Transworld Publishers

Sitting among the rows of tills in Supersafe supermarket in the North of England, the fortunes of a young checkout girl are on the brink of change … Linda works the tills at Safeshop. It's what everyone does. The grammar school girls get the careers; the comp girls get the two-bit college courses and the low wage jobs. But when model agent Rafe brings his disposable razors to Linda's till, he recognises the raw talent that could transform both their lives. Almost overnight, Linda becomes Crystalline, a supermodel catapulted onto the international stage. But in the blur of first class flights and flashy restaurants, will she begin to forget where Crysatline ends and Linda begins? The bittersweet story of a young checkout girl's rise to fame, this is prize-wining playwright Jim Cartwright's first novel. Bearing the hallmarks of his best-loved play, THE RISE AND FALL OF LITTLE VOICE and ROAD, this rollicking debut takes the reader on a journey from which there is no going back.

Englishman Paul West has just received an offer he can't refuse: two weeks in the sun, all expenses paid, with a beautiful blonde called Gloria Monday. M, as Gloria likes to be known, is down south to report on caviar trafficking but it soon becomes obvious that she s interested in something a lot more fishy than caviar. Meanwhile Paul s best friend Elodie is marrying a French aristocrat, and Paul is asked to do the catering. Cooking for the French is a risky assignment at the best of times, but Paul, who is starting to feel a bit like James Bond, assures her that nothing can go wrong. Or can it? As Paul is sexually harassed by an English hen party, picked on by French commandoes and arrested by excitable gendarmes, he realises that events are spiralling out of control. And when he discovers that M s real target is France s biggest fish of all the new President and that he s coming to Elodie s wedding, Paul knows that the merde really is about to hit the fan.

Pickpocket John Jacob Turnstile is on his way to be detained at His Majesty’s Pleasure when he is offered a lifeline, what seems like a freedom of sorts – the job of personal valet to a departing naval captain. Little does he realise that it is anything but – and by accepting the devil’s bargain he will put his life in perilous danger. For the ship is HMS Bounty, his new captain William Bligh and their destination Tahiti. From the moment the ship leaves port, Turnstile’s life is turned upside down, for not only must he put his own demons to rest, but he must also confront the many adversaries he will encounter on the Bounty’s extraordinary last voyage. Walking a dangerous line between an unhappy crew and a captain he comes to admire, he finds himself in a no-man’s land where the distinction between friend and foe is increasingly difficult to determine…

Beth Sheridan likes her life the way it is. OK, so her job's a little dull and her social life leaves a lot to be desired. But none of that really matters because Beth is in love with Richard. And one day they will be together. Yes, there are a few teeny obstacles, like the fact that Richard has been Beth's boss for eight years and that he is currently living in Portugal with another woman. But these are just minor details because Beth just knows that one day, the scales will fall from Richard's eyes and he will realise that it is Beth that he has always wanted. Beth's feisty flatmate Vini doesn't harbour any such illusions and decides that Beth needs to give up on Richard and find love elsewhere. Reluctantly Beth agrees to Vini's (at times extreme) plan of action. Following a puppeteers convention, a speed dating event, a chance encounter in a shopping mall and some pretty flirtatious email banter, Beth is suddenly dealing with three new men. There's the lovely down-to-earth Brad, who she just can't quite pin down, and the charming, millionaire Rupert. She's never actually met Rupert but judging from his emails, he seems to just get her. What's more, there's also sleazy Sean from the office who's suddenly seeming not-so-sleazy ... And just when things couldn't get more complicated, the gorgeous Richard waltzes back into her life. What's a girl to do?

Grand Central station, New York. 1:23pm. What starts as a normal day on the New York City subway becomes a race against time when a commuter train is hijacked. It is packed with passengers and the ransom is one million dollars. The NYPD frantically pursue the train on the city streets, but the question remains: the subway is a closed system – surely there is no way out... But the four hijackers, led by a mercenary named Ryder, have thought about this. And once they receive their ransom money, they plan to send the train off at top speed toward the terminal station where it will crash, killing all the passengers...

What makes a father violent? It takes a brave man to find out... As a volunteer at St Margaret’s Hospice, eager and helpful Meryl is looking for a role in life. The arrival of Jamie, the son of a patient, may be just what she is after. He is good-looking, young and, above all, troubled. Jamie’s father has only a few days to live, but between father and son is a lifetime of misunderstanding and unhappiness. Could the most powerful legacy Jamie faces be an inability to love? With well-meaning Meryl hovering in the background, Jamie embarks on his long dark night of the soul, facing the secrets, lies and heartbreaks behind his father’s life. Meanwhile his dying father, seemingly unconscious to it all, relives his extraordinary history, from the triumphs of his life as a boxer, to the onset of a crippling illness he doesn’t understand. And in the quiet of the night, he receives strange visitors of his own….

Imagine that some people have the power to affect your thoughts and feelings when you read, or they read a book to you. They can seduce you with amazing stories, conjure up vividly imagined worlds, but also manipulate you into thinking exactly what they want you to. When Luca Campelli dies a sudden and violent death, his son Jon inherits his second-hand bookshop, Libri di Luca, in Copenhagen. Jon has not seen his father for twenty years since the mysterious death of his mother. When Luca’s death is followed by an arson attempt on the shop, Jon is forced to explore his family’s past. Unbeknown to Jon, the bookshop has for years been hiding a remarkable secret. It is the meeting place of a society of booklovers and readers, who have maintained a tradition of immense power passed down from the days of the great library of ancient Alexandria. Now someone is trying to destroy them, and Jon finds himself in a fight for his life and those of his new friends.

There's a caste system even in murder. Seven years ago, Vivek 'Vicky' Rai, the playboy son of Cabinet Minister, murdered Ruby Gill at a trendy restaurant in New Delhi simply because she refused to serve him a drink. Now Vicky Rai is dead, killed at his farmhouse at a party he had thrown to celebrate his acquittal. Six guests are discovered with guns in their possession — and each one is equally likely to have pulled the trigger. Who are these six suspects? And what were they doing in the farmhouse that night? In this elaborate mystery, we join Arun Advani, India's best-known investigative journalist, as the lives of these six suspects unravel before our eyes. Ingeniously plotted, «Six Suspects» is the work of a master storyteller.

A masterful epic of love, war, treason, plague, famine, witchcraft, anti-Semitism and the Inquisition 14th-century Spain, the medieval city of Barcelona is enjoying a golden age of prosperity. Its humblest inhabitants are building, stone by stone, a magnificent church to overlook their harbour. This is the Cathedral of the Sea: a church to be built for the people by the people. In its shadow, Arnau, a young serf on the run from his feudal lord, struggles to earn his freedom. After famine, plague and thwarted love, Arnau's fortunes begin to turn when King Pedro makes him a baron as a reward for his courage in battle. But he is also forced to marry Eleonor, a ward of the King whom he does not love. His newfound status excites jealousy from his friends who plot his downfall with devastating consequences. Arnau's journey from slave to nobleman is the story of a struggle between good and evil that will turn Church against State and brother against brother ...

Danny Coughlin is Boston Police Department royalty and the son of one of the city's most beloved and powerful police captains. His beat is the predominately Italian neighbourhoods of the North End where political dissent is in the air — fresh and intoxicating. On the hunt for hard-line radicals as a favour to his father, Danny is drawn into the ideological fray and finds his loyalties compromised as the police department itself becomes swept up in potentially violent labour strife. Luther Lawrence is on the run. A suspect in a nightclub shooting in Oklahoma, he flees to Boston, leaving his wife behind. He lands a job in the Coughlin household and meets Danny and the family's Irish maid, Nora, who once had a powerful bond. As the mystery of their relationship unravels, Luther finds himself befriending them both even as the turmoil in his own life threatens to overwhelm him. Desperate to return to his wife and child, he must confront the past that has followed him and settle scores with enemies old and new. Set at the end of the Great War, The Given Day is meticulously researched and expertly plotted, it will transport you to an unforgettable time and place.

Lucy's been married for so long, her wedding certificate should be in hieroglyphics. When Jasper walks out after eighteen years, she panics. What will she do about vehicle maintenance, shifting heavy objects and Allen keys? Not to mention her rebellious teenage daughter Tally, who blames Lucy for the marital meltdown. Low self-esteem is hereditary: you get it from your kids. While Tally's busy trying to find a loophole in her birth certificate so she can put herself up for adoption, Lucy strives to accept that a child is for life and not just for Christmas. Could teenagers be God's punishment for having sex in the first place? This is a book about what to do when you fall in love. (Wipe it off your shoes before you walk it all over the carpet.) But above all it's a survival guide for anyone who has realized that the perfect marriage is like an orgasm — many of them are faked.

HE HIDES When an ancient mummy is discovered in the basement of a museum in down-town Boston, excitement starts to mount. Under the glare of a media frenzy, the mummy is taken to hospital for a CT scan. Forensic pathologist Maura Isles is also invited to attend. HE KILLS As the CT scan proceeds everyone in the room leans in and gasps in horror as an image of a bullet is revealed. Maura declares it a possible homicide, and calls in detective Jane Rizzoli. HE KEEPS When the preserved body of a second victim is found, and then a third, it becomes clear that taking their lives is not enough for this terrifying killer. And that unless Maura and Jane can find and stop him, he will soon be adding yet another chilling piece to his monstrous collection.

Hope Dunne has carved out a name for herself as a top photographer. In her chic Soho loft, she is content with her life, finding serenity and beauty through the lens of her camera. She isn t looking for a man or excitement. But things change when she accepts a last minute assignment in London, photographing one of the world s most celebrated writers. To Hope s surprise, Finn O Neill exudes warmth and a boyish charm. Enormously successful, he is a perfect counterpoint to Hope s quiet, steady grace — and he s taken by her. He courts her, whisking her away to his palatial, isolated Irish estate, weaving a tapestry of tales about his family and his life. Hope finds it all absolutely dizzying — Finn s charm is undeniable. But soon cracks begin to appear in his stories: gaps in his history, a few innocent lies, bouts of jealousy Suddenly Hope is both in love and suspicious. Alone, thousands of miles from home, her mind is reeling. Is she just being paranoid? How many lies has he told? Is it possible that this kind, loving, attentive man is hiding something even worse? With unerring insight and compassion, Danielle Steel delivers an unforgettable tale of danger and obsessive love.

150 years ago the momentous findings in Charles Darwin's controversial masterpiece, On the Origin of Species, shook the scientific and religious world to its core. Perhaps more astonishing, the creation-evolution debate sparked by his seminal work of 1859 continues unabated in the 21st century. Now, Richard Dawkins, world renowned evolutionary biologist and famous atheist, takes on the Creationists with a brilliant and uncompromising look at the incontrovertible evidence for Darwin's theory of evolution. The panoply of data that proves the theory is vast, with scientific fingerprints massively numerous and varied. The logic Dawkins employs to explain it is the same throughout the book: the evidence that we see is exactly what we should expect to see if evolution had happened. He examines the facts from the point of view of domestication, from cabbages to Great Danes. Anatomy yields a raft of clues whether from the common mouse or fish, and molecules underscore the message even more convincingly. With answers to a miscellany of common questions, and detailed descriptions of what our ancestors would have looked like at various landmark dates, Dawkins leaves us with no room for doubt. The Greatest Show on Earth comes at a critical time; systematic opposition to the truth of evolution is now flourishing as never before in America, while in Britain, pockets of intelligent design are entering our schooling system at an alarming pace. Following the storm upon publication of The God Delusion, Dawkins continues the heated debate about science and religion whilst furthering the public education that he feels passionately is his responsibility. His new book is a thrilling tribute to science, the wonders of nature and his ultimate hero, Charles Darwin.

Football has come to the ancient city of Ankh-Morpork — not the old fashioned, grubby pushing and shoving, but the new, fast football with pointy hats for goalposts and balls that go gloing when you drop them. And now, the wizards of Unseen University must win a football match, without using magic, so they're in the mood for trying everything else. The prospect of the Big Match draws in a street urchin with a wonderful talent for kicking a tin can, a maker of jolly good pies, a dim but beautiful young woman, who might just turn out to be the greatest fashion model there has ever been, and the mysterious Mr Nutt (and no one knows anything much about Mr Nutt, not even Mr Nutt, which worries him, too). As the match approaches, four lives are entangled and changed for ever. Because the thing about football – the important thing about football — is that it is not just about football. Here we go! Here we go! Here we go!

»Generation Kill» is about the young men sent to fight their nation's first open-ended war since Vietnam. Despite the flurry of media images to come of the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, you have never really met any of these people, who serve as front-line troops. For whatever reason, the media simply doesn't get them. As we all know, news accounts of the last two wars focused almost exclusively on battlefield imagery of high-tech weapons wreaking astounding destruction, comply with analysis from retired army grandees and other experts, punctuated by the odd heart-warming patriotic sound-bite. The troops themselves play a role in the media's presentation of recent wars rather like extras in «The Triumph of the Will». They are everywhere yet somehow invisible. When they speak you get the sense that what they are saying has been carefully scripted.Now «Generation Kill» tells the soldiers' story in their own words. The narrative focuses on a platoon of 23 marines, many of them veterans of Afghanistan, whose elite reconnaissance unit spearheaded the blitzkrieg on Iraq. This is the story of young men that have been trained to become ruthless killers. It's about surviving death. It's about taking part in a war many questioned before it even began. Evan Wright was the only reporter with First Recon, which operated well ahead of most other forces, usually behind enemy lines. They were among the first marines sent into the fight and one of the last units still engaged on the outskirts of Iraq, even after the city centre fell. «Generation Kill» is not just a combat chronicle but an inside look at how people fighting in war actually experience it. It is both an action narrative like «Black Hawk Down» and a detailed portrait of a generation at war along the lines of «Band of Brothers». It is not a book you are going to forget in a hurry.

Two small towns in Colorado: Hope and Despair. Between them, nothing but twelve miles of empty road. Jack Reacher can't find a ride, so he walks. All he wants is a cup of coffee. What he gets are four redneck deputies who want to run him out of town. Mistake. They're picking on the wrong guy. Jack Reacher is a big man, and he's in shape. No job, no address, no baggage. Nothing, except bloody-minded curiosity. What is the secret the locals seem so keen to hide? A hard man is good to find. Ex-military cop Reacher is today's most addictive hero. Now he pulls on a tiny loose thread, to unravel conspiracies that expose the most shocking truths. Because, after all, Jack Reacher has nothing to lose.

A cargo ship is apprehended by the authorities off the coast of Spain, loaded to the gunwales with enough arms and ammunition to start a war. Twenty years later, an unknown aggressor seems intent on eradicating those responsible for the treachery, one by one. The last victim was brutally tortured with a Black & Decker drill, then shot through the head. And Nick Stone — ex-SAS, tough, resourceful, ruthless, highly trained — is next on the killer's list... In his most daunting mission yet, Nick Stone must find a man who shared that past, and who may know more about the present threat than he is prepared to reveal. As the two find themselves pursued across sea and desert, they become ever more enmeshed in a deadly network of betrayal, to which Stone himself unwittingly holds the key. And in a final confrontation that echoes his worst nightmares, only he can stop the unthinkable and save the lives of those he holds most dear.

Most of us grow up having always known to touch wood or cross our fingers, and what happens when a princess kisses a frog or a boy pulls a sword from a stone, yet sadly some of these things are now beginning to be forgotten. Legends, myths, fairytales: our world is made up of the stories we told ourselves about where we came from and how we got there. It is the same on Discworld, except that beings which on Earth are creatures of the imagination — like vampires, trolls, witches and, possibly, gods — are real, alive and in some cases kicking on the Disc. In «The Folklore of Discworld», Terry Pratchett teams up with leading British folklorist Jacqueline Simpson to take an irreverent yet illuminating look at the living myths and folklore that are reflected, celebrated and affectionately libelled in the uniquely imaginative universe of Discworld.

What is fashion? Who decides what's in and what's out? Is the catwalk really catty? And what's so super about supermodels? Based entirely on true but anonymous stories, Material Girl covers six months in a designer's life and gives you exclusive access to a world where women get paid thousands for getting dressed in the morning and where the wrong shirt length can cost you your career. Tracking the development of a collection from concept to catwalk, onto the front pages of Vogue and then to the high street, it reveals the shocking mark-ups, the fabulous extremes and the shoddy shortcuts which the fashion industry would rather you didn't know about...

Following the National Theatre's success with plays based on novels by well-loved children's writers like Philip Pulman («His Dark Materials»), Jamila Gavin («Coram Boy») and Michael Morpurgo («War Horse»), the National now stages Mark Ravenhill's exhilarating adaptation of Terry Pratchett's witty and challenging adventure story in a major Christmas production for 2009. Its a parallel world, 1860. Two teenagers thrown together by a tsunami that has destroyed Mau's village and left Daphne shipwrecked on his South Pacific island, thousands of miles from home. One wears next to nothing, the other a long white dress; neither speaks the other's language; somehow they must learn to survive. As starving refugees gather, Daphne delivers a baby, milks a pig, brews beer and does battle with a mutineer. Mau fights cannibal Raiders, discovers the world is round and questions the reality of his tribe's fiercely patriarchal gods. Together they come of age, overseen by a foul-mouthed parrot, as they discard old doctrine to forge a new Nation.

Winter, 1916. In St Petersburg, snow is falling in a country on the brink of revolution. Beautiful and headstrong, Sashenka Zeitlin is just sixteen. As her mother parties with Rasputin and her dissolute friends, Sashenka slips into the frozen night to play her role in a dangerous game of conspiracy and seduction. Twenty years on, Sashenka has a powerful husband and two children. Around her people are disappearing but her own family is safe. But she's about to embark on a forbidden love affair which will have devastating consequences. Sashenka's story lies hidden for half a century, until a young historian goes deep into Stalin's private archives and uncovers a heart-breaking story of passion and betrayal, savage cruelty and unexpected heroism — and one woman forced to make an unbearable choice.

Seven Troop is Andy McNab's account of the time he served in the company of a remarkable group of men — from the day, freshly-badged as a member of the SAS Regiment, he joined them in the Malayan jungle, to the day, ten years later, that he handed in his sand-coloured beret and started a new life.

When Steve Lopez sees Nathaniel Ayers playing his heart out on a two-string violin on Los Angeles' skid row, he finds it impossible to walk away. More than thirty years ago, Ayers was a promising student at Julliard — ambitious, charming and hugely talented — until he gradually lost his ability to function, overcome by schizophrenia. When Lopez finds him, Ayers is homeless and paranoid, but glimmers of his earlier brilliance are still there. Over time, the two men form a bond, and Lopez imagines that he might be able to change Ayer's life. For each triumph, there is a crashing disappointment, yet neither man gives up. Their friendship will changes both of their lives in ways that neither could predict. Poignant and ultimately hopeful, «The Soloist» is a beautifully told story of devotion in the face of seemingly unbeatable challenges, and the inspiring power of music.