Agatha Christie's life and career told through the decades, from the never-before-published original ending to her first book to the unused ideas for her last, complete with two unpublished Agatha Christie stories — including a lost Miss Marple. In this follow-up volume to the acclaimed Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks, Christie archivist and expert John Curran leads the reader through the six decades of Agatha Christie's writing career, unearthing some remarkable clues to her success and a number of never-before-published excerpts and stories from her archives. Starting his investigation in the 1920s, John Curran examines the conventions of detective novels as they existed then and how Agatha Christie's publisher talked her into changing the ending of her very first book, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, a move that almost certainly changed the fortunes of not only her career but the future of the whole crime writing genre. For the very first time, this book prints Agatha's original ending, painstakingly transcribed from her notebooks. Every decade saw Agatha Christie's success grow to new heights. The emergence of the world-famous Collins Crime Club in 1930 brought with it the very first Miss Marple mystery, the austerity of the 1940s had Agatha Christie preparing to kill off Hercule Poirot, and the 1950s saw her experiment increasingly with formats influenced by more modern thrillers. Focusing on the detail of more than 20 Christie novels to illustrate this, John Curran shows the evolution of Agatha's writing through the decades, including the influence of the swinging sixties and seventies, concluding the book with a look at Agatha's last notebook, using his Christie knowledge to speculate about what she had in mind based on her brief notes for an unwritten final book. Also includes a number of short stories from the archives reproduced in full, including the unpublished The Man Who Knew, How I Created Hercule Poirot, and an early draft for a Miss Marple story, The Case of the Caretaker's Wife.

Tally has finally become Pretty. Now her looks are beyond perfect, her clothes are cool, her boyfriend is totally gorgeous, and she's completely popular. It's everything she's ever wanted. But beneath all the fun — the non-stop parties, the high-tech luxury, the total freedom — is the nagging sense that something is very wrong. Something important. Then a message from Tally's Ugly past arrives. Reading it, Tally remembers what's wrong with Pretty life, and the fun stops cold. Now she has to choose between fighting to forget what she knows and fighting for her life...

This third edition has been fully updated to reflect today's business world with new topics and example sentences. Armed with this book, you will learn the words you need for effective business communication. Suitable for intermediate/upper-intermediate learners of English (CEF level B1-B2), Collins Business Vocabulary in Practice presents business words in context and exercises to help you remember them. New words are introduced using Collins COBUILD definitions and supported by examples of real English from the Collins corpus. The user-friendly format, with visually dynamic presentation of vocabulary on the left-hand pages and related practice exercises on the right-hand pages, will help you gain a better understanding of the English language in the field of business and commerce. Collins Business Vocabulary in Practice is an indispensable reference tool for learners of English studying business in today's world.

Meet the Hueys — a fabulously quirky group of characters from international bestselling, award-winning author/illustrator, Oliver Jeffers, creator of How to Catch a Star and Lost and Found. The thing about the Hueys is that they are all the same! They all look the same, think the same and do the same things. Until one day, Rupert knits himself a new jumper! How will the other Hueys react? A hilarious story about individuality.

An absorbing novel about family, love and friendship from the bestselling author of Last Christmas. With four children, a Christmas cookbook to write, and her mum suffering from dementia, Cat Tinsall has plenty to juggle. When her eldest daughter, Mel, starts going off the rails, Cat has even more on her plate. Pippa Holliday adores her family, although often finds her hands full. When Dan is involved in a terrible accident, Pippa’s world is suddenly turned upside down. Balancing her job as a school teacher with twins and her step-son Steven isn’t easy for Marianne North. With her husband’s ex causing trouble, life is getting even trickier. As Cat, Pippa and Marianne help each other through a difficult year, they’re all hoping for a much brighter Christmas.

«Mister! He said with a sawdusty sneeze, I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees.» The Lorax is the original eco warrior and his message rings loud today. In this fable about the dangers of destroying our forests, he tries to save the Truffula trees from the greedy once-ler's axe. The Lorax is a hilarious story with typical zany humour and silly rhymes, that packs a punch with its ecological message without feeling heavy-handed or worthy. The Dr Seuss blend of zany pictures and unique rhyme, rhythm and repetition mean that all ages will love and learn from this wonderful book.»

A hilarious picture book featuring Paddington, the classic bear from Darkest Peru, as he takes part in a local family sports event, with rather sticky results! Paddington is in high competitive spirits when he accompanies the Brown family to a local sports day. But whether he's putting the shot, helping Jonathan and Judy get ready for the three-legged race, or taking part in a relay, nothing goes quite as planned. Will a gold medal ever be within Paddington's reach?

Author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Against All Enemies, former presidential advisor and counter-terrorism expert Richard A. Clarke sounds a timely and chilling warning about America's vulnerability in a terrifying new international conflict — Cyber War! Every concerned American should read this startling and explosive book that offers an insider's view of White House 'Situation Room' operations and carries the reader to the frontlines of our cyber defense. Cyber War exposes a virulent threat to our nation's security. This is no X-Files fantasy or conspiracy theory madness — this is real.

An icon and a phenomenon — both a muse and a canvas for many of the fashion industry's greatest creative visionaries — the remarkable Kate Moss has endured as a bellwether of fashion and pop culture. For years, her image in magazines, on billboards, and on the screen has influenced how women see themselves and their bodies, while setting societal standards for beauty. Her every step is still followed avidly in the tabloids, and her mercurial image can seemingly sell anything, from popular electronics to global luxury brands such as Calvin Klein, Longchamp, Dior, Chanel, and many others. In Kate Moss, author Christian Salmon explores how the twig became the Myth. Insightfully unravelling the mystery that is Moss — and the look and persona that has continually shifted and changed in perfect sync with the zeitgeist — Kate Moss is striking for its compelling read, beautifully enhanced with breathtaking images of the model throughout her career.

Inspired by a true story, this is the beautifully written tale of how a mighty gorilla wins his freedom. A winning blend of humour and poignancy that will appeal to fans of Michael Morpurgo. Ivan is an easy-going gorilla who has spent his life performing for the crowds at the Exit 8 shopping mall. He rarely misses life in the jungle. In fact, he hardly thinks about it at all. But everything changes when a baby elephant called Ruby arrives and Ivan realises he must find a new life for them both. Told from Ivan’s perspective this is a stand-out novel with a pertinent message for readers of 9+.

An epic thriller featuring the maverick methods of Police Detective Harry Hole as he investigates a series of brutal bank robberies and the suspicious suicide of a female artist.

The new novel from Patrick Gale, author of Richard & Judy-bestseller Notes from an Exhibition, returning readers to his beloved Cornish coastline. Do you need me to pray for you now for a specific reason? I'm going to die. We're all going to die. Does dying frighten you? I mean I'm going to kill myself. When 20-year-old Lenny Barnes, paralysed in a rugby accident, commits suicide in the presence of Barnaby Johnson, the much-loved priest of a West Cornwall parish, the tragedy's reverberations open up the fault-lines between Barnaby and his nearest and dearest. The personal stories of his wife, children and lover illuminate Barnaby's ostensibly happy life, and the gulfs of unspoken sadness that separate them all. Across this web of relations scuttles Barnaby's repellent nemesis — a man as wicked as his prey is virtuous. Returning us to the rugged Cornish landscape of Notes from an Exhibition, Patrick Gale lays bare the lives and the thoughts of a whole community and asks us: what does it mean to be good?

HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics. 'It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open!' Written when Mary Shelley was only nineteen-years old, this chilling tale of a young scientist's desire to create life still resonates today. Victor Frankenstein's monster is stitched together from the stolen limbs of the dead, and the result is a grotesque being who, rejected by his maker, sets out on a journey to reek his revenge. In the most famous gothic horror story ever told, Shelley confronts the limitations of science, the nature of human cruelty and the pathway to forgiveness with rich language and evocative imagery.

HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics. 'I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth.' Shipwrecked on the high seas, Lemuel Gulliver finds himself washed up on the strange island of Lilliput, a land inhabited by quarrelsome miniature people. On his travels he continues to meet others who force him to reflect on human behaviour — the giants of Brobdingnag, the Houyhnhnms and the Yahoos. In this scathing satire on the politics and morals of the 18th Century, Swift's condemnation of society and its institutions still resonates today.

HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics. 'How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrid, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young! If it was only the other way!' Wilde's first and only published novel recounts the story of handsome Dorian Gray who upon having his portrait painted desires that it will age and grow ugly while he may remain eternally beautiful. The painting, which reflects each of Gray's sins and transgressions in its hideousness, haunts him until it finally becomes unbearable. In this dark tale of duplicity and mortality, Wilde creates a world where art and reality collide.

Michael Chabon, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of 'The Adventures of Kavalier & Clay' and 'The Yiddish Policemen's Union', offers his first major work of non-fiction, an autobiographical narrative as inventive, beautiful and powerful as his novels. A shy manifesto; an impractical handbook; the true story of a fabulist; an entire life in parts and pieces: 'Manhood for Amateurs' is the first sustained work of personal writing from Michael Chabon. In these insightful, provocative, slyly interlinked essays, one of our most brilliant and humane writers presents his autobiography and vision of life in the way so many of us experience our own: as a series of reflections, regrets and re-examinations, each sparked by an encounter, in the present, that holds some legacy of the past. What does it mean to be a man today? Chabon invokes and interprets and struggles to reinvent for us, with characteristic warmth and lyric wit, the personal and family history that haunts him even as it goes on being written every day. As a son, a husband, and above all as a father of four young children, Chabon's memories of childhood, of his parents' marriage and divorce, of moments of painful adolescent comedy and giddy encounters with the popular art and literature of his own youth, are like a theme played — on different instruments, with a fresh tempo and in a new key — by the mad quartet of which he now finds himself co-conductor. At once dazzling, hilarious and moving, 'Manhood for Amateurs' is destined to become a classic.

The new Logan McRae novel set in gritty Aberdeen from the bestselling author of Cold Granite and Blind Eye. Richard Knox has served his time, so why shouldn't he be allowed to live wherever he wants? Yes, in the past he was a violent rapist, but he's seen the error of his ways. Found God. Wants to leave his dark past in Newcastle behind him and make a new start. Or so he says. Detective Sergeant Logan McRae isn't exactly thrilled to be part of the team helping Knox settle into his new Aberdeen home. He's even less thrilled to be stuck with DSI Danby from Northumbria Police — the man who put Knox behind bars for ten years — supposedly here to 'keep an eye on things'. Only things are about to go very, very wrong. Edinburgh gangster Malk the Knife wants a slice of the development boom Donald Trump's golf course is bringing to the Granite City, whether local crime lord Wee Hamish Mowat likes it or not. Three heavies from Newcastle want a 'quiet word' with DSI Danby about a missing mob accountant. And Richard Knox's dark past isn't done with him yet!