Eugene Fran?ois Vidocq was born in France in 1775 and his life spanned the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars and the 1848 revolutions. He was the Inspector Morse, the Sherlock Holmes, the James Bond of his day. A notorious criminal, he turned police officer and employed a gang of ex-convicts as his detectives. He invented innovative criminal indexing techniques and experimented with fingerprinting, until his cavalier attitude towards the thin blue line forced him out of the police. So he began the world's very first private detective agency. 
The cases he solved were high profile and he grew in notoriety. However, his infamy didn't prevent him from becoming a spy and moving secretly across the dangerous borders of Europe. This is a gloriously enjoyable historical romp through the eighteenth century in the company of the man whose influence still holds to this day.

The First Detective: The Life and Revolutionary Times of Vidocq. by James Morton

History

Morton, James

Europe

The Overlook Press

Sacrifice

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

HILL, Susan

Mystery

Disgraced Secretary Ku has been banished from the Party - it has been officially proved he does not have a fish-shaped birthmark on his bottom and is therefore not the son of a revolutionary martyr, but the issue of a river pirate and a prostitute. Mocked by the citizens of Milltown, Secretary Ku leaves the shore for a new life among the boat people on a fleet of industrial barges. Refusing to renounce his high status, he maintains a distance - with Dongliang, his teenage son - from the gossipy lowlifes who surround him. One day a feral little girl, Huixian, arrives looking for her mother, who has jumped to her death in the river. The boat people, and especially Dongliang, take her to their hearts. But Huixian sows conflict wherever she goes, and soon Dongliang is in the grip of an obsession for her. He takes on Life, Fate and the Party in the only way he knows.

The Boat to Redemption

Literature & Fiction

Su, Tong

Contemporary

The "wickedly funny" (Vanity Fair) master of literary black comedy spins a thrillingly erotic homage to Manolo Blahnik-wearing, nail-polished, high arched, beautifully footed women. Geoff Nicholson, the reigning master of obsessive black literary humor, brings us his riskiest novel yet, delving into the erotic world of a foot fetishist. Nicholson's unnamed narrator is a serious man with a full life. He reads newspapers, follows polit

Footsucker

NICHOLSON, Geoff

Dylan Thomas

Biographies & Memoirs

Lycett, Andrew

Arts & Literature

Ealing Studios.

Science & Math

Barr, Charles (edited by Ian Cameron)

Environment

In "Scattered Among the Peoples, historian Allan Levine presents a vivid and distinctly human perspective on how the Jewish people survived eight hundred years of persecution and forced migration, building and rebuilding their lives and communities. Structured as a chronological series of moment-in-time portraits, focusing on individuals and their interaction with their families and society, the narrative carries readers through the economic, political, social, and intellectual climates of some of the world's most famous and fascinating cosmopolitan centers. Levine has written an impressive and immensely readable book, one that is an important contribution to the literature of Jewish history.

Scattered Among the Peoples: The Jewish Diaspora in Tweleve Portraits

Levine, Allan

HONKY TONK PARADE: NEW YORKER PROFILES OF SHOW PEOPLE

John Lahr is America’s most celebrated drama critic, and Honky Tonk Parade is a collection of his work that illuminates some of the most compelling, elusive, and important artists of our time, who talk to Lahr with rare candor. His portraits weave together biography, anecdote, and shrewd interpretation. Included is the hilarious profile on Dame Edna Everage/Barry Humphries; his piece on Bill Hicks, which according to the comedian himself, is what finally found him an American audience; and the first in-depth portrait of Steve Buscemi. 
In writing "as lively as good conversation" (Robert Brustein), Lahr arrives at truths of uncommon clarity, a claim seconded by Arthur Miller, who said that Lahr’s essay on him is "by far the best thing about my stuff I’ve ever read." These heralded profiles, the product of his impressive work at The New Yorker, deepen our understanding of their subjects and our culture that they so profoundly reflect. Honky Tonk Parade, like the icons whose lives and work it so meticulously chronicles, corrupts an audience with pleasure.

Honky Tonk Parade: New Yorker Profiles of Show People

Lahr, John.

Humor & Entertainment

Between the Sheets: The Literary Liaisons of Ine 20th-Century Women Writers

McDowell, Lesley

History & Criticism

Does it mean nothing at all that we are spiritual beings? What does one of the world's oldest religions have to say? After the astonishing success of his latest book, Kosher Sex, Shmuley Boteach now tackles these important issues in another freshly argued, provocative book that will stir debate. Convinced that Judaism possesses a core of wisdom that appeals to everyone, Shmuley Boteach ferociously argues against Jews seeking piety in abstractions, in rationalising injustice, in explaining the holocaust away as a punishment for assimilation. He pleads for recognition that Judaism is not about death or suffering, but is about seeking optimism and spirituality, as is life. In a modern world riddled with angst, this book will have an astonishing impact on how our relation to society should be understood.

The Modern Guide to Judaism

Shmuley Boteach

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