Orion Books

Death is my beat.' Those words, spoken by the narrator and hero of THE POET, Jack McEvoy, could also apply to Michael Connelly. Time and time again in these riveting pieces, we make the connection between Connelly the crime reporter and Connelly the novelist: 'On the day I arrived in Los Angeles I sat in the newspaper editor's office being interviewed for a job on the crime beat. The day before there had been a bank heist in which the thieves had gone into the city's labyrinthine storm water tunnel system to get beneath the bank before tunnelling upward.' Years later that story would become THE BLACK ECHO. 'Moments. They kept coming. One morning an editor called me and told me to swing by a murder scene on my way to the office. Just like that, like I was picking up a coffee on the way to work. The murder was on Woodrow Wilson Drive in the Hollywood Hills. I went as instructed and got the story. I also got the place where I would put the home of the fictional detective [Harry Bosch] I had secretly begun writing about ...

Until that fateful day in Brighton, Maggie had thought she would never be happy again... Maggie's once happy marriage has turned sour, leaving her tied to a husband who no longer seems to love her. So she continues to work, keeps in touch with her friends and tries not to think about the lack of love in her life. But all that changes when Maggie meets someone who transforms how she feels about herself and turns her entire world upside down.

When two girls, aged nine and ten are abducted and killed in Wind Gap, Missouri, Camille Preaker is sent back to her home town to investigate and report on the crimes. Camille, self-described 'white trash from old money', is the daughter of one of the richest families in town. Long-haunted by a childhood tragedy and estranged from her mother for years, Camille suddenly finds herself installed once again in her family's Victorian mansion, reacquainting herself with her distant mother and the half-sister she barely knows, a precocious 13-year-old who holds a disquieting grip on the town and surrounds herself with a group of vampish teenage girls. As Camille struggles to remain detached from the evidence, her relationship with her neurotic, hypochondriac mother threatens to topple her hard-won mental stability. Working alongside the police chief and a special agent from out of town, Camille tries to uncover the mystery of who killed these little girls and why. But there are deeper psychological puzzles: Why does Camille identify so strongly with the dead girls? And how is this connected to the death of another sister years earlier?

Red Mutiny tells how the sailors of Imperial Russia's newest and most powerful battleship, Potemkin, seized control and flew the red flag of revolution in June 1905. It is a tale of dramatic adventure, naval battles, heroic sacrifices, treachery and intrigue at the court of the last Tsar. A dedicated band of revolutionaries inspire and lead the sailors to overthrow their tyrannical officers, but the Potemkin finds itself steaming around the Black Sea with the rest of the fleet in pursuit. Hunted from port to port, the mutineers enter Odessa, sparking a bloody insurrection (made famous by Eisenstein's film) and bringing Imperial Russia to its knees. As Lenin and many others recognized at the time, this was the key event that would make the Russian revolution possible. The political consequences of this mutiny were profound, but the author concentrates on the individuals involved in these dramatic events: it is a brilliantly realized, cinematic treatment that really brings the story to life.

The Principle of Simultaneity is a scientific breakthrough which will revolutionize interstellar civilization by making possible instantaneous communication. It is the life work of Shevek, a brilliant physicist from the arid anarchist world of Anarres. But Shevek's work is being stifled by jealous colleagues, so he travels to Anarres's sister-planet Urras, hoping to find more liberty and tolerance there. But he soon finds himself being used as a pawn in a deadly political game.

In 2756 AC (2003 AD in Christian terms), magnetic railways span Roman territory from Persia to Terranova, and mechanised crucifixes are ranked along the banks of the Thames. As volume one of ROMANITAS opens, Marcus Novius Faustus Leo, heir apparent to the Imperial throne, is mourning the death of his parents following a tragic accident. However, as information about the last days of his father's life becomes known to him, Marcus realises that his father's death was no accident and that his own life is in danger. Meanwhile, an escaped slave girl called Una, who possesses the power to look inside others' minds, struggles to save her brother, Sulien, from a London prison ship. In a fortune teller's stall in a Gallic flea-market, Marcus, Una and Sulien's paths cross, and the fate of the Empire rests on their shoulders...

The Sumner family can read the signs: the droughts and floods, the blighted crops, the shortages, the rampant diseases and plagues, and, above all, the increasing sterility all point to one thing. Their isolated farm in the Appalachian Mountains gives them the ideal place to survive the coming breakdown, and their wealth and know-how gives them the means. Men and women must clone themselves for humanity to survive. But what then?

The year is 1199, the place the Welsh Marches. Young Arthur de Caldicot is given a shining stone in which his legendary namesake is revealed. In 100 short chapters that brilliantly evoke life in a medieval manor, stories of the boy King Arthur begin to echo and anticipate the secrets and mysteries that emerge in his own life.

Arthur de Caldicot arrives at Holt to be squire to Lord Stephen and accompany him on crusade. It is an exciting and bewildering time for him as he finds a warhorse, is fitted with armour, and improves his fighting skills. He dreads a confrontation with his blood-father, the violent Sir William, and dreams of finding his true mother; he discovers girls — including the vivacious Winnie de Verdon whom he rescues from burning to death; he has to deal with the aftermath of a murder; he sees the sea for the first time, sails to France and finally takes the Cross. And meanwhile these events are reflected in his seeing stone, in stories of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Packed with incident, wonderful characters, and fascinating historical detail, and interwoven with brilliant retellings of Arthurian legends, this is a glorious follow-up to THE SEEING STONE.

Molly Sullivan said that the new baby was a little star. She was no trouble at all and she was always smiling... so she became known as Star and no one remembered that her name was Oona. Star Sullivan just wanted everyone to be happy — her father to stop gambling, her mother not to work so hard, her brother to stay out of trouble, her sister to stop worrying about every little thing she ate. Then the Hale family moved in next door, and from the moment Star saw 23-year-old Laddy Hale, everything began to change — until Star was no longer the sweet, thoughtful girl everyone loved and no one worried about...

It's Aimee Biel, a frightened teenager who has called the one adult who had promise to help her if she ever got into trouble. Myron collects Aimee from a cold street corner but she persuades him not to take her home, but to drop her of at an unknown address in the suburbs. And with a final wave from a darkened porch, Aimee disappears into the night... Drive by guilt and the desperation of her family, Myron is determined to find Aimee- whatever the cost. But he doesn't realise just how far people will go to protect the ones they love.

Four fabulously funny stories that will invoke every family's worst Christmas nightmares, as Horrid Henry sabotages the school play, tries to do his Christmas shopping without spending his pocket money, attempts to ambush Father Christmas, and endures Christmas dinner with the guests from hell.

When Dr Alice Tanner discovers two skeletons during an archaeological dig in southern France, she unearths a link with a horrific and brutal past. But it's not just the sight of the shattered bones that makes her uneasy; there's an overwhelming sense of evil in the tomb that Alice finds hard to shake off, even in the bright French sunshine. Puzzled by the words carved inside the chamber, Alice has an uneasy feeling that she has disturbed something which was meant to remain hidden... Eight hundred years ago, on the night before a brutal civil war ripped apart Languedoc, a book was entrusted to Alais, a young herbalist and healer. Although she cannot understand the symbols and diagrams the book contains, Alais knows her destiny lies in protecting their secret, at all costs. Skilfully blending the lives of two women divided by centuries but united by a common destiny, LABYRINTH is a powerful story steeped in the atmosphere and history of southern France.

Peter Sinclair is tormented by bereavement and failure. In an attempt to conjure some meaning from his life, he embarks on an autobiography, but he finds himself writing the story of another man in another, imagined, world, whose insidious attraction draws him even further in... TheAffirmation is at once an original thriller and a haunting study of schizophrenia; it has a compulsive, dream-like quality.

AD 500 is written as a practical survival guide for the use of civilised visitors to the barbaric islands of Britain and Ireland. It describes a journey which begins in Cornwall and continues through Wales and Ireland, then across to Scotland and eventually down to London and southern Britain. The Romans have left, and the islands are now fought over by Irish, British Celts, Picts and Saxons. It is a dangerous world, full of tribal war. The British Celts are enthusiastic head-hunters, while the Saxon gods require regular blood sacrifices, animal and sometimes human. There are social pitfals too (`Do not make fun of the Celts' beliefs about Arthur'...'Don't refuse a place in a Welsh collective bed.') Cheviot bandits, bizarre forms of Christianity, boat burials, peculiar haircuts, human sacrifice, poetry competitions, slave markets, the legend of King Arthur — these are the realities of life in the sixth century AD.

The Stasi was among the most sophisticated intelligence organisations in the world, but by the end of the 1980s the Orwellian state of East Germany was collapsing around it. The special squads of armed officers, the torture chambers in the Stasi jail, the hundreds of thousands of informers could do nothing to prevent the rebellion that saw the fall of the Berlin Wall. It is in the context of these last few paranoid weeks of the Communist world, when a population that had been oppressed for nearly sixty years found the will to rise up, that this outstanding thriller is set. Its hero is Dr Rudolf Rosenharte, an academic from Dresden and agent for MI6; his controller is Robert Harland, from A SPY'S LIFE and EMPIRE STATE. When Rosenharte's security is compromised he is faced with a stark choice: to defect to the West, leaving his beloved family to the mercies of the Stasi, or return to East Germany to carry out a dangerous assignment under the Stasi's suspicious eye... When Rosenharte's security is compromised he is faced with a stark choice: to defect to the West, leaving his beloved family to the mercies of the Stasi, or return to East Germany to carry out a dangerous assignment under the Stasi's suspicious eye...

Tom Cartwright is a ghost-writer: eking out a living in Edinburgh, he is always ready to assumethe persona of a struggling working mother-of-four, or a round-the-world yachtsman, or a 'sensual' aromatherapist — indeed anyone his agent asks him to be, so long as it brings in money. When he is offered the highly lucrative task of ghosting the autobiography of glamorous young soap star Georgina Nye, he and his girlfriend Sara are thrilled: Sara is a big fan of George's and Tom will finally be able to afford some new carpets for their house. But soon things go awry when Tom finds himself drawn to George by forces outside his control (even though they are inside his own body). Does his relationship with Sara stand a chance in the face of this explosion of chemistry? Is this love or just oxytocin — and is there a difference?

They're called Lincoln Lawyers: the bottom of the legal food chain, the criminal defence attorneys who operate out of the back of a Lincoln Town Car, taking whatever cases the system throws in their path. Mickey Haller has been in the business a long time, and he knows just how to work it. When a Beverly Hills rich boy is arrested for brutally beating a woman, Haller has his first high-paying client in years. The evidence mounts on the defence's side, and Haller might even be in the rare position of defending a client who is actually innocent. But when his case starts to fall apart and neither the suspect nor the victim are quite who they seem, Haller quickly discovers that when you swim with the sharks, it's easy to wind up as prey.

Rob Garland is getting married in two months. Oddly, however, this is the least of his problems. More vexing than the seating arrangements, the choice of wedding stationery — more even that the savagely obscene expense of everything — is the fact that Rob should be dead: and he knows it. Faced with an ultimatum from his girlfriend to either sort himself out, or call the wedding (and the whole relationship) off, he sets about trying to come to terms with how it is that, somehow, he's still inexplicably breathing. After pouring his heart out to the listeners on his late-night radio jazz show, he soon finds himself teamed up with others who really ought not to be alive, but who — for random, meaningless and, frankly, stupid reasons — unaccountably are. And that's when things become yet more worrying: because it turns out that their search to understand why they've each remained oddly alive might very well end up killing them all. Love, death, religious beliefs, existential angst — Love and Other Near-Death Experiences is a jack-knifing comedy about those things which should be no laughing matter.

For all the strange worlds borne of his vast and vivid imagination, Philip K. Dick was largely concerned with humanity's most achingly familiar heartaches and struggles. In Our Friends From Frolix 8, he clashes private dreams against public battles in a fast-paced and provocative tale that ultimately addresses our salvation both as individuals and a whole. Nick Appleton is a menial laborer whose life is a series of endless frustrations. Willis Gram is the despotic oligarch of a planet ruled by big-brained elites. When they both fall in love with Charlotte Boyer, a feisty black marketer of revolutionary propaganda, Nick seems destined for doom. But everything takes a decidedly unpredictable turn when the revolution's leader, Thors Provoni, returns from ten years of intergalactic hiding with a ninety-ton protoplasmic slime that is bent on creating a new world order.

Who, among you, deserves eternal life? Daniel is a highly successful stand-up comedian who has made a career out of playing outrageously on the prejudices of his public. But at the beginning of the twenty-first century, he has begun to detest laughter in particular and mankind in general. Despite this, Daniel is unable to stop himself believing in the possibility of love. A thousand years on, war, drought and earthquakes have decimated the earth and Daniel24 lives alone in a secure compound — his only companion, a cloned dog named Fox. Outside, the remnants of the human race roam in packs, while Daniel24 attempts to decipher his predecessor's history. In a nightmarish vision of the implosion of the modern world, he, like his predecessor attempts to fathom the meaning of love, sex, suffering and regret.

Pel Dalton leads an uneventful life. His days are spent bluffing his way through an IT job in the university library, pillow-fighting with his two sons, surviving family outings to the supermarket, and finding new things to argue about with Ursula, his German girlfriend. But things are about to change... In this funny tale of love, fatherhood and Anglo-German relations Pel discovers that sometimes the things that drive you crazy can be the only things that can keep you sane.

Bombs are exploding in the streets of London, but life seems to have planted more subtle booby-traps for Miles Flint. Miles is a spy. His job is to watch and to listen, then to report back to his superiors, nothing more. The job, affording glimpses into the most private lives of his victims, appeals to Miles. He doesn't lust after promotion, and he doesn't want action. He wants, just for once, not to botch a case. Having lost one suspect — with horrific consequences — Miles becomes too involved with another, a young Irishwoman. His marriage seems ready to crumble to dust. So does his home. But Miles is given one last chance for redemption — a trip to Belfast, which quickly becomes a flight of terror, murder and shocking discoveries. But can the voyeur survive in a world of violent action?

Since 1972, when he was eleven, Dylan Jones has been regularly buying records in a 30-year binge of glam rock, punk, disco and rap. His life is full of disparate pop stars and their disparate records. But now, the iPod has changed everything, because Apple CEO Steve Jobs and his chief designed Jonathan Ive's invention has enabled listeners to put all their music in one place. Dylan Jones' book is about the iPod, its astonishing effect on the music industry, its invention and marketing. It's also about how a little plastic and chrome digital music player no bigger than a mobile phone has irrevocably altered our relationship with music. This book features the design and creation of the iPod and the rejuvenation of Apple. It is also a history of Dylan Jones' personal journey through music, and his own obsessions with the Beatles, Bruce Springsteen, Burt Bacharach, punk, hip-hop, Van Morrison and U2. He selects the best 100 jazz records ever made and shows how to make your own definitive 175-song Beatles album. There are comprehensive lists and essays about what you could put on your own iPod. No longer will you have to bend to the whims of a record company's unalterable choices. With iPod, it's a scroll in the park, creating and collecting infinite playlists of your own with this wonderful memory box.