A brilliantly twisty tale from the No. 1 bestselling author of the Logan McRae series. Including an extract from his new Logan novel, The Missing and the Dead. It's the night of the big Referendum, and all Acting Detective Inspector Logan McRae has to do is find a missing 'No' campaigner. Should be easy enough... But, as usual, DCI Steel has plans of her own. As the votes are counted there's trouble brewing in the pubs and on the streets of Aberdeen. Logan's picked up a promising lead, but all is not quite what it seems, and things are about to go very, very wrong...

This brand new, shorter edition of the critically acclaimed work includes J.R.R. Tolkien's complete draft manuscript of The Hobbit, together with notes about its history, and is perfect for readers of all ages wishing to know more about how he came to write his beloved masterpiece. A Brief History of the Hobbit presents the complete unpublished text of the original manuscript of J.R.R.Tolkien's The Hobbit, accompanied by John Rateliff's lively and informative account of how the book came to be written and published. As well as recording important changes made to the story both before and after publication, it examines why those changes were made and how they reflect Tolkien's ever-growing concept of Middle-earth. The Hobbit was first published on 21 September 1937. Like its successor, The Lord of the Rings, it is a story that grew in the telling, and many characters and story threads in the published text are completely different from what Tolkien first wrote to read aloud to his young sons as part of their fireside reads. Like Christopher Tolkien's History of The Lord of the Rings before it, this is an invaluable companion to one of the most treasured stories in English literature. It offers fascinating new insights for those who have grown up with this enchanting tale, and will delight those who are about to enter Bilbo's round door for the first time.

Featuring interiors that exemplify the beauty and simplicity of small-space design, 150 Best Mini Interior Ideas is the latest volume in the bestselling 150 Best series. Composed of stunning photographs, floor plans, and insightful text, this book will help you discover how architects and designers from around the world work within a confined square footage to create innovative living spaces. 150 Best Mini Interior Ideas profiles a diverse range of homes, from rural and urban constructions to town houses and renovations. It reveals how to utilize walls, floors, and furniture to make a small room appear large, and it shares other methods and decorating tricks to inspire homeowners and designers. Secret storage systems, convertible furniture, and mindfulness of materials combine to create unique and flexible homes. This extensive collection celebrates functional, striking design meant to maximize the most minimal of spaces.

The streets don't come much meaner than those found in Mega-City One. Only the Judges — empowered to dispense law and order — keep the city from falling into total anarchy. Toughest of them all is Judge Dredd — he is the law and these are his stories. In this 24th volume of the bestselling Case Files series, Dredd is faced with one of his hardest challenges yet — dispensing justice in the Big Meg's worst sector known as The Pit! Also, the ultimate lawman faces a legendary war robot, when Judge Dredd squares off against the ABC Warrior Hammerstein!

SHORTLISTED FOR THE DYLAN THOMAS PRIZE The stories of Kseniya Melnik's debut collection are small-town miracles, each a miniature epic. Their focus is Magadan, a town in the Northern Far East of Russia, and the unvisited lives of its inhabitants and emigrants — schoolchildren, doctors, teachers, mothers, daughters. Some characters span several stories. Some of their stories span decades and continents. The measure of their telling, though, is invariably the measure of everyday existence. Their dramas, too, are made of quotidian stuff, each life with its own sly or suppressed tragedies, and its brief, often unexpected ecstasies. Kseniya Melnik's sensibility is sober and humorous; her stories are moving and funny. In their patient, deliberate unfolding — at once surprising and convincing — and in the fitness of their details — vital because they are suggestive — we sense, above all, an assurance that is dazzling.

Filled with information about firefighters and Scarry's sense of fun, this book will delight young readers everywhere. Drippy and Sticky the decorators have come to paint the Busytown Fire Station. But with Smokey and the other brave firefighters rushing in and out to rescue people, there are quite a few wet paint mishaps!

The new Hercule Poirot novel — another brilliant murder mystery that can only be solved by the eponymous Belgian detective and his little grey cells. Since the publication of her first book in 1920, Agatha Christie wrote 33 novels, two plays and more than 50 short stories featuring Hercule Poirot. Now, for the first time ever, the guardians of her legacy have approved a brand new novel featuring Dame Agatha's most beloved creation. Hercule Poirot's quiet supper in a London coffee house is interrupted when a young woman confides to him that she is about to be murdered. She is terrified, but begs Poirot not to find and punish her killer. Once she is dead, she insists, justice will have been done. Later that night, Poirot learns that three guests at the fashionable Bloxham Hotel have been murdered, a cufflink placed in each one's mouth. Could there be a connection with the frightened woman? While Poirot struggles to put together the bizarre pieces of the puzzle, the murderer prepares another hotel bedroom for a fourth victim... In the hands of internationally bestselling author Sophie Hannah, Poirot plunges into a mystery set in 1920s London — a diabolically clever puzzle that can only be solved by the talented Belgian detective and his little grey cells.

An achingly funny story about how to be your own hero when life pulls the rug out from under your feet. From the author of the bestselling YOU HAD ME AT HELLO Delia Moss isn't quite sure where she went wrong. When she proposed and discovered her boyfriend was sleeping with someone else — she thought it was her fault. When she realised life would never be the same again — she thought it was her fault. And when he wanted her back like nothing had changed — Delia started to wonder if perhaps she was not to blame... From Newcastle to London and back again, with dodgy jobs, eccentric bosses and annoyingly handsome journalists thrown in, Delia must find out where her old self went — and if she can ever get her back.

From one of Britain's most accomplished, acclaimed, and garlanded writers, Hilary Mantel delivers a brilliant collection of contemporary short stories that demonstrate what modern England has becomeIn The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher, Hilary Mantel's trademark gifts of penetrating characterization, unsparing eye, and rascally intelligence are once again fully on display. Her classic wicked humor in each story — which range from a ghost story to a vampire story to near-memoir to mini-sagas of family and social fracture — brilliantly unsettles the reader in that unmistakably Mantel way. Mantel brutally and acutely writes about gender, marriage, class, family, and sex, cutting to the core of human experience. Unpredictable, diverse, and even shockingly unexpected, each story grabs you by the throat within a couple of sentences. The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher displays a magnificent writer at the peak of her powers.

The epic new novel from Sunday Times Short Story Prize-winner Anthony Doerr. Marie Laure lives with her father in Paris within walking distance of the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of the locks (there are thousands of locks in the museum). When she is six, she goes blind, and her father builds her a model of their neighborhood, every house, every manhole, so she can memorize it with her fingers and navigate the real streets with her feet and cane. When the Germans occupy Paris, father and daughter flee to Saint-Malo on the Brittany coast, where Marie-Laure's agoraphobic great uncle lives in a tall, narrow house by the sea wall. In another world in Germany, an orphan boy, Werner, grows up with his younger sister, Jutta, both enchanted by a crude radio Werner finds. He becomes a master at building and fixing radios, a talent that wins him a place at an elite and brutal military academy and, ultimately, makes him a highly specialized tracker of the Resistance. Werner travels through the heart of Hitler Youth to the far-flung outskirts of Russia, and finally into Saint-Malo, where his path converges with Marie-Laure. Doerr's gorgeous combination of soaring imagination with observation is electric. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another. Ten years in the writing, All the Light We Cannot See is his most ambitious and dazzling work.

Big Nate is back! This companion activity book to the bestselling Big Nate series is packed with laughs, activities and fun. Big Nate is created by Lincoln Peirce, who inspired Jeff Kinney, author of 'Diary of a Wimpy Kid'. Big Nate is ready to rock, and with this fourth activity book in the series you can join the comic craziness and laugh along too! With 224 pages of Big Nate fun, including word puzzles, drawing games, brain-bending quizzes and lots and lots of hilarity, you'll never run out of Big Nate to enjoy. You can create your own comics, do quizzes on the characters, and get into Nate's crazy head in this great value for money activity book based on the bestselling series.

The latest jaw-achingly funny, number-one bestselling novel from David Walliams — now out in paperback. Make your appointment if you dare... Darkness had come to the town. Strange things were happening in the dead of night. Children would put a tooth under their pillow for the tooth fairy, but in the morning they would wake up to find... a dead slug; a live spider; hundreds of earwigs creeping and crawling beneath their pillow. Evil was at work. But who or what was behind it? Read this book and find out!

The heart-pounding conclusion to the InterWorld series, by award-winning writers Neil Gaiman, Michael Reaves and Mallory Reaves As the threat of FrostNight looms ever closer, Joey Harker seeks out more of his fellow Walkers across the Altiverse, training them as fast as he can. But even a solid team of recruits can't prepare Joey for the ultimate showdown with InterWorld's enemies, old and new. Joey never wanted to be in charge. But he's the one everyone is looking to now, and he'll have to step up if he has any hope of saving InterWorld, the Multiverse, and everything in between.

Perfect for fans of John le Carre, a gripping and suspenseful spy novel from 'the master of the modern spy thriller' (Mail on Sunday) MI6's Head of Station in Turkey is killed in a mysterious plane crash. Amelia Levene, chief of the Secret Intelligence Service, wants the incident investigated — quickly and quietly. The only man she can trust is Thomas Kell, a disgraced spy searching for redemption. Arriving in Istanbul, Kell discovers that MI6 operations in the region have been fatally compromised: a traitor inside Western Intelligence threatens not just the Special Relationship, but the security of the entire Middle East. Kell's search for the mole takes him from London, to Greece, and into Eastern Europe. But when Kell is betrayed by those closest to him, the stakes become personal. He will do anything to see this operation through — including putting himself, and others, in the line of fire...

The breathtaking new adventure starring Ben Hope A lost, aimless and hard-drinking Ben Hope has wandered back to his old haunt in Ireland. The ex-SAS soldier is searching for peace, but trouble soon appears when Kirsten Hall, a young journalist, is brutally murdered right in front of him. Unable to prevent it, Ben is driven by guilt to hunt down the killers. All he has to go on is a handful of clues from Kirsten's research — but how can the journals of Lady Stamford, the wife of an English lord during the time of the Irish Great Famine, have put Kirsten in mortal danger? Ben's quest for the truth leads him across the world and finally to Oklahoma, USA, where a deadly secret awaits. What connects the journals, a wealthy American politician and an intrigue surrounding the Irish famine? What Ben uncovers is a shocking historical conspiracy linked to the deaths of some two million people: a veritable holocaust that time has all but forgotten. Those who are still profiting from the lies and corruption of the time, and who are ready to kill anyone to protect their secret, are about to pay...

A classic coming-of-age tale set in a vivid and richly-imagined world from Sunday Times bestselling author Joe Abercrombie. 'Grabbed me from page one and refused to let go' GEORGE R.R. MARTIN Betrayed by his family and left for dead, Prince Yarvi, reluctant heir to a divided kingdom, has vowed to reclaim a throne he never wanted. But first he must survive cruelty, chains and the bitter waters of the Shattered Sea itself — all with only one good hand. Born a weakling in the eyes of a hard, cold world, he cannot grip a shield or swing an axe, so has sharpened his mind to a deadly edge. Gathering a strange fellowship of the outcast, he finds they can help him more than any noble could. Even so, Yarvi's path may end as it began — in twists, traps and tragedy ...

Fighting for survival in a shattered world...the truth is her only hope. The thrillingly dark sequel to No. 1 New York Times bestseller, DIVERGENT. I have done bad things. I can't take them back, and they are part of who I am. Tris has survived a brutal attack on her former home and family. But she has paid a terrible price. Wracked by grief and guilt, she becomes ever more reckless as she struggles to accept her new future. Yet if Tris wants to uncover the truth about her world, she must be stronger than ever...because more shocking choices and sacrifices lie ahead.

Prepare yourself for the IELTS exam using Collins Practice Tests for IELTS Book 2 By using Practice Tests for IELTS 2, you will: * Feel completely confident about how the IELTS exam works * Know what to expect on the day of the exam * Improve your score through realistic practice All you need for your ideal IELTS score: — Four complete Academic IELTS tests — PLUS Two complete General Reading and Writing papers — A clear guide to how the IELTS exam works — Useful information on common mistakes and how to avoid them — CD + audioscript for the Speaking and Listening papers — Answer key + model answers for the Speaking and Writing papers You can trust Collins COBUILD Practice Tests for IELTS 2 contains a mini-dictionary with definitions based on COBUILD content. The 4.5-billion-word Collins Corpus is the world's largest database of the English language. It is updated every month and has been at the heart of Collins COBUILD for over 20 years.

Collins Easy Learning English Verbs is an accessible guide to English verbs. With simple explanations of English verbs and the way they work, this book will prove indispensable for anyone who wants to improve their knowledge of English verbs.

Collins Easy Learning Grammar and Punctuation is an accessible guide to English grammar and punctuation. With clear, concise explanations on everything from adverbs to word order, and from apostrophes to semicolons, this book is indispensable for understanding correct usage.