It is surprising how few books there are on the history of fruits. Few topics can be more satisfyingly whole or surprisingly rich - more fruitful, in short. The pineapple's 500-year recorded history leads first-time author Fran Beauman to explore linguistics, social and economic history, colonialism, the industrial revolution, stone masonry, gardening technology and much more...Beauman jauntily rides the pineapple on through history.

Beauman's lively book is jam-packed with details..As Beauman concludes, the pineapple's tantalising exoticism its unique shape, heady perfume, lip-stinging juices and cultural resonance ensures it remains emphatically the king of fruits

Beauman's enthusiasm for her subject gives the book an admirable dynamism

With the selective skill of a great master painter who makes the most minute detail play its part in the whole composition, Vincent Cronin has, in this distinguished book, sifted for us the living spectacle of the quattrocento in the hub of Tuscany.

Harrowing and heartbreaking yet important tales

I was stunned and moved more than I can say

A compelling and affecting saga that resonates long after the reading. Montefiore's depiction of the epoch is superb. The language is precise and evocative without getting in the way of the storyline. Its evocation of 20th Century Russia is so intoxicating it made want to buy a plane ticket and find out more for myself. I can't remember being as moved by the fate of a character in a novel for some time

A must read! Montefiore polishes all the facets of a good story - secrets, lies, betrayal, love and death - and places them in Russia's grand setting

Gripping... moves you to tears

This completely addictive story offers an authoratative insight into Stalin's USSR and, in its huge characters and epic ambition, carries echoes of Tolstoy himself

A heartbreaking tale of passion, betrayal and an unthinkable decision

A compelling novel of passions and secrets, politics and lies, love and betrayal, savagery and survival

Sweeping historical epic about a daring young woman forced to make a hard choice in Stalinist Russia

Excellent... the historical detail is strong. The characterisation is superb, with Sashenka being especially well drawn. With her unwanted beauty and charisma, her gentle nobility that transcends class or wealth and her earnest ideals which eventually cost her so much. Sashenka commands out total sympathy, and when she is forced apart from her children, the sadness is profound and hard to dispel. A powerful novel... with a heroine who lingers in the mind when the story is finished

Sashenka is grand in scale, rich in historical research, and yet never loses the flow of an addictive, racy, well-wrought plot. It combines a moving, satisfyingly just-neat-enough finale with a warning - that history has an awful habit of repeating itself

An epic novel... The suspense lasts until the final pages. There is no let-up. At the end of the book, you really feel that even though Sashenka is a fictional character, she has become one of the thousands of real people who haunt the Moscow archives that Montefiore knows so well