The Leopard

Set in the 1860s, The Leopard tells the spellbinding story of a decadent, dying Sicilian aristocracy threatened by the approaching forces of democracy and revolution. The dramatic sweep and richness of observation, the seamless intertwining of public and private worlds, and the grasp of human frailty imbue The Leopard with its particular melancholy beauty and power, and place it among the greatest historical novels of our time. Although Giuseppe di Lampedusa had long had the book in mind, he began writing it only in his late fifties; he died at age sixty, soon after the manuscript was rejected as unpublishable. In his introduction, Gioacchino Lanza Tomasi, Lampedusa's nephew, gives us a detailed history of the initial publication and the various editions that followed. And he includes passages Lampedusa wrote for the book that were omitted by the original Italian editors. Here, finally, is the definitive edition of this brilliant and timeless novel. (Translated from the Italian by Archibald Colquhoun.)

A modeler’s guide to one of the most powerful tanks operating today: “Highly recommended.” —AMPS Indianapolis When the Leopard 2, a third-generation main battle tank, first entered service with the Bundeswehr in 1979, at the height of the Cold War, it was indisputably the most advanced and potent tank in the world. Over four decades it has undergone numerous upgrades and modifications to ensure it remains one of the most powerful tanks operating today. It currently serves with the armies of seventeen nations, from Canada to Turkey and many European states. The Leopard 2 is also a popular subject for modelers, which is why David Grummitt’s highly illustrated expert guide is so valuable. As well as describing in detail the Leopard 2’s design, development, and combat history, he gives a full account of the wide range of modeling kits and accessories available in all the popular scales. Included is a modeling gallery, which features six builds covering a range of Leopard 2s serving with different nations and a section of large-scale color profiles which provide both reference and inspiration for modelers and military enthusiasts alike.

From the creator of the acclaimed Kurt Wallander series: A thrilling story set in Sweden and Zambia told with “heart-stopping tension” (Entertainment Weekly). Interweaving past and present, The Eye of the Leopard draws on bestselling author Henning Mankell’s deep understanding of both Scandinavia and post-colonial Africa. Hans Olofson arrives in Zambia in the 1970s, at the start of its independence. There, he hopes to fulfill the missionary dream of a boyhood friend who was unable to make the journey. But he is also there to flee the traumas of his motherless childhood in provincial Sweden: his father’s alcoholism, his best friend’s terrible accident, his fear of an ordinary and stifled fate. Africa is a terrible shock, yet he stays and makes it his home. In all his years as a mzungu, a wealthy white man among native blacks, he never comes to fully understand his adoptive home, or his precarious place in it. Rumors of an underground army of revolutionaries wearing leopard skins warn him that the fragile truce between blacks and whites is in danger of rupturing. Alternating between Hans’s years in Africa and those of his youth in Sweden, The Eye of the Leopard is a bravura achievement and a study in contrasts—black and white, poor and wealthy, Africa and Europe—both sinister and elegiac. “Mankell’s novels are a joy.” —USA Today “A fascinating novel . . . [the] prose is powerful, and the narrative of The Eye of the Leopard is profound.” —Bookreporter.com “A thought-provoking, multilayered novel whose themes will challenge and linger.” —The Courier Mail “Mankell is a master of atmosphere and suspense.” —Los Angeles Times “Mankell’s novels are the best Swedish export since flatpack furniture.” —The Guardian “Beautiful, heartbreaking, yet ultimately hopeful . . . A powerful exploration of the stresses and challenges of freedom.” —Booklist, starred review

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2019 SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZE From the #1 nationally bestselling author of By Gaslight, a novel of exquisite emotional force about love and art in the life of one of the great writers, reminiscent of Colm Tóibín's The Master, or Michael Cunningham's The Hours. In sun-drenched Sicily, among the decadent Italian aristocracy of the late 1950s, Giuseppe Tomasi, the last prince of Lampedusa, struggles to complete the novel that will be his lasting legacy, The Leopard. With a firm devotion to the historical record, Lampedusa leaps effortlessly into the mind of the writer and inhabits the complicated heart of a man facing down the end of his life, struggling to make something of lasting worth, while there is still time. Achingly beautiful and elegantly conceived, Steven Price's new novel is an intensely moving story of one man's awakening to the possibilities of life, intimately woven against the transformative power of a great work of art.

Do genes explain life? Can advances in evolutionary and molecular biology account for what we look like, how we behave, and why we die? In this powerful intervention into current biological thinking, Brian Goodwin argues that such genetic reductionism has important limits. Drawing on the sciences of complexity, the author shows how an understanding of the self-organizing patterns of networks is necessary for making sense of nature. Genes are important, but only as part of a process constrained by environment, physical laws, and the universal tendencies of complex adaptive systems. In a new preface for this edition, Goodwin reflects on the advances in both genetics and the sciences of complexity since the book's original publication.

The fourth book in the epic Ballantyne series Craig got no further, for Tungata's anger turned to red fury. He was shaking with it, it clouded his gaze and knotted the muscles at the points of his heavy lantern jaw. "Be silent,'he hissed. 'You meddle in matters that you do not understand, and that do not concern you. Leave this land before they overwhelm you."' His family's past. His country's future. Bestselling author Craig Mellow is tired of fame, and wants only to return to his family's old home in Zimbabwe. Although it's now derelict, Craig wants to rebuild and turn Rholands into a functioning ranch and tourist safari, but finds his way unexpectedly blocked by his old friend, now government minister, Tungata Zebiwe. Working with acclaimed photographer Sally-Anne Jay, Craig is able to uncover Tungata's corruption and continue with his planned restoration. However, there is new fighting on the horizon that may threaten not only Rholands, but the lives of all who live there. In their desperate attempts to escape, Craig and Sally-Anne will learn that no one is truly who they say...

Wives of the Leopard explores power and culture in a pre-colonial West African state whose army of women and practice of human sacrifice earned it notoriety in the racist imagination of late nineteenth-century Europe and America. Tracing two hundred years of the history of Dahomey up to the French colonial conquest in 1894, the book follows change in two central institutions. One was the monarchy, the coalitions of men and women who seized and wielded power in the name of the king. The second was the palace, a household of several thousand wives of the king who supported and managed state functions. Looking at Dahomey against the backdrop of the Atlantic slave trade and the growth of European imperialism, Edan G. Bay reaches for a distinctly Dahomean perspective as she weaves together evidence drawn from travelers' memoirs and local oral accounts, from the religious practices of vodun, and from ethnographic studies of the twentieth century. Wives of the Leopard thoroughly integrates gender into the political analysis of state systems, effectively creating a social history of power. More broadly, it argues that women as a whole and men of the lower classes were gradually squeezed out of access to power as economic resources contracted with the decline of the slave trade in the nineteenth century. In these and other ways, the book provides an accessible portrait of Dahomey's complex and fascinating culture without exoticizing it.

Set in Kenya in the 1950s against the fading backdrop of the British Empire, a story of self-discovery, betrayal, and an impossible love from the author of The Fever Tree. After six years in England, Rachel has returned to Kenya and the farm where she spent her childhood, but the beloved home she’d longed for is much changed. Her father’s new companion—a strange, intolerant woman—has taken over the household. The political climate in the country grows more unsettled by the day and is approaching the boiling point. And looming over them all is the threat of the Mau Mau, a secret society intent on uniting the native Kenyans and overthrowing the whites. As Rachel struggles to find her place in her home and her country, she initiates a covert relationship, one that will demand from her a gross act of betrayal. One man knows her secret, and he has made it clear how she can buy his silence. But she knows something of her own, something she has never told anyone. And her knowledge brings her power.