Transworld Publishers

Gabriel Blackstone has an unusual talent. A computer hacker by trade, he is also able to enter the minds of others. But he uses his gift only reluctantly — until he is contacted by an ex-lover who begs him to find her step-son, last seen months earlier in the company of two sisters. And so Gabriel visits Monk House, a place where time seems to stand still, and where the rooms are dominated by the coded symbol of a cross and circle. As winter closes in, Gabriel becomes increasingly bewitched by the house, and by its owners, the beautiful and mysterious Monk sisters. But even as he falls in love, he knows that one of them is a deadly killer. But which one? And what is the secret they are so determined to protect?

How does it feel to live and work in the world's most beautiful and luxurious tropical island resort, surrounded by white sandy beaches and aquamarine seas? And how does it feel to be in the lap of luxury when you're thousands of miles from anywhere else? This work takes you behind the scenes at a five-star tropical island resort.

Throughout 1990s, Deric Longden has shared his life with Aileen Armitage and four cats: Thermal, Tigger, Frink and shabby old Arthur. And the cats have found that sharing a life with Aileen can be a painful business. She hardly trips over them, but they are always in danger of being mistaken for a cardigan, or locked away in the cellar.

Deric's gentle tales of life in Huddersfield with his wife Aileen and their menagerie of playful cats have won him thousands of loyal fans. And after a few years break Deric returns with the latest, and eagerly awaited, instalment of his memoirs. Deric is getting on a bit now and so are his cats. Life chez-Longden has adjusted to a slower pace, but everyday is still full of opportunities for the sort of mischief, mishaps and adventures that come with sharing your house and life with a troop of small cats with big personalities. «Paws in the Proceedings» has all of Deric's trademark charm, homespun wisdom and gentle wit. His remarkable eye for the humorous detail and the keen observation are very much in evidence, and this is another comic gem that will delight Deric's loyal fans and bring him to a bigger audience than ever before.

Gillon — red-haired, intelligent, vulnerable — comes to London to escape from the demands of her wealthy, conventional, socially superior family in Charleston, South Carolina. An art historian, she has a chance meeting with Tilly, whose long-term boyfriend Henry is a wildlife photographer who is finding it hard to commit.

For twenty years, Anna Bouverie, as a priest's wife, has served God and the parish in a variety of ways. She has baked for the Brownies, delivered parish magazines, washed and ironed her husband's surplices and clothed herself and her children in jumble-sale items. When her husband fails to gain promotion to archdeacon and retreats into isolated bitterness, and the bullying of her daughter at the local comprehensive reaches an intolerable level, Anna rebels. She takes a job in the local supermarket where she earns her own money, her sense of self-worth, the shocked disapproval of the parish and the icy fury of her husband. She also attracts the passionate interest of three very different men, each of whom was to play a significant part in the blossoming of her life...

Finding refuge in a quiet rural backwater, Dr David Hunter hoped he might at last have put the past behind him. But then they found what was left of Sally Palmer... It isn't just that she was a friend that disturbs him. Once he'd been a high-profile forensic anthropologist and all too familiar with the many faces of death, before tragedy made him abandon this previous life. Now, the police want his help. But to become involved will stir up memories he's long tried to forget. Then a second woman disappears, plunging the close-knit community into a maelstrom of fear and paranoia. And no one, not even Hunter, is exempt from suspicion. Gruesome and gripping, this startling new British crime thriller has an unnerving and original twist.

Britain's number one bestselling author turns her brilliant pen to the explosive world of education. Two schools, both in leafy Larkminster, but worlds apart, are turned upside down when the ambitious and fatally attractive headmaster of fashionable Bagley Hall, Hengist Brett-Taylor, hatches a plan to share the highly superior facilities of his school with the students at Larkminster Comprehensive. His reasons for doing so are purely financial but he is also encouraged by the opportunities the scheme gives him for frequent meetings with Janna Curtis, the young, pretty and enthusiastic new principal of the comprehensive school. The determined Janna has been drafted in to save what is a fast-sinking school from closure, and she will do anything to rescue her run-down, demoralized and cash-strapped school. The parents of Bagley Hall's rich and pampered children are none too keen on this radical move, but the students see it as a great opportunity to get up to even more mayhem than usual. And for the pupils at the comprehensive school, many of them struggling with appalling home backgrounds, violence and lack of any parental support (problems which are not unknown to some of the Bagley Hall pupils) mixing with the posh school up the road is often a mixed blessing.

When an exotic stranger, Vianne Rocher, arrives in the French village of Lansquenet and opens a chocolate boutique directly opposite the church, Father Reynaud denounces her as a serious moral danger to his flock — especially as it is the beginning of Lent, the traditional season of self-denial. As passions flare and the conflict escalates, the whole community takes sides. Can the solemnity of the Church compare with the sinful pleasure of a chocolate truffle?

At the age of thirty-four, Polly Evans finally fulfilled a childhood dream — to learn how to ride a horse. But rather than do so conveniently close to home, she decided to travel to Argentina and saddle up among the gauchos. This work features the story of Polly`s journey from timorous equestrian novice to wildly whooping cowgirl.

What is fashion? What is fashionable? Who decides what is in? What is out? Why is it green one year, and blue the next? Why is one little black dress worth three thousand pounds and another thirty quid? Is the catwalk that catty? Is everyone high on drugs and full of champagne? What makes a supermodel so super? And a designer too hot to touch? Who is making the money? Who owns who? Who hates who? And who's in each other's pocket? Following in the glamorous footsteps of Hotel Babylon and Air Babylon, Fashion Babylon will get under the well-cut skin of the fashion industry. Using a world renowned source, Fashion Babylon will take you through six months in a designer's life. Starting at the end of one catwalk show, it will explain how a collection is put together — from the rail of found objects, to how it gets on to the catwalk, into the shops and onto the covers of a magazine. It will tell you who goes to the shows, where they sit and whose backside one needs to kiss to get there. It will introduce you to a host of places and characters, it will take you into a world where women get paid tens of thousands for getting dressed in the morning and where a wrong shirt length can cost you your career. Witty, naughty and full of gripping detail, Fashion Babylon will explain the mark — ups, talk you through fashion's two seasons and discuss the money and commerce behind one of the most international, lucrative and secretive of businesses. With something for the simple follower of fashion as well as the hardcore fashionista, Fashion Babylon will change the way you sashay into Top Shop, flick through the pages of Vogue and enter the portals of Harvey Nichols forever.

Though best known for his hugely successful novels, Dennis Lehane is also a master of the short story. This collection, his first to be published in the UK, includes the story Running out of Dog which was featured in The Best American Mystery Stories 2005 and The Best American Mystery Stories of the Century. It also includes the full text of the acclaimed play Coronado. Infused with the compelling narrative drive, piercing insight, and psychological drama that have made his novels bestsellers, Coronado is sure to satisfy this acclaimed writer's devoted following while they eagerly await his next novel.

Ben Elton is about to put the “real” back into Reality TV in his biting satire of one of today’ s most popular cultural phenomena — the TV talent show. 95,000 hopefuls. Three judges. Just one winner. And that’ s Colin Simms, the genius behind the show. Colin always wins, because Colin writes the rules. But this year, as he sits smugly in judgment on the mingers, clingers and blingers whom he has pre-selected in his carefully scripted “search” for a star, he has no idea that the rules are changing. The “real” is about to be put back into «reality» television, and Colin and his fellow judges (the nation’ s favourite mum and the other bloke) are about to become ex-factors themselves. From the best-selling author of The First Casualty, Popcorn, and Dead Famous comes Chart Throb. One winner. A whole bunch of losers.

The truth can kill you...Reuben Maitland runs the UK's most elite crime squad, working only on the highest-profile cases, tracking down the country's most vicious criminals. At the cutting edge — controversial, ruthless, effective — the squad have always made enemies. But now they're in danger. A killer is using their own techniques against them. The hunters have become the hunted. Reuben must find the killer before his team is eradicated. But the more questions he asks, the more complex the answers become. And as the case unravels, so his own personal life collapses. Not only is he fighting to save the lives of his colleagues, he is fighting for his own professional and personal survival. The choices he makes will determine his future. And when he makes the wrong one, he finds himself alone on the outside of the law, at the mercy of a seemingly unstoppable killer.

John Pilger is one of the world's pre-eminent investigative journalists and documentary film-makers. His best-selling books of reportage, which include «Heroes and Hidden Voices», have in the words of Noam Chomsky 'been a beacon of light in often dark times'. In «Freedom Next Time», he looks at five countries, in each of which a long struggle for freedom has taken place; in each the people, having shed blood and dreams, are still waiting. In Afghanistan, Iraq and South Africa, there has been the promise of hope, and even an 'official' freedom, but the reality of these divided societies is that they are still waiting for real freedom. In Palestine, the cycle of violence continues with no resolution in sight. And the island of Diego Garcia, in the Indian Ocean, is a microcosm of the ruthlessness of great powers. The island was sold by the British to the American military in the 1960s. The indigenous population, descended from slaves, were forcibly removed to the slums of Port Louis in Mauritius. They have continued to fight for the return of their homeland ever since — three years ago the High Court granted them the right of return, but this has subsequently been blocked. The island remains the US's third biggest military base; a base from which they are able to launch attacks against the Middle East. Once again, John Pilger gives a voice to the people living through these momentous times and, in gripping detail, shows us the lives behind the headlines.

'I was down to my last chip, but it never occurred to me not to put it on the line, bet it, and roll the dice one more time ...' For Clifford Irving it was to be boom or bust. He chose to go for broke and pulled the most sensational hoax involving Howard Hughes, a prestigious New York publishing house and over a million dollars. It made global newspaper headlines and was heralded as the biggest media scam of all time. The Hoax recreates Irving's audacious literary sting when he convinced a US publisher that Howard Hughes, the reclusive billionaire, had commissioned him to write his authorized biography. A frantic year ensued while Irving forged letters and passports, faked interviews, set up a Swiss bank account and travelled thousands of miles to maintain his story, all the while desperately trying to juggle a wife, a mistress and an editor. Gradually the cracks in the plot started to appear and the nightmare began. Before he knew it, Irving realized he was set on a crash course towards indictment, conviction and jail.

Isn't it always the way? You wait ages for one purple flour-filled condom and then three come along at once. Of course the correct procedure for a chemical attack in the House of Commons would have been for MPs to remain in the chamber and remove all items of clothing. I'm not sure which is the more horrific vision; anthrax all over London or Nicholas Soames slipping out of his Y-fronts while chatting to a naked Ann Widdecombe. Here at last is the third collection of John O'Farrell's immensely popular «Guardian» columns — the final part of the trilogy in which he discovers that Margaret Thatcher is actually his mother. Contained within these covers are a hundred funny, satirical essays on subjects as diverse as Man's ascent from the apes and the re-election of George W. Bush. Plus there is a full account of O'Farrell's heroic but slightly less successful attempt to capture his Tory home town for socialism. He claims that identity fraud has got so bad that an audacious impostor using the name A.L. Blair even managed to get himself a Labour Party card by posing a left-wing champion of wealth distribution and civil rights. He asks why a Blackberry isn't compatible with an Apple. And find out why the Queen didn't go to her own son's wedding; 'What happened to that other girl you were seeing?' 'Mother, we got divorced and then she died in a car crash, remember?' 'Well sometimes you have to work at these things dear...'

Some say that the first hint that Bill Bryson was not of Planet Earth came when his mother sent him to school in lime-green Capri pants. Others think it all started with his discovery, at the age of six, of a woollen jersey of rare fineness. Across the moth-holed chest was a golden thunderbolt. It may have looked like an old college football sweater, but young Bryson knew better. It was obviously the Sacred Jersey of Zap, and proved that he had been placed with this innocuous family in the middle of America to fly, become invisible, shoot guns out of people’s hands from a distance, and wear his underpants over his jeans in the manner of Superman. Bill Bryson’s first travel book opened with the immortal line, ‘I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to.’ In his deeply funny new memoir, he travels back in time to explore the ordinary kid he once was, and the curious world of 1950s America. It was a happy time, when almost everything was good for you, including DDT, cigarettes and nuclear fallout. This is a book about growing up in a specific time and place. But in Bryson’s hands, it becomes everyone’s story, one that will speak volumes – especially to anyone who has ever been young.

Bestselling author, Jean Sasson tells the dramatic true story of a young woman caught up in Saddam Hussein's genocide of the Kurdish people of Iraq. One morning Joanna, a young bride living in the Kurdish mountains of Iraq, was surprised to see dead birds drop silently out of the clear sky. They were followed by sinister canisters falling to the ground, bringing fear and death. It was 1987, and Saddam Hussein had ordered his cousin 'Chemical Ali' to bombard Joanna's village, Bergalou, with chemical weapons. Temporarily blinded in the attack, Joanna was rescued by her husband, a Kurdish freedom fighter. After being caught in another bombardment and left for dead in the rubble, they managed to flee over the mountains in a harrowing escape. Now living in the UK and working for British Airways, Joanna has told the story of her eventful life to Jean Sasson, the bestselling chronicler of oppressed women's lives in the Princess trilogy and Mayada. «Love in a Torn Land» is published while the world watches the trial of the notorious 'Chemical Ali', Saddam Hussein's most bloodthirsty henchman, for crimes including the genocide of the Kurdish people.

Is Emilia, the wicked stepmother incarnate? Passionately in love with her husband, Emilia has a secret, guilty loathing for her precocious little stepson, William — a forty-year-old in a five-year-old's body, whom she picks up from nursery every Wednesday afternoon. He is lactose intolerant, she feeds him dairy products; he mustn't get cold, she pushes him — accidentally — into the pond in Central Park. How can she forgive William for living, when her own cherished child has gone?

Mitch is a 25-year-old with commitment issues. Leonard is a five-year-old kid with asthma and vision problems, who captivates everyone he meets. Pearl is Leonard's teenage mother, who's trying to hide a violent secret from her past. Life has given Pearl every reason to mistrust people, but circumstances force her to trust her neighbour, Mitch. Then one day, with a heart full of agony, Pearl drops Leonard off with Mitch and never returns. Pearl, Leonard and Mitch each have a story to tell and as their lives unfold, profound questions arise about the nature of love and family. How do you go on loving someone who isn't there? With Leonard's absolute conviction in 'forever love' always present, Leonard and Mitch grow up side by side and piece together the layered truths and fictions of their almost magical lives. The answers are heartbreaking, but ultimately triumphant.

It's an offer you can't refuse. Who would not to wish to be the man in charge of Ankh-Morpork's Royal Mint and the bank next door? It's a job for life. But, as former con-man Moist von Lipwig is learning, the life is not necessarily for long. The Chief Cashier is almost certainly a vampire. There's something nameless in the cellar (and the cellar itself is pretty nameless), it turns out that the Royal Mint runs at a loss. A 300 year old wizard is after his girlfriend, he's about to be exposed as a fraud, but the Assassins Guild might get him first. In fact lot of people want him dead. Oh. And every day he has to take the Chairman for walkies. Everywhere he looks he's making enemies. What he should be doing is ...Making Money!

Meet Annie Valentine: stylish, savvy, multi-tasker extraordinaire. As a personal shopper in a swanky London fashion store, Annie can re-style and re-invent her clients from head to toe. In fact, this super-skilled dresser can be relied on to solve everyone's problems...except her own. Although she's a busy single mum to stroppy teen Lana and painfully shy Owen, there's a gap in Annie's wardrobe — sorry, life — for a new man. But finding the perfect partner is turning out to be so much trickier than finding the perfect pair of shoes. Can she source a genuine classic? A life long investment? Will she end up with a mistake from the sale rail, who'll have to be returned? Or maybe, just maybe, there'll be someone new in this season who could be the one...

Toys — from teddy bears to Barbie dolls to train sets — define our image of childhood innocence. But the truth is that toys represent a $21 billion a year industry, and with so much money at stake, the toy business is anything but child's play. In «The Real Toy Story», investigative journalist Eric Clark exposes the startling truths behind Britain's favourite toys. Drawing on interviews with over 200 industry insiders, Clark names and shames the corporations spending millions on research into the best way to manipulate their target audience while manufacturing products in China under virtual slave labour conditions. In a world of cut-throat competition and cold-blooded marketing, toy companies are increasingly willing to sacrifice our children in the rush for profits. And as more children forsake cuddly play things for Ipods and cell phones, companies are using even more extreme tactics — unashamedly using sex and violence to sell dolls and action men to children as young as three — to make sure that their toy is the one that children want to have. «The Real Toy Story» is essential reading for the millions of adults who care about the toys they choose for the children in their lives.