Thirty-five short stories from the top names in British crime fiction, by the likes of Lee Child, Ian Rankin, Alexander McCall Smith, Jake Arnott, Val McDermid, and more.

An epic saga of the Soviet Union's brutal first decades-from The New York Times bestselling master of espionage. Hailed as the American le CarrA(c), Robert Littell presents an ambitious novel about star-crossed idealist Alexander Til. When Til returns from America to Petrograd on the eve of the October Revolution in 1917, it is to put his life on the line in the hope of transforming Russia. But after witnessing the birth of a new era, he watches the people, and his own ideals, trampled by the rise of Josef Stalin-with whom Til is destined to have a shattering confrontation. Taking readers from the storming of the Winter Palace to the nightmares of the gulag, The Revolutionist is a masterwork of historical fiction.

This newly updated, award-winning dictionary gives children confidence as they learn to read. More than 2,000 entry words are clearly defined, and 850 full-color photographs and drawings enhance the text for today's visually sophisticated young readers.

The Tales of Belkin were the first work of prose fiction to be completed by Russia's greatest poet, Alexander Pushkin. Written over a short period in the autumn of 1830, and sometimes referred to as the little parodies, the five stories reflect a number of the key interests of European writers of the time, such as the Byronic hero, the Gothic novel, and the tale of the supernatural. Perhaps the key element in each of these sparkling vignettes is surprise, as they provide some familiar literary themes with a range of unexpected twists. At the same time they suggested fruitful new avenues for Russian writers to explore, and the country's literature would simply not have been the same without them. The volume is completed by Pushkin's other prose work of the same time, The History of the Village of Goryukhino , an amusing parody of a contemporary history of Russia.

Murder doesn't get more peculiar than this. A lonely hearts killer is targeting middle-aged women at some of England's most well-known pubs. What's even more peculiar, Arthur Bryant happened to see the latest victim only moments before her death — at a pub torn down eighty years ago! It's only the beginning of a case littered with clues that defy everything the veteran detectives know about the profiles of serial killers and the methodology of crime. What do the Knights Templars, the secret history of English pubs, and the discovery of an astounding religious relic have to do with this recent crime spree? More important, do the Peculiar Crimes Units two living legends have enough life left in them to stop a murderous conspiracy...and a deadly cupid targeting one of their own?

Israel Armstrong, one of literature's most unlikely detectives, returns for more crime solving adventure in this hilarious third novel from the Mobile Library series. Israel has been invited to attend the Mobile Meet in London, the annual mobile library convention, with his irascible companion Ted Carson. Back in the UK, Israel is reunited with his family, and there is much eating of paprika chicken, baklava and the drinking of good coffee. But within only twenty-four hours of their arrival, the mobile library has been nicked. Who on earth would want to steal a thirty-year old rust-bucket of a van, and who can the two men turn to for assistance? Can Mr and Mrs Krimholz, the parents of Israel's childhood rival Adam Krimholz, help them out? Amidst all this mayhem, will Israel and Ted, one of literature's oddest oddball couples, ever make it to the Mobile Meet? In this, his most puzzling, personal and problematic case yet, Israel has never had it so bad! neither has his library.

Thank you for the music... It's 1939 and the war in Europe casts a long, all-encompassing shadow. In a sleepy town in Suffolk, the generous and determined widow, La, forms an amateur orchestra to entertain the locals and soothe her own broken heart. She recruits Felix, a refugee from Poland, to play the flute, and a touching friendship emerges. When the war is over and the orchestra disbands, La is left pondering her next move. What role can she play in her community now the war is over? And can she let herself love again? La's Orchestra is another delightful story celebrating friendship and the healing power of music, told with the warmth and charm we've come to love from one of the nation's favourite storytellers.

Our close bond with Great Britain seems inevitable, given our shared language and heritage. But as distinguished historian Kathleen Burk shows in this groundbreaking history, the close international relationship was forged only recently, preceded by several centuries of hostility and conflict that began soon after the first English colony was established on the newly discovered continent. Burk, a fourth-generation Californian and a professor of history in London, draws on her unrivaled knowledge of both countries to explore the totality of the relationship — the politics, economics, culture, and society — that both connected the two peoples and drove them apart. She tells the story from each side, beginning with the English exploration of the New World and taking us up to the present alliance in Iraq. She reveals the real motivations for settling North America, the factors that led to Britain's losing the colonies, and the reasons why hawks in Congress took the two countries to war again in 1812. Indeed, war between Britain and the United States loomed again later in the nineteenth century, and it took common enemies to bring them together in the twentieth. But the anchor of the alliance was human. Nineteenth-century British writers celebrated American energy while scorning its vulgarity; American writers appreciated the British sense of tradition while criticizing its aristocracy. Yet social reformers on both sides of the ocean worked together to end slavery and achieve female suffrage. Since 1945, the world has watched and wondered at the close bonds of the leaders — Kennedy and Macmillan, Reagan and Thatcher, and Bush and Blair. The first joint history of its kind, Old World, New Worldis a vivid, absorbing, and surprising story of one of the longest international love-hate relationships in modern history.

An international cabal drives Volk back to blood-soaked Chechnya, where he confronts an old nemesis and reunites with his lost love in this gripping sequel to the acclaimed series debut. The headquarters of an American oil company hemorrhages chemical-pink smoke into the Moscow night, the aftermath of an apparent terrorist attack. A Russian army captain carrying a priceless Faberge egg and digital evidence of horrific wartime atrocities is murdered and relieved of both these prizes. And in the snowy mountains of southern Russia, a terrorist named Abreg — who once held Volk captive in a Chechen mud pit — hatches a plan to lure him back into his grasp. Volk's Shadow finds Colonel Alexei Volkovoy — covert agent of the Russian army and major player in the Moscow underworld — once again struggling to stay afloat in the swirling currents of Russian political and economic intrigue. This time, however, he is without his sidekick and lover, the ethereal Valya Novaskaya. Aching for the soul mate he pushed away, Volk begins to doubt himself, becoming even more detached from the brutality of his actions. When he takes out his inner pain on the wrong man, he gains a powerful enemy in the highest reaches of the Kremlin, and only after he travels back to Chechnya to eliminate his old nemesis, Abreg, is Volk's debt finally repaid.

Tolstoy's tumultuous tale of passion and self-discovery marks a turning point in the author's career. His compelling, emotional saga recounts the effects of nonconformist behavior — a society woman's adulterous affair and a landowner's unconventional quest for a meaningful existence — against a backdrop of late 19th-century Russia.

Alice Hoffman is my favorite writer. Alice Hoffman is one of our most beloved writers. Here on Earth was an Oprah Book Club selection. Practical Magic and Aquamarine were both bestselling books and Hollywood movies. Her novels have received mention as notable books of the year by the New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, the Los Angeles Times, and People magazine, and her short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in the New York Times, The Boston Globe Magazine, Kenyon Review, Redbook, Architectural Digest, Gourmet, and Self. Now, in The Third Angel, Hoffman weaves a magical and stunningly original story that charts the lives of three women in love with the wrong men: Headstrong Madeleine Heller finds herself hopelessly attracted to her sister's fiance. Frieda Lewis, a doctor's daughter and a runaway, becomes the muse of an ill-fated rock star. And beautiful Bryn Evans is set to marry an Englishman while secretly obsessed with her ex-husband. At the heart of the novel is Lucy Green, who blames herself for a tragic accident she witnessed at the age of twelve, and who spends four decades searching for the Third Angel-the angel on earth who will renew her faith. Brilliantly evoking London's King's Road, Knightsbridge, and Kensington while moving effortlessly back in time, The Third Angel is a work of startling beauty about the unique, alchemical nature of love.

The missing piece of the internationally bestselling Kurt Wallander mystery series: the story of Wallander's beginnings, told in five gripping short mysteries. What happened to Wallander before the series began? Several years ago, right when I was done with the fifth book, Sidetracked, I realized that I had started to write stories in my head that took place long before the start of the series — from Henning Mankell's foreword. At last, a key addition to the Kurt Wallander mystery series: the book of short mysteries that takes us back to the beginning. Here we meet Wallander the twenty-one-year-old patrolman on his first criminal investigation, Wallander the young father facing an unexpected danger on Christmas Eve, Wallander on the brink of middle age solving a case of poisoning, the newly separated Wallander investigating the murder of a local photographer, and Wallander the veteran detective discovering unexpected connections between a downed mystery plane and the assassination of a pair of spinster sisters. Over the course of these five mysteries, he comes into his own as a murder detective, defined by his simultaneously methodical and instinctive work, and is increasingly haunted from witnessing the worst aspects of an atomized society. Written from the unique perspective of an author looking back upon his own creation to discover his origins, these mysteries are vintage Mankell. Essential reading for all Wallander fans, The Pyramid is also a wonderful showcase for Mankell's powers as a writer whose works transcend their chosen genre to become thrilling and moral literature (Michael Ondaatje).

From the founding editor of Everyman's Library comes this enthralling illustrated collection of 33 fairy tales. Favorite English characters such as Dick Whittington, Jack the Giant Killer, and King Arthur appear alongside Tom Thumb, Jack and the Bean-Stalk, and other figures from the wider world of folklore. This work includes a variety of full-colour plates.

Here is another brilliantly original novel from the cult author of Snowcrash and Cryptonomicon. Since childhood, Raz has lived behind the walls of a 3,400-year-old monastery, a sanctuary for scientists, philosophers, and mathematicians. There, he and his cohorts are sealed off from the illiterate, irrational, unpredictable saecular world, an endless landscape of casinos and megastores that is plagued by recurring cycles of booms and busts, dark ages and renaissances, world wars and climate change. Until the day that a higher power, driven by fear, decides it is only these cloistered scholars who have the abilities to avert an impending catastrophe. And, one by one, Raz and his friends, mentors, and teachers are summoned forth without warning into the unknown.

Photographs from the Internet phenomenon Stuffonmycat.com clearly demonstrate the alphabet from A-Z by identifying all the stuff that is on the cat! This is the first Stuff on My Cat book for children!

Woolf's first distinctly modernist novel follows an aloof yet beloved young man from his childhood through his student days to his too-early death during World War I. Annotated and with an introduction by Vara Neverow.

Julian Trent, you have been found guilty by this court of perpetrating a violent and unprovoked attack on an innocent family including a charge of attempted murder. You have shown little or no remorse for your actions and I consider you a danger to society. When defense lawyer Geoffrey Mason hears the judgeas ruling at Londonas Old Bailey, he quietly hopes that a substantial sentence will be handed down to his arrogant young client. That Julian Trent only receives eight years seems all too lenient. Little does Mason realize that heall be looking Trent in the eyes again much sooner than that. Setting aside his barristeras gown and wig, Mason heads to Sandown racetrack to don his colorful racing silks. As an amateur jockey, he fulfills his true passion by pounding the turf in the heat of a steeplechase. Yet when a fellow rider is brutally murderedaa pitchfork driven through his chestaMasonas racing hobby soon becomes too close to his work. The prime suspect is one of their brethren, champion jockey Steve Mitchell, and the evidence against him seems overwhelming. Mason is reluctant to heed Mitchellas plea for legal helpabut he soon finds himself at the center of a sinister web of violence, threats and intimidation. Mason is left fighting a battle of right and wrong, and more immediately, a battle of life and death his own.

The unique and notable work being done by contemporary architects is generously presented in this illustrated volume. Their designs can be understood as homes intended to be interpretations of life and the environment. Each of the forty examples included.

«When it comes to love, there are a million theories to explain it», notes the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Middlesex in his introduction to this collection of love stories from literature. «But when it comes to love stories, things are simpler. A love story can never be about full possession. Love stories depend on disappointment, on unequal births and feuding families, on matrimonial boredom and at least one cold heart. Love stories, nearly without exception, give love a bad name.» Here then are 27 such cures for lovesickness and antidotes to adultery — by Harold Brodkey, Grace Paley, William Faulkner, James Joyce, Milan Kundera, and Vladimir Nabokov.»

In certain uncanny ways this wonderful, compelling novel prefigures Suite Francaise and rehearses some of the themes of her big unfinished sequence of novels. Nemirovsky must have down put her pen in 1940 and picked it straight up again to embark on Suite Francaise...This novel, though is finished, and exquisitely so — first published in France in 1947. It tells the story of two intertwined but warring French families through two world wars from 1911 to 1940, and its themes are war, love and money. This is Balzac or The Forsyte Saga on a smaller, more intimate scale, with the bourgeoisie observed close-up, with Nemirovsky's characteristically clear-eyed compassion and sly humour. Full of moving, vivid observation of the devastating effects of the two wars on a small Normandy town and an industrial family, whose patriarch is a monstrous David Golder character (as French as they come and not in the least Jewish). The exodus and flow of refugee humanity through the town in both wars pre-figures Suite Francaise, but differently again, because this is Normandy and near the Somme, and the town itself is twice razed. Evocative and unputdownable the novel brings home with heartbreaking detail and clarity how close were those two wars, how history repeated itself, unbelievably. It opens in the Edwardian era (on a fashionable Normandy beach) and ends with a changed world, under Nazi occupation. Nemirovsky has an astonishing ability to give you the most blinkered, small-minded of characters (in this case Mme Hardelot, mother of one of the central characters) and bring tears to your eyes — when Mme H realises that her son is leaving for the front in minutes rather than days... It's a gripping story of family life and starcrossed love, of money and feuds, against the backdrop of two terrible wars.