Transworld: 509 books

Life isn’t an exact science. Things can be troublesome. Like pregnant step-mothers, the ins-and-outs of French existentialism . . . having an unexceptional name. In 1988, seventeen-year-old Sue Bowl has a diary, big dreams and £4.73. What she wants most of all is to make it as a writer,...

Bao Qing was a classic example of what people in Maqiao meant when they spat out the word 'intellectual'. Coming home to his old town for the holidays was just as much trouble as not coming home, for this was a town where his old schoolmate Fatcat had every local business in his pocket. And Fatcat...

Portugal 1826 Newly returned from India, Matthew Hervey joins a party of officers sent to lend support to the Portugese regent. But the Peninsula is a place redolent with memories. For it was here as a seventeen-year-old cornet that Hervey had his first taste of military action. The French...

Matthew Hervey of the 6th Light Dragoons is urgently summoned to the Cape Colony when he learns that the Zulu warrior King Shaka is about to wage war. Soon Hervey, his old friend Eyre Somervile and their escort of dragoons and mounted rifles are riding north. When they arrive at Shaka's kraal...

Badajoz: Christmas 1826 Matthew Hervey of the 6th Light Dragoons is a prisoner of the Spanish, incarcerated in the infamous fortress of Badajoz. As he plans his escape, his thoughts return to the year 1812 when he was a cornet in Wellington's Peninsular Army. He and the Sixth had survived...

India**, 1824** Matthew Hervey and the 6th Light Dragoons are stationed in India, where conflagration looks set to flair. The usurper prince, Durjan Sal, has taken refuge in the infamous fortress of Bhurtpore.A deep ditch, which can be flooded at a moment's notice, runs round it - and...

India**, 1816** Fresh from the field of Waterloo, Matthew Hervey is dispatched on a mission of the utmost secrecy. Leaving behind his fianc�e, Lady Henrietta Lindsey, he must journey across tempestuous seas to India, an alien, exotic and beguiling land that will test his mettle to...

Julia belongs to the inner circle of Johannesburg high society. But in the New South Africa, things have changed - the days of tea on the lawn are over. Julia's husband, Douglas, is a serial adulterer and is no longer willing to pay for the small luxuries she has always enjoyed. Her daughter...

Seventeen weeks pregnant and facing a miscarriage, Savita Halappanavar and her husband Praveen walked into an Irish maternity ward in October 2012. Unwittingly, the couple also walked into that deeply controversial arena in which Ireland’s legislative position on abortion remained unresolved. A...

Ellen thought she’d always live in the remote, pretty coastal village where she grew up. After all, her husband, Harry, works on a farm where he’s guaranteed a job and home for life. But when the old landowner dies and the couple and their young children are forced from their cottage, the...

The stories and legends of the Bushmen were told to Conrad when he was twelve years old. He was on a hunting trip with his father, Jack Hartmann, a brutal but confused man who 'gave' Conrad an old Bushman to teach him the ways of the land. Bastiaan taught him not only about the beasts and plants and...

The Dari�n Gap is a place of legend. The only break in the Pan-American highway, which runs from Alaska to the tip of South America, it is an almost impregnable strip of swamp, jungle and cloud forest between the vast landmasses of North and South America. Stories of abduction and murder there are...

On the evening of 30 March, 1982, Commander David Hall, chief engineer of the British nuclear submarine HMS Conqueror received a telephone call giving him the order to 'store for war'. At first he didn't believe it. In the early hours of 2 April, Argentine forces invaded the Falkland Isles. The...

Because of its island status, the British shoreline enjoys more traditional coastal golf courses than anywhere in world. When Stephen Cartmell set himself the challenge of finding and testing eighteen of the most outstanding links courses in Britain, he decided that they had to meet a number...