Random House, Inc.

In 'the stifling heat of equatorial Newark', a terrifying epidemic is raging, threatening the children of the New Jersey city with maiming, paralysis, life-long disability, even death. This is the startling and surprising theme of Roth's wrenching new book: a wartime polio epidemic in the summer of 1944 and the effect it has on a closely-knit, family-oriented Newark community and its children. At the centre of Nemesis is a vigorous, dutiful, twenty-three-year old playground director, Bucky Cantor, a javelin thrower and a weightlifter, who is devoted to his charges and disappointed with himself because his weak eyes have excluded him from serving in the war alongside his contemporaries. Focusing on Cantor's dilemmas as polio begins to ravage his playground — and on the everyday realities he faces — Roth leads us through every inch of emotion such a pestilence can breed: the fear, the panic, the anger, the bewilderment, the suffering, and the pain. Moving between the smouldering, malodorous streets of besieged Newark and Indian Hill, a pristine children's summer camp high in the Poconos — whose 'mountain air was purified of all contaminants' — Roth depicts a decent, energetic man with the best intentions struggling in his own private war against the epidemic. Roth is tenderly exact at every point about Cantor's passage into personal disaster and no less exact about the condition of childhood. Through this story runs the dark question that haunts all four of Roth's late short novels, Everyman, Indignation, The Humbling, and now, Nemesis: what choices fatally shape a life? How powerless is each of us up against the force of circumstances?

Following the massive success of Pride Prejudice and Zombies, and the impressive pre-pub sales of Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, we have Quirk Classic 3. Like 1 and 2 the suspense will build as we discover what new monster mayhem will descend upon us this Spring. Certain to create the same buzz and excitement as the previous Quirk Classic titles.

This is a must-have selection of timeless classics, brought gloriously to life by the award-winning Tony Ross. The collection includes favourites such as The Three Billy Goats Gruff, Henny-Penny, The Gingerbread Man, Three Little Pigs, The Enormous Turnip, Little Red Riding Hood and Goldilocks. The stories have been specially selected for their read-aloud qualities. The large type and full colour, integrated illustrations on every page make this a wonderful book to share with even the very youngest child.

Before the smash hit movie Serenity came Firefly, the cult TV series which started it all and became a DVD phenomenon, selling almost half a million copies. Set 500 years in the future, Firefly centres around Mal Reynolds, captain of the ship-for-hire Serenity and its eclectic crew of galactic misfits. When he takes on two passengers, a young doctor and his mysterious, telepathic sister, he gets much more than he bargained for... This third official companion in the much-loved series is packed with unseen photos, costume designs, behind the scenes secrets and much more.

With the release of Avatar in December 2009, James Cameron cements his reputation as king of sci-fi and blockbuster filmmaking. It's a distinction he's long been building, through a directing career that includes such cinematic landmarks as The Terminator, Aliens, The Abyss, and the highest grossing movie of all time, Titanic. The Futurist is the first in-depth look at every aspect of this audacious creative genius — culminating in an exclusive behind-the-scenes glimpse of the making of Avatar, the movie that promises to utterly transform the way motion pictures are created and perceived. As decisive a break with the past as the transition from silents to talkies, Avatar pushes 3-D, live action, and photo-realistic CGI to a new level. It rips through the emotional barrier of the screen to transport the audience to a fabulous new virtual world. With cooperation from the often reclusive Cameron, author Rebecca Keegan has crafted a singularly revealing portrait of the director's life and work. We meet the young truck driver who sees Star Wars and sets out to learn how to make even better movies himself — starting by taking apart the first 35mm camera he rented to see how it works. We observe the neophyte director deciding over lunch with Arnold Schwarzenegger that the ex-body builder turned actor is wrong in every way for the Terminator role as written, but perfect regardless. After the success of The Terminator, Cameron refines his special-effects wizardry with a big-time Hollywood budget in the creation of the relentlessly exciting Aliens. He builds an immense underwater set for The Abyss in the massive containment vessel of an abandoned nuclear power plant — where he pushes his scuba-breathing cast to and sometimes past their physical and emotional breaking points (including a white rat that Cameron saved from drowning by performing CPR). And on the set of Titanic, the director struggles to stay in charge when someone maliciously spikes craft services' mussel chowder with a massive dose of PCP, rendering most of the cast and crew temporarily psychotic. Now, after his movies have earned over $5 billion at the box office, James Cameron is astounding the world with the most expensive, innovative, and ambitious movie of his career. For decades the moviemaker has been ready to tell the Avatar story but was forced to hold off his ambitions until technology caught up with his vision. Going beyond the technical ingenuity and narrative power that Cameron has long demonstrated, Avatar shatters old cinematic paradigms and ushers in a new era of storytelling.

Ein verwunschener Garten, eine adlige Familie, ein dunkles Geheimnis. Als die junge Australierin Cassandra von ihrer Großmutter ein kleines Cottage an der Küste Cornwalls erbt, ahnt sie nichts von dem unheilvollen Versprechen, das zwei Freundinnen ein Jahrhundert zuvor an jenem Ort einlösten. Auf den Spuren der Vergangenheit entdeckt Cassandra ein Geheimnis, das seinen Anfang in den Gärten von Blackhurst Manor nahm und seit Generationen das Schicksal ihrer Familie bestimmt. Blackhurst Manor, Cornwall, Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts: Nach dem Tod ihrer Eltern wächst Eliza bei ihrem Onkel auf Blackhurst Manor, dem Familienbesitz der Mountrachets, auf. Sie und ihre Cousine Rose werden schnell unzertrennlich. Um der Welt der Erwachsenen zu entfliehen, erkunden sie das geheimnisvolle Anwesen und entdecken einen verborgenen Garten mit einem Cottage — ein Ort, an den sich die fantasievolle Eliza immer wieder zurückziehen kann. Doch als die Mädchen erwachsen werden, zerbricht ihre einstige Freundschaft. Rose verliebt sich in Nathaniel, und als die beiden heiraten, zieht sich Eliza in das Cottage zurück, um sich ganz dem Schreiben von Geschichten zu widmen. So ahnt sie nicht, dass Rose zutiefst unglücklich ist, weil ihre Ehe kinderlos bleibt. In ihrer Verzweiflung bittet sie Eliza um Hilfe. Ein unheilvoller Plan wird in die Tat umgesetzt und bestimmt fortan das Schicksal der nachfolgenden Generationen.

An der Schwelle zwischen Leben und Tod findet Logan Thibault einen Glücksbringer: die Fotografie einer lächelnden, schönen Frau. Obwohl er sie noch nie zuvor gesehen hat, glaubt Thibault, dass sie den Schlüssel zu seinem Schicksal in Händen hält. Er sucht die geheimnisvolle Frau auf — und sein Leben nimmt eine so wunderbare wie dramatische Wendung.

Romantisch und gefühlvoll: Der dritte Roman des Jahreszeitenzyklus von Nora Roberts. Gemeinsam mit ihren drei besten Freundinnen betreibt die hübsche Konditorin Laurel die erfolgreiche Hochzeitsagentur Vows. Tag für Tag hilft sie glücklichen Paaren, ihre Liebe mit einem rauschenden Fest zu krönen, in Laurels eigenem Privatleben sieht es aber alles andere als rosig aus. Doch dann verliebt sie sich in den smarten Staranwalt Del. Er ist für sie die Liebe ihres Lebens, aber sieht der heißbegehrte Junggeselle das ebenso?

The long-awaited new novel from Margaret Atwood. The Year of the Flood is a dystopic masterpiece and a testament to her visionary power. The times and species have been changing at a rapid rate, and the social compact is wearing as thin as environmental stability. Adam One, the kindly leader of the God's Gardeners — a religion devoted to the melding of science and religion, as well as the preservation of all plant and animal life — has long predicted a natural disaster that will alter Earth as we know it. Now it has occurred, obliterating most human life. Two women have survived: Ren, a young trapeze dancer locked inside the high-end sex club Scales and Tails, and Toby, a God's Gardener barricaded inside a luxurious spa where many of the treatments are edible. Have others survived? Ren's bioartist friend Amanda? Zeb, her eco-fighter stepfather? Her onetime lover, Jimmy? Or the murderous Painballers, survivors of the mutual-elimination Painball prison? Not to mention the shadowy, corrupt policing force of the ruling powers... Meanwhile, gene-spliced life forms are proliferating: the lion/lamb blends, the Mo'hair sheep with human hair, the pigs with human brain tissue. As Adam One and his intrepid hemp-clad band make their way through this strange new world, Ren and Toby will have to decide on their next move. They can't stay locked away... By turns dark, tender, violent, thoughtful, and uneasily hilarious, The Year of the Flood is Atwood at her most brilliant and inventive.

Lisbeth Salander — the heart of Larsson's two previous novels — is under close supervision in the intensive care unit of a Swedish city hospital. She's fighting for her life in more ways than one: when she's well enough, she'll stand trial for three murders. With the help of her friend, journalist Mikael Blomkvist, she will have to prove her innocence, and to identify the corrupt politicians who have allowed the vulnerable, like herself, to suffer abuse. And, on her own, she will plot her revenge — against the man who tried to kill her and the government institutions that very nearly destroyed her life.

Isabels son, Charlie, is now of an ageeighteen monthsto have a social life, and so off they go to a birthday party, where, much to Isabels surprise, she encounters an old adversary, Minty Auchterlonie, now a high-flying financier. Minty had seemed to Isabel a woman of ruthless ambition, but the question of her integrity had never been answered. Now, when Minty takes Isabel into her confidence about a personal matter, Isabel finds herself going another round: Is Minty to be trusted? Or is she the perpetrator of an enormous financial fraud? And what should Isabel make of the rumors of shady financial transactions at Minty's investment bank? Not that this is the only dilemma facing Isabel: she also crosses swords again with her nemesis, Professor Dove, in an argument over plagiarism. Of course her niece, Cat, has a new, problematic man (a tightrope walker!) in her life. And there remains the open question of marriage to Jamiedoting father of Charlie. As always, there is no end to the delight in accompanying Isabel as she makes her way toward the heart of every problem: philosophizing, sleuthing, and downright snooping in her inimitableand inimitably charmingfashion.

The stunning new thriller from the bestselling author of Velocity and Relentless. In the Colorado mountains something miraculous comes into the life of Grady Adams, a strong, gentle man whose past experiences have alienated him from the modern world and driven him to live in the wilds. When he sees it, he knows that one of Nature's great mysteries has been revealed to him. He takes his friend Cammy Rivers to bear witness to the phenomenal presence. As a scientist, she is stunned and awed. She emails photos to colleagues in far places to try and find a name for the wonderful beings. Before they know what is happening, Homeland Security has quarantined the wilderness around them and sent in assorted scientists to track down and 'neutralize' the threat to the known world. Grady and Cammy aren't sticking around to be mere witnesses to this atrocity — determined to prevent it, they go on the run, and a pursuit of hair-raising suspense is under way, with no happy ending in prospect! Breathless is a unique and riveting thriller from the master of suspense.

Flavia de Luce, a dangerously smart eleven-year-old with a passion for chemistry and a genius for solving murders, thinks that her days of crime-solving in the bucolic English hamlet of Bishop's Lacey are over — and then beloved puppeteer Rupert Porson has his own strings sizzled in an unfortunate rendezvous with electricity. But who'd do such a thing, and why? Does the madwoman who lives in Gibbet Wood know more than she's letting on? What about Porson's charming but erratic assistant? All clues point toward a suspicious death years earlier and a case the local constables can't solve — without Flavia's help. But in getting so close to who's secretly pulling the strings of this dance of death, has our precocious heroine finally gotten in way over her head?

New York, Summer, Very near future, Economic collapse, tanks in the streets, riots in Central Park, defeat in Venezuela, books are quaint artefacts, what's left of the indebted United States is about to be parcelled out to the rising nations of Finance-London and China-Worldwide, and what's left of interpersonal relations can be summarized by a couple of flashing statistics on attractiveness and wealth. But Lenny Abramov is too in love to notice any of it. The son of working-class Russian immigrants, a bumbling minor functionary in a company that just may hold the secret to eternal life, and the reluctant star of a show called «101 People We Need To Feel Sorry For», he has fallen way too hard for the imperious Eunice Park, a blistering, beautiful Korean-American, a seductive shopper and brilliant money-spender who still knows how to speak in sentences, and a true child of her times. As the country around them explodes into a million glittering pieces, the two will discover whether love is still possible in a world where words have lost their meaning, and where every touch, embrace and kiss could be mistaken for a commodity.

In 1954, in the cookhouse of a logging and sawmill settlement in northern New Hampshire, an anxious twelve-year-old boy mistakes the local constable's girlfriend for a bear. Both the twelve-year-old and his father become fugitives, forced to run from Coos County — to Boston, to southern Vermont, to Toronto — pursued by the implacable constable. Their lone protector is a fiercely libertarian logger, once a river driver, who befriends them. In a story spanning five decades, Last Night in Twisted River — John Irving's twelfth novel — depicts the recent half-century in the United States as 'a living replica of Coos County, where lethal hatreds were generally permitted to run their course'. From the novel's taut opening sentence — 'The young Canadian, who could not have been more than fifteen, had hesitated too long' — to its elegiac final chapter, Last Night in Twisted River is written with the historical authenticity and emotional authority of The Cider House Rules and A Prayer for Owen Meany. It is also as violent and disturbing a story as John Irving's breakthrough bestseller, The World According to Garp. What further distinguishes Last Night in Twisted River is the author's unmistakable voice — the inimitable voice of an accomplished storyteller. Near the end of this moving novel, John Irving writes: 'We don't always have a choice how we get to know one another. Sometimes, people fall into our lives cleanly — as if out of the sky, or as if there were a direct flight from Heaven to Earth — the same sudden way we lose people, who once seemed they would always be part of our lives'.

Quintessential Tyler, yet full of surprises — a perfectly pitched, enchanting and affecting novel about a man adrift in his own life, «Noah's Compass» chimes gently, heartbreakingly with our times. With the humour and poignancy of her classic «The Accidental Tourist» (though with a protagonist who doesn't venture far from home) Anne Tyler's new novel tells the story of a year in the life of Liam Pennywell, a man in his sixty-first year. A classical pedant, he's just been 'let go' from his schoolteaching job and downsizes to a tiny out-of-town apartment, where he goes to bed early and alone on his first night. Widowed, re-married, divorced and the father of three daughters, Liam is a man who is proud of his recall but has learned to dodge issues and skirt adventure. An unpleasant event occurs, though, to jolt him out of his certainty. Obsessed with a frightening gap in his memory, he sets out to uncover what happened, and finds instead an unusual woman with secrets of her own, and a late-flowering love that brings its own thorny problems. His ex-wife (sensible Barbara) and daughters worry about him but Liam blunders on, His teenage daughter Kitty is sent to stay — though it's not clear who is minding whom. His middle daughter, Louise, is a born-again Christian with a son called Jonah, but her certainties leave Liam still more perplexed. «Noah's Compass» is about memory and its loss, about incidents and relationships which open up sight lines into a painful past long dead for a man who becomes aware that merely trying to stay afloat may not be enough.

Dieser außergewöhnliche All-Age-Krimi hat die Herzen von Lesern, Buchhändlern und Kritikern aus aller Welt im Sturm erobert! Die junge Flavia de Luce staunt nicht schlecht, als sie im ersten Morgenlicht das Opfer eines Giftmordes in ihrem Gurkenbeet entdeckt! Da jeder ihren Vater, den sanftmütigen Colonel de Luce, für den Mörder zu halten scheint, nimmt die naseweise Flavia persönlich die Ermittlungen auf. Hartnäckig folgt sie jeder noch so abwegigen Spur — bis sie einsehen muss, dass ihr Vater tatsächlich ein dunkles Geheimnis hütet. Und so befürchtet Flavia schließlich, dass sie vielleicht eine zu gute Detektivin ist...

Ein bezauberndes, witziges Lesevergnügen für alle, die sich so alt fühlen, wie sie sind. Herbst des Lebens? Generation Silber? Unsinn! Marie Sharp wird demnächst sechzig und damit schlicht alt. Ein Grund zum Feiern, wie sie findet. Schon wegen all der Dinge, die sie jetzt nicht mehr tun muss, wie etwa Volkshochschulkurse besuchen. Nichts hasst Marie so sehr wie umtriebige Senioren, die nur so alt sind, wie sich fühlen — sie stürzt sich lieber kopfüber in das Vergnügen, nicht mehr jung sein zu müssen. Dazu gehört ihre neue Rolle als Großmutter und eine alte Liebe. Denn Maries Jugendschwarm ist wieder zu haben. Vom Vergnügen, endlich nicht mehr jung sein zu müssen.

Wie weiterleben, wenn man von einem Moment auf den anderen aus der Lebensbahn geworfen wird, wenn der Tod plötzlich nahe rückt? Christoph Schlingensiefs bewegendes Protokoll einer Selbstbefragung ist ein Geschenk an uns alle, an Kranke wie Gesunde, denen allzu oft die Worte fehlen, wenn Krankheit und Tod in das Leben einbrechen. Eine Kur der Worte gegen das Verstummen — und nicht zuletzt eine Liebeserklärung an die Welt.

Aleksandr Orlov has in the last year become one of the most loved figures in British culture and his catchphrase — Simples! — can be heard from the playground to the office. Written in his inimitable voice (as dictated to his sidekick Sergei), his autobiography will offer the same humour as his TV ads, giving us the full story of his ancestor's Journey of Courageousness from the Kalahari to Russia, the low-down on his life as entrepreneur and founder of comparethemeerkat.com and his love of grubs and cravats. 'My name is Aleksandr Orlov. I live and make work in Moscow. I have a success business. I have a mansion decorate with many fine things. I have a naturally majestic posture. But I would have none of these things if it were not for my family. This book is dedicated to them. I also wish to inspire next generation of young businesskats. I am hope that this book will show what can come of courage, hard work and a good fur-care regime. I am also hope that with royalties I will be able to re-marble roof on Orlov family mansion'.

After a lifetime's struggle with alcohol, critical neglect and depression, in 1840 the nature poet John Clare is incarcerated. The asylum, in London's Epping Forest, is run on the reformist principles of occupational therapy. At the same time, the young Alfred Tennyson, moves nearby and became entangled in the life of the asylum. This historically accurate, intensely lyrical novel, describes the asylum's closed world and Nature's paradise outside the walls: Clare's dream of home, of redemption, of escape.

A Mountain of Crumbs is the moving story of a young Soviet girl's discovery of the hidden truths of adulthood and her country's profound political deception. Elena, born with a desire to explore the world beyond her borders, finds her passion in the complexity of the English language — but in the Soviet Union of the 1960s, such a passion verges on the subversive. Elena's home is no longer the majestic Russia of literature or the tsars. Instead, it is a nation humiliated by its first faltering steps after World War II, putting up appearances for the sake of its regime and fighting to retain its pride. In this deeply affecting memoir, Elena re-creates the world that both oppressed and inspired her. She recounts stories passed down to her about the horrors of the Bolshevik Revolution and probes the daily deprivations and small joys of her family's bunkerlike existence. Through Elena's captivating voice, we learn not only the personal story of Russia in the second half of the twentieth century, but also the story of one rebellious citizen whose love of a foreign language finally transports her to a new world. 'This moving memoir made me cry' — The New York Times.

Eduardo Saverin and Mark Zuckerberg — an awkward maths prodigy and a painfully shy computer genius — were never going to fit in at elite, polished Harvard. Yet that all changed when master-hacker Mark crashed the university's entire computer system by creating a rateable database of female students. Narrowly escaping expulsion, the two misfits refocused the site into something less controversial — 'The Facebook' — and watched as it spread like a wildfire across campuses around the country, along with their popularity. Yet amidst the dizzying levels of cash and glamour, as silicon valley, venture capitalists and reams of girls beckoned, the first cracks in their friendship started to appear, and what began as a simple argument spiralled into an out-and-out war. The great irony is that Facebook succeeded by bringing people together — but its very success tore two best friends apart.

Get your teeth into The Vampire Diaries — the phenomenal television show which has a fanghold on TVs around the world. Based on the hit book series by L.J. Smith, the show sees two smouldering vampire brothers, Paul Wesley (Everwood) and Ian Somerhalder (Lost), at war with each other over the soul of high school girl Nina Dobrev (Degrassi: The Next Generation). Quench your thirst for blood with this incredibly detailed unofficial guide — full of behind the scenes facts, season one episode guide, character profiles and huge free poster.