An ex-CIA agent recounts several key cases of his career--including the infiltration of a Palestinian terror group and efforts in Iraq to undermine Saddam Hussein--and reflects on how the agency has gone into decline after his departure. Key ideas from the book inspired the entirely fictional thriller scenario of 2005 film SYRIANA, starring George Clooney, Jeffrey Wright, and Matt Damon.

Interweaving 14 years worth of research with an action-packed narrative, this transportation history chronicles the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad and the political and cultural struggles surrounding the expansion of the American West. A 2000 New York Times Notable Book.

George Hardy is a successful Liverpool surgeon and an amateur photographer. He is also, secretly, an alcoholic and a homosexual. The facts of his life are narrated by the people in his life: Myrtle, an orphan girl who devotes her life to him, even surreptitiously bearing his children (his wife is barren); his brother-in-law Dr. Potter, a geologist and classical scholar; and Pompey Jones, a street-urchin and fire-eater as well as Master Georgie's assistant and lover. The Crimean War is the background to this melancholy novel, which is about the essential aloneness of all human beings. A New York Times Notable Book for 1998.

Beryl Bainbridge's first novel in five years is an account of the classic tragedy of the sinking of the Titanic in 1912. The protagonist, a young Harvard grad with a rags-to-riches background, finds in the wreck a chance to prove himself as a man. A 1996 Booker Prize nominee.

Stella, star-struck teenage actress becomes involved in the backstage intrigues of a Liverpool repertory company. Her crush on the director of a production of "Peter Pan" has consequences she didn't dream of.

A fictionalized account of the expedition of Captain Scott to the South Pole.