Paris, 1869. Houses are being razed, whole neighbourhoods reduced to ashes. By order of Emperor Napoleon III, Baron Haussmann has set into motion a series of large-scale renovations that will permanently transform Paris into a modern city. In the midst of the tumult, one woman will take a stand. Rose Bazelet is determined to fight against the destruction of her family home until the very end; as others flee, she stakes her claim in the basement of the house on rue Childebert, ignoring the sounds of change that come closer and closer each day. Attempting to overcome the loneliness of her daily life, she begins to write letters to Armand, her late husband. And as Rose delves into her memories, she reveals the secrets held within the walls of her beloved house.

One International Bestseller. When thirty-four-year-old ex-war veteran Jack Armstrong is told he has only weeks to live, his first concern is for his beloved wife Lizzie, and their children: baby Jackie, twelve-year-old would-be actor Cory and rebellious teenage daughter Mikki. It seems so cruel that an apparently fatal illness should claim him, a survivor of Afghanistan and Iraq, when he still has so much left to live for. On Christmas Eve, as Jack prepares to say goodbye to his family, unthinkable tragedy strikes again and Lizzie is killed in a car accident. Just when Jack thought living was far harder than dying, and the children's future looked so bleak, something remarkable happens which gives Jack the valuable second chance he'd only dreamed of. Unexpectedly, the family inherits Lizzie's beautiful childhood home on the oceanfront in South Carolina. During one unforgettable summer Jack and the children struggle to rebuild their lives. They learn to live again — and to love again. And they learn the biggest lesson of all — the importance of family.

Be careful what you wish for...John and Naomi Klaesson are grieving the death of their four-year-old son from a rare genetic disorder. They desperately want another child, but when they find out they are both carriers of a rogue gene, they realize the odds of their next child contracting the same disease are high. Then they hear about geneticist, Doctor Leo Dettore. He has methods that can spare them the heartache of ever losing another child to any disease — even if his methods are more than they can afford. At his clinic is where their nightmare begins. They should have realized something was wrong when they saw the list. Choices of eye colour, hair, sporting abilities. They can literally design their child. Now it's too late to turn back. Naomi is pregnant, and already something is badly wrong...

In the immediate aftermath of the Revolution, the Western powers were anxious to prevent the spread of Bolshevism across Europe. Lenin and Trotsky were equally anxious that the Communist vision they were busy introducing in Russia should do just that. But neither side knew anything about the other. The revolution and Russia's withdrawal from the First World War had ensured a diplomatic exodus from Moscow and the usual routes to vital information had been closed off. Into this void stepped an extraordinary collection of opportunists, journalists and spies sometimes indeed journalists who were spies and vice versa: in Moscow Britain's Arthur Ransome, the American John Reed and Sidney Reilly 'Ace of Spies' all traded information and brokered deals between Russia and the West; in Berlin, Paris and London, the likes of Maxim Litvinov, Adolf Ioffe and Kamenev tried to infiltrate the political elite and influence foreign policy to the Bolshevik's advantage. Robert Service, acclaimed historian and one of our finest commentators on matters Soviet, turns his meticulous eye to this ragtag group of people and, with narrative flair and impeccable research, reveals one of the great untold stories of the twentieth century.

The Macmillan Children's Readers bring together a variety of enjoyable fiction and non-fiction titles. Six colour coded levels, designed for children aged 6-12, stimulate the pupils' interest in reading and learning English. The Readers include activity pages and a picture dictionary or wordlist. The upper levels also have fact-files and non-fiction tales to grab the interest of both boys and girls.

How tall is the tallest skyscraper? Which is the biggest rocket? Which beetle is as heavy as a hamster? Read and discover the facts in Macmillan Factual Readers, a six-level series which allows young English language learners to explore a variety of fascinating real-world topics. Each reader has been carefully graded to reinforce the main structures and vocabulary covered in most major language courses. All readers include a glossary with explanations of key vocabulary. Beautifully designed in full colour with striking images, the Macmillan Factual Readers help learners build confidence and fluency in their reading ability as well as enhancing their knowledge of other subjects. Free Teaching Notes, audio and exercises are available to download.

From David Baldacci — the modern master of the thriller and #1 worldwide bestselling novelist-comes a new hero: a lone Army Special Agent taking on the toughest crimes facing the nation. And Zero Day is where it all begins.... John Puller is a combat veteran and the best military investigator in the U.S. Army's Criminal Investigation Division. His father was an Army fighting legend, and his brother is serving a life sentence for treason in a federal military prison. Puller has an indomitable spirit and an unstoppable drive to find the truth. Now, Puller is called out on a case in a remote, rural area in West Virginia coal country far from any military outpost. Someone has stumbled onto a brutal crime scene, a family slaughtered. The local homicide detective, a headstrong woman with personal demons of her own, joins forces with Puller in the investigation. As Puller digs through deception after deception, he realizes that absolutely nothing he's seen in this small town, and no one in it, are what they seem. Facing a potential conspiracy that reaches far beyond the hills of West Virginia, he is one man on the hunt for justice against an overwhelming force. David Baldacci is one of the world's favorite storytellers. His books are published in over 45 languages and in more than 80 countries, with over 110 million copies in print. David Baldacci is also the cofounder, along with his wife, of the Wish You Well Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting literacy efforts across America.

Three days that could change the world's political landscape... A man wakes up to find himself lying on the ground in a railway station, his mind stripped bare of all recollection. He has no idea how he got there. He does not even know his own name. Convinced he is a drunken down and out, it isn't until a newspaper report about a satellite launch catches his eye that he begins to suspect all is not what it seems... The year is 1958, and America is about to launch its first satellite, in a desperate attempt to match the Soviet Sputnik and regain the lead in the space race. As Luke Lucas gradually unravels the mystery of his amnesia, he realizes that his fate is bound up with that of the rocket that stands ready on launch pad 26B at Cape Canaveral. And as he relearns the story of his life, he uncovers long-kept secrets about his wife, his best friend and the woman he once loved more than life itself...

The Macmillan Children's Readers bring together a variety of enjoyable fiction and non-fiction titles. Six colour coded levels, designed for children aged 6-12, stimulate the pupils' interest in reading and learning English. The Readers include activity pages and a picture dictionary or wordlist. The upper levels also have fact-files and non-fiction tales to grab the interest of both boys and girls.

First you take a drink, F. Scott Fitzgerald once noted, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you. Fitzgerald wrote alcohol into almost every one of his stories. On Booze gathers debutantes and dandies, rowdy jazz musicians, lost children and ragtime riff-raff into a newly compiled collection taken from The Crack-Up, and other works. On Booze portrays The Jazz Age as Fitzgerald experienced it: roaring, rambunctious, and lush with quite a hangover.

In 1998 Peter F. Hamilton, the master of space opera and top ten bestselling author, published his first collection of short stories in A Second Chance at Eden. Thirteen years later he returns to short fiction with a new collection. This includes 'Manhattan in Reverse, ' an original story featuring Hamilton's popular detective Paula Myo, from his bestselling Commonwealth series. From 'Watching Trees Grow' and a murder mystery set in an alternative Oxford in the 1800s, to 'The Forever Kitten' and the questions of eternal youth and the sacrifice required to pursue this, these stories deal with intricate themes and sociological issues. They take an intriguing look at what it is it that makes us enduringly human. With all his usual wonderfully imagined futuristic technology, complex characters and brilliantly conceived storytelling, Peter F. Hamilton shows yet again what makes him Britain's number one science fiction writer.

Over the last decade, through digital media, we have crossed a number of significant thresholds: the interconnection of over half of the world's adult population through mobile telephony and the internet and the devotion of more than half the waking hours of a western generation to mediated experience. Yet little mainstream thought has been given to what these transitions signify for the business of daily living; and what thought there has been too often focuses on grand claims of loss or gain. This book asks what it means not simply to live within a digital century, but to live well with it and within it. Unlike most other contemporary accounts, it is neither a tale of technology doom nor glory, but a pragmatic guide to what questions we need to ask of the world around us; what it might mean to answer these; and what practical steps might allow us all both to choose and to use the tools at our disposal, and to live within a digital century in as fully human a sense as possible.

Our relationship with money is one that lasts a lifetime. It can be as important as family life, as competitive as work, and as exciting and secretive as love. Yet books about money tend to take one of two routes: a) how to get more, or b) how to deal with less. This book turns these questions upside down, and looks not at money itself, but at the way we view it. How does money drive us? How does it frighten us? And how can it help us make sense of who we are? Money is too important a part of life for us not to worry about, but by approaching it differently, we can change the way we perceive its worth. With surprising and enlightening new insights, How to Worry Less About Money will help you realise what material wealth really means.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Sarah's Key and A Secret Kept comes an absorbing new novel about one woman's resistance during an epoque that shook Paris to its very core. Paris, France: 1860's. Hundreds of houses are being razed, whole neighborhoods reduced to ashes. By order of Emperor Napoleon III, Baron Haussman has set into motion a series of large-scale renovations that will permanently alter the face of old Paris, moulding it into a modern city. The reforms will erase generations of history — but in the midst of the tumult, one woman will take a stand. Rose Bazelet is determined to fight against the destruction of her family home until the very end; as others flee, she stakes her claim in the basement of the old house on rue Childebert, ignoring the sounds of change that come closer and closer each day. Attempting to overcome the loneliness of her daily life, she begins to write letters to Armand, her beloved late husband. And as she delves into the ritual of remembering, Rose is forced to come to terms with a secret that has been buried deep in her heart for thirty years. The House I Loved is both a poignant story of one woman's indelible strength, and an ode to Paris, where houses harbor the joys and sorrows of their inhabitants, and secrets endure in the very walls...

A wry exchange between an IT-savvy donkey, a book-loving ape and a mouse forms this playful and light-hearted look at the role of books in our digital age. With a subversive and signature Lane Smith twist, this satisfying and perfectly executed picture book has something to say to children and adults alike about the importance and joy of reading.

'Compulsive enough to read in a single sitting, brilliantly intelligent, elegantly constructed and ultimately intriguing' The Times First published in 2002, The Lovely Bones became an instant worldwide bestseller. There are now over ten million copies in print. A film adaptation of the novel, directed by Peter Jackson, was released in 2010. Susie Salmon was fourteen years old when she was murdered by a man from her neighbourhood. Now in heaven, she can have whatever she wishes for except the one thing she wants most: to be back with the people she loved on earth. Susie watches from above as her suburban family is torn apart by grief; as her friends grow up, fall in love, and do all the things she never had the chance to do herself. In time, Susie will realise that even in death, life is not quite out of reach... 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.

When an eager and curious Jane Eyre arrives at Thornfield Hall her sexual desires are instantly awakened. Who is the enigmatic Rochester whom she instantly feels attracted to, what are the strange and yet captivating noises coming from the attic, and why does the very air she breathes feel heavy with passion? Only one thing Is certain. Jane Eyre may have arrived at Thornfield an unfulfilled and tentative woman, but she will leave a very different person...

The shadowy Gangster Squad was formed in 1946 with eight men operating out of two rusted old Fords. They had no office and made no arrests — the idea was to remain invisible. By the time I met Sgt. Jack O'Mara, most of the early members were dead, so I set out to find the survivors. Based on the hugely popular Los Angeles Times column LA Noir: Tales from the Gangster Squad, this is the dark-hearted true story of a group of men cleaning up the mean streets of post-War America. From hundreds of interviews with the original members of the team, Paul Lieberman stitches together the story of Jack O'Mara, his dangerous colleague Jerry Wooters (the killer cop, that's what they called me) and their anything-goes war with arch-criminal Mickey Cohen and his budding rival Jack The Enforcer Whalen. A tale of stake-outs, shoot-outs and even the famous Black Dahlia murder case, this is ice-cool narrative non-fiction at its best — and the basis for a huge Warner Brothers film of the same name, starring Ryan Gosling, Sean Penn, Josh Brolin and Emma Stone.

In 1941, mixed race Ruby Darke is born into a family that seem to hate her, but why? While her two brothers dive into a life of gangland violence, Ruby has to work in their family store. As she blossoms into a beautiful young woman she crosses paths with aristocrat Cornelius Bray, a chance meeting that will change her life forever. When she finds herself pregnant, and then has twins, she is forced to give her children away. At that point she vows never to trust another man again. As the years pass, Ruby never forgets her babies, and as the family store turns into a retail empire, Ruby wants her children back. But secrets were whispered and bargains made, and if Ruby wants to stay alive she needs to forget the past, or the past will come back and kill her.

Hazel Bannock is the owner of the Bannock Oil Corp, one of the major global oil producers. While cruising in the Indian Ocean, her yacht is hijacked by Somalian pirates and her nineteen year old daughter Cayla kidnapped. Major Hector Cross is an ex-SAS operative and the man behind Cross Bow Security, the company contracted to Bannock Oil to provide all their security. His loyalty to the Bannock family goes beyond the call of duty. The pirates demand a crippling ransom for Cayla's 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 to help her rescue her daughter. Between them, Hazel and Hector are determined to take the law into their own hands.