Sunday lunchtime kick-offs. Absurd ticket prices. Non-black boots. Football's menu of ills is long. Where has the joy gone? Why do we bother? Saturday, 3pm offers a glorious antidote. It is here to remind you that football can still sing to your heart.Warm, heartfelt and witty, here are fifty short essays of prose poetry dedicated to what is good in the game. These are not wallowing nostalgia; they are things that remain sweet and right: seeing a ground from the train, brackets on vidiprinters, ball hitting bar, Jimmy Armfield's voice, listening to the results in a traffic jam, football towns and autograph-hunters. This is fan culture at its finest, words to transport you somewhere else and identify with, words to hide away in a pub and luxuriate in.Saturday, 3pm is a book of love letters to football and a clarion call, helping us find the romance in the game all over again.

    The aircraft is reported to have crashed into the English Channel. There are no survivors and no bodies are recovered. Records of the incident mysteriously go missing. The Susan Rae and its crew vanish, committed to the dustbin of history.On the day the Susan Rae disappears, the English village of Lower Friththingden is the scene of several remarkable events. Two Rolls-Royces are seen parked near the village church. The entourage has paused to listen to the sound of the village children’s choir. Overhead a German parachute mine floats down, heading directly toward the church. Inside are most of the village inhabitants, including a young girl rumored to be the illegitimate child of Winston Churchill.More than a half-century later two men, an embittered American and a reclusive Englishman, have their lives altered as a consequence of the disappearance of the Susan Rae. Vince Collesano, ill, depressed, and alone, travels to England to satisfy his wife’s final request. Seconds before her death she had pointed to a painting of an English churchyard and asked to have her ashes buried there – in the country where she had been born and raised.Unfortunately, Vince has no idea as to just where in England that particular churchyard is located. The promise cannot be kept without the help of his late wife’s cousin, Albert “Bertie” Ambrose, a sad little man who hasn’t ventured outside of London for more than thirty years.Despite Vince’s intense dislike of Bertie, and all things English, the pair team up for what Vince believes to be a search for his wife’s final resting place. Given an ample supply of Marmite, they just may succeed.

    In his fourth novel, The Unburied, Palliser turns to the late Victorian era to give us an equally authoritative reconstruction of the past and a tightly compressed narrative filled with treachery, drama, and interconnected mysteries.The novel opens with a brief preface in which Philip Barthram, editor of the manuscript we're about to read, travels to Geneva for an enigmatic encounter with an old, dying woman. At the end of this encounter -- which makes numerous references to events and people we know nothing about -- the narrative shifts abruptly, taking us into "The Courtine Account," a memoir written by Cambridge historian Edward Courtine. The memoir recounts Courtine's 1881 visit to the cathedral town of Thurchester, site of the mysteries that will gradually dominate the novel.Ostensibly, Courtine has come to Thurchester to visit his former college roommate, Austin Fickling. Courtine and Austin parted bitterly 20 years before and hope to effect a belated reconciliation. Courtine also hopes to unearth a manuscript -- rumored to reside in the Thurchester library -- that will shed new light on his academic specialty, the reign of King Alfred, medieval ruler of Wessex. As he attempts to follow both his personal and professional agendas, Edward finds himself embroiled in a pair of unresolved mysteries. One concerns the 200-year-old murders of William Burgoyne and Launcelot Freeth, whose violent deaths continue to generate controversy and speculation. The other concerns the brutal killing of a local banker, a killing that takes place -- or appears to take place -- just minutes after Courtine and Austin have visited the banker's home. As the novel progresses, the details of the two crimes echo each other with an eerie frequency. With unobtrusive skill, Palliser leads us through a cumulatively fascinating labyrinth composed of fact, rumor, legend, and supposition. Within this labyrinth, objective "truth" proves to be an illusive, perhaps unattainable goal. But Courtine, a historian who believes in the power of the imagination, continues to pursue that goal. In the course of his pursuit, which is never wholly successful, he finds himself forced to reassess the central elements of his life: his embattled relationship with Austin Fickling, the painful failure of his marriage, two decades before, and the unperceived weaknesses of his own character.Admirers of Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, John Fowles, and Umberto Eco should take this novel to their hearts. The Unburied is exciting, audacious, mysterious, moving, and intellectually challenging, all at once. Like The Quincunx, it speaks clearly and directly to the modern sensibility and leaves a lingering aftertaste behind.--Bill SheehanBill Sheehan reviews horror, suspense, and science fiction for Cemetery Dance, The New York Review of Science Fiction, and other publications. His book-length critical study of the fiction of Peter Straub, At the Foot of the Story Tree, has recently been published by Subterranean Press (www.subterraneanpress.com).

    A story of betrayal and treachery, of death and delusion, of ruthless obsession and ambition.The atmosphere of Bleak House, the sensuous thrill of Perfume, and the mystery of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell all combine in a story of murder, deceit, love, and revenge in Victorian England."After killing the red-haired man, I took myself off to Quinn's for an oyster supper."So begins the extraordinary story of Edward Glyver--booklover, scholar, and murderer. As a young boy, Glyver always believed he was destined for greatness. A chance discovery convinces him that he was right: greatness does await him, along with immense wealth and influence. Overwhelmed by his discovery, he will stop at nothing to win back a prize that he knows is rightfully his.Glyver's path to reclaim his prize leads him from the depths of Victorian London, with its foggy streets, brothels, and opium dens, to Evenwood, one of England's most beautiful and enchanting country houses, and finally to a consuming love for the beautiful but enigmatic Emily Carteret. His is a story of betrayal and treachery, of death and delusion, of ruthless obsession and ambition. And at every turn, driving Glyver irresistibly onward, is his deadly rival: the poet-criminal Phoebus Rainsford Daunt.The Meaning of Night is an enthralling novel that will captivate readers right up to its final thrilling revelation.

    But with family to care for, circumstances have driven her to pickpocketing. In Celia’s harsh world, it’s a small step from picking pockets to prostitution. When a young man offers her a fortune to spend a week with him, she takes the money and runs. But Celia’s conscious can’t allow her to forget the money she stole, and she is soon brought face-to-face with her past . . .

    A Lincolnshire village on a glorious summer's morning in 1940, the countryside as still as a painting. In the blue sky above, the fate of the whole war will soon rest with the RAF and their desperate effort to win the Battle of Britain. If they fail, Hitler's next step will be invasion. And as the scene comes to life before us over the next six months, this shadow of war will not disappear - the conflict will take husbands and sons away, bring in evacuees from the city and soldiers to defend the coast. There will be more money from war work, but less to spend it on - legitimately at least. Everywhere, the feeling of change is in the air. From the pub to the church, the humblest cottage to the biggest farm, from a struggling single mother to the lady of the manor, the paper boy to a traumatised bomb disposal volunteer, this superb jewel of a novel portrays a community of people and weaves together their stories with passion, betrayal, intrigue and suspense.

    Tragic, virginal, sweet, stoic, selfless, Anne. The less talented Brontë, the other Brontë.Or that's what Samantha Ellis, a life-long Emily and Wuthering Heights devotee, had always thought. Until, that is, she started questioning that devotion and, in looking more closely at Emily and Charlotte, found herself confronted by Anne instead.Take Courage is Samantha's personal, poignant and surprising journey into the life and work of a woman sidelined by history. A brave, strongly feminist writer well ahead of her time -- and her more celebrated siblings -- and who has much to teach us today about how to find our way in the world.

    His life is shattered but Morgan refuses to surrender, overcoming all obstacles to find unexpected contentment and happiness in the harsh early days of Australia's settlement.From England's shores to Botany Bay and the rugged frontier of a hostile new world, Morgan's Run is the epic tale of love lost and found, and the man whose strength and character helped settle a country and define its future.Cover Artist: Tom Hallman

     In trunks, under floorboards, in remote ravines — even in their own beds — the bodies of those for whom their lovers’ passion proved fatal have been found, and often through the stench of decay. One ingenious killer boiled down his wife’s remains in a vat at his sausage factory. Another throttled and incinerated a perfect stranger in order to stage his own death and thus escape the charge of bigamy. Then there were the lesbian schoolgirls who bludgeoned to death the mother of one of them with a brick in a stocking. Her crime: she had tried to keep them apart. Whilst one woman kept her lover in a secret attic for years until he shot her husband dead. A dark narrative, Adrian Vincent expertly brings together some of the world’s most notorious killer. In sixteen fascinating case histories, Fatal Passions tells the true stories of those who have literally loved someone to death. Praise for Adrian Vincent ‘A skilfully written account’ – Kirkus Reviews. Adrian Vincent worked in Fleet Street for twenty-seven years, becoming managing editor of IPC’s educational magazines. He is the author of many books on art and antiques, novels and true crime.

    (Nancy Pearl)After eleven years of marriage to an egocentric opera singer, Pat Murray packs up her daughter and leaves, regaining control of her life and approaching single parenthood bravely until she meets Roland and his pregnant wife.

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    Destined to lose her family name and beloved Wideacre estate once she is married, Beatrice will use any means:--seduction, betrayal, even murder--to protect her ancestral heritage. Yet even as Beatrice's scheming seems about to yield her dream, she is haunted by the one person who knows the extent of her plans...and her capacity for evil. THE FAVORED CHILD The Wideacre estate is bankrupt. The villagers are living in poverty, and Wideacre Hall is a smoke-blackened ruin. But, in the Dower House, two children are being raised in protected innocence. Equal claimants to the estate, rivals for the love of the village, they are tied by a secret childhood betrothal but forbidden to marry. Only one can be the favored child. Only one can be Beatrice Lacey's true heir. MERIDON Meridon knows she does not belong in the dirty vagabond life of a bareback rider in a traveling show. The half-remembered vision of another life drives her son, even as her beloved sister, Dandy, risks everything for their future. Alone, Meridon follows the urgings of her dream, riding in the moonlight past the rusted gates, up the winding drive to a house--clutching the golden clasp of the necklace that is her birthright--home at last to Wideacre.

    The Brontë sisters created a world in which we still live - the intense, passionate world of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights; and the phenomenon of this strange explosion of genius remains as baffling now as it was to their Victorian contemporaries. In this panoramic novel we see with new insight the members of a uniquely close-knit family whose tight bonds are the instruments of both triumph and tragedy. Emily, the solitary who turns from the world to the greater temptations of the imagination: Anne, gentle and loyal, under whose quietude lies the harshest perception of the stifling life forced upon her: Branwell, the mercurial and self-destructive brother, meant to be king, unable to be a prince: and the brilliant, uncompromising, tormented Charlotte, longing for both love and independence, who establishes the family's name and learns its price.

    And a very strange, very English obsession. But where did this fixation develop? And what does it tell us about ourselves?In The Art of the English Murder, Lucy Worsley explores this phenomenon in forensic detail, revisiting notorious crimes like the Ratcliff Highway Murders, which caused a nationwide panic in the early nineteenth century, and the case of Frederick and Maria Manning, the suburban couple who were hanged after killing Maria's lover and burying him under their kitchen floor. Our fascination with crimes like these became a form of national entertainment, inspiring novels and plays, prose and paintings, poetry and true-crime journalism. At a point during the birth of modern England, murder entered our national psyche, and it's been a part of us ever since.The Art of the English Murder is a unique exploration of the art of crime and a riveting investigation into the English criminal soul by one of our finest historians.

    In Stealing Athena, Karen Essex chronicles the Marbles' amazing journey through the dynamic narratives of Mary Nisbet, wife of the Earl of Elgin, the British ambassador to Constantinople, and Aspasia, the mistress of Pericles, the most powerful man in Athens during that city's Golden Age.At the height of the Napoleonic Wars, the twenty-one-year-old, newly wed Countess of Elgin, a Scottish heiress and celebrated beauty, enchanted the power brokers of the Ottoman Empire, using her charms to obtain their permission for her husband's audacious plan to deconstruct the Parthenon and bring its magnificent sculptures to England. Two millennia earlier, Aspasia, a female philosopher and courtesan, and a central figure in Athenian life, plied her wits, allure, and influence with equal determination, standing with Pericles at the center of vehement opposition to his vision of building the most exquisite monuments the world had ever seen.Rich in romance and intrigue, greed and glory, Stealing Athena is an enthralling work of historical fiction and a window into the intimate lives of some of history's most influential and fascinating women.