An authorized history of the world's oldest foreign intelligence service covers MI6's alliance with the United States, its contributions to wars, and its relationship with the CIA.

Ken Follett has 90 million readers worldwide. The pillars of the earth is his bestselling book of all time. Now, eighteen years after the publication of The pillars of the earth, Ken Follett has written the most-anticipated sequel of the year--World without end. In 1989 Ken Follett astonished the literary world with The pillars of the earth, a sweeping epic novel set in twelfth-century England centered on the building of a cathedral and many of the...

In this irresistibly imagined belowstairs answer to Pride and Prejudice, the servants take center stage. Sarah, the orphaned housemaid, spends her days scrubbing the laundry, polishing the floors, and emptying the chamber pots for the Bennet household. But there is just as much romance, heartbreak, and intrigue downstairs at Longbourn as there is upstairs. When a mysterious new footman arrives, the orderly realm of the servants' hall threatens to...

Learning of a plot to attack a major peace conference in Scotland, MI5 officer Liz Carlyle follows a series of elusive clues only to realize that the threat is much greater than anticipated and has a potential to permanently destabilize the Middle East.

"The daughter of the powerful Scottish Duke of Buccleuch, Lady Margaret Montagu Douglas Scott is expected to make an advantageous marriage. Her parents have selected a suitable groom, and she tries to reconcile herself to the match. But shortly before her betrothal is announced, Margaret flees, leaving her parents to explain her sudden absence to an opulent ballroom stuffed with distinguished guests. Banished from polite society, Margaret draws strength...

What is Britishness? What allowed one small island group to rule a quarter of the world and, even today, to have the most spoken language after Chinese? What makes Americans admire the guts, traditions and loyalties of these island Anglo-Saxon and Celtic peoples? What is it that makes cynical Europeans and once-dominated Asians look to the British for opinion, literature, social norms and justice? The answers lie within the creation of British institutions,...

Wilson explores the curious set of circumstances that led to Victoria's coronation, her strange and isolated childhood, her passionate marriage to Prince Albert and his pivotal influence even after death and her widowhood and subsequent intimate friendship with her Highland servant John Brown, all set against the backdrop of a momentous epoch in Britain's history -- and the world's.

"The narrator of Assembly is a black British woman. She is preparing to attend a lavish garden party at her boyfriend's family estate, set deep in the English countryside. At the same time, she is considering the carefully assembled pieces of herself. As the minutes tick down and the future beckons, she can't escape the question: is it time to take it all apart? Assembly is a story about the stories we live within--those of race and class, safety...

Skiffle ― a “do-it-yourself” music craze with American jazz, blues, folk, and roots influences ― is a story of jazz pilgrims and blues blowers, Teddy Boys and beatnik girls, coffee-bar bohemians and refugees from the McCarthyite witch hunts. Skiffle is reason the guitar came to the forefront of music in the UK and led directly to the British Invasion of the US charts in the 1960s. Emerging from the trad-jazz clubs of the early ’50s, skiffle...