Recommendations based on "The Paris Library: the bestselling novel of courage and betrayal in Occupied Paris"

Based on her personal archive of over 35,000 pages of documents - including letters, diaries, billets doux and suicide notes - as well as extensive interviews with friends and colleagues, this biography of Marilyn Monroe rejects many myths about her dramatic childhood, her marriages, and her relationships with Hollywood moguls, politicians, poets, artists and statesmen. It also offers evidence of the truth behind her death.

Her words have become some of the most important in modern history: discover the incredible life story of Anne Frank, whose bravery has inspired so many.Her incredible story comes to life in this beautifully illustrated book, with narrative biography, timelines, facts and quotes.

Mary Seacole is now known for her medical work in the Crimean war, and as a brilliant woman who combated the racial prejudice she experienced in her lifetime. But for a long time her story was lost.From growing up in Kingston, Jamaica as the daughter of a doctress to helping soldiers in the war, discover the details of the amazing life that Mary Seacole led in this beautifully illustrated book with real-life stories, timelines and facts.

Killing Thatcher is the gripping account of how the IRA came astonishingly close to killing Margaret Thatcher and to wiping out the British Cabinet – an extraordinary assassination attempt linked to the Northern Ireland Troubles and the most daring conspiracy against the Crown since the Gunpowder Plot.In this fascinating and compelling book, veteran journalist Rory Carroll retraces the road to the infamous Brighton bombing in 1984 – an incident that shaped the political landscape in the UK for decades to come. He begins with the infamous execution of Lord Mountbatten in 1979 – for which the IRA took full responsibility – before tracing the rise of Margaret Thatcher, her response to the ‘Troubles’ in Ireland and the chain of events that culminated in the hunger strikes of 1981 and the death of 10 republican prisoners, including Bobby Sands. From that moment on Thatcher became an enemy of the IRA – and the organisation swore revenge.Opening with a brilliantly-paced prologue that introduces bomber Patrick Magee in the build up to the incident, Carroll sets out to deftly explore the intrigue before and after the assassination attempt – with the story spanning three continents, from pubs and palaces, safe houses and interrogation rooms, hotels and barracks. On one side, an elite IRA team aided by a renegade priest, US-raised funds and Libya’s Qaddafi and on the other, intelligence officers, police detectives, informers and bomb disposal officers. An exciting narrative that blends true crime with political history, this is the first major book to investigate the Brighton attack.

"A touching three-dimensional portrait of the Polish-born scientist and two-time Nobel Prize winner" (Kirkus) Madame Curie, the discoverer of radium and radioactivityOne hundred years ago, Marie Curie discovered radioactivity, for which she won the Nobel Prize in physics. In 1911 she won an unprecedented second Nobel Prize, this time in chemistry, for isolating new radioactive elements. Despite these achievements, or perhaps because of her fame, she has remained a saintly, unapproachable genius. From family documents and a private journal only recently made available, Susan Quinn at last tells the full human story. From the stubborn sixteen-year-old studying science at night while working as a governess, to her romance and scientific partnership with Pierre Curie-an extraordinary marriage of equals-we feel her defeats as well as her successes: her rejection by the French Academy, her unbearable grief at Pierre's untimely and gruesome death, and her retreat into a love affair with a married fellow scientist, causing a scandal which almost cost her the second Nobel Prize. In Susan Quinn's fully dimensional portrait, we come at last to know this complicated, passionate, brilliant woman.

A highly anticipated biography of the enigmatic and popular Swedish painter.   The Swedish painter Hilma af Klint (1862–1944) was forty-four years old when she broke with the academic tradition in which she had been trained to produce a body of radical, abstract works the likes of which had never been seen before. Today, it is widely accepted that af Klint was one of the earliest abstract academic painters in Europe.    But this is only part of her story. Not only was she a working female artist, she was also an avowed clairvoyant and mystic. Like many of the artists at the turn of the twentieth century who developed some version of abstract painting, af Klint studied Theosophy, which holds that science, art, and religion are all reflections of an underlying life-form that can be harnessed through meditation, study, and experimentation. Well before Kandinsky, Mondrian, and Malevich declared themselves the inventors of abstraction, af Klint was working in a nonrepresentational mode, producing a powerful visual language that continues to speak to audiences today. The exhibition of her work in 2018 at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City attracted more than 600,000 visitors, making it the most-attended show in the history of the institution.   Despite her enormous popularity, there has not yet been a biography of af Klint—until now. Inspired by her first encounter with the artist’s work in 2008, Julia Voss set out to learn Swedish and research af Klint’s life—not only who the artist was but what drove and inspired her. The result is a fascinating biography of an artist who is as great as she is enigmatic.

The complex moral ambiguities of seduction and revenge make Les Liaisons dangereuses (1782) one of the most scandalous and controversial novels in European literature. Its prime movers, the Vicomte de Valmont and the Marquise de Merteuil--gifted, wealthy, and bored--form an unholy alliance and turn seduction into a game. And they play this game with such wit and style that it is impossible not to admire them, until they discover mysterious rules that they cannot understand. In the ensuing battle there can be no winners, and the innocent suffer with the guilty.This new translation gives Laclos a modern voice, and readers will be able to judge whether the novel is as "diabolical" and "infamous" as its critics have claimed, or whether it has much to tell us about a world we still inhabit.

A Sunday Times History Book of the Year 2023 A Spectator Book of the Year 2023 The Irish Times No.1 Bestseller As taut as a fictional thriller Mail on Sunday Gripping, detailed and richly layered Guardian KILLING THATCHER is the gripping account of how the IRA came astonishingly close to killing Margaret Thatcher and to wiping out the British Cabinet - an extraordinary assassination attempt linked to the Northern Ireland Troubles and the most daring conspiracy against the Crown since the Gunpowder Plot. In this fascinating and compelling book, veteran journalist Rory Carroll retraces the road to the infamous Brighton bombing in 1984 - an incident that shaped the political landscape in the UK for decades to come. He begins with the infamous execution of Lord Mountbatten in 1979 - for which the IRA took full responsibility - before tracing the rise of Margaret Thatcher, her response to the Troubles in Ireland and the chain of events that culminated in the hunger strikes of 1981 and the death of 10 republican prisoners, including Bobby Sands. From that moment on Thatcher became an enemy of the IRA - and the organisation swore revenge. Opening with a brilliantly-paced prologue that introduces bomber Patrick Magee in the build up to the incident, Carroll sets out to deftly explore the intrigue before and after the assassination attempt - with the story spanning three continents, from pubs and palaces, safe houses and interrogation rooms, hotels and barracks. On one side, an elite IRA team aided by a renegade priest, US-raised funds and Libyas Qaddafi and on the other, intelligence officers, police detectives, informers and bomb disposal officers. An exciting narrative that blends true crime with political history, this is the first major book to investigate the Brighton attack.

"A captivating Cold War page-turner." — Real SimpleThe New York Times bestselling author of The Summer Wives returns with a gripping and profoundly human story of Cold War espionage and family devotion.In the autumn of 1948, Iris Digby vanishes from her London home with her American diplomat husband and their two children. The world is shocked by the family’s sensational disappearance. Were they eliminated by the Soviet intelligence service? Or have the Digbys defected to Moscow with a trove of the West’s most vital secrets?Four years later, Ruth Macallister receives a postcard from the twin sister she hasn’t seen since their catastrophic parting in Rome in the summer of 1940, as war engulfed the continent and Iris fell desperately in love with an enigmatic United States Embassy official named Sasha Digby. Within days, Ruth is on her way to Moscow, posing as the wife of counterintelligence agent Sumner Fox in a precarious plot to extract the Digbys from behind the Iron Curtain.But the complex truth behind Iris’s marriage defies Ruth’s understanding, and as the sisters race toward safety, a dogged Soviet KGB officer forces them to make a heartbreaking choice between two irreconcilable loyalties.

The landmark novel that inspired Verdi’s opera La Traviata, in a sparkling new translation"One of the greatest love stories of all time," according to Henry James, and the inspiration for Verdi’s opera La Traviata, the Oscar-winning musical Moulin Rouge!, and numerous ballets, stage plays (starring Lillian Gish, Eleonora Duse, Tallulah Bankhead, and Sarah Bernhardt, and films (starring Greta Garbo, Robert Taylor, Rudolph Valentino, Isabelle Huppert, and Colin Firth), The Lady of the Camellias itself was inspired by the real-life nineteeth-century courtesan Marie Duplessis, the lover of the novel’s author, Alexander Dumas fils.Known to all as “the Lady of the Camellias” because she is never seen without her favorite flowers, Marguerite Gautier, the most beautiful, brazen, and expensive courtesan in all of Paris. But despite having many lovers, she has never really loved—until she meets Armand Duval, young, handsome, and hopelessly in love with her.“Marguerite and Armand are the kind of bright, self-destructive young things we still read about in magazines, watch on-screen, or brush up against today.”—Liesl Schillinger, from the Note on the TranslationFor more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.