Simon Prebble

A "lavishly entertaining" (Publishers Weekly) distillation of Waugh's genius—abundant evidence that one of the twentieth century's most admired and enjoyed English novelists was also a master of the short form.
Evelyn Waugh's short fiction reveals in miniaturized perfection the elements that made him the greatest satirist of the twentieth century. The stories collected here range from delightfully barbed portraits of the British...

"A work of art as rich and subtle and unnerving as anything its author has ever done" (New Yorker), The Loved One is Evelyn Waugh's cutting satire of 1940s California and the Anglo-American cultural divide.
Following the death of a friend, the poet and pets' mortician Dennis Barlow finds himself entering the artificial Hollywood paradise of the Whispering Glades Memorial Park. Within its golden gates, death, American-style,...

The Island of Dr. Moreau is an 1896 science fiction novel by H.G. Wells. It is the tale of Prendick, a British scientist, who is shipwrecked off Sumatra, then rescued and brought to an unnamed island. There he meets the evil scientist prototype, Dr. Moreau: a white-haired Old Testament type who, with the aid of a man named Montgomery, is changing animals into crazy man-beasts. Hyena-swine, Dog Man, Wolf woman - Prendick is horrified by the cruel

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Presented with an unexpected assignment, Alex Rider's greatest nemesis, Yassen Gregoravich, recalls his life and the path that led him to become an assassin while his one-time friend, Alex's uncle, became a spy.

Niall Ferguson follows the money to tell the human story behind the evolution of finance, from its origins in ancient Mesopotamia to the latest upheavals. To Christians, love of it is the root of all evil. To generals, it's the sinews of war. To revolutionaries, it's the chains of labor. But historian Ferguson shows that finance is in fact the foundation of human progress. What's more, he reveals financial history as the essential backstory behind...

When the clues in a hit-and-run investigation lead him to two families famous for producing and selling the world's best Madeira wine, Scotland Yard's Ian Rutledge is pitted against his new supervisor who, dismissing the evidence, has his own suspect.

An astonishing tip from a grateful ex-convict seems implausible--but Inspector Ian Rutledge is intrigued and brings it to his superior at Scotland Yard. Alan Barrington, who has evaded capture for ten years, is the suspect in an appalling murder during Black Ascot, the famous 1910 royal horserace honoring the late King Edward VII. His disappearance began a manhunt that consumed Britain for a decade. Now it appears that Barrington has returned to England,...

"As Banks and his team follow what few clues they have, desperate to find the missing boy, who holds the key to the puzzle, they find themselves branching out in different directions. As the end game becomes a race against time, even Banks's team isn't safe from the rage of the hunted animal."-- Provided by publisher.

Troubled Scotland Yard inspector Ian Rutledge wrestles with a startling and dangerous case that reaches far into the past when a false confession from a man who is not who he claims to be leads to a brutal murder.

While investigating the suspicious arrest of four young women on the north coast of Cornwall, Ian Rutledge must balance the outrage of the accused with the grief of the victim's family.