Random House Inc.

Literary agent Valerie Morrell receives an email from prospective author William Mendez, containing the first chapters of a promising new novel. Mendez's book tells the story of an April night. Morrell is hooked by the scandalous tale of decadence, drugs and disasters, but as the book unfolds, a parallel story emerges.

Haly's Circus, where Dick Grayson once performed, returns to Gotham City, bringing with it murder, mystery, and superhuman evil! To uncover more clues to why a mysterious assassin is targeting him, Nightwing joins the circus's tour. But as Dick becomes reacquainted with the big top he once called home, he learns there are darker secrets to be discovered.

DC Entertainment is pleased to present the official graphic novel adaptation of Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy, brought to life by best-selling mystery novelist Denise Mina and illustrated by Leonardo Manco and Andrea Mutti, with a spectacular cover by Lee Bermejo. Harriet Vanger, a scion of one of Sweden's wealthiest families, disappeared over forty years ago. All these years later, her aged uncle continues to seek the truth. He hires Mikael Blomkvist, a crusading journalist recently trapped by a libel conviction, to investigate. He is aided by the pierced and tattooed punk prodigy Lisbeth Salander. Together they tap into a vein of unfathomable iniquity and corruption in this extraordinary adaptation of the international publishing phenomenon.

In any 24 hours there might be sleeping, eating, kids, parents, friends, lovers, work, school, travel, deadlines, emails, phone calls, Facebook, Twitter, the news, the TV, Playstation, music, movies, sport, responsibilities, passions, desires, dreams. Why should you stop what you're doing and read a book? Reading is not an innate human ability. Many people can't read. Many people would rather read a newspaper, a magazine, a blog, a cereal packet, than a novel. But people have always needed stories. We need literature — novels, poetry — because we need to make sense of our lives, test our depths, understand our joys, and discover what humans are capable of. Great books can provide companionship when we are lonely or peacefulness in the midst of the commuter rush. Reading provides a unique kind of pleasure and no-one should live without it. The ten essays in this book tell us about the experience of reading, why access to books should never be taken for granted, how reading transforms our brains, and how literature can save lives. In any 24 hours there are so many demands on your time and attention — books should be one of them.

Attempts to shine a light on the work of the best and wisest the author have ever known. In this title, Sherlock Holmes has, he think it is safe to say, elevated the science of detection into an art form.

When unworldly student Anastasia Steele first encountered the driven and dazzling young entrepreneur Christian Grey it sparked a sensual affair that changed both of their lives irrevocably. Shocked, intrigued, and, ultimately, repelled by Christian’s singular erotic tastes, Ana demands a deeper commitment. Determined to keep her, Christian agrees. Now, Ana and Christian have it all—love, passion, intimacy, wealth, and a world of possibilities for their future. But Ana knows that loving her Fifty Shades will not be easy, and that being together will pose challenges that neither of them would anticipate. Ana must somehow learn to share Christian’s opulent lifestyle without sacrificing her own identity. And Christian must overcome his compulsion to control as he wrestles with the demons of a tormented past. Just when it seems that their strength together will eclipse any obstacle, misfortune, malice, and fate conspire to make Ana’s deepest fears turn to reality. This book is intended for mature audiences.

When literature student Anastasia Steele goes to interview young entrepreneur Christian Grey, she encounters a man who is beautiful, brilliant, and intimidating. The unworldly, innocent Ana is startled to realize she wants this man and, despite his enigmatic reserve, finds she is desperate to get close to him. Unable to resist Ana’s quiet beauty, wit, and independent spirit, Grey admits he wants her, too—but on his own terms. Shocked yet thrilled by Grey’s singular erotic tastes, Ana hesitates. For all the trappings of success—his multinational businesses, his vast wealth, his loving family—Grey is a man tormented by demons and consumed by the need to control. When the couple embarks on a daring, passionately physical affair, Ana discovers Christian Grey’s secrets and explores her own dark desires. Erotic, amusing, and deeply moving, the Fifty Shades Trilogy is a tale that will obsess you, possess you, and stay with you forever. This book is intended for mature audiences.

Summer of 1911. The streets of London ring with cheers for a new king's coronation and the cries of increasingly violent suffragette protests. Connie Callaway, fired up by the possibilities of independence, wants more than the conventional comforts of marriage. She is determined to fight for the greatest cause the world has ever known.

Squish crunch gollop — a very hungry, very enormous crocodile can't wait to fill his empty tummy with a fat juicy child. He thinks he's clever, but the other jungle animals might just be able to outwit him...

This title deals with a new introduction by Geoff Dyer. The world and his mistress are at Jay Gatsby's party. But Gatsby stands apart from the crowd, isolated by a secret longing. In between sips of champagne his guests speculate about their mysterious host. Some say he's a bootlegger. Others swear he was a German spy during the war. They lean in and whisper he killed a man once. Just where is Gatsby from and what is the obsession that drives him? This edition of The Great Gatsby is the result of a unique collaboration between Tiffany & Co. and Vintage Classics. It is based on designs in the Tiffany &Co. archives from the twenties when F. Scott Fitzgerald's talent, beauty and notorious lifestyle made him one of best known writers of the Jazz Age.

Un pasado persiguiendola. Un futuro aun por construir. Y un cuaderno para escribir toda una vida. Soy Maya Vidal, diecinueve anos, sexo femenino, soltera, sin un enamorado, por falta de oportunidades y no por quisquillosa, nacida en Berkeley, California, pasaporte estadounidense, temporalmente refugiada en una isla al sur del mundo. Me pusieron Maya porque a mi Nini le atrae la India y a mis padres no se les ocurrio otro nombre, aunque tuvieron nueve meses para pensarlo. En hindi, maya significa 'hechizo, ilusion, sueno'. Nada que ver con mi caracter. Atila me calzaria mejor, porque donde pongo el pie no sale mas pasto. Esta Maya me ha hecho sufrir mas que ningun otro de mis personajes. En algunas escenas le habria dado unas cachetadas para hacerla entrar en razon, y en otras la habria envuelto en un apretado abrazo para protegerla del mundo y de su propio corazon atolondrado.

A new translation of the hilarious picaresque about a man with an indomitable spirit The Enchanted Wanderer is a Russian Candide with a revolutionary edge, a picaresque that features a fast-talking monk named Ivan who is at war, it seems, with every level of society. Working as a carriage man for a Count, Ivan accidentally causes the death of a monk, which leads to his being ostracized by the local peasantry... until the dead monk returns as a ghost to guide him through trouble upon trouble.

Colonel de Luce, in desperate need of funds, rents his beloved estate of Buckshaw to a film company. They will be shooting a movie over the Christmas holidays, filming scenes in the decaying manse with a reclusive star. She is widely despised, so it is to no one's surprise when she turns up murdered, strangled by a length of film from her own movies! With a blizzard raging outside and Buckshaw locked in, the house is full of suspects. But Flavia de Luce is more than ready to put aside her investigations into the true identity of Father Christmas to solve this yuletide country-house murder.

Searing. Explosive. Lyrical. Compassionate. Here is the astonishing new novel by the Man Booker Prize-winning author of The White Tiger, a book that took rage and anger at injustice and turned it into a thrilling murder story. Now, with the same fearlessness and insight, Aravind Adiga broadens his canvas to give us a riveting story of money and power, luxury and deprivation, set in the booming city of Mumbai. At the heart of this novel are two equally compelling men, poised for a showdown. Real estate developer Dharmen Shah rose from nothing to create an empire and hopes to seal his legacy with a building named the Shanghai, which promises to be one of the city’s most elite addresses. Larger-than-life Shah is a dangerous man to refuse. But he meets his match in a retired schoolteacher called Masterji. Shah offers Masterji and his neighbors — the residents of Vishram Society’s Tower A, a once respectable, now crumbling apartment building on whose site Shah’s luxury high-rise would be built — a generous buyout. They can’t believe their good fortune. Except, that is, for Masterji, who refuses to abandon the building he has long called home. As the demolition deadline looms, desires mount; neighbors become enemies, and acquaintances turn into conspirators who risk losing their humanity to score their payday. Here is a richly told, suspense-fueled story of ordinary people pushed to their limits in a place that knows none: the new India as only Aravind Adiga could explore — and expose — it. Vivid, visceral, told with both humor and poignancy, Last Man in Tower is his most stunning work yet.

Hit the road reading with Dr. Seuss! Tucked inside this cute little blue box topped with a plastic handle and secured by a tuck closure are board book editions of the classic Dr. Seuss titles Hop on Pop; Oh, the Thinks You Can Think; Ten Apples Up On Top; and The Shape of Me and Other Stuff. Ideal for the holidays, new mothers, and happy occasions of all kinds, this is a literacy-nurturing gift that babies can literally sink their teeth into!

WHAT IS JESUS WORTH TO YOU? It's easy for Christians to forget how Jesus said his followers would actually live, what their new lifestyle would actually look like. They would, he said, leave behind security, money, convenience, even family for him. They would abandon everything for the gospel. They would take up their crosses daily... BUT WHO DO YOU KNOW WHO LIVES LIKE THAT? DO YOU? In «Radical,» David Platt challenges you to consider with an open heart how we have manipulated the gospel to fit our cultural preferences. He shows what Jesus actually said about being his disciple — then invites you to believe and obey what you have heard. And he tells the dramatic story of what is happening as a «successful» suburban church decides to get serious about the gospel according to Jesus. Finally, he urges you to join in The Radical Experiment — a one-year journey in authentic discipleship that will transform how you live in a world that desperately needs the Good News Jesus came to bring.

A family massacre... High summer. Wimbledon. 14-year-old Lydia Kennford returns home to discover the bodies of her mother and twin sister in the family living room, while her father, Philip, lies unconscious and bleeding in an upstairs bedroom DC Maeve Kerrigan and DI Josh Derwent begin to investigate, discounting a burglary quickly and focusing instead on Philip Kennford QC himself. There is no easy explanation for why he survived when the others were shown no mercy, and they suspect he might have staged the attack on himself after killing his wife and daughter. But Kennford is a self-possessed, intelligent man who knows criminal law inside out; proving that he's guilty will be difficult.

From the pages of Newbery Medal winner Neil Gaiman's THE SANDMAN comes fan-favorite character Death in a new deluxe hardcover edition collecting her solo adventures! The first story introduces the young, pale, perky, and genuinely likable Death. One day in every century, Death walks the Earth to better understand those to whom she will be the final visitor. Today is that day. As a young mortal girl named Didi, Death befriends a teenager and helps a 250-year old homeless woman find her missing heart. What follows is a sincere musing on love, life and (of course) death. In the second story, a rising star of the music world wrestles with revealing her true sexual orientation just as her lover is lured into the realm of Death that Death herself should make an appearance. A practical, honest, and intelligent story that illuminates the miracle of death. This new hardcover collects the DEATH: THE HIGH COST OF LIVING and DEATH: THE TIME OF YOUR LIFE miniseries, a must have for any fan.

Meet the Endless, a family of immortals that govern all aspects of life and death throughout the universe. However, one of theirown lays captured — Dream, the Lord of Sleep. As Dream makes his escape and returns to his duties after 70 years of imprison-ment, he encounters countless characters from myth, legend and comics, from Lucifer himself to the tragic Greek hero Orpheusto the HELLBLAZER John Constantine. New York Times best-selling author Neil Gaiman's transcendent series SANDMAN is often hailed as the definitive Vertigo titleand one of the finest achievements in graphic storytelling. Gaiman created an unforgettable tale of the forces that exist beyondlife and death by weaving ancient mythology, folklore and fairy tales with his own distinct narrative vision.

In Newgate Street, in the city of London, stand the meagre ruins of Christ Church. On the same site once stood a royal mausoleum set to rival Westminster Abbey in the fourteenth century. Among the many crowned heads buried there was Isabella of France, Edward II's queen — one of the most notorious femme fatales in history. Today, popular legends speak of how her angry ghost can be glimpsed among the ruins, clutching the heart of her murdered husband, and even the reputable publications of English Heritage maintain that the Queen's maniacal laughter can be heard on stormy nights at Castle Rising in Norfolk. Such stories paint a picture of a tragic, tormented, cruel and evil woman. In literature and poetry, she has fared no better with Christopher Marlowe calling her 'that unnatural Queen, false Isabel'; Thomas Gray appropriating Shakespeare's epithet 'She-Wolf of France' in The Bard (1757); and Kenneth Fowler describing her as 'a woman of evil character, a notorious schemer'. How, then, did Isabella acquire such a reputation? Isabella is known to have lived adulterously with Roger Mortimer for at least four years. But the evidence surrounding accusations of murder and regicide is unsubstantiated. Thus, what has condemned Isabella, in ways which no other queen has had to endure, is her sexual transgression. Had it not been for her unfaithfulness, history may have immortalised her as a liberator — the saviour who unshackled England from a weak and vicious monarch and helped put a strong king — her Lover Mortimer — on the throne. In the first, full-length biography of Isabella, Alison Weir revisits the facts of Isabella's life in a scholarly context in which women's personal lives do not dictate wholly the way we interpret their roles in the public world. This is a dramatic and startling biography which will change the way we think of Isabella and her world for ever.

No artist offered a more incisive and accurate portrait of the troubled landscape of the 1970s than David Bowie. Through his multi-faceted and inventive work, he encapsulated many of the social, political and cultural themes that ran through this most fascinating of decades, from the elusive promise of scientific progress to the persistent fear of apocalypse that stalked the globe. In The Man Who Sold The World: David Bowie And the 1970s , cultural historian Peter Doggett explores the rich heritage of the artist's most productive and inspired decade, and traces the way in which his music reflected and influenced the world around him. The book follows his career from 'Space Oddity', his dark vision of mankind's voyage into the unknown terrain of space, to the Scary Monsters album. It examines in detail his audacious creation of an 'alien' rock star, Ziggy Stardust, and his own increasingly perilous explorations of the nature of identity and the meaning of fame, against the backdrop of his family heritage of mental instability. Among the book's wider themes are the West's growing sense of insecurity in the age of oil shortages and terrorism; the changing nature of sexual roles, as represented by Bowie's pioneering adoption of a bisexual persona; the emergence of a new experimental form of rock music that would leave an indelible mark on the decades to come; and the changing nature of many of the world's great cities, including London, New York, Los Angeles and Berlin, each of which played host to Bowie during particularly creative periods of his career. Mixing brilliant musical critique with biographical insight and acute cultural analysis, The Man Who Sold The World is a unique study of a major artist and his times.

There's nothing unusual about the Brockets. Normal, respectable, and proud of it, they turn up their noses at anyone strange or different. But from the moment Barnaby Brocket comes into the world, it's clear he's anything but ordinary. To his parents' horror, Barnaby defies the laws of gravity — and floats.

Writer Cullen Bunn (The Sixth Gun) and artist ChrisCross (FIRESTORM) launch Superman and Batman on an utterly epic journey — one that will leave no corner of the DCU untouched! When Superman mysteriously vanishes from Earth, Batman must call upon some of the DCU's top mystics such as Dr. Occult to get some answers. Meanwhile, The Man of Steel finds himself fighting side-by-side with a strange Batman against a horde of Solomon Grundies. And just what is the sun doing to his powers? Batman, Doctor Occult, Detective Chimp and Klarion the Witchboy must face a magical Armageddon in the present as Superman is taken to meet the future Justice League at the Hall of Doom! How did things go so wrong — and can anything be done to stop it?

An all new epic bridging the gap between the hit game BATMAN: ARKHAM ASYLUM and its exciting, upcoming sequel BATMAN: ARKHAM CITY. Paul Dini (HARLEY QUINN, BATMAN: STREETS OF GOTHAM) is the game's writer and now tells this essential story that both gamers and Batman fans will want to read. Artist CARLOS D'ANDA provided visual concepts for the game and now brings his insider's expertise to this dark thriller.