Constantinople, 1599. Paul Pindar, a secretary to the English ambassador, thinks he has lost his love, Celia, in a shipwreck. Now, two years later, clues begin to emerge that she may be hidden among the ranks of the slaves in the Sultan's harem. But how can he be sure? And can they be reunited? With a secret rebellion rising within the Sultan's palace, danger surrounds the lovers. A lush, ancient tale of treacherous secrets, forbidden love, and murder in the Ottoman palace,The Aviary Gate is exotic historical fiction at its very best.
In a small town on the Italian coast, a mysterious woman washes ashore. She is crippled, mute, and clutches a bundle to her chest-a baby the townspeople insist is a real-life mermaid. It can only bring bad luck; they pay a troupe of acrobats to carry mother and child away. In the bustling trade center of Venice, merchant Paul Pindar is the subject of his colleagues' concern. Since his return from Constantinople, they have found him changed; raging over the loss of his beloved, Celia, he has gambled away his fortune at the gaming tables. But when a priceless blue diamond surfaces in the city, Pindar recognizes the opportunity to regain everything he has lost-including, perhaps, the woman he loves. A celebrated writer of history and travel books, Katie Hickman has always been a master of evoking time and place. With The Pindar Diamond, her follow-up to The Aviary Gate, she brings early-seventeenth-century Italy vividly to life, and also demonstrates her maturity as a novelist. A tale of love and avarice, with a touch of the mystical, The Pindar Diamond is rich with historical detail, and unfolds with urgency and grace. It is accomplished, wholly satisfying historical fiction.
Twelve-year-old Clara Dooley has spent her whole life in the crumbling Glendoveer mansion, home to a magician's widow, a cage full of exotic birds, and a decades-old mystery. Clara loves old Mrs. Glendoveer, but the birds in the aviary frighten her—they always seem to screech and squall whenever she's near. And then one day, the mynah bird speaks, and a mystery starts to unravel. Clara discovers dark secrets about the family, and about her own past. Somehow the birds in the aviary seem to be at the center of it all, and Clara can't shake the feeling that they are trying to tell her something. . . .
Katie Hickman went to Mexico looking for magic. She found it in the circus – Big Top, clowns, elephants and all – where cheap, torn materials and tarnished sequins are transformed into nights of glittering illusion. Gradually adjusting to the harsh ways of the circus's nomadic lifestyle, she soon became absorbed into this hypnotic new world, at first as a foreigner but later as 'La Gringa Estrella', a performer in her own right. Travels with a Mexican Circus is an unforgettable account of a year-long journey through an extraordinary and bizarrely beautiful country.
In an absorbing mixture of poignant biography and wonderfully entertaining social history, Daughters of Britannia offers the story of diplomatic life as it has never been told before. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Vita Sackville-West, and Lady Diana Cooper are among the well-known wives of diplomats who represented Britain in the far-flung corners of the globe. Yet, despite serving such crucial roles, the vast majority of these women are entirely unknown to history. Drawing on letters, private journals, and memoirs, as well as contemporary oral history, Katie Hickman explores not only the public pomp and glamour of diplomatic life but also the most intimate, private face of this most fascinating and mysterious world. Touching on the lives of nearly 100 diplomatic wives (as well as sisters and daughters), Daughters of Britannia is a brilliant and compelling account of more than three centuries of British diplomacy as seen through the eyes of some of its most intrepid but least heralded participants.
BAD-TEMPERED RUNAWAY CAMEL. Funny, fast, and satisfying--a hilarious yarn from the "master of animal stories."* Tired of his lonely life at the zoo, Hezekiah--an ornery, very hairy Bacrian camel--busts out and heads across country. His adventure leads him to an eccentric (and equally hairy) aristocrat, a new life at a wildlife park, and company in the form of a female camel. Laughs, action, short chapters, and a genuine appreciation of the animal world make this a satisfying choice for newly independent readers. Nick Bruel's antic black-and-white drawing add to the fun. *The Guardian (London)
Rome, too, wants the sound of roaring as evening falls ... The Rome Zoo: a place born of fantasy and driven by a nation’s aspirations. It has witnessed – and reflected in its tarnished mirror – the great follies of the twentieth century. Now, in an ongoing battle that has seen it survive world wars and epidemics, the zoo must once again reinvent itself, and assert its relevance in the Eternal City. Caught up in these machinations is a cast of characters worthy of this baroque backdrop: a man desperate to find meaning in his own life, a woman tasked with halting the zoo’s decline and a rare animal, the last of its species, who bewitches the world. Drifting between past and present, The Rome Zoo weaves together these and many other stories, forming a colourful and evocative tapestry of life at this strange place. It is both a love story and a poignant juxtaposition of the human need to classify, to subdue, with the untameable nature of our dramas and anxieties. Spellbinding and disturbing, precise and dreamy, this award-winning novel, translated by Stephanie Smee, is unlike any other. Winner of the Swiss Literature Award, the Prix Michel-Dentan and the Prix du public de la RTS “Like all truly great literary allegories, The Rome Zoo is both innocent and wise, filled equally with tenderness and darkness. A gorgeous, dream-like fable of Italy's past and present.” —Ceridwen Dovey
Tatiana, a young Mexican woman, is adrift in Berlin. Choosing a life of solitude, she takes a job transcribing notes for the reclusive Doktor Weiss. Through him she meets 'ant illustrator turned meteorologist' Jonas, a Berliner who has used clouds and the sky's constant shape-shifting as his escape from reality. As their three paths intersect and merge, the contours of all their worlds begins to change...
Everybody has a dream, images of the fantasy life they'd lead if not trapped behind an office desk. Saffia's dream was to live in the sunshine. She didn't realise it would lead to raising her first child up fifty-eight steps in a concrete Kyrgyz tenement. Saffia had barely heard of Kyrgyzstan when she agreed to move there with her water-engineer husband, Matthew. Kyrgyzstan is a small country of huge landscapes, a smudge in the vastness of Central Asia. Saffia arrived in the ex-Soviet republic fifteen weeks pregnant, scared about life in a place where people eat sheep's eyes, drink fermented mare's milk and live in felt tents. Revolution Baby is Saffia's story of leaving Bristol for Bishkek and raising Baby Tom in the shadow of the Tien Shan mountains, while Matthew struggles to bring clean water to isolated villages. When Kyrgyzstan descends into anarchy after corrupt parliamentary elections, Saffia is trapped in Bishkek. She witnesses the 'Tulip Revolution' and the violence and insecurity which follow as politicians, mafia gangs, crime lords and Islamic militants exploit the political void. Review by Katie Hickman - Revolution Baby's is Saffia Farr' s delightful account of several years spent living in Bishkek, captial of Kyrgyzstan, with her husband, Matthew, a water engineer. Pregnant with her first child, she samples the delights of ex-pat life in one of the poorest and remotest countries on earth, the bald realities of which are, of course, not delightful at all. Health care is rudimentary, if not non-existent (in Bishkek, 'health', she comments acerbically, meant only smoking at the weekend), and her first flat has a bathroom with a padded loo seat in it, so old and stained thatfoam can be seen escaping from the gashes in the plastic (This could not be hygienic.) But never mind, armed with a good dose of English stiff-upper lip, she learns to look on the bright side, and finally even to love her adopted country, which she writes about with unpretentious freshness, and an occasionally wicked sense of humour. (During one Russian lesson, she tries not to giggle too hard on finding that she has eaten cok for breakfast.) I was surprised to find that Farr-by her own admission-could not find a publisher for her memoir, and had to print it herself. Although, having a small baby in tow, her travels in the wider country were not extensive, her account of ex-pat life in a remote country, with all its playgroups, craft mornings and competitive mahjong-playing ladies, is one of the best I have read; equally, if not more, entertaining than a regular travel book. Katie Hickman is the author of six books, among them the bestselling Daughters of Britannia. Her novel, The Aviary Gate, set in the Sultan's harem in late sixteenth-century Constantinople, is published by Bloomsbury in April.
Constantinople, 1599. Deep inside the private quarters of the Sultan's palace, the Chief Black Eunuch lies poisoned. As a veiled figure retreats from the room, a tale of ancient alliances and intrigues, of forbidden love and dangerous secrets begins to unfold.
