Baby is twelve years old. Her mother died not long after she was born and she lives in a string of seedy flats in Montreal's red light district with her father Jules, who takes better care of his heroin addiction than he does of his daughter. Jules is an intermittent presence and a constant source of chaos in Baby's life — the turmoil he brings with him and the wreckage he leaves in his wake. Baby finds herself constantly re-adjusting to new situations, new foster homes, new places, new people, all the while longing for stability and a 'normal' life. But Baby has a gift — the ability to find the good in people, a genius for spinning stories and for cherishing the small crumbs of happiness that fall into her lap. She is bright, smart, funny and observant about life on the dirty streets of a city and wise enough to realise salvation rests in her own hands.

The Tudor period (1485 to 1603) marks in the minds of many the emergence of an English national identity. Defined by the totemic figure of the virgin queen — Elizabeth I — it witnessed the end of the dynastic uncertainties of the Wars of the Roses, the creation and triumph of the Anglican Church; the successful repulsion of foreign invaders and the beginnings of the adventure of empire; the blossoming of a sublimely gifted generation of musical composers, including Thomas Tallis and William Byrd; and the flowering of English poetry and drama, culminating in the glories of Ben Jonson, Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare. But it was also a period wracked by rebellion, invasion scares, sectarian strife, and — increasingly — by worries about dynastic succession. The Tudor Chronicles is a compelling, year-by-year chronology of this tumultuous and critical period in the development of the modern English nation. Each year is covered by a concise, informative and accessible narrative, amplified by extensive quotations from contemporary sources and accompanied by generously captioned and stunning images of the period — including portraits, maps, illuminations, royal seals, tapestries and other artefacts. Authoritative, informative and sumptuous, and compiled by a scholar who is steeped in knowledge of the period, The Tudor Chronicles brings a glorious era of English history dramatically and vividly to life. It is the perfect gift book for anyone with a love of, or fascination for, 16th-century English history.

Melander likes to do things flashy. When Parker finds himself working with Melander on a bank heist in a mid-sized midwestern city, his job is throwing a Molotov cocktail into a gas station. The resulting explosion sends the cops and fire trucks to the east side of town, while Melander and his gang plunder the bank on the west side. But Parker doesn't care for Melander's plan for a new heist, one that will clean out Palm Beach of a lot of very expensive jewelry. What Parker really dislikes is Melander's intention to use the proceeds from the bank job to capitalize the Palm Beach job... including Parker's cut. Melander is very polite about Parker's disinterest, and very sincere about paying him his share... with interest... after the jewelry job goes down. But that's not the way Parker works. Now he's tailing the gang down South, with a plan for getting his own back... and the entire swag of gems besides.

The magnificent vault of stars emblazoning Earth's night skies are but an infinitesimal fraction of the hundreds of billions that inhabit our galaxy — and there are at least as many galaxies in the universe as there are stars in the Milky Way. Cosmos makes sense of this dizzying celestial panorama by exploring it one step at a time, illustrating the planets, moons, stars, nebulae, white dwarfs, black holes and other exotica that populate the heavens with some of science's most spectacular photographs. The book opens with an orbital survey of planet Earth, before venturing into the solar system heading for interstellar space and the heart of our galaxy. As the journey unfolds, the rhythms of stellar life emerge: we pass through dark clouds of dust and gas ablaze with newly smelted stars and we witness dying stars bloom and fade as planetary nebulae, or tear themselves apart as supernovae. Having crossed the Milky Way, we enter intergalactic space. Out here we watch the hidden lives of galaxies: we see them flock and cluster, forming massive conglomerations that span millions of light years, visibly warping space with their tremendous gravity. After covering an almost unimaginable 13.4 billion light years, we approach the edge of space and the dawn of time where our voyage must end, but not before we consider how the universe was born, and how it might die.

Combining the data from 18 of the most advanced Earth satellites ever built, NASA has constructed the most detailed global portrait of our planet ever created. The Complete Earth reproduces this photomap in its entirety and at full-resolution, living up to its title by revealing the whole planet, cloud-free, at a resolution of 500m to every pixel, or 90 miles to every inch. At this scale we can trace the Amazon from Andean headwaters to Atlantic mouth, or explore the trackless sand seas of the Sahara, or follow the corrugated ridges of hills and mountains that mark the front line of India's tectonic assault on Eurasia as if we were in low-Earth orbit. These images are supplemented by a wealth of even higher resolution satellite imagery that zooms in on noteworthy features — from volcanoes to cities, river deltas to glaciers. In addition, 12 double-page-spreads chart one year in the life of our planet as they follow the ebb and flow of the seasons across the globe: we watch snow fall in the North as it melts in the South, and desert lands bloom and fade as the rains come and go. Accompanying the images, a brief but informative text explores the history of each landscape, explaining the how and when of its mountain ranges, deserts and plains.

With an introduction by Tariq Ali. Now almost exclusively known as the author of the bestselling Trilogy, as a professional journalist Stieg Larsson was an untiring crusader for democracy and equality. As a reporter and editor-in-chief on the journal Expo he researched the extreme right both in Sweden and at an international level. Collected here for the first time are essays and articles on right-wing extremism and racism, on violence against women and women's rights, on homophobia and honour killings. Included also is an account written for Vagabond magazine of his travels aboard the Trans-Siberian Express from Moscow to Beijing. His most important writings — perceptive, learned and committed texts — illustrate the breadth of his journalistic and political activities in connection with matters that were closest to his heart, and to which he devoted his life. Despite death threats and financial difficulties, Larsson never ceased to fight for and write about his most firmly held principles; it was his commitment to these which gave his best-selling novels their explosive force.

Drift through outer space with a doomed cosmonaut whose engine has cut out; return to an irradiated village with an elderly couple who want to go home; experience that sinking feeling common to all who visit Voromir, where graviatonal forces are 30 per cent higher than in the rest of the world; ask yourself, did Elvis really play a concert in Red Square? The ridiculous is rendered sublime in Francesc Seres' collection of twenty-one impish and outrageous stories by five imaginary Russian writers. Each story mines a discrete facet of Russian life, history or culture, and as a whole they sketch a historical arc that begins in the nineteenth century and ends in the age of budget airlines. Russian Stories is a virtuoso collection by a master of the genre, offering the reader a winning combination of daring, wit, dash and charm.

What exactly is a credit crunch? Why do footballers earn so much more than the rest of us? Which country is likely to be the world's leading economy in 10 years' time? Daily Telegraph economics editor Edmund Conway introduces and explains the central ideas of economics in a series of fifty essays. Beginning with an exploration of the basic theories, such as Adam Smith's 'invisible hand', and concluding with the latest research into the links between wealth and happiness, he sheds light on all the essential topics needed to understand booms and busts, bulls and bears, and the way the world really works.

Art introduces readers to 100 of the world's most important artists and their paintings, from the 13th century to the modern era. Works by artists including Caravaggio, Vermeer, van Gogh and Warhol are reproduced in superb high quality, arranged chronologically and set in their historical context by Susie Hodge's concise and readable narrative. Including explanations of key periods in art history — from the Early Renaissance to Dutch Realism, and from Rococo to Pop Art — a guide to the world's best art galleries and a helpful glossary of key terms, this is the perfect book for any art lover.

Shipwrecks have captured our imagination for centuries. Here acclaimed historian Sam Willis traces the astonishing tales of ships that have met with disastrous ends, along with the ensuing acts of courage, moments of sacrifice and episodes of villainy that inevitably occurred in the extreme conditions. Many were freak accidents, and their circumstances so extraordinary that they inspired literature: the ramming of the Essex by a sperm whale was immortalized in Herman Melville's Moby Dick. Some symbolize colossal human tragedy: including the legendary Titanic whose maiden voyage famously went from pleasure cruise to epic catastrophe. From the Kyrenia ship of 300 BC to the Mary Rose, through to the Kursk submarine tragedy of 2000, this is a thrilling work of narrative history from one of our most talented young historians.