This is a book about counting with adorable pet characters, which helps make learning fun! The bright, bold illustrations are full of humour, and little ones will love pulling the chunky tabs and helping the creatures 'talk'. The speech bubbles will help them to join in and the mirror ending will encourage them to make some noise themselves.

This is a book about noise with adorable farm animal characters, which helps make learning fun! The bright, bold illustrations are full of humour, and little ones will love pulling the chunky tabs and helping the creatures 'talk'. The speech bubbles will help them to join in and the mirror ending will encourage them to make some noise themselves.

This is a book about opposites with adorable jungle characters, which helps make learning fun! The bright, bold illustrations are full of humour, and little ones will love pulling the chunky tabs and helping the creatures 'talk'. The speech bubbles will help them to join in and the mirror ending will encourage them to make some noise themselves.

This is an utterly compelling and often unbelievable adventure into the world of madness. Jon Ronson meets everybody from a Broadmoor inmate who swears he faked a mental disorder to get a lighter sentence but is now stuck there to the influential psychologist who developed the industry standard Psychopath Test and who is convinced that many important CEOs and politicians are in fact psychopaths. Combining Jon's trademark humour, charm and investigative incision, The Psychopath Test is a deeply honest book unearthing dangerous truths and asking serious questions about how we define normality in a world where we are increasingly judged by our maddest edges. 'Ronson's new book is provocative and interesting, and you will, I guarantee, zip merrily through it' Observer 'Both screamingly funny and deeply disturbing' Tatler 'Ronson is such a chirpy, inquisitive and funny writer' Mail on Sunday.

Owl Hall is the story of Janet, a single mother, who goes to stay in an old farmhouse with her children, Kara and Martin. But there’s something strange about Kara’s relationship with her mother and brother. As the story develops, we discover that everyone at Owl Hall has a secret – even the house itself!

Owl Hall is an original story written specifically for the Macmillan Readers series. It is the story of Kara, who goes to stay at Owl Hall. But there is something strange about Kara’s relationship with her family. As the story develops, we discover that everyone at Owl Hall has a secret – even the house itself!

‘It was the first murder case I ever investigated on my own.’ Wexford said angrily. ‘There’s no mystery. Herbert Arthur Painter killed his ninety-year-old employer by hitting her over the head with an axe. He did it for two hundred pounds.’ Chief Inspector Wexford was sure that the murder of an old lady had been carried out by her employee, Herbert Painter, and the courts agreed with him. But then Henry Archery, whose son is engaged to marry Painter’s daughter, starts questioning the case …

The year is 1740. George II is on the throne but England's remoter provinces remain largely a law unto themselves. In Lancashire a grim discovery has been made: a Squire's wife, Dolores Brockletower, lies in the woods above her home, Garlick Hall, her throat brutally slashed. Called to the scene, Coroner Titus Cragg finds the Brockletower household awash with rumour and suspicion. He enlists the help of his astute young friend, doctor Luke Fidelis, to throw light on the case. But this is a world in which forensic science is in its infancy, and policing hardly exists. Embarking on their first gripping investigation, Cragg and Fidelis are faced with the superstition of witnesses, obstruction by local officials, and denunciations from the Squire himself. 'This is rollicking stuff. Cragg and Fidelis are an engaging duo' Financial Times 'Cragg and Fidelis make a fine pair of detectives' Literary Review.

'Part road movie, part joyful, nostalgic confession. A masterpiece' Daily Telegraph First published in Spanish in 1998, The Savage Detectives was immediately hailed as a critical success, wining the Herralde Prize and the Romulo Gallegos Prize. But with the 2007 English-language translation the book became more than a bestseller it began the global sensation of Bolanomania. New Year's Eve 1975, Mexico City. Two hunted men leave town in a hurry, on the desert-bound trail of a vanished poet. Spanning two decades and crossing continents, this remarkable quest is a journey told and shared by a generation of lovers, rebels and readers, whose testimonies are woven together into one of the most dazzling Latin American novels of the twentieth century. In 2012 Picador celebrate our 40th anniversary. During that time we have published many prize-winning and bestselling authors including Bret Easton Ellis and Cormac McCarthy, Alice Sebold and Helen Fielding, Graham Swift and Alan Hollinghurst. Years later, Picador continue to bring readers the very best contemporary fiction, non-fiction and poetry from across the globe.

Jack is now five and, like any little boy, excited at the prospect of presents and cake. But although Jack is a normal child in many ways, his upbringing is far from ordinary: Jack's entire life has been spent in a room that measures just 12 square feet; as far as he's concerned, Room is the entire world. He shares this world with his mother, with Plant, and TV and his friends the cartoon characters — but Jack knows that nothing else he sees on the screen is real. Old Nick, on the other hand, is all too real, but only visits at night — when Jack is meant to be asleep in Wardrobe. And only Old Nick has the code to Door, which is otherwise locked... Told in Jack's voice, 'Room' is the story of a mother's love for her son, and of a young boy's innocence.

Miss Emily Fido Faithfull is a woman of business and a spinster pioneer in the British women's movement, independent of mind but naively trusting of heart. Distracted from her cause by the sudden return of a once-dear friend, the unhappily wed Helen Codrington, Fido is swept up in the intimate details of Helen's failing marriage and obsessive affair with a young army officer. What begins as a loyal effort to help a friend explodes into an intriguing courtroom drama complete with accusations of adultery, counterclaims of rape, and a mysterious letter that could destroy more than one life. Based on a scandalous divorce case that gripped England in 1864, The Sealed Letter is a riveting, provocative drama of friends, lovers, and divorce, Victorian-style.

After eleven years of coupled-up domesticity, Rory Carmichael is single for the first time in her adult life. Even she would admit that her ex-boyfriend Martin wasn't the most exciting man in the world let's face it, his idea of a rocking night was one spent discussing pension plans in a Harvester restaurant but Rory could rely on him and, having watched her mother rack up four turbulent marriages, that's what matters. But when she discovers that her supposedly reliable Mr Right is a distinctly unreliable cheater, she's forced to consider the possibility that everything she knows about relationships is wrong. In an effort to reinvigorate both her love life and her lacklustre career at posh magazine Country House, she sets herself a mission to date as many unsuitable men as possible. Toyboys. Sugar daddies. Fauxmosexuals. Maybe the bad boys she's never dated can show her what she's been missing in life. But if Mr Right can turn out to be so wrong, maybe one of her Mr Wrongs will turn out to be just right...

Ten years ago, journalist Ben Webster had his investigation into a corrupt Russian business in Kazakhstan crushed, the cost of his scrutiny a terrible tragedy... Now employed by a private London intelligence agency, Webster's interest is piqued when a client asks him to expose the dealings of shadowy Russian oligarch Konstantin Malin. Before long Webster finds himself fixated by Malin and by his front man Richard Lock. But how far is he willing to risk the wellbeing of his family? And that of Lock himself? Against a background of Moscow, London and Berlin a journey of impossible decisions begins...

Kate Forrest is invisible Ned, the husband she adores, doesn't seem to know she's alive, and her two charming children have grown into stroppy adolescents. Her boss is suddenly shunting her towards career Siberia, and her demanding mother is never off the phone. With her fortieth birthday fast approaching, all Kate wants to do is run away from the lot of them. And so she does. On impulse, Kate walks out of her job, her family and her life, and gets on a plane to Italy. With no ties and no responsibilities, she soon finds herself deliriously caught up in La Dolce Vita and the arms of a man barely half her age. But when the unthinkable threatens her family, Kate is brutally forced to choose between her past and the future.

Acknowledging that she was different from everyone else wasn't difficult for Wendy Everly she'd always felt like an outsider. But a new world and new family is a little hard for any girl to accept easily. Leaving behind the mysterious country of her birth, she is determined to fit back into normal life. But the world she's left behind won't let her go that easily... Kidnapped and imprisoned by her true family's enemies, Wendy soon learns that the lines between good and evil aren't as defined as she thought. And those things she'd taken for granted may have been lies all along. With the help of the dangerously attractive Loki, she escapes back to the safety of Forening only to be confronted by a new threat. It's time to make a choice can she put aside her personal feelings for the sake of her country? Torn between duty and love she must make a choice that could destroy her one chance at true happiness...

Wedding writers face particular challenges, envy being one of them, especially if the writer happens to be single, as Lucky is. Who are all these smug people, thinking life is just one great big happily ever after? Does anyone truly believe in fairytales any more? It's a different kind of 'big day' at Your Wedding magazine. Lucky Quinn once a lowly wedding writer is thrust into the spotlight as Editor-in-Chief on the same day that two of the magazine's major competitors fold. Things are looking worse for sacked former-editor Grace Ralston, who has been at the helm of Your Wedding from day one, and is now facing a lonely, uncertain and unemployed future. Meanwhile Lucky must face the confusion and disappointment of her new staff, who are struggling with their own professional and personal issues in the wake of Grace's departure. For better or for worse, each woman confronts her past and deals with her hectic present in this tale of women, work and the world of weddings.

Olympic rowing hopeful and senior Metropolitan Police officer DCI Rebecca Meredith goes out alone to train on the river in Henley on a dark afternoon in late October and doesn't return. When a desperate search by the police and a K9 team reveals the possibility of foul play, Scotland Yard wants one of their own on the case. Detective Superintendent Duncan Kincaid, returning from celebrating his marriage to long-time partner Detective Inspector Gemma James, is called to Henley to investigate. He soon finds that the world of elite rowing can be brutal, and that Rebecca Meredith's ex-husband was not the only person with good reason for wanting her dead. Then, when a search-and-rescue team member is threatened, Kincaid realizes the case may be even more complex and more dangerous than he believed. But it is only when he enlists Gemma's aid that they find that the answers lie closer to home than they could have imagined and are infinitely more deadly. It seems that more than one innocent life depends on their ability to track down the killer.

Having written enthralling biographies of London and of its great river, the Thames, Peter Ackroyd now turns to England itself. This first volume of six takes us from the time that England was first settled, more than 15,000 years ago, to the death in 1509 of the first Tudor monarch, Henry VII. In it, Ackroyd takes us from Neolithic England, which we can only see in the most tantalising glimpses a stirrup found in a grave, some seeds at the bottom of a bowl to the long period of Roman rule; from the Dark Ages when England was invaded by a ceaseless tide of Angles, Saxons and Jutes, to the twin glories of medieval England its great churches and monasteries and its common law. With his extraordinary skill for evoking time and place, he tells the familiar story of king succeeding king in rich prose, with profound insight and some surprising details. The food we ate, the clothes we wore, the punishments we endured, even the jokes we told are all found here, too.

From the author of the internationally bestselling Sophie Kinsella novels, Madeleine Wickham's newest novel features a house whose asking price includes a stunning renovation of dreams and hearts... Liz and Jonathan Chambers were stuck with two mortgages, mounting debts and a miserable adolescent daughter. Then Marcus Witherstone came into their lives — and it seemed he would solve all their problems. He knew the perfect tenants from London who would rent their old house: a glamorous PR girl, Ginny, and her almost-famous husband, Piers. But soon Liz is lost in blissful dreams of Marcus, Jonathan is left to run their tutorial college, and neither of them has time to notice that their teenage daughter is developing a passion for the tenants, Piers and Ginny. Everyone is entangled with everyone else, in the most awkward possible way. And as events close in, they all begin to realize that some deceptions are just a bit too close to home.

Hazel Bannock is heir to the Bannock Oil Corporation, one of the major global oil producers. While cruising the Indian Ocean, her yacht is hijacked by Somalian pirates and her nineteen-year-old daughter, Cayla, kidnapped. The pirates demand a crippling twenty-billion-dollar ransom for her release, and complicated political and diplomatic sensitivities render the major powers incapable of intervening. With growing evidence of the horrific torture to which Cayla is being subjected, Hazel calls on Hector Cross to help her rescue her daughter. Hector is the man behind Cross Bow Security, the company contracted to Bannock Oil Corporation to provide all their protection. He is a formidable fighting man. Between them, Hazel and Hector are determined to take the law into their own hands. For nearly fifty years, internationally bestselling author Wilbur Smith has thrilled readers with novels set during the Egyptian era all the way up through the present day. Now, Those in Peril brings his matchless storytelling to bear on the violent, ruthless world of twenty-first-century piracy.