Craig Smith

ROME 46 BC

Dreaming of service to the great Gaius Julius Caesar, the young Tuscan knight, Quintus Dellius, secures the patronage of the youngest of his generals, the dissolute Cornelius Dolabella. Dellius distinguishes himself in Caesar’s Spanish war against Pompey, becomes a tribune of cavalry in Caesar’s army and looks forward to an assured and glittering career.

But when his hero is assassinated the Roman republic is plunged into chaos as both his heirs and enemies jostle for power. In the civil wars that follow, Dellius is soon caught up in a maelstrom of shifting allegiances and the young soldier will need to discover reserves of both tenacity and ruthlessness if he is to survive.

As he journeys from the orgiastic salons of Rome’s Palatine Hill to the Palaces of Alexandria, the rocky fortresses of Judea and the bloody field of Philippi, he manages to incur the enmity both of Egypt’s queen and Rome’s future emperor, but also to snare the affections of a beautiful and cunning young senator’s wife, Livia Drusilla.

Brian O’Connell and Norm Chung

This first attempt to catalogue the world’s craziest politicians contains 300 caricatures and profiles drawn from every corner of the globe and representing every shade of the political spectrum. The extent of their lunacy ranges from the endearingly eccentric to the pathologically insane. Here are the fanatics and revolutionaries; the xenophobes and homophobes; Islamists, Zionists and bible thumpers; the anarchists and fascists; extreme libertarians and unreconstructed Stalinists; populists, demagogues and hated despots; the idealistic and the corrupt. Here too are the heretics and non-conformists who have dared to be outspokenly different and whose biggest crime may simply be to have kicked at the traces of mainstream political conformity. Between them they’ve pronounced that wind turbines have motors in them to fool people they are working, that homosexuality inevitably destroys civilisations, that the world is little more than 4,000 years old, that the 9/11 attacks were perpetrated by George W. Bush, that virtuous women should refrain from laughter in public and that long hair saps energy from the brain.

They’ve executed their girlfriends, volunteered to be blasted by water cannon, tried to drive Darwin from the classroom, opposed cannabis legalisation while imbibing crystal meth to get them through the day, had themselves deified, been indicted for singing Nazi songs, pretended to be a cat, sobbed hysterically at press conferences and fed their opponents to packs of hungry dogs. Here they all are in their bizarre and colourful plumage in a highly irreverent volume that seems destined to provoke curiosity, controversy and debate.

Toby Frost 

The fifth exciting instalment of the cult Space Captain Smith series.

The lemming men of Yullia are rushing headlong towards the cliffs of destiny, and they intend to take the British Space Empire with them. When moral fibre clashes with lemming spirit, only one thing is certain – surrender is no longer an option. In the back-streets of Ravnavar, greatest planet of the Space Empire, revolution stirs. Someone will have to go deep undercover, take on the robot underworld and reveal what lies behind the mysterious Popular Front.

Worst of all, Major Wainscott – commando and nudist – has gone renegade in the most dangerous jungle in the galaxy. Someone will have to travel upriver, terminate Wainscott’s command and make him put some trousers on.

That someone is Isambard Smith. Once more, Smith and his crew must leap into action, civilise the galaxy and force legions of angry rodents to stop their nonsense at once. Smith is destined to topple a mighty empire. The only question is – whose empire will it be?

P.S. Duffy

‘Trust me. I know where I’m going.’

Angus MacGrath, artist, sailor and navigator, is lost―caught between a remote wife, a disapproving father and a son seeking guidance. Far from his coastal village in Nova Scotia, war rages in Europe, and among the missing is Angus’s adventurous brother-in-law whose unknown fate sets Angus on an uncharted course, with profound consequences for those he loves and those he comes to love.

Angus defies his pacifist upbringing and enlists to find his wife’s brother. Though assured a safe job as a military cartographer in London, he is assigned instead to the infantry to the blood-soaked mud of France, where his search begins. At home his young son, once wide-eyed about the war, must navigate uncertain loyalties in a village succumbing to war fever.

Separated by the ocean they once sailed together, Angus and his son search for what it takes to survive, each trying in his own way to return to the other. Every character in this exquisitely told story seeks to protect what matters most in the face of war’s upheaval.

Reviews

‘… an addition to the literary canon of World War I… Turning the final page, I wanted to go back to the beginning, if only to contemplate a writer who has such a broad and compassionate understanding of the human condition.’ Frances Itani, The Washington Post

Duffy’s vivid descriptions illuminate war’s transformative effect in fresh ways. Well nuanced characters and carefully choreographed (but still surprising) situations make this a strong debut.’ Publishers Weekly