The exploits of Jack O'Reilly, a 17-year-old New England boy struggling toward manhood, whose sea adventures over three years take him to Cuba, around Cape Horn, to the South Sea islands, the Philippines, around the Cape of Good Hope, and finally back to Cuba and the Americas.

For fans of David Mitchell and The Children's Book, or of the blockbusting biographies of great writers, or just anyone who loves books and wants an intelligent, utterly compelling, brilliant read, The Secret Life of William Shakespeare brings the past unforgettably to life

From the double Man Booker prize-winner comes an extraordinary work of historical imagination - this is Hilary Mantel's epic novel of the French Revolution.

An outstanding verse novel, which recreates the dramatic story of Christopher Marlowe's life and shows how he could have written the works attributed to Shakespeare - a provocative, persuasive and enthralling tour de force.

<p>"I wish I could tell everyone who thinks we're ruined, Look closer...and you'll see something extraordinary, mystifying, something real and true. We have never been what we seemed."<p><br>When beautiful, reckless Southern belle Zelda Sayre meets F. Scott Fitzgerald at a country club dance in 1918, she is seventeen years old and he is a young army lieutenant stationed in Alabama. Before long,...(view full description)