The tragic murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl is well known. Why he was in Karachi; how he saw his role as an international journalist: why he was singled out for kidnapping; and where the incredible search effort led - are the subject of Mariane Pearl's book. A journalist in her own right, Mariane is, as was her husband, profoundly committed to the idea that a more informed public makes for a better world, and to the idea that risks are taken to uncover a story. A superb writer, she presents a truly illuminating tale - including her own crucial role in the investigative team, where she was responsible for negotiating unprecedented cooperation between the FBI and Pakistani intelligence and able to forge alliances with an array of people, from the Karachi chief of police to George Bush. A Mighty Heart is an extraordinary book - a fitting tribute to a dedicated reporter and a profound and heartbreaking love story.

A Mighty Heart : The Daniel Pearl Story

MARIANE PEARL

Virago Hardbacks

From the cooking methods of Ulysses to Victorian nursery fare, from Biblical food facts to modern food fads, Alice Thomas Ellis takes delight in all things gastronomical, and generously seasons her gallimaufry with anecdote and wit. Fish, Flesh and Good Red Herring is a delectable culinary history catering to all tastes - as well as revealing some unusual ones: we learn that Charles Darwin proclaimed roast armadillo 'a most excellent dish'; that Elvis Presley adored cooked squirrel; and that British infants once devoured sugared mice - real ones! Garnished throughout with extracts from famous food writers including Brilliat-Savarin, Mrs Beeton, and Elizabeth Craig, there are recipes to relish and historical titbits to savour: we are taken from the sumptuous eighteenth-century banquet to the gossipy literary lunch, from the misery of rationing to the gluttony of the Roman feast. And cooking practices of some of the most celebrated chefs are shared with us -- as well as the grisly fates of those not so highly favoured: King Henry VIII boiled two of his cooks, whereas Ivan the Terrible preferred his fried.

Fish, Flesh and Good Red Herring : A Gallimaufry

Alice Thomas Ellis

On September 11th 2001, Carmen Bin Laden heard the news on the radio that the Twin Towers had been struck. She instinctively knew that her brother-in-law was involved in these horrifying acts of terrorism, and her heart went out to America. She also knew that her life and the lives of her family would never be the same again. In 1974 Carmen, half Swiss and half Persian, married into the Bin Laden family and found herself inside a complex and vast clan, part of a society that she neither knew nor understood. Determined to protect her daughters from the inevitable restrictions within a society riddled with hypocrisy and contradiction, in 1985 Carmen moved back to her home country, Switzerland. Carmen's story takes us inside one of the most powerful, secretive and repressive kingdoms in the world and the Bin Laden family's role within it, and she is one of the few women to have acquired, through her husband, intimate knowledge of the inner workings of this society.

Veiled Kingdom

Travel

Carmen Bin Ladin

Travel Writing

Mende Nazer had an idyllic early childhood with her loving family in a small village in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan, until she was brutally kidnapped by the Mujahidin. She was kept as a domestic slave by a woman in Khartoum without any pay or a single day off. Mende endured this harsh and lonely existence without knowing whether her family was alive or dead, for seven long years. In the spring of 2000 Mende was passed on by her master, like a parcel, to a relative in London. Eventually she managed to make contact with other Nuba exiles who, with British journalist and filmmaker Damien Lewis, helped her escape to freedom. In 2002 she was awarded the Human Rights Award by CECRA, the Spanish Coalition Against Slavery for her work in making slavery a public issue.

Slave

Mende Nazer

Two people meet in a crowded London theatre one night in 1785. They quickly become lovers - and slowly discover that neither is what he/she at first appeared to be. As a spy for the Venetian state, Mimosina trades in dangerous secrets, and Valentine Greatrakes, the mastermind behind London's quacks, in elaborate lies. As Valentine pursues the murderer of his right-hand man, he gets closer to the truth of his lover's background - and both are forced to admit the similarities between the different kinds of contraband they trade in.

The Remedy

Literature & Fiction

MICHELLE LOVRIC

British & Irish

Dawn Chorus

JOAN WYNDHAM

During the Soviet era, millions of Soviets - Socialist Revolutionaries, peasants, ordinary citizens, Bolshevik party activists and university students - were denounced, arrested, and imprisoned on fabricated charges of conducting 'anti-state' activities. Till My Tale Is Told recounts the testimonies of women whose family lives and careers were brutally disrupted by the nightmare of false accusation, torture, humiliation, hunger, and unspeakable deprivation. The women in this book were fortunate: unlike several million others, they survived. Published in Moscow in 1989, the narratives collected in this volume were written illegally and for many years hidden away from public view. Although in 1956 political prisoners began to be officially rehabilitated and declared innocent, their writings were repressed as 'slandering the Soviet system'. Although most of the authors were arrested in the Great Purges of the 1930s, the selections span the entire history of the Gulag Archipelago from the 1920s to the late 1940s, adding another sixteen distinctive voices to the accounts published in the west by Yevgenia Ginsburg and Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

Till My Tale Is Told : Women's Memoirs of the Gulag

History

Simeon Vilensky

Europe

Fashion model, UN ambassador and courageous spirit, Waris Dirie is a remarkable woman, born into a traditional family of tribal desert nomads in Somalia. She told her story - enduring, at five years old, the ancient and savage custom of female circumcision; running away at twelve on foot through the desert in order to escape an arranged marriage; being discovered by Terence Donovan as she worked as a cleaner in London; and becoming a top fashion model - in her book, the worldwide bestseller, Desert Flower. Although Waris Dirie fled her homeland, she never forgot the country and culture that moulded her. The very world that nearly destroyed her also gave her the tools to survive. She traces the roots of her courage, resilience and humour back to her motherland, and most particularly to her mother. Desert Dawn is the story of that return. Desert Dawn is about coming home.

Desert Dawn

Politics & Social Sciences

Waris, Dirie

Anthropology

Zora Neale Hurston, one of the most influential  African-American writers of the twentieth century, was a woman of  enormous talent, remarkable drive and intellectual prowess.  She  published four novels, including her most famous, Their Eyes Were  Watching God, two books of folklore, an autobiography, short stories  and plays. Yet though she enjoyed some popularity during her lifetime,  her greatest acclaim came posthumously. Nearly every black woman  writer of significance - including Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison and  Alice Walker - acknowledges Zora Neale Hurston as their literary  foremother.  Wrapped in Rainbows is a compelling profile of this intrepid and  inspiring woman. Valerie Boyd presents a full picture of the writer  and the woman.

Wrapped in Rainbows : A Biography of Zora Neale Hurston

Biographies & Memoirs

Valerie Boyd

Arts & Literature

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