Little, Brown and Company

They were teenage sweethearts from opposite sides of the tracks — with a passion that would change their lives for ever. But life would force them apart. Years later, the lines they had drawn between past and present are about to slip... Called back to their hometown for the funeral of the mentor who once gave them shelter when they needed it most, they are faced with each other once again, and forced to confront the paths they chose. Can true love ever rewrite the past? The new epic love story from the multi-million-copy bestselling author of The Notebook and The Last Song. Nicholas Sparks is one of the world's most beloved authors.

Polly, an average, completely ordinary property lawywer, is convinced she's losing her mind. Someone keeps drinking her coffee. And talking to her clients. And doing her job. And when she goes to the dry cleaner's to pick up her dress for the party, it's not there. Not the dress — the dry cleaner's. And then there are the chickens who think they are people. Something strange is definitely going on — and it's going to take more than a magical ring to sort it out.

Is there really such a thing as a good luck charm? Ex-soldier Logan Thibault thinks he just might have found one. Haunted by memories of the friends he lost in Iraq, Logan knows how fortunate he is to be home. He believes that a photograph he carried with him, a picture of a smiling woman he's never met, kept him safe. Even though he knows nothing about this woman, he hopes she might hold the key to his destiny. Resolving to find her, Logan embarks on a journey of startling discovery. Beth, the woman whose picture he holds, is struggling with problems of her own: her volatile ex-husband won't accept their relationship is over and threatens anyone who gets too close to her. And, despite a growing attraction between them, Logan has kept one explosive secret from Beth: how he came across her photograph in the first place...

Pitched between THE CROW ROAD and THE WASP FACTORY, STONEMOUTH is set in a small town north of Aberdeen and involves two warring crime families. Our hero was run out of town five years ago and now he's back for a family funeral — some closeted skeletons are about to appear!

Detective Catherine McLeod was always taught that in Glasgow, they don't do whodunit. They do score-settling. They do vendettas. They do petty revenge. They do can't-miss-whodunit. It's a lesson that has served her well, but Glasgow is also a dangerous place to make assumptions. Either way she looks at it, she recognises that the discovery of a dead drug-dealer in a back alley is merely a portent of further deaths to come. Elsewhere in the city, aspiring actress Jasmine Sharp is reluctantly — and incompetently — earning a crust working for her uncle Jim's private investigation business. When Jim goes missing, Jasmine has to take on the investigator mantle for real, and her only lead points to Glen Fallan, a gangland enforcer and professional assassin whose reputation is rendered only slightly less terrifying by having been dead for twenty years. Cautiously tracing an accomplished killer's footsteps, Jasmine stumbles into a web of corruption and decades-hidden secrets that could tear apart an entire police force — if she can stay alive long enough to tell the tale.

In the summer of 1968, Rose sets off for the United States from Kentish Town; in her suitcase a polka-dot dress and a one-way ticket. Together with the sinister man known only as Washington Harold, she goes in search of the charismatic and elusive Dr Wheeler — the man Rose credits with rescuing her from a terrible childhood, and against whom Harold nurses a silent grudge. As the odd couple journey across an America on the brink of paranoid disintegration, their journey mirrors that of Robert Kennedy's presidential campaign. As they draw ever closer to the elusive Dr Wheeler, one hot day in June at the Ambassador Hotel in LA, their search finally reaches its terrible climax.

This fascinating biography of Freddie Mercury which received outstanding acclaim from Queen and rock fans worldwide, has now been updated for reissue to coincide with the release of the film about his life. Laura Jackson addresses topics including: The reality behind Queen's flamboyant front man and lead singer; Mercury the star of mystery — amusing, loyal and generous, yet revealing a dark side to his personality; His frequent use of cocaine and how it heightened his tendency to excess — both on and off stage; The women in his life — his bizarrely enduring relationships with his first love, Mary Austin, and his long-time confidante, Barbara Valentin, who speaks for the first time in this book The book also includes new and intimate stories by those who knew him well, such as Tim Rice, Richard Branson, Cliff Richard, Bruce Dickinson, Mike Moran, Wayne Eagling, Zandra Rhodes and Susannah York.

They were teenage sweethearts from opposite sides of the tracks — with a passion that would change their lives for ever. But life would force them apart. Years later, the lines they had drawn between past and present are about to slip... Called back to their hometown for the funeral of the mentor who once gave them shelter when they needed it most, they are faced with each other once again, and forced to confront the paths they chose. Can true love ever rewrite the past? The new epic love story from the multi-million-copy bestselling author of The Notebook and The Last Song. Nicholas Sparks is one of the world's most beloved authors.

1947 Ten-year-old Fay Allen of Roswell, New Mexico, witnesses the fiery crash of an extraordinary craft unlike anything she's ever seen. 2011 More than sixty years later, army engineer Tyler Locke rescues Fay from gunmen. She says they were after a piece of wreckage she has retained from the Roswell crash — and she claims to know secrets about that incident that have never previously been revealed. Tyler is initially sceptical but after he is kidnapped by a mysterious gang, he comes to believe that Roswell holds the key to his and his countrymen's survival. And he realises that there is a desperate race against time for him to uncover its secrets... Fast-paced and thrilling, The Roswell Conspiracy draws on actual evidence from the Roswell Incident to create an page-turning and thought-provoking thriller.

When Barry Fairweather dies unexpectedly in his early forties, the little town of Pagford is left in shock. Pagford is, seemingly, an English idyll, with a cobbled market square and an ancient abbey, but what lies behind the pretty facade is a town at war. Rich at war with poor, teenagers at war with their parents, wives at war with their husbands, teachers at war with their pupils... Pagford is not what it first seems. And the empty seat left by Barry on the parish council soon becomes the catalyst for the biggest war the town has yet seen. Who will triumph in an election fraught with passion, duplicity and unexpected revelations? Blackly comic, thought-provoking and constantly surprising, The Casual Vacancy is J.K. Rowling's first novel for adults.

Happy with her husband-to-be and beloved son, Isabel Dalhousie has feelings about parenthood that grow more tender daily. So when Jane, a visiting academic adopted and sent to Australia as a baby, asks for help in tracing her Scottish origins, she cannot refuse. However, habitually upright Isabel finds herself beset by temptation — for instance, to be suspicious of Professor Lettuce's latest subterfuge, and of her niece Cat's weakness for the wrong man. And when the search for Jane's parents turns troubling, she can hardly prevent herself from interfering too forcefully in family secrets. As she steers a course between love and laissez-faire, our philosopher heroine succeeds in resisting all temptations but those which must be answered, and teases a solution from every problem.

Now that Lia has found the missing pages of the Librum Maleficii et Disordinae, or the Book of Chaos, the end of the Prophecy is in sight. While Lia tries to save James from Alice's sinister grasp, she unlocks the prophecy's final mystery and a caveat that may put an end to any hope of ending the prophecy; to close the Gate to the Beast forever, Lia must convene in an ancient ritualistic ceremony with all four keys at Avebury. But that's not all. Alice, as Guardian, must be there as well.

A little boy was found dead in a children's playground... Daniel Hunter has spent years defending lost causes as a solicitor in London. But his life changes when he is introduced to Sebastian, an eleven-year-old accused of murdering an innocent young boy. As he plunges into the muddy depths of Sebastian's troubled home life, Daniel thinks back to his own childhood in foster care — and to Minnie, the woman who adopted him and whose love saved him, until she, too, betrayed him so badly that he cut her out of his life. But what crime did Minnie commit that made Daniel disregard her for 15 years? And will Daniel's identification with a child on trial for murder make him question everything he ever believed in?

Rumour says the powerful Nicolai DeMarco can command the heavens, that the beasts below do his bidding... and that he is doomed to destroy the woman he takes as wife. It is whispered he's not wholly human — as untamed as his tawny mane and slashing amber eyes. Impoverished aristocrat Isabella Vernaducci would defy death itself to rescue her imprisoned brother. She'll even brave the haunted, accursed lair of the lion — the menacing palace of legendary, lethal Don Nicolai DeMarco. Then Isabella meets a man whose growl is velvet, purring heat, and whose eyes hold dark, all-consuming desire. And when the don commands her to become his bride, she goes willingly into his muscled arms, praying she'll save his tortured soul... and not sacrifice her life.

Seeking a fresh start, newly divorced Sarah and her daughter Elissa find the house of their dreams in a small, upscale, rural town. But when startling and unexplainable events begin to happen, Sarah and Elissa learn the town is in the shadows of a chilling secret. Years earlier, in the house next door, a daughter killed her parents in their beds, and disappeared — leaving only a brother, Ryan, as the sole survivor. Against Sarah's wishes, Elissa begins a relationship with the reclusive Ryan — and the closer they get, the deeper they're all pulled into a mystery more dangerous than they ever imagined.

Twenty-something Londoner Natalie Bowen is envied by many, but her personal life is a disaster. Men can't cope with her career success and Natalie thinks she'll never find real happiness. Then she hears about an exclusive weekend retreat called The Haven, a place that specialises in introducing you to pleasures you could never have imagined. Shocked at the idea, but unable to resist finding out more, Natalie decides it's time to put her fears behind her. Once at The Haven, Natalie meets the enigmatic and disciplined Simon, a man who is used to getting what he wants. And Natalie may very well have met her match...

SPELLBOUND. A fast-paced story of spells and consequences — a bewitchingly beautiful lady casts a thousand-year love spell on the man of her dreams — and unleashes a nightmare that only true love can conquer. EVER AFTER. Wearing an ancient star pendant, an enchanting woman journeys to an otherworldly land — and introduces a skeptical stranger to the magical powers of love...

Over the remote central Pacific, a plane is suddenly rocked by a massive explosion. Despite the pilot's valiant efforts, the blast sends it plummeting into the ocean, leaving no witnesses to the fireball. Kai Tanaka, the new and untested director of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Honolulu, notes a minor seismic disturbance in that region but doesn't make the connection with the lost airplane. There's no reason to be worried about his wife, who is the manager of a luxury hotel, or his daughter, who is enjoying the sunny holiday morning at Waikiki with friends. But when all contact with Christmas Island and its 3000 inhabitants is lost, Kai is the first to realize that Hawaii faces a catastrophe of epic proportions: in one hour, a series of massive waves will wipe out Honolulu. He has just sixty minutes to save the lives of a million people, including his wife and daughter...

In 1894 Henry James tried to drown a boatload of dresses belonging to the writer Constance Fenimore Woolson in the Venetian lagoon. She had fallen to her death from her Venice window three months before. James's elusive friendship with Fenimore echoed his mysterious relationship with Minny Temple who had died twenty years earlier at the age of twenty-four. From their graves they haunted his imagination, Minny inspiring the heroines of A Portrait of a Lady and The Wings of the Dove, while Fenimore was resurrected in his stories and in his very vision of a writer's life. Seeking out the hidden stories of the two women, Lyndall Gordon creates a new form of biography in which outward events are peeled back to glimpse unseen collaborators: women vital to the Master's art, who were kept under wraps.

Highly acclaimed when it was first published, Virago now reissues Lyndall Gordon's wonderful biography, The Imperfect Life of T S Eliot. Exploring Eliot's poetry, drama and essays in relation to his life in America and England, and to four quite different women who offer clues to his guarded character, this biography sees life and work as reciprocal parts of one design, the search for faith. Eliot once spoke of a lifetime burning in every moment. He had the mind to conceive a perfect life, and he also had the honesty to admit that he could not meet it. Here, close up, is the divide between saint and sinner in the greatest poet of the twentieth century. By viewing Eliot from the vantage point of the next century, this enduring book follows the trials of a searcher whose flaws and doubts speak to all of us whose lives are imperfect.

To be irrevocably in love with a vampire is both fantasy and nightmare woven into a dangerously heightened reality for Bella Swan. Pulled in one direction by her intense passion for Edward Cullen, and in another by her profound connection to werewolf Jacob Black, a tumultuous year of temptation, loss, and strife have led her to the ultimate turning point. Her imminent choice to either join the dark but seductive world of immortals or to pursue a fully human life has become the thread from which the fates of two tribes hangs. Now that Bella has made her decision, a startling chain of unprecedented events is about to unfold with potentially devastating, and unfathomable, consequences. Just when the frayed strands of Bella's life — first discovered in TWILIGHT, then scattered and torn in NEW MOON and ECLIPSE — seem ready to heal and knit together, could they be destroyed... forever? The astonishing, breathlessly anticipated conclusion to the Twilight Saga, Breaking Dawn illuminates the secrets and mysteries of this spellbinding romantic epic that has entranced millions.

In this sweeping epic set in the aftermath of the Norman Conquest, a rogue French knight named Vallon accepts a dangerous commission: he must travel to the ends of Europe in search of four rare gyrfalcons demanded as ransom for a Norman knight held captive by Seljuk Turks in Anatolia. Accompanied by a young English falconer and a Sicilian scholar, Vallon sets out on a quest that takes him from Iceland to Greenland to Russia and south to Byzantium. On the nine-month journey the company is joined by other adventurers. Together they brave raging seas, icy arctic wastes, treacherous rapids. They fight furious battles against Normans, Vikings and steppe nomads, pit their wits against warlords desperate to steal their precious cargo. And these are not the only perils they face, for among their company is a man who will stop at nothing to prevent them from fulfilling their quest. At more than 200,000 words, Hawk Quest is one of the most vast, utterly thrilling historical adventures ever written.

The new Culture novel from one of the most exciting science fiction writers of modern times — a tour de force of storytelling, world-building and imagination.

From her days as a child reader in the 1940s, through her time at Harvard, where she studied the Victorian ancestors of the form, and later as a writer and reviewer, Margaret Atwood has always been fascinated with science fiction. Here she brings together three Ellmann lectures: 'Flying Rabbits' begins with her early rabbit superhero creations, and goes on to speculate about masks, capes, weakling alter egos and Things with Wings; 'Burning Bushes' travels into Victorian otherlands and beyond; and 'Dire Cartographies' investigates Utopias and Dystopias, including Atwood's own ventures into those constructions. In further essays Atwood explores and critiques the form, and elucidates the differences — as she sees them — between 'science fiction' proper, and 'speculative fiction', not to mention 'sword and sorcery', 'fantasy' and 'slipstream fiction'. In Other Worlds is a must.