SNOBS Edith Lavery, the attractive only child of a middle-class accountant, leaves behind her dull job when she manages to bag one of the most eligible bachelors in town. But is life amongst the aristocracy really all that it seems...? PAST IMPERFECT Damian Baxter is very, very rich. But he has one concern: who should inherit his fortune. A letter from an ex-girlfriend suggests Damian may have fathered a child, but the letter is anonymous. Finding the truth will not be easy — and the only man who can help is Damian's sworn enemy...

My name is Peter Grant and until January I was just probationary constable in that mighty army for justice known to all right-thinking people as the Metropolitan Police Service (and as the Filth to everybody else). My only concerns in life were how to avoid a transfer to the Case Progression Unit — we do paperwork so real coppers don't have to — and finding a way to climb into the panties of the outrageously perky WPC Leslie May. Then one night, in pursuance of a murder inquiry, I tried to take a witness statement from someone who was dead but disturbingly voluable, and that brought me to the attention of Inspector Nightingale, the last wizard in England. Now I'm a Detective Constable and a trainee wizard, the first apprentice in fifty years, and my world has become somewhat more complicated: nests of vampires in Purley, negotiating a truce between the warring god and goddess of the Thames, and digging up graves in Covent Garden... and there's something festering at the heart of the city I love, a malicious vengeful spirit that takes ordinary Londoners and twists them into grotesque mannequins to act out its drama of violence and despair. The spirit of riot and rebellion has awakened in the city, and it's falling to me to bring order out of chaos — or die trying.

Life is looking up for Saffy. She has a great job, a gorgeous flat in the most desirable part of Dublin and — after six years — it looks like her boyfriend, Greg, is going to propose. Greg (just voted the 9th most eligible man in Ireland) is on a high, too — he's about to swap his part as a heart-throb in an Irish soap for a break in Hollywood. His best mate Conor wakes up every morning with Jess, the most beautiful woman on the planet but, even after seven years and two kids, she won't marry him. He spends his days teaching teenagers and his nights writing the book he hopes will change everything, including Jess's mind. But their happy endings are playing hard to get. It seems everyone's keeping secrets — one night stands, heartbreak, grief and loss are all in the mix. It's going to take some tough questions and even tougher answers before anyone's being honest — even with themselves.

I was my dad's vinyl-wallah: I changed his records while he lounged around drinking tea, and that's how I know my Argo from my Tempo. And it's why, when Dr Walid called me to the morgue to listen to a corpse, I recognised the tune it was playing. Something violently supernatural had happened to the victim, strong enough to leave its imprint like a wax cylinder recording. Cyrus Wilkinson, part-time jazz saxophonist and full-time accountant, had apparently dropped dead of a heart attack just after finishing a gig in a Soho jazz club. He wasn't the first. No one was going to let me exhume corpses to see if they were playing my tune, so it was back to old-fashioned legwork, starting in Soho, the heart of the scene. I didn't trust the lovely Simone, Cyrus' ex-lover, professional jazz kitten and as inviting as a Rubens' portrait, but I needed her help: there were monsters stalking Soho, creatures feeding off that special gift that separates the great musician from someone who can raise a decent tune. What they take is beauty. What they leave behind is sickness, failure and broken lives. And as I hunted them, my investigation got tangled up in another story: a brilliant trumpet player, Richard 'Lord' Grant — my father — who managed to destroy his own career, twice. That's the thing about policing: most of the time you're doing it to maintain public order. Occasionally you're doing it for justice. And maybe once in a career, you're doing it for revenge.

They were looking for a miracle cure... Sara Lowell and Michael Silverman. The ideal celebrity couple, darlings of the media. She's TV's most popular journalist. He's New York's hottest basketball star. Their lives would soon be shattered by the most deadly illness of modern times. Dr. Harvey Riker. His clinic has found the miracle cure that millions seek. One-by-one his patients are getting well. One-by-one they are targeted by a serial killer more fatal than their disease. Rev. Earnest Sanders. His ultra-conservative Holy Crusade Church saw the disease as God's vengeance on a lustful, sin-ridden generation of the damned. And God's will could not be denied. Lieutenant Bernstein. His true desires make him a perfect choice to track the killer — or a perfect victim.

Senka Skorikov, orphan and urchin, has been abandoned to the murky world of Moscow's gangster district. While picking a pocket or two, he glimpses the most beautiful woman he has ever seen, and joins the gang of her overlord lover, The Prince, so desperate he is to meet her. Senka climbs the criminal ranks, uncovering a stash of precious metal, and gradually capturing the heart of his beloved Death — so named for the life expectancy of her lovers. But as the bandit community balks at his success on both fronts, threats on his life begin to pour in. A dandy and his 'Chinese' sidekick seem to be taking an inordinate interest in Senka's welfare, and it becomes clear that those threatening Senka are linked to a spate of murders, grizzly even by underworld standards. Fandorin must unweave a tangled web of narcotics, false identities and organised crime — but can he survive an encounter with the ever-alluring Death unscathed? Find out in the darkest Fandorin to date!

These are the stories our ancestors told to explain how the world began; or they are the legends of half-remembered heroes and people whose lives were changed by magic. Brilliantly retold in the sparkling and inspirational words of the multiple award-winning and much-loved children's author, Geraldine McCaughrean, the tales will delight and entertain readers of all ages. Together, GEORGE AND THE DRAGON AND A WORLD OF OTHER STORIES with its two companion volumes, ROBIN HOOD AND A WORLD OF OTHER STORIES and KING ARTHUR AND A WORLD OF OTHER STORIES, make a wonderful gift collection of classic tales from around the world — many of them unavailable anywhere else.

Everything's changing for our friendly neighbourhood serial killer. As if getting married wasn't enough to complete his nice-guy persona, Dexter is now the proud father of a baby girl. And disconcertingly, he actually seems to care. But even if fatherhood is distracting Dexter from his midnight excursions to rid Miami of a few more lowlifes, there's no let-up at work. Two young girls are missing — and it's not long before one of the bodies turns up, partially eaten. But as Dexter and Miami PD's finest investigate, Dexter can't shake the feeling that somebody's watching him...

January 1937. Clouds of war are gathering over a fogbound London. Twenty-eight year old Jack is poor, lonely and desperate to change his life. So when he's offered the chance to join an Arctic expedition, he jumps at it. Spirits are high as the ship leaves Norway: five men and eight huskies, crossing the Barents Sea by the light of the midnight sun. At last they reach the remote, uninhabited bay where they will camp for the next year. Gruhuken. But the Arctic summer is brief. As night returns to claim the land, Jack feels a creeping unease. One by one, his companions are forced to leave. He faces a stark choice. Stay or go. Soon he will see the last of the sun, as the polar night engulfs the camp in months of darkness. Soon he will reach the point of no return — when the sea will freeze, making escape impossible. And Gruhuken is not uninhabited. Jack is not alone. Something walks there in the dark...

Secrets, rivalry, glamour — it's time for the party of the year... Delilah has lived out her tempestuous marriage to hell-raiser Raf in the glare of the media spotlight. Now planning a milestone birthday, she has more on her mind than invitations. Raf has been offered a part in a movie he can't refuse. But will he succumb to the temptations he's struggled to resist for the last ten years? Delilah's three daughters are building careers of their own, only too aware that the press are waiting for them to slip up. For the Rafferty girls might look like angels, but they are only human. It's the perfect recipe for a party like no other...

In the game, the single-player storyline is revealed through a series of flashbacks as Marine Staff Sergeant Henry Blackburn races to prevent an attack on New York City by a deadly force known as the PLR. As Blackburn recalls key events leading up to the attack, players take control of several characters in heart-pounding missions across land, sea and air. One of these characters is Dmitri Dima Mayakovsky, a legendary and pragmatic GRU operator in the twilight of his Special Forces career. Known as a cleaner, Dima is the sort of person that does whatever it takes to get the job done. The book picks up where the game leaves off, allowing McNab and Grimsdale to give a thrilling new perspective into Dimas own personal quest as well as the events of Battlefield 3.

The world lies devastated after the massive oil crisis that was described in LAST LIGHT. Human society has more or less entirely broken down and millions lie dead of starvation or disease. There are only one or two beacon communities that have managed to fashion a new way of living. Jenny Sutherland runs one of these groups. Based on a series of decaying offshore oil rigs — for safety — a few hundred people have rebuilt a semblance of normality in this otherwise dead world. But as Jenny and her people explore their surroundings once again, they start to realise not every survivor has the same vision of a better future than their catastrophic past. There are people out there who would take everything they have. War is coming, and the stakes are truly massive...

It began with a dead bird. Then state-wide school closure. Before long, the whole town is in lockdown and the Brooks family are quarantined in their own home — with a faceless enemy on their doorstep. They must cope as best they can, battling hunger, cold and boredom. But as the threat inches closer, and neighbour turns against neighbour, single mother Ann doesn't know who she can trust — including those taking refuge in her house. With no end in sight, Ann knows that if she is to protect her daughters from untold danger, she must make impossible decisions in order to survive...

Paris, 1968. Four young hopefuls are following their dreams, making their way in the ruthless world of haute couture. Seamstress Monique, standing with her tatty suitcase in hand, watches shop assistants spray Chanel No. 5 in the street outside Coco's world-famous store. Can all her dreams come true in this magical place? Christopher, London born and bred, the handsome up-and-coming designer is determined to leave his mark on the city where glamour and power go hand in hand and every man has a mistress. Samantha, the daddy's girl with an uncanny eye for PR, understands what sells — sex, sex and more sex. But can a loud, brash American ever conquer the sophisticated wives of Paris? And hauntingly beautiful Sophie, the top model with her face in a thousand magazines and the world at her feet, has a secret in her past that won't stay buried... Four lives collide in the dizzying world of French fashion as Harold Carlton weaves a spellbinding tale of ambition, passion and rivalry.

At 21, James Farrell has the world at his feet. A gifted violinist, his successful career seems assured. Until a chance encounter with Ella changes everything. Ella, bewitching, irresistible, haunted by the ghosts of her family's past — James cannot help falling in love with her, and she with him. But as the power and dangerous fragility of their relationship overwhelm them, James can only watch helplessly as the most beautiful thing in his life is strangled by deception, betrayal and ultimately murder...

The subtitle of this wonderful memoir declares its contents: this is 'my life with Harold Pinter', not Lady Antonia Fraser's complete life, and certainly not his. It is a love story, and as with many love stories, the beginning and the end, the first light and the twilight, are dealt with more fully than the high noon in between. The result is a marvellously insightful testimony to modern literature's most celebrated marriage, between the greatest playwright of the age and a beautiful and famous prize-winning biographer. MUST YOU GO is based partly on Antonia Fraser's own diaries, which she has kept since October 1968 when she suffered from withdrawal symptoms after finishing her first historical biography, MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS. Antonia Fraser has also used her own recollections, both immediate reactions (she always writes her Diary the next morning, unless otherwise noted) and memories. She has quoted Pinter where he told her things about his past, once again noting the source, and has occasionally quoted his friends talking to her on the same subject. Intriguingly her Diaries always pay special attention to any green shoots where Pinter's writing is concerned, perhaps a consequence of a biographer living with a creative artist and observing the process first hand. Harold Pinter and Antonia Fraser lived together from August 1975 until his death thirty-three years later on Christmas Eve 2008.

The last time Maureen O'Donnell saw Ann Harris, she was in the Glasgow Women's Shelter smelling of a long binge on cheap drink. A month later Ann's mutilated body, stitched into a mattress, is washed up on the banks of the Thames. No-one, except for Maureen and her best mate, Leslie, seems to care about what happened to her, and Maureen is the only person who thinks Ann's husband is innocent. But solving Ann's murder comes as light relief. Maureen's father is back in Glasgow, Leslie is sloping about like a nervous spy, and then there's Angus, Maureen's old therapist, who's twice as bright as she is and making her play a dangerous game with the police. In the long tradition of Scots in trouble, Maureen runs away to London. Looking for answers to the mystery surrounding Ann's death, she becomes embroiled in a seedy world of deceit and violence. Alone in a strange city, Maureen starts to piece together Ann's final days. But time is not on her side, and Maureen needs just twelve hours, just twelve, to put things right, and she doesn't care what it costs...

Maureen O'Donnell wasn't born lucky. A psychiatric patient and survivor of sexual abuse, she's stuck in a dead-end job and a secretive relationship with Douglas, a shady therapist. Her few comforts are making up stories to tell her psychiatrist, the company of friends, and the sweet balm of whisky. She is about to end her affair with Douglas when she wakes up one morning to find him in her living room with his throat slit. Viewed in turn by the police as a suspect and as an uncooperative, unstable witness, Maureen is even suspected by her alcoholic mother and self-serving sisters of being involved. Worse than that, the police won't tell her anything about Douglas' death. Panic-stricken and feeling betrayed by friends and family, Maureen begins to doubt her own version of events. She retraces Douglas' desperate last days and picks up a horrifying trail of rape, deception and suppressed scandal at a local psychiatric hospital where she had been an inmate. But the patients won't talk and the staff are afraid, and when a second brutalised corpse is discovered, Maureen realises that unless she gets to the killer first, her life is in danger.

Clover Grace is finally getting married. Or she will be if she drinks enough champagne to pluck up the courage for her trip down the aisle. The problem is that after months spent bickering over menus and table placements, Clover's never felt more distant from the man she's supposed to be spending the rest of her life with. As last minute nerves take hold, a night of soul-searching sees Clover reflecting back on old flames in a bid to reassure herself she's making the right decision. There's Rupert — adoring but dull; Jay — the teenage crush; Oliver — sexy but toxic; and Xander — a true friend. But as the sun rises and the ceremony looms ever closer, Clover is still unsure if she's doing the right thing. Then an unexpected encounter turns her world upside down. Should she take a chance? Or should she stick with the choices she's made? As Clover makes her way to the church, only one question remains: who will be waiting for her at the altar?