Picador

'Point Omega is a treat: the most satisfying and least cryptic of DeLillo's late novels' — Sunday Telegraph. Richard Elster, a retired secret war adviser, has retreated to a forlorn house in a desert, 'somewhere south of nowhere'. But his planned isolation is interrupted when he is joined by a young filmmaker intent on documenting his experience in a one-take film. The two men sit on the deck, drinking and talking. Weeks go by. And then Elster's daughter Jessie visits. When a devastating event follows, all the men's talk, the accumulated meaning of conversation and isolation, is thrown into question. Written in hypnotic prose, this substantial novel is both a metaphysical meditation and a deeply unsettling mystery, from which one thing emerges: loss, fierce and incomprehensible. 'Another formidable construction by a very distinctive writer' — Evening Standard. 'A pared, intense anti-parable... so rigorous and so precise' — Observer. 'Impossible to forget' — Sunday Times.

Prentis, senior clerk in the 'dead crimes' department of police archives, is becoming more and more confused. Alienated from his wife and children, and obsessed by his father, a wartime hero now the mute inmate of a mental hospital, Prentis feels increasingly unsettled as his enigmatic boss, Mr Quinn, turns his investigation towards him — and his father. Gradually Prentis suspects that his father's breakdown and Quinn's menacing behavior are connected and the link is to be found in his father's memoirs, Shuttlecock. 'Excellent, profound' — Alan Hollinghurst, London Review of Books. 'An astonishing study of forms of guilt, laced with a thread of detection, and puckering now and then into outrageous humor' — Sunday Times. 'A superbly written claustrophobic account of power that corrupts private and public life and of guilt that becomes obsession' — Daily Telegraph. 'Swift's central strength as a writer is his integrity. Story and character are treated with a seriousness and respect that while allowing for the oddity of human behavior — Shuttlecock is thoroughly and beautifully odd — always honors them' — Times Literary Supplement. 'Serious, moving and often very funny indeed' — Observer.

John Banville' s stunning powers of mimicry are brilliantly on display in this engrossing novel, the darkly compelling confession of an improbable murderer. Freddie Montgomery is a highly cultured man, a husband and father living the life of a dissolute exile on a Mediterranean island. When a debt comes due and his wife and child are held as collateral, he returns to Ireland to secure funds. That pursuit leads to murder. And here is his attempt to present evidence, not of his innocence, but of his life, of the events that lead to the murder he committed because he could. Like a hero out of Nabokov or Camus, Montgomery is a chillingly articulate, self-aware, and amoral being, whose humanity is painfully on display.

Francis Jay, a nineties person, embarks on a quest to find one of the greatest philosophers and thinkers of the modern age, the elusive Dr Bazlo Criminale. From European congress to congress, from woman to woman, from muse to muse he pursues the doctor, while the truth is slowly revealed.

Written in the last years of Roberto Bolano's life, «2666» was greeted across Europe and Latin America as the great writer's masterpiece, surpassing even his previous work in imagination, beauty, and scope. At the centre of the book is the fictional city of Santa Teresa on the Mexico-US border. It is an urban sprawl that draws in lost souls like a vortex: convicts and academics, an American sportswriter, a teenage student with her widowed father, and a reclusive, 'missing' writer. But there is a darker side still.As in the real town of Juarez, on which Santa Teresa is based, girls and women are disappearing at an alarming rate...A creeping sense of conspirac-y permeates «2666», from the apocalyptic overtones of its title, to the ways in which Santa Teresa becomes an emblem of the corruption, violence and decadence of twentieth century European history. This is a novel on an astonishing scale from a passionate, visionary writer, one who unerringly 'adjusts your angle of view on the world'. 'A tour de force — though the phrase seems hardly adequate to describe the novel's narrative velocity, polyphonic range, inventiveness, and bravery' — «New York Review of Books».

My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973. My murderer was a man from our neighborhood. My mother liked his border flowers, and my father talked to him once about fertilizer. This is Susie Salmon. Watching from heaven, Susie sees her happy suburban family devastated by her death, isolated even from one another as they each try to cope with their terrible loss alone. Over the years, her friends and siblings grow up, fall in love, do all the things she never had the chance to do herself. But life is not quite finished with Susie yet.

In 1979, a secret unit was established by the US Army. Defying all known military practice — and indeed the laws of physics — they believed that a soldier could adopt a cloak of invisibility, pass cleanly through walls, and, perhaps most chillingly, kill goats just by staring at them. They were the First Earth Battalion. And they really weren't joking. What's more, they're back and fighting the War on terror. So unbelievable it has to be true — this is the real-life account that inspired the film.

New Year's Eve, 1975: Arturo Belano and Ulises Lima, poets and leaders of a movement they call visceral realism, leave Mexico City in a borrowed white Impala. Their mission: to track down the poet Cesarea Tinajero, who disappeared into the Sonora desert — and obscurity — decades before. But the detectives are themselves hunted men, and their search for the past will end in violence, flight, and permanent exile. In this dazzling novel, Roberto Bolano tells the story of two modern-day Quixotes on a twenty-year, multi-continent, tragicomic quest through a darkening universe. 'A unique voice asserting the importance and exuberance of literature...Bolano writes with such elegance, verve and style and is so immensely readable. He makes you feel changed for having read him; he adjusts your angle of view on the world' — «Guardian». 'Part road movie, part joyful, nostalgic confession. A masterpiece' — «Daily Telegraph». 'Extraordinary ...A portrait of people for whom literature is bread and water, sex and death. The abiding message to be taken from Bolano's novel, and maybe from his fraught life, too: books matter' — «GQ».

Llewelyn Moss, hunting antelope near the Rio Grande, stumbles upon a transaction gone horribly wrong. Finding bullet-ridden bodies, several kilos of heroin, and a caseload of cash, he faces a choice -- leave the scene as he found it, or cut the money and run. Choosing the latter, he knows, will change everything. And so begins a terrifying chain of events, in which each participant seems determined to answer the question that one asks another: how does a man decide in what order to abandon his life? 'No Country for Old Men is a severed head and shoulders over anything else written in America this year' Independent on Sunday 'A Western thriller with a racy plot and punchy dialogue, perfect for a lazy Sunday' The Times '[An] utterly absorbing, chilling tale ...One of the most sinister characters in modern American fiction' Herald 'A fast, powerful read, steeped with a deep sorrow about the moral degradation of the legendary American West' Financial Times 'It's hard to think of a contemporary writer more worth reading' Independent.

There is September 11 and then there are the days after, and finally the years. Falling Man is a magnificent, essential novel about the event that defines turn-of-the-century America. It begins in the smoke and ash of the burning towers and traces the aftermath of this global tremor in the intimate lives of a few people. First there is Keith, walking out of the rubble into a life that he'd always imagined belonged to everyone but him. Then Lianne, his estranged wife, memory-haunted, trying to reconcile two versions of the same shadowy man. And their small son Justin, standing at the window, scanning the sky for more planes. These are lives choreographed by loss, grief and the enormous force of history. Brave and brilliant, Falling Man traces the way the events of September 11 have reconfigured our emotional landscape, our memory and our perception of the world. It is beautiful, heartbreaking, cathartic.

Who was Shakespeare? Why has his writing endured? What makes it so endlessly adaptable to different times and cultures? And how has Shakespeare come to be such a powerful symbol of genius? The Genius of Shakespeare is a fascinating biography of the life – and afterlife – of the greatest English poet. Jonathan Bate, one of the world’s leading Shakespearean scholars, deftly shows how the legend of Shakespeare’s genius was created and sustained, and how it has become a truly global phenomenon.

Alone in her native St Petersburg, Maria Glover sends an urgent summons to London and New York. Her son and daughter arrive too late to see her, but the end of their mother’s life marks the beginning of their own story: one of secrets, strangers, and the ultimate retelling of everything they thought they knew.

Robbie Coyle is an imaginative kid. He wants so badly to become Scotland’s first cosmonaut that he tries to teach himself Russian and trains for space exploration in the cupboard under the sink. But the place to which his fantasies later take him is far from the safety of his suburban childhood. In a communist state, in a closed, bleak town, the mysterious Red Star heralds his discovery of cruelty and of love, and the possibility that the most passionate of dreams may only be a chimera...

Helen Knightly has spent a lifetime trying to win the love of a mother who had none to spare. And as this electrifying novel opens, she steps over a boundary she never dreamt she would even approach. But while her act is almost unconscious, it also seems like the fulfilment of a lifetime's buried desire. Over the next twenty-four hours, her life rushes in at her as she confronts the choices that have brought her to this crossroads.

A lost child: On the eve of the First World War, a little girl is found abandoned on a ship to Australia. A mysterious woman called the Authoress had promised to look after her — but has disappeared without a trace. A terrible secret: On the night of her twenty-first birthday, Nell Andrews learns a secret that will change her life forever. Decades later, she embarks upon a search for the truth that leads her to the windswept Cornish coast and the strange and beautiful Blackhurst Manor, once owned by the aristocratic Mountrachet family. A mysterious inheritance: On Nell's death, her granddaughter, Cassandra, comes into an unexpected inheritance. Cliff Cottage and its forgotten garden are notorious amongst the Cornish locals for the secrets they hold — secrets about the doomed Mountrachet family and their ward Eliza Makepeace, a writer of dark Victorian fairytales. It is here that Cassandra will finally uncover the truth about the family, and solve the century-old mystery of a little girl lost.

The Bad Mother's Handbook is the story of a year in the lives of Charlotte, Karen and Nan, none of whom can quite believe how things have turned out. Why is it all so difficult? Why do the most ridiculous mistakes have the most disastrous consequences? When are you too old to throw up in a flowerbed after too much vodka? When are you too young to be a mother? Both hilarious and wise, it is a clear-eyed look at motherhood — and childhood — in its many guises, from the moment the condom breaks to the moment you file for divorce or, more optimistically, from the moment you hear your baby's first cry to the moment you realize that there are as many sorts of mother as there are children, and that love sometimes is the most important thing of all.

In What I Do: More True Tales of Everyday Craziness, the second volume of Jon Ronson’s collected Guardian journalism, he hilariously demonstrates how our everyday lives are determined by the craziest thoughts and obsessions; how we spend our time believing in and getting worked up by complete nonsense. But also, as he chillingly demonstrates, there are clever people working in the highest echelons of business who are employed to spot, nurture and exploit the irrationalities of those among us who can barely cope as it is. In part one, read about the time Jon inadvertently made a lewd gesture to a passing fourteen-year-old girl late at night in the lobby of a country-house hotel. And about his burgeoning obsession with a new neighbour who refused to ask him what he did for a living, despite Jon’s constant dropping of intriguing hints. And about the embarrassment of being caught recycling small talk at a party. In part two, read some of Jon’s longer stories, which explore manifestations of insanity in the wider world: the tiny town of North Pole, Alaska, where it’s Christmas 365 days of the year; behind the scenes at Deal or No Deal, which Jon likens to a cult with Noel Edmonds as its high priest; a meeting with TV hypnotist Paul McKenna, who has joined forces with a self-help guru who once stood trial for murder – but can they cure Jon of his one big phobia? As hilarious as it is perturbing, Jon Ronson’s new collection is a treat for everyone who has ever suspected themselves to be at the mercy of forces they can barely comprehend.

It is autumn, 1541. Following the uncovering of a plot against his throne in Yorkshire, King Henry VIII has set out on a spectacular Progress to the North to overawe his rebellious subjects there. Accompanied by a thousand soldiers, and his fifth wife Catherine Howard, the King is to attend an extravagant submission of the local gentry at York.

John Grady Cole and Billy Parham, two cowboys of the old school, are poised on the edge of a world about to change forever. Their journeys across the border into Mexico, each an adventure fraught with fear and pain, mark a passage into adulthood and eventual salvation.

Summer 1924: On the eve of a glittering Society party, by the lake of a grand English country house, a young poet takes his life. The only witnesses, sisters Hannah and Emmeline Hartford, will never speak to each other again. Winter 1999: Grace Bradley, 98, one-time housemaid of Riverton Manor, is visited by a young director making a film about the poet's suicide. Ghosts awaken and memories, long-consigned to the dark reaches of Grace's mind, begin to sneak back through the cracks. A shocking secret threatens to emerge; something history has forgotten but Grace never could. A thrilling mystery and a compelling love story, The House at Riverton will appeal to readers of Ian McEwan's Atonement, L.P. Hartley's The Go-Between, and lovers of the film Gosford Park.

1940: The Spanish Civil War is over, and Madrid lies ruined, while the Germans continue their relentless march through Europe. And as Britain stands alone, General Franco considers whether to abandon neutrality and enter the war. Into this uncertain world comes Harry Brett: ex-public schoolboy, traumatised veteran of Dunkirk and, now, reluctant spy for the British Secret Service. Sent to gain the confidence of Sandy Forsyth, an old schoolfriend turned shady Madrid businessman, he finds himself involved in a dangerous game — and surrounded by memories. Meanwhile Sandy's girlfriend, ex-Red Cross nurse Barbara Clare, is engaged on a secret mission of her own — to find her former lover...

In this incisive collection of stories, Bret Easton Ellis returns to the moral badlands of 1980s Los Angeles Dirk sees his best friend killed in a desert car wreck, then rifles through his pockets for a last joint before the ambulance comes. Cheryl, a wannabe newscaster, chides her future stepdaughter, 'You're tan but you don't look happy'. Jamie is a clubland carnivore with a taste for human blood. The characters go to the same schools and eat at the same restaurants. Their voices enfold us as seamlessly as those of DJs heard over a car radio. They have sex with the same boys and girls and buy from the same dealers. In short, they are connected in the only way people can be in L.A. — suffering from nothing less than the death of the soul.

A raw portrait of a lost, rich generation who experience sex, drugs, and disaffection at too early an age. Clay comes home to L.A. for Christmas vacation and re-enters a landscape of limitless privilege and moral entropy, where everyone drives Porsches, dines at Spago, and snorts mountains of cocaine. He tries to renew feelings for his girlfriend, Blair, and for his best friend from high school, Julian, who is careering into hustling and heroin. Clay's holiday turns into a dizzying spiral of desperation that takes him through the relentless parties in glitzy mansions, seedy bars, and underground rock clubs. Morally barren, ethically bereft and tinged with implicit violence, Less Than Zero is a shocking coming-of-age novel about the casual nihilism that comes with youth and money.

In this hilarious romp through England, one of America's pre-eminent humourists seeks the answer to an eternal question: what makes the Brits tick? One semi-tropical Fourth of July, Joe Queenan’s English wife suggested that the family might like a chicken tikka masala in lieu of the customary barbecue. It was this pitiless act of gastronomic cultural oppression, coupled with the dread of the fearsome Christmas pudding that awaited him for dessert, that inspired the author to make a solitary pilgrimage to Great Britain. Freed from the obligation to visit an unending procession of Auntie Margarets and Cousin Robins, as he had done for the first twenty-five years of his marriage, Queenan decided that he would not come back from Albion until he had finally penetrated the Limey heart of darkness. His trip was not in vain. Crisscrossing Old Blighty like Cromwell hunting Papists, Queenan finally came to terms with the choochiness, squiffiness, ponciness and sticky-wicketness that lie at the heart of the British character. Here he is trying to find out whose idea it was to impale King Edward II on a red-hot poker – and what this says about English sexual politics. Here he is enjoying a tour of Liverpool given by Big Jim, a cab driver whose best man was John Lennon. And here he is in Stroud, impressed by Talon, an all-Brit Eagles tribute band fresh from the Cheese and Grain in Frome. At the end of his epic adventure, the author returns chastened, none the wiser, but encouraged that his wife is actually as sane as she is, in light of her fellow countrymen.