Quercus/MacLehose Press

The Big Questions series is designed to let renowned experts address the 20 most fundamental and frequently asked questions of a major branch of science or philosophy. Each 3,000-word essay simply and concisely examines a question that has eternally perplexed enquiring minds, and provides answers based on the latest research. This ambitious project is a unique distillation of humanity's best ideas. In Big Questions: Evolution, Francisco Ayala answers the 20 key questions: What is evolution? What is natural selection? Is evolution a random process? What are chromosomes, genes and DNA? What is molecular evolution? What is the tree of life? What does the fossil record tell us? Is intelligence inherited? Can I clone myself? Is language a uniquely human attribute? Was Darwin right? What is 'survival of the fittest'? What is a species? How do genes build bodies? How did life begin? Am I really a monkey? What is the missing link? Will humans continue to evolve? Where does morality come from? Is Creationism true?

Childhood friends Laurie and Rachel's lives have taken very different paths since they picked up their A-level results together. Laurie is living in London and dedicated to her career, keeping track of her friends on Facebook. Rachel is seemingly living the family idyll in a cottage in Yorkshire — except she worries her marriage is starting to show cracks. When Rachel's mother in law falls ill and needs treatment in London, and Laurie decides she needs to get away for a break, a house swap falls into place. Soon Rachel is braving the mean streets of London while trying to keep her family together, while Laurie tries to figure out how to work an Aga and befriend the locals — and forget the man who seems intent on breaking her heart. Will their relationships survive this test? And will they make it home in time for Christmas?

Lisbeth Salander is a wanted woman. Two Millennium journalists about to expose the truth about sex trafficking in Sweden are murdered, and Salander's prints are on the weapon. Her history of unpredictable and vengeful behaviour makes her an official danger to society — but no-one can find her. Mikael Blomkvist, editor-in-chief of Millennium, does not believe the police. Using all his magazine staff and resources to prove Salander's innocence, Blomkvist also uncovers her terrible past, spent in criminally corrupt institutions. Yet Salander is more avenging angel than helpless victim. She may be an expert at staying out of sight — but she has ways of tracking down her most elusive enemies.

Elizabeth Moynihan, a young journalist, has hit the jackpot. It's 1992 and a chance remark has sent her to a small farm in the middle of nowhere in Colorado. There resides Russia's most notorious sniper-turned-spy, the one-time beautiful assassin, Tat'yana Levchenko, and she's ready to tell her story. During the Second World War, Tat'yana was Russia's secret weapon. After the Germans killed her daughter, aged four, she enlisted as a sniper for the Russian army. Having finally achieved her goal of killing three hundred Germans, she was badly injured in a siege and shipped back to Moscow. She was presented to Stalin, paraded among the ranks of high society and before the world's press. Her duty to her country not yet over, she was sent to America, to befriend Eleanor Roosevelt, touring the nation with her, securing support for the war. And all the while, she was to send vital information about American armament and troop plans back to her homeland. Before long, Tat'yana was ready to defect, putting her own life — and that of the man she loves — in more grave danger than ever before.

'A man doesn't work for his enemies unless he has little choice in the matter.' So says Bernie Gunther. It is 1954 and Bernie is in Cuba. Tiring of his increasingly dangerous work spying on Meyer Lansky, Bernie acquires a boat and a beautiful companion and quits the island. But the US Navy has other ideas, and soon he finds himself in a place with which he is all too familiar — a prison cell. After exhaustive questioning, he is flown back to Berlin and yet another prison cell with a proposition: work for French intelligence or hang for murder. The job is simple: he is to meet and greet POWs returning to Germany and to look out for one in particular, a French war criminal and member of the French SS who has been posing as a German Wehrmacht officer. The French are anxious to catch up with this man and deal with him in their own ruthless way. But Bernie's past as a German POW in Russia is about to catch up with him — in a way he could never have foreseen. Bernie Gunther's seventh outing delivers more of the fast-paced and quick-witted action that we have come to expect from Philip Kerr. Set in Cuba, a Soviet POW camp, Paris and Berlin, and ranging over a period of twenty years from the Thirties to the Fifties, Field Grey is an outstanding thriller by a writer at the top of his game.

One man saved the British Royal Family in the first decades of the 20th century — amazingly he was an almost unknown, and certainly unqualified, speech therapist called Lionel Logue, whom one newspaper in the 1930s famously dubbed 'The Quack who saved a King'. Logue wasn't a British aristocrat or even an Englishman — he was a commoner and an Australian to boot. Nevertheless it was the outgoing, amiable Logue who single-handedly turned the famously nervous, tongue-tied, Duke of York into the man who was capable of becoming King. Had Logue not saved Bertie (as the man who was to become King George VI was always known) from his debilitating stammer, and pathological nervousness in front of a crowd or microphone, then it is almost certain that the House of Windsor would have collapsed. The King's Speech is the previously untold story of the extraordinary relationship between Logue and the haunted young man who became King George VI, drawn from Logue's unpublished personal diaries. They throw extraordinary light on the intimacy of the two men — and the vital role the King's wife, the late Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, played in bringing them together to save her husband's reputation and his career as King. The King's Speech is an intimate portrait of the British monarchy at a time of its greatest crisis, seen through the eyes of an Australian commoner who was proud to serve, and save, his King.

From the reign of Alfred the Great — the first king of Wessex to call himself 'king of England' — in the 9th century, to the shock of Norman invasion in the 11th, and from the brutal vicissitudes of late medieval kingship to the comfortable ceremonial of modern-day constitutional monarchy, the story of England's kings and queens is to a large degree that of England herself. Kings and Queens of England offers readable profiles of 59 English monarchs from Harold II to Henry VIII, and from Ethelred the Unready to Elizabeth II. Each monarch is elegantly profiled and the impact of their rule on wider English history clearly and concisely described and analysed. For every king and queen there is a detailed timeline, and the narrative is further amplified by display quotations, feature boxes, panels of key biographical facts, and — last but not least — by 135 lavish full-colour images. Ian Crofton recounts a 1000-year tale of murder, invasion, usurpation, adultery, divorce, civil war and revolution in a manner that is as entertaining as it is informative. The Kings and Queens of England is the perfect choice for anyone looking for an illustrated account of the English monarchy from the Anglo-Saxon era to the present.

Sneaking out of prison isn't easy, unless you are a thief, or a wizard. Luckily, Conn is both! Trouble is, once he's out, where does he go? His home is a pile of rubble since he blew it up doing magic. His master, the wizard Nevery, is furious. With a new order of exile, this time with a death penalty, Conn has never been in such a tight fix. But Wellmet is in danger from an evil predator coming to destroy the city. Now Conn must set off on a quest to find something that will help him fight back. After an explosive experiment, he follows the call of his magic stone to a distant land. When Conn is swept away in the mouth of a magnificent Dragon, he is to face a power unlike any other... but is he a match for it and can he save his city, and himself, in time? INTERACTIVE WEBSITE Visit www.magicthief.co.uk for fun games, lost diary entries and author interviews.

Born as a Germanic tongue with the arrival in Britain of the Anglo-Saxons in the early medieval period, heavily influenced by Norman French from the 11th century, and finally emerging as modern English from the late Middle Ages, the English language has grown to become the linguistic equivalent of a superpower, and is now sometimes described as the world's lingua franca. Worldwide some 380 million people speak English as a first language and some 600 million as a second language. A staggering one billion people are believed to be learning it. English is the premier international language in communications, science, business, aviation, entertainment, and diplomacy and also on the Internet. It has been one of the official languages of the United Nations since its founding in 1945. It is considered by many good judges to be well on the way to becoming the world's first universal language. Author Philip Gooden tells the story of the English language in all its richness and variety. From the intriguing origins and changing definitions of common words such as 'OK', 'beserk', 'curfew', 'cabal' and 'pow-wow', to the massive transformations wrought in the vocabulary and structure of the language by Anglo-Saxon and Norman conquest, through to the literary triumphs of Beowulf, The Canterbury Tales and the works of Shakespeare. The Story of English is a fascinating tale of linguistic, social and cultural transformation, and one that is accessibly and authoritatively told by an author in perfect command of his material.

Sixteen-year-old Dru's worst fears have come true — Sergej, the deadly nosferat, has kidnapped her best friend Graves and she must now go on a suicidal rescue mission to bring him back in one piece. That is, if she can put all of Christophe's training to good use, defeat her mother's traitor, Anna, once and for all, and manage to survive another day...

When their country is invaded and their families are taken, eight high school teenagers band together to fight. Seventeen-year-old Ellie Linton wants one final adventure with her friends before the school holidays are over. Packed in Ellie's parents' land rover they drive to the famously isolated rock pool Eden dubbed 'Hell' by the locals. Returning to their home town of Wirrawee, the seven teenagers realize that something is seriously wrong. Power to the houses has been cut, pets and livestock have been left dead or dying, and most alarmingly of all, everyone's family has vanished. When the hostile armed forces discover that the teenagers are lying low in the vicinity, Ellie and her friends must band together to escape, outwit and strike back against the mysterious enemy that has seized control of their town and imprisoned their friends and loved ones...

Marshall Ziegler's father, Owen, has been murdered. Brutally, violently, disembowelled. And Marshall discovered the body in the basement of his father's art gallery. During their last conversation, Owen had hinted at having something to hide, something that could really cause a stir in the art world. But Marshall works as a translator and has taken no interest in his father's business. Until now, when he needs to get revenge. So Marshall starts to investigate. His financial troubles are immediately evident, but it's only a meeting with his father's oldest friend and mentor that reveals the truth behind Owen's secret — he has proof that many of Rembrandt's paintings were faked, but where is that proof now? As Marshall digs deeper, someone else is on the case and having already killed two men, they are casting their net ever wider to catch their prey. Who will be next?

On 10 May 1941 Rudolph Hess, then the Deputy Fuhrer, parachuted over Renfrewshire in Scotland on a mission to meet with the Duke of Hamilton, ostensibly to broker a peace deal with the British government. After being held in the Tower of London, he was transferred to Mytchett Place near Aldershot on 20 May, under the codename of 'Z'. The house was fitted with microphones and sound recording equipment, guarded by a battalion of soldiers and codenamed Camp Z. Churchill's instructions were that Hess should be strictly isolated, and that every effort should be taken to get any information out of him that might be useful. During the ensuing thirteen months a psychological battle was waged between intelligence officers using the new Freudian techniques of 'dynamic psychologies', and the man who had been a heartbeat away from Hitler. Stephen McGinty uses new documentation, contemporaneous reports, diaries, letters and memos to piece together a riveting account of the claustrophobia, paranoia and high-stakes gamesmanship being played out in an English country house. CAMP Z is a 'locked room mystery' where the 'locked room' is a man's head, and information which could help change the course of the Second World War lies inside a mind which no one can decide, with any degree of confidence, is either sane or insane. Hess was given a life sentence at the Nuremberg Trials, and from 1966 to his death in 1987 he was the sole remaining prisoner of Spandau Prison.

Paha Sapa, 'Black Hills', is a Red Indian shaman who as a young boy at the Battle of Little Bighorn takes the ghost of the dying General Custer into his own body. Sixty years later as an old man working as a dynamiter on Mount Rushmore, he plots to blow it up. Meanwhile, Custer finds himself trapped in a strange, dark place and begins to write sensuous, heartbreaking missives to his beloved wife. Thus begins an intricate narrative that sweeps across decades of American history, building up a portrait of one country's relentless expansion and what was lost and destroyed in its path. Black Hills is historical fiction with Dan Simmons' trademark twist. He weaves in real places, events and people with his own uniquely weird take on reality to create a portrait of a world that is hilarious and tragic, spiritual and disturbing.

It was a beautiful winter's day. Anders, his wife and their feisty six-year-old, Maja, set out across the ice of the Swedish archipelago to visit the lighthouse on Gavasten. There was no one around, so they let her go on ahead. And she disappeared, seemingly into thin air, and was never found. Two years later, Anders is a broken alcoholic, his life ruined. He returns to the archipelago, the home of his childhood and his family. But all he finds are Maja's toys and through the haze of memory, loss and alcohol, he realizes that someone — or something — is trying to communicate with him. Soon enough, his return sets in motion a series of horrifying events which exposes a mysterious and troubling relationship between the inhabitants of the remote island and the sea.

In the final days of the Second World War, Michael Rogan, an American intelligence officer, is tortured by a group of seven senior Gestapo officers who need to discover the secrets he alone can give them. Ten years later, when he has recovered from the appalling injuries he suffered, and determined to revenge the death of his wife at the hands of the same men, he begins a quest to track down and kill each one of his tormentors. Dark, violent, and graphic, this is an addictive thriller about how far one man will go to exact his own justice. Written a year before Puzo completed The Godfather, published under a pseudonym and only very recently brought to light, Six Graves to Munich bears all the hallmarks of a master storyteller.

Beauty and ugliness are two sides of the same coin; by ugliness we usually mean the opposite of beauty and we often define the first in order to understand the nature of the second. But the various depictions of ugliness over the centuries are richer and more unpredictable than is commonly thought. The striking images and anthological quotations in On Ugliness lead us on an extraordinary journey through the passions, terrors and nightmares of almost three thousand years, where acts of rejection go hand in hand with touching instances of empathy, and an aversion to deformity is accompanied by seductive violations of all classical canons. With his characteristic wit and erudition, Umberto Eco draws on examples in art and literature from ancient times to the present day. Abundantly illustrated with demons, madmen, vile enemies and disquieting presences, with freaks and the living dead, On Ugliness is conceived for a vast and diverse readership, and is an invaluable companion volume to On Beauty.

Tie-in edition to the major U.S. Columbia Pictures/Sony production starring Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara, directed by David Fincher. The first volume in Stieg Larsson's phenomenal Millennium Trilogy, with combined sales of over 55 million worldwide. Forty years ago, Harriet Vanger disappeared from a family gathering on the island owned and inhabited by the powerful Vanger clan. Her body was never found, yet her uncle is convinced it was murder — and that the killer is a member of his own tightly knit but dysfunctional family. He employs disgraced financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist and the tattooed, truculent computer hacker Lisbeth Salander to investigate. When the pair link Harriet's disappearance to a number of grotesque murders from forty years ago, they begin to unravel a dark and appalling family history. But the Vangers are a secretive clan, and Blomkvist and Salander are about to find out just how far they are prepared to go to protect themselves.

'I'm just saying that if you ever want, like, a boyfriend or anything — not that I think you should get one right now — but if you did want a boyfriend ever, you might have to start being a bit more like a girl than a boy.' Thirteen-year-old Gwynnie is just about to turn fourteen. While other girls in her year are all about boys and make-up, the closest she's got to a boy is in a tackle on the football field. But when the totally hot Charlie Notts starts at school, Gwynnie decides now might be the time to start being a girl. Gwynnie enlists the help of a gang of girls at school, headed by the super-confident Jenny. But is it really safe for Gwynnie to be let loose with lash curlers and strong eye-shadow? Has Jenny got a hidden agenda while giving Gwynnie her make-over? And will Charlie ever see her as more than a killer football player with skinny legs? When everything comes to a head at the school prom, Gwynnie will learn some truths about herself and her new found girly friends. Has she risked the firm friendships she has with boys for that first kiss?

The perfect guide to the most important ideas and concepts that underpin Western art: Romanesque; Byzantine; International Gothic; Early Renaissance; High Renaissance; Northern Renaissance; Mannerism; Baroque; Caravaggism; Dutch Golden Age; Rococo; Neoclassicism; Romanticism; Academic Art; Orientalism; Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood; Realism; Impressionism; Symbolism; Post-Impressionism; Neo-Impressionism; Synthetism/Primitivism/Les Nabis; Fauvism; Expressionism; Art Nouveau and Secessionism; Cubism; Orphism; Futurism; Dadaism; Surrealism; Magic(al) Realism; Suprematism; Constructivism; Bauhaus; South American Muralism; Neo-plasticism; New Objectivity; American Scene Painting; Socialist Realism; Abstract Expressionism; Colour Field; Minimalism; Pop Art; Op Art; Conceptual Art; Performance Art including Fluxus; Installation Art; Land and Environmental Art; Hyperrealism; Pluralism.

The Third Reich was the name Hitler and the Nazi Party gave to the dictatorship that began in 1933 and ended twelve years later with the utter destruction of Germany and Hitler's suicide. Defined by the messianic, iconic figure of the Fuhrer, the Third Reich was one of the pivotal periods of the modern age. From small beginnings in the 1920s, Hitler's movement came to dominate German society in the 1930s, bringing with it the militarization of German society, the apparatus of state terror and a policy of violent discrimination against political opponents, the so-called 'asocials': gypsies, homosexuals, and, above all, the Jews. The history of the Reich is bound up with territorial aggression, total war and genocide. The end result was the complete defeat of Germany and the annihilation of millions of Europeans, a historical drama without precedent that still lies as a shadow over modern-day Germany. Richard Overy charts the rise and fall of Nazi power in a compelling narrative of the period, amplified by extensive quotations from documents, letters, diaries and oral testimony, and accompanied by many original and striking images of the era. There are also fact boxes which explore many of the important aspects of the Third Reich in greater detail. Authoritative, informative and sumptuously illustrated, written by a scholar steeped in knowledge of the period, The Third Reich brings the bloody realities of war, conquest and genocide vividly to life. It is an ideal book for anyone fascinated by the stormy history of the twentieth century, World War II and the age of dictators.

People in London are being taken away in unmarked police vans, never to be seen again... While trying to keep up with his school studies and ensuring his football team stays top of the league, it's Johnny's job to safeguard planet Earth. Suspicious of the strange occurrences, Johnny investigates to find that alien enemies are feeding humans to their Queen on a nearby planet. He then discovers a more terrifying secret: the aliens are planning a devastating invasion of Earth. The battle for Earth will take all of Johnny's and his friends' strength and resolve. Can they win? If they do, what price will they pay to save the world?

The Daemon is now firmly in control and moving towards its endgame, using an expanding network of real-world, dispossessed darknet operatives to tear civilization apart and build it anew. As the global economy begins to fail, the world's most powerful organizations — monolithic corporations, complete with armies of their own — prepare to fight their unseen enemy. When a brutal civil war breaks out in the United States, former detective Pete Sebeck, now the Daemon's most powerful though reluctant operative, must lead a small band of enlightened humans to protect the new world order. Amid conflicting loyalties, rapidly diminishing human power and the possibility that anyone can be a daemon operative or a corporate spy, Sebeck knows that he embodies the last hope that freedom can survive the information revolution.

By the author of Life and Fate, now a major Radio 4 drama starring Kenneth Branagh. Vasily Grossman is widely recognized as one of the outstanding literary figures of the twentieth century. The short fiction collected here — satire, comedy, tragedy and pure narrative — illustrate the remarkable breadth of his work, and demonstrate all the bold intelligence, delicate irony and extraordinary vividness for which he has become known. In addition to the eleven stories, this volume includes the complete text of 'The Hell of Treblinka', one of the first descriptions of a Nazi extermination camp; a powerful and harrowing piece of journalism written only weeks after the camp was dissolved. Beautifully illuminated by Robert Chandler's introductions and endnotes, with photographs from the family archive, and an Afterword by Grossman's stepson, Fyodor Guber.