Italy's Sorrow by Holland, James
ISBN13: 9780007176458
Today Italy is a land of beauty and prosperity but in 1944-45 it had become a place of nightmares, a land of violence, war, and destruction. James Holland's ground-breaking account expertly documents the German advance to the stalemate of the Gothic line and a segment of Italian history that has been largely neglected. The war in Italy was the most destructive campaign in the west as the Allies and Germans fought a long, bitter and highly attritional conflict up the mountainous leg of Italy during the last twelve months of the Second World War. For front-line troops, casualties rates at Cassino and then along the notorious Gothic Line were as high as they had been along the Western Front in the First World War. 
Warsaw 1920 Lenin's Failed Conquest of Europe by Zamoyski, Adam
ISBN13: 9780007225521
The dramatic and little-known story of how, in the summer of 1920, Lenin came within a hair's breadth of shattering the painstakingly constructed Versailles peace settlement and spreading Bolshevism to western Europe. In 1920 the new Soviet state was a mess, following a brutal civil war, and the best way of ensuring its survival appeared to be to export the revolution to Germany, itself economically ruined by defeat in World War I and racked by internal political dissension. Between Russia and Germany lay Poland, a nation that had only just recovered its independence after more than a century of foreign oppression.
Artemis by STOCKWIN, JULIAN
ISBN 10: 0743214609
ISBN 13: 9780743214605
The French vs. the British navy during the Napoleonic Wars: Julian Stockwin's second novel continues the career of Thomas Kydd, an ex-wigmaker who has been forced into service by a press-gang. In this installment, Kydd has taken thoroughly to the life onboard ship, and when his ship, the Artemis, meets the French frigate Citoyenne in battle, Kydd's heroic actions make him a hero. But then the family business gets into trouble, and Tom is forced to return home--until a new and unexpected opportunity arises.
Henrietta Howard King's Mistress, Queen's Servant by Borman, Tracey
ISBN13: 9780224076067
Henrietta Howard, later Countess of Suffolk, was the long-term mistress and confidante of King George II. Described by Swift as a consummate courtier who packed away her 'private virtues... like cloaths in a chest', by Pope as 'so very reasonable, so unmov'd', and by the world at large as 'the Swiss' (due to her apparent neutrality), she remains as fascinating and perplexing today as she was for her contemporaries. Orphaned at the age of twelve after her mother died and her father was killed in a duel, and dragged into poverty by her brutal husband, Henrietta used her own ingenuity and determination to secure a role at the very heart of the royal court.
The Great Wall by Man, John
ISBN13: 9780593055748
The Great Wall of China is a wonder of the world. Hundreds of thousands of tourists every year take the five-mile journey from Beijing to climb its battlements. It is instantly familiar to millions more from the myriad photographs of this extraordinary landmark. But what do we really know about the Great Wall? Many myths surround it - for example that it is visible from space. Not true: it cannot even been seen from earth orbit. Estimates of its length vary from 1500 to 5000 miles. Even its name is deceptive - it is not in fact a single entity, but many walls (hence the uncertain length), most of which are not built of stone, but earth. Different sections were built by different states and were first joined together in the third century BC, to counter the threat from nomadic barbarians from the north - a threat that was to menace China's borders for almost 2000 years.
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