Macmillan Publishers

Following his investigations in The Holy Thief, which implicated those at the very top of authority in Soviet Russia, Captain Alexei Korolev finds himself decorated and hailed as an example to all Soviet workers. But Korolev lives in an uneasy peace his new-found knowledge is dangerous, and if it is discovered what his real actions were during the case, he will face deportation to the frozen camps of the far north. But when the knock on the door comes, in the dead of night, it is not Siberia Korolev is destined for. Instead, Colonel Rodinov of the NKVD security service asks the detective to look into the suspected suicide of a young woman: Maria Alexandovna Lenskaya, a model citizen. Korolev is unnerved to learn that Lenskaya had been of interest to Ezhov, the feared Commissar for State Security. Ezhov himself wants to matter looked into. And when the detective arrives on the set for Bloody Meadow, in the bleak, battle-scarred Ukraine, he soon discovers that there is more to Lenskaya's death than meets the eye.

Oyeyemi reveals a twinkling sense of humour... A delight' Independent It's a bright afternoon in 1938 and Mary Foxe is in a confrontational mood. St John Fox, celebrated novelist, hasn't seen her in six years. He's unprepared for her afternoon visit, not least because she doesn't exist. He's infatuated with her. But he also made her up. «You're a villain», she tells him. «A serial killer... can you grasp that?» Will Mr Fox meet his muse's challenge, to stop murdering his heroines and explore something of love? What will his wife Daphne think of this sudden change in her husband? Can there be a happy ending this time? 'Oyeyemi's characters almost dance on their pages. This is her best, most beautiful novel yet' Independent on Sunday 'Funny, deep, shocking, wry, heart-warming and spine-chilling' Guardian 'Funny and fresh, piercingly astute' Daily Telegraph 'Not just vibrantly imaginative but filled with wit and wisdom. Her best book so far.'

'Helen Fielding is one of the funniest writers in Britain and Bridget Jones is the creation of a comic genius' Nick Hornby Bridget Jones's Diary was first published in 1996 and applauded by critics from Salman Rushdie to Jilly Cooper. It has since sold over fifteen million copies worldwide and been turned into an Academy Award-nominated film. A dazzling urban satire of modern relationships? An ironic, tragic insight into the demise of the nuclear family? Or the confused ramblings of a pissed thirtysomething singleton? In 2012 Picador celebrate our 40th anniversary. During that time we have published many prize-winning and bestselling authors including Bret Easton Ellis and Cormac McCarthy, Alice Sebold and Helen Fielding, Graham Swift and Alan Hollinghurst. Years later, Picador continue to bring readers the very best contemporary fiction, non-fiction and poetry from across the globe.

It's a bad enough day for NYPD detective Callum Doyle when his cop partner is murdered. It's about to get a hell of a lot worse... When the dead man's replacement is also brutally killed, suspicion falls on Doyle himself. Then he receives an anonymous message. This is just the beginning, it says. Anyone he gets close to will die and that includes Doyle's own family. The only way to keep them alive is to stay away. For good. Doyle is desperate to find out who is responsible, but when his every move puts others in danger he is forced to back off. With the investigation getting nowhere and his isolation deepening, Doyle has to ask himself an uncomfortable question: just how low is he prepared to sink in order to get his life back?

Nothing on the tundra rotted... The whole history of human settlement lay exposed there, under that big northern sky. There was nowhere here for bones to hide. On Craig Island, a vast landscape of ice north of the Arctic Circle, three travellers are hunting duck. Among them is expert Inuit hunter and guide, Edie Kiglatuk; a woman born of this harsh, beautiful terrain. The two men are tourists, experiencing Arctic life in the raw, but when one of the men is shot dead in mysterious circumstances, the local Council of Elders in the tiny settlement of Autisaq is keen to dismiss it as an accident. Then two adventurers arrive in Autisaq hoping to search for the remains of the legendary Victorian explorer Sir James Fairfax. The men hire Edie whose ancestor Welatok guided Fairfax along with Edie's stepson Joe, and two parties set off in different directions. Four days later, Joe returns to Autisaq frostbitten, hypothermic and disoriented, to report his man missing. And when things take an even darker turn, Edie finds herself heartbroken, and facing the greatest challenge of her life...

An uplifting, inspiring and heartwarming story of a woman truly ahead of her time. Of loves lost and found, of courage and determination. It is the 1930s and when her beloved husband, John, suddenly dies, young Ellie Hogan decides to leave Ireland and return to New York. She hopes that the city's vibrancy will distract her from her grief. But the Depression has rendered the city unrecognisable gone is the energy and party atmosphere that Ellie once fell in love with, ten years before. And while she is used to rural poverty back home in Ireland, the suffering she sees in New York is an entirely different proposition. Walking around the neighbourhood, Ellie sees destitute families and hungry children on every street corner. The horror of it all jolts Ellie out of her own private depression. Pushing thoughts of her homeland and her dead husband firmly out of her mind, she plunges headfirst into her new life to try and escape her grief. All her passion and energy is poured into running a home and refuge for the homeless. Until, one day, someone she thought she'd never see again steps through her door. It seems that even the Atlantic isn't big enough to prevent the tragedies of the past catching up with her...

Wendy Everly can barely remember what it was like to feel like a normal girl. She'd wished for her life to be different but everything is so much more complicated than she'd expected. And she certainly hadn't dreamt she'd be getting married at eighteen to man she didn't love all for the sake of duty. As the big day approaches, Wendy can't stop thinking about two different men and neither of them are her husband-to-be. Finn, quiet, strong and determined to do what's right and Loki, dark and seductive a sworn enemy who once saved her life... With an all-out war just days away, Wendy needs to act quickly if she is to save her friends and family. But while her loyalties and duties are to her people deeper passions are leading her elsewhere. And as her worlds collide Wendy must sacrifice everything she loves to save them. But will it be enough?

This is an another outstanding adventure from one of the world's best loved storytellers. Hazel Bannock is the owner of the Bannock Oil Corp, one of the major global oil producers. While cruising in the Indian Ocean, her yacht is hijacked by Somalian pirates and her nineteen year old daughter Cayla kidnapped. Major Hector Cross is an ex-SAS operative and the man behind Cross Bow Security, the company contracted to Bannock Oil to provide all their security. His loyalty to the Bannock family goes beyond the call of duty. The pirates demand a crippling ransom for Cayla's release, and complicated political and diplomatic sensitivities render the major powers incapable of intervening. With growing evidence of the horrific torture to which Cayla is being subjected, Hazel calls on Hector to help her rescue her daughter. Between them, Hazel and Hector are determined to take the law into their own hands.

Rennie Airth was born in South Africa and has worked as a foreign correspondent for Reuters. The first novel in his John Madden trilogy, River of Darkness, was published in 1999 to huge critical acclaim, was shortlisted for four crime fiction awards and won the Grand Prix de Litterature Policiere in France. The sensational sequel was The Blood-Dimmed Tide, and The Dead of Winter forms the final part of the trilogy.

1588. In the height of her power is the legendary Elizabeth Tudor, history's most enigmatic queen. She is the virgin with many suitors; the victor of the Armada who hated war; the jewel-bedecked woman always pinching pennies. Elizabeth's flame-haired cousin, Lettice Knollys, is her bitter rival. In love with Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and mother to the Earl of Essex, the mercurial nobleman who challenged Elizabeth's throne, Lettice has been intertwined with Elizabeth since childhood. This is a story of two women of fierce intellect and desire: one trying to protect her country and throne; the other trying to regain power and position for her family. Their rivalry soon involves everyone close to Elizabeth from the famed courtiers who enriched the crown to the legendary poets and playwrights. And, for Elizabeth, to be married to her people meant she must rule as much with her heart as with her head...

It is January 1895 and Henry James's play, Guy Domville, from which he hoped to make his fortune, has failed on the London stage. Opening with this disaster, The Master spans the next five years of James's life, during which time he moves to Rye in Sussex, having found his dream retreat. There he writes his short masterpiece The Turn Of The Screw, a tale in which he incorporates many details from his own life, including his experiences as a member of one of the great eccentric American families and, later, an exile in England. Impelled by the need to work and haunted by his past — including his failure to fight in the American Civil War, and the golden summer of 1865, and the death of his sister Alice — James is watchful and witty, relishing the England in which he has come to live and regretting the New England he has left.

Expect the unexpected... A wrongly convicted murderer exacts a flawless plan of revenge... Headlights in a rear-view mirror tail a female traveler on a lonely stretch of road... A serial bride secures her future by marrying only the wealthiest of men... An escaped Iraqi with a price on his head pays an involuntary visit to his homeland... A brush with death proves the biggest break of an aspiring artist's career... Two strangers, struck by lust-at-first-sight, consider a myriad of possibilities for where the day will take them. ...And you’ll still be surprised, because nothing is what it seems. Bestselling author Jeffrey Archer, «one of the most captivating storytellers writing today» (Pittsburgh Press), engages the reader in a cunning game of cat-and-mouse as he spins twelve ingenious tales of duplicity, love, murder and revenge, each capped with a startling twist. But be careful, for buried in each tale is a red herring — a wicked diversion that Archer challenges readers to uncover for themselves. Artfully entertaining and suspenseful, this is Jeffrey Archer at his inventive best.

Rust and Bone conjures a savage world of prizefighters, gamblers and sex addicts; dogs fight to the death and bare-knuckled men fight for survival on the most extreme margins. And yet these gritty stories are tempered by gentleness, the quiet understanding in the most intimate relationships. A whale trainer's accident, a boy's life endangered — where human vulnerability is so close to the surface, the humanity of these characters heralds redemption and hope.

First published in 1985, White Noise won the National Book Award. It is now regarded as a classic of postmodern literature. Jack Gladney is a pioneering professor in the field of Hitler Studies at the bucolic Midwestern College-on-the-Hill. Married five times, he has a brood of children and stepchildren with his current wife, Babette. Over the course of an absurd, tragic year, Jack and Babette will each be forced to confront the question that keeps them awake at night: who will die first? In 2012 Picador celebrates its 40th anniversary. During that time we have published many prize-winning and bestselling authors including Bret Easton Ellis and Cormac McCarthy, Alice Sebold and Helen Fielding, Graham Swift and Alan Hollinghurst. Years later, Picador continue to bring readers the very best contemporary fiction, non-fiction and poetry from across the globe.

The long-awaited third installment of the worldwide phenomenon and number-one international bestseller Tales of the Otori.

After a health scare, Brighton-based Lou is forced to confront the fact that her time to have a baby is running out. She can't imagine a future without children, but her partner doesn't seem to feel the same way, and she's not sure whether she could go it alone. Meanwhile, up in Yorkshire, Cath is longing to start a family with her husband, Rich. No one would be happier to have a child than Rich, but Cath is infertile. Could these strangers help one another out? Combining Sarah Rayner's deft exploration of raw emotions with the joy and resilience of friendship, The Two Week Wait is a memorable, moving page-turner about two very different women, each yearning to create a family of her own.

Caleb and Camille Fang have dedicated their lives to making great art. But for their children, Annie and Buster, who have been unwillingly involved in their parents' crazy performances for as long as they can remember, their art is an embarrassment. As soon as the children grow up they flee home, desperate to escape chaos of their parents' world.

Coroner Jenny Cooper returns in her most explosive journey yet. When Flight 189 plunges into the Seven Estuary, Coroner Jenny Cooper finds herself handling the case of a lone sailor whose boat appears to have been sunk by the stricken plane, and drawn into the mysterious fate of a ten year-old girl, Amy Patterson, a passenger on 189, whose largely unmarked body is washed up alongside his. While a massive and highly secretive operation is launched to recover clues from the wreckage, Jenny begins to ask questions the official investigation doesn't want answered. How could such a high tech plane — virtually impregnable against human error — fail? What linked the high powered passengers who found themselves on this ill-fated flight? And how did Amy Patterson survive the crash, only to perish hours later? Under pressure from Amy's grieving mother, and opposed by those at the very highest levels of government, Jenny must race against time to seek the truth behind this terrible disaster, before it can happen again...

Why would suicide need a witness? On the east coast of Ireland, Victor Delahaye, one of the country's most prominent citizens, takes his business partner's son out sailing. But once at sea, Davy Clancy is horrified to witness Delahaye take out a gun and shoot himself dead. This strange event captures the attention of Detective Inspector Hackett and his friend Pathologist Doctor Quirke. The Delahayes and Clancys have been rivals for generations and the suicide lays bare the perplexing characters at the heart of the mystery, from Mona, Delahaye's toxic young widow, to Jonas and James, his strange, enigmatic twin sons; and Jack Clancy, his down-trodden, womanizing partner. And when a second death occurs, one even more shocking than the first, Quirke begins to realise that terrible secrets lie buried within these entangled families; and that in this world of jealousy, ruthless ambition and pride — nothing is quite as it seems...

I laughed out loud in places and had tears in my eyes as I turned the last page. I can't wait to watch Julie Kibler's star rise! Diane Chamberlain 89-year-old Isabelle McAllister has a favour to ask her hairdresser Dorrie Curtis and it's a big one. Isabelle wants Dorrie, a black single mother in her thirties, to drop everything to drive her from her home in Arlington, Texas, to a funeral in Ohio. As they drive, Isabelle starts to tell her story: as a willful teen in 1930s Kentucky, she fell deeply in love with Robert Prewitt, the black son of her family's housekeeper — in a town where blacks weren't allowed after dark. The tale of their forbidden relationship and its tragic consequences makes it clear that Dorrie and Isabelle are headed for a gathering of the utmost importance, and that the history of Isabelle's first and greatest love just might help Dorrie find her own way. With tenderness and searing emotion, Calling Me Home illuminates the hardships, passions and dreams that link women across race, generations and time.

Catherine's last job ended badly. Corporate bullying at a top television production company saw her fired and forced to leave London, but she was determined to get her life back. A new job and now things look much brighter. Especially when a challenging new project presents itself — to catalogue the late M H Mason's wildly eccentric cache of antique dolls and puppets. Rarest of all, she'll get to examine his elaborate displays of posed, costumed and preserved animals, depicting scenes from World War I. When Mason's elderly niece invites her to stay at the Red House itself, where she maintains the collection, Catherine can't believe her luck. Until his niece exposes her to the dark message behind her uncle's 'Art'. Catherine tries to concentrate on the job, but M H Mason's damaged visions raise dark shadows from her own past. Shadows she'd hoped had finally been erased. Soon the barriers between reality, sanity and memory start to merge. And some truths seem too terrible to be real...

Actor Gwydion Morgan's dramatic appearance at Jessica Mayhew's psychotherapy practice coincides with a turbulent time in her own life — her husband has just admitted he's been unfaithful. Her new client is good-looking and talented, but tormented by an intriguing phobia, which Jessica is determined to investigate. On an emergency visit to the Morgans' remote cliff-top mansion, Jessica discovers that Gwydion's former au pair was mysteriously drowned in the bay nearby. Could the tragedy somehow be linked to Gwydion's disorder? As the quest to help her client deepens, Jessica finds herself becoming embroiled in the Morgans' poisonous family dynamic. At the same time, she has to deal with the demands of her own domestic life: her struggle to keep her marriage intact, as well as her older daughter's increasingly defiant behaviour. And then, of course, there is the growing attraction she feels towards her new client.

Cursed to be a siren, Gemma’s life is slowly being destroyed. Struggling to move away from the savage darkness she needs to survive, she’s desperate to break the curse that has turned her into a monster and is keeping her from the family – and boy – that she loves. But the alluring yet lethal sirens, Penn, Thea and the newly initiated, Liv have no intention of letting her go. The key to her freedom lies with an ancient scroll and Gemma’s frantic search leads her to someone who might be able to help—the mysterious immortal Diana, who cursed Penn and her sisters thousands of years ago. But Diana will not give up her secrets easily and unless Gemma and her sister Harper can unlock the scroll’s powers then Penn will trap Harper’s boyfriend Daniel and destroy the two sisters for good.

The Present: Rebecca Bradley, a young American actress, escapes the bright lights and her well-known actor boyfriend after his unexpected proposal to deepest Dartmoor in Devon, after landing a leading role in a prestigious 1920s-set British film. Hiding from the media glare, she is welcomed by the mysterious Lord Anthony Astbury, who has opened his stately home, Astbury Hall, to the film crew. When Rebecca is transformed into her screen role as a 1920s debutante, Lord Anthony is shocked by the resemblance to his late grandmother and reveals to her his quest to discover his family's past. As Rebecca is cut off from the modern world and drawn deeper into the atmosphere of a bygone age by the role, her grasp on present-day reality begins to slip... The Past: India, 1911. At the Coronation Durbar of George V, eleven-year-old Anahita, a spiritually gifted Indian girl, meets Indira, a wealthy and privileged Indian Princess. They form a deep, lasting friendship, and Anahita is persuaded by Indira to become her companion. Indira's mother sends them both to England to be educated, but, once there, World War I strikes. Instead of returning to India, they travel to Astbury Hall for the holidays, where Anahita meets the sixteen-year-old Lord Donald Astbury, the reluctant heir to the estate. Their relationship grows stronger after the war, but with it so too does the pressure from the callous and conniving Lady Maud Astbury, Donald's mother, for him to marry Violet, a rich American heiress, to save Astbury Hall.