Orion Books

If you think your family relationships are complicated, think again: you haven't seen anything like the ones in Bon Temps, Louisiana. Sookie Stackhouse is dealing with a whole host of family problems, ranging from her own kin (a non-human fairy and a telepathic second cousin) demanding a place in her life, to her lover Eric's vampire sire, an ancient being, who arrives with Eric's 'brother' in tow at a most inopportune moment. And Sookie's tracking down a distant relation of her ailing neighbour (and ex), Vampire Bill Compton. In addition to the multitude of family issues complicating her life, the werewolf pack of Shreveport has asked Sookie for a special favour, and since Sookie is an obliging young woman, she agrees. But this favour for the wolves has dire results for Sookie, who is still recovering from the trauma of her abduction during the Fairy War.

Seventeen-year-old Haley McWaid never gave her parents a moment's worry. Until one morning her mother wakes to find that Haley didn't come home the night before. Three months quickly pass without a word, and everyone assumes the worst. Wendy Tynes is a reporter on a mission: to identify and bring down sexual predators via televised sting operations. Her latest target is Dan Mercer, a social worker known as a friend to troubled teens. But his story soon becomes more complicated than Wendy could have imagined. CAUGHT tells the story of a missing girl, the community stunned by her loss, the predator who may have taken her, and the reporter who suddenly realises she can't trust her own instincts about this story — or the motives of the people around her...

A collection of 12 new stories — all linked by the theme of Asterix's anniversary celebration.

The Great War took much more than lives. It robbed a generation of friends, lovers and futures. In Freddie Watson's case, it took his beloved brother and, at times, his peace of mind. Unable to cope with his grief, Freddie has spent much of the time since in a sanatorium. In the winter of 1928, still seeking resolution, Freddie is travelling through the French Pyrenees — another region that has seen too much bloodshed over the years. During a snowstorm, his car spins off the mountain road. Shaken, he stumbles into the woods, emerging by a tiny village. There he meets Fabrissa, a beautiful local woman, also mourning a lost generation. Over the course of one night, Fabrissa and Freddie share their stories of remembrance and loss. By the time dawn breaks, he will have stumbled across a tragic mystery that goes back through the centuries. By turns thrilling, poignant and haunting, this is a story of two lives touched by war and transformed by courage.

From the high seas of the Indian Ocean to the dark jungles of Southeast Asia, from the canals of Venice to the crypts of ancient kings, SIGMA FORCE must piece together a mystery that, unless solved, will end all life on our planet... But even this challenge may prove too large for SIGMA FORCE alone. With a worldwide pandemic growing, Painter Crowe and Commander Gray Pierce turn to their deadliest adversaries for help, teaming up with a diabolical foe who thwarted them in the past. But can the enemy be trusted even now? Or will they prove to be another Judas...?

Just as the dust from the case of the White Bulldog begins to settle in the small Russian town of Zavolzhsk, its sleepy rural existence is shaken up once again by the arrival of a desperately frightened monk who seeks the help of the bishop, Mitrofanii. The monks have been troubled by visions of a dark, hooded figure that appears to walk on the waters of the vast Blue Lake surrounding their monastery. Sceptical of ghost stories, Mitrofanii sends first his clever young ward, then two of his most trusted advisors, to investigate the mystery. All meet with unexpected fates. Finally Sister Pelagia takes matters into her own hands and, adopting a number of ingenious disguises, she ventures across the Blue Lake in search of answers. As she delves deeper into the layers of secrecy that cloak the islanders, and as the body count continues to rise, Pelagia begins to realise that an encounter with a ghost may be the least of her problems...

'From the moment the first scabrous and brilliant volume was published, people wanted more. Now they have it and they will not be disappointed... These diaries are not wonderful simply because they show a politician unafraid to say what he thinks, and refusing to suck up to those whom he represents. They are great because they show all sides of a man who was, within his complex personality, arrogant, sensitive, loyal, unfaithful, patriotic, selfish, selfless, and — at all times — completely Technicolour' Simon Heffner, DAILY MAIL.

Living at home with her mother, aunt, and grandmother, Evelyn is still haunted by the death of her younger brother James in the First World War. She is also determined to make a career for herself as one of the first female lawyers. So when the doorbell rings late one night and a woman appears, claiming to have mothered James's child, her world is turned upside down. Evelyn distrusts Meredith at first, but also finds that this new arrival challenges her work-obsessed lifestyle. So far her legal career has not set the world alight. But then two cases arise that make Evelyn realise perhaps she can make a difference. The first concerns a woman called Leah Marchant whose children have been taken away from her simply because she is poor. The second, Stephen Wheeler, has been charged with murdering his own wife. It is clear that Wheeler is innocent but he won't talk. In the meantime, Meredith makes an earth-shattering accusation about James — and Evelyn falls in love with a man engaged to be married. With the Wheeler case coming to a head, and her heart in limbo, Evelyn takes matters into her own hands...

Four women who dared to live their romantic fantasies, not just dream them. Aimee Dubucq de Rivery was a convent girl who was captured by pirates and forced to join the enormous harem of the Turkish sultan. Lady Ellenborough was a society beauty who fled London and became notorious for her love affairs with the important men of Europe, including two kings — Ludwig of Bavaria and Otho of Greece, then she lived with an Arab sheik in Syria for almost 30 years. Isabel Burton travelled to exotic lands with her explorer husband. Isabelle Eberhardt was born and raised in Switzerland and grew up as a nonconformist, feeling most comfortable in boy's clothes. She lived among the Arabs in the North African desert and described her surroundings in travel writings and journals. Yet although of widely different natures, backgrounds and origins, all had this in common — each found, in the East, 'glowing horizons of emotion and daring'. And each of them, in their own way, used love as a means of individual expression, of liberation and fulfilment.

Set in 1938 on the Canadian Prairies, UNDER THIS UNBROKEN SKY, tells the story of a farming family from the Ukraine who, having survived war and Stalin's labour camps, set out to make a living from an unrelenting land in a new country. The harsh vicissitudes of farming life and tensions within the family combine to generate a conflict that ends in tragedy. Theo Mykolayenko returns to his family after a year in prison for the crime of trying to feed them. With unremitting resolve, he takes to the land, and as the crops grow, his family heals and strengthens. But the return of his sister's husband with an unforgivable plan threatens to take away everything they have built...

George Madoc had commanded an RAF Air-Sea Rescue boat ferrying secret agents between the south coast and occupied France. One night in April 1944 an operation to bring back a French agent went terribly wrong, and when George finally made it home two months later, he was unable to speak about what had happened. Hi son, Iain, is finally given a clue to unlocking the mystery of what so traumatised his father that he turned away from his own son. The wreck of his father's boat has been found near the Breton village of St Cyriac, and with it, perhaps, the key to unlocking George Madoc's memories. Desperate to understand, Iain goes to St Cyriac determined to discover the truth. But St Cyriac will not give up its secrets easily. For some people the past is still dangerously alive, and Iain soon finds that his own family may have to pay the price of uncovering it.

HEAVEN, HELL AND CHANEL follows the stories of four young fashion-obsessed people trying to make it big in the late 1960s world of Paris haute couture. Sophie is a beautiful Parisian girl from one of the city's most influential families. She finds herself working as a Chanel model when a sudden discovery about her family roots shatters her previously cosy and privileged existence... Monique has left her lowly family home in Angers to become a seamstress in the house of Chanel. As she arrives at 9.30am on her first day of work, two beautiful girls in grey dresses emerge from the house holding flacons of Chanel No.5 and spray scent into the street. Will all of Monique's dreams come true in this magical place? Christopher is London born and bred and the experience of Paris's swinging 60s left bank lifestyle expands his horizons in more ways than one. His quest to become a top fashion designer brings him into contact with a world of glamour, sex and parties he could never have imagined... Samantha is a Jewish princess, freshly arrived from New York, and with a fantastic fashion publicity job courtesy of Hungarian Daddie's impeccable contacts in the garment industry. Will this loud, opinionated American ever be accepted by the sophisticated Parisian ladies that she must mix with? As the destinies of these four gifted individuals unfold, they intertwine with none other than the elderly and enigmatic Coco Chanel herself...

When David Audley, that most subtle of Intelligence chiefs, sends his insubordinate protege Paul Mitchell off to investigate a KGB operation by researching a long-forgotten naval engagement off France in 1812, it doesn't look to Mitchell as if it will lead anywhere. But the fate of the crew of the Vengeful has more than a few surprises in store for Mitchell and suddenly the past throws a dazzling and very dangerous light on the present.

Nowadays a top Premiership football club can spend 50 million on a Portuguese pin-up or a legendary Italian goalkeeper, but you cannot take into account the effects of a dodgy takeaway meal, a dropped bottle of aftershave on a goalkeeper's toe, or the fact that your most creative player has to leave town because of a chance drunken encounter with another player's wife. It is these random moments that have shaped football as much as the headline-grabbing Cantona kung fu kick and that Russian linesman in 1966. Along the meandering paths of this witty alternative history of the world's most popular game, you will learn: Different sizes of football were used in each half of the inaugural World Cup Final of 1930. The first England defeat was not that famous 6-3 home defeat in 1953 by Hungary but was in Madrid against Spain back in 1929 (4-3). After penalty kicks were introduced in 1891, the Corinthian Casuals goalkeeper would stand idly by his post to allow the ball into his goal unhindered, such was the stigma of conceding a penalty. From the height of international football to the scandal of the Conference league Christmas party that cost far more than a bar-bill, Colin Murray tries his best to make you believe, once more, in football's unpredictability.

In less than twenty-four hours a vicious and virulent viral epidemic destroys virtually all of the population. Billions are killed, within minutes. There are no symptoms and no warnings; within moments of infection each victim suffers a violent and agonising death. At the end of ten minutes, only a handful of survivors remain. By the end of the first day those survivors wish they were dead. By the end of the first week, as the dead get up and walk, they know they are in hell. AUTUMN, the classic free underground novel finally bursts into the mainstream. It is cold, dark, relentless — and uncomfortably plausible, a NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD for the 21st Century. Amazon said: 'The perfect zombie story, nothing written in the genre has grabbed me in the same way as AUTUMN, an equal to Romero's Night of the Living Dead'.

Originally published in 1955 Jack Finney's sinister SF tale has outgrown the initial debate about whether it satirized Communism or the conformity of US society at the time, to become a classic of paranoia; an examination of our fear of 'the other'. Most people know the story from seeing THE INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, the classic 1978 remake (one of the few Hollwood remakes said to better than the original, made in 1956) starring Donald Sutherland. Here's your chance to read the original source; a story that has resonated with readers and viewers for more than 50 years.

Harold Pinter and Antonia Fraser lived together from August 1975 until his death thirty-three years later on Christmas Eve 2008. MUST YOU GO is, in essence, a love story based partly on Antonia Fraser's own diaries, which she has kept since October 1968. She has also used her own recollections, both immediate reactions and memories. She has quoted Pinter where he told her things about his past, once again noting the source, and has occasionally quoted his friends talking to her on the same subject. The result is a marvellously insightful testimony to modern literature's most celebrated marriage, between the greatest playwright of the age and a beautiful and famous prize-winning biographer.

In the seamy theatre world of 1970s New York, where rents are cheap and love is free, aspiring actor Edward Day joins his friends for a summer weekend on the New Jersey Shore. But something happens — and Edward's life will never be the same again. He is saved from drowning by the mysterious Guy Margate, a man with whom he shares both a marked physical resemblance and an implacable attraction to the beautiful, talented, neurotic Madeleine. Ever after, in encounters provoked by envy and resentment, Edward is torn between his desire for Madeleine and his indebtedness to the querulous Guy. Professional and personal jealousies come to a head when Edward is cast opposite Madeleine in an acclaimed production of Uncle Vanya, their respective roles painfully mirroring the reality of their personal situations. As the sexual tensions of the play spill over outside the theatre walls, Guy — Edward's reluctant saviour and now Madeleine's husband — makes the ultimate act of protest...

Born in 1918 into a working-class Edinburgh family, Muriel Spark ended as the epitome of literary chic, one of the great writers of the twentieth century. It is a Cinderella story, the first thirty-nine years of which she presented in her autobiography, CURRICULUM VITAE (1992), politely blurring the intensity of her darker moments: her relations with her brother, mother, son, husband; a terrifying period of hallucinations and subsequent depression; and the disastrously misplaced love she had felt for two men she had wanted to marry, Howard Sergeant and Derek Stanford. Aged nineteen, Spark left Scotland to marry in Southern Rhodesia, escaping back to Britain on a troopship in 1944 after her divorce. Her son returned in 1945 to be brought up by her parents in Edinburgh while she established herself as a poet and critic in London. After becoming a Roman Catholic in 1954, she began a novel, THE COMFORTERS (1957), and with MEMENTO MORI, THE BALLAD OF PECKAM RYE and THE BACHELORS rose rapidly into the literary stratosphere. THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE (1961), with its adaptation into a successful stage-play and film, marked her full translation into international celebrity and from that point she went to live first in New York, then Rome, and finally Tuscany where for over thirty years, until her death in 2006, she shared a house with her companion, the artist Penelope Jardine. In 1992 Spark invited Martin Stannard to write her biography, offering interviews and full access to her papers. The result is a compelling portrait of an extraordinary life.

Floyd Jones is sullen, ungainly and quite possibly mad, but he really can see exactly one year into the future. And this talent means that in a very short time he rises from being a disgruntled carnival fortune-teller to convulse an entire planet. For Jones becomes a demagogue, whipping up the ideal-starved population into a frenzy against the threat of the 'drifters' , enormous single-cell protoplasms that may be landing on Earth soon. But, in a world of engineered mutants, hermaphrodite sex performers in drug-fuelled nightclubs, Jones is a tragic messiah. His limited precognition renders him helpless because he cannot bring himself to fight against what he knows will happen...

When the silent spacecraft arrived and took the light from the world, no one knew what to expect. But, although the Overlords kept themselves hidden from man, they had come to unite a warring world and to offer an end to poverty and crime. When they finally showed themselves it was a shock, but one that humankind could now cope with, and an era of peace, prosperity and endless leisure began. But the children of this utopia dream strange dreams of distant suns and alien planets, and begin to evolve into something incomprehensible to their parents, and soon they will be ready to join the Overmind... and, in a grand and thrilling metaphysical climax, leave the Earth behind.

1901. Denton, a writer with a reputation for involving himself in murder cases, is used to getting unconventional mail. But one particular letter gets his attention: a note from a young woman, Mary, saying she's in terrible danger and needs his help. The letter is months old, and was only forwarded to him when the buyer of a painting found it stuck behind the frame. Presumably whatever Mary was frightened of has already happened. So why did she hide the note behind this particular painting, instead of sending it? The search for answers leads Denton into the heart of Bohemian London — the world of artists and their models, a world of brilliance and depravity, of unconventional morals and shifting sexual identities, where the border between genius and madness is hard to discern but easy to cross. And before he has learned the shocking truth, Denton will discover what it's like to be the object of a lethal obsession and endure a terrifying confrontation with his own demons.

The worst day of Tim Blake's life started out with him making breakfast for his seventeen-year-old daughter Sydney. Syd was staying with him while she worked a summer job — even if he wasn't entirely sure what her job at the Just Inn Time motel actually was — and Tim hoped this quality father-daughter time would somehow help her deal with his divorce. When she didn't arrive home at her usual time, he thought she'd probably gone to the mall to hang with her friends. When she didn't answer her phone he began to worry. When she didn't come home at all, he began to panic. And when the people at the Just Inn Time said they had no Sydney Blake working at the motel and never had, he began to see his life going into freefall. If she hadn't been working at the Just Inn Time every day, what had she been doing? Something she couldn't — or wouldn't — tell her own father about? To find his daughter Tim doesn't need to simply track her down — he needs to know who she really was, and what could have made her step out of her own life without leaving a trace. Only one thing has him convinced the worst hasn't already happened: the fact that some very scary people seem just as eager as he is to find her. The question is: who's going to find her first?

Paris, 1815. Napoleon has just surrendered at Waterloo and is due to begin his exile. Meanwhile, Daniel Connor, a young medical student from Edinburgh, has just arrived in Paris to study anatomy at the Jardin des Plantes — only to realise that his letters of introduction and a gift of precious coral specimens, on which his tenure depends, have been stolen by the beautiful woman with whom he shared a stagecoach. In the fervour and tumult of post revolutionary Paris, nothing is quite as it seems. In trying to recover his lost valuables, Daniel discovers that his beautiful adversary is in fact a philosopher-thief who lives in a shadowy world of outlaws and emigres. As Daniel embark on a passionate love affair with the Coral Thief, he is drawn to join her salon of thieves to execute one last breathtakingly bold robbery...