The British Library Publishing – The Bell Bookshop

Man Who Didn’t Fly

Emma — Fri, 10 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Four men had arranged to fly to Dublin. When their aeroplane descended as a fireball into the Irish Sea, only three of them were on board. With the identities of the passengers lost beneath the waves, a tense and perplexing investigation begins to determine the living from the dead, with scarce evidence to follow beyond a few snippets of overheard conversation and one family's patchy account of the three days prior to the flight. Who was the man who didn't fly? What did he have to gain? And would he commit such an explosive murder to get it?

My Husband Simon

Emma — Thu, 02 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

My Husband Simon tells the story of the married life of Nevis Falconer, a young woman novelist, and Simon Quinn. Temperamentally unsuited, they are only kept together by a mutual physical attraction, in spite of innumerable quarrels. They live this superficial existence for three years, until one day Nevis meets Marcus Chard, her American publisher, who has just arrived in London. Soon friendship develops into love. Inevitably the problem faces her. Wife or mistress? Nevis finds herself caught in a whirl of circumstances over which she has no control. Published in 1931 in the immediate aftermath of D H Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover controversy, Mollie Panter-Downes’s book explores the different echelons of the increasingly self-conscious middle class and the ways in which the tensions and nuances of vocabulary, dress, occupation, politics, taste and, ultimately, the literary world contribute to the incompatibility of a marriage.

Part of a curated collection of forgotten works by early to mid-century women writers, the British Library Women Writers series highlights the best middlebrow fiction from the 1910s to the 1960s, offering escapism, popular appeal and plenty of period detail to amuse, surprise and inform.

Death In Fancy Dress

Emma — Sun, 10 Nov 2019 00:00:00 +0000

The British Secret Service, working to uncover a large-scale blackmail ring and catch its mysterious mastermind 'The Spider', find themselves at the country residence of Feltham Abbe where a fancy-dress ball is in full swing. In the tumult of revelry, Sir Ralph Feltham is found dead.

Tales of the Tattooed: An Anthology of Ink

Emma — Fri, 01 Nov 2019 00:00:00 +0000

The excruciating beauty, exoticism, and mystery of tattoos is laid bare in this new collection of 12 stories ranging from the 1880s to 1940s

Uncovering the history of the tattoo in classic fiction for the first time, this original selection depicts the tattoo as a catalyst for scandal in society, as a symbol for an unknowable supernatural force, and as transcendent living art merging the spirits of a tattooer and his or her living canvas.

Featuring previously hidden works from the pages of rare literary magazines such as “The Starfish Tattoo” alongside such classics of the genre as Tanizaki’s “The Tattooer” and Saki’s “The Background,” this exploration of the tattoo in fiction is guaranteed to leave an indelible impression.

British Library Magnificent Maps Puzzle Book

Emma — Thu, 03 Oct 2019 00:00:00 +0000

The British Library has one of the largest and most impressive cartographic collections in the world, including manuscript maps and atlases, administrative records and plans, large-scale surveys, and digital maps. From this rich resource, 100 fascinating examples ranging from world and city maps, celestial and sea charts, literary and statistical maps, curiosities and fake maps have been selected as the basis for this puzzle book. Each map is faithfully reproduced with a description of its creation and use, followed by details showing areas of particular interest. Readers are asked to scrutinize the maps to answer a series of historical and geographical questions, all the while enjoying new perspectives on the world we live in provided by our eclectic and extensive archive.