'Perhaps we shall not see each other again. I will write to you, though, and tell you, as best I can, the story of your family. A glass-blower, remember, breathes life into a vessel, giving it shape and form and sometimes beauty; but he can with that same breath, shatter and destroy it'. Faithful to her word, Sophie Duval reveals to her long-lost nephew the tragic story of a family of master craftsmen in eighteenth-century France. The world of the glass-blowers has its own traditions, it's own language — and its own rules. 'If you marry into glass'. Pierre Labbe warns his daughter, 'you will say goodbye to everything familiar, and enter a closed world'. But crashing into this world comes the violence and terror of the French Revolution against which, the family struggles to survive. The Glass Blowers is a remarkable achievement — an imaginative and exciting reworking of du Maurier's own family history.

In Regency London, the only way for a woman to succeed is to beat men at their own game. So when Mary Anne Clarke seeks an escape from her squalid surroundings in Bowling Inn Alley, she ventures first into the scurrilous world of the pamphleteers. Her personal charms are such, however, that before long she comes to the notice of the Duke of York. With her taste for luxury and power, Mary Anne, now a royal mistress, must aim higher. Her lofty connections allow her to establish a thriving trade in military commissions, provoking a scandal that rocks the government — and brings personal disgrace. A vivid portrait of overweening ambition, MARY ANNE is set during the Napoleonic Wars and based on du Maurier's own great-great- grandmother.

'It is rather awful, Emma thought as she walked across the fields down to the farm, how this business is leading us all into subterfuge and deception, and we can't really tell who is friend and who is enemy'... Emma wakes up one morning to an apocalyptic world. The cosy existence she shares with her grandmother, a famous retired actress, has been shattered: there's no post, no telephone, no radio — and an American warship sits in the harbour. As the two women piece together clues about the 'friendly' military occupation on their doorstep, family, friends and neighbours gather round to protect their heritage. In this chilling novel of the future, Daphne du Maurier explores the implications of a political, economic and military alliance between Britain and the United States.

This illustrated volume celebrates London's history and present, providing a record of its architecture. The text highlights the spirit of each area through its history and the essence of life there today. It includes quotations from chroniclers such as Pepys, Wordsworth and Dickens.

Two weeks after September 11th, award-winning journalist Asne Seierstad went to Afghanistan to report on the conflict. In the following spring she returned to live with a bookseller and his family for several months. The Bookseller of Kabul is the fascinating account of her time spent living with the family of thirteen in their four-roomed home. Bookseller Sultan Khan defied the authorities for twenty years to supply books to the people of Kabul. He was arrested, interrogated and imprisoned by the communists and watched illiterate Taliban soldiers burn piles of his books in the street. He even resorted to hiding most of his stock in attics all over Kabul. But while Khan is passionate in his love of books and hatred of censorship, he is also a committed Muslim with strict views on family life. As an outsider, Seierstad is able to move between the private world of the women — including Khan's two wives — and the more public lives of the men. The result is an intimate and fascinating portrait of a family which also offers a unique perspective on a troubled country.

«The Dream of Scipio», Iain Pears' first mainstream novel since «An Instance of the Fingerpost», is a work of astonishing ambition that appeals equally to the head and heart. It is set in Provence at three different critical moments of Western Civilisation — the collapse of the Roman Empire in the fifth century, the Black Death in the fourteenth, and the Second World War in the twentieth — and follows the fortunes of three men. The story of each man is woven through the narrative, linked by the classical text that gives the book its title, and by each man's love for an extraordinary woman. The narratives intertwine seamlessly, but what joins them thematically is an ancient text — «The Dream of Scipio» — a work of neo-Platonism that poses timeless philosophical questions. Expertly imagined and perfectly realised, «The Dream of Scipio» is a bonafide novel of ideas, a dazzling feat of storytelling, a fiction for our times. Dense, dark, erudite and yet utterly compelling.»

Dick Young is lent a house in Cornwall by his friend Professor Magnus Lane. During his stay he agrees to serve as a guinea pig for a new drug that Magnus has discovered in his biochemical researches. The effect of this drug is to transport Dick from the house at Kilmarth to the Cornwall of the 14th century. There, in the manor of Tywardreath, the domain of Sir Henry Champernoune, he witnesses intrigue, adultery and murder. As his time travelling increases, Dick resents more and more the days he must spend in the modern world, longing ever more fervently to get back into his world of centuries before...

I threw the piece of paper on the fire. She saw it burn... Orphaned at an early age, Philip Ashley is raised by his benevolent older cousin, Ambrose. Resolutely single, Ambrose delights in Philip as his heir, a man who will love his grand home as much as he does himself. But the cosy world the two construct is shattered when Ambrose sets off on a trip to Florence. There he falls in love and marries — and there he dies suddenly. In almost no time at all, the new widow — Philip's cousin Rachel — turns up in England. Despite himself, Philip is drawn to this beautiful, sophisticated, mysterious woman like a moth to the flame. And yet...might she have had a hand in Ambrose's death?

Maintaining the froideur that has won her little public support, First Lady Elizabeth Tyler MacMann needs to find the hottest lawyer in town to defend her in the biggest murder trial in America's history. And that means taking on the services of the fiance she dumped at law school in order to marry the then distinguished war hero who eventually becomes President. Serially divorced, Boyce Baylor is not surprised — he's the only attorney up to the job and he knows it. It's all going swimmingly — he's got it nailed, until his client decides she wants to take the stand and restore her reputation and he has no choice but to acquiesce. Throw in several egos the size of the White House, media-spin like there's no tomorrow, the old boy network, some very underhand business involving the FBI, a pregnancy, a few sex toys and a dose of Viagra and you're some way into this delicious farce — which becomes all the more delicious when you realise how small a leap of the imagination is required to get there.

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again... Working as a lady’s companion, the heroine of Rebecca learns her place. Life begins to look very bleak until, on a trip to the South of France, she meets Maxim de Winter, a handsome widower whose sudden proposal of marriage takes her by surprise. She accepts, but whisked from glamorous Monte Carlo to the ominous and brooding Manderley, the new Mrs de Winter finds Max a changed man. And the memory of his dead wife Rebecca is forever kept alive by the forbidding Mrs Danvers... Not since Jane Eyre has a heroine faced such difficulty with the Other Woman. An international bestseller that has never gone out of print, Rebecca is the haunting story of a young girl consumed by love and the struggle to find her identity.

Before the legend …Before the icon …There was a teenager called Clark Kent… Clark and his classmates have a new substitute teacher — the gorgeous Ms Lilia Sanchez. Pretty soon Clark has a serious crush on her, and he’s not the only one. Lex Luthor has feelings for Ms Sanchez too, and they might just tear the two friends apart. Especially when Clark begins to suspect that Ms Sanchez might be able to read people’s minds. Because if Lex believes Lilia is the key to unlocking Clark’s secrets, there’s no telling how far he’d go to reveal the truth and expose Clark’s powers to the world.

Wayward daughters. Missing husbands. Philandering partners. If you've got a problem, and no one else can help you, then pay a visit to Precious Ramotswe, Botswana's only female private detective. Her methods may not be conventional, but she's got warmth, wit and canny intuition on her side.

Born in 1917, the year of the Russian Revolution, the 85 years of Eric Hobsbawm's life are backdropped by an endless litany of wars, revolutions and counter-revolutions. He has led a remarkably fulfilling and long life; historian and intellectual, fluent in five languages, a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, until it dissolved itself, and writer of countless volumes of history. He has personally witnessed some of the critical events of our century, from Hitler's rise to power in Berlin to the fall of the Berlin wall. Hobsbawm has kept his eyes and ears open for 85 years, and has been constantly committed to understanding the interesting times (as the Chinese curse puts it) through which he has lived. His autobiography is one passionate cosmopolitan Jew's account of his travels through that past which is another country, where they do things differently, and how it became the world we now live in.

A year after the events narrated in the bestselling THE ALIENIST, the cast of characters from that novel are again brought together to investigate a crime committed in the heady days of New York in the 1890s, but this time narrated by the orphan Stevie Taggert. A young child, the daughter of Spanish diplomats, disappears. It seems she has been abducted but no ransom note is received and the detectives Isaacson quickly discover that a nurse, Elspeth Hunter, is probably the kidnapper. They also discover that Hunter has been a little too closely connected with the death of three other infants. But what are her motives? She married a fortune, and although she is connected to some fairly rough villains this crime does not fit their modus operandi. Is it something as 'simple' as psychological disturbance due to her own inability to bear children, or something more sinister unguessed at?

Dr Johnson, having completed his life's major work (the first ever Dictionary of the English Language) is running an increasingly chaotic life, torn between his strict morality and his undeclared passion for Mrs Thrale, the wife of an old friend. Her daughter, Queeney, narrates.

'Sometimes I whisper it over to myself: Murderess. Murderess. It rustles, like a taffeta skirt along the floor.' Grace Marks. Female fiend? Femme fatale? Or weak and unwilling victim? Around the true story of one of the most enigmatic and notorious women of the 1840s, Margaret Atwood has created an extraordinarily potent tale of sexuality, cruelty and mystery.

It was one of the less glorious incidents of a long-ago war. It led to the destruction of two suns and the billions of lives they supported. Now, eight hundred years later, the light from the first of those ancient mistakes has reached the Culture Orbital, Masaq'.

Her murder was just the beginning. She was an army captain and the daughter of legendary General 'Fighting Joe' Campbell, when her body was found — naked and bound — on the firing range of Fort Hadley. This political powder keg of a case goes directly to elite army investigator Paul Brenner and rape specialist Cynthia Sunhill — and explodes. Behind the military code of honour, Brenner and Sunhill uncover trails of corruption — all leading to the golden girl's shocking secret life.

After twenty-five years of working in the shadowy world of espionage Keith Landry is on his way home. Driving along the highway, humming a few bars of 'Homeward Bound', the twenty-five years' service he has given the US government are fast becoming a distant memory. He is safe. He is alone. And life has never felt sweeter as the signs for hometown Spencerville come into view. Keith Landry has promised himself no more violence, no more death. But a chance meeting with childhood sweetheart Annie Baxter makes it a promise he cannot keep. As passion is rekindled between them, jealousy flares. For Annie is married to a violent and sadistic bully: the man who runs Spencerville, Sheriff Baxter. And he won't tolerate any man near his wife. Especially Keith Landry.

The first hit man came after me at home, which should be against the rules. Then there was a second, and a third. Eventually, I found out that the word on the street was that Anita Blake, preternatural expert and vampire killer extraordinaire, was worth half a million dollars. Dead, not alive. So what's a girl to do but turn to the men in her life for help? Which in my case means an alpha werewolf and a master vampire. With professional killers on your trail, it's not a bad idea to have as much protection as possible, human or otherwise. But I'm beginning to wonder if two monsters are better than one...