Transworld Publishers

When DI Terry Connor turns up on David Hunter's doorstep, it's an unwelcome reminder of the past in more ways than one. The two used to be friends before Connor's behaviour caused a bitter rift. And the news the policeman brings is even less welcome: the psychotic rapist and murderer Jerome Monk has escaped from high security prison. Monk's is a name all too familiar to Hunter. Eight years before he'd part of an ill-fated Body Recovery team assembled to try and find the graves of Monk's teenage victims on the bleak expanse of Dartmoor. Only one of the missing girls' bodies was ever found, and Monk's own controversial involvement in the search led to more failure and a violent denouement. And now Monk is on the loose — and seems to be targeting anyone involved with the original search. Then Hunter receives a mysterious appeal for help from Sophie Keller, a young woman who also worked on the operation, he suddenly finds that the past is far from dead and buried. Neither the events unfolding now, nor those from all those years ago, are quite as they seem. And as the maniac's bloody trail edges ever closer, Hunter is forced to question who he can really trust. Especially when his own life depends on it...

Tallie Jones is a Hollywood legend. An ambitious and passionate film director, her award-winning productions achieve the rare combination of critical and commercial success. But she has little interest in the glitz and glamour of Los Angeles, instead focusing intently on her work and family. She has close, loving relationships with her daughter, her elderly father and Hunter Lloyd — her co-producer and partner of four years. Completing her trusted circle is Brigitte Parker — Tallie's best friend and devoted personal assistant. They've been friends since film school, and Brigitte's polished glamour and highly organized style provides a perfect balance to Tallie's casual appearance and down-to-earth approach to life. However as Tallie is in the midst of directing her most ambitious film to date, small disturbances start to ripple through her faultlessly ordered world. An audit reveals worrying discrepancies in her financial records, which have always been maintained by her trusted accountant, Victor Carson. Receipts hint at activities of which she has no knowledge. Someone close to Tallie has been steadily helping themselves to enormous amounts of her money. Her once safe world of trusted associates is suddenly shaken to its very core — and Tallie is in shock, trying to figure out who has betrayed her among those she trusts and holds dear...

What makes a house... a home? For Francesca Thayer, everything seems to be falling to pieces. Her beautiful, old house is full of leaks and in need of total restoration. Then her relationship with lawyer Todd collapses and he moves out. As the owner of a struggling art gallery, she can't possibly manage the mortgage alone, and so is forced to do something she never imagined she would: she advertises for lodgers. First arrives Eileen — a young schoolteacher who has just moved from LA. Then comes Chris, a newly-divorced father struggling with a difficult ex-wife and the challenges of parenting his seven-year-old son who visits every other weekend. Last to arrive is Marya — a famous cookery author who is hoping to rebuild her life after the death of her husband. And so Francesca finds that her house has become a whole new world. As these random strangers begin to bond, they find that the life they have been thrown into together has both highs and lows. Over their year together, the house at 44 Charles Street fills with laughter and hope. And Francesca discovers that she might be able to open her heart again after all.

'As I sleep, my mind will erase everything I did today. I will wake up tomorrow as I did this morning. Thinking I'm still a child. Thinking I have a whole lifetime of choice ahead of me...' Memories define us. So what if you lost yours every time you went to sleep? Your name, your identity, your past, even the people you love — all forgotten overnight. And the one person you trust may only be telling you half the story. Welcome to Christine's life.

Hope Delafield hasn't always had an easy life. She has red hair and a temper to match, as her mother is constantly reminding her. She can't wear heels, is terrified of heights and being a primary school teacher isn't exactly the job she dreamed of doing, especially when her class are stuck on the two times table. At least Hope has Jack, and Jack is the God of boyfriends. He's sweet, kind, funny, has a killer smile, a cool job on a fashion magazine and he's pretty (but in a manly way). Hope knew that Jack was The One ever since their first kiss after the Youth Club Disco and thirteen years later, they're still totally in love. Totally. They're even officially pre-engaged. And then Hope catches Jack kissing her best friend Susie... Does true love forgive and forget? Or does it get mad... and get even?

March 1997. A woman has her throat cut behind a bar in Carter Crossing, Mississippi. Just down the road is a big army base. Is the murderer a local guy — or is he a soldier?Jack Reacher, still a major in the military police, is sent in undercover.The county sheriff is a former U.S. Marine — and a stunningly beautiful woman. Her investigation is going nowhere. Is the Pentagon stonewalling her? Or doesn't she really want to find the killer? The adrenaline-pumping, high-voltage action in The Affair is set just six months before the opening of Killing Floor, and it marks a turning point in Reacher's career. If he does what the army wants, will he be able to live with himself? And if he doesn't, will the army be able to live with him? Is this his last case in uniform?

Bear Grylls is a man who has always sought the ultimate in adventure. Growing up on the Isle of Wight, he was taught by his father to sail and climb at an early age. As a teenager he found identity and purpose through both mountaineering and martial arts, which led the young adventurer to the foothills of the mighty Himalaya and a grandmaster's karate training camp in Japan. On returning home, he embarked upon the notoriously gruelling selection course for the British Special Forces to join 21 SAS — a journey that was to push him to the very limits of physical and mental endurance. Then, in a horrific free-fall parachuting accident, Bear broke his back in three places. It was touch and go whether he would ever walk again. However, only eighteen months later Bear became one of the youngest ever climbers to scale Everest, aged only twenty-three. But this was just the beginning of his many extraordinary adventures... Known and admired by millions, Bear Grylls has survived where few would dare to go. Now, for the first time, Bear tells the story of his action-packed life. Gripping, moving and wildly exhilarating, Mud, Sweat and Tears is a must-read for adrenalin junkies and armchair adventurers alike.

Paris — one of the most visited cities in the world. But do you know... Which is the most romantic spot to say 'je't'aime'? And the sexiest? Where to see fantastic art, away from all the crowds? Why Parisian men feel compelled to pee in the street? How to choose a hotel room where you might actually get a good night's sleep? Stephen Clarke goes behind the scenes to reveal everything Parisians know about their city — but don't want to tell you.

It's Russia, 1855. After forty years of peace in Europe, war rages. In the Crimea, the city of Sevastopol is besieged. In the north, Saint Petersburg is blockaded. But in Moscow there is one who needs only to sit and wait — wait for the death of an aging tsar, and for the curse upon his blood to be passed to a new generation. As their country grows weaker, a man and a woman — unaware of the hidden ties that bind them — must come to terms with their shared legacy. In Moscow, Tamara Valentinovna Komarova uncovers a brutal murder and discovers that it not the first in a sequence of similar crimes, merely the latest, carried out by a killer who has stalked the city since 1812. And in Sevastopol, Dmitry Alekseevich Danilov faces not only the guns of the combined armies of Britain and France, but must also make a stand against creatures that his father had thought buried beneath the earth, thirty years before..

A welcome return to Lasquenet, the small town in rural France that was the setting for Joanne Harris's remarkable number one bestseller Chocolat. Vianne Rocher is called back to Lasquenet by a letter from beyond the grave...

The great Victorian engineers who inspired Fred Dibnah. Fred Dibnah was a man born out of his time. His era should have been the 'magnificent age of British engineering' — the nineteenth century — and his heroes were the great industrial engineers of the period whose prolific innovations and dedicated work ethic inspired a national mood of optimism and captured the hearts of the British public. Fred Dibnah's Victorian Heroes tells the stories of some of these men — including George and Robert Stephenson, Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Joseph Whitworth — and what it was that made them such inspirational figures to Fred. What were their backgrounds? Where did their drive and vision come from? What sort of people were they at work and at home? And what was their contribution to the history of industry and engineering? Most of them — like Fred — were colourful, larger-than-life characters for whom no challenge was too great. Taking these fascinating characters as inspiration, Fred Dibnah's Victorian Heroes gets to the very heart of what allowed nineteenth-century Britannia to rule the waves.

Time to blow out the candles, say goodbye to the past, and make a wish for the future... For April Wyatt, turning thirty is not what she had expected. She's single, with no interest in changing that in the foreseeable future. Her popular, successful restaurant in downtown New York — where she is chef and owner — consumes every ounce of her passion, attention and energy. Ready or not, though, April's life is about to change, in a tumultuous discovery on the morning of her milestone birthday. April's mother Valerie is a popular TV personality and the queen of gracious living. Since her divorce long-ago, she has worked tirelessly to reach the pinnacle of her career and to create a camera-ready life in her Fifth Avenue penthouse. But she's having trouble equating her age with how she feels, and all the hours with her personal trainer, the careful work of top hairdressers and her natural good looks can't hide the fact that she is turning sixty, and the whole world discovers it on her birthday. It is also Jack Adams' birthday — the most charismatic sports personality on TV, a man who has his pick of desirable younger women. But he fears his age may finally be catching up with him when he wakes up on his fiftieth birthday needing an emergency visit to the chiropractor... A terrifying act of violence, an out-of-the-blue blessing, and two very unlikely love affairs soon turn lives inside out and upside down. As these three very different people celebrate their birthdays, they discover that life itself is a celebration — and that its greatest gifts are always a surprise...

History always comes down to the details. And when it comes to the fall of the Soviet Union, the details are crucial, especially when such an era-defining event hinged on the bitter personal relationship between two powerful men, Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin. On the twentieth anniversary of the end of the Cold War, Conor O'Clery has built his compelling and brilliantly constructed narrative of the fall of the Soviet Union around one day, December 25, 1991, the date Gorbachev resigned and the USSR was effectively consigned to history. From there, O'Clery looks back over the events of the previous six years: Gorbachev's reform policies of glasnost and perestroika; Yeltsin's ignominious fall and then rise to the top; the defiance of the once docile Soviet republics; the failed August coup by the hardliners; and, the events that swiftly followed until a secret meeting in a central European forest sealed the fate of the communist monolith and the clock ticked down to the last day. The result is an intricately detailed, thoroughly researched book, based on interviews with many of the key figures in a drama of Shakespearean intensity as well as contemporary reportage, the memoirs and diaries of key political figures and official documents. The book is written at a breathtaking, dramatic pace, drawing the reader in as it focuses equally on the personal and historical stories. Moscow, December 25, 1991 is set to become a defining book on the fall of the Soviet Union.

Magic takes many forms. The ancient Egyptians explained the night by suggesting that the goddess Nut swallowed the sun. The Vikings believed a rainbow was the gods' bridge to earth. The Japanese used to explain earthquakes by conjuring a gigantic catfish that carried the world on its back — and earthquakes occurred each time it flipped its tail. These are magical, extraordinary tales. But there is another kind of magic, which lies in the exhilaration of discovering the real answers to these questions. It is the magic of reality — science. Packed with inspiring explanations of space, time, evolution and clever thought experiments, The Magic of Reality explains a stunningly wide range of natural phenomena. What is stuff made of? How old is the universe? What causes tsunamis? Who was the first man, or woman? This is a page-turning, inspirational detective story that not only mines all the sciences for its clues but primes the reader to think like a scientist too. In this special text-only edition of the original colour illustrated hardback, Richard Dawkins' own inimitable clarity and exuberance can be especially appreciated as he elucidates the wonders of the natural world to all ages.

Hospital Babylon is an in-depth, amusing and highly insightful expose of the extraordinary world of modern medicine. It will take the reader on a journey through the various departments and wards where babies are made, thighs are reduced, noses straightened and spare kidneys are flown in from the Indian subcontinent. We will meet doctors who sleep with nurses. Doctors who sleep with patients. Doctors who fiddle their insurance forms. Doctors who suck fat, pump up breasts, plump lips and lengthen penises. The doctor who specialises in flatulence. The doctor who shoots up before he operates. Doctor Feelgood who will give you anything and everything you need. As well as the doctor who makes a fortune doing buttock enlargements in the Caribbean. En route, we will discover what touches them, what amuses them and quite how obsessively insane you have to be to make it to the top. Why does a private room cost over GBP1000 a night? Who are the people changing your bedpan? Holding your hand as you go to sleep? What do they do to you while you're out cold? Why are drugs so expensive? How easy is it for the pharmaceutical companies to grease the good doctor's palm? Who exactly is profiting from your illness, embarrassing affliction or brand new nose? And, of course, what happens when it all goes wrong? Packed with true stories, anecdotes and revelations, Hospital Babylon is a riveting, entertaining and shocking look at 24 hours in the life of a hospital. Both amusing and appalling, it will make you question whether you should sign that consent form after all...

The new Discworld novel from the master features the popular Sam Vimes, Commander of the City Watch. According to the writer of the best-selling crime novel ever to have been published in the city of Ankh-Morpork, it is a truth universally acknowledged that a policeman taking a holiday would barely have had time to open his suitcase before he finds his first corpse. And Commander Sam Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch is on holiday in the pleasant and innocent countryside, but not for him a mere body in the wardrobe. There are many, many bodies and an ancient crime more terrible than murder. He is out of his jurisdiction, out of his depth, out of bacon sandwiches, and occasionally snookered and out of his mind, but never out of guile. Where there is a crime there must be a finding, there must be a chase and there must be a punishment. They say that in the end all sins are forgiven. But not quite all.

From Snuff: 'Vimes' prompt arrival got a nod of approval from Sybil, who gingerly handed him a new book to read to Young Sam. Vimes looked at the cover. The title was The World of Poo. When his wife was out of eyeshot he carefully leafed through it. Well, okay, you had to accept that the world had moved on and these days fairy stories were probably not going to be about twinkly little things with wings. As he turned page after page, it dawned on him that whoever had written this book, they certainly knew what would make kids like Young Sam laugh until they were nearly sick. The bit about sailing down the river almost made him smile. But interspersed with the scatology was actually quite interesting stuff about septic tanks and dunnakin divers and gongfermors and how dog muck helped make the very best leather, and other things that you never thought you would need to know, but once heard somehow lodged in your mind'.

2015: Madison, Wisconsin. Junior cop Sally Jansson is called out to the house of Willis Lynsey, a reclusive scientist, for an animal-cruelty complaint: the man was seen forcing a horse in through the door of his home. Inside there is no horse. But Sally finds a kind of home-made utility belt. She straps this on — and 'steps' sideways into an America covered with virgin forest. Willis came here with equipment and animals, meaning to explore and colonise. And when Sally gets back, she finds Willis has put the secret of the belt on the internet. The great migration has begun... The Long Earth: our Earth is but one of a chain of parallel worlds, lying side by side in a higher space of possibilities, each differing from its neighbours by a little (or a lot): an infinite landscape of infinite possibilities. And the further away you travel, the stranger the worlds get. The sun and moon always shine, the basic laws of physics are the same. However, the chance events which have shaped our particular version of Earth, such as the dinosaur-killer asteroid impact, might not have happened and things may well have turned out rather differently. But only our Earth hosts mankind...

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. This is 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...

Although Lorana cured the dragons' sickness so many died from the disease that there are no longer enough dragons to fight the deadly Thread, and more dragons and their riders die each Threadfall. With their numbers dwindling, Lorana made the decision to fly forward in time in a desperate bid to bring dragons from the future to fight Thread. She knew that jumping so far in time would result in her losing her baby, but without her jump all life on Pern is doomed. Back at Telgar Weyr Fiona, Kindan and T'mar realise what Lorana has done. They are desperately sad, but two things give them hope. The first is that Fiona is expecting twins, and the second the fact that all the dragonriders are exhausted, a sign that they are Timing it — existing elsewhere in space and time — which gives them hope that Lorana has found a way through time to help them. Sure enough, led by messages left for them by Lorana, they fly through space to the Dawn Sisters, the ships hanging in space that brought their ancestors to Pern. From there they look down at the beautiful planet and see a previously undiscovered continent — this is where they are Timing it and where they are reunited with Lorana. Now they can increase the number and strength of the dragons before going back to their own time to fight Thread. Although Lorana found she couldn't break time, she has found a way to cheat it.

As I sleep, my mind will erase everything I did today. I will wake up tomorrow as I did this morning. Thinking I'm still a child. Thinking I have a whole lifetime of choice ahead of me... Memories define us. So what if you lost yours every time you went to sleep? Your name, your identity, your past, even the people you love — all forgotten overnight. And the one person you trust may only be telling you half the story. Welcome to Christine's life.

A second short story collection from Joanne Harris, author of Chocolat and Peaches for Monsieur le Cure. 'Stories are like Russian dolls; open them up, and in each one you'll find another story'. Conjured from a wickedly imaginative pen, here is a new collection of short stories that showcases Joanne Harris's exceptional storytelling art. Sensuous, wicked, mischievous, uproarious and wry, here are tales that combine the everyday with the unexpected; wild fantasy with bittersweet reality. From the house where it is Christmas all year round, to a ghost who lives on a Twitter timeline; from the Congo where a young girl braves the raging rapids to earn a crust of bread, to Norse gods battling for survival in Manhattan; and a newborn baby created with sugar, spice and lashings of cake, these stories will ensnare and delight you with their variety and inventiveness.

The amazing first adult novel from Sarra Manning — this is Pretty Woman for the twenty-first century. Money makes the world go round — that's what twenty-something Grace Dent is learning. Stuck in a grind where everyone's ahead apart from her, she's partied out, disillusioned, and massively in debt. If she's dumped by another rock-band wannabe, squashed by anyone else at her cut-throat fashion job, or chased by any more bailiffs, Grace suspects she'll fall apart. So when older, sexy and above all, wealthy art-dealer Vaughn appears, she's intrigued against her will. Could she handle being a sugar daddy's arm-candy? Soon Grace is thrown into a world of money and privilege, at Vaughn's beck and call in return for thousands of pounds in luxurious gifts, priceless clothes — and cash. She's out of her depth. Where's the line between acting the trophy girlfriend, and selling yourself for money? And, more importantly, whatever happened to love?

Query: would it be a serious breach of etiquette to run out on my own wedding? This is the question Becky Steele finds herself asking, on the morning of her very own wedding. Having finally managed to fit into her meringue dress after weeks of drinking only skimmed water, she is suddenly uncertain about what exactly she wants. Yes, she loves Julian, but is she quite ready to become a proper grown-up, and give up on the joys of the single life? Julian might be the right man, but has she had enough wrong ones? Things get more complicated still when temptation arrives in the form of gorgeous rockstar toy boy Zack. And it looks like Julian might be making a few contingency plans of his own...