Bloomsbury Publishing

Jakob Beer is seven years old when he is rescued from the muddy ruins of a buried village in Nazi-occupied Poland. Of his family, he is the only one who has survived. Under the guidance of the Greek geologist Athos, Jakob must steel himself to excavate the horrors of his own history. A novel of astounding beauty and wisdom, Fugitive Pieces is a profound meditation on the resilience of the human spirit and love's ability to resurrect even the most damaged of hearts.

In this wide-ranging history of debt Margaret Atwood investigates its many meanings through the ages, from ancient times to the current global financial meltdown. Many of us wonder: how could we have let such a collapse happen? How old or inevitable is this human pattern of debt? Imaginative, topical and insightful, Payback urges us to reconsider our ideas of ownership and debt — before it is too late.

When Peter's parents are killed, he is sent to an orphanage in Warsaw. Then German soldiers take him away to be measured and assessed. They decide that Peter is racially valuable. He is Volksdeutsche: of German blood. With his blond hair, blue eyes, and acceptably proportioned head, he looks just like the boy on the Hitler Jugend poster. Someone important will want to adopt Peter. They do. He is sent to Germany to meet his new family. Professor Kaltenbach and his wife have three daughters, but they have always wanted a son. The professor in particular is very pleased to welcome such a fine Aryan specimen to his household. People will be envious. But Peter is not quite the specimen they think. He is forming his own ideas about what he is seeing, what he is told. Peter doesn't want to be a Nazi, and so he is going to play a very dangerous game. The most dangerous game he could possibly choose to play in 1941, in Berlin.

Madame Pamplemousse is the story of Madeleine, forced to work in her unpleasant uncle's horrible restaurant, The Squealing Pig. By chance she comes across the most marvellous shop, run by Madame Pamplemousse, which is quiet, discreet, yet full of delicious and otherworldly 'edibles' — Pterodactyl Bacon, Scorpion Tails in Smoked Garlic Oil, and Great Squid Tentacle in Jasmine-Scented Jelly. A quiet comradeship develops between Madeleine, Madame Pamplemousse, and Madame's cat, Camembert. And together they create some wonderful culinary magic. Exquisite, beautifully formed prose that has echoes of Angela Carter belies a narrative that is full of pace. A wonderful fairy tale that will appeal to both adults and children.

I always think that if you walk around thinking you can have anything you want, you usually can.For confident nineteen-year-old Anna, finding men is easy, holding on to them unnecessary. Moving to Paris brings her a new job, a new life and a new friend in the form of a woman twenty years her senior, Beth. As they fall in love with the city, Anna is irresistibly drawn to Beth's warmth and charm. When Beth falls in love with an attractive Frenchman, Christian, Anna struggles to overcome her increasing jealousy. But who is her real rival: Christian or Beth? A sultry tale of betrayal and regret, Harm's Way traces Anna's story as she learns one of life's hardest lessons: that if you believe you can have anything you want, you may end up with nothing but regret.

In 1954 a fisherman is found dead in the nets of his boat, and a local Japanese-American man is charged with his murder. In the course of his trial, it becomes clear that what is at stake is more than one man's guilt. For on San Piedro, memories grow as thickly as cedar trees and the fields of ripe strawberries — memories of a charmed love affair between a white boy and a Japanese girl; memories of land desired, paid for, and lost. Above all, San Piedro is haunted by the memory of what happened to its Japanese residents during World War II, when an entire community was sent into exile while its neighbours watched.

Faustin Charles has specially created for this collection over 40 new rhymes inspired by traditional nursery rhymes and all featuring animal characters. The rhymes are illustrated throughout by Michael Terry, illustrator of the bestselling The Selfish Crocodile, and whose animal portrayals have become legendary. Combined with a fantastic audio CD that has Faustin Charles narrating the poems with lots of amazing animal sounds and noises, this will make a much-loved and much-listened to collection for younger readers.

»You're not responsible for your ancestry, are you... But if that's so, why have marched under banned slogans, got yourself beaten up by the police, arrested a couple of times; plastered walls with subversive posters... The past is valid only in relation to whether the present recognizes it». In this collection of new stories Nadine Gordimer crosses the frontiers of politics, memory, sexuality, and love with the fearless insight that is the hallmark of her writing. In the title story a middle-aged academic who had been an anti-apartheid activist embarks on an unadmitted pursuit of the possibilities for his own racial identity in his great-grandfather's fortune-hunting interlude of living rough on diamond diggings in South Africa, his young wife far away in London. “Dreaming of the Dead” conjures up a lunch in a New York Chinese restaurant where Susan Sontag and Edward Said return in surprising new avatars as guests in the dream of a loving friend. The historian in “History” is a parrot who confronts people with the scandalizing voice reproduction of quarrels and clandestine love-talk on which it has eavesdropped. “Alternative Endings” considers the way writers make arbitrary choices in how to end stories and offers three, each relating the same situation, but with a different resolution, arrived at by the three senses: sight, sound, and smell.

An epic of biblical proportions, The Year of the Flood is a feast of imagination and a journey to the end of the world. Adam One is the leader of the God's Gardeners, a religious group devoted to living under the command of the natural world. They wear beige cloth-sacks, cultivate mushrooms, harvest honey and curse each other by shouting: Pig-Eater! Their community is only tolerated by the CorpSeCorps, the ruling power, because they are not perceived as threatening. But, this is a world where gene-splicing is the norm; where lions and lambs have become Liobams and pigs have human DNA. The times, and species, are changing at a rapid rate, and with loyalites as thin as environmental stability, the future is a dangerous place. And, if the Waterless Flood does indeed arrive, as predicted by the Gardeners, will there even be a future to contemplate? Ren is a trapeze dancer at Scales and Tails, and can work a plank just as well. After a rip in her biofilm she is placed in solitary confinement until they can guarantee she is without disease. Her story is one part of our gateway into this uniquely constructed world. The other is Toby, an ex-counter-girl at SecretBurger ('Because we all love a Secret'), a natural cynic and source of extensive homeopathic knowledge; she knows her aminatas from her puffballs. Their stories weave beneath the holy teachings and saintly-songs of Adam One to create a truly apocalyptic vision, a world that harnesses Atwood's wit, dystopic imagination and sharp insight. The result is a collective blast of a novel and one that will remain with you until the Waterless Flood comes.

The appearance of a hastily-constructed barbed wire entanglement through the heart of Berlin during the night of 12-13 August 1961 was both dramatic and unexpected. Within days, it had started to metamorphose into a structure that would come to symbolise the brutal insanity of the Cold War: the Berlin Wall. A city of almost four million was cut ruthlessly in two, unleashing a potentially catastrophic East-West crisis and plunging the entire world for the first time into the fear of imminent missile-borne apocalypse. This threat would vanish only when the very people the Wall had been built to imprison, breached it on the historic night of 9 November 1989. The Berlin Wall reveals the strange and chilling story of how the initial barrier system was conceived, then systematically extended, adapted and strengthened over almost thirty years. Patrolled by vicious dogs and by guards on shoot-to-kill orders, the Wall, with its more than 300 towers, became a wired and lethally booby-trapped monument to a world torn apart by fiercely antagonistic ideologies. The Wall had tragic consequences in personal and political terms, affecting the lives of Germans and non-Germans alike in a myriad of cruel, inhuman and occasionally absurd ways. The Berlin Wall is the definitive account of a divided city and its people.

Throughout his career as a novelist, William Boyd has never stopped writing non-fiction, providing a fascinating counterpoint to the world of his novels. Bamboo gathers together Boyd's writing on literature, art, the movie business, television, people he has met, places he has visited and autobiographical reflections on his African childhood and his years at boarding school. From Pablo Picasso to the allure of the British caff, from Charles Dickens to Catherine Deneuve, from mini-cabs to Brideshead Revisited, this collection proves an engrossing and revealing companion to the work of one of Britain's leading novelists.

When two young women meet under extraordinary circumstances in the eighteenth century West Indies, they are unified in their desire to escape their oppressive lives. The first is a slave, forced to work in a plantation mansion and subjected to terrible cruelty at the hands of the plantation manager. The second is a spirited and rebellious English girl, sent to the West Indies to marry well and combine the wealth of two respectable families. But fate ensures that one night the two young women have to save each other and run away to a life no less dangerous but certainly a lot more free. As pirates, they roam the seas, fight pitched battles against their foes and become embroiled in many a heart-quickening adventure. Written in brilliant and sparkling first-person narrative, this is a wonderful novel in which Celia Rees has brought the past vividly and intimately to life.

Forty years after the disappearance of a beautiful schoolgirl, thirteen members of her swimming team gather at their old boarding school for a reunion, and look back to the weeks leading to her disappearance. As teenage memories and emotions resurface, the women relive the horror of a long-buried secret. Now a major film directed by Jordan Scott and starring Eva Green, Cracks is a mesmerising and shocking story of teenage sexuality, longing and identity.

Central concerns will be the rags to riches element of Garcia Marquez's story, the tension in his life between celebrity and literary quality, between politics and writing; and between power, solitude and love; the contrast between his Caribbean background and the gloomier authoritarianism of highland Bogota; and his conscious but nonetheless extraordinary turn away from Macondo, magical realism and «One Hundred Years of Solitude» after those interlinked phenomena had brought him fame and unimagined wealth. Martin is considered by Garcia Marquez to be his 'official' biographer and he has met the novelist and conducted interviews with him at regular intervals throughout the 15-year research period.He has also interviewed at least 300 other persons, including Fidel Castro, Felipe Gonzalez, several presidents of Colombia, writers like Carlos Fuentes, Mario Vargas Llosa and Alvaro Mutis, the author's wife and sons, his mother, his brothers and sisters, his literary agent and translators, and most of his best friends and professional collaborators (as well as some detractors). This biography is not only based on Martin's unique experience of Garcia Marquez and his milieux over the last two decades but also on a wealth of sources, which it will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, for any other biographer to replicate.

Mankind has always been fascinated by space — prehistoric man built temples to honour the moon and sun, early civilisations developed theories about what went on up there, and scientists and philosophers from Pythagoras to Copernicus have been drawn to it ever since. Our obsession has led us in to space itself. Not to mention the numerous amazing books, films and UFO 'experiences'. Everything there is to know about space is here. With pictures. It's very very funny. And, of course, supremely edifying.Written by Tracey Turner (101 Things) and illustrated by celebrated cartoonist Sally Kindberg.

As every parent knows, Christmas is a time of great excitement and here young readers can join Lulu as she prepares the tree, lays out her stocking, builds a snowman and — of course — experiences the thrill of opening her presents. But which will Lulu's favourite present be in this glorious book, full of touch-and-feel, pull-tab and sensational surprise elements?

The world is populated by some beastly dragons who care nothing for how much they mess up the oceans, chop down the trees, gobble up all the food and use everything up without stopping to think. Those dragons need to wake up to what they are doing to their world before it is too late A delightful and energy-filled picture book that addresses concerns about the environment in the most child-centric and delightful way possible.

Peking, 1914. Eight-year-old Eastern Jewel peers from behind a screen as her father, Prince Su makes love to a servant girl. Caught spying by her thirteenth sister, Eastern Jewel’s sexual curiosity sees her banished to live with distant relatives in Tokyo, then forced into a passionless marriage in freezing Mongolia. Increasingly isolated, at night she is plagued by disturbing fantasies and unsettling dreams. But she refuses to be pinned down by anyone – least of all a man – and in the dazzling city of Shanghai she puts her thrill-seeking nature to work spying for the Japanese, spurning everything she once held dear… Based on the real-life story of Yoshiko Kawashima, Chinese princess turned ruthless Japanese spy, «The Private Papers of Eastern Jewel» is an intoxicating tale of sexual manipulation and self-discovery that spans three countries and a world war.

It's 1946. Juliet Ashton, a 32-year-old writer, has found a certain recognition through her light-hearted column for the Spectator which lifted the spirits of her readers during WW2, but she can't think what to write next. But then Dawsey Adams writes to her from Guernsey — by chance he's acquired a book Juliet once owned — and, emboldened by their mutual love of books, they begin a correspondence. Dawsey belongs to the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, and as Juliet investigates the strange-named reading group, soon she stumbles upon a whole number of islanders eager to write and tell her of their experiences of the German occupation of Guernsey. Entranced by her new friends, Juliet decides to visit the island to meet them properly. A moving tale of friendship, tolerance and forgiveness in the wake of a period of unthinkable hardship and horror, this is set to become a classic.

As featured in the first year set texts reading list in «Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone», «Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them» is an extensive introduction to the magical beasts that exist in the magical, non-Muggle world. Some of the animals featured in the A–Z you will have already met in the existing Harry Potter books: for example Hippogriff, Flobberworm, Kappa – others you certainly won’t: read on to find out exactly what a Chizpurfle is, or why one should always beware of the sinister Lethifold... As Albus Dumbledore says in his introduction, this set text book by Newt Scamander has given the perfect grounding to many a Hogwarts student. It will be helpful to all Muggles out there too... On reading the book you will also find that Harry, Ron and (in one instance) Hermione – couldn’t resist graffitiing the book, and adding their own hand-written opinions.

Did you know that: there are 700 ways of committing a foul in Quidditch? The game first began to evolve on Queerditch Marsh? What Bumphing is? That Puddlemere United is oldest team in the Britain and Ireland league? (Founded 1163.) All this information and much more could be yours once you have read this book: this is all you could ever need to know about the history, the rules – and the breaking of the rules – of the noble wizarding sport of Quidditch.

The international bestseller, reissued with a striking new illustrated cover with a new introduction by Neil Gaiman. Part of The Bloomsbury Phantastic series — three books tracing the tradition of fantasy from Edgar Allan Poe to Neil Gaiman and Susanna Clarke. Susanna Clarke’s novel is an epic tale of nineteenth-century England and the two magicians who emerge to change its history. In the year 1806, in the midst of the Napoleonic Wars, most people believe magic to have long since disappeared from England — until the reclusive Mr Norrell reveals his powers and becomes a celebrity overnight. Another practising magician emerges: the young and daring Jonathan Strange. He becomes Norrell’s pupil and the two join forces in the war against France. But Strange is increasingly drawn to the wildest, most perilous forms of magic and soon he risks sacrificing not only his partnership with Norrell, but everything else he holds dear.

The international bestseller, reissued with a new introduction and all the stories from «M is for Magic». Part of The Bloomsbury Phantastics series — three books tracing the tradition of fantasy from Edgar Allan Poe to Neil Gaiman and Susanna Clarke. When Coraline explores her new home, she steps through a door and into another house just like her own – except that things aren’t quite as they seem. There’s another mother and another father in this house and they want Coraline to stay with them and be their little girl. Coraline must use all of her wits and every ounce of courage in order to save herself and return home… but will she escape and will life ever be the same again? Elsewhere in this collection, a sinister jack-in-the-box haunts the lives of the children who ever owned it, a stray cat does nightly battle to protect his adopted family, and a boy raised in a graveyard confronts the much more troubled world of the living. From the scary to the whimsical, the fantastical to the humorous, «Coraline & Other Stories» is a journey into the dark, magical world of Neil Gaiman.

It is the early 1970s; Nixon is in the White House and Corey Sifter, the young son of working-class parents, is befriended by the powerful Metarey family, whose patriarch is a kingmaker in the world of New York state politics. Corey becomes a yard-boy on the Metarey's grand estate, and soon, through the family's generosity, a student at a private boarding school. Before long, he is a confidant of the Metareys and an aide to the great New York Senator Henry Bonwiller as he runs for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States. But as the Bonwiller presidential campaign gains momentum a crime is committed, and Corey is forced to reconcile his part in a complex tangle of morality, politics, gratitude, love and loyalty. Set against the backdrop of the Vietnam War and during one of the most turbulent eras of twentieth-century US politics, America America possesses the mastery of pace and voice of classic American fiction. Canin has written a magnificent novel about ambition and family, politics and crime, sex and love, small-town life and big-time power — and, ultimately, how vanity, greatness and tragedy combine to change history and fate.