Lieutenant Colonel Philip Toosey was the senior British officer concerned with the building of the notorious "Bridge over the River Kwai". Toosey understood from the very beginning that the only real issue was how to ensure that as many of his men as possible should survive their captivity. Many thousands who knew how Toosey stood up to their oppressors at great personal risk were incensed by Alec Guinness's brilliant portrayal of 'Colonel Nicholson' in the film version of Boulle's book. This book provides an accurate historical account of the terrible events during which more than 16,000 PoWs died while building the Thai-Burma railway, of which "the bridge" formed an essential part. A memorial to Toosey, this book is also a definitive history of the building of the railway in the context of the Far Eastern theatre of World War II. First published in 1991, this title is part of the Bloomsbury Academic Collections series.

"Readers will be captivated by this beautifully written novel about young people who must use their instincts and grit to survive. Padma infuses her story with hope and bravery that will inspire readers."--Aisha Saeed, author of the New York Times Bestseller Amal Unbound Four determined homeless children make a life for themselves in Padma Venkatraman's stirring middle-grade debut. Life is harsh on the teeming streets of Chennai, India, so when runaway sisters Viji and Rukku arrive, their prospects look grim. Very quickly, eleven-year-old Viji discovers how vulnerable they are in this uncaring, dangerous world. Fortunately, the girls find shelter--and friendship--on an abandoned bridge that's also the hideout of Muthi and Arul, two homeless boys, and the four of them soon form a family of sorts. And while making their living scavenging the city's trash heaps is the pits, the kids find plenty to take pride in, too. After all, they are now the bosses of themselves and no longer dependent on untrustworthy adults. But when illness strikes, Viji must decide whether to risk seeking help from strangers or to keep holding on to their fragile, hard-fought freedom.

From the author of the beloved #1 national bestseller Crow Lake comes an exceptional new novel of jealously, rivalry and the dangerous power of obsession. Two brothers, Arthur and Jake Dunn, are the sons of a farmer in the mid-1930s, when life is tough and another world war is looming. Arthur is reticent, solid, dutiful and set to inherit the farm and his father’s character; Jake is younger, attractive, mercurial and dangerous to know – the family misfit. When a beautiful young woman comes into the community, the fragile balance of sibling rivalry tips over the edge. Then there is Ian, the family’s next generation, and far too sure he knows the difference between right and wrong. By now it is the fifties, and the world has changed—a little, but not enough. These two generations in the small town of Struan, Ontario, are tragically interlocked, linked by fate and community but separated by a war which devours its young men—its unimaginable horror reaching right into the heart of this remote corner of an empire. With her astonishing ability to turn the ratchet of tension slowly and delicately, Lawson builds their story to a shocking climax. Taut with apprehension, surprising us with moments of tenderness and humour, The Other Side of the Bridge is a compelling, humane and vividly evoked novel with an irresistible emotional undertow.

One exceptional boy journeys into the ashes of society to find the cure for a devastating plague in this riveting post-apocalyptic standalone set in the same world as the USA Today-bestselling The Girl With All the Gifts. Once upon a time, in a land blighted by terror, there was a very clever boy. The people thought the boy could save them, so they opened their gates and sent him out into the world. To where the monsters lived. "Strange and surprising and humane" (Lauren Beukes), The Boy on the Bridge is a gripping, powerful story that will make you question what it means to be human.

Two childhood friends from Scotland and two illegitimate half-brothers from the south suffer and enjoy all manner of bizarre adventures that are somehow interconnected.

Wearing a police wire, a skateboarding street boy from Spokane confronts the drug dealer who threatens to kill his brother.

In Mrs. Bridge, Evan S. Connell, a consummate storyteller, artfully crafts a portrait using the finest of details in everyday events and confrontations. With a surgeon's skill, Connell cuts away the middle-class security blanket of uniformity to expose the arrested development underneath-the entropy of time and relationships lead Mrs. Bridge's three children and husband to recede into a remote silence, and she herself drifts further into doubt and confusion. The raised evening newspaper becomes almost a fire screen to deflect any possible spark of conversation. The novel is compris.

From the author of the no.1 New York Times bestselling novel The Book Thief. "An amazing talent in Australian literature" Sunday Telegraph The Dunbar boys bring each other up in a house run by their own rules. A family of ramshackle tragedy - their mother is dead, their father has fled - they love and fight, and learn to reckon with the adult world. It is Clay, the quiet one, who will build a bridge; for his family, for his past, for his sins. He builds a bridge to transcend humanness. To survive. A miracle and nothing less. WINNER INDIE BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION 2019 SHORTLISTED FOR THE ABIA BOOK OF THE YEAR 2019 LONGLISTED FOR THE DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD 2020 PRAISE FOR BRIDGE OF CLAY "I am pleased to recommend...Markus Zusak's extraordinary novel Bridge of Clay, which I suspect I'll reread many times. It's a sprawling, challenging, and endlessly rewarding book. But it also has the raw and real and unironized emotion that courses through all of Zusak's books. I'm in awe of him." John Green, author of The Fault in Our Stars and Looking for Alaska "Exquisitely written multigenerational family saga...With heft and historical scope, Zusak creates a sensitively rendered tale of loss, grief, and guilt's manifestations." Publishers Weekly "An evocative, compassionate and exquisitely composed coming-of-age story about family, love, tragedy and forgiveness. Zusak's prose is distinct: astute, witty, exquisitely rhythmic, and utterly engrossing." Australian Books+Publishing Magazine "Zusak is a writer of extraordinary empathy and he excels in his understanding of adolescent boys...in his portrayal of the gently traumatised Clay he has created a memorable character to savour... in Bridge of Clay, as earlier in The Book Thief, Zusak has succeeded in creating a story so vibrant and so real that the reader feels enveloped by it." The Australian "This vast novel is a feast of language and irony. It is such a compassionate book that it is hard not to fall a bit in love with it yourself. Bridge of Clay shares with Zusak's The Book Thief an underlying sense of the possibility of joy and human dignity even in dehumanising situations." Sydney Morning Herald "A complex, big-hearted, multi-generational Australian epic, highly evocative and rich in idiom that sprawls across 580 pages, much in the manner of Colleen McCullough, or Tim Winton's Cloudstreet." Good Weekend Magazine "In 2005, the Australian writer dazzled readers and secured a perch on bestseller lists with The Book Thief ...this book too is a stunner. Devastating, demanding and deeply moving, Bridge of Clay unspools like a kind of magic act in reverse, with feats of narrative legerdemain concealed by misdirection that all make sense only when the elements of the trick are finally laid out. In words that seem to ache with emotion, or perhaps, more aptly, with the suppression of it, Mr. Zusak moves us in and out of time. Grief and sacrifice lie at the heart of things, and we can feel it through Mr. Zusak's writing even before we understand the story's real contours." Wall Street Journal "What truly stands out about Bridge of Clay is the intensity of the prose - the potency of the heartbreak. The depth of grief and loss is so palpable you can all but feel the blood, sweat, and tears that went into crafting the story." Entertainment Weekly "As with The Book Thief, much of the appeal of the novel lies in Zusak's heartfelt love for his characters and for language. The book sings in short musical sentences like poetry, and words stop you in your tracks." Herald Sun

A “witty [and] compelling” true story for kids about San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge—and why it’s orange—by the New York Times–bestselling author! (Fast Company). In this delightfully original nonfiction book, National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize finalist Dave Eggers tackles one of the most famous architectural monuments in the world: the Golden Gate Bridge—and all the arguments and debates about building it and what it should look like. Cut-paper illustrations by Tucker Nichols enliven the tale, and this revised edition also includes real-life letters from local constituents making the case for keeping the bridge orange. With sly humor and lots of fascinating historical facts, this is an accessible, enjoyable read for kids (or adults), transporting readers to the glorious Golden Gate no matter where they live. “Eggers’s featherlight humor provides laughs throughout.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review). “A love letter to infrastructure.” —The New York Times “A story compelling enough to keep adults interested as they read it (and re-read it and re-read it) each night at bedtime.” —Fast Company

The #1 New York Times bestseller and subject of the acclaimed major motion picture Bridge of Spies directed by Steven Spielberg, starring Tom Hanks as James B. Donovan. Originally published in 1964, this is the “enthralling…truly remarkable” (The New York Times Book Review) insider account of the Cold War spy exchange—with a new foreword by Jason Matthews, New York Times bestselling author of Red Sparrow and Palace of Treason. In the early morning of February 10, 1962, James B. Donovan began his walk toward the center of the Glienicke Bridge, the famous “Bridge of Spies” which then linked West Berlin to East. With him, walked Rudolf Ivanovich Abel, master spy and for years the chief of Soviet espionage in the United States. Approaching them from the other side, under equally heavy guard, was Francis Gary Powers, the American U-2 spy plane pilot famously shot down by the Soviets, whose exchange for Abel Donovan had negotiated. These were the strangers on a bridge, men of East and West, representatives of two opposed worlds meeting in a moment of high drama. Abel was the most gifted, the most mysterious, the most effective spy in his time. His trial, which began in a Brooklyn United States District Court and ended in the Supreme Court of the United States, chillingly revealed the methods and successes of Soviet espionage. No one was better equipped to tell the whole absorbing history than James B. Donovan, who was appointed to defend one of his country’s enemies and did so with scrupulous skill. In Strangers on a Bridge, the lead prosecutor in the Nuremburg Trials offers a clear-eyed and fast-paced memoir that is part procedural drama, part dark character study and reads like a noirish espionage thriller. From the first interview with Abel to the exchange on the bridge in Berlin—and featuring unseen photographs of Donovan and Abel as well as trial notes and sketches drawn from Abel’s prison cell—here is an important historical narrative that is “as fascinating as it is exciting” (The Houston Chronicle).