A Bold and Dangerous Family

The first major biography of legendary war correspondent Martha Gellhorn casts "a vivid spotlight on one of the most undercelebrated women of the 20th century" (Entertainment Weekly)<BR><BR>Martha Gellhorn's heroic career as a reporter brought her to the front lines of virtually every significant international conflict between the Spanish Civil War and the end of the cold war; her wartime dispatches rank among the best of the century. From her birth in St. Louis in 1908 to her death in London in 1998, the tall, glamorous blonde passed through Africa, Cuba, Panama, and most of the great cities of Europe. She made friends easily-among them Eleanor Roosevelt, Leonard Bernstein, and H. G. Wells-but happiness often eluded her despite her professional success: both of her marriages ended badly, the first, to Ernest Hemingway, dramatically and publicly so.<BR><BR>Drawn from extensive interviews and exclusive access to Gellhorn's papers and correspondence, this seminal biography spans half the globe and almost an entire century to offer an exhilarating, intimate portrait of one of the defining women of our times.

El caso de Martha Gellhorn (1908-1998) supone un buen ejemplo del papel secundario que siempre se ha otorgado a la mujer. Y es que, en lugar de por su propia obra, se la conoce por haber sido esposa de Ernest Hemingway.

'As much a history of the deeply crooked culture of Italian politics as it is a vivid biography of one man' SUNDAY TIMES<BR>'Fascinating' SPECTATOR<BR>'Vivid and disturbing but utterly compelling' DAILY MAIL<BR><BR>Corruption, sleaze and violence were woven into the fabric of twentieth-century Sicilian life, as the Mafia rose to dominance. This is the story of one man who stood in opposition.<BR><BR>In 1986, the largest Mafia trial in Italy's history took place in Sicily: 471 men and 4 women took the stand, accused of horrific crimes. Sitting in the gallery was Leonardo Sciascia. One of the greatest European writers of the twentieth century, he had published the first Mafia novel, The Day of the Owl, in 1961, and was widely seen by Italians as a true moral figure in a country where corruption had seeped into every corner of public and private life.<BR><BR>Sciascia had come of age as the Mafia grew to prominence across Sicily. Witnessing the scale of corruption and violence, Sciascia predicted it would soon spread north, and he was right: by the 1980s, the Mafia had infiltrated every level of Italian politics and grown into an international, highly successful business.<BR><BR>In A Sicilian Man, prize-winning historian and biographer Caroline Moorehead charts Sciascia's life against the rise of the Mafia, and lays out the thrilling and devastating struggle that ensued for Italy's soul.<BR><BR>'Magnificent and deeply affecting' PHILIP HENSHER<BR><BR>'Vivid and knowledgeable... This feels like the book [Moorehead] was destined to write' LUCY HUGHES-HALLETT

'Vividly told, engrossing history' CLARE MULLEY, author of The Women Who Flew for Hitler<BR><BR>'Precise, empathic . . . a profoundly satisfying, albeit wistful, read and . . . a worryingly relevant one' GUARDIAN<BR><BR>A thrilling biography of Benito Mussolini's favourite daughter, and a heart-stopping account of the unravelling of the Fascist dream in Italy<BR><BR>Edda Mussolini was Benito's favourite daughter: spoilt, venal, uneducated but clever, faithless but flamboyant, a brilliant diplomat, wild but brave, and ultimately strong and loyal.<BR><BR>She was her father's confidante during the 20 years of Fascist rule, acting as envoy to both Germany and Britain, and playing a part in steering Italy to join forces with Hitler. From her early twenties she was effectively first lady of Italy. She married Galeazzo Ciano, who would become the youngest Foreign Secretary in Italian history, and they were the most celebrated and glamorous couple in elegant, vulgar Roman fascist society.<BR><BR>Their fortunes turned in 1943, when Ciano voted against Mussolini in a plot to bring him down, and his father-in-law did not forgive him. In a dramatic story that takes in hidden diaries, her father's fall and her husband's execution, an escape into Switzerland and a period in exile, we come to know a complicated, bold and determined woman who emerges not just as a witness but as a key player in some of the twentieth century's defining moments. And we see Fascist Italy with all its glamour, decadence and political intrigue, and the turbulence before its violent end.