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Set in Reformation Europe, Q begins with Luther's nailing of his 95 theses on the door of the cathedral church in Wittenberg and traces the adventures and conflicts of two central characters, an Anabaptist, a member of the most radical of the Protestant sects, the anarchists of the Reformation, and a Catholic spy and informer, as they travel across Germany, Italy and the Netherlands. The four young writers who shelter behind the pseudonym Luther Blissett have created a world of intrigue, violence and intense political and religious passion. Far from the traditional historical novel, Q is the stuff of which cults are made.

Death stalks the city of angels...Jimmy Gage, a reporter for «SLAP» magazine, stumbles on an explosive story while interviewing Garrett Walsh, an Oscar-winning Hollywood director who has just finished serving time for the murder of a teenage actress. Walsh swears he's not guilty and tells Gage he's written a movie about what really happened — «The Most Dangerous Screenplay in Hollywood». Gage is sceptical, but when Walsh turns up dead — and the screenplay missing — he goes to work to find out the truth.

Scott Fitzgerald follows the life of one of America's most enduring authors, from his early years in St Paul and at Princeton to New York in the twenties, the French Riviera, Baltimore, and finally Hollywood. Andrew Turnbull tells the story behind F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise, revised and finally published when he was twenty-four, making him instantly famous, and his tender love affair with Zelda Sayre, from their glittering early life to the years Zelda spent in and out of sanatoriums. A literary generation, too, comes alive, including Ernest Hemingway, Edmund Wilson and Edith Wharton. Fitzgerald lived on Turnbull's family estate in Baltimore in the early 1930s and there befriended young Andrew, then aged eleven. Turnbull's personal relationship with Fitzgerald and the hundreds of interviews with those who knew him elegantly capture the dramatic, tragic story of F. Scott and the glow and pathos of his flamboyant life.

For Ned, 1978 seems a blissful year. Handsome, popular, responsible, and a fine cricketer, life if progressing smoothly, if not effortlessly. When he meets Partia Fendeman his personal jigsaw appears complete. What if her left-wing parent despise his Tory MP father? Doesn't that just make them star-crossed lovers? And surely, in the end, won't the Fendemans be won over by their happiness? But of course, one person's happiness is another's jealous spite. And spite is about to change Ned's life forever. A promise made to a dying teacher and a vile trick played by fellow pupils rocket Ned from cricket captain to solitary confinement, from Head Boy to political prisoner. More than twenty years later, Ned returns to London, a very different man from the boy seized outside a Knights bridge language college. A man implacably focused on revenge, revenge is a dish he plans to savour and serve to those who conspired against him, and those who forgot him.

In Miami, 1992, a tropical garden of a city where corruption pulses beneath the lush surface is the perfect city for a vampire. Yet Lestat — hero, rock star, incorrigible seducer and the most powerful and sensual vampire of them all — prowls this savage garden in desperate misery. Restlessly pursuing the mystery of his dark existence, Lestat yearns to think, breathe and feel as a man, free of his nightmare immortality. When, stalked in his turn by the only creature able to grant his desire, Lestat rashly seizes the chance. While the Body Thief, cloaked in Lestat's immortal powers, lays a trail of carnage across America and the Caribbean, Lestat himself is abandoned to the fragility of human life, and discovers that a mortal body is no fit receptacle for a vampire's soul. Rejected by the other vampires, a tormented and appallingly vulnerable Lestat is forced to seek human help to recover his vampire self; help he abuses unforgivably when, in a mesmerizing climax, he succumbs to the basest urge in any nature.

There's trouble on the Aching farm — a monster in the river, a headless horseman in the driveway and nightmare spreading down from the hills. And now Tiffany Aching's little brother has been stolen by the Queen of the Fairies. Tiffany's got to get him back.

In this, the second of Tom Sharpe's chronicles about Henry Wilt, our hero is no longer the victim of his own uncontrolled fantasies. As Head of a reconstituted Liberal Studies Department, he has assumed power without authority at the Fenland College of Arts and Technology and the fantasies he now confronts are those of political bigots and reactionary bureaucrats — in addition to his wife's enthusiasm for every Organic Alternative under the compost heap and the insistence of his quadruplets on looking at every problem with a foreign student and the hostility of medical services unwilling to attend to his most urgent needs. But it is only when Wilt becomes the unintentional participant in a terrorist siege that he is forced to find an answer to the problems of power, which have corrupted greater men than he. With a mental ingenuity born of his innate cowardice, Wilt fights for those liberal values which are threatened by the sophisticated methods of police anti-terrorist agents. In the confusion that follows, Wilt resumes his dialogue with the unflagging Inspector Flint and is himself subjected to the indignity of a psycho-political profile. Bitingly funny and brilliantly written, «The Wilt Alternative» exposes the farcical anomalies, which have become the social norma of our time.

Wilt is still teaching at the Fenland Tech, attempting to drill English into plasterers, dozing through tedious committee meetings and occasionally getting mildly plastered in 'The Pig in a Poke' with one of his few bearable colleagues. But the even tenor of his days is rudely interrupted when the shadow of drug dealing flickers across the Tech. Suddenly Wilt becomes the target of suspicion. His colleagues believe him to be responsible for triggering a departmental inquiry, and his old adversary Inspector Flint, knowing that he's guilty of something, sees a chance to settle a number of scores. What his wife thinks is...well, what all wives think. But what none of them have reckoned with is Wilt's talent for making new enemies. What starts with an accusation of voyeurism in the staff lavatory (of the wrong gender to boot) leads, more or less directly, to a massive confrontation at a nearby US airbase with the forces of law and order on both sides and Wilt in his usual place — in the middle.

On the verandah of a great New Orleans house, now faded, a mute and fragile woman sits rocking. And the witching hour begins...Demonstrating once again her gift for spellbinding storytelling and the creation of legend, Anne Rice makes real for us a great dynasty of witches — a family given to poetry and incest, to murder and philosophy, a family that over the ages is itself haunted by a powerful, dangerous, and seductive being. A hypnotic novel of witchcraft and the occult across four centuries, The Witching Hour could only have been written by the spellbinding bestselling author of The Vampire Chronicles.

One of the best-loved of Nabokov's novels, Pnin features his funniest and most heart-rending character. Professor Timofey Pnin is a haplessly disoriented Russian emigre precariously employed on an American college campus in the 1950s. Pnin struggles to maintain his dignity through a series of comic and sad misunderstandings, all the while falling victim both to subtle academic conspiracies and to the manipulations of a deliberately unreliable narrator. Initially an almost grotesquely comic figure, Pnin gradually grows in stature by contrast with those who laugh at him. Whether taking the wrong train to deliver a lecture in a language he has not mastered or throwing a faculty party during which he learns he is losing his job, the gently preposterous hero of this enchanting novel evokes the reader's deepest protective instinct.

One windy spring day in the Chilterns Joe Rose's calm, organized life is shattered by a ballooning accident. The afternoon, Rose reflects, could have ended in mere tragedy, but for his brief meeting with Jed Parry. Unknown to Rose, something passes between them — something that gives birth in Parry to an obsession so powerful that it will test to the limits Rose's beloved scientific rationalism, threaten the love of his wife Clarissa and drive him to the brink of murder and madness.

In The Master of Petersburg J. M. Coetzee dares to imagine the life of Dostoevsky. Set in 1869, when Dostoevsky was summoned from Germany to St Petersburg by the sudden death of his stepson, this novel is at once a compelling mystery steeped in the atmosphere of pre-revolutionary Russia and a brilliant and courageous meditation on authority and rebellion, art and imagination. Dostoevsky is seen obsessively following his stepson's ghost, trying to ascertain whether he was a suicide or a murder victim and whether he loved or despised his stepfather.

Once, when Benet was about fourteen, she and her mother had been alone in a train carriage and Mopsa had tried to stab her with a carving knife. It was some time since Benet had seen her mad mother. So when Mopsa arrived at the airport, looking drab and colourless in a dowdy grey suit, Benet tried not to hate her. But the tragic death of a child begins a chain of deception, kidnap and murder. Domestic dramas exploding into deaths and murders ...threads are drawn tightly together in a lethal last pattern.

Tanzy Harrington is the ultimate Alpha Female. As the Bay Area's most-read single-scene columnist and self-proclaimed love-'em-and-leave-'em artist, she's not about to tie herself down to one man —especially when «settling down» seems awfully close to simply «settling.» But when all of her friends are happily married — and reproducing — she's starting to feel a little bit like she's missing something important. What is it about those dependable guys — the sheep who follow along — that makes Tanzy want to prowl the hot spots looking for a wolf to take home to her lair? And then there's Riley Parrish, her eccentric aunt's mysterious new employee. He's a sheep, all right ... right? But under his polite, good-provider exterior, she catches a glimpse of something decidedly wolfish lurking in his eyes. With a deranged fan stalking her, her friends cooing over china patterns and baby outfits, and a deadline her editor won't extend, Tanzy's experiment in wolf-taming may be ill-thought, but it sure is a howling good time.

In the stunning continuation of the epic adventure begun in «Hyperion», Simmons returns us to a far future resplendent with drama and invention. On the world of Hyperion, the mysterious Time Tombs are opening. And the secrets they contain mean that nothing — nothing anywhere in the universe — will ever be the same.

Harry Turtledove’s acclaimed alternate history series began with a single question: What if the South had won the Civil War? Now, seventy years have passed since the first War Between the States. The North American continent is locked in a battle of politics, economies, and moralities. In a world that has already felt the soul-shattering blow of the Great War, North America is the powder keg that could ignite another global conflict — complete with a new generation of killing machines. “Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!” In 1934, the chant echoes across the Confederate States of America, a country born of bloodshed and passion, stretching from Mexico to Virginia. But while people use the word to greet each other in the streets, the meaning of “Freedom” has become increasingly unclear. Jake Featherston, leader of the ruling Freedom Party, has won power — and is taking his country and the world to the edge of an abyss. Charismatic, shrewd, and addicted to conflict, Featherston is whipping the Confederate States into a frenzy of hatred. Blacks are being rounded up and sent to prison camps, and the persecution has just begun. Featherston has forced the United States to give up its toeholds in Florida and Kentucky, and as the North stumbles through a succession of leaders, from Socialist Hosea Blackford to Herbert Hoover and now Al Smith, Featherston is feeling his might. With the U.S.A. locked in a bitter, bloody occupation of Canada, facing an intractable rebellion in Utah, and fatigued from a war in the Pacific against Japan, Featherston may pursue one dangerous proposition above all: that he can defeat the U.S.A. in an all-out war. The Victorious Opposition is a drama of leaders and followers, spies and traitors, lovers and soldiers. From California to Canada, from combat on the high seas to the secret meetings where former slaves plot a desperate strategy for survival, Harry Turtledove has created a human portrait of a world in upheaval. The third book in his monumental American Empire series, The Victorious Opposition is a novel of ideas, action, and surprise — and an unforgettable re-imagining of history itself.

“Power Failure” is the electrifying behind-the-scenes story of the collapse of Enron, the high-flying gas and energy company touted as the poster child of the New Economy that, in its hubris, had aspired to be “The World’s Leading Company”, and had briefly been the seventh largest corporation in America. Written by prizewinning journalist Mimi Swartz, and substantially based on the never-before-published revelations of former Enron vice-president Sherron Watkins, as well as hundreds of other interviews, “Power Failure” shows the human face beyond the greed, arrogance, and raw ambition that fueled the company’s meteoric rise in the late 1990s. At the dawn of the new century, Ken Lay’s and Jeff Skilling's faces graced the covers of business magazines, and Enron’s money oiled the political machinery behind George W. Bush’s election campaign. But as Wall Street analysts sang Enron’s praises, and its stock spiraled dizzyingly into the stratosphere, the company’s leaders were madly scrambling to manufacture illusory profits, hide its ballooning debt, and bully Wall Street into buying its fictional accounting and off-balance-sheet investment vehicles. The story of Enron’s fall is a morality tale writ large, performed on a stage with an unforgettable array of props and side plots, from parking lots overflowing with Boxsters and BMWs to hot-house office affairs and executive tantrums. Among the cast of characters Mimi Swartz and Sherron Watkins observe with shrewd Texas eyes and an insider’s perspective are: CEO Ken Lay, Enron’s “outside face”, who was more interested in playing diplomat and paving the road to a political career than in managing Enron’s high-testosterone, anything-goes culture; Jeff Skilling, the mastermind behind Enron’s mercenary trading culture, who transformed himself from a nerdy executive into the personification of millennial cool; Rebecca Mark, the savvy and seductive head of Enron’s international division, who was Skilling’s sole rival to take over the company; and Andy Fastow, whose childish pranks early in his career gave way to something far more destructive. Desperate to be a player in Enron’s deal-making, trader-oriented culture, Fastow transformed Enron’s finance department into a “profit center”, creating a honeycomb of financial entities to bolster Enron’s “profits”, while diverting tens of millions of dollars into his own pockets An unprecedented chronicle of Enron’s shocking collapse, “Power Failure” should take its place alongside the classics of previous decades – “Barbarians at the Gate” and “Liar’s Poker” – as one of the cautionary tales of our times.

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The first girl had a bite mark on her neck. When the tabloids got hold of the story, they immediately called the killer 'The Rottweiler', and the name stuck. The latest body was discovered very near Inez Ferry's antique shop in Marylebone. Someone spotted a shadowy figure running away past the station, but couldn't say for sure if it was a man or a woman. There were only two other clues. The murderer seemed to have a preference for strangling his victims and then removing something personal — like a cigarette lighter or a necklace... Since her actor husband died, too early into their marriage, Inez supplemented her modest income by taking in tenants above the shop. The unpredictably obsessive activities of 'The Rottweiler' would exert a profound influence on this heterogeneous little community, especially when the suspicion began to emerge that one of them might be a homicidal maniac.

After two nuns are brutally attacked leaving one dead and the other critically injured, medical examiner Maura Isles and homicide detective Jane Rizzoli uncover an ancient horror in the chapel of nuns' convent that leads them toward the killer's identity.

Beginning with the classic «Dragonriders of Pern», Anne McCaffrey has created a complex, endlessly fascinating world uniting humans and great telepathic dragons. Millions of devoted readers have soared on the glittering wings of Anne’s imagination, following book by book the evolution of one of science fiction’s most beloved and honored series. Now, for the first time, Anne has invited another writer to join her in the skies of Pern, a writer with an intimate knowledge of Pern and its history: her son, Todd. DRAGON’S KIN Young Kindan has no expectations other than joining his father in the mines of Camp Natalon, a coal mining settlement struggling to turn a profit far from the great Holds where the presence of dragons and their riders means safety and civilization. Mining is fraught with danger. Fortunately, the camp has a watch-wher, a creature distantly related to dragons and uniquely suited to specialized work in the dark, cold mineshafts. Kindan’s father is the watch-wher’s handler, and his son sometimes helps him out. But even that important job promises no opportunity outside the mine. Then disaster strikes. In one terrible instant, Kindan loses his family and the camp loses its watch-wher. Fathers are replaced by sons in the mine–except for Kindan, who is taken in by the camp’s new Harper. Grieving, Kindan finds a measure of solace in a burgeoning musical talent... and in a new friendship with Nuella, a mysterious girl no one seems to know exists. It is Nuella who assists Kindan when he is selected to hatch and train a new watch-wher, a job that forces him to give up his dream of becoming a Harper; and it is Nuella who helps him give new meaning to his life. Meanwhile, sparked by the tragedy, long-simmering tensions are dividing the camp. Far below the surface, a group of resentful miners hides a deadly secret. As warring factions threaten to explode, Nuella and Kindan begin to discover unknown talents in the misunderstood watch-wher–talents that could very well save an entire Hold. During their time teaching the watch-wher, the two learn some things themselves: that even a seemingly impossible dream is never completely out of reach... and that light can be found even in darkness.

All along the Mediterranean coast, the Roman empire’s richest citizens are relaxing in their luxurious villas, enjoying the last days of summer. The world’s largest navy lies peacefully at anchor in Misenum. The tourists are spending their money in the seaside resorts of Baiae, Herculaneum, and Pompeii. But the carefree lifestyle and gorgeous weather belie an impending cataclysm, and only one man is worried. The young engineer Marcus Attilius Primus has just taken charge of the Aqua Augusta, the enormous aqueduct that brings fresh water to a quarter of a million people in nine towns around the Bay of Naples. His predecessor has disappeared. Springs are failing for the first time in generations. And now there is a crisis on the Augusta’s sixty-mile main line — somewhere to the north of Pompeii, on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius. Attilius — decent, practical, and incorruptible — promises Pliny, the famous scholar who commands the navy, that he can repair the aqueduct before the reservoir runs dry. His plan is to travel to Pompeii and put together an expedition, then head out to the place where he believes the fault lies. But Pompeii proves to be a corrupt and violent town, and Attilius soon discovers that there are powerful forces at work — both natural and man-made — threatening to destroy him. With his trademark elegance and intelligence, Robert Harris, bestselling author of «Archangel» and «Fatherland», re-creates a world on the brink of disaster.

This new edition combines Tolstoy’s most famous short tale, “The Death of Ivan Ilyich”, with a less well known but equally brilliant gem, “Master and Man”, both newly translated by Ann Pasternak Slater. Both stories confront death and the process of dying: In “Ivan Ilyich”, a bureaucrat looks back over his life, which suddenly seems meaningless and wasteful, while in Master and Man, a landowner and servant must each confront the value of the other as they brave a devastating snowstorm. The quintessential Tolstoyan themes of mortality, spiritual redemption, and life’s meaning are nowhere more movingly and deftly explored than in these two tales. This unique edition also includes a critical Introduction and extensive notes by Ann Pasternak Slater, a Fellow at St. Anne’s College, Oxford.

Rarely, if ever, does a new writer dazzle us with such a vivid imagination and storytelling, flawlessly capturing the essence of a land, a people, a legend. Conn Iggulden is just such a writer, bringing to vivid life one of the most fascinating eras in human history. In a true masterpiece of historical fiction, Iggulden takes us on a breathtaking journey through ancient Rome, sweeping us into a realm of tyrants and slaves, of dark intrigues and seething passions. What emerges is both a grand romantic tale of coming-of-age in the Roman Empire and a vibrant portrait of the early years of a man who would become the most powerful ruler on earth: Julius Caesar. On the lush Italian peninsula, a new empire is taking shape. At its heart is the city of Rome, a place of glory and decadence, beauty and bloodshed. Against this vivid backdrop, two boys are growing to manhood, dreaming of battles, fame, and glory in service of the mightiest empire the world has ever known. One is the son of a senator, a boy of privilege and ambition to whom much has been given and from whom much is expected. The other is a bastard child, a boy of strength and cunning, whose love for his adoptive family–and his adoptive brother–will be the most powerful force in his life. As young Gaius and Marcus are trained in the art of combat–under the tutelage of one of Rome’s most fearsome gladiators–Rome itself is being rocked by the art of treachery and ambition, caught in a tug-of-war as two rival generals, Marius and Sulla, push the empire toward civil war. For Marcus, a bloody campaign in Greece will become a young soldier’s proving ground. For Gaius, the equally deadly infighting of the Roman Senate will be the battlefield where he hones his courage and skill. And for both, the love of an extraordinary slave girl will be an honor each will covet but only one will win. The two friends are forced to walk different paths, and by the time they meet again everything will have changed. Both will have known love, loss, and violence. And the land where they were once innocent will be thrust into the grip of bitter conflict–a conflict that will set Roman against Roman...and put their friendship to the ultimate test. Brilliantly interweaving history and adventure, Conn Iggulden conjures a stunning array of contrasts–from the bloody stench of a battlefield to the opulence of the greatest city in history, from the tenderness of a lover to the treachery of an assassin. Superbly rendered, grippingly told, «Emperor, The Gates of Rome» is a work of vaulting imagination from a powerful new voice in historical fiction.