Random House Inc.

From the internationally acclaimed author of the Kurt Wallander mysteries comes an extraordinary stand-alone novel — both a mystery and a sweeping drama — that traces the legacy of the nineteenth-century slave trade between China and America. January 2006. In the small Swedish hamlet of Hesjovallen, a horrific scene is discovered: nineteen people have been tortured and massacred an the only clue is a red silk ribbon found at the scene. Judge Birgitta Roslin has a particular reason to be shocked by the crime: her mother's adoptive parents, the Andrens, are among the victims. Investigating further, she learns that an Andren family living in Nevada has also been murdered. Travelling to Hesjovallen, she finds a diary, kept by a gangmaster on the railway built across America in the 1860s, full of vivid descriptions of the brutality with which the Chinese and other slave workers were treated. She discovers that the red silk ribbon found at the crime scene came from a local Chinese restaurant, and she learns that a Chinese man, a stranger to the town, was staying at a local boarding house at the time of the atrocity. The police insist that only a lunatic could have committed such a horrific crime, but Birgitta suspects that there is much more to it, and she is determined to uncover the truth. Her search takes her from Sweden to Beijing and back, but Mankell's narrative also takes us 150 years into the past: to China and America when the hatred that fuelled the massacre was born, a hatred transformed and complicated over time and that will catch up to Birgitta as she draws ever closer to discovering who is behind the Hesjovallen murders.

When Tempe is called to the scene of an autoerotic death, she has little idea of the tangled chain of events that will follow. Because the man whose body she is examining apparently died in a helicopter crash in Vietnam 40 years before. So who is buried in the soldier's grave? Tempe's investigations take her to Honolulu where she is caught up not only in the mystery of the unidentified body in the soldier's grave, but also dragged into investigating who, or what, killed the young men whose body parts have floated up onto a popular Hawaiian beach. And as Tempe gradually unravels the tangled threads of the mystery, it becomes clear that there are some who would rather the past stays dead and buried. And when Tempe proves difficult to frighten, they turn their attention to the person who means more to her than anyone else in the world.

When members of a secret American interrogation squad that was running a black site in Poland in 2007 and 2008 and had since been disbanded are murdered, John Wells is asked to investigate. But his enquiries lead him to discover that while the squad came up with some very valuable intel, its tactics were questionable at best...

It was the biggest leak in history. WikiLeaks infuriated the world's greatest superpower, embarrassed the British royal family and helped cause a revolution in Africa. The man behind it was Julian Assange, one of the strangest figures ever to become a worldwide celebrity. Was he an internet messiah or a cyber-terrorist? Information freedom fighter or sex criminal? The debate would echo around the globe as US politicians called for his assassination. Award-winning Guardian journalists David Leigh and Luke Harding have been at the centre of a unique publishing drama that involved the release of some 250,000 secret diplomatic cables and classified files from the Afghan and Iraq wars. At one point the platinum-haired hacker was hiding from the CIA in David Leigh's London house. Now, together with the paper's investigative reporting team, Leigh and Harding reveal the startling inside story of the man and the leak.

In Torment fallen angel Daniel and his mortal love Lucinda think they are safe but evil forces are massing against them. As Luce learns more about her past, and discovers that the lives she's already lived hold the key to her future happiness; she starts to wonder if Daniel has told her the whole truth. What if his version of events isn't the way things happened? What if that means that she's really meant to be with someone else?

Lauren Kate's irresistible first novel, The Betrayal of Natalie Hargrove, features the most ruthlessly ambitious heroine since Lady Macbeth. Natalie is utterly determined to cement her position at the top of the high school social ladder by becoming prom queen. When it looks like an interfering ex-boyfriend might get in her way, she devises a little prank to humiliate him. But when the prank goes devastatingly wrong, Natalie starts to lose control of her life. Caught in a web of dark secrets, shame and abuse of power, it's not guilt that eventually defeats Natalie. It's fate: the only thing she can't control...

I want to change my boss' mind, but he won't listen. I want to change the way we operate around here, but there are too many obstacles. I want to make some changes in my life, but I'm scared they might not work out. All too often our desire to improve things is undermined by the scepticism of others and by our own caution and fear. In Switch, best-selling authors Chip and Dan Heath delve deep inside the human psyche to explain why this should be so, but they also argue that once we understand how our minds function, there are practical steps we can take to overcome our inbuilt resistance to change. And the results can be extraordinary.

William and Harry is a fascinating insight into the lives and loves of two extraordinary young men who have captured not only the hearts and minds of not only the British public, but those the world over. This is the definitive book about the princes, bringing their story right up to date. It is the tale of two brothers who have carried the legacy of their mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, into the twenty-first century and on whom the future of the House of Windsor largely depends. Drawing on her unique set of contacts Katie Nicholl recounts the royal brothers' extraordinary lives and reveals William and Harry's real characters as they become front-line soldiers and modern princes. Through her network of sources, some of whom have agreed to speak for the very first time, Katie tells the story of one of Prince William's earliest romances, and his struggle with his destiny as a future King of England. As a royal wedding between Prince William and Kate Middleton seems more probable, Katie has spoken to a wealth of contacts close to the couple who reveal how their love affair really started at St Andrews, the hurdles the pair overcame and the challenges they still face. She recounts the story of Harry's time at Eton, his relationship with Chelsy Davy, and his three months he spent on the front line in Afghanistan. She analyses William and Harry's complex relationship with their father, and the woman who will one day become Queen Camilla. She talks to their friends, contemporaries and confidants to paint a unique and revealing portrait of the two most famous brothers in the world.

When Stuart Font decides to throw a house-warming party in his new flat, he invites all the people in his building. After some deliberation, he even includes the unpleasant caretaker and his wife. There are a few other genuine friends on the list, but he definitely does not want to include his girlfriend, Claudia, as that might involve asking her husband. The party will be one everyone remembers. But not for the right reasons. All the occupants of Lichfield House are about to experience a dramatic change in their lives... Living opposite, in reclusive isolation, is a young, beautiful Asian woman, christened Tigerlily by Stuart. As though from some strange urban fairytale, she emerges to exert a terrible spell. And Mr and Mrs Font, the worried parents, will have even more cause for concern about their handsome but hopelessly naive son. Darkly humorous, piercingly observant of human behaviour, Ruth Rendell has created here another compelling fable of our lives and crimes.

When the body of a young woman is discovered in Lake Grant, a note points to suicide. But soon it becomes clear that this is no suicide. It's a brutal murder. Former Grant County medical examiner Sara Linton finds herself unwittingly drawn into the case. But when she arrives at the local police station to see the chief suspect, he is lying dead.

NYPD detective Jacob Kanon is on a tour of Europe's most gorgeous cities. But the sights aren't what draw him he sees each museum, each cathedral, and each cafe through the eyes of his daughters killer. Kanon's daughter, Kimmy, and her fiance were murdered while on vacation in Rome. Since then, young couples in Madrid, Salzburg, Athens and Paris have been found dead. Little connects the murders, other than a postcard to the local newspaper that precedes each new victim. Now Kanon teams up with the Swedish reporter, Dessie Larsson, who has just received a postcard in Stockholm and they think they know where the next victims will be. With relentless logic and unstoppable action, Postcard Killers may be James Patterson's most vivid and compelling thriller yet.

Ivan Grigoryevich has been in the Gulag for thirty years. Released after Stalin's death, he finds that the years of terror have imposed a collective moral slavery. He must struggle to find a place for himself in an unfamiliar world.

The Alien Hunter is playing with fire... Daniel X is on an impossible mission: to eliminate every intergalactic criminal on the face of the Earth. Using his incredible superpower to create objects out of thin air, he's taken on some of the most fearsome and fiendish aliens in the universe.

You may know me best as Meredith Nic Essus, princess of faerie. Or perhaps as Merry Gentry, Los Angeles private eye. In the fey and mortal realms alike, my life is the stuff of royal intrigue and celebrity drama. Among my own, I have confronted horrendous enemies, endured my noble kin's treachery and malevolence, and honored my duty to conceive a royal heir — all for the right to claim the throne. But I turned my back on court and crown, choosing exile in the human world — and in the arms of my beloved Frost and Darkness. While I may have rejected the monarchy, I cannot abandon my people. Someone is killing the fey, which has left the LAPD baffled and my guardsmen and me deeply disturbed. My kind are not easily captured or killed. At least not by mortals. I must get to the bottom of these horrendous murders, even if that means going up against Gilda, the Fairy Godmother, my rival for fey loyalties in Los Angeles. But even stranger things are happening. Mortals I once healed with magic are suddenly performing miracles, a shocking phenomenon wreaking havoc on human/faerie relations. Though I am innocent, dark suspicions of banned magical activities swirl around me. I thought I'd left the blood and politics behind in my own turbulent realm. I had dreamed of an idyllic life in sunny L.A. with my beloved ones beside me. But it becomes time to wake up and realize that evil knows no borders, and that nobody lives forever — even if they're magical.

A novel that tells the story of New York city — from the epic, empty grandeur of the New World to the skyscrapers of the City that Never Sleeps, from the intimate detail of lives long forgotten to those lived at breakneck speed.

Even the most devoted Anglophile will learn something new from these four hundred fun and wide-ranging trivia questions about London's history, monuments, architecture, famous residents, place-names, notable events, and more. A delightful way to explore the city on foot or via armchair, this fun book is a perfect stocking stuffer, with history ranging from obscure lore to facts and fascinating, often humorous histories. Here's a sample: Where is the only cross-eyed statue in London and who does it depict? a) Next to the Royal Exchange in the City of London; George Peabody, the nineteenth-century American-born philanthropist b) At the point where Fetter Lane and New Fetter Lane converge; John Wilkes, the eighteenth-century politician c) Islington Green; Sir Hugh Myddleton, the seventeenth-century entrepreneur Answer: b) John Wilkes really did have a severe squint, as reproduced in the statue, but despite his looks, he was a legendary and eloquent womanizer who once said that, when meeting an attractive woman, it took him only ten minutes to talk away his face.

Tiffany Aching, the young witch from The Wee Free Men, A Hat Full of Sky and Wintersmith is back in a new adventure featuring Discworld characters both familiar to fans (such as Tiffany, the Wee Free Men, Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg) and new (meet Wee Mad Arthur, the Nac Mac Feegle on the City Watch whose only previous appearance was a brief cameo in Feet of Clay and city witch Mrs. Proust — a fabulous Pratchett creation). Oh, and there's a magic book or two, a twist through time, a Cunning Man — and a Giant Man of chalk...

Agent Number 67, nicknamed Pygmy for his diminutive size, arrives in the United States from his totalitarian homeland. An 'exchange student' he is welcomed with open arms by his Midwestern host family. Simpsons-spinoffs, they introduce him into the rituals of postmodern American life, which he views with utter contempt. Along with his fellow operatives, he is planning something big, something truly, truly awful, to bring this big dumb country's fat inhabitants to their knees.

A wonderful new novel from the Carnegie Medal winner. A riotous, wise, and gripping junior Discworld novel. Up on the chalk downs known as The Wold, witches are banned — ever since the Baron's son vanished in the woods. Anyway, as all witches know, chalk is no good for magic. Nine-year-old Tiffany Aching thinks her Granny Aching — a wise shepherd — might have been a witch, but now Granny Aching is dead and it's up to Tiffany to work it all out when strange things begin happening. There's a fairy-tale monster in the stream, a headless horseman and, strangest of all, the tiny blue men in kilts, the Wee Free Men, who have come looking for the new hag. These are the Nac Mac Feegles, the pictsies, who like nothing better than thievin', fightin' and drinkin'. When Tiffany's young brother goes missing, Tiffany and the Wee Free Men must join forces to save him from the Queen of the Fairies. From the Hardcover edition.

Looking out upon the backstreets, the suburbs and the high society haunts of Edwardian London, the delightfully witty and independent spinster Miss Ley surveys a tangled web of lives; she sympathetically observes the struggle under the pressures of convention, and the complex interplay between love and reason. Through Miss Ley's eyes we witness the brief but happy marriage of a dying poet; a woman's adulterous passion for a young rascal, and finally, an honourable man's decision to take virtue to extremes.

In his remarkable book, Jonathan Phillips explores the conflict of ideas, beliefs and cultures and shows both the contradictions and diversity of holy war. He draws on contemporary writings — on chronicles, songs, sermons, travel diaries and peace treaties — to throw a brilliant new light on people and events we thought we knew well. Although the notion of fighting for one's faith fell into disrepute in the Enlightenment, Phillips traces the crusading impulse from the bloody conquest of Jerusalem in the First Crusade and the titanic struggle between Richard the Lionheart and Saladin up to the present day — to George W. Bush's characterisation of the war on terrorism as a crusade.

A real witch never casually steps out of her body, leaving it empty. Eleven-year-old Tiffany does. And there's something just waiting for a handy body to take over. Something ancient and horrible, which can't die... Wise, witty and wonderful, A Hat Full of Sky is Terry Pratchett's second novel about Tiffany and the Wee Free Men — the rowdiest, toughest, smelliest bunch of fairies ever. They'll fight anything. And even they might not be enough to save Tiffany...

Ellie Woods spends her days immersed in the escapist pages of the romantic novels she lovingly edits. But her reality is somewhat less rose-tinted. Once upon a time, Ellie had her 'happily ever after' moment when she married her beloved Nick, but fifteen years later her husband's tragic death leaves her alone with their soon-to-become-a-teenager son, faced with a mountain of debt, and on the verge of losing the family home. On the brink of bankruptcy, Ellie finally succumbs to her sister's well-meant bullying and decides to rent out some rooms. And all too soon the indomitable Allegra with her love for all things lavender, Sabine on secondment from Berlin and estranged from her two-timing husband, and unreconstructed lads' mag aficionado Matt enter her ordered but fragile existence — each with their own messy life in tow. And Ellie finds herself forced to step out of the pages of the romantic novels she hides behind, and learn to live — and love — again. Maybe a new chapter is about to begin for them all...

It is one of the more surprising facts about Old England that one can still find families living in the same houses their ancestors built centuries before and on land that has belonged to them since before the Norman Conquest. The Gropes of Grope Hall are one such family... This is a brilliantly funny novel about what happens when the women take charge. The Gropes are an old English family based in Northumberland, separated from the rest of society and as eccentric as they come. It is a line dominated by strong-willed and oversexed women, determined to produce more female heirs regardless of whether their desired partners are willing... At the dawn of the new millenium, timid and gormless teenager Esmond is abducted and lured to Grope Hall by a descendant of the Gropes. Young Esmond is powerless to escape, and his kidnap sets in motion a stream of farcical events that will have readers laughing out loud. Tom Sharpe's trademark humour abounds in this new novel, marking him out once again as an outstanding and unique British storyteller.