Random House, Inc.

Stopping to use a cash machine one evening, a man inexplicably falls to the ground: dead. A taxi driver is brutally murdered by two teenage girls. Quickly apprehended they appeal local policemen with their total lack of remorse. One girl escapes police custody and disappears without trace. Soon afterwards, a blackout covers half the country. When an engineer arrives at the malfunctioning power station, he makes a grisly discovery. Inspector Kurt Wallander is sure that these events must be linked — somehow. Hampered by the discovery of betrayals in his own team, lonely and frustrated, Wallander begins to loose conviction in his role as a detective. The search for answers leads Wallander dangerously close to a shadowy group of anarchic terrorists, hidden within the anonymity of cyberspace. Somehow these criminals seem always to know the police's next move and Wallander finds himself fighting to outsmart them.

It is Midsummer's Eve. Three young friends meet in a wood to act out an elaborate masque. But, unkown to them, they are being watched. Each is killed by a single bullet. Soon afterwards, one of Inspector Wallander's colleagues is found murdered. Is this the same killer, and what could the connection be? In this investigation, Wallander is always, tantalisingly, one step behind.

Midsummer approaches, and Wallander prepares for a holiday with the new woman in his life, hopeful that his wayward daughter and his ageing father will cope without him. But his summer is ruined when a girl commits suicide before his eyes, and a former minister of justice is butchered in the first of a series of apparently motiveless murders. Wallander's hunt for the girl's identity and his furious pursuit of a killer who scalps his victims will throw him and those he loves most into mortal danger.

When a new highway threatens to bypass the town of Rossmore and cut through Whitethorn Woods, it will also destroy St. Ann's well, where people have been coming for generations to share their dreams and speak their prayers. Some believe the well to be a place of true spiritual power, demanding protection; others think it's a mere magnet for superstitions, easily sacrificed. Maeve Binchy creates a rich spectrum of men and women, all with passionate opinions, who are drawn into this timely conflict between the traditions of the past and the promises of the future.

An acclaimed bestseller and international sensation, Patrick Suskind's classic novel provokes a terrifying examination of what happens when one man's indulgence in his greatest passion — his sense of smell — leads to murder. In the slums of eighteenth-century France, the infant Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is born with one sublime gift-an absolute sense of smell. As a boy, he lives to decipher the odors of Paris, and apprentices himself to a prominent perfumer who teaches him the ancient art of mixing precious oils and herbs. But Grenouille's genius is such that he is not satisfied to stop there, and he becomes obsessed with capturing the smells of objects such as brass doorknobs and frest-cut wood. Then one day he catches a hint of a scent that will drive him on an ever-more-terrifying quest to create the «ultimate perfume» — the scent of a beautiful young virgin. Told with dazzling narrative brillance, Perfume is a hauntingly powerful tale of murder and sensual depravity. Translated from the German by John E. Woods.

Alfred Day wanted his war. In its turmoil he found his proper purpose as the tail-gunner in a Lancaster bomber; he found the wild, dark fellowship of his crew, and — most extraordinary of all — he found Joyce, a woman to love. But that's all gone now — the war took it away. Maybe it took him, too. Now in 1949, employed as an extra in a war film that echoes his real experience, Day begins to recall what he would rather forget...

It started as a joke. From the moment she first meets him Alice is aware that David is impotent. 'I'm impotent', he says, 'in so many ways.' He's separated from his wife and daughter, an HR executive worried for his job at a Glaswegian TV company. She's American, wants to be an artist. They move in together. To start with she tells him stories, bedtime stories about couples having sex, them watching. Then Alice finds that David has gone further, and is logging on to swinging sites — horny housewives, couples willing to try anything... Just as a joke, he says. Alice is intrigued.These people seem so honest, so open about needing to reach out and touch. And maybe this is the answer to David's problem. Maybe they need people like this to give them a love life. And so David and Alice plunge head first into the hidden world of Glasgow swinging, where no one is ugly and nothing is forbidden. Their journey ends at an orgy with nine other couples in the Black Room, where you can see nothing but feel everything. And there, finally, each of them finds what they have been searching for. Like Ewan Morrison's first book, the highly-praised The Last Book You Read and Other Stories, Swung is frank, funny, disturbing and compassionate. It confirms Morrison as a writer of great daring and huge gifts.

A model of efficiency and order, the aerodrome stands on the hill looking down on the village below. Roy, coming of age in the messy, violent and adulterous world of the villagers, is simultaneously attracted and repelled by this strange place and by the powerful figure of the Air Vice-Marshal. Soon he is led to leave his family, his friends and his love in order to join the aerodrome and confront the secrets of this mysterious and sinister place...

'Nobody fights forever, so I prepared myself for two battles. The first was fighting alongside her. We've done that. As well as two can. But, as the years have ticked by, I've seen a second front coming — and it's the tougher of the two. Abbie might still be swinging but she was beat. To be honest, I think she was still in the ring fighting, simply for me. Lately, the thing that had been keeping me up nights was wondering what would happen if I told her that she could let her guard down — that she could stop fighting. What if she was just waiting on me?' Doss Michaels and Abbie Colman should never have met let alone fallen in love. As the only child of South Carolina's most senior senator, Abbie's father had wanted better for her than Doss, who grew up in a trailer park next to the St Mary's river. Abbie and Doss had married quickly and secretly, returning to face her parents' objections that haven't faded even after over fourteen years of marriage. But now Abbie and Doss are coming to the end of the road. Diagnosed with breast cancer four years before, Abbie's case is now terminal and they've run out of options. Rather than letting Abbie spend her final days in a cold, sterile hospital room, Doss packs their bags and steals away with her in the middle of the night. They carry with them Abbie's 'wish list' — ten things she wants to do before she dies. The wishes are simple, normal; because after four years of non-stop invasive medical treatments, 'normal' is a fleeting memory. Along with taking a final trip with Doss on the river that holds so many memories for them both, Abbie wants to dance with her husband, drink wine on a beach, laugh until it hurts. But as they head for river's end, racing against weather and time, Abbie's father, the press and the police are determined to find them and bring Abbie home...

Two helicopters disrupt the peace of Dr Gabe Singleton's remote Wyoming ranch. From one of them strides the President of the United States with startling news — and a stunning request which will turn Gabe's quiet life upside down. President Stoddard's personal physician has suddenly and mysteriously disappeared, and he needs Gabe to take the man's place. Reluctantly, Gabe agrees — but soon he discovers that critical details concerning the President's health have been kept from him. Suspecting that the President's worsening condition may not be due to natural causes, Gabe sets out to uncover who is behind his mysterious illness. But the more questions he asks, the more Gabe seems to be putting himself in danger.

In 1903, Leon M — a devout terrorist — is given the responsibility of 'liquidating' Valerian Alexandrovitch Courilof, the notoriously brutal and cold-blooded Russian Minister of Education, by the Revolutionary Committee. The assassination, he is told, must take place in public and be in most grandiose manner possible in order to strike the imagination of the people. Posing as his newly appointed personal physician, Leon M takes up residence with Courliof in his summer house in the Iles and awaits instructions.But over the course of his stay he is made privy to the inner world of Courliof — his failing health, his troubled domestic situation and, most importantly, the tyrannical grip that the Czar himself holds over all his Ministers, forcing them to obey him or suffer the most deadly punishments.Set during a period of radical upheaval in European history, The Courliof Affair is an unsparing observation of human motives and the abuses of power, an elegy to lost world and an unflinchingly topical cautionary tale.

It is the summer of 1975. Marco Timoleon, an Onassis-like tycoon, is nearing the end of his life. When he finds out his troubled daughter is pregnant by a man he doesn't approve of, he throws a birthday party for her on his private island, secretly intending to persuade her to terminate the pregnancy. A doctor stands by to perform the operation on the spot. The story of this fateful party and the lives it affects is a brilliant modern fable, a rags-to-riches tale with no certainty of a happily-ever-after ending.

Meet Burt Hecker, aka Eckbert Attquiet, a 63 year old medieval re-enactor with a momentous nose, who dresses in tunics and drinks too much home-made mead. His treasured wife Kitty has died and their strange and beautiful relationship is now the stuff of history; he has sold all of his possessions and bought a one-way ticket to Europe, bent on rescuing his beloved son Tristan from the 'evil' city of Prague. If only he knew that his son doesn't want to be rescued, or found.

1957, and Lewis Aldridge is travelling back to his home in the South of England. He is straight out of jail and nineteen years old. His return will trigger the implosion not just of his family, but of a whole community. A decade earlier, his father's homecoming casts a different shape. The war is over and Gilbert has recently been demobbed. He reverts easily to suburban life — cocktails at six thirty, church on Sundays — but his wife and young son resist the stuffy routine. Lewis and his mother escape to the woods for picnics, just as they did in wartime days. Nobody is surprised that Gilbert's wife counters convention, but they are all shocked when, after one of their jaunts, Lewis comes back without her. Not far away, Kit Carmichael keeps watch. She has always understood more than most, not least from what she has been dealt by her own father's hand. Lewis's grief and burgeoning rage are all too plain, and Kit makes a private vow to help. But in her attempts to set them both free, she fails to predict the painful and horrifying secrets that must first be forced into the open. As menacing as it is beautiful, The Outcast is a devastating portrait of small-town hypocrisy from an astonishing new voice.

This perfect gem of a novel by the author of the posthumously acclaimed and bestselling Suite Francaise has never previously been published and was discovered only recently in separate archive files. A couple of pages were in the famous suitcase which her daughters saved, and the balance had been deposited with a family friend and editor during the war. A morality tale with doubtful morals, a story of murder, love and betrayal in rural France, Fire in the Blood, planned in 1937, written in 1941, is set in a small village, based on Issy-l'Eveque where Suite Francaise was written, and brilliantly prefigures the village community in her later masterpiece. An old man looks back on a chequered life with secret regrets, concealing a truth he will not reveal until the end. Fire in the Blood is a small and beautiful chamber piece which starts quietly, lyrically, but then races away with revelations and narrative twists in a story about young women forced into marriages with old men, about mothers and daughters, stepmothers and stepdaughters, youthful passions and the regrets of old age, about peasant communities and the way they hide their secrets. Nemirovsky looks at her characters, both young and old, with the same clear-eyed distance and humanity as she displayed in Suite Francaise, unpeeling layer after layer. Atmospheric and haunting as Embers and with the crystalline perfection of Chekhov, Fire in the Blood is a gripping literary find.

In school playgrounds across the country parents huddle in worried packs, desperately putting together their final plans to survive the summer weeks of mayhem — school is officially out! For once, Amanda has a simple, cheap and fail-safe plan to make it through the summer holidays with her three, overexcited offspring. But a last minute addition of fellow-mum Suzanne and her perfect son Orlando quickly shatters Amanda's vision of the quintessential bucket-and-spade summer adventure. In fact, before she even makes it to the picture-perfect Cornish idyll that is home to her one-time playground comrade Skyler, Amanda has to endure tantrums, floods, and an eerie B&B, all with three ratty kids and a carsick dog in tow.When they finally arrive, dishevelled and exhausted, she discovers that not only must she endure Suzanne at close quarters in a cramped cottage, but also that Skyler's business in dire need of a helping hand. In the weeks that ensue, Amanda discovers there is only one way to survive the summer holidays, and that's with a stiff drink, a pair of wellies and a bucket-full of bonhomie! Praise for Sarah Tucker — 'Scandal, backstabbing, illicit affairs... a fab, girlie read!' — New Woman. 'Mums will be able to see the truth behind this fun novel' — In The Know. 'A real laugh-out-loud tale' OK!

Hester Prynne is a beautiful young woman. She is also an outcast. In the eyes of her neighbours she has committed an unforgivable sin. Everyone knows that her little daughter, Pearl, is the product of an illicit affair but no one knows the identity of Pearl's father. Hester's refusal to name him brings more condemnation upon her. But she stands strong in the face of public scorn, even when she is forced to wear the sign of her shame sewn onto her clothes: the scarlet letter 'A' for 'Adulteress'.

This moving and profoundly truthful story is told in the form of diary, kept by Angelika, the sister-in-law and friend of Klara, who, after her release from Auschwitz, wandered through war-ravaged Europe for two months before returning to Paris in August 1945. Gradually, over a period of six weeks, Klara reveals, with cold anger and pitiless lucidity, the full horror of what she experienced in Auschwitz as she struggles to readapt to normal life. Not since Sophie's Choice has a novelist succeeded in conveying — with truth, dignity, power and intelligence — the inhumanity of the death camps and the scars suffered by those who survived them.

Roxanne's world collapses when she comes home one day to discover her husband lying dead on the bathroom floor. Consumed by grief, she runs away from her life, quitting her job and heading for Peaks Island, a tiny speck off the coast of Maine. A former psycologist, she finds herself taking a job as an animal warden and reinventing her past so it doesn't include the tragedy of her husband's death. But despite Roxanne's best efforts to cut herself off from her emotions and people in general, she finds herself drawn to her quirky new neighbours. And then Roxanne meets Lloyd. Lloyd is a large black Labrador retriever who Roxanne finds with a handmade arrow sticking out of his shoulder. It's clear that Lloyd has been woefully mistreated. And so begins a remarkable friendship between a wounded woman and a wounded dog. And as slowly both begin to heal, Roxanne begins to deal with her grief and even discover that happiness can be found in unexpected places.

Dionisio Vivo, a South American lecturer in philosphy, is puzzled by the hideously mutilated corpses that keep turning up outside his front door. To his friend, Ramon, one of the few honest policement in town, the message is all too clear: Dionisio's letters to the press, exposing the drug barons, must stop; and although Dionisio manages to escape the hit-men sent to get him, he soon realises that others are more vulnerable, and his love for them leads him to take a colossal revenge.

On a cold day in January President Kerry Kilcannon takes the oath of office and within days makes his first, most important move: appointing a new Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Kilcannon's choice is a female judge with a brilliant record. And a secret. While the Senate spars over Caroline Masters' nomination, an inflammatory abortion rights case is making its way toward the judge--and will explode into the headlines. Suddenly, the most divisive issue in America turns the President's nomination into all-out war. And from Judge Masters to a conservative, war-hero senator facing a crisis of conscience and a fifteen-year-old girl battling for her future, no one will be safe. Protect and Defend takes us on a riveting journey between what is legal, what is right... and the price of finally knowing the difference.

Beautiful Irishwoman Eliza Lynch became briefly, in the 1860s, the richest woman in the world. The book opens in Paris with Eliza in bed with Francisco Solano Lopez — heir to the untold wealth of Paraguay. The fruit of their congress will be extraordinary, and will send her across the Atlantic on the regal voyage to claim her glorious future in Ascuncion. With the lavish imaginative richness of Marquez and the crazed panoramic sweep of Herzog, The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch is a bold and brilliantly achieved novel about sex, beauty and corruption and the end of the old world.

Crime fiction obsessive Martin Reed is the proverbial butt of everyone's jokes. Working as a glorified accountant at Southern Toilet Supply and still living with his cantankerous mother, he has become resigned to the world in which he lives — the school bullies now pick on him in the workplace, women still spurn him and his arch enemy is now his supervisor. But then he arrives at work one morning to find the police on site. A co-worker has been brutally murdered and her body abandoned in a ditch. And the overwhelming evidence points to Martin — especially when he can't or won't admit that he has an alibi. When a second victim is found in the company bathroom, things really conspire against Martin. The one bright star on his otherwise bleak horizon is the beautiful and sympathetic Detective Anther Albada, but even she's beginning to have her doubts about his innocence. Could Martin be guilty? Or is he just misunderstood?

When it comes to sisterly rivalry, the MacLeod family has a long history and with the social event of the year looming, there are bound to be some fireworks. Natalie wants the perfect wedding. Milly longs to be able to fit into something other than her maternity trousers. Avril secretly dreams of settling down with an unmarried man. And Hazel, the baby of the family, just wishes she was taken more seriously. Forced together for the first time in years, it's not long before they slip into old habits and childhood squabbles. But when tragedy strikes and all plans have to be put aside, it's surprising who's there to lean on. But all the more surprising are the skeletons that are about to come out of the rather crowded MacLeod closet...