Transworld Publishers

A tale of love, courage and family, interweaving the lives of two extraordinary women — a writer working in the heart of modern academia, and a daring young Sioux on an unforgettable journey in the eighteenth century. Someday is Brigitte Nicholson's watchword. Someday she and the man she loves, Ted, will clarify their relationship. Someday she'll have children. Someday she'll finish writing her book. Someday she'll stop playing it so safe... Then something happens that changes Brigitte's life completely. Struggling to plot a new course, Brigitte agrees to help her mother on a genealogy project — and makes a discovery that reaches back to the French aristocracy. How did Brigitte's ancestor, Wachiwi, a Dakota Sioux, travel from the Great Plains to the French court of Marie Antoinette? How did she come to marry into Brigitte's family? Brigitte decides to travel to South Dakota and Paris to follow the path of this exceptional young woman who lived so long ago. And as she begins to solve the puzzle of Wachiwi's Journey, her quiet life becomes an adventure of its own. A chance meeting and a new opportunity put Brigitte back at the heart of her own story. And with family Legacy coming to life around her, someday is no longer in the future. Instead, someday is now.

The squabbling Norse gods and goddesses of Runemarks are back! And there's a feisty new heroine on the scene: Maggie, a girl the same age as Maddy but brought up a world apart — literally, in World's End, the focus of the Order in which Maddy was raised. Now the Order is destroyed, Chaos is filling the vacuum left behind... and is breaching the everyday world. A chilling prophecy from the Oracle. A conflict between two girls. And with just twelve days to stave off the Apocalypse, carnage is about to be unleashed...

Forced by circumstance to seek refuge with Fleur, her young daughter, in the remote abbey of Sainte Marie-de-la-Mer, Juliette reinvents herself as Soeur Auguste under the tutelage of the kindly Abbess. But times are changing: the murder of Henri IV becomes the catalyst for massive upheaval in France. A new appointment is made, and Juliette's new life begins to unravel. For the new Abbess is Isabelle, the eleven-year-old child of a corrupt, noble family. Worse, Isabelle has brought with her a ghost from Juliette's past, masquerading as a cleric, a man she has every reason to fear...

Liz and Jonathan are in trouble. They can't sell their old house. Here they are, stuck with two mortgages, mounting debts and a miserable adolescent daughter who hadn't wanted to move anyway. Then it seems Marcus Witherstone will solve all their problems. He knows the perfect tenants from London who will rent their old house — glamorous PR girl Ginny and almost-famous Piers. Everything is going to be OK. Or is it? As Marcus starts to become involved with Liz, while her teenage daughter develops a passion for the lodgers, it seems that some deceptions are too close to home...

Swiss-born Hugues Martin has worked for the world's most prestigious hotels, so when he purchases a small, run-down place in New York, everyone thinks he must be crazy! He alone sees it for the rough diamond it is, transforming it into a beautiful boutique hotel of impeccable elegance, run with the precision and attention to detail he learnt through his hotelier training in Europe. The Hotel Vendome soon becomes renowned for its unparalleled service, and is the ideal New York refuge for the rich and famous, as well as a perfect home for Hugues' beautiful wife and their young daughter. But when his wife tires of his obsession for the hotel, she walks out on him for a notorious rock star, leaving Hugues a single parent to four-year-old Heloise. And so the kind hotel staff quickly embrace the little girl, becoming Heloise's family and she has a happy upbringing, adored by the fascinating milieu of high-profile guests. Hugues' commitment to his work has heavily influenced his daughter, so he is delighted when she decides she wants to follow in his footsteps — hotelier training in Switzerland. But for a father and daughter who have always relied solely on each other, how is Hugues going to cope with his daughter so far away? Will Heloise ever be able to accept another woman in her father's life? And will Hugues have to choose between them? As life marches quickly on, the close-knit unit at Hotel Vendome is forced to form new bonds, face the often bitter sweetness of life, and work out the true meaning of love and family against the backdrop of a glamorous hotel.

We are born with the instinct to create and invent. Indeed our ability to do so is what separates we humans from the rest of the animal world. The moment man first converted a stone to a useful tool set him on a relentless path toward greater control and power over his environment. But have our creative ideas always produced desirable results in line with their original good intention? How many ill-effects and dangers have they brought about along the way? And have they really served us well? Bad Ideas? traces the fascinating history of our attempts at self-improvement but also questions their value. The dubious consequences of the development of weaponry, for example, is self-evident from the primitive but lethal sling to the devastating nuclear bomb. But what of apparently more innocuous inventions such as farming, writing or medicine? All were initiated for the greater good but have nonetheless produced unforeseen fallout that continues to this day. What are their undesirable side-effects, how did they emerge over the years and where will they take us in the future? Written against a huge historical canvas, we join Robert Winston on a thrilling and inspiring journey from our earliest days to the present. We learn about the history of modern science, engineering, IT and much more, following the unexpected twists and turns of their progress. We meet the individuals who played a key role in their development, and share quirky anecdotes about their lives and brainwaves. Inspiring, unusual, and at times controversial, Bad Ideas? enables us by appreciating the past to look forward to the technological opportunities and ethical challenges of the future. In so doing it celebrates man's extraordinary capacity for achievement whilst warning us that his good intentions can sometimes end up as thoroughly bad ideas.

Frustrated with her stalled career as a broadcast journalist and uninspired by dating naive and needy guys her own age, Helen Croydon joins a website to seek an older man. She expects it to be just a few fun dates in some fancy bars but finds herself propelled into a world of Prada shopping trips, fine dining, first-class travel and fascinating, powerful men. Helen's soul-searching dating adventures take her to New York, Malaysia, highbrow sex parties, top ski resorts and London's finest hotels. When one of her dates alludes to a monthly allowance, she is shocked, but how long will her resistance to the idea last? Sugar Daddy Diaries is a confessional true story that questions modern ideals about relationships, examines the attraction of power and asks if money can ever be the currency of love.

»From Manhattan to Paris and all the way to Tehran, Danielle Steel weaves a powerfully compelling story that reminds us how challenging and unpredictable life can be--and how the bonds of family hold us together.» FAMILY TIES Annie Ferguson was a bright young Manhattan architect with a limitless future--until a single phone call changed the course of her life forever. Overnight, she became the mother to her sister's three orphaned children, keeping a promise she never regretted making, even if it meant putting her own life indefinitely on hold. Now, at forty-two, still happily single with a satisfying career and a family that means everything to her, Annie is suddenly facing an empty nest. With her nephew and nieces now grown and confronting challenges of their own, she must navigate a parent's difficult passage between helping and letting go. The eldest, twenty-eight-year-old Liz, an overworked editor in a high-powered job at «Vogue,» has never allowed any man to come close enough to hurt her. Ted, at twenty-four a serious law student, is captivated by a much older woman with children, who is leading him much further than he wants to go. And the impulsive youngest, twenty-one-year old Katie, is an art student about to make a choice that will lead her to a world she is in no way prepared for but determined to embrace. Then, when least expected, a chance encounter changes Annie's life again in the most surprising direction of all. . . .

The chilling sequel to the Napoleonic historical vampire novel, Twelve. In the summer of 1812, before the Oprichniki came to the help of Mother Russia in her fight against Napoleon, one of their number overheard a conversation between his master, Zmyeevich, and another of their number. He learns of a feud, an unholy grievance between Zmyeevich and the Romanov dynasty that began a century earlier at the time of Peter the Great. Indeed, while the Oprichniki's primary reason for journeying to Russia is to stop the French, one of them — Iuda — is following a different agenda, for he is to be the instrument of revenge on the Romanovs. But thanks to the valiant efforts of Captain Aleksei Ivanovich Danilov, Iuda would not be able to begin to complete his task until thirteen years later. But now, in 1825, Russia once more stands on the brink of anarchy, and this time the threat comes from within.

The last thing Gwen Cooper wanted was another cat. She already had two, not to mention a phenomenally underpaying job and a recently broken heart. But Homer was no ordinary cat. He was a three week old, abandoned, eyeless kitten and Gwen was unable to resist his charm. It was love at first sight. Homer, tagged as an 'underachiever' from day one, quickly proved his doubters wrong revealing himself to be a tiny dare devil with a giant heart and a passion for adventure. The kitten they said would never be as independent or as playful as the other cats eagerly made friends with every human who crossed his path, scaled seven foot bookcases with ease and chased off an intruder in the middle of the night. He even survived being trapped alone for days after 9/11 in an apartment near the World Trade Centre. Homer's Odyssey is the story of one cats unswerving loyalty, his infinite capacity for love, his constant happiness in the face of all obstacles and his ability to inspire and transform Gwen's life. He kept her company through the ups and downs of daily life and by the time she had met the man she would marry Gwen realised Homer had taught her the most valuable lesson of all: love isn't something you see with your eyes.

There's a fine line between saving lives — and taking them. Nursing is everything to Ruth. Having lost her beloved grandmother to cancer, it breaks her heart to see a terminally ill patient suffering in the same way. So when the old lady begs Ruth to end her life, Ruth knows it is the kindest thing to do. But what she doesn't realize is that someone in the hospital has been watching her. Someone who is intent on making her pay for what she's done. Wracked with guilt, Ruth struggles to meet her tormentor's demands. But she is already way out of her depth. And things are about to take a very sinister turn...

When Lulu wakes up one morning and realises that she's in crisis, she knows she must rethink her life completely. She just needs more time — time to relax, time to have fun with her friends and, most importantly, time to find the perfect man who's eluded her for far too long. So she packs in her job as a therapist, ditches the swanky apartment, waves goodbye to her soft-top car and embraces a simpler life. But then a terrible tragedy strikes and Lulu realizes that it isn't that easy to escape the past after all. Can she deal with her unfinished business and make the perfect life she longs for?

Flying Lancaster bombers on raids into Germany was one of the most dangerous missions of the war. Casualties in Bomber Command were shockingly high, there was statistically only a 17 per cent chance of a bomber crew surviving a full tour of operations. Night after night Flight Lieutenant Geoffrey King and the crew of C Charlie risked their lives. Together they faced incredible dangers, near misses, close encounters with the fighter planes of the Luftwaffe, and crash landings. Against this background a friendship was formed that bound the crew of C Charlie together against all odds. Between May 1943 and May 1944 Geoffrey King and his crew flew thirty missions over Germany, hitting Frankfurt, the Ruhr, and bombing Berlin ten times. They trusted each other so much that they were determined to stay together after their full tour. They refused to take leave and be split up, instead they volunteered immediately for another tour. As King says 'We believed in ourselves so much, no one ever panicked, even when the situation looked so desperate. We all believed that our best chance of staying alive was to stick together'. Geoffrey King and the crew of C Charlie are unique in having flown together for fifty missions and living to tell the tale. Now, sixty years later, Geoffrey is the only one of this group of friends still alive to tell the story. As well as the memories of the other men he spent three years of the war with, he lives daily with the memories of those ten missions above Berlin, as he flew into what seemed certain death, and aircraft all around him were blasted out of the sky.

This title offers an epic Romeo and Juliet for the 21st century. In a bustling London cafe, Anil, now a famous architect, sits waiting for Lina. It is years since he last laid eyes on her, the love of his life. Lina is running for the train — punctuality has never been her strength. After all this time she cannot be late to meet Anil. Together, they think back to tragedies both personal and political, betrayals large and small. A past played out across three continents that house their rival worlds: Sikh and Muslim, wealthy and modest, liberal and orthodox, corrupt and moral... Lina has one more revelation that must be shared with Anil. Might it unite them once and for all, or has it come too late?

In the small inlaid wooden box, Matt's mother had kept all his childhood memories. Amongst them are many photos of Matt as a child, growing up. But something about the photos has always puzzled Matt — was that really him? Why did he not remember those clothes? The toys? And where, in the photos, was his sister Imogen? He has a strange unresolved feeling that there is something missing in his life. Imogen is living with her husband, a country vet, and their gorgeous baby in a rented cottage. Since her childhood she has loved the Summer House, a charming folly in the grounds of her oldest friends' beautiful and ancient house on Exmoor, and now they have the chance of buying. But her marriage is threatened when her husband refuses to live so far from his practice. Meanwhile, Matt begins to discovers the strange and tragic secret which has affected his whole life...

If you had three wishes, what would you wish for? Having spent two years alone in France, doing his best to survive in a foreign land, and failing miserably to woo a dishy French copine, Michael Wright has everything he ever wanted: manly powertools; a cat, chickens and sheep; earthy neighbours; an aircraft and a grand piano. Yet he is still alone and — in a moment of rare self-knowledge — decides that the only way to find the girl of his dreams is to stop looking for her. Yet barely a week after coming to this momentous decision, an email from an old school friend re-introduces him to Alice — a paid-up city girl who speaks only three words of French and comes with an expensive shoe habit and a deep-rooted mistrust of the countryside. Even worse, she lives and works on the far side of the Atlantic, in Baltimore, USA. And so begins an unlikely romance, conducted across two continents, as Michael the rustic hermit struggles to unlearn his lessons in living alone and contemplates the alarming prospect of sharing his French life (not to mention his aeroplane) with someone else...

Hannah is a confused fourteen-year-old. In the magazines she reads, celebrities plan elaborate weddings; in Hannah's own life, her parents' marriage is crumbling. Over the next decade and a half, love throws her some complicated questions. At what point can you no longer blame your adult failures on your messed up childhood? Is settling for someone who's not your soulmate an act of maturity or an admission of defeat? And if you move to another state for a guy who might not love you back, are you being plucky — or just pathetic?

1980s Romania: As the sun sets on the magical shore of the Black Sea and casts its last rays across the water, all Nora Teodoru can think about is pursuing her dream of becoming an accomplished artist — and of her love for Gigi, her childhood boyfriend from the Turkish part of town. But storm clouds are gathering as life under Dictator Nicolae Ceausescu becomes increasingly unbearable. His secret police are circling, never far from the young couple's doors. Nora and Gigi make plans to escape to Turkey. But nothing can prepare them for the events that follow...

In 2004, after felling his last chimney and retiring from steeplejacking, Fred took to the road on his engine for the BBC series Made in Britain. Travelling the length and breadth of the country, his intention was to seek out the remarkable achievements of the craftsmen, engineers, inventors and industrial workers whose endeavour made engines like Fred's possible. It was a journey that took him to Britain's most iconic engineering marvels as well as less familiar sites: from the Forth Bridge and the Middlesbrough Transporter Bridge to Europe's last deep-working iron ore mine in Cumbria and a local castings workshop in Bo'ness. Along the way he called in on numerous old friends and even managed to squeeze in a trip to Buckingham Palace to collect his MBE. This behind-the-scenes account of that ambitious journey is made all the more remarkable by Fred's heroic efforts to complete it while suffering from terminal cancer. It is not only a glorious testament to our nation's industrial achievements but also a story of the friendships, unfailing courage and determination of the nation's favourite steeplejack.

When and how did the universe begin? Why are we here? Is the apparent 'grand design' of our universe evidence for a benevolent creator who set things in motion? Or does science offer another explanation? In The Grand Design, the most recent scientific thinking about the mysteries of the universe is presented in language marked by both brilliance and simplicity. Model dependent realism, the multi verse, the top-down theory of cosmology, and the unified M-theory — all are revealed here. This is the first major work in nearly a decade by one of the world's greatest thinkers. A succinct, startling and lavishly illustrated guide to discoveries that are altering our understanding and threatening some of our most cherished belief systems, The Grand Design is a book that will inform — and provoke — like no other.

Curtis Sittenfeld's sparkling debut is set in an American boarding school, a hotbed of privilege, ambition and neurosis, every bit as snobbish and competitive as anything dreamed up on this side of the Atlantic. Lee Fiora is an intelligent, observant fourteen-year-old when her father drops her off at the prestigious Ault School in Massachusetts; she leaves behind her affectionate family in South Bend, Indiana, her head filled with images from the school's glossy brochure, in which boys in sweaters chat in front of old brick buildings, girls hold lacrosse sticks on pristine athletics fields, and everyone sings hymns in chapel. As Lee soon learns, Ault is quite unlike anything she has previously experienced, a self-enclosed world populated by jaded teenagers whose expectations, values and social rituals are utterly unfamiliar to her. At first an observer of, then a participant in the hyper-vigilant, intricately demarcated life of the school, Lee eventually finds her own place in the pecking order — until a single act of spontaneous folly shatters her carefully honed identity. «Prep» is a sharp and lucid portrait of the pain and the excitement of adolescence, and a remorseless dissection of privilege and class in the cradle of the American establishment.

After the irresponsible, ignorant bliss of financial boom, stockbroker Jimmy and his family are forced to confront financial meltdown in this hilarious and deeply pertinent domestic drama.

Stephen Swan is amazed when he hears that the uncle he thought had been killed in the Blitz is actually alive. For nearly four decades, Eldritch Swan has been locked away in an Irish prison and now, at last, has been released. Shocked and suspicious, Stephen listens to the old man’s story and is caught up in a tale that begins at the dawn of World War II, when Eldritch worked for an Antwerp diamond dealer with a trove of Picassos—highly valuable paintings that later disappeared. Stephen, who finds his uncle by turns devious, charming, and brazen, then meets Rachel Banner, a beautiful American who may have inherited the Picassos—and is determined to see justice done for her family. But in this tale of revenge and redemption, justice is the ultimate illusion. Eldritch, Stephen, and the woman Stephen has fallen in love with soon find themselves fighting for their lives—against sinister forces still guarding a secret that must never be revealed.

Joanna Trollope's most heartfelt and enthralling novel in years, Second Honeymoon explores what happens when the empty nest is suddenly full again. Ben Boyd is leaving home. At twenty-two, he's the youngest of the family and the last to leave. His mother Edie, an actress, is distraught. His father Russell, a theatrical agent, is hoping to get his wife back after decades of family life. Ben's brother, Matthew, is wrestling with a relationship in which he earns less than his successful girlfriend. Their sister Rosa is wrestling with debt, and the end of a turbulent love affair. Living on your own, it seems, may not be as glamorous as it's cracked up to be. Rosa is the first of the Boyd children to think she may have to move back in with her parents—just until she can make ends meet again. This is the empty nest, twenty-first-century style—with grown children coming and going just as parents are getting ready for their second honeymoon. With characteristic grace and humor, Trollope weaves multiple stories of two generations struggling with love, careers, and parenthood into a riveting family drama.