Robin, a postgrad student in Coventry, has spent four and a half years not writing his thesis. Now it languishes in a drawer, and Robin hides in his room, increasingly frightened by a world he doesn't understand. His friends have failed him and romance eludes him. His only outlet is his short stories, scribbled in notebooks and expressing his secret obsessions and frustrations. Then, when an unfortunate and embarassing incident in a public park lands him in serious trouble, Robin's life finally spirals out of control...

Lesley Pearse, No.1 bestselling author of The Promise and Belle is back with Survivor, the story of Mariette, a born fighter. It is 1938 and headstrong eighteen-year-old Mari Carrera leaves a gossipy small town in rural New Zealand aboard the SS Rimutaka. Rather too careless with her reputation, Mari is bound for the bustling anonymity of London — but she is all too willing to be seduced by the temptations of the glittering West End. Until war comes and snatches it all away. As the Blitz rains death on London, Mari's life is blown apart. Lost and alone in the burning West End, she learns that to endure this war she must find the strength, selflessness and compassion locked within her. And soon this born survivor must risk everything — putting her life on the line for others. From internationally bestselling author, Lesley Pearse, Survivor is a story of bravery and love. Utterly riveting, brilliant. (Closer). Characters it is impossible not to care about. (Daily Mail). Full of love, passion and heartbreak. (Best). Lesley Pearse's novels have sold over five million copies worldwide. Her sixteen most recent books, including Forgive Me, The Promise, and Belle are huge bestsellers and available as Penguin paperbacks. Lesley lives near Bristol and has three daughters and three grandchildren.

The groundbreaking follow-up to the New York Times bestseller The Great Stagnation The United States continues to mint more millionaires and billionaires than any country ever. Yet, since the great recession, three quarters of the jobs created here pay only marginally more than minimum wage. Why is there growth only at the top and the bottom? Renowned economist and bestselling author Tyler Cowen explains that high earners are taking ever more advantage of machine intelligence and achieving ever-better results. Meanwhile, nearly every business sector relies less and less on manual labor, and that means a steady, secure life somewhere in the middle-average — is over. In Average is Over, Cowen lays out how the new economy and identifies what workers and entrepreneurs young and old must do to thrive in this radically new economic landscape.

The Complete Polysyllabic Spree is Nick Hornby's wickedly funny journey through reading. This is not a book of reviews. This not a book that sneers at other books. This is a book about reading — about enjoying books wherever and however you find them. Nick Hornby, author of the bestsellers About a Boy and Fever Pitch — takes us on a hilarious and perceptive tour through the books he bought, the books he read and his thoughts on literature. He is first and foremost a reader and he approaches books like the rest of us: hoping to pick up one he can't put down. The Complete Polysyllabic Spree is a diary of sorts, charting his reading life over two years. It is a celebration of why we read — its pleasures, its disappointments and its surprises. And above all, it is for you — the ever hopeful reader. For fans of Bill Bryson and Stephen Fry, and for bookworms eveywhere, this witty, passionate book will make you cherish the world of letters anew.

Cress is the third book in the bestselling Lunar Chronicles series, following Cinder and Scarlet. Incarcerated in a satellite, an expert hacker and out to save the world — Cress isn't your usual damsel in distress. Cress grew-up as a prisoner. With only net screens for company she's forced to do the bidding of the evil Queen Levana. Now that means tracking down Cinder and her handsome accomplice Emperor Kai. But little does Levana know that those she seeks, and the man she loves, are plotting her downfall... As paths cross and the price of freedom rises, happily ever after has never seemed further away for Cress, Scarlet and Cinder. This is not the fairy tale you remember. But it's one you won't forget. Fairy tales are becoming all the rage, with the TV shows Once Upon a Time and Grimm spinning them through a modern filter... Meyer's debut novel Cinder, though, combines a classic folk tale with hints of The Terminator and Star Wars. (USA Today.com). [praise for Cinder] About the author: Marissa Meyer's first two books in the Lunar Chronicles, Cinder and Scarlet, debuted on the New York Times bestseller list. Marissa lives in Tacoma, Washington, with her husband and their three cats. Also Available: Cinder Scarlet Cress And don't miss: Winter.

The Marquis de Custine's unique perspective on a vast, fascinating country in the grip of oppressive tyranny. In 1839, encouraged by his friend Balzac, Custine set out to explore Russia. His impressions turned into what is perhaps the greatest and most influential of all books about Russia under the Tsars. Rich in anecdotes as much about the court of Tsar Nicholas as the streets of St Petersburg, Custine is as brilliant writing about the Kremlin as he is about the great northern landscapes. An immediate bestseller on publication, Custine's book is also a central book for any discussion of 19th century history, as — like de Tocqueville's Democracy in America — it dramatizes far broader questions about the nature of government and society.

Truth be told, there's a lot I still don't know. My superior Nightingale, previously the last of England's wizardly governmental force, is trying to teach me proper schooling for a magician's apprentice. But even he doesn't have all the answers. Mostly I'm just a constable sworn to enforce the Queen’s Peace, with the occasional help from some unusual friends and a well-placed fire blast. With the new year, I have three main objectives, a) pass the detective exam so I can officially become a DC, b) work out what the hell my relationship with Lesley Mai, an old friend from the force and now fellow apprentice, is supposed to be, and most importantly, c) get through the year without destroying a major landmark. Two out of three isn’t bad, right? A mutilated body in Crawley means another murderer is on the loose. The prime suspect is one Robert Weil, who may either be a common serial killer or an associate of the twisted magician known as the Faceless Man -- a man whose previous encounters I've barely survived. I've also got a case about a town planner going under a tube train and another about a stolen grimoire. But then I get word of something very odd happening in Elephant and Castle, on a housing estate designed by a nutter, built by charlatans, and inhabited by the truly desperate. If there's a connection to the Crawley case, I'll be entering some tricky waters of juristiction with the local river spirits. We have a prickly history, to say the least. Just the typical day for a magician constable.

A beautifully drawn study of what is at risk when you lose control of your own life. Unique, gripping, and viscerally moving — this impressive debut novel heralds the arrival of an extremely talented writer. Jodi Picoult, New York Times bestselling author of The Storyteller and Lone Wolf Destined to be a book club favorite, a heart-wrenching debut about two people who must decide how much they're willing to sacrifice for love. Mara Nichols, a successful lawyer, and devoted wife and adoptive mother, has recently been diagnosed with a terminal disease. Scott Coffman, a middle school teacher, has been fostering an eight-year-old boy while the boy's mother serves a jail sentence. Scott and Mara both have five days left until they must say good-bye to the ones they love the most. Through their stories, Julie Lawson Timmer explores the individual limits of human endurance, the power of relationships, and that sometimes loving someone means holding on, and sometimes it means letting go.

The Victoria System is Eric Reinhardt's novel of sex, power, capitalism and deception. It is shortlisted for The Prix Renaudot, The Prix Goncourt and The Grand Prix Du Roman De L'Academie Francaise. David Kolski is in charge of the construction of a huge Paris tower block, and the pressure is crushing him. But then he meets Victoria — a high-powered and ruthless executive by day and insatiable sensualist by night. David's hard-headed new lover gives him a new sense of purpose and renewed energy, but when she offers to use her position to help him in his career, a shadow falls over their affair. Is she capable of helping anyone other than herself? And who are the men in the Audi he keeps seeing, always a few cars behind him? Bold, arresting, accomplished, complex, sensual, sexual, intriguing, heady. (Le Monde). An ambitious and tragic novel which weaves together sex, power games and imagination. An ultracontemporary anti-fairy tale. (Les Inrocktibles). Finally, a sexy book by someone who appears to have actually had sex. (Dazed and Confused). Born in 1965, Eric Reinhardt is the is the author of four previous novels and a freelance publisher of art books. He lives and works in Paris. The Victoria System is his first novel to be translated into English. Sam Taylor is the English-language translator of HHhH, by Laurent Binet. He lives in France and the United States.

In the newest novel in the USA Today bestselling series, Jessica Fletcher must diagnose a killer with a taste for bad medicine... Jessica's latest book tour brings her to Tampa, Florida, where she meets up with an old friend, Cabot Cove's Dr. Seth Hazlitt. Seth is in town visiting Alvaro Vasquez, a renowned physician who is developing a potentially groundbreaking cure for Alzheimer's disease. If he's successful, his American backers stand to make millions. But there's a growing fear that the drug may fall into the wrong hands. Jessica attends a party at Vasquez's lavish home, but the celebration ends abruptly when Vasquez seems to be struck by lightning. Jessica and Seth do some digging into the physician's checkered past and learn that his death was no accident. As they work together to find a cure for the common killer, they become enmeshed in international intrigue involving the local police, the FBI, and the CIA — and begin to wonder whether they'll ever see Cabot Cove again.

Cicely Mary Barker's Flower Fairies of the Summer with a beautiful new cover. This new edition of Cicely Mary Barker's classic Flower Fairy title features a beautiful and catwalk-inspired cover. Intricate and reminiscent of lace, the new cover pays homage to the delicate beauty of Cicely's original illustrations. The book includes all the original classic poems and illustrations of the Flower Fairies of the Summer. Cicely Mary Barker's Flower Fairies have been ethereal companions to girls and women around the world ever since the publication of Cicely's first book in 1923. The magical illustrations have inspired generations of children to search for fairies at the bottom of their gardens. There is something delightfully charming about the delicate, childlike fairies of Cicely's imagination. Once seen, they are never forgotten. Cicely Mary Barker was born in Croydon, South London in 1895 and died in 1973. She found international acclaim as an artist with her delightful Flower Fairies books the first of which, Flower Fairies of the Spring, was printed in 1923.

When young Pablo Picasso arrived in Paris in October 1900 he made his way up the hillside of Montmartre... The real revolution in the arts first took place not, as is commonly supposed, in the 1920s to the accompaniment of the Charleston, black jazz and mint juleps but more quietly and intimately, in the shadow of the windmills — artificial and real — and in the cafes and cabarets of Montmartre during the first decade of the century. The cross-fertilization of painting, writing, music and dance produced a panorama of activity characterized by the early works of Picasso, Braque, Matisse, Derain, Vlaminck and Modigliani, the appearance of the Ballet Russe and the salons of Gertrude Stein. In In Montmartre, Sue Roe vividly brings to life the bohemian world of art in Paris between 1900-1910.

This book is a record of what has moved me between Uxbridge and Dagenham. My hope is that it moves you, too. Nairn's London is an idiosyncratic, poetic and intensely subjective meditation on a city and its buildings. Including railway stations, synagogues, abandoned gasworks, dock cranes, suburban gardens, East End markets, Hawksmoor churches, a Gothic cinema and twenty-seven different pubs, it is a portrait of the soul of a place, from a writer of genius.

It has become all too common for Napoleon Bonaparte's biographers to approach him as a figure to be reviled, bent on world domination, practically a proto-Hitler. Here, after years of study extending even to visits paid to St Helena and 53 of Napoleon's 56 battlefields, Andrew Roberts has created a true portrait of the mind, the life, and the military and above all political genius of a fundamentally constructive ruler. This is the Napoleon, Roberts reminds us, whose peacetime activity produced countless indispensable civic innovations — and whose Napoleonic Code provided the blueprint for civil law systems still in use around the world today. It is one of the greatest lives in world history, which here has found its ideal biographer. The sheer enjoyment which this book will give anyone who loves history is enormous.

Driving Honda by Jeffrey Rothfeder takes a revealing look inside the world-beating car maker. Honda Motors has quietly become one of the most successful multinational corporations in history. Since its founding in 1949 with the very first motorcycle, Honda — the world's fifth largest car manufacturer and Japan's second biggest — has abided by three unorthodox principles that value innovation over self-promotion, decentralization over corporate control, and dialectics over certainty. These management tenets have made Honda the model of what a multinational manufacturer should be in a globalized business environment — and point the way forward for others. Toyota may get all the attention (for both the right and wrong reasons, these days), but it's Honda that gets the results. Jeffrey Rothfeder is a veteran, award-winning business journalist. He has written the recent Wall Street Journal bestseller Make or Break and McIlhenny's Gold. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, Forbes, Fortune, PC World, and Popular Science, among others.

After seven years of marriage the beautiful Lady Brenda Last is bored with life at Hetton Abbey, the Gothic mansion that is the pride and joy of her husband, Tony. She drifts into an affair with the shallow socialite John Beaver and forsakes Tony for the Belgravia set. Brilliantly combining tragedy, comedy and savage irony, A Handful of Dust captures the irresponsible mood of the 'crazy and sterile generation' between the wars, The breakdown of the Last marriage, is a painful, comic re-working of Waugh's own divorce and a symbol of the disintegration of society.

'I think your work will improve no end if you accept my offer of Fenella's cat. And Tabby will have the time of his life down in the kitchen'. Poor Mildred is distraught. On the first day back at Miss Cackle's Academy for Witches her beloved but useless cat, Tabby, is banished to the kitchen. Then the class go for a week by the seaside and Mildred can bear the separation no longer. Stowing Tabby away, she takes him with her. But trying to keep him out of sight of Miss Hardbroom and prying Ethel Hallow leads Mildred from one disaster to another, and soon she really is all at sea. In this long-awaited fourth book about the endearing Worst Witch there's enough excitement to more than satisfy all her many fans.

The well-loved story of a big friendly giant who spirits a child out of bed to the land of the child-eating giants. This edition has a great new cover by Quentin Blake as well as a whole new exciting end section about Roald Dahl and his world.

Since its publication in 1947, Anne Frank's Diary has been read by tens of millions of people. This Definitive Edition restores substantial material omitted from the original edition, giving us a deeper insight into Anne Frank's world. Her curiosity about her emerging sexuality, the conflicts with her mother, her passion for Peter, a boy whose family hid with hers, and her acute portraits of her fellow prisoners reveal Anne as more human, more vulnerable and more vital than ever.

This Nick Hornby's first novel, an international bestseller and instantly recognized by critics and readers alike as a classic, helps to explain men to women, and men to men. Rob is good on music: he owns a small record shop and has strong views on what's decent and what isn't. But he's much less good on relationships. In fact, he's not at all sure that he wants to commit himself to anyone. So it's hardly surprising that his girlfriend decides that enough is enough.