Little, Brown and Company

»I want to know if men realise when they are insane. Sometimes I think that my brain cannot hold together, it is filled with too much horror — too much despair... I cannot sleep, I cannot close my eyes without seeing his damned face. If only it had been a dream». In «The Doll», a waterlogged notebook is washed ashore. Its pages tell a dark story of obsession and jealousy. But the fate of its narrator is a mystery. Many of the stories in this haunting collection have only recently been discovered. Most were written early in Daphne du Maurier's career, yet they display her mastery of atmosphere, tension and intrigue and reveal a cynicism far beyond her years.

Emmaline Grant has always loved romance, so it's really no surprise that she has found her calling as a wedding florist. And she gets to work with her best friends Mackensie, Parker and Laurel — she couldn't ask for a better job. Yet while men swarm around her, she still hasn't found Mr Right. But the last place Emma's looking is right under her nose. And that's just where Jack Cooke is. He's been best friends with Parker's brother for years, which makes him practically family. Now the architect has begun to admit to himself that his feelings for Emma have developed into much more than friendship, and when she returns his passion — kiss for blistering kiss — things start to get complicated. Jack has never been big on commitment. Emma yearns for a lifelong love affair. And if the two are to find common ground, they must trust in their history — and in their hearts . . .

The business world is awash with legal pitfalls and opportunities. If you own or run a small-to-medium sized business (with a turnover of up to 10 million) you cannot afford to miss out on this book. Jo Haigh is a business expert who gives presentations to companies on how they can protect themselves — as individuals and as a group — from a range of potentially fatal pitfalls. In this accessible and practical book, she highlights essential — yet very often unknown — business practice to provide valuable insight and guidelines to alert and arm you before you enter the proverbial lion's den of the business world. The Business Rules draws on current legislation and case histories. It covers approximately 80 key topics, divided into sections: Business structure; Funding; Compliance; People and personal liabilities; Management; Tax and accounting; Exiting.

Set in London and Monmouth in the late 1700s, this is an extraordinary novel about Mary Saunders, the young daughter of a poor seamstress. Mary hungers greedily for fine clothes and ribbons, as people of her class do for food and warmth. It's a hunger that lures her into prostitution at the age of thirteen. Mary is thrown out by her distraught mother when she gets pregnant and almost dies on the dangerous streets of London. Her saviour is Doll — a prostitute. Mary roams London freely with Doll, selling her body to all manner of 'cullies', dressed whorishly in colourful, gaudy dresses with a painted red smile. Faced with bad debts and threats upon her life she eventually flees to Monmouth, her mother's hometown, where she attempts to start a new life as a maid in Mrs Jones's house. But Mary soon discovers that she can't escape her past and just how dearly people like her pay for yearnings not fitting to their class in society...

CLASS: It's about love lives... Maggie has been dating Stan for years but can their relationship survive? Especially when Maggie meets David McDonald, her opposite number at the boys' boarding school over the hill... It's about school lives... Simone Kardashian has won a scholarship and is determined to make her parents proud. Fliss Prosser is furious at being so far from home and her friends. As Simone tries desperately to fit in, Fliss tries desperately to get out. It's about private lives... Veronica Deveral knows how to manage a school. Routine and discipline are fundamental to her role. But Veronica has a secret that could ruin her career... RULES: For the second year at Downey House, it's getting harder and harder to stick to the rules... It's about making them... Now she's engaged to sweet and steady Stan, Maggie's just got to stop thinking about David McDonald... hasn't she? It's about breaking them... But headmistress Veronica Deveral has more to lose than anyone. When Daniel Stapleton joins the faculty, she's forced to confront her scandalous secret. How long will she be able to keep it under wraps?

KALEIDOSCOPE: No one could have imagined that Sam Walker's fairytale love with his French bride would end in tragedy... Nine-year-old Hilary, the eldest of the Walker children, clung desperately to her two younger sisters, Alexandra and baby Megan. However, they too would be wrenched from her tender arms. Hilary swears that she will one day track down the man who destroyed her family, and find her beloved sisters again. John Chapman, prestigious private investigator chosen to find the sisters, embarks on a labyrinthine trail, knowing that at some point, the sisters must face each other — and the most devastating secret of all... FAMILY ALBUM: Hollywood, 1945. Shipping heir Ward Thayer and screen star Faye Price are reunited after a chance meeting two years earlier. Unable to forget the connection they shared, romance quickly sparks. But for Faye, the life she's heading for with Ward is a threat to her ambition. How can she decide between Hollywood and motherhood? Is it right to choose fame over family? Faye is on the brink of an impossible choice that will shape the lives of those she loves in ways she could scarcely have imagined.

Frank, no ordinary sixteen-year-old, lives with his father outsIde a remote Scottish village. Their life is, to say the least, unconventional. Frank's mother abandoned them years ago: his elder brother Eric is confined to a psychiatric hospital; and his father measures out his eccentricities on an imperial scale. Frank has turned to strange acts of violence to vent his frustrations. In the bizarre daily rituals there is some solace. But when news comes of Eric's escape from the hospital Frank has to prepare the ground for his brother's inevitable return — an event that explodes the mysteries of the past and changes Frank utterly. Iain Banks' celebrated first novel is a work of extraordinary originality, imagination and horrifying compulsion: horrifying, because it enters a mind whose realities are not our own, whose values of life and death are alien to our society; and compulsive, because the humour and compassion of that mind reach out to us all.

Anita Shreve`s eighth novel is a contemporary novel of love and forgiveness — and a life not lived.

Englishness is an ancient and powerful concept, but no one seems sure exactly what it means in the twenty-first century. In exploring our national identity, Tony Thorne has compiled a fascinating compendium of the hundred words and phrases that have become the cornerstones of modern English, and have been used — sometimes deliberately, but often inadvertently — to stake out our common ground, to define what makes us essentially English, and thus different from those beastly foreigners who lurk just off our shores.

Are there tangible benefits in flossing? Is it wrong to fake orgasms? What does the perfect online dating ad look like? Should we bother doing the ironing? Is it really impossible to buy the perfect Christmas gift? (Other than this book, of course.) Economists might not be the first people you would think of to give you advice on such diverse areas as parenting, the intricacies of etiquette or the dark arts of seduction. But for years bestselling author Tim Harford has been doing just that: answering the most challenging questions in his brilliant column, where he uses the tools of economics to give practical advice about everyday dilemmas, conundrums and concerns. From family rows and the stock market to buying socks or speed dating, you'll find within these pages a witty — and of course rational — explanation for almost everything you ever wanted to know about life.

It's been a few years since Fiona Bristow has moved to Orcas Island. Within the small, tight-knit island community she's built up her business, a canine rescue centre that trains dogs to track missing persons. Whether they are lonely travellers on a hiking trip gone wrong or disappearances of a more sinister nature, more than once Fiona has been the last hope for those lost in Washington's vast wilderness. Other than her work, Fiona doesn't ask for much: the peace of the landscape, the companionship of her dogs, the safe haven of friends and family. Romantic entanglements are very far down on her list — and certainly not with Simon Doyle, an artist newly arrived from the mainland. Impossible rude, and impossibly handsome, he suddenly seems to be around an awful lot. But he doesn't know that Fiona harbours a terrible secret, and as her past unexpectedly catches up with her, she has to decide whether past grief will keep her from ever loving again...

Abby is dedicated to turning herself into a vampire. Her boyfriend Steve is researching a serum to turn the undead back into mortals. Chet? An enormous vampire cat? Is busy turning the stray cats of San Francisco into vampiric kitties. And vampire lovers Jody and Tommy are imprisoned in a bronze statue and have to try to escape... In the unpredictable, blood-sucking, thrillingly paranormal San Francisco Christopher Moore has created, a love story unfolds that has real warmth and bite.

Kay Scarpetta has been training at the Dover Port Mortuary, mastering the art of 'virtual autopsy' — a groundbreaking procedure that could soon revolutionise forensic science. And it is not too long before these new skills urgently need to be put into practice. A young man drops dead, apparently from a heart condition, eerily close to Scarpetta's home. But when his body is examined the next morning, there are stunning indications that he may have been alive when he was zipped inside a pouch and locked inside the cooler. When the revolutionary 3D radiology scans reveal more shocking details about internal injuries unlike any Scarpetta has ever seen, Scarpetta realizes that this is a case of murder — and that she is fighting a cunning and uniquely cruel enemy. Now it is a race against time to discover who and why before more people die. But that time is running out...

1920. The Great War has been over for two years, and it has left a very different world from the Edwardian certainties of 1914. Following the death of his wife and baby and his experiences on the Western Front, Laurence Bartram has become something of a recluse. Yet death and the aftermath of the conflict continue to cast a pall over peacetime England, and when a young woman he once knew persuades him to look into events that apparently led her brother, John Emmett, to kill himself, Laurence is forced to revisit the darkest parts of the war. As Laurence unravels the connections between Captain Emmett's suicide, a group of war poets, a bitter regimental feud and a hidden love affair, more disquieting deaths are exposed. Even at the moment Laurence begins to live again, it dawns on him that nothing is as it seems, and that even those closest to him have their secrets...

It begins in the realm of the Real, where matter still matters. Lededje Y'breq is one of the Intagliated, her marked body bearing witness to a family shame, her life belonging to a man whose lust for power is without limit. Prepared to risk everything for her freedom, her release, when it comes, is at a price, and to put things right she will need the help of the Culture. It begins in the realm of the Real. It begins with a murder. And it will not end until the Culture has gone to war with death itself.

To everyone who's anyone in New York, Victory Ford, Wendy Healy and Nico O'Neilly are riding high, the beautiful faces of success in the city. Victory is the hottest new designer on the block; Wendy is president of Parador Pictures with a sure-fire hit in production and three gorgeous children; and Nico is the editor of Bonfire magazine, the city's style bible. To the outside world they've hit their prime. The trouble is, from where Victory, Wendy and Nico are standing, things don't look quite that way. Nico is fitting in guilty extra-marital sex with an underwear model, Victory's last collection bombed and Wendy's twelve-year marriage to her metrosexual househusband is in freefall. Fierce, funny and flawed, Candace Bushnell's new heroines are also irresistible, and as she follows them through the minefield of work, love and life at the top she gives us a hugely entertaining lesson on how to stay ahead and keep laughing in the toughest town on the planet. Welcome to the Lipstick Jungle.

In Thailand, Anderson Lake is a calorie company man working for big business. Under cover as a factory manager, he combs Bangkok's street markets in search of near-extinct foodstuffs. And there he meets the Windup Girl, the beautiful and enigmatic Emiko — now abandoned to the streets. She is one of the underclass of New People, creche-grown and bred to suit the whims of the rich. Engineered as slaves, soldiers and toys, they are seen as soulless by some and as devils by others. As Lake becomes more drawn to Emiko, conspiracies breed within his working life becomes and the politics of a troubled age threaten to spiral out of control. The pressures mount as what he should do conflicts with what he wants to do, threatening to bring down his world. So what happens when bio-terrorism becomes a tool for corporate profits? And could bio-terrorism's genetic drift force mankind to the cusp of post-human evolution?

Scarlett O'Brien is in love... with the movies. Utterly hooked on Hugh Grant, crazy about Richard Curtis, dying with lust for Johnny Depp, Scarlett spends her days with her head in the clouds and her nights with her hand in a huge tub of popcorn. Which is not exactly what her sensible, DIY-obsessed fiance David has in mind for their future. So when Scarlett has the chance to house-sit an impossibly grand mansion in Notting Hill? The setting of one of her all-time favourite movies? She jumps at the chance to live out her film fantasies one last time. It's just a shame that her new neighbour Sean is so irritating? And so irritatingly handsome, too. As a chaotic comedy of her very own erupts around Scarlett, she begins to realise there's more to life than seating plans and putting up shelves. What sort of happy ending does she really want? Will it be a case of Runaway Bride or Happily Ever After? The big white wedding looms, and Scarlett is running out of time to decide...

Cool. Balanced. Modern. The precisions of science, the wild variance of lust, the catharsis of confession and the fear of failure — these are things that happen in the Glass Room. High on a Czechoslovak hill, the Landauer House shines as a wonder of steel and glass and onyx built specially for newlyweds Viktor and Liesel Landauer, a Jew married to a gentile. But the radiant honesty of 1930 that the house, with its unique Glass Room, seems to engender quickly tarnishes as the storm clouds of WW2 gather, and eventually the family must flee, accompanied by Viktor's lover and her child. But the house's story is far from over, and as it passes from hand to hand, from Czech to Russian, both the best and the worst of the history of Eastern Europe becomes somehow embodied and perhaps emboldened within the beautiful and austere surfaces and planes so carefully designed, until events become full-circle.

'My sister would never have killed herself...' When Beatrice hears that her little sister, Tess, is missing, she returns home to London on the first flight available. But Bee is unprepared for the terrifying truths she must face about her younger sibling when Tess's broken body is discovered in Hyde Park. The police, Bee's friends, her fiance and even her mother accept the fact that Tess committed suicide. But nobody knows a sister like a sister, and Bee is convinced that something more sinister is responsible for Tess's untimely death. So she embarks on a journey to discover the truth, no matter the cost...

In the dead silence, all the details suddenly fell into place for me with a burst of intuition. Something Edward didn't want me to know. Something that Jacob wouldn't have kept from me... It was never going to end, was it? Sink your teeth into eclipse, book III in Stephenie Meyer's riveting twilight saga.

Fans of the twilight saga will be enthralled by this riveting story of bree tanner, a character first introduced in eclipse, and the darker side of the newborn vampire world she inhabits. Bree Tanner can barely remember life before she had uncannily powerful senses, superhuman reflexes, and unstoppable physical strengch. Life before she had a relentless thirst for blood... life before she became a vampire. All Bree knows is that living with her fellow newborns has few certainties and even fewer rules: watch your back, don't draw attention to yourself, and above all, make it home by sunrise or die. What she doesn't know: her time as an immortal is quickly running out. Then Bree finds an unexpected friend in Diego, a newborn just as curious as Bree about their mysterious creator, whom they know only as her. As they come to realize that the newborns are pawns in a game larger than anything they could have imagined, Bree and Diego must choose sides and decide whom to trust. But when everything you know about vampires is based on a lie, how do you find the truth? In another irresistible combination of danger, mystery, and romance, Stephenie Meyer tells the devastating story of the newborn army as they prepare to close in on Bella Swan and the Cullens, following their encounter to its unforgettable conclusion.

Explore the making of the film The Twilight Saga: Eclipse in this ultimate visual companion, lavishly illustrated with full-color photos of the cast, locations, and sets. This beautiful paperback edition celebrates the onscreen creation of Stephenie Meyer's fascinating world, brought to life by critically acclaimed director David Slade. With never-before-seen images, exclusive interviews and personal stories, renowned author Mark Cotta Vaz takes you behind the scenes with cast and crew, uncovering intimate details of the filmmaking process.

Physically and psychologically bruised by her encounter with the killer Chandonne, Dr Kay Scarpetta has to leave her home in the hands of the police team investigating the attack. She finds shelter with an old friend, Anna Zenner, but it is not the haven of security she needs when she discovers that Anna has been sub-poenaed to appear before a Grand Jury which is investigating Scarpetta for murder. Kay knows she is being framed and she also knows she can trust no-one. Meanwhile it appears that Chandonne killed a woman in New York before his murderous spree in Virginia, but when Scarpetta looks more closely into that case with the NY prosectuor Jaime Berger, proof of his guilt is far from certain — in fact she begins to believe that he may not be the perpetrator of any of the crimes he is accused of. As she follows the forensic trail to the real killer she gradually realises that someone has been spinning a web for years with the aim of entrapping her. Who is it, and why are they so desperate to be rid of her?