Amid the carnage of the 100 Years War – the bloodiest conflict in medieval history – a young English archer confronts his destiny... England, 1346: For Thomas Blackstone the choice is easy – dance on the end of a rope for a murder he did not commit, or take up his war bow and join the king's invasion. As he fights his way across northern France, Blackstone learns the brutal lessons of war – from the terror and confusion of his first taste of combat, to the savage realities of siege warfare. Vastly outnumbered, Edward III's army will finally confront the armoured might of the French nobility on the field of Crecy. It is a battle that will change the history of warfare, a battle that will change the course of Blackstone's life, a battle that will forge a legend.

Miner's son David Powlett-Jones returns from the carnage of the Western Front in 1918, shell-shocked and bitterly hardened by the violence of war. He begins life again as a master at a remote Devon school, controlling the destiny of boys barely his junior. As the years pass David becomes a teacher of rare talent, begins to find peace, and is able to adjust to the changes which are overwhelming society. But soon he will have to face up to the prospect of another terrible war.

Winter, 1361. After two decades of conflict, Edward III has finally agreed a treaty with the captive French King, John II. In return for his freedom, John has ceded vast tracts of territory to the English. But for five long years mercenary bands and belligerent lords have fought over the carcass of his kingdom. They will not give up their hard-won spoils to honour a defeated king's promises. If the English want their prize, they'll have to fight for it... Thomas Blackstone will have to fight for it. As he battles to enforce Edward's claim, Thomas Blackstone will see his name blackened, his men slaughtered, his family hunted. He will be betrayed and, once again, he'll face the might of the French army on the field. But this time there will be no English army at his back. He'll face the French alone.

Winter, 1362 After decades of successful campaigning in France, Thomas Blackstone, once a common archer, has risen to become Edward III's Master of War. But the title is as much a curse as a blessing. Success has brought few rewards: his family - bar his son Henry - is dead, slaughtered; his enemies only multiply. Death, in so many guises, beckons. As he battles to enforce his King's claim to French territory, Blackstone will assault an impregnable fortress, he'll become embroiled in a feud between French aristocrats, he'll be forced into pitched battle in the dead of winter... and he'll be asked to pay an impossible price to protect something much more precious to the King than mere land. All the while, out of the east, a group of trained killers, burning with vengeance, draw ever closer.

Winter, 1364. The King is dead. Defeated on the field of Poitiers, Jean Le Bon, King of France, honoured his treaty with England until his death. His son and heir, Charles V, has no intention of doing the same. War is coming and the predators are circling. Sir Thomas Blackstone, Edward III's Master of War, has been tasked with securing Brittany for England. In the throes of battle, he rescues a young boy, sole witness to the final living breaths of the Queen of Castile. The secret the boy carries is a spark deadly enough to ignite conflict on a new front – a front the English cannot afford to fight on. So Blackstone is ordered south to Castile, across the mountains to shepherd Don Pedro, King of Castile, to safety. Accompanied only by a small detachment of his men and a band of Moorish cavalrymen loyal to the king, every step takes Blackstone further into uncertain territory, deeper into an unyielding snare. For the Master of War, the shadow of death is always present.

Tuscany, 1358: Thomas Blackstone has built a formidable reputation in exile, fighting as a mercenary amid the ceaseless internecine warring of Italy's City States. But success has bred many enemies, and when a dying man delivers a message recalling him to England, it seems almost certain to be a trap. Yet Blackstone cannot disobey – the summons is at the Queen's demand. On his journey, Blackstone will brave the terrors of the High Alps in winter, face the Black Prince in tournament, confront the bloody anarchy of a popular revolt and submit to trial by combat. And every step of the way, he will be shadowed by a notorious assassin with orders to despatch him to Hell.

Dan Raglan, former Foreign Legion fighter, alias The Englishman, returns in Resurrection, the new high-octane, high-stakes international thriller from David Gilman. Somewhere in the Sahara, on the desolate border between Sudan and Chad, a P51 Mustang with long-range drop tanks slowly emerges from the dunes. Inside, the skeletalized remains of a man missing for three decades. His flying jacket bears no insignia, a worn leather attache case lies by his side, held securely by a manacle around his left wrist. Inside a document men will kill for. Die for. The sands of time have shifted, and whoever finds that aircraft finds information that could expose the most valuable spy the UK intelligence service has ever known. The British, the French, and the Russians are on the trail. And so is Raglan.

Dan Raglan, former Foreign Legion fighter, alias The Englishman, returns. The new high-octane international thriller from David Gilman. Someone's trying to start a war. And Raglan's just walked into the kill zone. It has been many years since Dan Raglan served in the French Foreign Legion, but the bonds forged in adversity are unbreakable and when one of his comrades calls for help, Raglan is duty-bound to answer. An ex-legionnaire, now an intelligence officer at the Pentagon, disappears. He leaves only this message: should he ever go missing, contact Raglan. But Raglan's not the only one looking for the missing man. From the backstreets of Marseilles, Raglan finds himself following a trail of death that will lead him to Florida, to a Vietnam vet in Washington D.C., and into the heart of a bitter battle in the upper echelons of the US intelligence community. Pursued by both the CIA and a rogue female FBI agent, Raglan's search will place him in the cross hairs of an altogether more lethal organisation. He finds himself in the midst of deadly conspiracy, and on a journey to a fatal confrontation deep in the Honduran rainforest.

The Cold War plays out in the shadow of the Second World War as old loyalties collide Sinister rumours link clandestine Arab arms dealing with a hero of the French resistance. Time to re-open the master file on yesterday's spy...

Hulton College in Norfolk is a school dedicated to producing military officers. With the First World War about to start, the boys of the school will soon be on the front line. But no one expects a war – not even Dr John Smith, the college’s new house master… The Doctor’s friend Benny is enjoying her holiday in the same town. But then she meets a future version of the Doctor, and things start to get dangerous very quickly. With the Doctor she knows gone, and only a suffragette and an elderly rake for company, can Benny fight off a vicious alien attack? And will Dr Smith be able to save the day? An adventure set in Britain on the eve of the First World War, featuring the Seventh Doctor as played by Sylvester McCoy and his companion Bernice Summerfield. This book was the basis for the Tenth Doctor television story Human Nature / The Family of Blood starring David Tennant.

From the master of spy thrillers, John Le Carre's The Spy Who Came In From the Cold is a gripping story of love and betrayal at the height of the Cold War.

From the master of spy thrillers, John Le Carre's The Spy Who Came In From the Cold is a gripping story of love and betrayal at the height of the Cold War.

Penal Colony No. 74, AKA White Eagle, lies some 600 kilometres north of Yekaterinburg in Russia's Sverdlovskaya Oblast. Imprisoning the country's most brutal criminals, it is a winter-ravaged hellhole of death and retribution. And that's exactly why the Englishman is there. Six years ago, Raglan was a soldier in the French Foreign Legion engaged in a hard-fought war on the desert border of Mali and Algeria. Amid black ops teams and competing intelligence agencies, his strike squad was compromised and Raglan himself severely injured. His war was over, but the deadly aftermath of that day has echoed around the world ever since: the assassination of four Moscow CID officers; kidnap and murder on the suburban streets of West London; the fatal compromise of a long-running MI6 operation. Raglan can't avoid the shockwaves. This is personal. It is up to him to finish it – and it ends in Russia's most notorious penal colony. But how do you break into a high security prison in the middle of nowhere? More importantly, how do you get out?

Provoked by the Dauphin's refusal to honour the terms of his father's surrender, Edward III has invaded France with the greatest army England has ever assembled. But the English lion's attempts to claw the French crown from its master are futile. After defeats at Crecy and Poitiers, the Dauphin will no longer meet the English in the field. Mired down in costly sieges and facing a stalemate, Edward's great army is forced to argee a treaty. But peace comes at a price. The French request that Blackstone escort their King's daughter to Italy to see her married to one of the two brothers who rule Milan – the same brothers who killed Blackstone's family to revenge the defeats they suffered at his hand. Blackstone, the French are certain, will never leave Milan alive...

An accessible, powerful overview of Noam Chomsky's political thought In sixteen extended talks with Alternative Radio's David Barsamian, Noam Chomsky explains why the 'war on drugs' is really a war on poor people; how attacks on political correctness are attacks on independent thought; how historical revisionism has recast the United States as the victim in the Vietnam War. Widely recognized as one of the most original and important thinkers of our age, Chomsky's trenchant analysis of current events is a breath of fresh air in a world more and more polluted by mainstream media.

The Western Ocean. 1942: from the bridge of HMS Gladiator, Lieutenant-Commander David Howard's orders were chillingly clear. There could be no mercy. To the men who fought to protect the vital, threatened Merchant Navy convoys in the Western Approaches, the Battle of the Atlantic was a full-scale war; a relentless, savage war against an ever-present enemy and a violent sea - in an arena known only to its embittered survivors as the killing ground. HMS Gladiator was part of that war. An ordinary, hard-worked destroyer and her company of men. Fighting for survival in a war with no rules...