Orion Books

Tess Leonard thought matrimony was for life, but her husband has decided that their marriage is the relationship equivalent of a starter home: cramped, claustrophobic and something he's definitely outgrown. Now, at thirty-five, Tess is in the biggest mess of her life. Known to all her friends as 'Tip Top Tess' because of her dogged pursuit of the perfect home, the perfect marriage and the perfect career, she's now a candidate for How Clean Is Your House? And it's all because Barney has walked out. But there's a life raft on the horizon: The Divorce Survival Class. It may be uncomfortable, overcrowded and nearly sinking under the weight of excess baggage, but it's a boot-camp for the broken-hearted. Over eight weeks, Tess and her battle-weary classmates will lay bare the darkest secrets of their failed marriages — from the thrills of a threesome to the monotony of monogamy. And course leader William, an alchemist for the unloved and rejected, will turn their lives around in truly spectacular style…

Sam Spade is hired by the fragrant Miss Wonderley to track down her sister, who has eloped with a louse called Floyd Thursby. But Miss Wonderley is in fact the beautiful and treacherous Brigid O'Shaughnessy, and when Spade's partner Miles Archer is shot while on Thursby's trail, Spade finds himself both hunter and hunted: can he track down the jewel-encrusted bird, a treasure worth killing for, before the Fat Man finds him?

Four complete hilarious stories with really horrid music and sound effects. Horrid Henry's Perfect Day Horrid Henry's Dance Class Horrid Henry and Moody Margaret Horrid Henry's Holiday

Joe Fernwright works as a pot-healer, a repairer of ceramics, in a dull future where there isn't much call for his skills. He's broke and bored when the offer from the Glimmung comes along. It might just be the answer to both his financial and spiritual problems, even if it does mean working on a strange project on Plowman's Planet with other assorted odd creatures. The only thing is that the Glimmung may just be divine and ask for more than Joe's commitment to the job...

World War III is raging — or so the millions of people crammed in their underground tanks believe. For fiteen years, subterranean humanity has been fed on daily broadcasts of a never-ending nuclear destruction, sustained by a belief in the all powerful Protector. Now someone has gone to the surface and found no destruction, no war. The authorities have been telling a massive lie. Now the search begins to find out why.

It is winter, 1901. The ancient facade of Cresswell Manor surveys a vast and rich estate — but the land has fallen into decay. Mortimer Cresswell is an old man now, and at his deathbed his family waits, patiently, to scrap over his fortune. Only Hannah, Mortimer's daughter, can see that the family has become consumed by private ambition, jealousy and greed. When Stanislas von Ehrlich, a self-made man of fortune, moves into the neighbourhood, the natural order of things changes, sparking a massive feud. And then von Ehrlich's headstrong, spoilt and beautiful daughter Esmeralda is drawn to a member of the Cresswell household, with the most far-reaching consequences. Before long, both families are set on a collision course so powerful it will completely alter their world.

The structure of the book is chronological, with digressions. From Roman and then Norman London, we move on to Chaucer's London — the city of the Peasants Revolt, Dick Whittington and the great Livery Companies. In Tudor and Stuart London many believed the city was being wrecked by over-population, over-building and the greed of speculators. Eighteenth-century London witnessed the South Sea Bubble, gin, highwaymen and the Gordon riots; but also banking, hospitals, and the elegant design of everyday things. In the nineteenth century, expanding vigorously, the city resisted any overall make-over. With Queen Victoria came the Railway Age, which made and unmade the city. Chartism, anti-semitism, overcrowding and cholera. But engineering triumphs too. If the First World War was a nightmare happening elsewhere, the amazing six years of 1939-45 were the city's finest hour. Post-1945, property developers took over, with disastrous results. The author celebrates the cosmopolitan city that mobility and immigration have created, while deploring the moronization' of the city, exemplified by the Millennium.

Fourteen people arrive on the strange planet of Delmark-O; they have nothing in common other than a desire to make a fresh start. And they have no idea why they are there and no way of escaping. And then the first murder takes place...

Hidden in the heart of the old city of Barcelona is the 'cemetery of lost books', a labyrinthine library of obscure and forgotten titles that have long gone out of print. To this library, a man brings his 10-year-old son Daniel one cold morning in 1945. Daniel is allowed to choose one book from the shelves and pulls out 'La Sombra del Viento' by Julian Carax. But as he grows up, several people seem inordinately interested in his find. Then, one night, as he is wandering the old streets once more, Daniel is approached by a figure who reminds him of a character from La Sombra del Viento, a character who turns out to be the devil. This man is tracking down every last copy of Carax's work in order to burn them. What begins as a case of literary curiosity turns into a race to find out the truth behind the life and death of Julian Carax and to save those he left behind. A page-turning exploration of obsession in literature and love, and the places that obsession can lead.

A remote shelf in the Arctic circle. A small TV crew is braving the harsh conditions to film the breaking off of a major ice shelf — yet another nail in the planet's eco-coffin. Then someone calls out, pointing at something up in the sky overhead. The camera pans up and they look up to see a blazing symbol clear, burning high over the bleak, deserted terrain. Thus begins a series of strange events worldwide as the mysterious sign appears over the sites of conflict, natural disasters and terrorist atrocities. What can it portend? The world is wracked with both fear and hope. Suddenly, all this is focused onto one man. An obscure monk who recognises the symbol from the past and understands what it means for the future of humanity. But as he becomes the most sought-after man on the planet, the questions have to be asked: could this be the real deal? Or the most elaborate fake in world history? And — either way — what happens to the world now?

Major Brendan Archer travels to Ireland — to the Majestic Hotel and to the fiancee he acquired on a rash afternoon's leave three years ago. Despite her many letters, the lady herself proves elusive, and the Major's engagement is short-lived. But he is unable to detach himself from the alluring discomforts of the crumbling hotel. Ensconced in the dim and shabby splendour of the Palm Court, surrounded by gently decaying old ladies and proliferating cats, the Major passes the summer. So hypnotic are the faded charms of the Majestic, the Major is almost unaware of the gathering storm. But this is Ireland in 1919 — and the struggle for independence is about to explode with brutal force.

1885, the North West Frontier. Rudyard Kipling is witness to a bizarre encounter between the British army and what appears to be an impossibly advanced piece of Russian technology. And then to a terrifying intervention by a helicopter from 2037. Before the full impact of this extraordinary event has even begun to sink in, Kipling, his friends and the helicopter crew stumble across Alexander the Great's army. Mankind's time odyssey has begun. It is a journey that will see Alexander avoid his premature death and carve out an Empire that expands from Carthage to China, beating the time-slipped army of Ghenghis Khan in a battle outside the ruins of Babylon in the process. And it will present mankind with two devastating truths. Aliens are amongst us and have been manipulating our past and our future. And that future extends only as far as 2037, for that is the date Earth will be destroyed. This is SF that spans countless centuries and carries cutting edge ideas on time travel and alien intervention. It shows two of the genre's masters at their groundbreaking best.

Three muffled thuds ring from the partially filled grave of the newly wed girl. Only the verger hears them and he dismisses the noise as his imagination. But over the next few days others also hear faint sounds. An exhumation order is granted. Reporter Kate Hemingway sneaks into the small suburban churchyard when the coffin is opened, and the scene she witnesses is so horrific she can never forget it. As she starts work on the story, Kate finds herself caught up in a sinister and macabre cover-up. At the centre is a respected anaesthetist who has a secret obsession. He believes people can exist outside their bodies and that if he can prove it he will provide the answer to the question that has haunted mankind through the ages: is there life after death? Nothing — and no one — is going to stand in the way of his driving ambition...

THE ANCESTOR'S TALE is a pilgrimage back through time; a journey on which we meet up with fellow pilgrims as we and they converge on our common ancestors. Chimpanzees join us at about 6 million years in the past, orang utans at 14 million years, as we stride on together, a growing band. The journey provides the setting for a collection of some 40 tales. Each explores an aspect of evolutionary biology through the stories of characters met along the way. The tales are interspersed with prologues detailing the journey, route maps showing joining lineages, and life-like reconstructions of our common ancestors. THE ANCESTOR'S TALE represents a pilgrimage on an unimaginable scale: our goal is four billion years away, and the number of pilgrims joining us grows vast — ultimately encompassing all living creatures. At the end of the journey lies something remarkable in its simplicity and transformative power: the first, humble, replicating molecules.

It's the spring of 1968, the sun shines down on an America on the brink of civil war. Martin Luther King preaches in vain for non-violent protest and the ghettos of Washington DC seethe with anger. In the middle of this powder-keg is thrust a young black cop, barely out of school himself. Derek Strange believes passionately that he can make a difference, but his friends and family think he's a traitor and a patsy of the white establishment. On April 4th, 1968, Dr King is assassinated on the balcony of his motel in Memphis, Tennessee. And black America rises as one to condemn the slaying of their hero. For one week, it seems that the whole country will fall. And Derek, his brother, his father, his mother and his whole community find themselves at the heart of a battle for the heart and soul of the new world.

An illegal immigrant is found murdered in an Edinburgh housing scheme: a racist attack, or something else entirely? Rebus is drawn into the case, but has other problems: his old police station has closed for business, and his masters would rather he retire than stick around. Siobhan meanwhile has problems of her own. A teenager has disappeared from home and Siobhan is drawn into helping the family, which will mean travelling closer than is healthy towards the web of a convicted rapist. Then there's the small matter of the two skeletons — a woman and an infant — found buried beneath a concrete cellar floor in Fleshmarket Close. The scene begins to look like an elaborate stunt — but whose, and for what purpose...?

Gaul was divided into three parts. No, four parts — for one small village of indomitable Gauls still held out against the Roman invaders. BOOK 20 Asterix and Obelix meet a Corsican chieftain who has been taken prisoner and accompany their new friend Boney was a warrior way a yix back to Corsica to help him foil the evil designs of the corrupt Roman Praetor Perfidius.

Gaul was divided into three parts. No, four parts — for one small village of indomitable Gauls still held out against the Roman invaders. BOOK 8 The Romans have invaded Britain but one village still holds out against them. At his British cousin Anticlimax's request, Asterix and Obelix set off to help with a barrel full of magic potion.

Gaul was divided into three parts. No, four parts — for one small village of indomitable Gauls still held out against the Roman invaders. BOOK 12 The famous Olympic Games are to be held in Athens — and Asterix, Obelix and their friends enter. The competition will be formidable but our heroes are determined they will find a way to win.

Gaul was divided into three parts. No, four parts — for one small village of indomitable Gauls still held out against the Roman invaders. BOOK 22 Asterix and Obelix are lost at sea and finally reach what they think is a Roman colony, but when the Vikings turn up on a voyage of discovery, they realise that they have, in fact, discovered a strange New World.

For the millions of Asterix fans old and young alike the wait is over. ASTERIX RETURNS sees our favourite hero on fine form in this superb collection of short stories. ASTERIX RETURNS includes 10 short stories by Goscinny and Uderzo (many unpublished in the UK) and a further 2 brand-new short stories created by Albert Uderzo. The initial print-run in French is a cool million and Asterix and his chums once again look set to take the UK by storm.

Gaul was divided into three parts. No, four parts — for one small village of indomitable Gauls still held out against the Roman invaders. BOOK 21 On being demobilised from the Roman army Legionary Tremensdelirius gets the title deeds to the little Gaulish village. Soon, however, he swaps them for a drink in a tavern and the landlord Orthopaedix, his wife Angina and their daughter Influenza set off to claim their rights. Strange to say, Asterix and his friends don't see it quite the same way.

Breaking the German Enigma codes was not only about brilliant mathematicians and professors at Bletchley Park. There is another aspect of the story which it is only now possible to tell. It takes in the exploits of spies, naval officers and ordinary British seamen who risked, and in some cases lost, their lives snatching the vital Enigma codebooks from under the noses of Nazi officials and from sinking German ships and submarines. This book tells the whole Enigma story: its original invention and use by German forces and how it was the Poles who first cracked — and passed on to the British — the key to the German airforce Enigma. The more complicated German Navy Enigma appeared to them to be unbreakable.

Gaul was divided into three parts. No, four parts — for one small village of indomitable Gauls still held out against the Roman invaders. BOOK 6 Getafix, Obelix, Dogmatix and Asterix visit Egypt to help an architect build a palace for Caesar. There they are entranced by the Sphinx, the pyramids and Cleopatra's nose.