Bücher veröffentlicht von FLAMINGO

The third novel from the acclaimed author of The Pied Piper's Poison and The Resurrection Club Leaving behind a dowdy northern winter for the warming delights of the French Riviera, Martin and his three student friends soon find their feet, turning a tidy profit as beach-bum salesmen and taking to the joys of life by the Mediterranean with relish. Martin soon gets addicted to those delights, jacks in his degree and goes down deeper into a life less ordinary ? scuba-diving, bed-hopping and bar-keeping his way into corners and out again. Out on the high seas, on board the laden 'Anne', ship's surgeon Martin is looking for the fresh start a life on the ocean wave can afford a man with a problematic past. As his captain steers his precious cargo ? but not his crew ? to safety through a raging, swelling storm and onward to the riches of the uncharted African coast, Martin comes to realize that down deeper lie secrets, desires and freedoms of uncanny power. The laws seem different out on the ocean, criss-crossing the Mediterranean or hugging Africa's shore, couriering yachts or cocaine, trafficking in spices or more human contraband. Living outside the dry land's dry laws is liberating, but, as Martin discovers, the lawgivers and the lawkeepers always turn up, looking for their justice. Christopher Wallace, the prize-winning author of The Pied Piper's Poison and The Resurrection Club, tells an exhilarating pair of stories that reflect off each other like the sun off the sea to illuminate just how a man ? with all his principles and compromises, desires and doubts ? can find honour and more in piracy.

A flight of imagination back to a time when London was green meadows and rolling hills, dotted with babbling brooks. Join Tim Bradford as he explores the lost rivers of London. Over the last hundred and fifty years, most of the tributaries of the Thames have been buried under concrete and brick. Now Tim Bradford takes us on a series of walks along the routes of these forgotten rivers and shows us the oddities and delights that can be found along the way. He finds the chi in the Ching, explores the links between London's football ground and freemasons, rediscovers the unbearable shiteness of being (in South London), enjoys the punk heritage of the Westbourne, and, of course, learns how to special-brew dowse. Here, then, is all of London life, but from a very different point of view. With a cast that includes the Viking superhero Hammer Smith, a jellied-eel fixated William Morris, a coprophiliac Samuel Johnson, Deep Purple and the Glaswegian deer of Richmond Park, and hundreds of cartoons, drawings and maps, 'The Groundwater Diaries' is a vastly entertaining (and sometimes frankly odd) tour through not-so-familiar terrain.

From the author of 'Twelve', the story of a tangled, obsessive friendship. Gifted, magnetic, a virtuoso with a short temper, Lee defies his background to win a scholarship to the prestigious Cabresi academy of music. James ? richer, less gifted and less charismatic ? leeches onto the teenage prodigy to feed off his fame and genius, and to bask in Lee's reflected glory. Slowly, stealthily, James fuels Lee's increasing need for women and illicit substances, the better to pull the strings, keep him close. Watching all of this is Peter, whose conversations with Lee call into question Lee's tangled relationship with James. Peter appears uniquely placed to present a clear picture of this obsessive, increasingly destructive friendship. Gradually, he reveals the truth behind their power struggle, and the events that led to Lee's tragic, drug-fuelled death... Gripping and lean, considered and powerful, Vanessa Jones's darkly brilliant second novel confirms the arrival of a bright British talent.

'Unnervingly cool prose...an entertainingly urbane thriller [whose] suspense lies not in the whodunit, but in watching a perfect life unravel.' Daily Telegraph Matthew Bourne suspects his partner, Marianne, of having an affair ? though he has just embarked on one himself. Then one day a colleague's wife dies in tragic circumstances, and Matthew is called to identify the body. Only much later does he realise that this incident has seeped into his life like a slow poison...A riveting narrative of mystery and menace, 'The Execution' is a stunningly accomplished novel.

An extraordinary, passionate and personal journey into Africa's past. 'The most enthralling account out of Africa for years.' Daily Mail. '?Livingstone's Tribe? is excellent...Taylor is an intelligent and stimulating companion.' Financial Times 'At the book's heart is a riveting examination of Livingstone's tribe...the whites of post-independence Africa.' Independent on Sunday 'Taylor's expedition into the interior of the continent's colonial past has got everything that such a book should have.' Guardian 'Stephen Taylor, a third-generation émigré of British descent, finds a melancholy collection of white misfits and failures...as well as a heroic, dwindling clutch of missionaries still holding the line. The catalogue of theft, corruption, murder and superstition that Taylor chronicles makes appalling, fascinating reading. Yet Taylor is no Colonel Blimp, rather an anti-apartheid liberal who fled the old South Africa and welcomed independence for Mugabe's Zimbabwe.' Daily Mail 'Sights and travel experiences are vividly described and people both from Livingstone's and from the other tribes are handled particularly well.' Sunday Times

Winner of two major European prizes, this funny, quirky chronicle of a family of Dutch clockmakers is a bestseller in the Netherlands. Sixty-year-old Nathan Hollander is stranded in a winter blizzard with his young niece, Nina, in the deserted house of his late Uncle Herman. As they wait for the weather to improve, Nathan tells Nina the story of their forefathers ? a family of clockmakers who came to the Netherlands from Eastern Europe and then emigrated to America before WWII. An extraordinary and rich family history emerges. An epic family saga, a Gothic novel gone haywire, a very human story and a chronicle of the twentieth century, In Babylon is already set to be a classic European novel. A piece of very solid, traditional storytelling combined with a very funny, sensual magical realism. A brilliant merging of the lightness of popular American writing and the depth of European literature.

An authoritative and entertaining account by one of our most talented writers of the courageous and unusual women who have been the backbone of the British Empire and foreign service. 'English ambassadresses are usually on the dotty side and leaving their embassies drives them completely off their rockers' ? Nancy Mitford From the first exploratory expeditions into foreign lands, through the heyday of the British Empire and still today, the foreign service has been shaped and run behind the scenes by the wives of ambassadors and minor civil servants. Accompanying their spouses in the most extraordinary, tough, sometimes terrifying circumstances, they have struggled to bring their civilization with them. Their stories ? from ambassadresses downwards ? never before told, are a feast of eccentricity, genuine hardship and genuine heroism, and make for a hilarious, compelling and fascinating book.

Nick Danziger began his journey in June 1994, as newspapers and magazines throughout the land commemorated the 50th anniversary of the D-Day landings and recalled the Allies' war aims (to afford assurance that all men in all lands may live out their lives in freedom from fear and want).

From Miami to Kabul In his remarkable first book, Danziger's Travels, Nick Danziger journeyed incognito through Iran, Afghanistan and China. Now we learn what Danziger did next: more extraordinary episodes as he swings from rags to riches and back again in some of the most outlandish places on earth.Vivid encounters with the designer yuppies of New York and California are followed by a photographic commission which brings him face to face with a horrific massacre of Kurdish refugees in Turkey - and a narrow escape from death. Returning to Kabul after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, he finds the city under rocket attack by his old friends the mujahedeen, and sees for himself the pointless destruction and terror of the forgotten civil war. He attends the Ayatollah Khomeini's funeral in Tehran, amidst scenes of mass hysteria: goes in search of the Tuareg in Libya; and mingles with would-be 'wetback' immigrants from Tijuana - some of whom literally dig their way into the United States. Finally, he returns once more to Afghanistan - and to the abandoned children in Marastoon mental asylum, Kabul, whom he helps to find a new home. This books is available as a print-on-demand product only.

"McGrath is a cool-eyed chronicler of a dispossessed generation ¿ philosophical, astute and ultimately unforgiving. This is no pseudo rock'n'roll road trip, but an accessible and insightful study of the modern condition. The final autobiographical chapter is breathtaking."DEBORAH BOSLEY, 'Literary Review'"McGrath meets the nation's lost souls of the New Age. A 267-year-old princess from the tribe of Atlantis, a technoshaman, an alien who talks to Barbie dolls, an overweight angel and a prince who will never die all impress her with their certainties as much as they depress her with their chronic self-awareness. It's an ambitious debut: McGrath has a keen sense for deadpan descriptions of off-kilter encounters, and an acute knack for deflating the Myth."EMER BRIZZOLARA, 'Ikon'"Fortifying herself with booze, cigarettes and a useful amount of asperity and common sense, McGrath painstakingly trawls the aisles of the spiritual supermarket. She writes beautifully about the terrain, offers deliciously dyspeptic observations¿and is very funny on the sense of spiralling dislocation which arises from being confronted not just with unfamiliar behaviour but with 'an entirely inner architecture'."MICK BROWN, 'Daily Telegraph'McGrath has a fine, questing mind, a splendid eye for detail and a healthily cynical attitude. Confronted at every turn ¿ in her deliciously sardonic picaresque travelogue through America's south-western desert states ¿ by the strange, the sinister and the just plain barmy¿she maintains a fine, dense and colourful narrative that brings the desert landscape and the loony-tune New Agers vividly to life."NICK CURTIS, 'Financial Times'

Alice Keppel and her daughter Violet Trefusis where both, in their ways, lefendary lovers. Mrs Keppel mistress of Edward VII and Great-Grandmother to Camilla Parker Bowles, was the acceptable face at her command - charm, determination, money to repress her love affair with Vita Sackville.