The Professor was the first novel that Charlotte Brontë completed. Rejected by the publisher who took on the work of her sisters in 1846—Anne's Agnes Grey and Emily's Wuthering Heights—it remained unpublished until 1857, two years after Charlotte Brontë's death. Like Villette (1853), The Professor is based on her experiences as a language student in Brussels in 1842. Told from the point of view of William Crimsworth, the only male narrator...

"1942. Hannah Martel has narrowly escaped Nazi Germany. When her ship bound for America is turned away at port, she has nowhere to go but to her cousin Lily in Brussels. Fearful for her life, Hannah is desperate to get out of occupied Europe. But with no safe way to leave, she must return to the dangerous underground work she thought she had left behind. Seeking help, Hannah joins the Sapphire Line, a secret resistance network. But when a grave mistake...

When her husband, Intelligence Agent Malcolm Rannoch, is sent on a perilous mission in the wake of Napoleon's escape from Elba, Suzanne must help him expose a killer as they are both forced to play a deadly game of murder, espionage and betrayal.

"Set in the European Union buildings in Brussels, [this novel] is based on Manasse?s extensive research of this much-maligned institution. Without a central plot, it offers a kaleidoscopic view of the machinations and tribulations of a huge cast of characters who undertake the widely varied work of the European Commission. One strand follows the attempts of Martin Susman and Fenia Xenapoulou, bureaucrats in the Department of Culture, to organize a...