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Aware of the dangers of working at sea, James Pfeiffer's parents want desperately to keep their son on shore. But James finds a job on a scallop trawler andis drawn to sea.

A war novel of breathtaking power, this finalist for the Booker Prize presents "an astonishing triumph of the imagination" ("The New Yorker"). In the summer of 1944, fifteen-year-old Sebastian Westland joins the SS, knowing that he and his cohorts will probably be destroyed in the last stages of a war they neither welcome nor comprehend. At the Battle of the Bulge, this army of boys makes its last stand--and Sebastian is transfigured by his fear.

Businessman Noah Mackenzie has a bitter history with the Algonquin forest, and how he's trying to clear-cut the part he considers his own. Using her small newspaper, Madeleine Cody tries to stop the excessive logging in a peaceful manner. But when a newcomer proposes a radical--and dangerous--form of protest, Madeleine is frustrated enough to try it. Optioned for film by Paramount.

In this enthralling and sometimes harrowing memoir, the acclaimed author of The Promise of Light gives us a masterly companion to such classics as Brideshead Revisited and A Separate Peace. At the age of seven, Paul Watkins was roughly transplanted from his home in Rhode Island to England's Dragon School. He was greeted by a delegation of bullies who, in time, would become his friends and whose rules would become his own. For at Dragon, and later at Eton, "there was no middle ground. You could not go here and come out not caring one way or the other. You had to stand before your God and commit." Here are the masters who paddle boys for small infractions and then offer them sweets; the seniors who pamper pretty favorites and subject all others to humiliating servitude; the deep friendships and sudden, devastating betrayals. Above all, here is the exhilaration of a boy discovering own capacities for learning and creativity, in a book that conveys with astonishing insight the pangs of growing up.

‘See America by Greyhound’ was Paul Watkins’ magic ticket to 35 US States. In the company of his four-legged friend, the spirit of the Founding Fathers urged him on through famous cities and landscapes and memorable encounters including the Alamo and Hollywood visions of Daniel Boone, Washington’s gay revolution and a stand-off with a jungle cat in a blacked-out New York apartment.

An exciting new novel, by the author of The Story of My Disappearance and Archangel. At the turn of World War II, David Halifax is a young American painter who receives a scholarship to come to Paris and work under the tutelage of the mysterious and brilliant Russian painter, Alexander Pankratov. Getting more than he bargained for, Halifax is quickly subjected to Pankratov's rigid will, and beguiled by the quiet, nude model who poses before them. But Paris is also a city that is holding its breath. The Nazi forces are slowly penetrating the Maginot Line, and the once-indominitable city is now expecting the worst. Beneath Paris' blanket of fear and eerie calm, David Halifax realizes the true purpose of his visit: Pankratov is to train him in duplicating the masterworks of the Paris museums, and with the aid of a wily art dealer, barter the fakes to Hilter's legion of art dealers. What develops is a cat and mouse game through Paris' silent streets, in the tunnels beneath its museums, and eventually into the scorched countryside of Normandy. In David and Pankratov's frantic race to complete the uncompletable, both are forced to confront the terrible sacrifices one must finally make for art; a sacrifice of identity, and perhaps of the soul. In The Forger by Paul Watkins.

A biography of the twentieth-century British Royal Navy officer and Victoria Cross recipient, who fought below, above, and on the waves. Of all the acts of gallantry in World War II few were as audacious as the attack by midget submarines on the pride of the German fleet, the battleship Tirpitz, lying in her heavily fortified lair deep in a Norwegian fjord. Lieutenant Godfrey Place was in command of submarine X7 in September 1943 and travelled over 1,000 miles, negotiating minefields and anti-submarine nets to place four tons of high explosive accurately under the hull of the Tirpitz. For this he was awarded the Victoria Cross in 1944, at the age of twenty-two. Taken prisoner he was repatriated to England at the end of the war, and continued to serve in the Royal Navy for twenty-five years, flying with 801 squadron in the Korean War, and serving on aircraft carriers at Suez, Nigeria and the withdrawal from Aden. On his retirement in 1970 he had the distinction of being the last serving naval officer to hold the Victoria Cross. This overdue biography details Godfrey Place VC’s eventful life, from a childhood spent partly in East Africa to being the hugely respected Chairman of the Victoria Cross and George Cross Association for over twenty years. Thanks to the author’s extensive access to previously unpublished material, including Place’s own recollections of the attack, there is unlikely to be a better or more thrilling account of the attack on the Tirpitz.

Although haunted by his wartime experiences, William Bromley relishes his quiet life as a boarding school's history teacher, but when a soldier from his regiment reappears, he is forced to confront his fears and memories by returning to northern Italy.

In Rhode Island, a Soviet spy ferrying agents from submarines takes over the operation when his commanding officer dies. He also takes over the officer's wife and when the USSR disintegrates they remain in the U.S. illegally, but the past catches up.

A gripping, acclaimed action-packed Viking epic. Set in the 10th century, when Viking raids were at their peak, Paul Watkins spins a tale that covers three continents. After centuries of ranging unchecked across the northern world, the fortunes of the Vikings have begun to turn. In this time of violent change, a young man, struck by lightning, is believed to be marked by the gods as a keeper of the Norse religion's greatest secret. To save the Norse faith and himself, he embarks upon a journey that takes him far beyond the boundaries of the known world, where he must confront not only his own gods but the gods of a people yet more savage. 'Few contemporary novelists have the ability to grab readers by the throat with such intense story-telling power and not release them until the final page has been turned.' Sunday Times