Alyson Sheldrake is the author of the award-winning Algarve Blog, and she is also a feature writer for the Tomorrow Magazine in the Algarve. She is an accomplished and sought-after artist working alongside her husband Dave, a professional photographer. She has published three books about their Algarve Adventures: Living the Dream – in the Algarve, Portugal, Living the Quieter Algarve Dream, and her latest book is a new anthology of expat stories entitled A New Life in the Algarve, Portugal. When she is not painting or writing, you can find her walking their rescued Spanish Water Dog called Kat along the riverbank in Aljezur.
This is a real treat of a book, with sumptuous photography and detailed descriptions. A book to treasure and rest on your coffee table with pride. Portugal is such a beautiful and picturesque place to photograph – I know, I am married to a professional photographer! This book is a treasure-trove of images and information that will make you want to visit – or even pack your bags and move here to live – which is exactly what we did ten years ago. It was the best move we ever made.
Anne de Stoop shares her infectious delight for Portugal via a tour of the diverse country: the Minho and Douro regions in northern Portugal, renowned for their fertile landscapes and port wines; the busy markets of Oporto; elegant country estates and lavish gardens, whose sophisticated designs reflect a rich architectural heritage; the urban pleasures and baroque opulence of Lisbon; the sparkling white villages of the sun-drenched Alentejo; and the unspoiled beaches of the Algarve.
I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t interested in Napoleon, although in what ways have shifted back and forth over time. His reforms shaped the Europe we live in today, as few other rulers have managed. To go to law, to buy and sell, to marry, be born, or divorce, all these actions belong to his Civil Code. That is why I took up the study of his regime and its work as a professional historian. His myth, his exploits, gripped me as a boy, and still do. So spectacular a rise and fall do not happen by chance. There was no one like him.
Not since the monumental work of Jacques Morvan in his Le Soldat Imperial, almost a century ago, has a scholar brought so much learning and insight to the experience of the soldiery of the longest wars in modern European history. Forrest brings his hallmark skills as an archival scholar to the daunting task of reassembling the lives of the men who did the fighting, endured the horrors and the hardships behind the glittering uniforms, and heroic paintings of the battles. He brings the ordinary to life and puts the extraordinary in its proper context of the hardscrabble, but adventurous, lives of the rankers. One for the ages.
Napoleon's soldiers marched across Europe from Lisbon to Moscow, and from Germany to Dalmatia. Many of the men, mostly conscripted by ballot, had never before been beyond their native village. What did they make of the extraordinary experiences, fighting battles thousands of miles from home, foraging for provisions or garrisoning towns in hostile countries? What was it like to be a soldier in the revolutionary and imperial armies? We know more about these men and their reactions to war than about the soldiers of any previous army in history, not just from offical sources but also from the large number…
Alyson Sheldrake is the author of the award-winning Algarve Blog, and she is also a feature writer for the Tomorrow Magazine in the Algarve. She is an accomplished and sought-after artist working alongside her husband Dave, a professional photographer. She has published three books about their Algarve Adventures: Living the Dream – in the Algarve, Portugal, Living the Quieter Algarve Dream, and her latest book is a new anthology of expat stories entitled A New Life in the Algarve, Portugal. When she is not painting or writing, you can find her walking their rescued Spanish Water Dog called Kat along the riverbank in Aljezur.
I am often asked for recommendations on where to go and what to see for visitors to Portugal, and I always recommend Rick Steve’s book. He doesn’t just cover the major attractions, he takes you into the small towns and villages, the remote beaches, and the local restaurants and cafés that will introduce you to the ‘real’ Portugal. Top tips, must-see destinations and clever itineraries will help you to pick out the best spots and the most memorable locations of this beautiful place I am proud to call home.
Stroll Lisbon's cobbled lanes, cruise the Douro River, and soak up the sun on Algarve beaches: experience Portugal with Rick Steves! Inside Rick Steves Portugal you'll find:
* Comprehensive coverage for spending a week or more exploring Portugal * Rick's strategic advice on how to get the most out of your time and money, with rankings of his must-see favorites * Top sights and hidden gems, from the bone chapel of Evora and the palaces of Sintra to seaside street food and lush vineyards * How to connect with culture: Chat with friendly locals over a glass of vinho verde,…
Louise Ross is a non-fiction and fiction writer, speaker, and podcaster. Originally from Australia, she moved abroad in the mid-'80s, living in the UK, France, the US, and since 2014, Portugal. Her book, Women Who Walk: How 20 women from 16 countries came to live in Portugal, (2019), is a collection of mini-memoirs. In 2020, she released the sequel and comparative read, The Winding Road to Portugal: 20 Men from 11 Countries Share Their Stories. Louise lives on the Estoril coastline where she continues to interview women living in Portugal, and around the world, for her podcast, Women Who Walk.
Part spy novel, part historical fiction, this book tells the tale of a young Jewish boy who’s been deposited by his parents at the Hotel Palacio in Estoril for safekeeping during WWII, when the hotel was home to exiled European nobles and royalty, British and German spies. We meet the Polish pianist, Yan Paderewski; Ian Fleming, the British spy novelist and creator of James Bond; French writer and flyer Antoine de St. Exupery; the ex-king of Romania, Carol II, and his mistress Elena Lupescu, the woman for whom he renounced the crown. We’re privy to the goings-on at the Hotel via the lives of this cast of colourful characters in a way that’s reminiscent of the quirky movie, The Grand Budapest Hotel.
Set in a luxurious grand hotel just outside Lisbon, at the height of the Second World War, Estoril is a delightful and poignant novel about exile, divided loyalties, fear and survival. The hotel's guests include spies, fallen kings, refugees from the Balkans, Nazis, American diplomats and stateless Jews. The Portuguese secret police broodingly observe the visitors, terrified that their country's neutrality will be compromised.
The novel seamlessly fuses the stories of its invented characters with appearances by historical figures like the ex-King Carol of Romania, the great Polish pianist Jan Paderewski, the British agent Ian Fleming, the Russian chess grandmaster…
I love to read fiction and non-fiction about the city in which I live, and Lisbon is where I've lived for nearly 12 years. And Chris Pavone manages to capture the contemporary landscape as a backdrop to his face-paced John le Carré-like thriller. Thoroughly enjoyed it!
AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES AND NATIONAL BESTSELLER. "There’s no such thing as a book you can’t put down, but this one was close." —Stephen King "Smart suspense at its very best." —John Grisham
Tautly wound and expertly crafted, Two Nights in Lisbon is a riveting thriller about a woman under pressure, and how far she will go when everything is on the line.
You think you know a person . . .
Ariel Pryce wakes up in Lisbon, alone. Her husband is gone—no warning, no note, not answering his phone. Something is wrong.
I have been to Europe a handful of times, exploring Paris, Italy, Malta, Spain, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, and Amsterdam. Europe lends itself perfectly to be immortalised in literature. The continent is steeped in thousands of years of charming history, oozing out of the cobblestoned streets and painted in layers on the buildings. Scratch the surface and a new, richer layer comes to the fore, exciting and amazing anew. Europe inevitably turns into one of the important characters in any book set there and many a writer have managed to capture its essence in their work. Alongside Peter Sarstedt, Europe inspired my work, taking the reader along on a wondrous journey.
To be honest, this one is close to being a travel book. Rick Steves is a well-known traveler, with a large number of guide books and television shows sharing his exploits with the world. But, this book describes Europe in a way that no travel guide can. Rick is a master of sharing anecdotes of his travels through Europe, never failing to describe the flavours, sights, and sounds of the continent and the wonderful cities we all yearn to see. This was a wonderful escape during the 2020 lockdowns, a true lifesaver!
After 40+ years of writing about Europe, Rick Steves has gathered 100 of his favorite articles and essays together into one inspiring collection: For the Love of Europe: My Favorite Places, People, and Stories.
Join Rick as he's swept away by a fado singer in Lisbon, learns the dangers of falling in love with a gondolier in Venice, and savors a cheese course in the Loire Valley. Contemplate the mysteries of centuries-old stone circles in England, dangle from a cliff in the Swiss Alps, and hear a French farmer's defense of foie gras.
With a brand-new, original introduction from Rick…
Every serious researcher who seeks clarity about specific historical events understands the value of primary source material, and I was happy to stumble across this treasure trove.
The editor and his assistants diligently researched every surviving official record from the 16th Century pertaining to the Battle of the Spanish Armada, and they compiled a series of official letters written by actual protagonists and eyewitnesses.
The magnitude of the battle is summarized by the editor in his introduction: "The defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588…[was] one of the decisive battles of the world…it marks alike the approaching downfall of Spain and the rise of England as a great maritime power.”
I frequently tapped into this critical resource while researching and writing my novelized account of the battle.
These are chiefly 'State Papers' in the narrow sense of records of the English Secretary of State, but include other English government documents from the Public Record Office and the British Museum. Vol I covers December 1587 to July 1588.
On 19 May 1588 the Spanish Armada set sail from Lisbon. 130 ships and carried 2,500 guns and 30,000 men. The fleet was not sighted off the Lizard until 29 July 1588 as the Armada was forced by poor weather and a lack of supplies into Corunna. This book, the very first published by the Navy Records Society, in 1894,…
My name is B.W. Powe—and I’m a writer, poet, teacher, mentor, and musician. I’ve written since I was a boy, when I began to dream of beautiful sentences, and finding a way to turn music into literary expression. I live in Stouffville, a small edge town near Toronto, Canada—and a portion of the year in Cordoba, Spain, where my wife is from. I was encouraged by my mother, an amateur pianist, and my father, a politician, and novelist. We lived in Toronto through the 60s-90s and witnessed how the city sprawled. I’ve written about the Genesis Overdrive that informs culture and lives. My latest book, Ladders Made of Water, will be available on February 14th, 2023.
Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet—original, counter, spare, strange—is not like anyone’s book, truly, in its mix of prose poetry, reflections, impressions, descriptions of psychic states and the city of Lisbon. I’d say read it to remind you of how hauntingly elliptical and daring a book can be.
I love it for its mysterious quality—how it evokes, invokes moods—how it stays ahead of you—always inviting you to come back to it. It taught me to welcome the unfinished and fragmentary, the evasive and the atmospheric, the creation of new identities in a book, that enigma and precise description can exist side by side, the alchemical mix of disbelief and mystique, the sense of something getting ready to be uttered, the sheer beauty of its expressiveness.
It taught me to overcome the sense that a book must be linear or systematic, or even accessible and lucid: it revels its embryonic obscurities…
A modernist masterwork that has now taken on a similar iconic status to Ulysses, The Trial or In Search of Lost Time, Fernando Pessoa's The Book of Disquiet is edited and translated with an introduction by Richard Zenith in Penguin Modern Classics.
'Fernando Pessoa, strictly speaking, doesn't exist,' - so claimed Alvaro de Campos, one of the 'heteronyms', fully-realised substitute personalities invented by Fernando Pessoa to spare himself the trouble of living real life. In this extraordinary book, the putative 'factless autobiography' of an accountant named Bernardo Soares, Fernando Pessoa explores and dismantles the nature of memory, identity, time and…
For many years, I’ve been creating visual nonfiction books for adults. These books are about climate change, indigenous sovereignty, and nuclear physics—not typical kids’ book fare. But because my books include artwork, everyone always asked me when I would write and illustrate a book for children. Once I had my own children, I was suddenly full of ideas. Children’s books are often underestimated. The best books of the genre are accessible enough to interest a young person, sophisticated enough to engage the adults reading them aloud, and multidimensional enough to reward countless re-readings. I believe books that meet this standard fit alongside civilization’s great works of literature.
I never tire of reading this brilliant book to my son. His imagination (and mine) goes to new places with each rereading. Each spread relocates the reader to another corner of the world, where we glimpse a snapshot of action: someone honks their car horn in a traffic jam in Mexico City, a volcano erupts in Papua-New Guinea, a woman drops a mysterious envelope on the sidewalk in Budapest.
For my son and I, the book has been as interactive as any game, offering endless possibilities for discussion and debate. Because each spread is a single moment, we can dream up our own interpretation of what might have led to this scene and what will unfold afterward. It’s wonderful to see wildly varied landscapes as we travel the planet.
Inspired by the question, "What are they doing right at this moment on the other side of the world?" this book focuses on natural and human events happening all over the world in the same second. Talking about the world and how it's so different in places but also so similar and shared, so incredible and surprising, the books takes us to New York, Chicago, Mexico, Portugal, Angola, Turkey, Greece, Italy, Hungry, Brazil, and South Africa, among others.
So, while you sit turning the pages of this book, things are happening everywhere. Somewhere, a wave is reaching the shore. Elsewhere,…
I love thrillers that give you something to think about, keep you on the edge of your seat and take you to new places. And, although I also like Daniel Silva and Lee Child and Tess Gerritsen et al, I love to find new voices in the thriller genre, especially ones (like mine) that haven’t become household names. And I am especially drawn to thrillers with great prose and great characters. Try some of the books I recommended. You will not be sorry.
Yes, yes, I know this book won a gold dagger… but I still doubt you have read it or heard of Robert Wilson. I loved this book for three reasons. First, Wilson can flat-out write. Even though the prose is almost lyrical, it still reads like a fast-paced thriller, not an easy combination to achieve. Second, I love Lisbon, and reading the book is like walking through the streets of this great city. Third, I love dual timeline books—when they are done right—and Wilson really nails it.
This stunning, atmospheric thriller set in war-torn Europe won the CWA Gold Dagger and has now been reissued with the Javier Falcon series.
A Portuguese bank is founded on the back of Nazi wartime deals. Over half a century later a young girl is murdered in Lisbon. 1941. Klaus Felsen, SS, arrives in Lisbon and the strangest party in history where Nazis and Allies, refugees and entrepreneurs dance to the strains of opportunism and despair. Felsen's war takes him to the bleak mountains of the north where a brutal battle is being fought for an element vital to Hitler's blitzkrieg.…
