Over forty years of service to the United Nations — the last ten as Secretary-General — Kofi Annan has been at the centre of the major geopolitical events of our time. As much a memoir as a guide to world order, Interventions provides a unique, behind-the-scenes view of global diplomacy during one of the most tumultuous periods in UN history. With eloquence and immediacy, Annan writes about the highs and lows of his years at the United Nations: from shuttle-diplomacy during crises such as Kosovo, Lebanon and Israel-Palestine to the wrenching battles over the Iraq War to the creation of the landmark Responsibility to Protect doctrine. He is remarkably candid about the organization's failed efforts, particularly in Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur. Ultimately, Annan shows readers a world where solutions are available, if we have the will and courage to see them through.

NW is Zadie Smith's masterful novel about London life. Zadie Smith's brilliant tragi-comic NW follows four Londoners — Leah, Natalie, Felix and Nathan — after they've left their childhood council estate, grown up and moved on to different lives. From private houses to public parks, at work and at play, their city is brutal, beautiful and complicated. Yet after a chance encounter they each find that the choices they've made, the people they once were and are now, can suddenly, rapidly unravel. A portrait of modern urban life, NW is funny, sad and urgent — as brimming with vitality as the city itself. Praise for NW: Her dialogue sings and soars; terse, packed and sassy. Smith is simply wonderful: Dickens' legitimate daughter.

Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief is the first bestselling book in Rick Riordan's phenomenally successful Percy Jackson series — now with a new cover look. Half boy. Half God. ALL Hero. Look, I didn't want to be a half-blood. I never asked to be the son of a Greek God. I was just a normal kid, going to school, playing basketball, skateboarding. The usual. Until I accidentally vaporized my maths teacher. Now I spend my time battling monsters and generally trying to stay alive. This is the one where Zeus, God of the Sky, thinks I've stolen his lightning bolt — and making Zeus angry is a very bad idea. Rick Riordan is the Mythmaster. The Greek Gods are alive and kicking — go to the website and see for yourself. It's Buffy meets Artemis Fowl. Thumbs up.

The court of Henry VIII is rife with intrigue, rivalries and romance — and none are better placed to understand this than the women at its heart. The story of Katherine Parr, Henry VIII's final wife.

Packed with heart-pounding action and boundless invention, The Tombs is an exceptional thriller. Husband-and-wife team Sam and Remi Fargo are intrigued when an archaeologist friend requests their help excavating a top secret historical site. What they find will set them on a hunt for a prize greater than they could ever imagine.

The Top Gear Years brings together Jeremy Clarkson's collected magazine columns for the first time. Clarkson at his pithy, provocative, hilarious best. We now know all about the world according to Clarkson. In a series of bestselling books Jeremy has revealed it to be a puzzling, frustrating place where all too often the lunatics seem to be running the asylum. But in The Top Gear Years, we get something rather different. Because ten years ago, at an ex-RAF aerodrome in Surrey, Jeremy and his friends built a world that was rather more to his liking: they called it Top Gear HQ. And Top Gear is for Jeremy what the jungle is for Tarzan: the perfect place to work and play. But they didn't stop there... With this corner of Surrey sorted out, Jeremy and the boys decided to have a crack at the rest of the world. With Top Gear Live charging through with the subtlety of a touring heavy rock band and far flung outposts across the globe from North America to China — an empire of petrol-headed upon which the sun never set. And all along Jeremy was writing about it in Top Gear magazine. Here, collected for the first time, are the fruits of his labours: the cars, the hijinx, the pleasure and the pain. Brilliantly written and laugh out loud funny. The Top Gear Years follows Jeremy Clarkson's many bestselling titles including Round the Bend and The World according to Clarkson series. Praise for Jeremy Clarkson: Jeremy Clarkson is very funny and his well-honed political incorrectness is a joy. (Daily Telegraph). Jeremy Clarkson began his writing career on the Rotherham Advertiser. Since then he has written for the Sun, the Sunday Times, the Rochdale Observer, the Wolverhampton Express & Star, all of the Associated Kent Newspapers and Lincolnshire Life. Today he is the tallest person working in British television.

In The Launch Pad, Randall Stross, author of eBoys and Planet Google, takes a behind-the-scenes look at how tomorrow's hottest startups are being primed for greatness. Twice a year, in the heart of Silicon Valley, a small investment firm called Y Combinator selects an elite group of young entrepreneurs, from around the world, for three months of intense work and instruction. Their brand new, two- or three-person startups are given a seemingly impossible challenge: to turn a raw idea into a viable business, FAST. Each YC session culminates in Demo Day, when investors and venture capitalists flock to hear pitches from the new graduates. Any one of them might turn out to be the next Dropbox (class of 2007, now valued at $5 billion), or Airbnb (2009, $1.3 billion). Randall Stross is the first journalist to have fly-on- the wall access to Y Combinator. He tells the full story of how Paul Graham started this ultra-exclusive institution, how it chooses among hundreds of aspiring Mark Zuckerbergs, and how it teaches them to go from concept to profitability in record time. The Launch Pad is both a gripping narrative and a gold mine of useful insights. A must-read for anyone interested in the realities of modern entrepreneurship' — Eric Ries, author of The Lean Startup 'Stross' account of the best new entrepreneurs and the exciting companies they're building at startup schools is a great read for founders and would-be founders alike . (Marc Andreessen, cofounder, Andreessen Horowitz). Randall Stross writes the Digital Domain column for The New York Times and is a professor of business at San Jose State University. He is the author of several acclaimed books, including eBoys, Planet Google, and The Wizard of Menlo Park. He has a Ph.D. in history from Stanford University.

Forget the 1 per cent — it's time to get to grips with the 0.1 per cent... There has always been some gap between rich and poor, but it has never been wider — and now the rich are getting wealthier at such breakneck speed that the middle classes are being squeezed out. While the wealthiest 10 per cent of Americans, for example, receive half the nation's income, the real money flows even higher up, in the top 0.1 per cent. As a transglobal class of highly successful professionals, these self-made oligarchs often have more in common with one another than with their own countrymen. But how is this happening, and who are the people making it happen? Chrystia Freeland, acclaimed business journalist and Global Editor-at-Large of Reuters, has unprecedented access to the richest and most successful people on the planet, from Davos to Dubai, and dissects their lives with intelligence, empathy and objectivity. Pacily written and powerfully researched, Plutocrats could not provide a more timely insight into the current state of Capitalism and its most wealthy players. A superb piece of reportage... a tremendous illumination.

The boy who would be King has gained the throne... Prince Honorious Jorg Ancrath vowed when he was nine to avenge his slaughtered mother and brother--and punish his father for not doing so. When he was fifteen, he began to fulfill that vow. Now he is eighteen — and he must hold on by strength of arms to what he took by torture and treachery. King Jorg is a man haunted: by the ghost of a young boy, by a mysterious copper box, by his desire for the woman who rides with his enemy. Plagued by nightmares of the atrocities he committed, and of the atrocities committed against him when he was a child, he is filled with rage. And even as his need for revenge continues to consume him, twenty thousand men march toward the gates of his castle. His enemy is far stronger than him. Jorg knows that he cannot win a fair fight. But he has found, in a chamber hidden beneath the castle, ancient and long-lost artifacts. Some might call them magic. Jorg is not certain — all he knows is that the secrets they hold can be put to terrible use in the coming battle...

On Manhattan's Upper East Side a woman lies dead at the bottom of the stairs, stripped of all her valuables. Most cops might call it a mugging gone wrong, but Lieutenant Eve Dallas knows better. A well-off accountant and a beloved wife and mother, Marta Dickenson doesn't seem the type to be on anyone's hit list. But when Eve and her partner, Peabody, find blood inside the building, the lieutenant knows Marta's murder was the work of a killer who's trained, but not professional or smart enough to remove all the evidence. But when someone steals the files out of Marta's office, Eve must immerse herself in her billionaire husband Roarke's world of big business to figure out who's cruel and callous enough to hire a hit on an innocent woman. And as the killer's violent streak begins to escalate, Eve knows she has to draw him out, even if it means using herself as bait.

Berlin in 1933 is in upheaval. Eleven-year-old Carla von Ulrich struggles to understand the tensions disrupting her family as Hitler strengthens his grip on Germany. Into this turmoil steps her mother's formidable friend and former British MP, Ethel Leckwith, and her student son, Lloyd, who soon learns for himself the brutal reality of Nazism.

Throughout history, maps have been fundamental in shaping our view of the world, and our place in it. But far from being purely scientific objects, maps of the world are unavoidably ideological and subjective, intimately bound up with the systems of power and authority of particular times and places. Mapmakers do not simply represent the world, they construct it out of the ideas of their age. In this scintillating book, Jerry Brotton examines the significance of 12 maps — from the almost mystical representations of ancient history to the satellite-derived imagery of today. He vividly recreates the environments and circumstances in which each of the maps was made, showing how each conveys a highly individual view of the world. Brotton shows how each of his maps both influenced and reflected contemporary events and how, by reading it, we can better understand the worlds that produced it. Although the way we map our surroundings is changing, Brotton argues that maps today are no more definitive or objective than they have ever been, but that they continue to define, shape and recreate the world. Readers of this book will never look at a map in quite the same way again.

It's hard to be patient when you're only a very little bear, and Little Pip cannot wait until Christmas! Every day he wakes up and thinks the day has finally come — it's driving Daddy Grizzle nuts! Poor Daddy Grizzle... and poor Pip! How will he be able to carry on waiting — there are still so many sleeps to go.

The Christmas Tale of Peter Rabbit is a brand new tale from Emma Thompson. In her second Further Tale of Peter Rabbit, Emma Thompson returns Peter to his home in the Lake District. Peter and his silly cousin Benjamin are helping their friend William — he's a turkey — who is in danger of becoming Mr and Mrs McGregor's Christmas dinner. Will Peter and Benjamin be able to save him? Emma Thompson is an Oscar-winning screenwriter and actress who lives in London and Argyll. Emma's Further Tale of Peter Rabbit was published in 2012. Emma said, I've always loved Beatrix Potter, as a child and then as a mother and all the years in-between as well. When Mr Rabbit invited me to write a further tale, I was more honoured than I can say. I hope I don't let him or his extraordinary creator down. Don't miss The Further Tale of Peter Rabbit by Emma Thompson.

Stuff I've Been Reading by Nick Hornby — the bestselling novelist's rich, witty and inspiring reading diary. Read what you enjoy, not what bores you, Nick Hornby tells us. And in this new collection of his columns from the Believer magazine (taking off where The Complete Polysyllabic Spree finished), he shows us how it's done. Or at least, how he does it: whether plunging into a biography of Dickens whilst his children are destroying something in the room next door or devouring a whole series of children's books whilst on holiday. Hornby is the intelligent, committed but sceptical reader we'd all like to be. Admiring Ian McEwen's On Chesil Beach, he points out a surprising anachronism. Reading Cormac McCarthy's The Road, he wonders why 'unflinching' is a term of praise among critics. And who but Nick Hornby could successfully juxtapose a discussion of a book on the Band with one on the Stasi? These accounts of one reader's experience of buying and reading, and sometimes not reading, books differ from all other reviews or critical appreciations — they take into account the role that books actually play in the lives of readers. This book, which is classic Hornby, confirms the novelist's status as one of the world's most exciting curators of culture. It will be loved by fans of About a Boy and High Fidelity, as well as readers of Will Self, Zadie Smith, Stewart Lee and Charlie Brooker. Nick Hornby has captivated readers and achieved widespread critical acclaim for his comic, well-observed novels About a Boy, High Fidelity, How to be Good, A Long Way Down (shortlisted for the Whitbread Award), Slam and Juliet, Naked. His four additional works of non-fiction, Fever Pitch, 31 Songs (shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award), The Complete Polysyllabic Spree and Pray are also available from Penguin.

Includes cutaways, floorplans and reconstructions of the must-see sites, and street-by-street maps of all the cities and towns of Cambodia & Laos. This guide helps you discover everything region-by-region; from local festivals and markets to day trips around the countryside.

HardCover. Pub Date: 2011-01-01 Pages: 1300 Language: English Publisher: Particular Books This is the bestselling classic guide to French cooking with over 1000 clear authentic and delicious recipes for every key French dish from Boeuf Bourguignon to the perfect croissant. And now to celebrate its 50th anniversary Penguin have reset and redesigned the text and there is a special anniversary introduction from Julia Child. Published in time for Mothers Day. this boxset with its two beautiful hardback volumes will become the essential ingredient for any cultivated kitchen.

This new volume of eight short stories offers students of German at all levels the opportunity to enjoy a wide range of contemporary literature in the original, with the aid of parallel translations. The majority of these stories have been written in the past decade, and reflect a rich diversity of styles and themes. Complete with notes, the stories make excellent reading in either language.

Hairy Maclary goes off for a walk with a few of his friends — and comes up against a nasty surprise, in the shape of the cat Scarface Claw, who chases the dogs away. This bestselling story is now available as an adorable mini paperback in a brand new series of Pocket Puffins.