Orion Books

In May 1980, fifteen-year-old Oscar Drei suddenly vanishes from his boarding school in the old quarter of Barcelona. For seven days and nights no one knows his whereabouts. It all began the previous autumn when, while exploring the dilapidated grounds of what seemed to be an abandoned house filled with portraits, he inadvertently stole a gold pocket watch. Thus begins Oscar's friendship with Marina and her father Herman Blau, a portrait painter. Marina takes Oscar to the gardens of the nearby cemetery to watch a macabre ritual that occurs on the fourth Sunday of each month. At 10 a.m., a coach drives up to the cemetery and a woman with her face shrouded, wearing gloves, and holding a single rose is helped down from the coach and walks over to a nameless gravestone, where she sets down the flower, pauses for a moment, and then returns to the coach. The gravestone bears no marking but the outline of a strange-looking butterfly with open wings. On one of their subsequent walks Oscar and Marina spot the same woman and determine to follow her. Thereupon begins their journey into the woman's past, and that of the object of her devotion. It is a journey that takes them to the heights of a forgotten, postwar-Barcelona society, of now aged or departed aristocrats and actresses, inventors and tycoons; and into the depths of the city's mysterious underground of labyrinthine sewers, corrupt policemen, beggars' hovels, and criminal depravity.

Early Readers are stepping stones from picture books to reading books. A blue Early Reader is perfect for sharing and reading together. A red Early Reader is the next step on your reading journey. Miranda wins a balloon ride — but the rope snaps and away she goes, over seas, mountains and deserts. She touches down at the Taj Mahal and the Pyramids, flies over the Great Wall of China, visits Japan, almost falls into a river full of crocodiles in Australia, makes some new friends at the Leaning Tower of Pisa — and much more.

Early Readers are stepping stones from picture books to young fiction. Even little monsters get worried about their first day at school. It's a big step to take. Fred and Ted are two little monsters who aren't at all sure they want to go... but once they do, they soon find out it's fun. After a day filled with mud splashing and slime painting, some howling and growling practice and a good stomp and stamp, not to mention big helpings of worms for lunch — they can't wait for Tuesday!

Early Readers are stepping stones from picture books to young fiction. Anything Moody Margaret can do, Horrid Henry can do better. So when Margaret starts giving her friends makeovers, Henry decides to steal — no, borrow! — her idea. He is sure he can do it much, much better. It can't be that hard to make people look really fantastic... can it?

Early Readers are stepping stones from picture books to young fiction. Anything Moody Margaret can do, Horrid Henry can do better. So when Margaret starts giving her friends makeovers, Henry decides to steal — no, borrow! — her idea. He is sure he can do it much, much better. It can't be that hard to make people look really fantastic... can it?

Ensign Andrew Dahl has just been assigned to the Universal Union Capital Ship Intrepid, flagship of the Universal Union since the year 2456. It's a prestige posting, and Andrew is even more delighted when he's assigned to the ship's Xenobiology laboratory. Life couldn't be better... although there are a few strange things going on... every Away Mission involves a lethal confrontation with alien forces the ship's captain, the chief science officer, and the handsome Lieutenant Kerensky always survive these encounters at least one low-ranked crew member is, sadly, always killed. Suddenly it's less surprising how much energy is expended below decks on avoiding, at all costs, being assigned an Away Mission. Andrew's fate may have been sealed... until he stumbles on a piece of information that changes everything... and offers him and his fellow redshirts a crazy, high-risk chance to save their own lives...

The Second World War began in August 1939 on the edge of Manchuria and ended there exactly six years later with the Soviet invasion of northern China. The war in Europe appeared completely divorced from the war in the Pacific and China, and yet events on opposite sides of the world had profound effects. Using the most up-to-date scholarship and research, Beevor assembles the whole picture in a gripping narrative that extends from the North Atlantic to the South Pacific, from the snowbound steppe to the North African Desert, to the Burmese jungle, Gulag prisoners drafted into punishment battalions and to the unspeakable cruelties of the Sino-Japanese War. Moral choice forms the basis of all human drama, and no other period in history has presented greater dilemmas both for leaders and ordinary people, nor offered such examples of tragedy, the corruption of power politics, ideological hypocrisy, betrayal, perversity, self-sacrifice, unbelievable sadism and unpredictable kindness. Although filling the broadest canvas on a heroic scale, Beevor's THE SECOND WORLD WAR never loses sight of the fate of the ordinary soldiers and civilians whose lives were crushed by the titanic forces unleashed in this, the most terrible war in history.

It is almost Easter in Bishop's Lacey, and the villagers are holding their collective breath as the tomb of St Tancred in the church that bears his name is about to be opened after five hundred years. And as luck would have it, it's inveterate eleven-year-old sleuth Flavia de Luce who is first at the scene. But the body she finds lying there is clearly not that of a desiccated saint. For a start there's the pool of fresh blood, and then there's the gas mask, from under which an unmistakable shock of golden hair identifies the corpse as that of Mr Collicutt, St Tancred's celebrated organist. Flavia is no stranger to murder — but even she is baffled by the peculiar circumstances of Collicutt's death. Especially when soon after, an effigy of St Tancred appears to be weeping blood onto the church floor. Determined to get to the bottom of the mystery, Flavia soon finds herself exploring a secret maze of underground passages beneath the church — and is drawn into the equally dark and fetid world of one of Bishop's Lacey's most peculiar families.

Marc Simonetti, the cover artist of the French «Discworld» mass market paperbacks provides 12 inspired illustrations for the brand-new «Discworld» calendar.

The Vikings famously took no prisoners, relished cruel retribution, and prided themselves on their blood-thirsty skills as warriors. But their prowess in battle is only a small part of their story, which stretches from their Scandinavian origins to America in the west and as far as Baghdad in the east. As the Vikings did not write their history, we have to discover it for ourselves, and that discovery, as Neil Oliver reveals, tells an extraordinary story of a people who, from the brink of destruction, reached a quarter of the way around the globe and built an empire that lasted nearly 200 years. Drawing on the latest discoveries that have only recently come to light, Neil Oliver goes on the trail of the real Vikings. Where did they emerge from? How did they really live? And just what drove them to embark on such extraordinary voyages of discovery over 1000 years ago? VIKINGS will explore many of these questions for the first time in an epic story of one of the world's great empires of conquest.

When the concierge of a historic Atlanta apartment building, invites his fellow residents to join him for weekly screenings of Downton Abbey, four very different people find themselves connecting with the addictive drama, and-even more unexpectedly-with each other...Samantha married young and for the wrong reason: the security of old Atlanta money-for herself and for her orphaned brother and sister. She never expected her marriage to be complicated by love and compromised by a shattering family betrayal. Claire is now an empty nester and struggling author who left her home in the suburbs for a new and productive life. But she soon wonders if clinging to old dreams can be more destructive than having no dreams at all. And then there's Brooke, a woman in constant battle with her faithless ex-husband. She's just starting to realise that it's time to take a deep breath and come to terms with the fact that her life is not the fairy tale she thought it would be. For Samantha, Claire, Brooke — and Edward, who arranges the weekly gatherings — it will be a season of surprises as they forge a bond that will sustain them through some of life's hardest moments-all of it reflected in their shared love of Downton Abbey.

Professor David Ullman is among the world's leading authorities on Christian religion and myth. Not that he's a believer. He sees what he teaches as nothing more than entrenched fiction — the things that go bump in the mind. It's why when he's offered a trip to Venice to be a consultant on a case study based on his expertise as a demonologist he accepts, seeing it as a free vacation for his teenage daughter and himself. But what he witnesses in an attic room at an address amidst the decadent splendour of the old city will change what he believes forever. Terrified, David races back to his hotel. But now he has the unshakable feeling that he is no longer alone. And that the voice that passes from his daughter's lips before she jumps from the hotel's roof belongs to a being he has long studied, but until now never thought could ever be real...

In her terrifying new novel, No. 1 NEW YORK TIMES bestselling author Tami Hoag brings back her inimitable investigators, Kovac & Liska. THE 9TH GIRL focuses on the ninth unidentified body to turn up in Minneapolis in 2012, nicknamed Jane Doe 9. When Kovac and Liska take on the case, they discover a shocking fact: This victim has been found without any identifiable characteristics, except for those that peg her as an adolescent girl. The case takes the two detectives deep into the life and death of a teenage girl who wanted nothing more than to be 'normal'. They come perilously close to the bullies who tormented her, the twisted family dynamics that may have contributed to her death, and ultimately to the haunting details of a young love that just may hide the secret of Jane Doe 9's terrible fate.

Six years have passed since Jake Fisher watched Natalie, the love of his life, marry another man. Six years of hiding a broken heart by throwing himself into his career. Six years of keeping his promise to leave Natalie alone, and six years of tortured dreams of her life with her new husband, Todd. But six years haven't come close to extinguishing his feelings, and when Jake comes across Todd's obituary, he can't keep himself away from the funeral. There he gets the glimpse of Todd's wife he's hoping for... but she is not Natalie — and Jake's world is turned completely inside out. As Jake searches for the truth, his picture-perfect memories of Natalie begin to unravel. Mutual friends of the couple either can't be found or don't remember Jake. No one has seen Natalie in years. Jake's search for the woman who broke his heart — and who lied to him — soon puts his very life at risk as it dawns on him that the man he has become may be based on carefully constructed fiction.

In a hotel room in Chile, an assassin washes blood from his clothes as he receives word of a new job. Miles away in the twisting streets of London, American writer Ed is tormented by the ghosts of his brutal past. And unseen, a plot churns into motion that will blur the boundaries between what's real and what's not. Ensnared in an affair with the beautiful wife of a dangerous crime lord, Ed fights to keep a deadly secret hidden. But with each turn, his past is catching up with him. Because in the shadows, nothing is as it seems...

Norman Stokoe has just been appointed Children's Czar by the new government. He sells his flat and moves up north to take up the position. However before his first salary cheque has even hit his bank account, new priorities are set for the government department for which he works. The Children's Czar network is put on hold but it is too late to reverse the decision to employ Norman. So he is given a P.A. and a spacious office in a new business park on the banks of the Tyne. He settles down in his new leather chair behind his new desk, to wait for the green light to begin his mission. The green light never comes. What does happen is that two children go missing. As Children's Czar, surely this case should fall within his remit, but Norman has built a career on doing nothing, on stamping pieces of paper with 'send to the relevant department'. Now, faced with a campaigning journalist and a distraught mother, he is forced to become involved. The search will take him to dark places and will make him ask questions about the system he is supposed to uphold.

There is more than one history of the world. Before science defined the modern age, other powers, wondrous and magical, once governed the universe, their lore perfected within a lost capital of hieroglyphs, wizard-kings, and fabulous monuments. In the 1970s, a historian named Pierce Moffett moves to the New England countryside to write a book about Agypt, driven by an idea he dare not believe: that the physical laws of the universe once changed and may change again. Yet the notion is not his alone. Something waits at the locked estate of Fellowes Kraft, author of romances about Will Shakespeare and Giordano Bruno and Dr. John Dee, something for which Pierce and those near him have long sought without knowing it: a key, perhaps, to Agypt... Shortlisted for the WORLD FANTASY and ARTHUR C. CLARKE AWARDs.

Laureth Peak's father is a writer. For years he's been trying, and failing, to write a novel about coincidence. His wife thinks he's obsessed, Laureth thinks he's on the verge of a breakdown. He's supposed to be doing research in Austria, so when his notebook shows up in New York, Laureth knows something is wrong. On impulse she steals her mother's credit card and heads for the States, taking her strange little brother Benjamin with her. Reunited with the notebook, they begin to follow clues inside, trying to find their wayward father. Ahead lie challenges and threats, all of which are that much tougher for Laureth than they would be for any other 16-year old. Because Laureth Peak is blind.

OTHER CHILDREN GET GIVEN XYLOPHONES. SUSAN JUST HAD TO ASK HER GRANDFATHER TO TAKE HIS VEST OFF. Yes. There's a Death in the family. It's hard to grow up normally when Grandfather rides a white horse and wields a scythe — especially when you have to take over the family business, and everyone mistakes you for the Tooth Fairy. And especially when you have to face the new and addictive music that has entered Discworld. It's lawless. It changes people. It's called Music With Rocks In. It's got a beat and you can dance to it, but... It's alive. And it won't fade away.

IT'S THE NIGHT BEFORE HOGSWATCH AND IT'S TOO QUIET. Where is the big jolly fat man? Why is Death creeping down chimneys and trying to say Ho Ho Ho? The darkest night of the year is getting a lot darker... Susan the gothic governess has got to sort it out by morning, otherwise there won't be a morning. Ever again... The 20th Discworld novel is a festive feast of darkness and Death (but with jolly robins and tinsel too). As they say: You'd better watch out...

When Dan Davis is crossed in love and stabbed in the back by his business associates, the immediate future doesn't look too bright for him and Pete, his independent-minded tomcat. Suddenly, the lure of suspended animation, the Long Sleep, becomes irresistible and Dan wakes up 30 years later in the 21st century, a time very much to his liking. The discovery that the robot household appliances he invented have been mass produced is no surprise, but the realization that, far from having been stolen from him, they have, mysteriously, been patented in his name is. There's only one thing for it. Dan somehow has to travel back in time to investigate. He may even find Pete... and the girl he really loves.

If your planet has been destroyed to make way for a new hyperspace bypass, your best friend turns out to be from a small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse (and not Guilford, as you'd thought), and you find yourself in the company of a two-headed man who also happens to be the president of the galaxy, and a beautiful girl you utterly failed to connect with at a party in a city that no longer exists... you probably shouldn't be surprised to find yourself having breakfast at Milliways, the Restaurant at the end of the Universe...

The very far future: The Galaxy is a drifting wreck of black holes, neutron stars, chill white dwarfs. The age of star formation is long past. Yet there is life here, feeding off the energies of the stellar remnants, and there is mind, a tremendous Galaxy-spanning intelligence each of whose thoughts lasts a hundred thousand years. And this mind cradles memories of a long-gone age when a more compact universe was full of light... The 27th century: Proxima Centauri, an undistinguished red dwarf star, is the nearest star to our sun — and (in this fiction), the nearest to host a world, Proxima IV, habitable by humans. But Proxima IV is unlike Earth in many ways. Huddling close to the warmth, orbiting in weeks, it keeps one face to its parent star at all times. The 'substellar point', with the star forever overhead, is a blasted desert, and the 'antistellar point' on the far side is under an ice cap in perpetual darkness. How would it be to live on such a world? Needle ships fall from Proxima IV's sky. Yuri Jones, with 1000 others, is about to find out... Proxima tells the amazing tale of how we colonise a harsh new eden, and the secret we find there that will change our role in the Universe for ever.

1930s Hollywood. The depression has receded, the studios are booming, and the glitz and glamour are bewitching. But for Cecilia Brady, this is just life. That is, until she meets Monroe Stahr... Stahr is at the centre of it all. A genius production chief in the Golden Age of Hollywood. Cecilia is mesmerised. But Stahr's attentions are caught elsewhere — in the arms of a mysterious woman — and Cecilia watches as a passionate but doomed love affair unfolds. Little by little, Stahr loses his grasp on this fickle world. Fighting with his writers and declaring war on the Union bosses, he is saved from tragedy only by Fitzgerald's own death. Although THE LAST TYCOON will forever remain unfinished, it is a work of unrivalled potential, exposing a Hollywood we no longer know. One of stars in ascension, and the great picture men in free fall.