A mysterious toymaker who lives as a recluse in an old mansion, surrounded by the mechanical beings he has created... an enigma surrounding strange lights that shine through the mists that envelop the small island on which the old lighthouse stands...a shadowy creature that hides deep in the woods...these are the elements of a mystery that bind will bind 14-year-old Irene to Ismael during one magical summer spent in the Blue Bay. He mother has taken a job as a housekeeper for the toymaker, Lazarus, but his house contains more secrets than Irene and Ishmael have bargained for.

A wonderfully atmospheric collection of short stories, rooted deep in the landscape — some Carcassonne, some elsewhere — and powerful portraits of lonely (often heartbreakingly lonely) women seeking, or coming to terms with, their destiny. The collection will include The Mistletoe Bride, La Fille de Melisande, Red Letter Day, The Lending Library, The House on the Hill...

DEATH IS MISSING — PRESUMED... ER... GONE. Which leads to the kind of chaos you always get when an important public service is withdrawn. Meanwhile, on a little farm far, far away, a tall, dark stranger is turning out to be really good with a scythe. There's a harvest to be gathered in...

In this follow up to CALL THE MIDWIFE, Jennifer Worth, a midwife working in the docklands area of East London in the 1950s tells more stories about the people she encountered. There's Jane, who cleaned and generally helped out at Nonnatus House — she was taken to the workhouse as a baby and was allegedly the illegitimate daughter of an aristocrat. Peggy and Frank's parents both died within six months of one another and the children were left destitute. At the time, there was no other option for them but the workhouse. The Reverend Thornton-Appleby-Thorton, a missionary in Africa, visits the Nonnatus nuns and Sister Julienne acts as matchmaker. And Sister Monica Joan, the eccentric ninety-year-old nun, is accused of shoplifting some small items from the local market. She is let off with a warning, but then Jennifer finds stolen jewels from Hatton Garden in the nun's room. These stories give a fascinating insight into the resilience and spirit that enabled ordinary people to overcome their difficulties.

Four hilarious new Horrid Henry stories — HORRID HENRY'S MOTHER'S DAY, probably not the day his mum looks forward to most in the year, HORRID HENRY'S NIGHTMARE where Henry's chased by a ghost bunny with huge teeth, a wailing graveyard ghost and, for good measure, a slimy zombie, then a new story about one of his greatest enemies in THE RETURN OF THE DEMON DINNER LADY and last but not least FLUFFY STRUTS HER STUFF. Horrid Henry is illustrated by Tony Ross, who also illustrates David Walliams' children's books, as well as his own picture books.

MIGHTY BATTLES! REVOLUTION! DEATH! WAR! (AND HIS SONS TERROR AND PANIC, AND DAUGHTER CLANCY). The oldest and most inscrutable empire on the Discworld is in turmoil, brought about by the revolutionary treatise What I did on My Holidays. Workers are uniting, with nothing to lose but their water buffaloes. Warlords are struggling for power. War (and Clancy) are spreading throughout the ancient cities. And all that stands in the way of terrible doom for everyone is: Rincewind the Wizard, who can't even spell the word 'wizard'... Cohen the barbarian hero, five foot tall in his surgical sandals, who has had a lifetime's experience of not dying... and a very special butterfly.

There is a hint of Armageddon in the air. According to the Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch (recorded, thankfully, in 1655, before she blew up her entire village and all its inhabitants, who had gathered to watch her burn), the world will end on a Saturday. Next Saturday, in fact. So the Armies of Good and Evil are massing, the four Bikers of the Apocalypse are revving up their mighty hogs and hitting the road, and the world's last two remaining witchfinders are getting ready to Fight the Good Fight. Atlantis is rising. Frogs are falling. Tempers are flaring, and everything appears to be going to Divine Plan. Except that a somewhat fussy angel and a fast-living demon are not particularly looking forward to the coming Rapture. They've lived amongst Humanity for millennia, and have grown rather fond of the lifestyle. So if Crowley and Aziraphale are going to stop it from happening, they've got to find and kill the AntiChrist (which is a shame, really, as he's a nice kid). There's just one glitch: someone seems to have misplaced him. Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman's brilliantly dark and funny take on mankind's final judgment is back, in a new hardcover edition which includes an introduction by the authors.

Megan is a suburban soccer mom who once upon a time walked on the wild side. Now she's got two kids, a perfect husband, a picket fence, and a growing sense of dissatisfaction. Ray used to be a talented documentary photographer, but at age forty he finds himself in a dead end job posing as a paparazzo pandering to celebrity-obsessed rich kids. Jack is a detective who can't let go of a cold case-a local husband and father disappeared seventeen years ago, and Jack spends the anniversary every year visiting a house frozen in time, the missing man's family still waiting, his slippers left by the recliner as if he might show up any moment to step into them. Three people living lives they never wanted, hiding secrets that even those closest to them would never suspect, will find that the past doesn't recede. Even as the terrible consequences of long-ago events crash together in the present and threaten to ruin lives, they will come to the startling realization that they may not want to forget the past at all. And as each confronts the dark side of the American Dream the boredom of a nice suburban life, the excitement of temptation, the desperation and hunger that can lurk behind even the prettiest facades they will discover the hard truth that the line between one kind of life and another can be as whisper-thin as a heartbeat. With his trademark combination of page-turning thrills and unrivaled insight into the dark shadows that creep into even the happiest communities, Harlan Coben delivers a thriller that cements his status as the master of domestic suspense.

Growing up, Aurelia was haunted by the mysterious death of her parents when she was very young, and she has always longed to know the truth about her past. At 18, she meets a man who will change her life forever, and when he disappears before she can learn his name, she vows to find him again. Thanks to an unknown benefactor, Aurelia travels to America to continue her education. There she comes across the existence of an exclusive ball that has been held every year for centuries. The decadent celebration of the senses travels from country to country, cropping up in secret locations and inviting only a very selective list of guests. Caught up in world of passion and intrigue, Aurelia soon becomes one of the ball's star attractions. But little does she know that as her involvement with the festivities increases, she is coming ever closer to discovering the truth about her mysterious benefactor, her own past, and the identity of the one man she has ever truly loved.

The hit BBC TV series CALL THE MIDWIFE is based on the memoirs of Jennifer Worth, chronicling her life as a midwife in London in the 1950s. FAREWELL TO THE EAST END is the third book in the trilogy. Following on from the bestselling CALL THE MIDWIFE and SHADOWS OF THE WORKHOUSE, Jennifer brings her story to a conclusion. Post-war life could be a struggle — the devastating effects of TB, dangerous backstreet abortions, people driven to extremes by poverty — but there was also warmth and humour. Like Megan'mave, the identical twins who share the same browbeaten husband; the eccentric Sister Monica Joan; and gauche debutante Chummy, who wants to be a missionary. FAREWELL TO THE EAST END shines a light on the lives, culture and stories of a bygone era, and is both moving and heartwarming in equal measure.

Only five individuals stand between the killer robots of Krikkit and their goal of the total annihilation of the universe. They are Arthur Dent, homeless Englishman currently marooned in the deep past; his friend Ford Prefect, temporarily insane to see if he likes it, also marooned; Slartibartfast, once of the planet builders of Magrathea; Zaphod Beeblebrox, ex-confidence trickster and part-time galactic president; and Trillian, the sexy space cadet who is torn between a persistent Thunder God and a very depressed Beeblebrox. In other words: we're doomed.

Robert Cope Harland ended his career as a British spy in an Austrian hospital, after being tortured and beaten by Czech security agents in the last days of the communist regime. He was young enough then to find a new life with the Red Cross and then with the UN. Twelve years later his UN plane crashes in mysterious circumstances at La Guardia airport, New York and Harland is the only survivor. Was it sabotage, and if so, was Harland the target? It is soon clear to Harland that the answers are to be found in his past, a past which, along with its secrets and tradecraft, he has desperately tried to forget. And now the crash has thrown him back into a world of relentless intrigue and mistrust, to his youth, and a life-changing love affair... 'A taut new thriller about international espionage...Deftly orchestrating a byzantine plot and a multinational cast of characters, Porter creates a chilling global masquerade in which no one is who he (or she) pretends to be' Vanity fair.

Dee loves her children very much, but now they are all grown up, shouldn't they leave home? Rosie moved out when she got married, but it didn't work out, so now she is back with her parents. Helen is a teacher, and doesn't earn enough for a place of her own. Anthony writes songs, and is just waiting for the day when someone will pay him for them. Until then, all three are happy at home. It doesn't cost them anything, and surely their parents like having a full house? When a crisis occurs, Dee decides things have to change for the whole family... whether they like it or not.

On 3rd September 1939, Amy Browning decided to start writing a diary. It was a momentous day for so many reasons: it was Amy's 18th birthday; her sister had just given birth to a baby boy; and on the radio it was announced that Great Britain was now at war with Germany. For a while, life didn't change very much for Amy. Living with her family in Opal Street, Liverpool, Amy and her friend both got jobs at a factory, and spent their free time looking round the shops, or watching the ships being loaded at the docks. But as the months went by, things began to change. The bombing started, and Amy's fears grew for her brother, fighting in France, and her boyfriend Ian, in the RAF...

Jerusalem is the universal city, the capital of two peoples, the shrine of three faiths; it is the prize of empires, the site of Judgement Day and the battlefield of today's clash of civilizations. From King David to Barack Obama, from the birth of Judaism, Christianity and Islam to the Israel-Palestine conflict, this is the epic history of 3,000 years of faith, slaughter, fanaticism and coexistence. How did this small, remote town become the Holy City, the 'centre of the world' and now the key to peace in the Middle East? In a gripping narrative, Simon Sebag Montefiore reveals this ever-changing city in its many incarnations, bringing every epoch and character blazingly to life. Jerusalem's biography is told through the wars, love affairs and revelations of the men and women — kings, empresses, prophets, poets, saints, conquerors and whores — who created, destroyed, chronicled and believed in Jerusalem. Drawing on new archives, current scholarship, his own family papers and a lifetime's study, Montefiore illuminates the essence of sanctity and mysticism, identity and empire in a unique chronicle of the city that many believe will be the setting for the Apocalypse. This is how Jerusalem became Jerusalem, and the only city that exists twice — in heaven and on earth.

Miss Gabriel Dain Leggett is young and wealthy, with a penchant for morphine and religious cults. She also has an unfortunate effect on the people around her. They die — violently. Is she the victim of a family curse? The short, squat, utterly unsentimental Continental Op, the best private detective around, has his doubts and finds himself confronting something infinitely more dangerous. This is the Continental Op's most bizarre case.

Sookie Stackhouse is a cocktail waitress at Merlotte's, in her home town of Bon Temps, Louisiana. Other than being telepathic, she's always considered herself pretty normal — though she had a hard time at first, until she learned to filter out other people's thoughts. She thought life was pretty dull, but then the vamps and the weres and the shifters came out of the closet, and she met a vampire called Bill and she couldn't hear him at all... And Bill was her first love, even if he hadn't been alive since the 1860s. But then Sookie found herself all caught up in vampire politics, and betrayal, and since then her life has been anything but normal. And life in Bon Temps has never been the same.

The six wives of Henry VIII — Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anna of Cleves, Katherine Howard and Catherine Parr — have become defined in a popular sense not so much by their lives as by the way these lives ended. But, as Antonia Fraser conclusively proves, they were rich and feisty characters. They may have been victims of Henry's obsession with a male heir, but they were not willing victims. On the contrary, they displayed considerable strength and intelligence at a time when their sex supposedly possessed little of either.

Joe Abercrombie is the most successful fantasy novelist of his generation, with a remarkable, cynical and powerful voice cutting through the cliches of the fantasy genre to create something compelling and exceptionally commercial. With a strong core readership already behind him, each new novel breaks new ground — the epic fantasy quest in The First Law Trilogy, revenge fantasy with the hit BEST SERVED COLD, and now, with THE HEROES, venturing into the dangerous and topical territory of war. Set over three days, in the same world as BEST SERVED COLD, the action is compelling and fast, the battlefield is muddy, bloody and horrible and Joe Abercrombie uses his fantasy setting to explore violence and ambition, strategy and the truism that no plan survives contact with enemy. The characters are the stars, as ever, and the message is dark: when it comes to war, there are no heroes...

Max Frei, and the LABYRINTHS OF ECHO series, is a multi-million copy selling Russian literary sensation appearing in English for the first time. Intriguing, original, remarkable and wry... THE LABYRINTHS OF ECHO is a piece of absolute enchantment. Splash a bit of enchantment into my glass... there is no better phrase to describe the state that a reader may find themselves in when exposed to this strong, absolutely legal, literary narcotic which goes by the name of Max Frei. Stolichniye Novosti If it weren't for bad luck, Max Frei wouldn't have any luck at all. A self-described twenty-something classic loser, an insomniac, hardened smoker, a glutton and a loafer, there's nothing much going for Max Frei... at least not until he arrives in the magical city of Echo. Summoned to the city by the head of the Department of Absolute Order, Sir Juffin Halli, Max's dreams are becoming a reality. But as with all dreams-come-true its not quite the reality Max expected; he's about to become a secret agent, tasked to solve extravagant, impossible crimes with nothing but his wits and a handful of unexplained magical abilities to recommend him. Max is going to be thrown into the fray — and he can't even have a cigarette first...