Orion Books

King Canute, Lady Godiva, Guy Fawkes, Bonnie Prince Charlie, Grace Darling and other famous names from 3000 years of history live again in these 100 tragic, comic, stirring tales of adventure, folly and wickedness. These stories, many of them virtually forgotten, are Britain's heritage, told and illustrated with such verve and colour that they are the perfect way to give present-day children a sense of the excitement of history.

The wizard Alder comes from Roke to the island of Gont in search of the Archmage, Lord Sparrowhawk, once known as Ged. The man who was once the most powerful wizard in the Islands now lives with his wife Tenar and their adopted daughter Tehanu. Alder needs help: his beloved wife died and in his dreams she calls him to the land of the dead — and now the dead are haunting him, begging for release. He can no longer sleep, and the Wizards of Earthsea are worried. But there is more at stake than the unquiet rest of one minor wizard: for the dragons of Earthsea have arisen, to reclaim the lands that were once theirs. Only Tehanu, herself daughter of a dragon, can talk to them; it may be that Alder's dreams hold the key to the salvation of Earthsea and all the peoples who live there.

THE BOURNE IDENTITY: He has no past. And he may have no future. His memory is blank. He only knows that he was fished out of the Mediterranean Sea, his body riddled with bullets. There are a few clues: evidence that plastic surgery has altered his face, a Swiss bank account containing four million dollars, and a name: Jason Bourne. But he is marked for death, racing for survival through the layers of his buried past into a world of murderous conspirators — led by the world's most dangerous assassin, Carlos. And no one can help Bourne but the woman who once wanted to escape him. THE BOURNE SUPREMACY: In a Kowloon Cabaret, scrawled in a pool of blood, is a name the world wanted to forget: Jason Bourne. The Chinese vice-premier has been slain by a legendary assassin. World leaders ask the same fearful questions: Why has Jason Bourne come back? Who is the next to die? But US officials know the truth: there is no Jason Bourne. The name was created as cover for David Webb on his search for the notorious killer Carlos. Someone else has taken the Bourne identity and unless he is stopped, the world will pay a devastating price. So Jason Bourne must live again. THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM: The world's two deadliest spies in the ultimate showdown.Two men, each mysteriously summoned by telegram, witness a bizarre killing. The telegrams are signed Jason Bourne. Only they know Bourne's true identity and understand the telegram is really a message from Bourne's mortal enemy, Carlos, the world's deadliest and most elusive terrorist. And they also know that he wants a final confrontation with Bourne. Now David Webb must do what he hoped he would never have to do again — assume the terrible identity of Jason Bourne.

Years have gone by since the events surrounding the death of Anne Boleyn. But her missing hand and all that it represents to the dark world of 16th-century Europe still draws the powerful to seek it out. Jean Rombaud — the French executioner of the first novel — has grown old, both in age and spirit. Wearied by the betrayal of a son and the scorn of a wife, he fights in the seemingly never-ending siege of Siena. Meanwhile, Gianni Rombaud has forsaken everything his ageing father stands for and now kills heathen for the Inquisition in Rome. Then he is summoned by Cardinal Carafa himself. His masters no longer merely want his dagger in the hearts of Jews, they want the hand of the dead queen... But only three people know where it is buried, and one of them is Gianni's father...

In THE ROAD TO STALINGRAD Professor Erickson takes us in detail from the inept command structures and strategic delusions of the pre-invasion Soviet Union, through the humiliations as her armies fell back on all fronts before the Barbarossa onslaught, until the tide turned at last at Stalingrad. Unsparingly he assesses the generals and political leaders, and analyses the confusions and wranglings within both Allied and Axis commands. The climax, the grinding battle for Stalingrad, leaves the Red Army poised for its majestic counter-offensive, Operation 'Uranus', discovering it had 'caught a tiger by the tail'.

The Ukraine is one of the most neglected countries in the world. It has a population of 52 million — larger than Britain's — and a land mass the size of France; it also has Chernobyl, and after Russia is the largest nuclear power. The word 'Ukraine' means 'borderland' and for most of its history the lands that make up present-day Ukraine have been a collection of other countries' border regions. Prior to Stalinism and Nazism, Ukraine was ethnically extremely diverse, including Russians, Poles, Jews, Greeks and Armenians. Their ghosts linger in language, literature, and architecture, quite distinct from Russia's.

Michael Palin's epic voyages have seen him circumnavigate the globe, travel from the North to the South Pole and circle the countries of the Pacific Ocean, but this was perhaps the greatest challenge yet: to cross the vast and merciless Sahara desert. As the journey unfolds, the Sahara reveals not the emptiness of endless sand dunes, but a huge and diverse range of cultures and landscapes and a long history of commerce and conquest stretching from the time of the ancient Egyptians to the oil-rich Islamic republics of today. On his way, he encounters dangers such as camel stew, being run over by the Paris-Dakar rally and Dakar nightlife, as well as returning to the original spot where THE LIFE OF BRIAN was filmed.

The operating principle was random selection: positions of public power were decided by a sophisticated lottery. Everyone had a chance, everyone could live in hope that they would be chosen to be the boss, the Quizmaster. But with the power came the game — the assassination game — which everyone could watch on TV. Would the new man be good enough to avoid his chosen killer? Which made for fascinating and exciting viewing, compelling enough to distract the public's attention while the Big Five industrial complexes run the world, the solar system and the people, unnoticed and completely unopposed. Then, in 2203, with the choice of a member of a maverick cult as Quizmaster, the system developed a little hitch...

In the overcrowded world and cramped space colonies of the late 21st century, tedium can be endured through the use of the drug Can-D, which enables the user to inhabit a shared illusory world. When industrialist Palmer Eldritch returns from an interstellar trip, he brings with him a new drug, Chew-Z, which is far more potent than Can-D, but threatens to plunge the world into a permanent state of drugged illusion controlled by the mysterious Eldritch. «The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch» is, by universal consent, one of his three key novels, and the book in which he first took his perennial interest in the fragile nature of reality to a new level of imaginative intensity.

The life of Henry VIII is a wonderful subject for Richard Brassey to interpret through his comic, colourful pictures and funny captions. All the essential information is there, concisely and wittily put. With its small paperback format, its 24 pages packed with pictures, it is lots of fun to read and look at and makes the perfect introduction to one of the most famous characters in British history.

Ragle Gumm is an ordinary man leading an ordinary life, except that he makes his living by entering a newspaper contest every day — and winning, every day. But he gradually begins to suspect that his life — indeed his whole world — is an illusion, constructed around him for the express purpose of keeping him docile and happy. But if that is the case, what is his real world like, and what is he actually doing every day when he thinks he is guessing 'Where Will The Little Green Man Be Next?'

Elvis Cole has got a problem to solve — and this time it's personal.His girlfriend, Lucy, is out of town, and has left her young son, Ben, in Elvis's care. Elvis and Lucy have had a few problems lately — not least over his job as a private investigator. But at last things seem to be getting better. Until Ben disappears. One minute he's playing his computer game in Elvis's house; the next he has vanished. Elvis looks everywhere, but he just can't find Ben; and neither can Lucy, when she arrives. Then Elvis receives a phone call about Ben — and realises that something from his own past has come back to haunt him...

Henry Pierce has a whole new life — new apartment, new telephone, new telephone number. But the first time he checks his messages, he discovers that someone had the number before him. The messages on his line are for a woman named Lilly, and she is in some kind of serious trouble. Pierce is inexorably drawn into Lilly's world, and it's unlike any world he's ever known. It is a night-time world of escort services, websites, sex, and secret identities. Pierce tumbles through a hole, abandoning his orderly life in a frantic race to save the life of a woman he has never met. Pierce traces Lilly's last days, but every step into her past takes him deeper into a web of inescapable intricacy — and a decision that could cost him everything he owns and holds dear ...

In consequence of a number of stunning catastrophes, Arthur Dent is surprised to find himself living in a hideously miserable cave on prehistoric Earth. And just when he thinks things cannot possibly get any worse, they do. He discovers that not only is the Galaxy mind-bogglingly big and bewildering, but also that most of the things that happen in it are staggeringly unfair...The final part of the original Hitch Hiker's Guide trilogy confirms Douglas Adams as one of the most original and funniest of Britain's comic writers.

The Mass-Observation organisation was set up in 1937 with the aim of recording everyday life in Britain. Dorothy Sheridan has plundered its astonishingly rich archives to put together this anthology of women's experience in the Second World War. What was this experience? How far did it go to liberate women? Was it the opportunity that so many expected or was it simply six years of deprivation, hard work and pain? WARTIME WOMEN allows us to explore these questions through the writings of women living through the war years. The range of contributors is enormous, from a fish and chip shop worker in Birmingham to Irish immigrant munitions, factory workers, young women welders in Yorkshire and a seventeen-year-old schoolgirl in Essex. 'My horror of all this war business is qualified by an eagerness to be a unit of it. I feel as if I have been waiting for this all my life and I have just realised it' — A young woman writing in her diary in September, 1939.

A stinkbomb becomes a deadly weapon in Horrid Henry's longrunning war with Moody Margaret; he uses all his guile to win the school reading competition, only to find the longed-for prize is not what he expected; he goes for a sleepover and retreats in horror when he finds that other people's houses aren't always as nice as his own; and he has the joy of seeing Miss Battle-Axe ticked off by the Head when he knows it was all his fault. In short, another vintage Horrid Henry title!

The slaves are revolting... they've stolen Julius Casar's own galley. Seeking shelter in the little Gaulish village, they find it in crisis. Obelix has suffered diree effects from drinking the druid's magic potions on the sly. Can his friends get him cured by Absolutlifabulos, high priest of Atlantis? Enjoy all the thrills and spills of sea battles against the Roman navy!

A follow-up to the highly successful “Discworld Unseen University Quizbook”, “The Wyrdest Link” will present itself as qualifying tests for various levels of mastery in Ankh-Morpork City's Guilds and other organisations — from the dignified Thieves' Guild to illicit outfits like the feared Breccia (the trolls' Mafia) or the wholly reprehensive Elucidated Brethren of the Ebon Night (see “Guards! Guards!”). As before, the straight Discworld general knowledge inquisition — presented with offbeat twists and linking themes — will be varied with trick questions, outrageous bogglers, and the occasional near-impossible poser to suit all levels of Discworld fans.

Eight years ago David Beck was knocked unconscious and left for dead, and his wife Elizabeth was kidnapped and murdered. For the next eight years Dr Beck re-lived the horror of what happened that day every day of his life. Then one afternoon, he receives an anonymous e-mail telling him to log on to a certain web-site at a certain time, using a code that only he and his wife knew. The screen opens on to a web cam — and it is Elizabeth's image he sees. Is it a practical joke? But as Beck tries to find out if Elizabeth is truly alive, and what really happened the night she disappeared, the FBI are trying to pin Elizabeth's murder on him. And everyone he turns to seems to end up dead?

The Unadulterated Cat is becoming an endangered species as more and more of us settle for those boring mass-produced cats the ad-men sell us — the pussies that purr into their gold-plated food bowls on the telly. But the Campaign for Real Cats sets out to change all that by helping us to recognise a true, unadulterated cat when we see one. For example: real cats have ears that look like they've been trimmed with pinking shears; real cats never wear flea collars... or appear on Christmas cards... or chase anything with a bell in it; real cats do eat quiche. And giblets. And butter. And anything else left on the table, if they think they can get away with it. Real cats can hear a fridge door opening two rooms away...

The powerful and bestselling memoir of a young Jewish pianist who survived the war in Warsaw against all odds. Made into a Bafta and Oscar-winning film.

Thor has broken the sword Tyrfing so that it cannot strike at the roots of Yggdrasil, the tree that binds together earth, heaven and hell. But now the mighty sword is needed again to save the elves in their war against the trolls, and only Scafloc, a human child kidnapped and raised by the elves, can hope to persuade Bolverk the ice-giant to make Tyrfing whole again. But Scafloc must also confront his shadow self, Valgard the changeling who has taken his place in the world of men.

Time is running out for the passengers and crew of the tourist cruiser Selene, incarcerated in a sea of choking lunar dust. On the surface, her rescuers find their resources stretched to the limit by the mercilessly unpredictable conditions of a totally alien environment. A brilliantly imagined story of human ingenuity and survival, «A Fall of Moondust» is a tour-de-force of psychological suspense and sustained dramatic tension by the field's foremost author.

When the bones of a twelve-year-old boy are found scattered in the Hollywood Hills, Harry Bosch is drawn into a case that brings up the darkest memories from his own haunted past. The bones have been buried for years, but the cold case doesn't deter Bosch. Unearthing hidden stories, he finds the child's identity and reconstructs his fractured life, determined that he won't be forgotten. At the same time, a new love affair with a female cop begins to blossom for Bosch — until a stunningly blown mission leaves him in more trouble than ever before in his turbulent career. The investigation races to a shocking conclusion and leaves Bosch on the brink of an unimaginable decision.