1688. Beth Ambrose has lead a sheltered life within the walls of Merryfields, her family home on the outskirts of London; a place where her parents provide a sanctuary for melancholic souls. A passionate and gifted artist, Beth shares a close bond with Johannes the painter, a troubled resident at Merryfields, who nurtures her talents and takes her on as his apprentice. But as political tensions begin to rise in the capital, Noah Leyton arrives at their door in the middle of the night with a proposition that turns Beth's world upside down. Meanwhile, Merryfields becomes refuge to a mysterious new guest, whose connections provide an opportunity for Beth to fulfil her artistic ambitions. But she soon realises it comes at a price. As the Glorious Revolution begins to throw the whole country into turmoil, can Beth find the courage to follow her heart and defend all she holds dear? And change the course of history for good...

For Emily Pool, India is a magical place where she has the freedom to escape her mother's suffocating influence. Her days are spent exploring the canals and gardens of East Bengal, and admiringly observing her glamorous, dignified neighbours, the Nikolides. But just as the cracks in Emily's family home are papered over, so do the Pools strive to maintain an outward impression of respectability, and it is through the Nikolides that Emily is exposed to a world of adult deceit and attrition. And when her beloved dog dies, the event forces a confrontation and reveals to Emily that nothing in the town is quite as it seems...

People came in and out, chairs were moved, dishes gathered up on trays, but it was happening at a great distance; she concentrated entirely on his pink face crowned with foppish curls. Genteel, passive Ann works for the BBC in London and is engaged to a successful academic, fulfilling her snobbish mother's ambitions — more or less — while the Swinging Sixties happen elsewhere, to other people. Then she meets William: snub-nosed and generous, cunning and protean. She is first seduced, then transfixed, as William's past, present and future swirl around her kaleidoscopically, overwhelmingly, and Ann is herself irrevocably, and irreparably, changed.

The fascinating, intimately told story of the wild and romantic life of Pannonica Rothschild, the author's great aunt, which moves from London to Africa during World War II and finally to the postwar jazz world of New York City.

A woman has vanished while digging a dinosaur bone bed in the remote wilderness of Canada. Somehow, the only evidence has made its way to the inbox of Chief Medical Examiner Kay Scarpetta, over two thousand miles away in Boston. She has no idea why. But as events unfold with alarming speed, Scarpetta begins to suspect the paleontologist's disappearance is connected to a series of crimes much closer to home: a gruesome murder, inexplicable tortures, and trace evidence from the last living creatures of the dinosaur age. When she turns to those around her, Scarpetta finds that the danger and suspicion have penetrated even her closest circles. Her niece Lucy speaks in riddles. Her lead investigator Pete Marino and FBI husband Benton Wesley have secrets of their own. Feeling alone and betrayed, Scarpetta is tempted by someone from her past as she tracks a killer both cunning and cruel.

The stories in this collection, some written before du Maurier published her first novel, reflect many human emotions: romance, disenchantment, fantasy, nostalgia, ambition, irony, the longing for adventure. Each of them is based on something observed, something overheard, and all will provide pleasure for every mood.

When a troubled model falls to her death from a snow-covered Mayfair balcony, it is assumed that she has committed suicide. However, her brother has his doubts, and calls in private investigator Cormoran Strike to look into the case. A war veteran, wounded both physically and psychologically, Strike's life is in disarray. The case gives him a financial lifeline, but it comes at a personal cost: the more he delves into the young model's complex world, the darker things get — and the closer he gets to terrible danger... A gripping, elegant mystery steeped in the atmosphere of London — from the hushed streets of Mayfair, to the backstreet pubs of the East End, to the bustle of Soho — The Cuckoo's Calling is a remarkable debut. Introducing Cormoran Strike, it is a classic crime novel in the tradition of PD James and Ruth Rendell, and unlike any other book you will read this year.

Adulteress? Sorceress? Immoral Temptress? No English Queen has been so persistently vilified as Anne Boleyn. Even after her execution in May 1536 — on trumped-up charges of adultery — the portrait that has come down to us is the one drawn by her enemies. Joanna Denny's compelling new biography of Anne presents a radically different picture of her — a highly literate, accomplished and intellectual woman, and a devout protagonist of the Portestant faith. It was Anne who played the key role in separating England from the Church of Rome. Her tragedy was that her looks and vivacious charm attracted the notice of a violent and paranoid King Henry — and trapped her in the vicious politics of the Tudor court. Joanna Denny's enthralling book plunges the reader into the fascinating, turbulent time that changed England forever.

'The iron of the bridge felt hot under my hand. The sun had been upon it all day. Gripping hard with my hands I lifted myself on to the bar and gazed down steadily on the water passing under... I thought of places I would never see, and women I should never love. A white sea breaking on a beach, the slow rustle of a shivering tree, the hot scent of grass... I breathed deeply and I felt as though the waiting water rose up in front of me and would not let me go' As far as his father, an accomplished poet, is concerned, Richard will never amount to anything, and so he decides to take his fate into his own hands. But at the last moment, he is saved by Jake, who appeals to Richard not to waste his life. Together they set out for adventure, jumping aboard the first ship they see and working their passage to Norway and around Europe, eventually to bohemian Paris, where Richard meets Hesta, a captivating music student...

Eavesdropping on Jane Austen's England explores the real England of Jane Austen's lifetime. It was a troubled period, with disturbing changes in industry and agriculture and a constant dread of invasion and revolution. The comfortable, tranquil country of her fiction is a complete contrast to the England in which she actually lived. From forced marriages and the sale of wives in marketplaces to boys and girls working down mines or as chimney sweeps, this enthralling social history reveals how our ancestors worked, played and struggled to survive. Taking in the horror of ghosts and witches, bull baiting, highwaymen and the stench of corpses swinging on roadside gibbets, this book is a must-read for anyone wanting to discover the genuine story of Jane Austen's England and the background to her novels.

An award-winning and bestselling SF writer, Kim Stanley Robinson is widely acknowledged as one of the most exciting and visionary writers in the field. His latest novel, 2312, imagined how we would be living 300 years from now. Now, with his new novel, he turns from our future to our past — to the Palaeolithic era, and an extraordinary moment in humanity's development. An emotionally powerful and richly detailed portrayal of life 30,000 years ago, it is a novel that will appeal both to his existing fans and a whole new mainstream readership.

What would have happened had Britain not entered the First World War but stood aside as a neutral non-belligerent? What might the result have been had Britain concluded a separate peace with Nazi Germany in 1940 or 1941? How would the British have behaved had they lost the Battle of Britain and been conquered and occupied by the armed forces of Hitler's Third Reich? Altered Pasts is a fascinating discussion of the historical and cultural significance of imagining the road not taken. From its beginnings as an Enlightenment parlour game to its relationship with modern-day conspiracy theories, Richard Evans charts the social and political implications of counterfactual history and its capacity for being a mirror on the present.

I felt the worlds of ocean and ice were meeting in a frontier of rage, as if the Earth had torn in two along this line.This was a place if there ever was a place, where you could disappear. The year is 1845 and young researcher Eliot Saxby is paid to go on an expedition to the Arctic in the hope of finding remains of the by now extinct Great Auk. He joins a regular hunting ship, but the crew and the passengers are not what they seem. Caught in the web of relationships on board, Eliot struggles to understand the motivations of the sociopathic, embroidery-loving Captain Sykes, the silent First Mate French, the flamboyant laudanum-addicted Bletchley and, most importantly of all, Bletchley's beautiful but strange 'cousin' Clara. As the ship moves further and further into the wilds of the Arctic sea, Eliot clings to what he believes in, desperate to save Clara but drawn irrevocably back into the past that haunts him. The first historical novel from an author who has been critically acclaimed for his two contemporary novels (Salt and The Wake), The Collector of Lost Things is a compulsive, beautifully writtten read.

When her mother dies, Mary Yellan makes the grim journey across bleak Cornish moorland to Jamaica Inn, the home of her Aunt Patience and her husband, Joss Merlyn. On arriving at the gloomy, threatening inn, with the coachman's warning echoing in her mind, she finds her aunt a cowering shadow, and her uncle a hulking, vicious brute. Even more alarming, Jamaica Inn has no guests and is never open to the public. Mary finds herself powerless to help her aunt, and is drawn unwillingly into the misdeeds of Joss and his accomplices. Even more disturbing are her feelings for Jem, a man she dare not trust... Jamaica Inn is a dark and gripping gothic tale that will remind readers of two other great classics, Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights.

My love story may not be the sort you read about in books or see in films... Love stories have glorious highs and ghastly lows. But when it comes to my own life, I'd have to say, you can keep your fabulous highs and I'll happily steer clear of the terrible lows. After a rocky start in life, Jenny Taylor, 27, star receptionist at the local doctors surgery, has things all worked out thanks to a list of ten daily things she must do to keep the blues at bay. But her life is turned upside down when she meets aspiring musician Joe King. And reliable boyfriend Matt proposes. And then her mum leaves her dad and moves into Jenny's flat determined to bond. Hilarious, honest and heartbreaking, Just a Girl, Standing in Front of a Boy is an edgy modern love story that will make you look at your own love story in a whole new way. Lucy-Anne Holmes is the bestselling author of 50 Ways to Find a Lover.

Rhea — dark, intense and brilliant — and her golden, voluptuous sister Amber are not alike, but they are bound tighter than most: by love, by the loss of their father, and by the man who stands between them. Lewis is Amber's husband and the ferociously driven director of the biotech lab where Rhea is a rising star. In search of funding, academic advancement and in alchemical pursuit of the perfect stem cell — their Holy Grail in one flawlessly reproducing genetic blueprint — Rhea and Lewis inhabit a rarefied world. Putting their trust in science, they are blinkered against the fatal human element: sex and envy, treachery and error. Amber, however, desperate for a child and embarking on fertility treatment, must confront precisely this flawed physicality, and a Faustian pact is forged. As the three are increasingly drawn into a transgressive relationship, the result is a series of betrayals that none, finally, will be able to forgive. Breathing on Glass is both coolly analytical and erotically subversive in its exploration of passion and power intertwined, and breeds a whole DNA sequence of cautionary tales: on weakness, temptation, ambition and the limits of science.

When the British wrested New Amsterdam from the Dutch in 1664, the truth about its thriving, polyglot society began to disappear into myths about an island purchased for 24 dollars and a cartoonish peg-legged governor. But the story of the Dutch colony of New Netherland was merely lost, not destroyed: 12,000 pages of its records — recently declared a national treasure — are now being translated. Drawing on this remarkable archive, Russell Shorto has created a gripping narrative-a story of global sweep centred on a wilderness called Manhattan — that transforms our understanding of early America. The Dutch colony pre-dated the original thirteen colonies, yet it seems strikingly familiar. Its capital was cosmopolitan and multi-ethnic, and its citizens valued free trade, individual rights, and religious freedom. Their champion was a progressive, young lawyer named Adriaen van der Donck, who emerges in these pages as a forgotten American patriot and whose political vision brought him into conflict with Peter Stuyvesant, the autocratic director of the Dutch colony. The struggle between these two strong-willed men laid the foundation for New York City and helped shape American culture. The Island at the Center of the World uncovers a lost world and offers a surprising new perspective on our own.

When a mysterious package is delivered to Robin Ellacott, she is horrified to discover that it contains a woman's severed leg. Her boss, private detective Cormoran Strike, is less surprised but no less alarmed. There are four people from his past who he thinks could be responsible — and Strike knows that any one of them is capable of sustained and unspeakable brutality. With the police focusing on the one suspect Strike is increasingly sure is not the perpetrator, he and Robin take matters into their own hands, and delve into the dark and twisted worlds of the other three men. But as more horrendous acts occur, time is running out for the two of them... A fiendishly clever mystery with unexpected twists around every corner, Career of Evil is also a gripping story of a man and a woman at a crossroads in their personal and professional lives. You will not be able to put this book down.

Terry Flynt is a struggling legal clerk, desperately trying to get promoted. And then he is given the biggest opportunity of his career: to help defend a millionaire accused of murdering a woman in his hotel suite. The only problem is that the accused man, Vernon James, turns out to be Terry's sworn enemy — a man who betrayed him and turned all his friends against him at university. This case could potentially make Terry's career, but how can he defend a man that he loathes? With the trial date looming, Terry delves deeper into Vernon's life and is forced to confront secrets from their shared past that could have devastating consequences for them both. For years he has wanted to witness his former friend's downfall, but with so much at stake, how can Terry be sure that Vernon is guilty? And what choices must he make to ensure that justice is done? Packed with twists, turns and an unforgettable trial scene, The Verdict is the most page-turning British legal thriller in many years.