the passionate connections and the complications of manhood that will forge his character and shape his life. As his fate becomes interwined with destiny of the Cherokee, Will travels to Washington City to fight against the Removal of the Indians from their land and to protect Bear's people, their culture, and way of life.In a voice filled with insight, humor and regret, Will tells of a long life's journey, from the beautiful forests and mountains of the Nation across the South and up and donw the Mississippi River, and on into the twentieth century. THIRTEEN MOONS is a novel of breathtaking power and beauty, by an American master.

Cloud Atlas

'A remarkable book, made up of six resonating strands; the narrative reaches back into the 19th century, to colonialism and savagery in the Pacific islands, and forwards into a dark future, beyond the collapse of civilisation. It knits together science fiction, political thriller and historical pastiche with musical virtuosity and linguistic exuberance: there won't be a bigger, bolder novel this year' Justine Jordan, <I>Guardian</I>.<br> 'It is an impeccable dance of genres...played out to a suite on the great themes of colonialism, power, greed, corporate culture, and the way human civilisations evolve, morph, die and survive...an elegiac, radiant festival of prescience, meditation and entertainment.' Neel Mukherjee, <I>The Times</I>.<br> 'His wildest ride yet... a singular achievement, from an author of extraordinary ambition and skill' Matt Thorne, <I>Independent on Sunday</I>.

When Red is Black

When Inspector Chen Cao agrees to do a translation job for a Triad-connected businessman he is given a laptop, a 'little secretary' to provide for his every need, medical care for his mother. There are, it seems, no strings attached .. Then a murder is reported: Chen is loath to shorten his working holiday, so Sergeant Yu is forced to take charge of the investigation. The victim, a middleaged teacher, has been found dead in her tiny room in a converted multi-family house. Only a neighbour could have committed the crime, but there is no motive. It is only when Chen returns and starts to investigate the past that he finds answers. But by then he has troubles of his own. This is the third critically-acclaimed Inspector Chen mystery set in contemporary China . The first two, Death of a Red Heroine and A Loyal Character Dancer, are also available from Sceptre.

Ghostwritten

What is real and what is not?": David Mitchell's first novel, Ghostwritten: A Novel in Nine Parts, plays with this question throughout its "parts". (That there are 10 sections is just part of the mystery of this book's schema.) Told through a range of voices, scattered across the globe--Tokyo, Hong Kong, Mongolia, Petersburg, London--Ghostwritten has been described as a "firework display, shooting off in a dozen different narrative directions" (Adam Lively).Certainly, Mitchell offers his readers a vertiginous, sometimes seductive, display of persona and place. "Twenty million people live and work in Tokyo," he writes in "Okinawa", the first section in the novel. "It's so big that nobody really knows where it stops." That sense of the global extension of the (post)modern city, the networks-- cultural, technological, phantasmagoric--to which it gives rise, is one key to this story of a Japanese death cult devoted to purging the "unclean" (gas attacks on the metro). "No, in Tokyo you have to make your place inside your head": that's how this immense world gets smaller, more subjective, more mad, as the narrator, Mr Kobayashi, sheds his "old family of the skin" to join a new "family of the spirit". It's a common theme. "I'm this person, I'm this person, I'm that person, I'm that person too," chants the voice of "Hong Kong", in the second section of the book. "No wonder it's all such a fucking mess." Neal's talking about his world, his life as a Hong Kong trader--"he's a man of departments, compartments, apartments"--but he might also be describing the experience of reading Ghostwritten. At once loquacious and knowing, leisurely and frantic, Mitchell offers his readers a huge, but fragmentary, portmanteau which builds in the links between its parts--aching bodies, reality police, the "ghost" writer in the machine of contemporary life, its mad, comic, and cosmic voices--without quite convincing you that they really do come together. -- Vicky Lebeau

The Rice Mother

Grains of rice stick to her body but time will not touch her. She is the keeper of dreams... The Tiger - Lakshmi, the fierce matriarch whose thwarted ambitions turn her cruel. Would she destroy all she sought to love? The Enchanted Twins - They stood and stared at the terrible trick fate played on them. The Princess Bride - Relentlessly wooed, callously discarded, she consoles herself with magic charms and sweet oblivion. The Great-Granddaughter - The Rice Mother's true heir, who weaves together the silken strands of the family's deeply buried secrets as it spans the twentieth century.

Crossing The Lines

Set in Britain during the 1950s, this moving and evocative novel follows the intertwined fates of people crossing boundaries in their lives. As a teenager in the small northern town of Wigton, Joe Richardson falls in love with Rachel, just when her life is about to be uprooted. While his parents, Sam and Ellen, face the frontiers of middle age, Joe finds himself drawn by the intoxicating world outside home, and swept into situations that seem beyond his control. Vividly conveying the spirit of the mid-century and the profound social changes taking place at the time, this is a masterly successor to the award-winning The Soldier's Return and A Son Of War.

The City Of Falling Angels

Taking the fire that destroyed the Fenice theatre in 1996 as his starting point, John Berendt creates a unique and unforgettable portrait of Venice and its extraordinary inhabitants. Beneath the exquisite facade of the world's most beautiful historic city, scandal, corruption and venality are rampant, and John Berendt is a master at seeking them out. Ezra Pound and his mistress, Olga; poet Mario Stefani; the Rat Man of Treviso; or Mario Moro -- self-styled carabiniere, fireman, soldier or airman, depending on the day of the week. With his background in journalism, Berendt is perfectly poised to gain access to private and unapproachable people, and persuade them to talk frankly to him. The result is mischievous, witty, compelling - and destined to be the non-fiction succes d'estime of the year.

Colour

Colour tells the remarkable story of Victoria Finlay's quest to uncover the many secrets hidden inside the paintbox. On her travels she visited remote central American villages where women still wear skirts dyed with the purple tears of sea snails; learned about George Washington's obsession with his green dining room, and investigated the mysterious production of Indian Yellow paint.

Watch Me Disappear

Tina Humber is 40 and living in the States when a moment of panic about her 10 year-old daughter triggers the memory of her childhood friend, Mandy Baker, who went missing at the same age from the sleepy Cambridgeshire village where they grew up. As Tina replays events and the past comes back to life, she begins to suspect the awful truth of what happened to Mandy. But after so many years, will anyone believe what is based on nothing more than conjecture, intuition and fragments of memory? And even if she is able to placate the ghost of Mandy Baker, there will be profound consequences for the living, including herself. Set against the backdrop of the waterlogged Fens, Jill Dawson's powerful new novel captures the mysteries of childhood, and that volatile transitional stage when girls become aware of their attractions -- but do not grasp the dangers.

Schindler's Ark

In the shadow of Auschwitz, a flamboyant German industrialist became a living legend to the Jews of Cracow. A womanizer and drinker, he risked his life to protect Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland. This novel was subsequently made into the internationally acclaimed film "Schindler's List".

Nelson's Daughter

In a farmhouse near Calais, a lonely English girl pieces together the life of the legendary Admiral Nelson - the loving godparent she learnt was in fact her father only after his death. What no one tells Horatia is that the woman she has followed into exile, Nelson`s mistress Emma Hamilton, is also her mother. In this absorbing, superbly inagined novel, an intimate light is cast on the most celebrated couple of their age. But while Nelson and Emma`s story of extraordinary success and grand passion ends in heartbreak, the tale of their secret daughter becomes one of spirited survival.

Do The Right Thing

For Shyam and Chita, the lovers in this third novel by talented young Sri Lankan writer Shyama Perera, it is love at first click; after several passionate e-mails via Inderdates, they arrange to meet at Chita's home. The reality more than matches up to expectation - Chita is beautiful, Shyam handsome, and so begins a marriage made in Heaven. Or does it? Utterly besotted with each other, the newly-weds set themselves up as models of fidelity. This is a modern novel, so Chita and Shyam both have fulfilling careers, but in the early days of their wedded bliss, there are few problems combining the demands of home and work. With a charming naivety, they believe their love will endure simply because they want it to. Chita's colleagues find her allegiance to traditional domestic values strangely at odds with her high-profile business persona, but it is not until the flamboyant Sam Raven erupts into her life that Chita realizes what a battle she has on her hands. Sam is bewitched by her and determined to woo her from Shyam, using whatever devious tricks he can devise. Chita, however, knows what is right, and is adamant she will do the right thing for the sake of her marriage and because she adores Shyam. But as the snow falls on Aspen and she finds herself trapped with Sam at the mercy of the elements, will her resolve hold fast? Perera has dexterously reworked the traditional Indian epic of Rama and Sita, with Chita and Shyam in the starring roles. The extent to which she has interwoven the original poem with her modern version is only apparent at the end, and readers cannot help but admire the deftness of her touch. This may seem to be a light romantic novel, but the underlying sense of tragedy, as Chita tries vainly to cling on to everything she holds dear, results in a work of great poignancy and charm.