Little, Brown and Company

Liverpool late 1950s. This is a story of three people: a suppressed mother; a father, projectionist at the local cinema which has seen better days; and their daughter Martha. It is a time of many escapes: Nureyev defects in London; Gagarin escapes the earth's atmosphere to be the first man in space; the Beatles escape the dreariness of Liverpool to seek their fortune in Hamburg. In Britain the drab 50s are giving way to the lively 60s and the young sense it. With shades of Billy Liar, and Absolute Beginners, this novel brilliantly captures that longing for freedom. Sixteen year old Martha is leaving home.

The stories in this collection, some written before du Maurier published her first novel, reflect many human emotions: romance, disenchantment, fantasy, nostalgia, ambition, irony, the longing for adventure. Each of them is based on something observed, something overheard, and all will provide pleasure for every mood.

The human race faces annihilation. An alien threat is on the horizon, ready to strike. And if humanity is to be defended, the government must create the greatest military commander in history. The brilliant young Ender Wiggin is their last hope. But first he must survive the rigours of a brutal military training programme — to prove that he can be the leader of all leaders. A saviour for mankind must be produced, through whatever means possible. But are they creating a hero or a monster? This is the multiple award-winning classic ENDER'S GAME — a groundbreaking tale of war, strategy and survival.

Adulteress? Sorceress? Immoral Temptress? No English Queen has been so persistently vilified as Anne Boleyn. Even after her execution in May 1536 — on trumped-up charges of adultery — the portrait that has come down to us is the one drawn by her enemies. Joanna Denny's compelling new biography of Anne presents a radically different picture of her — a highly literate, accomplished and intellectual woman, and a devout protagonist of the Portestant faith. It was Anne who played the key role in separating England from the Church of Rome. Her tragedy was that her looks and vivacious charm attracted the notice of a violent and paranoid King Henry — and trapped her in the vicious politics of the Tudor court. Joanna Denny's enthralling book plunges the reader into the fascinating, turbulent time that changed England forever.

'The iron of the bridge felt hot under my hand. The sun had been upon it all day. Gripping hard with my hands I lifted myself on to the bar and gazed down steadily on the water passing under... I thought of places I would never see, and women I should never love. A white sea breaking on a beach, the slow rustle of a shivering tree, the hot scent of grass... I breathed deeply and I felt as though the waiting water rose up in front of me and would not let me go' As far as his father, an accomplished poet, is concerned, Richard will never amount to anything, and so he decides to take his fate into his own hands. But at the last moment, he is saved by Jake, who appeals to Richard not to waste his life. Together they set out for adventure, jumping aboard the first ship they see and working their passage to Norway and around Europe, eventually to bohemian Paris, where Richard meets Hesta, a captivating music student...

What would have happened had Britain not entered the First World War but stood aside as a neutral non-belligerent? What might the result have been had Britain concluded a separate peace with Nazi Germany in 1940 or 1941? How would the British have behaved had they lost the Battle of Britain and been conquered and occupied by the armed forces of Hitler's Third Reich? Altered Pasts is a fascinating discussion of the historical and cultural significance of imagining the road not taken. From its beginnings as an Enlightenment parlour game to its relationship with modern-day conspiracy theories, Richard Evans charts the social and political implications of counterfactual history and its capacity for being a mirror on the present.

When her mother dies, Mary Yellan makes the grim journey across bleak Cornish moorland to Jamaica Inn, the home of her Aunt Patience and her husband, Joss Merlyn. On arriving at the gloomy, threatening inn, with the coachman's warning echoing in her mind, she finds her aunt a cowering shadow, and her uncle a hulking, vicious brute. Even more alarming, Jamaica Inn has no guests and is never open to the public. Mary finds herself powerless to help her aunt, and is drawn unwillingly into the misdeeds of Joss and his accomplices. Even more disturbing are her feelings for Jem, a man she dare not trust... Jamaica Inn is a dark and gripping gothic tale that will remind readers of two other great classics, Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights.

My love story may not be the sort you read about in books or see in films... Love stories have glorious highs and ghastly lows. But when it comes to my own life, I'd have to say, you can keep your fabulous highs and I'll happily steer clear of the terrible lows. After a rocky start in life, Jenny Taylor, 27, star receptionist at the local doctors surgery, has things all worked out thanks to a list of ten daily things she must do to keep the blues at bay. But her life is turned upside down when she meets aspiring musician Joe King. And reliable boyfriend Matt proposes. And then her mum leaves her dad and moves into Jenny's flat determined to bond. Hilarious, honest and heartbreaking, Just a Girl, Standing in Front of a Boy is an edgy modern love story that will make you look at your own love story in a whole new way. Lucy-Anne Holmes is the bestselling author of 50 Ways to Find a Lover.

Rhea — dark, intense and brilliant — and her golden, voluptuous sister Amber are not alike, but they are bound tighter than most: by love, by the loss of their father, and by the man who stands between them. Lewis is Amber's husband and the ferociously driven director of the biotech lab where Rhea is a rising star. In search of funding, academic advancement and in alchemical pursuit of the perfect stem cell — their Holy Grail in one flawlessly reproducing genetic blueprint — Rhea and Lewis inhabit a rarefied world. Putting their trust in science, they are blinkered against the fatal human element: sex and envy, treachery and error. Amber, however, desperate for a child and embarking on fertility treatment, must confront precisely this flawed physicality, and a Faustian pact is forged. As the three are increasingly drawn into a transgressive relationship, the result is a series of betrayals that none, finally, will be able to forgive. Breathing on Glass is both coolly analytical and erotically subversive in its exploration of passion and power intertwined, and breeds a whole DNA sequence of cautionary tales: on weakness, temptation, ambition and the limits of science.

The story revolves around the comings and goings at No. 44 Scotland Street, a fictitious building in a real street in Edinburgh. Immediately recognisable are the Edinburgh chartered surveyor, stalwart of the Conservative Association, who dreams of membership of Scotland’s most exclusive golf club. We have the pushy Stockbridge mother, and her prodigiously talented five-year-old son, who is making good progress with the saxophone and with his Italian. Then there is Domenica Macdonald who is that type of Edinburgh lady who sees herself as a citizen of a broader intellectual world. In McCall Smith’s hands such characters retain charm and novelty, simultaneously arousing both mirth and empathy. 44 Scotland Street is vintage McCall Smith, tackling issues of trust and honesty, snobbery and hypocrisy, love and loss, but all with great lightness of touch. Clever, elegant and funny, this is a novel that provides huge entertainment but which is underpinned by the moral dilemmas of everyday life and the characters’ struggles to resolve them.

It is 4034 AD. Humanity has made it to the stars. Fassin Taak, a Slow Seer at the Court of the Nasqueron Dwellers, will be fortunate if he makes it to the end of the year. The Nasqueron Dwellers inhabit a gas giant on the outskirts of the galaxy, in a system awaiting its wormhole connection to the rest of civilisation. In the meantime, they are dismissed as decadents living in a state of highly developed barbarism, hoarding data without order, hunting their own young and fighting pointless formal wars. Seconded to a military-religious order he’s barely heard of — part of the baroque hierarchy of the Mercatoria, the latest galactic hegemony — Fassin Taak has to travel again amongst the Dwellers. He is in search of a secret hidden for half a billion years. But with each day that passes a war draws closer — a war that threatens to overwhelm everything and everyone he’s ever known. As complex, turbulent, flamboyant and spectacular as the gas giant on which it is set, the new science fiction novel from Iain M. Banks is space opera on a truly epic scale.

Victor was clearly concerned about our plans to travel along the border, promising that the guards would shoot us on sight: 'They will be made heroes, with medals from Moscow', he thundered, slapping his chest, ' but you will be dead!' And with that, he moulded his hands around an imaginary machine gun and sprayed our chests with an impressive salvo of spittle. For years they'd dreamed of packing in their day-jobs and travelling one of the world's greatest rivers, so long as it was somewhere warm. Siberia seemed like the obvious choice...Starting from high in the mountains of northern Mongolia, Paul Grogan and travelling companion Richard Boddington set out to make the first source-to-sea descent of Siberia's 4,400km Amur River, known in China as The Black Dragon. After wading up-stream for five days to reach the source, they begin their epic, four-month journey knowing virtually nothing about the region they'll be travelling through, or even where they'll be able to find food along the way. One of the few things they do know about the river is that for almost 2,000km if forms the long-disputed border between Russia and China. the scene of armed conflict up until the late 1980's, it's still considered off-limits, even to Russians. Never sure if they'll be able to continue around the next bend, the pair face guns, gunboats and arrest at every turn, and are forbidden to even set foot in Chinese territory. But beyond this fascade of military might they find a generous, warm-hearted people with a wicked sense of humour and an unhealthy predilection fir poetry, pig fat and home-made vodka. With sun, sauna's and dancing girls also high on the agenda, they are soon swept along by life on the river and the occasional 4 a.m. flood.

Laura Patterson is an American exchange student in Rome who, fed up with being inexpertly groped by her young Italian beaus, decides there’s only one sure-fire way to find a sensual man: date a chef. Then she meets Tomasso, who's handsome, young — and cooks in the exclusive Templi restaurant. Perfect. Except, unbeknownst to Laura, Tomasso is in fact only a waiter at Templi — it’s his shy friend Bruno who is the chef. But Tomasso is the one who knows how to get the girls, and when Laura comes to dinner he persuades Bruno to help him with the charade. It works: the meal is a sensual feast, Laura is utterly seduced and Tomasso falls in lust. But it is Bruno, the real chef who has secretly prepared every dish Laura has eaten, who falls deeply and unrequitedly in love. A delicious tale of Cyrano de Bergerac-style culinary seduction, but with sensual recipes instead of love poems.

Irina Davydovna is a cleaner. She has no time for politics or even for that matter, people: 'rules and rulers may come and go, but dirt never changes.' Boris Aleksandrovich is a revolutionary. He thinks he understands power. But this is Leningrad in 1933 and Stalin is about to turn against their city. When the life of his beloved daughter Natasha is threatened and his old friend Anton saves a skinny little orphan he finds on a Moscow train, Boris' faith in his ideals are put to the test. While Irina, watching it all, must learn the power of loyalty and love.

One evening in 1951, an itinerant storyteller arrives unannounced and mysterious at a house in the Irish countryside. By the November fireside he begins to tell the story of this extraordinary land. One of his listeners, a nine-year-old boy, grows so entranced by the storytelling that, when the old man leaves, he devotes his life to finding him again. It is a search that uncovers both passions and mysteries, in his own life as well as the old man's, and their solving becomes the thrilling climax to this tale. But the life of this boy is more than just his story: it is also the telling of a people, the narrative of a nation, the history of Ireland in all its drama, intrigue and heroism. Ireland travels through the centuries by way of story after story, from the savage grip of the Ice Age to the green and troubled land of tourist brochures and news headlines. Along the way, we meet foolish kings and innocent monks, god-heroes and great works of art, shrewd Norman raiders and envoys from Rome, leaders, poets and lovers. Each illuminates the magic of Ireland, the power of England and the eternal connection to the land.

From London to New York, Ewan and Charley chased their shadows through Europe, the Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Mongolia and Russia, across the Pacific to Alaska, then down through Canada and America. But as the miles slipped beneath the tyres of their big BMWs, their troubles started. Exhaustion, injury and accidents tested their strength. Treacherous roads, unpredictable weather and turbulent politics challenged their stamina. They were chased by paparazzi in Kazakhstan, courted by men with very large guns in the Ukraine, hassled by the police, and given bulls' testicles for supper by Mongolian nomads. And yet despite all these obstacles they managed to ride more than twenty thousand miles in four months, changing their lives forever in the process. As they travelled they documented their trip, taking photographs, and writing diaries by the campfire. Long Way Round is the result of their adventures — a fascinating, frank and highly entertaining travel book about two friends riding round the world together and, against all the odds, realising their dream

Since Postmortem garnered critical acclaim and a record-breaking five awards for a first crime novel, the Scarpetta novels have often been imitated, but never bettered. Against her own judgement and the advice of Benton Wesley and her niece, Lucy, Scarpetta agrees to return to Virginia as a consultant pathologist on a case involving the death of a fourteen-year-old girl. Accompanied by Pete Marino she finds the once familiar territory of her morgue and her department much changed, and the new Chief Medical Examiner treats her with disdain despite the obvious fact that he is in desperate need of her expertise. But professional as ever, she re-examines the evidence and proves the girl was murdered. She also finds trace evidence which matches that found on an accident victim and at the scene where one of Lucy's operatives was attacked. It is not only a forensic puzzle, but opens up the probability that someone is after those closest to Scarpetta.

Benjamin Weaver is awaiting death in Newgate gaol. Mysteriously convicted for a murder he didn't commit by a judge determined to see him hang, he is suddenly — and equally mysteriously — offered the means to escape. What, you may well ask, is going on? It's a question Weaver asks of himself as he slinks out into the London night on a mission to clear his name. In doing so, he steps straight into a labyrinthine plot that weaves, like Benjamin, across eighteenth century London. For the conspiracy against him is part of a grimmer and gaudier picture: one that encompasses double-dealings and dockworkers, the extorting of a priest — and a looming election with the potential to spark a revolution and topple the monarchy. Handily, Weaver is a private investigator. He's also an ex-pugilist, which is also a good thing when it comes to punching his weight in the `polite' society of plotters and politicians, power-brokers, crime lords, assassins and spies. At the apex of which sits, rather precariously, a recent import from Hanover: The King.

The trolls of Bonespittle aren't pretty, and centuries of bad press has given them a real bad reputation for meanness. But the truth is that they are simple folk forced to serve the ogres, ghouls and sorcerers who hold all the power. Trolls were once great warriors, respected throughout the land. But then they were enslaved by a power-hungry king, and now are told terrible stories about fairies, elves, and the other creatures that live across the Great Chasm. Enter Rollo, a handsome young troll who is surprised when Stygius Rex, Bonespittle's ruler, passes through his village. Stygius is recruiting trolls to construct a bridge to span the Chasm. Rollo wants to sign on for the task — but is he prepared for what really lies beyond the realm of the trolls?

Having freed the trolls of Dismal Swamp from the tyranny of Stygius Rex, the reluctant troll leader Rollo has left the swamp on a bittersweet mission: to return his little friend Clipper to her people in the Forbidden Forest. It's a dangerous trip but he's determined not to fail. Ludicra, the troll who now finds Rollo worthy of her attentions, is distraught over his absence and convinced he needs her help. So she assembles a crew of trolls, ogres and even a gnome to cross the Great Chasm in search of her beloved. But the Chasm holds its own dangers and now the rescue party is in need of rescue!

The concluding volume in this charming and highly readable trilogy for readers of 10 and over. Just when all the trials appear to be over for Rollo, the evil sorceror Stygius Rex returns, demanding that the new troll king surrender the lands of Bonespittle to him. As an incentive, Stygius produces Rollo's father and his former bridge mentor as hostages! The only way to stop Stygius is for the trolls to find a legendary treasure that was created by a troll king long ago and left with the elves in the Great Chasm for safekeeping. Now Rollo must figure out a way to make peace with the elves, find some treasure he isn't sure exists, rescue his father, and defeat Stygius, all the while hoping he can free his little fairy friend Clipper from the evil spell she's under. Will the new troll king ever make it to his coronation?

What is visible to the naked eye has been exhaustively raked over; in Underground London, acclaimed travel writer Stephen Smith provides an alternative guide and history of the capital. It's a journey through the passages and tunnels of the city, the bunkers and tunnels, crypts and shadows. As well as being a contemporary tour of underground London, it's also an exploration through time: Queen Boudicca lies beneath Platform 10 at King's Cross (legend has it); Dick Turpin fled the Bow Street Runners along secret passages leading from the cellar of the Spaniards pub in North London; the remains of a pre-Christian Mithraic temple have been found near the Bank of England; on the platforms of the now defunct King William Street Underground, posters still warn that 'Careless talk costs lives'. Stephen Smith uncovers the secrets of the city by walking through sewers, tunnels under such places as Hampton Court, ghost tube stations, and long lost rivers such as the Fleet and the Tyburn. This is 'alternative' history at its best.

In writer Simon Mawer's new novel, a banished priest discovers the fifth gospel, and with it, the power to bring down the Christian faith.

Precious Ramotswe, that cheerful Botswanan private investigator of traditional build, is now married to Mr J.L.B. Matekoni of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors. The Agency is busy, but Mma Ramotswe cannot ignore the plea which is made by a woman who comes to her with a tale of particular misfortune. Unfortunately, her attempts to help are interrupted by a close encounter between her tiny white van and a bicycle, and by a spectacular disagreement between her assistant, Mma Makutsi, and one of the apprentices at the garage. This apprentice has found a fancy girlfriend who drives a Mercedes-Benz. How can he be rescued from his folly? And as for Mma Makutsi, she has found a dancing class, and a man who may not be able to dance very well, but who admires her greatly. And all of this happens against a background of quiet sessions of bush tea, and of a land that stretches out forever under mile upon mile of empty sky...