Random House Inc.

This sweeping account of the siege of Stalingrad aims to give as panoramic a view of Soviet society during World War II as Tolstoy did of Russian life in the epoch of the Napoleonic Wars. Completed in 1960 and then confiscated by the KGB, it remained unpublished at the author's death in 1964; it was smuggled into the West in 1980. Grossman offers a bitter, compelling vision of a totalitarian regime where the spirit of freedom that arose among those under fire was feared by the state at least as much as were the Nazis. His huge cast of characters includes an old Bolshevik now under arrest, a physicist pressured to make his scientific discoveries conform to «socialist reality» and a Jewish doctor en route to the gas chambers in occupied Russia. Ironically, just as Stalingrad is liberated from the Germans, many of the characters find themselves bound in new slavery to the Soviet government. Yet Grossman suggests that the spirit of freedom can never be completely crushed. His lengthy, absorbing novel, which rejected the compromises of a lifetime and earned its author denunciation and disgrace testifies eloquently to that spirit.

Fourteen-year-old Prue and her sister Grace have been educated at home by their controlling, super-strict father all their lives. They know they are different to 'normal' girls but their attempts to find out what being an ordinary teenager are like — buying nice clothes instead of wearing Mum's odd hand-made garments, reading teenage magazines etc — are greeted with fury by their Dad. But when Dad has a stroke and ends up in hospital, unable to move or speak, Prue suddenly discovers what it's like to have a little freedom. Unable to cope with their education and a sick husband, the girls' mother sends them to the local comprehensive and they experience school life for the first time. Prue had never thought it would be so bitchy and that she'd find it so hard to fit in. The only person she can talk to is her kindly, young, handsome Art teacher, Rax. She and Rax bond over art lessons, and soon he asks to babysit for his young children while he and his wife have a night out on a Friday. This becomes a regular 'date' and Prue can't wait for the ten minutes they have along together as he drives her home. As her feelings for Rax develop, she begins to realise that perhaps he feels the same way about her. But he can't act upon them, can he? This title presents an absorbing portrait of a forbidden relationship for teenage readers from the mega bestselling Jacqueline Wilson.

This is a stunning international thriller of psychology and conspiracy, espionage and prophecy, history and suspense. After someone he has under surveillance is slaughtered — literally — CIA agent Jack Dunphy is ordered to leave London immediately and return to the US, where he is dumped into a tedious desk job that seems calculated to make him quit. Determined to learn why, Dunphy uses all his CIA tradecraft on the agency that has turned against him — and discovers the fragments of a story that seems too wild to be true, providing him with evidence of a conspiracy that goes back to the time of Christ, a conspiracy so vast and deep and old that the CIA itself is but a cover for it. Embroiled in a plot far more elaborate than he ever could have imagined, with players too powerful and consequences too deadly, Dunphy must uncover the shocking truth — or die trying...

Marital troubles? Sick of life? Suicide the answer? Why not get yourself a contract killer? Nothing easier, provided you communicate only by phone and box number. You give him your photograph, specify when and where to find you, then sit back and prepare to die. Murdered, you will be of greater interest than ever you were in life. More to him than met the eye will be the judgement. A mysterious killing lives long in the popular memory. Our hero meticulously plans his own demise, except for one detail: what if he suddenly decides he wants to live? This darkly funny tale is Kurkov on top form.

For Arthur Rowe the charity fete was a trip back to childhood, to innocence, a welcome chance to escape the terror of the Blitz, to forget twenty years of his past and a murder. Then he guesses the weight of the cake, and from that moment on he's a hunted man, the target of shadowy killers, on the run and struggling to remember and to find the truth.

With Sancho Panza, a deposed Communist mayor, his faithful Rocinate, an antiquated motorcar, Monsignor Quixote roams through modern-day Spain in a brilliant picaresque fable. Like Cervantes' classic, «Monsignor Quixote» offers enduring insights into our life and times.

Yambo, a sixty-ish rare book dealer who lives in Milan has suffered a loss of memory; not the kind of memory neurologists call 'semantic' (Yambo remembers all about Julius Caesar and can recite every poem he has ever read), but rather his 'autobiographical' memory: he no longer knows his own name, doesn't recognize his wife or his daughters, doesn't remember anything about his parents or his childhood. His wife, who is at his side as he slowly begins to recover, convinces him to return to his family home in the hills somewhere between Milan and Turin. Yambo promptly retreats to the sprawling attic, cluttered with boxes of newspapers, comics, records, photo albums and adolescent diaries. There, he relives the story of his generation: Mussolini, Catholic education and guilt, Josephine Baker, Flash Gordon, Cyrano de Bergerac. As he recovers his memory, two voids remain shrouded in fog: a terrible event he experienced during the resistance, and the vague image of a girl whom he loved at sixteen, then lost.But a relapse occurs. Now in a coma, his memories run wild, and life racing before his eyes takes the form of a graphic novel. Yambo struggles through the frames to find at last the face of the girl he loves: she descends the stairs of their high school and morphs into a Dante-esque promise (or threat) of the afterlife, as he struggles harder to capture her simple, innocent, real-life image — the schoolgirl he never forgot. Copiously illustrated throughout with images from comics, book jackets, record sleeves and other printed ephemera, «The Mysterious Flame» is a fascinating and hugely entertaining new novel from the incomparable Umberto Eco.

During the past 16 years, acclaimed author and documentary-maker, Laurence Rees has met and interviewed a large number of former Nazis, and his unique insights into the Nazi psyche and the Second World War have received enormous praise. Following the success of Rees's bestselling «Auschwitz», this substantially revised and updated edition of «The Nazis — A Warning from History» tells the powerfully gripping story of the rise and fall of the Third Reich. At the heart of the book lie compelling eyewitness accounts of life under Adolf Hitler, spoken through the words of those who experienced the Nazi regime at every level of society. An extensive new section on the Nazi/Soviet war (previously published in Rees's «War of the Century») provides a chilling insight into Nazi mentality during the most bloody conflict in history. Described as 'one of the greatest documentary series of all times', «The Nazis — A Warning from History» won a host of awards, including a Bafta and an International Documentary Award. The accompanying book broke new ground in our understanding of the Nazi regime and was praised for 'getting to the heart of the most troubling and elusive questions of Germany before and during World War Two'. The dramatic and incredible story that unfolds in these pages, once read, is not easily forgotten. '...scholars across the world owe a considerable debt of gratitude to Laurence Rees for his immense and unique contribution to historical understanding'. — From the citation awarding Laurence Rees Honorary Doctorate from the University of Sheffield in July 2005.

Knowledge can be dangerous! For ten-year-old teacher Negi Springfield and his all-girl class, it's time for final exams! If his students manage not to end up with the lowest scores in school, the principal has promised to make Negi an official teacher. To prepare for the tests, the class takes a trip to the school's Library Island. But, this is no quiet place to study — stone golems, traps, and secret passageways are the norm throughout the enormous library building. With all of these distractions, can Negi's class hope to climb out of the cellar — both academically and literally?

There is a vampire stalking the night! Normally ten-year-old teacher/magician Negi Springfield would have no problem dispatching such a villain, but this vampire has a magic-enhancing partner — a team that partnerless Negi cannot defeat — and worse, the vampire is a student in his own class! Now he must find a partner of his own, but with a class full of beautiful girls all vying for the position, it won't be an easy task. Add in Negi's old friend, a skirt-chasing weasel from Wales, and the nice orderly chaos of Negi's life turns into a hilarious melee of sirens and sorcery!

Who was Dmitri Shostakovich? The USSR's official figurehead composer and son of the revolution that brought the Soviet state into being, or a secret dissident whose contempt for the totalitarian regime was scathing? Perhaps both? Since the posthumous publication in 1979 of alleged memoirs by Shostakovich, the controversy about the composer and his music has escalated into the most rancorous debate the world of classical music has ever known. Ian MacDonald's «The New Shostakovich» presents the case for the dissident view, arguing passionately that the meaning of the composer's music cannot be fully appreciated without a knowledge of the terrible times he and his fellow artists lived through under Soviet Communism. A widely read and critically acclaimed book in the 1990s, this new edition has been comprehensively revised, extensively corrected, and updated with much new material. Whichever side of the debate readers support, «The New Shostakovich» presents them with a viewpoint which cannot be ignored.

In December 2004, the world watched as hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians gathered to defy the results of a transparently rigged presidential election. The charismatic popular candidate, Viktor Yushchenko, was disfigured after being poisoned by his opponents. The security forces threatened violent repression. But the demonstrators stayed and, as international pressure grew, the corrupt old regime that had been supported by Putin's Kremlin was deposed. It was the most significant moment for Europe since the fall of the Berlin Wall. «An Orange Revolution» is the gripping account of this historic uprising and the events that led to it. Often in thrall to the Kremlin but aspiring to the liberties of western Europe, Ukraine was treated roughly by the twentieth century, occupied by the Germans and annexed by the Soviets. It saw guerrilla fighting after the Second World War and dissent was crushed by successive Communist administrations. Its history has been one of corruption, power struggles, organised crime, but a resiliently optimistic population. Based on firsthand observation and interviews with major players and anonymous demonstrators alike, this is about a people who have forced a lasting change: judges who defied death threats, a murdered journalist, amateur musicians who composed an anthem for the people, and soldiers who staked their lives to back the opposition. «An Orange Revolution» also traces the story of the author's family, who paid a high price for speaking out. An Orange Revolution is a captivating book about a defining moment in European history.

After the opening essay on the general significance of literature, Eco examines a number of major authors from the Western canon. A stimulating chapter on the poetic qualities of Dante's «Paradiso» is followed by one on the style of the Communist Manifesto. The next three essays centre on nineteenth and early twentieth-century literature: one on the French writer Nerval's masterpiece, «Sylvie» (a major influence on Eco and a novella that he translated into Italian), one on Oscar Wilde's love of paradox, and one on Joyce's views on language. The last three pieces deal with the road that leads from Cervantes via Swift to Borges' «Library of Babel», then an essay on Eco's own anxiety about Borges' influence on him, and the volume ends with an article on the enigmatic Italian critic and anthropologist Piero Camporesi. «On Literature» is a provocative and entertaining collection of sprightly essays on the key texts that have shaped Eco, the novelist and critic. This volume will appeal to anyone interested in how new light is shed on old masters by a great contemporary mind.

Ah, the trusty penis. The cock, knob, widgie, pink python, groin bollard — call it what you will, this is one part of the male anatomy that never ceases to provide endless fascination, and frequently mirth. Half the population have one, and the other half, so Freud would have us believe, would like to. And yet still our flaccid friend is so often misunderstood. The «Penis Book» seeks to redress the balance, exposing all (quite literally) there is to know about the honourable member. Throbbing with facts, figures, photos and illustrations, the book leaves no foreskin unturned in its quest to bring you the low-down on its subject. Told with wit, vim and lashings of wicked humour, even the most prudish won't be able to resist raising a smile (and perhaps something else). The «Penis Book» is a celebration of the male member in all its purple-helmeted glory. So whether you're male or female, straight or gay, you'll find something in here to titilate and stimulate.

'My painter friends think I am a die-hard conservative, my writer friends think I am a man of loose morals. In Jushlin Temple I am a quiet disciple, in the Propaganda Department I am a decadent youth. Women call me a cynical artist, the police call me a hooligan. Well, they can think what they like. I only have 20,000 days left to live'. In 1983, Ma Jian turned 30 and was overwhelmed by the desire to escape the confines of his life in Beijing. All around him, China was changing. Deng Xiaoping was introducing economic reform but clamping down on 'Spiritual Pollution'; and young people were rebelling. With his long hair, denim jeans and artistic friends, Ma Jian was under surveillance from his work unit and the police. His ex-wife was seeking custody of their daughter; his girlfriend was sleeping with another man; and he could no longer find the inspiration to write or paint. One day he bought a train ticket to the westernmost border of China and set off in search of himself. Ma Jian's journey would last three years and take him to deserts and overpopulated cities, from scenes of barbarity to havens of tranquillity and beauty. The result is an utterly unique book: an insight into the teeming contradictions of China that only a man who was both an insider and an outsider in his own country could have written.

Saturday, February 15, 2003. Henry Perowne is a contented man — a successful neurosurgeon, the devoted husband of Rosalind and proud father of two grown-up children. Unusually, he wakes before dawn, drawn to the window of his bedroom and filled with a growing unease. What troubles him as he looks out at the night sky is the state of the world — the impending war against Iraq, a gathering pessimism since 9/11, and a fear that his city and his happy family life are under threat. Later, Perowne makes his way to his weekly squash game through London streets filled with hundreds of thousands of anti-war protestors. A minor car accident brings him into a confrontation with Baxter, a fidgety, aggressive, young man, on the edge of violence. To Perowne's professional eye, there appears to be something profoundly wrong with him. Towards the end of a day rich in incident and filled with Perowne's celebrations of life's pleasures, his family gathers for a reunion. But with the sudden appearance of Baxter, Perowne's earlier fears seem about to be realised.

Roundworld is in trouble again, and this time it looks fatal. Having created it in the first place, the wizards of Unseen University feel vaguely responsible for its safety. They know the creatures who lived there escaped the impending Big Freeze by inventing the space elevator — they even intervened to rid the planet of a plague of elves, who attempted to divert humanity onto a different time track. But now it's all gone wrong — Victorian England has stagnated and the pace of progress would embarrass a limping snail. Unless something drastic is done, there won't be time for anyone to invent spaceflight and the human race will be turned into ice-pops. Why, though, did history come adrift? Was it Sir Arthur Nightingale's dismal book about natural selection? Or was it the devastating response by an obscure country vicar called Charles Darwin, whose bestselling «Theology of Species» made it impossible to refute the divine design of living creatures? Either way, it's no easy task to change history, as the wizards discover to their cost. Can the God of Evolution come to humanity's aid and ensure Darwin writes a very different book? And who stopped him writing it in the first place?

Peter Ackroyd's marvellous biography is a living attempt to reach into the heart of Shakespeare. He creates an intimate and immediate connection with his subject, so that the book reads like the work of a contemporary — meeting Shakespeare afresh on his own ground. Written with intuition and imagination unique to Peter Ackroyd, this is a book by a writer about a writer, and a fascinating and detailed depiction of the world Shakespeare inhabited.

Los Angeles, 1991. Maximilian Ophuls, one of the makers of the modern world, is knifed to death in broad daylight on the doorstep of his illegitimate daughter India, slaughtered by his Kashmiri driver, a mysterious figure who calls himself Shalimar the Clown. The dead man is a World War II Resistance hero, a man of formidable intellectual ability and much erotic appeal, a former United States ambassador to India, and subsequently America's counter-terrorism chief. The murder looks at first like a political assassination but turns out to be passionately personal. This is the story of Max, his killer, and his daughter — and of a fourth character, the woman who links them, whose story explains them all. The story of a deep love gone fatally wrong, destroyed by a shallow affair, it is an epic narrative that moves from California to France, England, and above all, Kashmir. At its heart is the tale of that earthly paradise of peach orchards and honey bees, of mountains and lakes, of green-eyed women and murderous men: a ruined paradise, not so much lost as smashed. Lives are uprooted, names keep changing — nothing is permanent, yet everything is connected. Spanning the globe and darting through history, Salman Rushdie's majestic narrative captures the heart of the reader and the spirit of a troubled age.

Alan Hollinghurst's new novel is a comedy of sexual manners that follows the interlocking affairs of four men: Robin Woodfield, an architect in his late forties, who is trying to build an idyllic life in Dorset with his younger lover, Justin, a would-be actor increasingly disenchanted with the countryside; Robin's 22-year-old son Danny, a volatile beauty who lives for clubbing and casual sex; and the shy Alex, whose life is transformed by house music and a tab of ecstasy. As each in turn falls under the spell of romance or drugs, country living or rough trade, a richly ironic picture emerges of the clashing imperatives of modern gay life, the hunger for contact and the fear of commitment, the need for permanence and the continual disruptions of sex. At once lyrical and farcical, sceptical and romantic, «The Spell» confirms Alan Hollinghurst as one of Britain's most important novelists.

Alan Hollinghurst's first novel is a tour de force: a darkly erotic work that centres on the friendship of William Beckwith, a young gay aristocrat who leads a life of privilege and promiscuity, and the elderly Lord Nantwich, who is searching for someone to write his biography.

An old man wearing a brown robe is found wandering disoriented in the Arizona desert. He is miles from any human habitation and has no memory of how he got to be there, or who he is. The only clue to his identity is the plan of a medieval monastery in his pocket. So begins the mystery of «Timeline», a mystery that will catapult a group of young scientists back to the Middle Ages and into the heart of the Hundred Years' War. Imagine the risks of such a journey. Imagine the impossible.

For more than seventeen years, Lin Kong, a devoted and ambitious doctor, has been in love with an educated, clever, modern woman, Manna Wu. But back in the traditional world of his home village lives the wife his family chose for him when he was young. Every year he visits her in order to ask, again and again, for a divorce. In a culture in which the ancient ties of tradition and family still hold sway and where adultery discovered by the Party can ruin lives forever, Lin's passionate love is stretched ever more taut by the passing years. Every summer, his compliant wife agrees to a divorce but then backs out. This time, Lin promises, will be different. «Waiting» charms and startles with its depiction of a China that remains hidden to Western eyes even as it moves with its piercing vision of the universal complications of love.

Artistic genius, political activist, painter and decorator, mythic legend or notorious graffiti artist? The work of Banksy is unmistakable, except maybe when it's squatting in the Tate or New York's Metropolitan Museum. Banksy is responsible for decorating the streets, walls, bridges and zoos of towns and cites throughout the world. Witty and subversive, his stencils show monkeys with weapons of mass destruction, policeman with smiley faces, rats with drills and umbrellas. If you look hard enough, you'll find your own. His statements, incitements, ironies and epigrams are by turns intelligent and cheeky comments on everything from the monarchy and capitalism to the war in Iraq and farm animals. His identity remains unknown, but his work is prolific. Here's the best of his work in a fully illustrated colour volume — including brand material.